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Comment: Re:FireFox is great, but... (Score 1) 278

by A12m0v (#30652024) Attached to: Testing a Pre-Release, Parallel Firefox

Why would that spur Adobe to make a 64-bit version? As much as people hate it around here, it would take a 64-bit version of IE being the default to really spur them. I look at our website statistics and over 80% of our hits are from some type of MSIE. This causes much gnashing of teeth, but...

You've got the right idea here. I wonder if Gnash went 64bit before Flash, would that help its adoption?

Comment: Re:still flogging this old dead horse? (Score 1) 360

by MaskedSlacker (#30652002) Attached to: Constitutionality of RIAA Damages Challenged

I go on so rarely these days that the odds of me being found to share are about the same as running into Elvis at the mall.

You'd be surprised how many people claim to have had that happen to them (actually, I'd bet its comparable to the number that have been sued for file sharing).

Comment: Re:still flogging this old dead horse? (Score 1) 360

by MaskedSlacker (#30651946) Attached to: Constitutionality of RIAA Damages Challenged

As much as such silliness may be in vogue, no its nothing of the sort.

The present law was written under very different conditions, with very different situations in mind, and political bickering and general incompetence prevents legislative change.

You might want to see a shrink, delusions of persecution are a major sign of schizophrenia.

Comment: Completely OT: Installing Win7 on a netbook (Score 3, Informative) 504

by Osty (#30651942) Attached to: Best Buy $39.95 "Optimization" At Best a Waste of Money

A couple of months ago I needed a USB DVD to install Windows 7 on a netbook.

But why? Assuming you have access to a PC with a DVD drive, a USB port, and a 4GB or larger USB drive, you didn't need a USB DVD drive. Installing Windows from a USB stick is trivial:

  1. Make sure your USB stick is FAT32 formatted. Unless you mucked about with formatting, that should be the out-of-the-box default.
  2. Copy the contents of the Windows DVD to the USB drive, keeping the folder structure the same.
  3. Stick the USB drive in your netbook and reboot. When prompted to boot from USB drive (the BIOS might say CD or DVD), press any key and get on with your install.

I've never understood why most "Install Windows 7 from USB drive" tutorials on the web have so many extra, unnecessary steps. I've done this install on three different netbooks, across multiple installs on one (beta to RC to RTM), and have never had to do anything more than just copying the files to my USB key.

Comment: Re:still flogging this old dead horse? (Score 1) 360

by MaskedSlacker (#30651910) Attached to: Constitutionality of RIAA Damages Challenged

And that it comes out of profit doesn't mean you have to adjust downward the amount of profit you expect from your efforts.

Not sure what parallel universe you're living in, but yes that is exactly what it means. If costs go up, profits go down. Really, it's a mathematical fact: Profits = Revenues - Costs. Costs big, profits small. I don't think I can make this any simpler for you.

Wanting to make money doesn't make you greedy.

Again, that's pretty much exactly what the word means. Well, wanting to make 'excessive' amounts of money, anyway.

You've got some powerful Orwellian newspeak going on in your head.

Patents

Best Approach To Keeping a Virtual World Protocol Free to All? 163

Posted by timothy
from the generous-coders- dept.
arkowitz writes "I invented a protocol called CICP for interacting with virtual worlds, and filed a provisional patent application on it March 20 of last year. I have since declared the protocol open and public, and contributed an implementation of it to the Sun Wonderland project, which is GPL; and made public the LSL code and accompanying Java servlet for the Second Life implementation of the protocol. I've been collaborating with a fellow in Finland named Tommi S. E. Laukkanen on a new protocol called MXP: Metaverse Exchange Protocol (here's a full description at cybertechnews.com). MXP is and will always be public domain; we intend it to enable an open and ubiquitous metaverse. My question is this: is there any reason to complete the patent app for CICP, which could potentially cover MXP as well, and release it to the public domain? The full app is due by March 20 and the legal work would probably cost my company $10k. Would finishing the patent protect the open and public protocols from patent trolls, or would it be a waste of money? Also, what kind of document would I need to make official the public-domaining of the app?"
Communications

Scientists "Teleport" Quantum Information One Meter 107

Posted by timothy
from the teleport-a-child-and-we'll-be-impressed dept.
the4thdimension writes "While we may not be beaming up to the Enterprise anytime soon, a team of scientists from the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan have managed to teleport information between two atoms up to a meter apart. Until this point, only very tiny distances were able to be traveled. However, using a complicated system of photons, ions, lasers, and electromagnetics, scientists have managed to 'teleport' information contained on one atom to another atom that is in a separate sealed container. This can lead to a wide range of developments in computing and communications." Update: 01/29 22:29 GMT by T : Sorry, it's a dupe, but today's article in Time is better reading than the abstract anyhow.

Envy is a pain of mind that successful men cause their neighbors. -- Onasander

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