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Google Pledges Not To Sue Any Open Source Projects Using Their Patents 153

sfcrazy writes "Google has announced the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge. In the pledge Google says that they will not sue any user, distributor, or developer of Open Source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. Under this pledge, Google is starting off with 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google. Google says that over time they intend to expand the set of Google's patents covered by the pledge to other technologies." This is in addition to the Open Invention Network, and their general work toward reforming the patent system. The patents covered in the OPN will be free to use in Free/Open Source software for the life of the patent, even if Google should transfer ownership to another party. Read the text of the pledge. It appears that interaction with non-copyleft licenses (MIT/BSD/Apache) is a bit weird: if you create a non-free fork it appears you are no longer covered under the pledge.

Comment Velcro Ties (Score 1) 242

Look @ NewEgg for reusable velcro ties. Better than zip ties since you can re-run as necessary. Also look at Tie-D-Wires for affixing cable bundles to your desk. I like ones with adhesive backing so they don't destroy the surface. Or, go all out and get some plastic channels to run cables through.

Comment Increased network load (Score 1) 261

In addition to all of the comments about weather actually affecting the data centers that "the cloud" resides in, bad weather pushes most people inside. Instead of being out of their house doing something else, people will start browsing the Internet, increasing the network and server load in these data centers. Large enough storms might drive up traffic just enough to cause, at minimum, a small spike in loads, and at worst would force load distributors to do their work.

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