Interesting that you call MPEG-LA scum, while Google _is_ _actually_ suing Microsoft over the use of h.264, right here, right now. So who is the scum?

I wasn't aware of that. Hmmm. It's one thing to sue for patent infringement, but what MPEG-LA did was IMHO much worse. Not the creation of the H264 patent pool or its licensing, but their attempt (solicitation) to create a patent pool specifically to use against WebM. It's one thing to patent some stuff, use it, and defend it. It's entirely different to see a competitor, try to get people to gang up on them with a patent pool covering their thing, and go after them. OK, if it's patented that wouldn't really be "their thing" (googles thing) but MPEG-LA had no stake in VP8 when they went after it. That is why I called them scum. I'm not certain but I think there are legal terms that cover that behaviour as well (cartel, collusion, and possibly racketeering might be applicable but IANAL).

Now if you tell me Google sued MS over a patent they purchased just to sue, I may have to include them under the scum umbrella.

It's great to write an article outlining the problem, but it would be nice if he offered a better solution. Google put WebM / VP8 / VP9 out there are open source with a strong belief that it didn't infringe the H264 patents. Turns out the scum at MPEG-LA rounded up some patents for an attack and Google has made some effort to allow use of those patents. What else could they do? Go to court and get the claims thrown out? Perhaps, but what it some are valid claims?

We can hope that Google has a larger strategy than they are letting on. The thing to do is get WebM out there to take power away from MPEG-LA. For the short term that means Google, Android, and the major browsers have to be able to use it, and then YouTube needs to use it exclusively. Everyone else can use the code, but it's kinda hard for Google to influence other patent holders. Rather than just complain, the author and OSI should propose a better solution - there isn't one.

BTW, your phone probably supports VP8 - Android has supported it in software since 2.3(?) and Google has made hardware implementations available for some time now with many SoC vendors licensing it (for free).

I do not pay for bugs. Developers can make more work for themselves by causing bugs, and with the specifications I write there is no excuse for not testing their code. Developers are always fine with it until we get toward the end of a project and the customer is complaining about bugs.

Anyone who says they write perfect specs or perfect code, or perfect anything is full of shit. Even if YOU write perfect specs, they're based on customer requirements and those are always incomplete. Customers do not have requirements, they have problems, and it's our job to devise solutions to those problems. Even if code is written bug-free the customer will not know exactly how it should work until you give them something to critique. Then they ask for changes - this is called a requirement change or clarification, not a bug, and not the developers fault. I'm sure your developers create bugs too, but I'm certain they're not the only cause.

BTW, my subject line applies to developers too.

Usually reporters tell stories of "hackers" finding such things and we wonder weather the reporters understand how "non-hacking" the activity really was. Well in this case it's abundantly clear to them since it was they who discovered the data in plain sight. No question the reporters see the absurdity of the "hacker" label in this case.

And since it will be the police getting the reports, how do you figure it will increase the level of fear in citizens?

Because once you've got that label they will throw away whatever legal protections you may have. Don't leave the country because then you are a possible drone target - all because your nosy neighbor thought *you* were suspicious. Remember, everyone probably looks suspicious to someone and you've always had the ability to report suspicious activity. But now you get to add that label. Does it scare you now?

Suppose the judge ordered the OWNER of the video to remove it from the internet. Now that poor chump would have to run around sending takedown notices for those violating his copyright. See see see? Now he's not outside his jurisdiction and can plausibly get it removed from the major portions of the net by offloading the pain onto the video owner.

As a bioinformatician who's trying to give researchers better tools to identify disease, whose projects could also improve the lives of lots of folks: this is not that kind of programming. Demoscene programmers are generally hired by graphics companies and embedded systems development, where their formidable optimization abilities actually get put to use; those skills are not transferable to general high-performance computing.

Actually the skills do transfer. The techniques of code optimization are many and universal. Which ones constitute acceptable use depends on the application (i.e. mathematical approximations are not always OK). From what I keep reading, HPC focuses a lot on matrix math - an area where some tricks can help a lot without affecting the results. I was manipulating 1GB 3d data sets interactively on a machine with 128M of RAM back in the day, and I suspect the technique has not gone mainstream yet.

Could be me, but I was told that GPS does not work in the extreme Northern and Southern regions due to lack of satellite coverage? Like North of 84 degrees?

You take a known point on the ground and track its movement within the constellation of satellites for a day. Its path with trace a circle on a plane in 3-space. The normal vector of that plane (throught the center of the circle) is the earths spin axis.

The world is not perfectly spherical and rely on equal opposite weight on each side to stay balanced.

Every object has a natural stable spin axis, no matter how uniform it is or not. Actually, they have 2 stable axis to rotate on. Tape a book shut and toss it in the air spinning, it will be fine in a "flat" spin and will also be fine spinning about the center line of its longest dimension. try spinning it on the 3rd axis and it will tumble in an attempt to reach one of the 2 stable states (the one with lower energy I think).

Did that NASA guy ever try to demonstrate this on the space station? That would be a cool experiment.

What if Google just removes auto complete for everyone in Germany? 'cause how are they supposed to know what someone may find offensive?

Where did you see the input voltage for this thing being 2.4V? I was going to ask what it is.

I don't think the concept of "junk" DNA is ever going to go away. Evolution would predict that sequences that are good at replicating themselves would accumulate in the genome, even if they don't do anything "useful".

No, no it wouldn't. I am a fan of taking simple logic like that and concluding "it must be in play", but there are other equally valid pieces of simple logic that it must compete (or be in equilibrium) with. One of those off the top of my head: Evolution would predict that an excess of junk DNA would be detrimental to the organism since the likelihood of a random mutation turning some of that junk into something harmful goes up with the amount of junk. Other mechanisms would be in play too like "too much replicating junk takes resources away from the necessary DNA". It's really hard to say how strong the influence of these factors is or how many more we haven't even thought of.

The only way to prove that the DNA is junk is to remove it and see if the organism still exhibits all the capabilities of the original. And even at that, you don't know if the junk happens to contain something useful only in rare circumstances. But I'd agree if said organism seemed normal and could produce several generations of offspring that seem normal, then we could say the removed DNA was mostly junk.

Well I thought it was commonly known that people are cutting and burning the rain forest, so let's not blame that on CO2. If climates move further toward the poles due to "warming" species may be able to migrate, but that leaves one to wonder what happens in the areas that are warmest already. Many think those areas turn to desert, but we know that doesn't have to be the case: Reversing desertification In fact we've been causing it, just not with CO2. And if you don't like the sea level rising, you should look at a map that shows bathymety - the continental shelf areas used to be above water, but the level has been rising since the glaciers started melting. There really is no reason to think we're at the high water mark just because people decided to build cities on the present-day coast.

Besides, I think it would be a good idea to get out of this ice age before another glaciation comes along. Yes, we're still in "the ice age" look it up, we're near the end of an interglacial period. I'd rather give warming a shot than let the ice come back.

If species are losing their living space it's due to increasing populations of humans burning their habitat, not from a little CO2. Or from humans using the wrong farming practices, but again not due to CO2 levels.

The problem, as **I** see it, is the societal urge to send everyone to college

That's a part of it. The real issue is "free trade" sending lower level jobs overseas and automation taking care of many more. At the same time there are some nice things that only require 2 years at community college (this x-ray techs and such). So yeah, we should expand the notion of skilled trades. But for people who are just out of high school or didn't finnish, the options seem to be fast food and retail. If we got rid of so-called free trade (it's not a level playing field at all) we'd fix the economy and create jobs, but the big importers (middlemen offering little real value) will not allow it. The simple demand for those jobs would reduce the number of people thinking they need to go to college.