You know, it goes to show, how little the judges making decisions on these types of cases really know about technology, let alone software technology, where simply put, someone could easily swipe whatever facebook developed, and resell it on the open market...

Facebook did (like so many other companies) use many copy and paste code lines from about everywhere they could find, however,
for someone to say specifically it belongs to them, I know many different applications which uses categories to a piece of data.
It really is not something you can patent, ...a song which belongs in the rock category and metal category, would make windows media player go through the same thing as facebook, should they ever want REAL money for their infringement.

"We believe that commercial software companies and the developers that work for them under-participate in open source projects," Microsoft stated.

While I applaud the intent to appear to be open source friendly, they haven't yet begun to address two of the major issues with Microsoft and open source:

1. What happens when a Microsoft developer inadvertently contributes to their Open Source repository something better than a commercial Microsoft offering?
2. Most of us developing commercial software *CAN NOT* participate in open source projects due to overly broad non-compete clauses in our contracts. The extent of our participation is not up to us, or Microsoft - it's up to our employer, and Microsoft's recent action in this regard does nothing to change this.

Now, here we have Microsoft reinventing the wheel, aka sourceforge. I could even go for a BSD style license, or even public domain. But I have one question:

Would they host, and allow development on ReactOS? (for those who don't know, it's an open source Windows clone)

How Codeplex and Microsoft deal with this question would reveal far more about their true intentions than what their pundits say about their open source attitude.

that's a lot of heavy post-processing for a problem which if you use modern technology and something with low latencies you really just won't have to deal with at all at that stage

The main difference in our opinions though comes from the rather different way you're doing things, which is a great deal more difficult and might have been necessary a decade ago.

Prime example is the idea of loading soundfonts on to a sound card, it isn't done that way these days for a myriad of reasons, pci bus latency being a main one. Flexibility another. Hardware midi with soundfonts on a sound card isn't even seen as something beneficial now.

These days everything is integrated, volumes for individual tracks etc are adjusted easily even in midi form while you're working on it and playing with it. no need to render it to a fixed saved waveform until you're completely done, it can do whatever you like in real-time.

with the 4msec jack latency i mentioned, with everything as it should be that's all the latency you'll ever get. (ok to be pedantic you could maybe add 1msec for usb polling for the midi device you're using if you are) This is an advantage of the heavy integration of everything.

Mastering pre-done waveforms is still a handy skill of course, chances are you'll deal with analogue instruments at some stage. But might i heavily recommend you look into some of the more modern ways of making music electronically? things aren't what they were like a decade ago, where what you have said would have been necessary

Surely you mean downgraded, right?

Your argument is emotional, and I am not arguing the merits of DRM, so therefor I will not engage at the level..

No, it isn't. It's technical: DRM doesn't work, and can't work, and as such it's pointless.

In the digital age when content, even content obtained legitimately, can be distributed world wide on a mass basis within hours and in some cases minutes both against the content creator/owners wishes and in violations of the protections currently in place what recourse to content creators/owners have?

Absolutely none. And they'll never have one.

No matter how much DRM you wrap around a MP3, I'll always be possible to break it. Worst case, I can place a microphone next to my speakers. And once it's broken even once, it's trivial to create a non-DRMd file from that.

Think of any popular MP3 file or program. Look on file sharing networks. There's not a single that's not available, regardless of the amount of effort done by the author to prevent it.

Your argument that there are content creators that sell their content without any sort of digital rights management, implies that you believe that all content creators should do so. I submit that it is the choice of the content creator/owner to make that decision for themselves and as such it is your choice to purchase or not as both of you have that fundamental right.

In that case, you should know that I never buy DRMed content. It's a 100% guarantee I won't buy whatever you're selling.

I also submit that we, the DMR'd ( if you will ) are the original creators of DRM since those content creators were forced to attempt to control the distribution of their content when those of us with digital means undertook to distribute their content without their agreement, to the world en-mass. In this regard we are truly hoisted on our own petard.

I submit it's a pointless exercise. You can't make data not copyable any more than you can make water not wet. You may not like it, but the world doesn't adjust to your preferences just because you'd prefer it to work in some other way.

I think that if you don't like the situation, you should just give up, and earn money in some other way. You'll be happier that way; because no matter what protections you apply to your stuff, they're doomed to be broken if somebody cares enough to break them. And the stronger the protections you apply to your work, the more sales you'll lose to people who think they're too restrictive.

You know, there are plenty of successful space missions propelled by chemical jets, and using already proven technology for human missions has a lot of sense.

But I agree, that anything serious regarding space exploration can start with a more efficient propulsion, e.g. an operational VASIMR, which I would welcome with a great joy.

Isn't that a little redundant?

I had no idea; I don't use Facebook myself. However, I meant "discreet" (and not "discrete"). Those words sound alike. People should fix the English language. It was much better in Shakespeare's time when people used to talk in iambic pentameter.

    The Supreme Court's review of Bilski is the first time since 1981 that they've decided to look at the patentability of software. The Supreme Court needs facts, studies, and opinions (but only if they're
from very respected people, which includes Timothy B. Lee). You can help gather and document these things on the public swpat.org wiki:

• Studies
• Arguments
• âZTimothy B. Lee on software patents

This is our big chance to fix the problem!

Colors are good for many things. For one, any modern video is going to look like crap on a black and white LCD. For another most people see black and white LCDs as cheap, most people play their MP3 players in their car, at home, at work all indoors. And you can find a large amount of black and white LCD players if you get cheaper off brand ones. Sure, they won't be the greatest quality, but most customers don't want black and white LCDs because they are inferior.

Have you ever been to ANWR? I work right next door to it, and I can tell you, there ain't shit to protect out there. Seriously. Do you know what tundra is? It is literally frozen dirt with short grass growing on top. It isn't exactly an eco-paradise. Also, provided we are careful about it, animals flourish in the middle of an active oil field. Thanks to legislation that has been in place for a while now, the oil companies are incredibly careful about the environment. The quickest ways to get fired are to ignore safety rules and ignore the environmental rules. I can't even walk out on the tundra without risking my job. Of course, I wouldn't be walking out there when the temperature is pushing -100 anyway. ;)

All that for a few thousand carribou, a few hundred foxes and rodents, and some bears. The whole of ANWR looks like a frozen grass desert, and has about as much wildlife as a few acres of forest in the lower 48. Some populations, particularly the carribou, actually do better around the pipes. They are warm during the winter, and allow more carribou to survive the tougher seasons.

ANWR won't free us from dependance on foreign oil, but it would boost our capacity by about 20% or more, and that's nothing to sneeze at.

Opening up the National Petroleum Reserves, which are on the other side of the North Slope, would be about as big or bigger than ANWR.

>>>>> WW2 was a horror not a success

>>And yet the United States of America emerged as the most wealthy and dominant power in the world AFTER WW1 and WW2.

In other words we grew wealthy-and-powerful on the back of Europe, China, and Japan's ruin (aka "the lost generation"). I think this cartoonist expresses it quite well - http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/digital/redscare/IMAGES_LG/Ghosts_of_War.gif - Ironically it appears China is now doing the same thing - loaning tons of money which we must now payback. Do you view the Chinese takeover of your government and your marketplace as a "success"?

I suppose from Beijing's viewpoint the answer is yes. But from OUR viewpoint it sucks, and I bet from the European/Japanese viewpoint the post-WW2 American takeover also sucked. I stick with my original comment about WW2 being a "horror" not a success.

I'd be more interested on the speed tests on machines with smaller memory, since a big win in browser development for me is bringing older kit back into play by making it more comfortable for websurfing. (I'd also be interested in seeing browser comparisons under Linux instead of XP too)

all of the beef cattle I see raised around here spend most of their days pretty much the same as they do in the wild - wandering around through a wide open field eating grass.

AFAIK the vast majority of beef cattle in the US are corn fed. Grass fed beef is much more difficult to come by and usually considerably more expensive. So, if that's what you've seen around where you live, it is not a representative sample.