This is a weird world we're living in. Microsoft is offering patent protection to an open source product to counter lawsuits by Apple, thereby increasing the viability of the open source platform to spite Apple's own platform, even though Microsoft also has a competing platform.

Well, I guess I still hate Apple, so.. go Microsoft!

I need them to update the firmware on my DVD drives.

Rule #1 - Any positive comments about Apple will get you modded troll it seems. Slashdot has turned from rational thinking and actual intelligent discourse in regards to Apple to simply "they are anti-geek or anti-hacker and therefore evil".

Slashdot is "news for nerds". Many things that Apple does goes straight against things nerds want to do. So I find it entirely unsurprising that are considered evil by many people.

And for me at least it is indeed that simple: They are anti-geek or anti-hacker and therefore unworthy of my support. Supporting them would be going squarely against my interests.

It doesn't matter what the context or the content of the post is. Any 'fuck apple' will get an immediate 5 Insightful. Look to the top of this entire thread for a prime example.
Apple gives plenty to the community:
Clang, Blocks (in llvm), libdispatch (Grand Central Dispatch services), OpenCL, WebKit (including a whole new JavaScript VM), CUPS, Darwin, blocks, Bonjour, Calendar and Contacts Server, Darwin Streaming Server, launchd and XQuartz, MacRuby. Many of those not insignificant, and something which could have generated a lot of revenue in patents. I'm sure there are more, but those are just off the top of my head.

That is irrelevant. Doing good doesn't erase your evil deeds. The court might be a bit more lenient if you're generally upstanding character and did nothing too heinous, but I've never heard of anybody get declared innocent due to a good deed cancelling out some wrongdoing. Al Capone ran soup kitchens, but that didn't help, which is precisely the way things should work.

I have no problem with recognizing that they did some good work there, but don't see why that suddenly absolve them of anything.

They are a far more responsible corporation than some,

What any other company does or doesn't do doesn't enter into it. My neighbour stealing a lot doesn't justify me stealing a bit.

[...] but they ARE a company, and given who they are competing with, they have to protect their profits. Apparently they are supposed to simply allow anyone to use their patents and copyrights, and defending those patents will immediately make you even more evil, even if it's justified (something that has yet to be determined by the courts, but has already been decided here).

I do think patents should be greatly reduced, and software ones shouldn't exist at all. That said, there are plenty companies that manage to exist perfectly fine while being a lot less heavy handed, so improvement must be possible.

They are also not allowed to control their product sales, terms of service, or anything else that is accepted in thousands of other products around the world, all because they have 'insulted' the geek crowd.

It's not specifically about Apple. Personally I believe that there should be as much freedom as possible for the individual, but that companies should be much more limited in what they can do. Again, that somebody else does it isn't an excuse. Right of first sale should be absolute, for all companies, not just Apple. I have just as much of a problem with game companies wanting to end second hand sales, but their fanboys seem to be less numerous, so pointing out I don't agree with it seems to be a lot less controversial.

If you feel so bad about the U.S. and being foreign, why don't you just go back? You will be happy back in India!

So, as always, 8.8.8.8 is a lucky number in China?

In addition to the other points above, there are nearly always at least two, and in larger planes often more people, in the cockpit certified to fly the plane. On a 6 hour transcontinental flight, I'd like to think that they're switching off on the "watching blinky lights and widgets" duty. I know how well I can pay attention to blinky lights and widgets for 6 straight hours, and lemme tell ya... it's not all that well. I've been known to zone out watching a three minute install progress bar.

I gave two examples including links of people who were detained for a period of time (from days to months) who had driver's licenses but not a birth certificates. One even had a birth certificate but it was still ignored by immigration. It's in the sibling thread. I won't duplicate myself.

The fact here is you are the naive fool assuming local police operate strictly according to the letter of the law with no racial bias. You also assume immigration, which is a federal agency, will mirror arizona state law. Hint: it does not and will not.

Wow, 8 days without spam bots? Could it be time for the resurrection?

Oddly, floppies are great for debug and making code changes during the boot process. There are times when you do not have access to the disk or console (yet) and still need to know what is happening. Redirecting standard error to a file on a floppy has saved my bacon more times that I can count. It is also good if I need to "inject" new code into a system that is barely booted up. (no network, no disk access) Burning a CD/DVD for a 12K shell script seems a waste to me. I know I am probably a special case though. I don't buy millions of them, but when I buy new test systems, they must have a floppy drive.

We've seen a few ISPs that MitM www.google.com in DNS (you can check for yourself in Netalyzr.

Does anyone know (save me looking at a TCPdump) what domain name firefox uses, is it www.google.com or something else, for the google searches?

So if you have an iPad and you currently sync it with a PC, you need to buy a Mac mini and a subscription to a service that costs $99 per year (iPhone developer program) in order to turn your iPad into a computer. Otherwise, the iPad is called an "appliance". Your microwave oven has a microprocessor, but do you ordinarily think of it as a "computer"?

And which one is our president a product of?

Because not all applications on which a business depends are available for Mac OS X. That's why Orange Micro used to sell single-board PCs that fit in one of a Mac's slots. This was faster than the emulation that was otherwise required before Apple switched to x86 CPUs.

Nexus one is almost exactly the same phone as the Desire, HTC made the Nexus for Google. The desire has just added firm keys instead of the Nexus touchscreen keys at the bottom and changed the crazy ball for a crazy optical eye - oh and slung the HTC Sence interface on top of it, which really is the USP. Same screen, same processor, same battery, same phone.

is that an exclusive or? googled prison crowding for you