The newspapers could adapt to changing technology. Although, it looks like they are already. I see more and more newspapers becoming online-only, for better or worse. The "major" ones will probably continue print editions, but they'll be only on Sundays or something. How this will effect people who can't get the Internet, I don't know, but it's one of the few ways they can stay profitable.

Abit specialized in high-end motherboards back in the day. I'm not too surprised that they're closing now; most people are going with laptops now, and the people who get desktops get sub-$1k machines, anyway. Hell, most desktops seem to be less than $500 now.

Oh well, at least Gigabyte's still around. *hugs his mobo*

...would third-world nations have wires, a light filter and LEDs?

(then again, LEDs are something like < $1 each)

Doesn't this remind you of the microwave power plants in SimCity? To me, it does. :)

The FBI is supposed to get the whole truth out. Unfortunately, there are people who want to bring politics into enforcing the law, so we need checks and balances on the entire government. That's where the media comes in. Mark Felt did do the right thing, even though it was incredibly difficult for him at the time. RIP, Mark. (now, whether we'd have the balls to do that today, or the attention span to see it through, is another question entirely. I don't think we do, quite honestly, judging by the multiple scandals that have gone seemingly unpunished during the Bush administration.)

But the case doesn't really prove anything, at least, not until SCOTUS denies to hear it/agrees with the ruling. But even then, it could just be that patent writers have to be a bit more creative about the wording of their patents.

Really, it's a graph that you create a topological ordering from in order to execute the correct sequence of actions. The cool part is seeing the end results of that sort of thing (and what algorithms and AI can do), not the exact implementation details. Although, I guess they're doing all this faster than real-time, so that's cool, too. *shrug*

Software patents, sadly, play by different rules than everything else. I'd imagine that software patents would still be granted and enforced, especially since they could just tie the process to the PC and meet the court's requirements. Meh.

Meanwhile, I "explained the selection process" to your mom last night. ;)

But really, there needs to be a bit more transparency for stuff like this.

With most merchant accounts offering 99% approval rates, if your company falls in the other 1%, it probably can't accept cards anyway (due to the type of business or other factors, or you're just plain shady). I feel bad for the people defrauded by the merchants who used this processor. :(