It's the Internet that changed the way we access information for our own betterment. In most companies no one cares anymore about your credentials as long as you're capable of performing the required tasks. The school - college - university system that was the means to get started in a career in the 20th century has been eroded from the top: It's universities and colleges that are losing relevance. School is still somewhat relevant, but I wonder how long will that last. More unconventional ways of learning that leverage technological advances like the Internet, ereaders, tablets, and possible future advances as well, will surely come to erode more of the current practices in education.

Intellectual property must be rendered obsolete for the Internet can reach its full potential, and for these advances in learning and education to materialize.

What about not treating the algorithms as property, but your combines intellectual traits. Instead of thinking that you have a product, instead think you have value-creating intellect. This way there is no more conflict. You release everything in the open as a way to prove to the World your intellect and cleverness. Then you wait for all those juicy contracts for services and new code that you'll get. You treat your clients well and help them use your capacities for their own improvement. You'll be nit Microsoft-rich, but quite sustainable and respected.

I had a 320 GB 5400 RPM hard disk drive in my laptop computer, when I decided it was time to upgrade to something faster. I download lots of pirated music, movies and TV series, so I did not want to go the SSD route and have a fraction of the storage space. I was originally thinking on getting a 500 GB 7200 RPM hard disk, but settled for the Seagate Momentus XT hybrid hard disk drive with 4 GB of flash storage. After a few reboots the HDD seemed to make up its mind on what to cache in the SSD, so my machine started to boot up in under 15 seconds (Ubuntu), and my web browser and email client would load very quickly. I recommend hybrid HDDs for anyone that is unwilling to compromise on storage space.

There's is some downside though: I find that my computer drinks more energy now. I believe it's because my platters now run at 7200 RPM instead of 5400 RPM. This computer isn't very energy-efficient since the outset. It's more of a desktop replacement machine. But I think it should be mentioned that changing to a hybrid HDD did increase power consumption overall. I wouldn't get anything but SSD if I was buying a computer meant to be used where there would be no power plug available. I would also not get a conventional LCD, but a LED screen, and I wouldn't want to have a big GPU.

Flash only works properly in Windows, and not elsewhere. Flash is about Adobe effectively controlling parts of the web with their proprietary plugin, which is the only thing that can properly parse Flash content.

HTML may not be the best markup language around. JavaScript may not be the best scripting language around. But they are by all means superior to Flash, in the sense that they're open and well supported at this point by all major browsers, including those on mobile devices.

I use Ubuntu as my operating system, and Flash is nowhere near usable. On the other hand, HTML5 gets good support from browsers here. All three Firefox, Chrome and Opera handle it very well.

When I got to the part where you said that Flash could handle 1080p video well enough, I understood that your post was a troll. I don't know why I bothered feeding it.

1. Take a pager in vibration-only mode,
2. Wrap it around a condom,
3. Insert into a suitable body cavity,
4. Sleep

Why doesn't anyone challenge all copyrights and patents in court. Heck, why we don't all do this?

We don't need these monopolies.

Digital files aren't rival. If you copy a music file and give it to my, we both have it.

Disobey, download, share, pirate everything. It's getting ridiculous. Why are so many people just brainwashed fucking zombies applauding copyrights and patents, for what? for stomping on everyone's freedoms? for making us believe that sharing is bad?

Fuck them all!

I got used to the Unity fairly quickly. The first thing I enjoyed about it was the efficient use of vertical space, a welcome change since I have a laptop with a widescreen display, like most people that bought their computer in the last three years. Also, the left bar feels (to me) like a more efficient way to move around open applications, with the added benefit that it allows launching the popular ones that I pinned there. I must admit that I preferred the Ubuntu menu in the top left corner as it was in Ubuntu 11.04, and I believe making it the first button of the left bar was not an improvement. Clicking on a button for an application that has multiple windows and having only those windows displayed for me to choose is an improvement over using alt-tab to switch amongst all application windows arranged in no particularly intuitive way.

Using the Super key to access the Ubuntu menu is (duh) much more intuitive than ALT+F1, I don't think I need to argue about this one!. Super + shortcut keys to access shortcuts from the left tab is nice as well.

But the best improvement of all, and that was introduced first in Windows Vista AFAIK, is that I can just press Super and then *type* the first few letters of the application name, and launch it with enter, optionally using arrows to select the right one first, or pointing the mouse. This is a HUGE improvement over the previous browsing-only menu.

Placing the application menus in the top is efficient use of screen space. Getting rid of the left bar when I need for a window is good. Not needing a title bar for maximized windows is then again more efficient.

The only drawback I find in the new interface is that browsing the applications is harder than with the previous one. Before clicking on the Ubuntu menu and just browsing around the available applications was dead easy. Now I have to perform some clicks to get there. I don't care much though since typing is *so* much better.

I find that the new Unity interface makes better use of the assumption that I have both a mouse and a keyboard. I like it much better than anything else I've tried.

But we're supposed to be a civilized society that don't send people to prison for "punishment", but instead to avoid further harm to others.

Oh shit!, sorry, wrong planet!

Doesn't the fact that the theft occurred outside of US territory. I'm sorry, I'll correct: Doesn't the fact that the theft occurred outside the planet messes up all the jurisdiction thing?

Are they going to be able to shapeshift into cars, trucks, and cool jets?

Screw folding@home, give me that cluster so I can make some Bitcoin!

Hopefully they will eventually do the same with all research that's financed with taxes.

But a worker that accepts one of these positions probably has nothing better, as as the saying goes: better crowdsourcing than no-sourcing.

...the stupidest idea ever published on Slashdot.

Bicoin transactions can't be reversed, on the other hand, transactions that were performed inside an exchange never left the exchange, so they can be reversed.