Assuming this holds, Google will not have to make any changes; the nine lines of RangeCheck have already been replaced long ago, everything else has been found non-infringing.

I know how much IBM is invested in Java as a technology, so no, I wouldn't lose any confidence at all. Indeed, my confidence might well go up.

. . . in an effort to save some shred of credibility.

Actually, that's the exact problem, isn't it? Nobody knows what RMS might do next week.

That's clearly not the goal of the GPL3, because if it were, there would be no need of an anti-TiVoization clause, but the Affero clause would be standard.

Meteoric iron has very high concentrations of nickel and platinum-group metals compared to terrestrial ores, where the nickel and platinum-group metals mostly wound up in the planetary core. And how many asteroids are the "right type" isn't a big issue. You identify the ones you want with telescopes and spectography, and just recover them.

But the other half is, delivering light elements to orbit is how you bypass the expense of having to launch them up a gravity well. If you want to build a carbon nanotube space elevator, it may well be cheaper to move a high-carbon asteroid into the right place than try to boost all the carbon needed into orbit. (You have to originally manufacture a space elevator in orbit anyway.)

that's mainly an issue for those who work in the dying industry of paper-publishing

Printing and publishing are not the same industry. The people printing labels, packaging, billboards, and junk mail are not particularly threatened by ebooks and digital editions of periodicals; even if the entire publishing industry goes entirely nonphysical they'll still be around. And they'll still need high-bits-per-channel CMYK for best results.

Windows the family has 85% marketshare. "Windows 8" has 0%.

And remember the pattern:

Windows 98 SE
Windows Me
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7
Windows 8

Metro is a Windows 8 exclusive.

And since the A5 is made in Texas, it's actually possible for Apple to make such a decision stick, rather than have China respond to the blackmail threat by ordering the factories keep making iPads anyway.

There has been no statistically significant warming in the last 15 years. The Earth is not getting hotter, it got hotter and then, a decade and a half ago, it stopped. This may well be a blip; noted climatoligist Professor Phil Jones, Director of Research for the University of East Angliaâ(TM)s Climatic Research Unit certainly thinks so. But claims the Earth hasn't been getting warmer for the last 15 years are not fantasies; they are the actual consensus of real, respected climate scientists, based on the best data available.

Cannabis, defined in such a manner as to include seeds, is listed as one of the substances banned in Canada's anti-drug trafficking statute, so it is technically illegal for him to sell in Canada. In practice, last time he was prosecuted he just got a small fine, and nobody in Canada has bothered to prosecute anyone's seed sales ever since. Is something illegal if there's a law against it, but nobody is ever punished for breaking it, and the state actually refers people to the lawbreaker as a supplier?

I'm for full marijuana legalization, so I think the results are stupid, but I do think it's important to remember that the actions and inactions of the Canadian Parliament were essential steps in Emery getting fucked over.

Actually, this is a very important point you got wrong. It is, in fact, illegal in Canada; the Canadian law is merely not enforced.

The US-Canada extradition treaty specifies that the US can only demand extradition in cases where the act was, by Canadian law, punishable by a prison sentence exceeding 1 year. Emery could only be extradited because Canada left that law on its books, even though it didn't actually enforce it.

The Parliament of Canada could have, at any time, shut down the extradition effort by simply repealing the law in question, or reducing the maximum sentence to less than a year, or the like. And despite the Conservative government, the House of Commons of Canada had a Liberal-NDP-BQ majority during most of the extradition effort.

So Mr. Emery is in jail because the freely-elected representatives of the Canadian commons, of all parties, jointly exercised the sovereign power of the Queen-in-Parliament to outlaw his conduct under Canadian law and keep it illegal under Canadian law.

. . . to something more in line with expectations. For the ESR patches, number them 10.0.1, 10.0.2, etc, while the mainline goes 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, etc. until the new ESR (currently planned to be 17) gets version 11.

IBM has a big enough arsenal and enough cross-licensing agreements that they can afford to sell part of the arsenal for money. Google isn't interested in a license, because a license wouldn't let Google use the patents as part of Google's patent defense arsenal.

Parts of Texas, sure. But Texas is the size of (Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Maine, South Carolina, West Virginia, Maryland, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island) combined, and Austin is pretty well inland.

The idea that Firefox's development has been driven by consumer demand at any point in the last year is utterly ridiculous.