You've described it pretty well. One of their earliest cases was in Richmond, VA and I sat in to videotape a lot of the depositions. (That's how long it's been going on -- VHS and SVHS were still in use when they started suing everyone. That was around 2000-2001.)

They admitted in depositions they were in on the meetings when the standards were drawn up and had no reason for not objecting to designs that were supposedly theirs.

I have to admit, the Rambus lawyers were polite and easy to work with. The lawyers for the other company (a German firm) were mostly from one New York office and were just plain rude and nasty.

I remember one deposition in particular where there was a top memory expert giving testimony and they asked him about flip-flops and if they were memory. They (the Rambus lawyers) were trying to get him to say a flip-flop was a one bit memory and he kept saying, "Under certain conditions." The lawyer was stumped and started getting worse and worse (the only time I saw a Rambus lawyer start to get nasty) because he not only couldn't get him to give the answer they wanted, but the lawyer had no understanding of what any Electronics 101 student would know. I had a hard time not laughing and shaking the camera during the time that topic was being covered. It was pretty clear to me that lawyer had not fully prepared and didn't know at all what the topic was with flip-flops. I would have loved to have stayed in that one all day, since I figured it would only get more technical and confuse the lawyer even more, but someone took my place so I could finish some editing.

I'm not familiar with you or your posts, elrous0, but this comment is enough for you to never gain any credibility with me on this topic (and likely other ones as well), since it tells us that you are thinking in absolutes and you see anyone who disagrees or speaks up for Apple in any way as a fan boy.

Guess what? It's not all black and white. You may say you know that, but your comments show otherwise.

Any 1st year calculus student should know both that it's been proven that Pi is irrational and does NOT repeat, but should be able to do that proof on their own.

Either way, it's a wasted question. Years ago, when Ma Bell was the only phone company and they came out with touch-tone phones, they patented the arrangement with 1-2-3 at the top. So if you want to make a calculator that uses that, you'll have to pay a fee.

So, I take it, you live in or have lived in that area so you know these people?

And if you stick a really nasty looking syringe on it, it makes a great Deathstar interrogation system.

Fox News didn't start leaning to the left. The intent from the start was not to provide news made up of facts, but to provide "news" that helped that group feel good about their beliefs and standings. There's an article on the Rolling Stone website, I think it's current now (5/31/11) on Roger Ailes. His intent from the start was to present the news as he saw it, with is anything but fair and balanced.

Fox News was never intended as anything more than a propaganda machine for the Republican Party. It's based on fear, and so is the internal organization. Even Rupert Murdoch thinks Ailes is kind of whack because of the things he believes, but as long as Fox News brings in more money than any other part of Fox, including the movie division, they're going to get whatever they want.

I know it won't help, but I've been to Germany, Luxembourg, France, Andorra, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia and even Lichtenstein.

I've seen them and most of those countries are quite beautiful. Yes, even Yugoslavia.

I know he'll say I'm a liberal plant, but if he has the balls, he can always go himself and see. If he's right, he'll see it. If he's wrong -- well, he won't be able to accept it.

Do they think people are really that unaware of the problems with their network that they'll believe that AT&T LTE will work any better than AT&T as it is?

How do you seize communication?

I know how they can cease communication, but that's a whole different thing.

It's all in the question -- ask the right question and the answer is obvious.

It's not if something happened because you're in Vegas.

It's not what we should do.

It's who we can contact for help -- in other words, "Who ya gonna call?"

And that question pretty much tells us who should be dealing with this whole thing.

It seems you are not clear on the difference between "free as in speech" and "free as in beer."

Projects need funds to support themselves and sometimes a FOSS project has to ask for donations. It's not against the spirit of FOSS, it's just that you have a misunderstanding of what "free" means.

Nah, I know a few chicks who want much more than just babes in spandex or leather. So I figure there's gotta be lasers and spaceships.

I hate to agree.

I don't think the people behind SyFy now have the brains to make it work as a premium network. They're stuck with a genre network and they know nothing about the genre and just need to rebrand it as "20-something and Stupid!" and get it over with.

It'd be cool to find a real SF network that played old classics (like UFO or others you don't see much or at all) as well as new and original productions.

Caprica shot themselves in the foot by running 3-4 episodes in a row that did nothing but give you reasons to not trust or despise characters.

But, and speaking from the point of view of someone with a writing, literature, and film background, SG:U was actually very well written and acted and once I saw that, I didn't expect it to last long on SyFy. And, honestly, I didn't expect many "SF fans" to go for it, since, as much as many protest they want something that challenges them intellectually, all many of them want are lasers, spaceships, and babes in spandex or leather.

Guess you made your point. It's fixed now.

And this thread will look silly to anyone reading it with the correct veresion in place.