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Comment Re:clemency? (Score 1) 504

Hmm, could be...

Though, not all the media are liberal, but lately the conservative media has the habit of pissing away any shard of credibility. I think this is mostly due to selecting raving idiots (O'Reilly & Limbaugh spring to mind) for the spotlight.

My mainstream news sources are limited, have you heard much mainstream news call for impeaching Obama over the NSA's mass surveillance? I just assumed the republican politicians weren't saying anything because it's something they approve of.

Comment Re:clemency? (Score 4, Insightful) 504

...eventually they will be the ones asking for clemency.

I hope you're right, but I really worry that U.S. citizens are no longer up to the challenge of holding a politician's feet to the fire. Maybe it's our news networks colluding with politicians on damage control. Ayway, Nixon spied on another political party and it was somehow a bigger deal than the NSA spying on everyone.

NSA = Gladys Kravitz

Comment Re:Ditch Windows? LOL!!! (Score 2) 304

M$, with every iteration of xbox, has been subconsciously trying to diminish the viability of windows as a gaming platform, this is mostly due to the 10 dollar royalty they get for each xbox game, compared to no royalty for each windows game. Games are the last reason for many technically minded people to retain a windows machine. Dev's won't take linux over windows yet, but in three months...if it's easy to port from ps4 to linux...then gamedevs may start to view windows as "not a worthwhile endeavor". Though allot of how that will turn out depends on the ps4 vs xbone face-off that's going to happen soon.

Comment Re:End the corruption of copyrights (Score 1) 361

Perhaps Nintendo wouldn't care enough about the original Super Mario Brothers title to renew it past the first 14 years. I don't think they were still selling (firsthand that is) the game 14 years after its first publication.

Even if they did it would be 2 more years for the us publication date, and entirely public domain if taking graphics from the 1985 japanese famicom rom
.

Comment Re:trademarks not copyrights. (Score 1) 361

Good Point.

Though, it seems beyond the intended effect of the law. Trademarks should be things like The Official Nintendo Quality Seal. Remember that awful graphics on NES games (except the Tengen ones)? Or the "Nintendo" or title "Super Mario Borthers".
Those seem like legitimate trademarks, intended to help avoid consumer confusion.

IP lawyers do tend to push the envelope creatively in applying trademark/dress protection.
the graphics for Mario, if they're a direct byte-by-byte copy it should be copyright infringement (indeed, that may be the case here), but if you yourself draw Mario, you are the copyright holder of that drawing of Mario and those Mario graphics.

The idea that trademarks/dress *should* apply for the art-style seems pretty out-of-scope of the intended laws though, which is, as you said, to avoid consumer confusion.

The Military

Boeing Turning Old F-16s Into Unmanned Drones 239

dryriver sends this news from the BBC: "Boeing has revealed that it has retrofitted retired fighter jets to turn them into drones. It said that one of the Lockheed Martin F-16s made a first flight with an empty cockpit last week. Two U.S. Air Force pilots controlled the plane from the ground as it flew from a Florida base to the Gulf of Mexico (video). Boeing suggested that the innovation could ultimately be used to help train pilots, providing an adversary they could practise firing on. The jet — which had previously sat mothballed at an Arizona site for 15 years — flew at an altitude of 40,000ft (12.2km) and a speed of Mach 1.47 (1,119mph/1,800km/h). It carried out a series of maneuvers including a barrel roll and a 'split S' — a move in which the aircraft turns upside down before making a half loop so that it flies the right-way-up in the opposite direction. This can be used in combat to evade missile lock-ons. Boeing said the unmanned F-16 was followed by two chase planes to ensure it stayed in sight, and also contained equipment that would have allowed it to self-destruct if necessary. The firm added that the flight attained 7Gs of acceleration but was capable of carrying out maneuvers at 9Gs — something that might cause physical problems for a pilot. 'It flew great, everything worked great, [it] made a beautiful landing — probably one of the best landings I've ever seen,' said Paul Cejas, the project's chief engineer."

Comment Re:GNOME: We don't want Microsoft to have all the (Score 4, Interesting) 729

I think the problem with Ubuntu is similar to the problem at M$. They feel that they have to make UI changes (they call them improvements) to show the end user it's not the same old thing.

I've really been wondering why a company doesn't just build something like litestep (basically a module loader and a large collection of modules) and continually beef each shell module's capability. Come up with a new layout each release to prove to people you're changing, while leaving old layouts around for people who liked them better.

Even the tech support guy not knowing how to tell you to do things over the phone would be no worse than it was with previous OS iterations "switch to '98 interface then click the gray bar" or they could now do the whole remote desktop thing.

Comment Re:So he admits it. (Score 1) 133

are you sure those aren't also called brushless dc motors?
this thingy seems to indicate brushed and brushless could both be refered to by the term.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_motor

in any case, the intention of my message was: as long as we can buy/make motors controllable from a dc power source we should be able to create actuators to run 3d printers, and program them from our not-locked down computers.

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