This is not usually how patent trolls operate. They usually test the waters against small companies that can ill afford to take a infringement case to trial. Once a certain level of precedence is set with victories or settlements at a relatively cheep cost, then you go after the big fish with the big pockets (having already fattened your own war chest with prior "wins".

This isn't year 2000 anymore. Most of the commercial database vendors have "developer editions" available for free. There's usually a bunch of restrictions such as total database size, number of concurrent connections (usually 1) or local access only. Microsoft has made a pared-down SQL Server available for free under monikers such as "Compact Edition", "Express Edition" and (I think?) "Embedded Edition". Currently, with SQL Server 2014, it's Express Edition and a size limit of 10 GB per database. I don't see a connection limit specified, just a compute restriction of "the lesser of 1 socket or 4 cores". I've seen some Windows games utilize this engine to store game assets.

The main reason I currently run Win8.1 is for Hyper-V. Unlike its predecessor Virtual PC, it actually supports Linux guest VMs, and it also does it well. Probably the only missing feature is the ability to share folders between host & guest. It works so much more smoothly than VirtualBox. Little things like being able to use an active ftp connection from a VM, rather than forcing passive mode (yes, people still use FTP in 2015) or have the VM suspend/resume when the host is rebooted automatically is awesome (especially when you leave your laptop at work on the weekend updates are applied).

Granted, the Win8.1 UI generally sucks - too much crap I don't care about forced into the main start menu by default - but it only takes about 10 mins to clean that up and get stuff I actually use pinned to the start menu or task bar. My 90% most commonly used apps are just pinned to the task bar - Visual Studio, Outlook, IntelliJ, MTPuTTY, etc, so I rarely even see the Win8.1 start menu. IE & the Windows Store are the very first things removed/unpinned.

I have, about a year ago. My Surface Pro 2, on wake from sleep, wouldn't allow me to enter credentials, it would just sit at the login screen. The attached keyboard wouldn't allow input, and the on-screen touch keyboard wouldn't show up. Only work around was a hard reboot. Turns out the Surface didn't really like being put to sleep while using a full-screen game, such as Civ 5. Never did get an official resolution to the issue, but I haven't had the problem as of late (maybe quietly fixed somewhere along the way).

For enterprise support, the few times I've had to reach out, they've been very helpful and responsive. Granted, the company I was working for was paying for that support (and no, I have no idea of the financial terms of the contract).

Is this maybe why Comcast twice inside of 3 days invoked Emergency Broadcast System tests, the latest being roughly 8:15 CDT last night? (Previous was on Sunday, both disrupted recorded/on demand programs, neither was live).

After 4 years, still not sure what/who is causing the problem, but I've an Asus Rampage IV Extreme with a main SSD and 3x whirling platters (in a RAID config). If I do a soft-restart (i.e. Windows->Shutdown->Restart), all knowledge of my SSD is lost (which is a big problem, because that is my boot device). As soon as I see this (I see the drive missing in the onboard Intel SATA bios), I just do a hard power-off, wait a few seconds, then power on, and everything is back to normal. Pretty sure the SSD is not the cause, I've had Intel & Corsair drives in that spot and no problem. And the platters have had no problems (except for one that failed a S.M.A.R.T. check, unrelated).

I wouldn't normally bitch about this, but when Windows does an auto-install (which I've allowed it to do) of patches that require a reboot, they happen around 3am local. However, when Windows does it's autoreboot and I'm not around to watch for the device missing silliness, the system gets in a really weird state, like monitors won't turn on, don't even realize they're connected to something.

The media bias is evident when you look at who and why they attack certain individuals. Biden has gotten away with a lot of stuff. He basically groped a woman in public, in front of cameras, and the reaction was "Oh, Biden....", but when Dan Quayle only accepted a different spelling of potato at a spelling bee, he was vilified. Another example of bias is look at DHS funding: some media outlets are blaming Republicans of denying funding, yet it's Dems that are blocking the vote through parliamentary measures because they don't have the votes to outright block it.

As I've seen it, the Koch brothers are not for gay marriage, one has said he's basically fine with it and doesn't get why everyone's in a big fuss about it.

I, for one, tend to be fiscally conservative, yet socially liberal or, rather, laissez faire. I don't care to subsidize others lifestyles, but I won't comment on or condemn others' lifestyle choices. However, I'm willing to state that marriage is not a constitutional right, and as such, should be left as an issue of states' rights. I'm also willing to state that the primary reason this is an issue is because the federal government grants certain privileges (nominally in the form of tax breaks) to such qualifying "couples". The argument to extend such protections is under the 14th Amendment "equal protection" clause, yet neither sexual orientation nor marital status is listed, under that amendment, as protected classes. Thus, if you extend that qualification to same-sex couples, you're still alienating another class: single individuals and still violating the spirit of the 14th Amendment. What it boils down to, if you treated all people equally, as individuals, regardless of marital status, gay or otherwise marriage would be a non-existent issue.

I picked a singular, complete, quote from her, directly, that appears to be very telling of her mindset. I'm not assuming anything, I'm exercising literacy and understanding words of the English language. "could have offended" is not the same as "offended". I didn't try and reconstitute what I thought I heard someone behind me said at conference after I heard the word "dongle". Walk down the street or mingle among any large crowd of people. You'll likely, in very short order, hear a lot of things taken out of context may be offensive. Even if you heard the sentence "I want to give her my dongle", so what? You don't, without context, know who "her" is, what the dongle is, or why the dongle should be given to her. Yeah, you can make anything sexual. I want to her in the . Done. In today's society, we jump to the worst conclusions, publicly shame and convict in the media, nevermind whether what we perceive has any actual bearing on reality.

Yes, it snowballed, but someone had to get that snowball rolling down the hill to begin with, and that was someone was Adria Richards.

If you read the interview in the article, she claims to have empathy towards "Hank", but her past and present actions reek of her being a sociopath. Even her own remarks insinuate that she wasn't offended, but she made a shit-storm because they could appear to be offensive to her. In her mind, and she states this in the interview, that because she is a black Jewish woman, and he is a white male, that she basically decided he needed to made an example of and that they got what was coming to them, because they don't understand where she comes from. She took racist and sexist actions by assuming things about these two because of parts of a private conversation she eavesdropped on because they are white and male, and she is black and female. She made no attempt to even privately or discretely address her perceived transgression, instead immediately publicly shamed them with a he-said/she-said allegation. I'd wager if she knew any personally identifying info when she snapped the photo & tweeted it, she'd have included that, as well. She has no remorse, and considering how public and detailed this whole incident has been and her (re)actions along the way, I don't see it as a surprise she's still unemployed. I don't see very many companies wanting to take on that legal time bomb. I'm sure there are companies where she'd be welcome (probably certain media/political outlets targeting certain niche demographics), but after this, I think she'll be hard-pressed to find a job in "normal" corporate environment.

I quoted directly from the article of the interview. Sorry I did not indicate that, just sort of assumed it would be conveyed.

Yeah, the interview doesn't exactly paint her in any better of a light than people already hold her in. In her own words she basically states she's racist and sexist with a possible religious bias:

(emphasis mine). The way that's phrased, to me, states that she was not offended, but chose to manufacture offense via the photo & tweets, and that resulted in real world damage to peoples lives. Not just to the two men, but their families, as well.

While I do think that a lot of the stuff that was done and said to her after this incident are despicable, it doesn't make her any less of a hurtful, spiteful, vindictive, hypocritical, hateful excuse of a human being. Additionally, her comment about Downs Syndrome is just...disturbing.

Not to be pedantic or argumentative, but how are you sure your open hardware design isn't manipulated or back-door'd after you hand it over to a 3rd party for manufacturing? There is no single person in the world that build a useful general purpose (in today's standards) computer from hardware to software, guaranteeing that no one else has had an opportunity along the way to manipulate it in some fashion. At some point, you have to start trusting people/organizations/companies. The fewer involved, the greater level of trust you can reasonably assume. We've already seen how the "many eyes" postulation may be flawed (see: openssl). I chalk that up more to human nature: everyone assumes everyone else is looking, so until you personally have a problem, you don't look, you just assume & trust. I know I do this; I only read others' code when I'm bored or have to. Once I'm sufficiently bored by reading others' code that I'm not paid to read, I get back to my regular job.

There's another part that I didn't bring up: Dish will be fined. But, where does that money go? To the people impacted by their acts? No. It will disappear into the fed government somewhere. Whatever fines are collected should be distributed to the people that they violated - and I'm not one of them.

Fair enough, I did read it several times, but managed to miss, each time, the "and require" part under Section 15. I'd suggest that it wouldn't withstand a challenge under the 4th or 5th Amendments, but seeing as how the SCOTUS has previously ruled the 1st Amendment doesn't (always) apply during public school, I'm not sure how well that would fare.

Market Cap of Dish Network is roughly $34B, so the max potential fine is roughly 30x what the company is worth. If levied, it means *poof*, gone. Won't happen. There will be a fine, but I'll be surprised if it ends up being more than even $30M.