Erlang is Ericsson.

> ...
> Think about it, who ever wanted a loan of Brazilian Reales?
> ...

Nobody, of course. But if it was in Brazilian Reais, I'd want one. Provided the interest is low enough. ;-)

Egos and charlatans aside, real academics with actual know-how/expertise on given areas are simply not going to use Wikipedia.

Not for any reason except that much of what they'd write would be reverted by some random i-know-more-than-you joe, or some of the entrenched biased "editors".

I love the Wikipedia idea and I still like the site a lot as a whole, but I no longer contribute much mainly because of this. Especially on the non-English wikis.

It's also a mistake even in South America or half of Europe. And especially in Japan.

I'd rather have them die in a fire. Especially if it's one that will get them nominated to the Darwin Award. :)

Very valid point. If I'm not mistaken these are called method patents (and are specially common in Germany).

Sorry if I indirectly implied a dichotomy, my point was that the Wild Fox guy was talking about software patents, while the replier was talking about other kinds as well.

Oblig. xkcd: http://www.xkcd.com/739/ :-)

But these count hardware patents, not only software patents. Remember that both are wildly different beasts.

The guy proposing Wild Fox is focused on going around software patents. It would be pretty hard to add hardware to Firefox. :)

Hey, not the Americas, just the US.

Brazil and most of South America have no concept of software patents.

In Brazil specifically, the law says that mechanism to protect software is the same as literary works, i.e. copyright. Business methods are also not patentable in Brazil.

Mexican law also states that software (computer programs) are not inventions and thus, not subject to patents.

In 2009 Canada also rejected software and business methods patents. As far as I know, this has not changed. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.

Just wait till DHS notices all this illegal border crossing...

The new "unified" ISDB-T standard (Japanese/Brazilian digital tv) also uses H.264.

From the little info that is available, the problem seems to be exactly the direct affiliation with the FBI.

ACM is just a professional organization, and they'd like to know the profiles of their members. ACM doesn't have other goals but tho help their members (at least officially).
The same applies to IEEE and others.

In this case, an external entity (the FBI) is asking for this info from members of another entity, which does not specify clearly their purpose or the nature of their relationship with the FBI.
It is only natural for people to think this is weird.

Oddly, the same also kind of applies to the system in Cuba.

Interesting correlation...

I agree with you and I also know people that have this happen to them, so they are now doing research in other countries.

What I think is interesting is that US policy always (officially) favours an open market and competition. But in this area (grad-school-educated people) they have these weird protectionist rules. It is not as if the US even has a lot of unemployed PhDs laying around to begin with...

Sorry for replying to myself, but it should say "Only in very few places outside southeast Asia..." on the part about Chinese food.