It wouldn't matter, I don't think. A clearer statement than "we took our plaques off our wall" is needed, but assuming there is a clear statement from Tesla that they will only use these patents defensively, anyone who takes them at their word should be safe.

Why? There's a legal concept called "promissory estoppel". In a nutshell, it means that if I make you a promise and you, in good faith, depend upon that promise and build your business on it, and I knew or should have known that you were going to do so, then I can't later change my mind, withdraw my promise and sue you for doing what I said you could do.

I disagree.

Most of the Internet-related patents are so utterly obvious the patents should never have been issued. The reason companies don't want to license them is because thay add no value: The companies' engineers independently reinvented all of those trivially-obvious inventions, and now the patent holders are trying to hold them up for a lot of money. This is evidence that the system is badly broken.

The problem is that the situation you describe fits about 0.1% of patents, or less. The dream of the lone inventor making it big with the help of patent law isn't a fantasy, but it's so rare that it might as well be. In the meantime the current patent law structure serves mostly to impede technological progress and enrich patent attorneys.

There is money fighting for both sides. Much of the tech industry is fighting for patent reform.

Better translation: Some engineer who works for Google and is interested in web programming languages wants to create a new one.

To be precise, this ruling established a binding precedent in the 11th circuit and a persuasive precedent elsewhere in the country, correct?

My understanding is that given a binding precedent a circuit judge must explain why the precedent does not apply to the facts in order to rule contrary, and that given a persuasive precedent the judge merely needs to explain (in some detail) why the precedent is in error. Is that right?

The story here might be that Apple is going to be looking for a new supplier. This has repercussions for investor in the sector.

Same answer. I don't know what you pay for pay for view movies, but they're typically only a couple of bucks most places.

Expensive PPV events are largely limited to live events, and are thus, irrelevant. Hence my bringing the discussion back to what *is* relevant, things directly comparable to physical media.

Now kindly fuck off, the adults are having a discussion.

I have an purchased Android phone, a B15 from Caterpillar, not from a carrier. I bought a T-Mobile SIM card for it. When, at first startup, it asked me to sign up for GMail, I exited that dialog. I don't have a Google account. Turned off Google App Store, Google+, Google Market Feedback Agent, Google Play Music, Google Play Store, Google Play Magazines, Google One Time Init, Google Contacts Sync, Google Bookmarks Sync, Google Account Manager, GMail, Google Chrome, and Picasa Uploader. (Kept the phone preloaded apps: CAT Equipment Rental, CAT Parts, etc. Yes, this thing really is from Caterpillar Tractor. Waterproof, shockproof, dustproof, of course.) Works fine. Phone network data consumption is low, about 250MB/month.

There are a few glitches running in this mode. Google Maps will crash if you access Settings, which is a clear bug.. But that's about it. Google Now works, but doesn't know my location. Nothing ever gets updated, since the carrier knows nothing about the phone. Apps have to be side-loaded. I may load up the Amazon app store to see what that's like.

I was thinking of loading Cyanogenmod, but don't see the need now.

If you just have to play Angry Birds, run the Flash version.

The comparison between physical media and expensive pay per view services is another matter though. Streaming doesn't have an obvious price advantage.

I don't know how much your streaming plan and high speed internet costs, but I can recoup most or all of the full cost (as compared to physical media) of both Netflix and my high speed internet by watching four or five movies a month.

Did you actually read that waiver? It doesn't waive liability arising due to accidents. It's all about not promising any service level guarantees.

No. Uber provides coverage up to $1M per accident in automobile liability insurance. So any liability arising from the auto accident is covered.

http://blog.uber.com/ridesharinginsurance

http://blogcdn.uber.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/commercial-insurance-policy.pdf

Or maybe they just decided it was the easiest way to make that particular issue go away.

Exactly this. Cheap bastards torrent (understandable if you're broke), but if you have money? You rip the physical media.

For $DIETY's sake why? I've already paid for the disk, I've already paid for the player. I have the money, but it makes no dammed sense whatsoever to pay a third time for more (potential failure points) storage media and the electricity to run it. You and the OP ("Tech-savvy folks rip physical media") should speak for yourselves.
 

There's just no beating the convenience of a normal filesystem with normal media files.

If you're watching 3-4-5 movies a night, and your player and media is in some inaccessible location... Otherwise, it only takes a minute to swap disks and the time the player spends playing all the copyright threat crap is the time you'd spend hitting the head, getting another beverage, more snacks, etc.. anyhow.
 

obsession

This, I suspect, is a large component of the real reason - hipster geeks rip, and so you rip.

My last DSL modem was a bridge and so didn't really care about higher level stuff like IP. Googling for "dsl modem ipv6" turned up quite a few hits, though.