Crap, there's another bubble burst by pesky mathematics.

At least the patents on DVDs are expiring if not already expired. The first DVD player was sold in 1996, and patents can be good for up to 20 years from the filing date, so it would seem that by late next year, all necessary patents should have expired.

This is HORRIBLE legal advice. Patent laws were different before 1996, that's why MP3 patents are still around (and will be until 2017) despite the fact that specifications were published back in 1991!

In the United States, "patents filed prior to 8 June 1995 expire 17 years after the publication date of the patent, but application extensions make it possible for a patent to issue" quite a few years after initial filing.

MP3 patents have mostly expired, though one US patent expires later this year.

I wish that was true, but it's certainly not:

http://www.tunequest.org/a-big...

Futureshop and BestBuy were literally on the same street, less than half a klick from eachother in my town. I never went to BestBuy because the one time I was there, the dumb blonde behind the counter berated me for buying the kind of keyboard I wanted.

Anyways, since Futureshop is closed now, I went to WorstBuy to see if I could get a 7200 rpm 2.5" HD, or an SSD of any kind. No SSD's anywhere, only 2 2.5" HD's, both 5400rpm. Crap... Then I passed by the cables because I needed a couple short ethernet cables. $25 for a 4' ethernet cable? Are you fucking shitting me? And these guys are complaining they're losing business.

Maybe if you fuckheads had shit people actually wanted to buy, at reasonable prices, they would buy it.

Rickrolling? You seem to be confusing "geeks" for "/b/tards"...

I always knew more than my parents about computers and the Internet. I never thought I'd say this, but I was lucky to grow up in the 90s when the Internet was less trollish and in a small town where the bullying was "only" physical and ended when you went home as there was no "Social Media". I never thought I'd think bullying had gotten worse since I was in school, but here it is - it's worse now.

This was tried in Athens. What actually happens is that 2 car families who have the option no longer take the smaller, less polluting car half the time, and lots of 1 car families buy a really cheap clapped out, much more polluting car to use on alternate days.

After Bing and Zune, I think they'll continue with the 'rejected 60s Batman fight scene captions' theme, and it'll be Splork, Zoing or possibly Ptoink.

If you're going to edit an article, don't just cut out the least significant words, or you'll be left with nonsense.

According to the summary, this laser somehow generates power instead of consuming it, and it generates "3.2 million watts of power", which is "more than 1 petawatt".

Rather badly, I guess?

While English in the British Isles used to have mutually incomprehensible dialects, the influence of received pronunciation has drastically lessened this, so I'd argue that it is coalescing.

Most people I know who have strong regional accents have the ability to switch to a neutral accent and cut out dialect words when they are in formal situations - an ability my father's generation learned from radio, my generation learned from radio and television, and my children's generation will learn from radio, television and internet. If you ask a Hebridean Scot to give a transcript of two Cockneys talking in a pub, or vice versa, they will struggle, but if you arrange a conversation between a Hebridean Scot and a Cockney they will simply both 'talk like the people on the telly' and understand each other perfectly well.

English was able to fragment because in the past, you rarely had to communicate with people from far away (which is how we ended up with prominent Americans who can't even say their own names properly... yes, Jay-ZED, I'm looking at you!) The internet changes all this, we now have regular interactions with people worldwide, so speaking or writing in a mutually incomprehensible way has penalties.

Perhaps we should consider the benefits of formalising 'correct' English, lest we be doomed to forever be re-translating Wikipedia into 'current' English?

Yep, a customer of ours got hit with this, not only did Panda shit the bed, but it *let everything that was quarantined out* causing massive infections to spread across the entire network.... We're still cleaning it up 2 days later.

I'm not the OP, but I do the same thing. If you're any good, you'll network at least a bit at least online. You'll see job postings on mailing lists from mailing list members, you'll be contacted by companies from the community, etc. That will usually help you get through some of the buzzword bingo, and talking to people who understand the tech, or are the people hiring for the position.

I feel the same way about Macs - they have issues with SAMBA, they can't run lots of software I use, and for lots of the FLOSS I use they don't have a useable installer - or when they do, it fails to do something critical.

For instance, Fusion Inventory Agent. On Windows, run .exe with configure flags. On Linux yum install RPM and give conf file. In this case, it's all set up, and will check in every 24 hours, and grab all other settings from the server.

On Mac? lol for the longest time you couldn't get it to install. Last time I tried, it installed, but only ran on boot. No way to get it to run every hour or whatever. Of course, I'm not a Mac guy, but I didn't need to do anything beyond software install + config file on Windows or Linux so . . .

Puppet? Run MSI with installer flags. yum install rpm with conf file. On Mac? It installs as the user, who, even when admin, doesn't have permissions to run systemwide, or run on a schedule.

So now I still can't really manage the macs like I can Windows and Linux.

Snark over - it's what you're used to. There are problems with all OSs...

if you're trying to use a DJI Phantom to take photos, I'm sure the local police and others have plenty to get you on

I'd want the rules to be similar to taking pictures with a hand held camera - i.e. if taking the picture isn't breaking some law, then "taking the picture with a drone" probably shouldn't be illegal either, barring saftey issues...

Honestly, the stuff like the DJI Phantom seems like it ought to be preferred vs the radio helicopters you can buy from the mall because it seems to be able to help you not crash it.