Addressing the last bit, about the user, first, while anyone can make a claim, it's extremely unlikely that a claim against a mere user based on violation of the GPL would stand up in court, because the intent (and wording, it seems to me, but IANAL) is clear that a user may do what they want, including modification, linking with whatever proprietary program, etc, as long as they don't distribute the result. Thus it is that mere users of proprietary kernel modules don't have to worry about linking them into the kernel, but distributions have to be very careful about what they distribute, and of course the authors of those proprietary kernel modules have something to worry about, with the trend toward stricter and occasional threats of legal action but nothing serious yet.

Thus while you are correct that such a thing would cause an uproar in the community, it's not realistic that the case against said user would get very far -- and I expect the FSF would end up on the user's side against whatever "insane" author, as well.

As for the coder and linker against the GPL library, ultimately, that comes down to how derived (from copyright code, US code in consideration for GPLv2, more general international code for v3) the new code is found to be. For static linking, the answer is pretty simple as the GPL library will then be shipped as part of the binary. For dynamic linking, the case is blurrier. However, answering your question, consider that the headers needed to compile the code against the library can be argued to be part of the GPLed code as well, tho with some limits as to the extent that can be taken (I know there's limits there but won't attempt to define them as I'm a bit vague on that end of things myself). Using that definition, anyone using the headers to link against would be creating derived code.

But perhaps that wouldn't ordinarily be seen as a correct interpretation. Still, by downloading and using the libraries and their headers on a system, thus making copies of them, something forbidden by copyright law without the code owner's permission (as here granted by the GPL), a developer will be going beyond mere copyright. Again, for a mere user that's not a problem, as the GPL is explicit in unconditionally allowing that, and a mere user doesn't even have to agree to it either, as the license at that point is covered under the automatic grant to recipients under the same conditions clause. But it's the GPL that allows it, absent other permission, since copyright code forbids it, and once someone starts distributing it (or a derived work, see below), then they must accept the GPL themselves in ordered to do so.

Further, just doing the development and not distributing anything isn't a violation. But as soon as the developed code linking to that GPL library is distributed, THEN the derivation question comes into play.

And again, under ordinary circumstances, that's a logical and legitimate question, one that hasn't been definitively settled in court, AFAIK. HOWEVER, and this is where my previous comment enters the picture, when developers start looking at the actual logistics of defending themselves, it quickly becomes apparent that by questioning the author's intended and specifically stated definition of "derived", one is starting to saw notches into the branch they're legally sitting on, that branch being the validity of the GPL that gave them the rights to copy and code agains the library in the first place.

Thus, the rare appearance of the GPL in actual court, because by trying to argue about the definitions of derived, the whole legal foundation the developer is standing on is being eroded.

It's also worth pointing out the effect of a severability clause and the fact that the GPL (at least v2, which I'm most familiar with) has what could be considered a NEGATIVE severability clause in effect -- that if it's impossible to satisfy patent and other legal requirements and the GPL, then distribution must cease entirely. Again, by trying to poke holes in the definition of derived, the accused violator quickly finds they are poking holes in the whole legal justification for their use of the work in the first place.

It is at this point that the reasonable offer of little more than correcting the violation going forward plus expenses, begins to look rather inviting, especially when faced with the possibility of the thing spiraling entirely out of the developer's control, possibly including a no-ship injunction (maybe complete with recall of already in-channel units) while the case proceeds, the threat alone of which is generally enough to get the accused looking to settle, even if they think they'd ultimately win the court case. Against that, opening the source or very quickly finding a replacement library so as to continue uncontested shipping while additionally paying little more than to-date expenses, looks VERY good indeed!

Of course, it also helps that AFAIK, there's a 100% success record (with one mild variance against the FSF GPL FAQ in regard to trade secrets, but it dealt with enforceability of them, not of the GPL) in not only settlements, but in the few cases that HAVE gone to court, now several, including in in Israel, several in Germany, and a couple here in the US. That's going to be STRONG encouragement to settle as well, thereby keeping the accused in control of the terms and continued distribution ability, let alone avoiding the now even worse odds of actually winning the case in court.

But even so, yes, the question of just what's derived remains, as does the fact that so far, every potential violator has decided to settle rather than risk an unfavorable resolution. (Then again, the FSF and others have never pressed the riskiest cases, either. That's one reason proprietary kernel modules continue to ship, and the threats that have happened tend to be against Linux distributions, not the module developers themselves, as the distributions tend to be far more sensitive to community PR effects in addition to the normal legal issues and thus much more likely to back down nearly instantly.)

That's the beauty of the GPL, in that if the opposition (defendant, perhaps plaintiff in a declaratory judgment) doesn't accept the license, everything defaults back to standard copyright protections, which don't allow use/copying/distribution in the first place, thus being far stricter than the GPL. They are thus free not to accept the GPL, but should they do that, they better make very sure they are not infringing standard copyright, either, because that's the fallback.

That's also why the legal system is likely to rely on the author's (or license author's) clearly laid out interpretation of his chosen license as well -- unlike EULAs and the like, which seek to impose additional restrictions on top of copyright as a condition of granting limited use under copyright, the GPL does not restrict what copyright law already permits. As such, the author's interpretation of the conditions under which he grants those additional permissions holds a lot of weight because the defaults would be far stricter.

IMNLO (NL=non-lawyer), this is why the very high majority of GPL violation cases ultimately settle out of court. Once it's pointed out that should the GPL NOT be valid, the fallback is far stricter copyright law, which would put the violator in a far worse position than they are in with the GPL violation, most reasonable people quickly see the light, and decide the chances of risking even WORSE penalties for full copyright violations are simply not worth it. Thus, they find that abiding by the GPL in the future is in their best interest, and all that must then be agreed is the penalty for past violation. The FSF and friends seem to be relatively flexible in that regard, since the object is after all to get the code out there, and a settlement for costs plus a normally undisclosed but apparently reasonable donation, plus some measures (license compliance officer or etc, agreement on release breadth and deadlines) to ensure the followthru, seems to be common. Compared to the penalties a company would pay for violating a proprietary license or raw copyright law, that's very reasonable indeed, and most violators quickly see how mutually satisfactory the offered settlement conditions actually are.

I'm a bit west of you, in Phoenix. I agree with the sentiment, but at least here, the practical side of it doesn't work.

Really, one of my big problems is that I find too much interesting. A few years ago I got the paper here for awhile, then quit. One problem was as I said, I found too much interesting, and it thus took longer than I normally had to read the paper every day. So they began to pile up...

What I quickly realized is that really, I'm inundated with data, and I really do find a lot of it reasonably interesting. What I'd find valuable, therefore, would be some sort of assistant that would go thru and edit and prioritize to my interests and needs, cutting out the noise and low priority stuff, to let me absorb more higher priority stuff in less time.

The newspaper as it was (and is) wasn't doing that. As such, it wasn't (and isn't) valuable to me. News on net, with various ad-filters, etc, cutting out that bit of noise, with subscriptions to various site feeds for news I find high priority interesting, etc, worked MUCH better for me, and was free.

Now the ONE thing the net was NOT effective at was presenting me local news (including ads, tech stuff like Fry's Electronics and Best Buy, department store stuff, less grocery and coupons, since couponed products tend to still be higher priced even with the coupon than generics, ESPECIALLY when the non-zero time/opportunity cost to check them all the time is taken into account) that affect me right where I live and work and play. That's what a local paper (or other local news source, on the net or elsewhere) needs to provide. If they provide national and international news, fine, but when that's available on the net in a pretty efficient form already, I'm not buying it for that.

It also needs to be in a physical format that's easy and convenient to use. Unfortunately, the local paper wasn't providing a whole lot of either of these. Yes, there was some local politics, etc, news that affects me, but the SNR was simply way too low, and it took me way too long to gather and process the information -- it wasn't very efficient.

When the called up wanting me to resubscribe, I told them I would, but only to a somewhat different product. Physically, broadsheets simply are not convenient to read. One needs way to much space to manipulate them, and when the stories get continued on some other page, manipulate them again. It's just not convenient, and there's a FAR more efficient format technology has presented us with now than the broadsheet, called the tabloid. Yes, tabloids have a bad name, but I'm interested in content I can actually ingest and use efficiently, and one has to admit they're certainly much more convenient to actually use!

Also, daily papers just wasn't working. I told them if they had a weekly or twice-weekly that featured mostly local political and etc news and carried the department store and electronics ads (and the comics for the week or at least that day would be nice too), I'd be VERY interested, and would likely buy it in a heartbeat even at the same rate they had been charging for the entire paper.

It was little surprise when they politely offered to put my number on file (yeah, probably circular file...) and get back to me if they ever came up with such a product...

Which is of course the problem. The net offers pretty close to this sort of specialization, tho unfortunately seldom on local news and happenings except in some of the bigger cities where the paper or a local TV station has a lot of that content on the web as well. But that's what users are demanding now, that sort of specialized channel, that sort of convenience, because they're used to getting it on the net, AND because in today's ever increasing "information overload" society, it's becoming an absolute NECESSITY!

I think I'd have to disagree, not on the idea, but because in practice, it wouldn't actually save me anything for long.

I'm 42 now, and one thing I've realized the last few years, as I guess pretty much everyone does at about this age, is that life *IS* going to end before I get, perhaps even 1/10 of what I'm interested in and would /like/ to do, actually done.

As a consequence, and again, this process is anything /but/ unique to me, as I age, I've tended to focus more and more narrowly on what I /really/ want to do, what I /really/ find important and of priority, and by the same token, on things I can accomplish efficiently, making the best use of the time I have available. It is thus that while as a teen I was interested in and would read all sorts of science stuff, pretty much anything I could get my hands on, I'm much choosier now, increasingly narrowing my focus and specializing, and doing so even more as time goes on. One of the first things I deliberately chose not to pursue, as I had a friend that was into it and could have done so, was ham radio. Then it was the wider world of science, tho I do still try to keep a summary level familiarity with the biggest developments in many areas (thus my interest in /.). I focused in first on the electrical side, then electronics, then computers, then on freedomware, finding at each step of the way that I really didn't have time to deal with the rest any more at the same level of detail that I had been, if I was to find /any/ time really to further my learning in my increasingly narrow field of real interest. Of course, with the net, we're finding ever more information and detail available at our fingertips, as well, leading to information overload until some method of coping, either increasingly narrowing the field of interest or increasingly limiting the depth at which one studies the broader field (or some of both), becomes mandatory, or until we go crazy trying to do the impossible.

It is within that very practical context that I must interpret your comment quoted above, and state my disagreement at least in practice.

Here's what'd actually happen, for me: Sure, the first couple times I'd see the ads and click on them if it save me that nickle, because I'd be interested in whatever it was that lead me there. Beyond that, however, I'd quickly realize the non-zero time/opportunity cost, and despite my interest in the subject leading me to the site in general, would increasingly and probably subconsciously find my internal priority and efficiency processing algorithm directing me elsewhere -- the site would simply be too expensive in lost opportunity, either that nickle PLUS the time spent that couldn't now be spent on anything else I find interesting, OR the time spent reading PLUS the noise and hassle factor of the ad, probably insulting my intelligence since in large degree, most ads are targeted at the programmable zombies that can most effectively be influenced by others telling them what they /should/ think and buy, and less at the people who actually find thinking for themselves stimulating and pleasurable, and are thus less influenced by ads telling them what they /should/ think and buy.

Of course, this is where it all comes full circle to adblockers and dying newspapers trying to charge for their online content as they did for their offline content, perhaps vs. ads. Yes, if it's valuable enough to me, I'll pay for it, one way or another. However, given the limited time in life I have left and the perhaps 10% of what I'd /like/ to do that I'll actually /get/ to do before I die, increasing the hassle factor OR the monetary cost, very likely has the effect of moving far enough down my priority list that it no longer actually gets done, with any one of ten or a hundred or a thousand things taking its place, depending on how egregious I find the added cost vs the priority I had placed on it and the other things, and thus how far on the list it actually drops.

Now if it were just me, no big deal. However, Murdoch and others are gambling that reading their content won't drop that far in people's lists as the cost goes up, while the /. denizens predict it will. We'll see, I guess. As for me, as I said, there's more stuff on the list where that came from. If worse comes to worse and the net ceases to have any place worthwhile to visit at a cost that doesn't bump it down out of worthwhileness, I do have all those scifi books I was once interested in but never got to read before scifi dropped out of my practical priority range...

Meh... kde/konqueror 4.3 worked... once I enabled scripting globally (but for the specifically banned sites including google analytics, which was scripted in to run here), something I don't normally do, and wouldn't have done here had I not run firefox and known exactly what scripting I was allowing, already.

With iceweasel/firefox, noscript told me exactly what sites the page wanted to load scripting from, and if I'd wanted to, I could have called up individual scripts to inspect them (without going to the page's source code to find them) using JSView, before deciding to allow that site's scripts. That makes it **FAR** easier to manage scripts and decide what I want to allow and what not to allow. Once I saw it was just the one site, and twitter (and google analytics, which is of course set as permanently untrusted in noscript/firefox, here, and specifically disallowed in konqueror, as well), I went ahead and allowed it in firefox.

Then, knowing from firefox what sites it wanted to script, I allowed it in konqueror as well, and could compare the performance. But the thing is, without firefox's extensions, I'd have most likely given it up as not worth the botther and the risk of globally enabled /without/ verifying. That's really what konqueror is missing, now, not most of the standards compliance and rendering, but all that "extra" stuff in the form of extentions, etc, that it's impractical if not flat out impossible for a small group of developers to do, that a whole global community can do. Yes, konqueror has the ability to do extensions, but the konqueror community is simply not of critical mass. If they'd get together with Google and Apple and Nokia/Qt and whoever else is doing KHTML/Webkit based browsers now, and form a single community around a single Webkit compatible extension framework that they all supported (or even got together with Mozilla and suported its extension standard, given the huge lead it already has in that regard), then the community would acheive critical mass and it's very likely all the webkit/khtml based browsers would quickly develop the same extension community and the same flexibility in usage, including the same nice UI based per-source-site scripting viewing and permissions that the JSView and NoScript extensions give me on firefox.

Meanwhile, on Gentoo, both iceweasel/firefox and konqueror built from sources to native 64-bit amd64 code, running on a now older dual Opteron 290 (thus, dual dual-core 2.8 GHz) w/ 8 gigs RAM on kde4.3.0, iceweasel did seem to run slightly smoother here, but not really noticeably so. And of course iceweasel gave me sound. ... Which reminds me, I really just switched from kde3 over the last couple weeks, with 4.2.4, now 4.3.0... Wasn't a big thing about kde4's phonon that it had per-application audio control? How come I don't see any such thing? Or is that only with pulse-audio, which I don't have enabled here? But if so, why was it called a kde4 feature, when I guess then it would be a pulse-audio feature, not kde4-specific? I've stuck with plain alsa and the phonon's xine-engine backend piping into alsa, as I've really seen no need for the additional complication of a sound server when my audio hardware (ac97 codec on amd8111 using the analog devices 1981b/amd8111/i810/sis/nVidia/ALi ac97 alsa driver) apparently has no issues with hardware mixing. But if this so-called kde feature requires pulse-audio... maybe I'll do without as I haven't really needed it so far.

(Back on kde3, instead of runing arts, I ran I believe it was an alsaplayer wrapper, set to 50% volume, for kde's sound notifications, so my normalized sound effects didn't get too loud. That's still possible with a lot of apps. And enough apps have their own volume levels that it's not a big deal. FWIW, I finally got tired enough of amarok bloat and killing the kde3 version features I liked only to add kde4 version junk and dependencies I had no use for, that I kicked it, and run mpd with a variety of clients... AND it's own nicely light requirements music library and volume handling, now. But I don't have a kde4 version of kaffeine yet; still have the kde3 version of it. Dragonplayer just doesn't make available enough user control...)

I believe I disagree with part of your post rather strongly, it would appear to be due to definitional issues:

Not really. Because we define "four" to be the name given to what two plus two equals, which is simply stating that it's the sequential unitary count coming after one two three...

By that definition, if the majority of people suddenly decided to call what we now call "four", "five" instead, well, then the new definition of what two plus two equals WOULD be five, because after all, that's simply what the majority of people have decided to label that number, and if the majority decided to label it differently, then by definition of language, they'd have the new correct usage, and everyone else using the old definition would be wrong, at least in the new context.

Of course the same idea applies if the language being spoken isn't English, or the base is changed. In Spanish (according to babelfish), dos (2) mas (+) dos (2) iguales (=) cuatro (4), it doesn't "iguales" either four /or/ five. In English but base two aka binary, 10+10=100, and how that's actually pronounced may depend on context (normal English description of the principle or discussion among mathematicians or computer professionals or...).

So it /does/ depend on the number of people who agree, because it wouldn't be the nature of the numbers that had changed, but simply what people agreed to call those numbers.

It could be argued that the second-guessing, as you put it, is /always/ necessary, it's simply a matter of where it is done. As machines get more (direct programmed or programmed machine based learning) effective at deducing what a person "really" means, the level of "pre-processing" that needs to be done manually by the human before querying the machine, or the number of successive rounds of post-initial-query modification, will likely go down.

To use an analogy from personal experience, I once learned the process of extracting a root by manual calculation. That was decades ago (grade school, in the late 70s or early 80s), and occasionally I try half-heartedly to look it up, as on some level it /bothers/ me that I lost that ability, as I think I /should/ have it.

Never-the-less, with a square root button now having been on dollar-store calculators for approaching a decade now, and sub-20-buck calculators since the 80s at least (that being when I first needed it, I've no idea when it would have been introduced on "scientific" calculators at say the $100 level, or how common it might have been on $20 calculators earlier), and Nth root extractions possible on computers and $20 calculators everywhere now, there's little real practical value in actually knowing how to do that manually, for the average person or even thru intermediate level geek, today.

Similarly, command line computing is really not absolutely necessary today, as millions and millions get by with icon based interfaces all the way down to the cellphone level.

There's not that many folks around skilled in the art of using a buggy whip any more, either.

In the same way, the automatic "second-guessing" and preprocessing that we geek types tend to do to our search queries before entry, often so naturally that we don't even realize we're doing it, could and likely will become unnecessary as time goes on. You say the computer doing that second-guessing is unnecessary and only gets in the way. Actually, you and I agree, at the level you and I tend to use the computer, at least, but for us, getting a precisely adjusted query starts well before we begin actually typing. At some point, however, those presently very useful skills aren't going to be so necessary any more, and we'll be the ones not properly adapted to our computing environment if we don't change with them, because by that point the assumptions will be that the query /is/ in natural language, and entering a query that is /not/ in natural language will actually throw things off and give far worse results than otherwise.

So from my viewpoint, as with what we call the result of two plus two, it's all a matter of cultural context and perspective. We see bing's second guessing as unnecessary, because we've already preprocessed the query and gone thru several iterations in our head before we ever start typing, at which point the query is already refined enough that those second-guesses tend to be more irritating diversions than helpful. But that's not the case for many users, and on that point, it would seem we agree.

Meanwhile, I'm quite happy if the ad susceptible "programmable zombies" that need that level of machine based second guessing because they're uncomfortable with or unable to do the necessary preprocessing analysis themselves, have somewhere else to go. It means google can narrow its focus a bit, making it more effective for those of us who can do that bit of preprocessing and prefer to do it ourselves, thus making the process when we do submit the query more efficient, as there's less "marshalling" to be done across that maddeningly slow computer/human interface.

(FWIW, as a confirmed kde power user and heavy customizer, that's pretty much the same attitude I take on the "there's only one 'correct' way to do it, the one the gnome devs chose" approach -- let the folks who want others to make those decisions for them, and the devs that want to make the decisions for them, have at it, it keeps them away from kde, where they'd otherwise be attempting serious damage to the "if it can be configured, let's ensure we've exposed a method to configure it" approach kde is often accused of having, but which us heavy customizers so enjoy. There's room in the FLOSS free world for both groups!

And, really, same for TV vs the Internet. Let the eggplant-brains sit on their couch and absorb all that programming from the idiot box. Consider how much worse "Eternal September" would have been had all the TVs ceased to work at the same time! Meanwhile, there's enough such folks that apparently actually /want/ to be told what to think and what they should want to buy, that I don't think our ad-sponsored net is in any danger, really. And even if it were, would the prospect of people who actually enjoy what they're doing and wish strongly enough to share it with others to put up the page, program the software, or compose and perform the music, play, or book, without, horror of horrors, actually being PAID to do what they'd otherwise not enjoy doing enough to do it anyway... would the prospect of /that/ sort of an Internet and information society really be /that/ bad? Somehow, I don't think so.

But regardless, I think it's safe to say it's unlikely to happen in any case, because as long as humans are humans, there'll be a significant group of them that prefer to let someone ELSE do that thinking and producing and etc, and don't mind at all being programmed by it as a result, even if that programming includes programming to buy what they'd otherwise not find valuable enough to spend their money on, which is, after all, the big reason advertising exists as it does today. (There's a small segment that's actually informational, letting folks know about that new restaurant that just opened down the street, etc, but that's a /very/ small segment.))

From the letter, explaining the $36/yr Pandora One option:

>> Pandora One offers very high quality 192 Kbps streams

Ugh! While I won't quarrel with the $36/yr price, 192 kbps MP3 is NOT "very high quality"! 128kbps is "minimum listenable quality", and 192kbps is at best, "medium quality". "High quality" would be 256kbps, and "very high quality" would be 360kbps.

Of course, if it's AAC instead of mp3, the quality arguably notches one higher for the bitrate, but even still, 192kbps would be "high quality" not "very high quality", and unfortunately, aac isn't as cross-compatible.

FWIW, I'm not a Pandora user, tho I'm an avid shoutcast.com user. Does pandora require proprietaryware of any kind? Yes, it appears to require flash. Perhaps gnash or swfdec work; I don't have them loaded here. Does anyone know?

Because I cannot and will not load priorietaryware such as flash -- among other things I cannot and do not agree to waive my rights to damages for software that cannot be freely and legally inspected to actually see what the code does, without waiving my rights (or those of my chosen agent) to work on similar software, perhaps using some of the code I (or my chosen agent) saw, in the process, in the future. Thus, no proprietaryware, aka servantware (see the sig), for me!

Luckily, the shoutcast.com and the various audio streams listed there work on freedomware.

First off these are by no means perfect solutions themselves. They're expensive for the power generated, are subject to the whims of nature and of course, could affect surrounding nature in unforeseen ways. What happens when you cause large dead spots in the ocean or wind currents? Have any real life tests been performed?

Personally I don't like the idea of off shore power generation, I'm sure it would expand and screw up the laws for sailors and the sea. Not to mention the large zones a few miles off shore that would be off limits to the public.

You also forgot to mention nuclear power, which beats everything else atm. If power companies want to experiment with this stuff i say go for it, but to realistically solve power needs with reliability America needs to get its nuclear ass in gear.

Here in Oregon the greenies have been fighting against the energy buoys for a while. They are concerned that electromagnetic cables on the ocean floor could affect sea life, and that buoys could interfere with whale and fish migration. We've also been tearing down hydroelectric dams because it disturbs the salmon. We got Washington DC jacking up the price of non-enviro friendly electricity on one end and the greenies on the other end kicking the green energy in the balls.

But there should be a way to take them back if the holder demonstrates remarkable stupidity.

After all, snopes is always correct.

No problem, and thanks for not getting offended. I tried to keep it humorous.

The problem of course is that once it came to my awareness enough to be able to use it right in my own writing, it now stuck out like a sore thumb if the usage was wrong in anybody else's writing! I'm not normally critical of most such things, but now, that one BOTHERS me! But at least I can still see the humor in it, as that post demonstrated... I hope.

Oh, well, maybe if enough people are made aware of it so it BOTHERS everyone, I'll not have to worry about it any more. =:^P

> Last year the earth cooled ALLOT

So, was that a random allotment that the earth cooled, possibly made by casting lots, or was it a deliberate allocation, perhaps by law? And, while we're at it, where was this allotment? I thought the earth was in general warmer than the surrounding space, so it warmed it up.

> And unless we get allot more sunspots soon, we be PRAYING for a little global warming.

So who's allotting them, and again, randomly, perhaps by casting or drawing lots, or by design? Whoever it is, is certainly God, to be powerful enough to allot sunspots, if it is indeed by design. So praying indeed would be appropriate.

Or maybe the "AllOt" company has something to do with all this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allot

Well, that's my alloted time for this post, as I've a lot of other comments to read, but before I go, let me leave you with these links. It's only three links. Really not a lot...

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/allot

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a_lot

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alot

(FWIW, thanks to the guy, whoever it was, that posted the mistaken use, I think here on /., that prompted someone to leave a comment clarifying the difference for me, at that time simply a lurker. I'm just passing it on, hopefully clarifying the difference for someone else.)

Get a bicycle. Drive to within 10 miles or so of work, park the car and bike the rest of the way. Increase the distance as you become more fit.

Dozens of devices use it. Cameras, GPS, if it has files most likely it uses FAT.

Again, for the 100th time, you misread the bicycledriving.org law. It says if the bike lanes exist, bikes have to ride in them. IT DOES NOT SAY IF THEY DON'T EXIST THAT THEY CAN'T BE ON THE ROAD. Get that through your thick head. You are wrong. Bike *are* allowed on the road throughout the states even if there isn't a bike lane.