Not necessarily. It sounded like there was a pretty strict NDA in place. I wouldn't be surprised if it was to keep Google from knowing what the alleged infringing patents were, so Google may not have had a chance to really fight this.

"By using this website, you agree that if you are currently holding an elected position, work directly for someone holding an elected position, work as a lobbyist, or are a Supreme Court Justice of the United States, you will immediately resign your position. Furthermore, you agree to never hold an elected position or work as a lobbyist. You also agree to waive any class action lawsuits against this site, and agree that any disagreements over these terms of service will not be argued in a court of law, but will be subject to binding arbitration by an arbitrator selected by the owners of this website."

This isn't a solution until he first figures out how to get this by the politicians that said bankers have bought with said money.

I'm really not sure that I want to be flying on an airline whose chief can't tell the difference between a private hotel room and an airplane with dozens of other people sitting right next to you.

Hmm, if you are going to get a smartphone dock built into your prosthetic, it really ought to be an Android phone.

He has been quite good. There are more talented actors though. The thing with Leonardo DiCaprio though is that he may be the actor with the best judgement in what movies to play in. If you look at his filmography, you notice that he plays in relatively few movies, but those really tend to be smart, well put together movies.

I am kind of hoping that he does play Alan Turing, not necessarily for his acting skills so much, but just because it tells me that the script is likely to have been well done.

IE and Safari. Our logs have indicated a pretty even split in usage among our users between IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari (and no, the Safari users are not all or even a majority coming from mobile devices).

What would break is Javascript. The different browsers have been messing around quite a bit with their Javascript engines in recent years, and there are idiosyncrasies that have to be worked around. What you see as a minor change to how a browser handles a piece of Javascript does in fact mean that major corporate websites could suddenly no longer work for thousands of users.

When you have to support such systems, you want to be able to do testing to make sure that things work. This new scheme means that each and every day you are living under the gun, wondering if today is the day that Mozilla will release a version with a minor tweak that will leave you in a huge mess.

Unfortunately, although I've loved Firefox and have used it for years, I'm about ready to suggest that my organization no longer support it, because it's becoming impossible to realistically test against. The best that such testing can do is say 'It works today, but who knows about tomorrow?', which bosses REALLY don't like.

It is stupid. There is value in a combined service.

I had been a bit annoyed about the price increase and their BS handling of it, but I had gotten over it, and was figuring that I'd just pay a bit more and keep both the DVDs and the streaming (despite probably using the streaming less). It was just easy and already packaged nicely together, where I had my queues together, and if I was interested in a show I could easily see if it was on instant first before trying to get it on DVD. This is destroying that severing that link and destroying that convenience. This is actually making me think now that perhaps I should just drop the streaming part, since I use it less and it's now going to be far less convenient. I am thinking that I should perhaps take this opportunity to look into Amazon's streaming content, as using it would now be just as convenient, and due to their pricing changes, I wouldn't have to pay more to just keep the DVD service.

A few points:

Q. How do we discover the 'new'?
A: We are more likely to discover the new BECAUSE of GPS. Without GPS you are much more likely to stick with major routes to your destination. With our (perhaps over-) confidence in the guidance of GPS, we are more prone to take out of the way routes as suggested by the GPS. This is how we can discover the 'new'. Additionally with confidence in GPS, I know that I am a lot more willing to try to even go to new places that I haven't been before. I can tell you from personal experience that just going with printed Mapquest directions and a map or two does not lead to marital bliss and made me not want to go to new places nearly as much. It's far better going to new places now that we have GPS.

Q. Is it damaging our navigational ability?
A: Does the use of a compass also damage our navigational ability? You could argue that the GPS in fact can help our navigational ability by showing us how distorted our own viewpoint can be. You find the same thing though with a compass.

Q. Is it changing how we think about travel and explorations?
They point to the need for more multi-tasking skills, etc. This may be a change for Baby Boomers, but I would argue that it's actually moving navigation into sync for the younger generation. We are used to multi-tasking. Additionally, when I first got a GPS, it felt EXTREMELY comfortable. Suspiciously so. Then I realized that it was a real-life mini-map! I was tremendously used to navigating in less familiar (albeit virtual) environs with the help of a minimap, while keeping most of my attention on the new environs, after all, if I didn't pay attention to where I was going in the world before, I could run into some nasty dragon, etc. The younger generation is already thinking about travel and exploration in the way that GPS pushes us, due to video games.

Looking into why we are paying so much money to security contractors that can't even secure their own servers.

I was just wondering something. If you specifically were to put terms in your EULA that prohibits the use of the software if you are in East Texas, would you then be able to (most likely) successfully argue that East Texas is not the appropriate venue if you are sued for patent infringement?

Blue Ray is not just competing against DVDs. It's competing against networks and hard drives.

You start with an $80 up front cost for a Blu-Ray writer, but then have to buy the discs, which have come down to $1 per disc, so $.040 per gigabyte.

Meanwhile. you can get a 1.5 TB external hard drive for $70, which winds up being $.051 per gigabyte.

So if you look at these costs, you'll have to use 290 Blu Ray discs before Blu Ray is cheaper storage than external hard drives. Yes, if you are just putting movies on those Blu Ray discs, you will be able to able to play those in a FEW more devices, but many DVD/Blu Ray/Consoles/etc. can read from an external hard drive. But access to a few extra devices comes at the cost of not being able to reuse that storage, where you certainly can with an external hard drive.
Also, if you are needing high amounts of storage, you are almost certainly doing video, and will wind up using a lot more than 25 GB. An external is far more compact (and easier to deal with) than 60 Blu Ray discs.

Sure, there are cases when you want to transfer smaller amounts of data, but that's what flash drives are for.

According to the figures that I've found by a quick search, the unemployment rate 5 years ago was around 5%. It's now around 10%. With a US workforce size of about 150 million, that's about 7.5 million more people without jobs. So that's a good chunk of their lost customers right there. Even those with jobs may be watching their budget more closely (especially with the price of food and a lot of other more important things going up, while salaries have kept stagnant) considering that we are in a recession.

So yeah, they may have lost 20 million customers, but it's beyond ridiculous to blame it on places like Pandora (that may even be helping their sales).