Copyright terms are a farce. The emperor has no clothes. It's completely distorted for how long the terms are. What should they be? 20 years for video, audio, and written works. 10 years for software as that changes so fast.

If I'm ever brought before a judge for the contents of my hard-drive I'll plead guilty to everything within the above given terms and no contest for everything older.

Snow Crash was written in 1992. For an even earlier conception, see Earth which was written in 1990.

These novels provide protection over the general idea of "augmented reality" but however, they do not provide protection for the specific implementations as those will likely be very complex assemblages of various technologies that are much more involved than just a general idea.

Remember, machine language is just another language except it is one tailored to processors. So, I should have said "and/or" instead of just "or" in the parent post. For operating systems, the APIs can be high-level thunked so you could do something like translate DirectX calls on Windows 7 to an equivalent library on an ARM Linux machine. The program code is recompiled but the libraries the program code calls are native to the destination device. DirectX is also just another "hardware feature." You can thunk DirectX in exactly the same way you would thunk a VGA card. The recompiler doesn't care - all that matters is that the calls from recompiled code go to equivalents, no matter how high or low level those may be.

On the fly recompiler for different operating systems or processor architectures... Mmm? ;)

See: The Uplift Series.

If drugs and/or surgical modification was both safe and effective? Sign me up. I'd love to sit down with a C++11 book, flip through the pages fast in half an hour and then be an expert programmer. Spare me the - admit it - religiously inspired dogma. I want to be better, stronger, faster, and while I'm at it please remove that bummer of a failure condition called "death" too.

I am typing this on a machine which has Intel x4500 graphics. I bought it about 2 weeks ago, and I can certainly support your point: I went looking for Intel graphics because for everything besides Poulsbo they are the graphics to have on Linux. 2D and 3D acceleration is fine, Compiz works fine. Intel graphics are great for Linux. Intel graphics are not great for gaming. That is why just to my right, currently powered down, is a Windows machine with an AMD Radeon 6870 in it.

Oh, Kafka was way ahead of you: The Trial. Charged, convicted, and executed on secret evidence the protagonist was never allowed to see.

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

So pretend you're a client and request the decryption key for the payload from their servers?

Won't give up their "compilers" now will they.. Bastards, I'll drop in my version of GCC and show them! Er, ahem, I think the article means "source code." And even with that a determined reverse-engineering effort could negate that too..

As covered on Slashdot, waaay back: Intel proposed a unique identifier for every processor. However, once the proposal went public then "mark of the beast" and other interests got it canned. This article is simply attempting to replicate, badly, what Intel proposed to do in a clean manner.

Any caricature is bound to be inaccurate to actual individuals contained within it. Yes, I read Slashdot, yes, I run Linux - typing this on that right now, and yes, sitting right next to me is my other machine which is running Windows 7. Linux is for everything but games, and Windows 7 is for games. I also happen to have an aesthetic streak and like my systems to look good. Custom Xfce theme that looks good on Linux and Aero looks good on Windows 7. I don't fit into the "slashdotter" mold that you have roughly sketched out in your own mind.

Aero looks much, much nicer than a flat rectangle that is one color. It's too bad that the window chrome got bashed so bad. Of course a likely reason for it is that tablets will run primarily on battery and Aero might be a drain on that.

Which is the "other engineering problem." ;)

The issue for all of us who already exist today is that the tissue grows around the mesh. Certainly in the future new organisms can be grown and integrated at the same time to become cybernetic life forms. However, for all of us who are already grown getting a mesh inside of our tissues presents a whole other engineering problem.