Not Peter North, then?

And they weren't a big bank like HSBC, which was given a slap on the wrist (relative to the illicit profits) for massive money-laundering that benefited terrorist organizations and drug cartels. If Bitfloor had made contributions to enough politicians, they probably would have been allowed to continue.

Apparently one problem is that the Xio's expert made a terrible mistake:

Xio’s own expert admitted there are “almost unlimited number” of ways to design the pieces and the board and the game would still “function perfectly well.” Pl. Motion, at 35.

Basically, the judge was given wrong information about the realistic possibility of using blocks of other shapes or configurations. While there may be some other piece designs that would work, there are not that many that would avoid introducing a fairly complex and thus hard-to-play geometry.

The judge also seemed to believe that a falling block game was a completely novel idea, without any real-world counterpart. I'm puzzled by this, and think she didn't comprehend the gravity of the situation (puns intended).

If you meant all of the Star Trek franchise, you're forgetting all those Holodeck episodes. Now, making a story for TV was often a stretch, but it makes a lot of sense that crew would spend a lot of time in the Holodeck between locations.

It's really sad to see someone say that technical legal terms are somehow bad. You want the law to be simple? Fine. If you do something some people think is bad, the state kills you. Simple. No need for extenuating circumstances like self-defense, accident, etc. Death penalty for everything.

Just like any other complex field (think computer technology or some other typical Slashdotter field), legal terms often have a lot of nuance. They need to - they describe non-simple concepts.

Despite what you may think from TV, they actually DO that - they are called "jury instructions," which define terms and explain how they fit together. If something has a meaning other than what a layperson thinks, it is the JOB of the attorneys and/or judge to explain that to the jury. That's the whole point of having a trial: to give the jury the information needed on which to base a decision. It's not perfect, but it's the best system we've come up with so far. Like the myriad proposed solutions for spam tend to ignore reality, most alternatives to the jury system fail to understand basic human nature.

Looking up words on your own is a very bad idea. Would you want your technophobe relative setting up your own systems by reading articles on USAToday? Don't try to become the attorney or judge by looking up a term on "teh intrawebs."

IAAL, but not yours. Hopefully if you ever need one, you'll get a good one that does his/her job and makes sure the jury knows what it needs to give you justice (although if justice would be bad for you, I suppose my "hopes" wouldn't be yours *grin* ).

What I wonder about is whether the ease of reading attributed (correctly, I assume) to proportional fonts apply to prose, but not necessarily to the kinds of reading needed in programming. When I read code, I'm sometimes looking for single-character mistakes. In a case like that, a proportional font that helps form "word-pictures" might mask an error. In other words, the speed attributed to proportional fonts is for reading comprehension — translating text into thought — but might actually detract from the speed and accuracy of reading for the purpose of editing/finding mistakes.

Incredible? Where have you been? Governments around the world have strongly suspected the Chinese government has been silently providing support and encouragement, if not directly paying, hackers to probe and outright attack government and national infrastructure computer systems. Do you get all your news via China-censored sources?

Shouldn't that be something like "within each individual unique member" - or is even that too much like a multiple item set?

So, is it a $300 video gets a $30 million deal, like the title, or a $30 video gets a $300 million movie deal?

Based on the comments from people who appear to have RTFA, it seems the title is correct: $300 / $30 million. I sure hope whoever wrote that summary is working in entertainment and not engineering. Hollywood gets things wrong by a factor of ten all the time and no one dies, right?

[ Come on, that's a softball - someone post a good response. ]

Is the first herd the trumpets? Would the second herd be the trombones? Sousa, is that you?

Most netbooks offer Linux as an option and due to no Windows tax they are usually either cheaper or make up with it with better hardware than their Windows counterparts.

Not even nearly true anymore. Microsoft freaked out about the linux netbook phenomenon and slashed the price of XP on netbooks. Combine that with the awfulness of the early netbook distros, and it was an easy decision for netbook manufacturers to go with Microsoft again.

I'm hopeful the netbook wars are starting again in six months or so but we'll have to see. In the meantime we just have to admit that Microsoft owns that market as well.

I used the term 'pretty much' because I knew I'd be corrected otherwise (by several disagreeing posters rooting for StG44, Cei-Rigotti, Mondragon, Fedorov Avtomat or whatever else): with hindsight I agree that my hint was not clear enough.

I wonder if there is something else I failed at conveying since my post is now marked flamebait? That was definitely not the intention.

An AK-47 is semi-auto, not full-auto, so your question is irrelevant.

There may be semi-auto versions available for hobbyists, but as a general statement that is just wrong. The AK-47 is definitely a proper assault rifle capable of emptying the 30 round magazine in 3 seconds if need be. In fact it is pretty much the mother of all assault rifles, copied dozens of times around the world.