I think we need to read the following paper which defends Rybka. I got the link from the Wikipedia entry on Rybka.

http://www.chessbase.com/news/2011/riis01.pdf(It's a PDF file, in case you hadn't noticed the extension.)

The paper proposes that, contrary to popular opinion, Rybka probably did not misappropriate parts of Fruit. It was enough for me to tend toward believing Rybka and not believing 34 panelists on ICGA, but I'll let you judge for yourself. If you know the background of the SCO vs Linux case, especially how the pundits made their pronouncements, you will appreciate this paper more. I can definitely say that I no longer unequivocally conclude that Rybka stole from Fruit.

A similar situation, where copyright shows its ugly leash, appears in everyday medical practice. The Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes describe the type of service that a doctor has provided (e.g. simple office visit, complex office visit, appendix operation, etc.) and is used a few dozen times a day by insurance companies all around the USA to determine payment for services. It becomes essential for every doctor and every clinic/hospital to know the definition of these codes in order to remain financially solvent. If you surgically extracted a lipoma, but didn't know that the correct code for that particular case was 11424 (if the incision was 4cm long and the location was on the foot), then the insurance company just got a free ride and your other patients are subsidizing the cost of that operation.

You'd think that, for such an important part of daily operations, there'd be a list of all the CPT codes and what they mean. It should be a plain text file. I myself tried to get such a list --a simple text file, to call up on my laptop or handheld or something. Alas, nothing so simple. Yes, there's a list available for purchase, published on paper in thick books the size of a white page phone book (remember those?). If you wanted an electronic version, you'll have to hope someone wrote an app for your particular platform to display the text, because the American Medical Association holds the strings to that piece of text and doesn't want you to do your own searches in your favourite editor or sort the text alphabetically, etc. I'm not sure why such a code is not in public domain if it's so essential to keeping healthcare running smoothly.

I'm told that doctors are one of the most developmentally delayed professions when it comes to adapting to technology, and this is not the first time they seem woefully ignorant of issues in the information age which are screwing them over. I imagine that if someone held the intellectual property rights to the names of diagnoses ("You're not allowed to say 'appendicitis', doctor, because you haven't paid the licensing fees!") then doctors would just bend over and hand over some lube.

the text of Mozilla's questions

CollegeHumor did some videos that did use Google Street images and animation. Kinda neat.

Here's the first one, and that should lead you to more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35LqQPKylEA

Wait, no one has mentioned this yet?

So, with the Raspberry Pi running the QT 5 operating system, of course this combination will be called ...

the QT Pi

Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week ...

"""I think that AdBlocking on a phone can only improve the usage.I don't see what problem you could possibly have with the idea? AdBlock Plus on my N900 works great, and makes certain sites much less intensive on my phone. Unfortunately, there's no NoScript equivalent for the Maemo browser, which IMO is a must have as well."""

Alas, it's also not in the cards short of rooting your phone.

First, Google owns AdMob, the largest mobile ad company out there. They sell in-app ads (Google knows your app usage habits bevcause of this). It's not in their interest to let you easily block it.

Not sure what you mean: GP poster was talking about N900, which more or less comes with root. Not sure how Google would have anything to say about the Maemo browser (micro-B, I think it's called) or how they could make it less/more easy to have NoScript equivalent. Presumably you can run NoScript on Fennec (ie. Firefox for N900) although I haven't tried on mone.

This would not work for those middle-of-the-night surprise raids, but would work if you could get a 5- or even 1-minute warning; definitely works for airport crossings, etc.

Put a keyfile on a removable USB stick. It *looks like* that stick is acting as a physical key. Instead of typing a password, you direct TrueCrypt (or whichever other encryption program) to use that file. When law enforcement arrives, you get rid of the USB key and the drive is undecryptable.

The trick is that the keyfile is something easy for you to memorize, like some lines from Shakespeare or something. (If you like, insert your mother's maiden name before the 17th word to salt the text.) Law enforcement has no way to know that this is not a bunch of random characters, if they don't have the USB key.

"""Moral of the story - make sure you are logged off from Skype before file sharing."""

... because there's no way they can acquire the Skype identification at "random time A", and then correlate that with the BitTorrent traffic at "random time B"...

Right, at least for those users whose ISP gives them a dynamically reassigned IP address. Log off Skype, disconnect from the Internet and then reconnect, hopefully getting a new IP address (I remember one Slashdot user who kept getting reassigned the same "random" address), and then your IP addresses won't be correlatable.

I pity the guy who ends up with your recycled IP address, though.

anon coward replying with useful info; currently at +0.

Since you mention the Kindle, I'll slip in this question about the Kindle. Apparently they are $80 on Amazon now, which is cheaper than the HP $99 WebOS tablet (but of course it also does less).

How hackable is the Kindle? Is it worth it at $80?

I basically want something to hold *MY* documents to read, either HTML or text (but I can convert to PDF, etc.). Would be a bonus to be able to edit them, save under subdirectories, etc. but that would be secondary. Would be a bonus to be able to grab documents wirelessly from my home web server but again I'm willing to put on documents via USB.

Other suggestions for cheap easy-to-use, easy-to-read tablets (with any DRM jailbroken) would also be welcome.

Mod parent up.

had a camera covered by Best Buy warranty, one of those point-and-clicks (Canon Powershot SD400 or something). After a while, something mechanical failed --either the lens barrel wouldn't extend/retract, or the lens cover wouldn't close up. Also the slider switch (to select Photo/Video/Playback) was loose. It was covered by the 4-year warranty, so I went to Best Buy and they took it and sent it back for repair.

After a month, repair dept sent it back to my local store, and I picked it up. It was exactly the same: mechanical failure, loose slider switch. I showed the staff at Best Buy, that it was malfunctioning and I hadn't even walked out of the store after picking up the camera. So they sent it back for repairs a second time.

After another month, repair dept sent it back again. Again it was exactly the same, so I told the staff, WTF?? THey said they'd check. After a while, someone called and said, the repair dept could tell that I had damaged the camera, so the repair wasn't covered. What!? I spent almost an hour on the phone with some Best Buy headquarters person, saying, Hey, I just sent it back a 2nd time after having gotten it back from your repair department, and the 1st time there was no mention of damage, so it must have been the repair department that damaged it! (I was confident that it had not been I who damaged it.) The guy said that just because they send it back the first time it doesn't mean that they guarantee that it's in good condition, so it was perfectly valid to say that the 2nd time it was in crappy condition because it was already that way when they sent it back the 1st time.

I said, fine, what about the slider switch that was loose? The guy said, it was already loose, as I had given in my statement the first time I sent it in. That's when it struck me: if I had *NOT* told them about the slider switch, then *THEY* would have been responsible for fixing it since it would seem that they had damaged it during the repair process.

It was maddening, but finally I found a reason to send it back (I remember now: the first time the lens had gotten stuck in the retracted position, and now I could say that it was stuck in the extended position) and it went back. Of course it came back unrepaired, and I ranted and raved at the local Best Buy, saying that I had been missing my camera for 3 months now (in fact, it was a big deal since we had a birth in the family and I had wanted to take pictures). The local staff quietly upgraded to --well, an equivalent camera, but of course the model number had advanced since the 3+ years since buying the malfunctioning camera.

Lesson: if there is more than one thing wrong with the camera, do NOT mention anything else wrong. Gives you more leverage when they try to send it back saying that repair is not covered, and you can say, "What about this here thing wrong? Did you cause this?"

Maddening.

This shows some support on the part of Samsung for open source, although not in the way I had been hoping. I've heard that Samsung is working on a Linux-based phone, apparently with shell. Is this correct? Anyone else confirm/refute this? I heard from what seemed to be a reliable "on the inside" source a year ago, but with the way the economy is going, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a very real project that met a very real end.

Any inkling of news would be appreciated, however, since I am hoping I don't have to replace a failing N900 with another N900 bought somewhere over eBay.

"-what do you people do when you travel"
Simple - I have an el-cheapo Nokia I use :).

Also - if you know you are going to travel a lot there are CDMA phones that support both CDMA and GSM.

That's what I figured --so the el-cheapo phone you use does have internet connection? Do you use it to sync your files over to the Real Phone or do you end up using the el-cheapo? And what if it doesn't run the software that you're used to on the Real Phone? Or does it not have internet, and then your Real Phone is cut off from the rest of the world? (I mean, I wouldn't have the faintest clue how to rsync an iPhone to home, never mind an el-cheapo Nokia that might not even have bash, let alone rsync.)

I would be interested in CDMA phones which also support GSM --any of them run Linux? (or WebOS or iOS or something decent?)

Agree. Got on TMo to get good service with phones that take a SIM card. (I still don't get phones with no SIM card --what do you people do when you travel? Buy and learn to reconfigure a new phone just because you're in Japan/France/Ecuador for 2 weeks? Keep your non-functioning phone and disappear from civilization?) TMo had no problem with me bringing my unsupported unlocked Treo onto the TMo network, and now I similarly have a N900 which does what I want, as opposed to what the phone's corporate master wants (thank goodness, since Nokia clearly has no idea what N900 owners want).

Here's hoping the deal doesn't go through, or at least that AT&T chokes and crumbles into little customer-oriented pieces.

And, the rest of the phone companies, can you sort of take a look around and realize that global compatibility and SIM card use is a good thing? Thanks.