You must be kidding. Since the patent troll is enjoying a government-granted monopoly, what the troll does with that monopoly is every bit the government's business.

I get what you're saying but requiring the inventor to file progress reports/submit to inspection does not necessarily require a working implementation of the idea. We all know that progress is by no means steady. In the case of your antenna example, the incomplete prototype would be adequate evidence that the inventor is at least trying to do something with the idea instead of merely waiting to sue someone else who actually succeeds in making a working implementation that is unknowingly based on the patented idea.

It seems like the easy way to fix the patent troll situation is for the government to require yearly progress reports (it's not too much to ask to have the patent holder produce something that indicates actual development work is going on whether the product is complete or not). The patent should be rendered null and void if the patent holder has done nothing but sit on it; if the holder hasn't done anything then it's time to let someone else try. No more free money by gaming the system and shaking people down.

IIRC, Broadcom wireless support was still a bit dodgy on Ubuntu back in the 7.10 days. There was no easy-fix install from the repos, you had to manually rip the firmware from the Windows drivers yourself with bcm43xx-fwcutter and hope it would work after the next reboot.

If you want Ubuntu without all the bullshit just use Linux Mint.

After typing in a password 8-10 times I pretty much have it memorized, how long does it take for you? Doing it every 1-3 months isn't too bad. If it were changed every week then I would agree with you.

If you can memorize a 10-digit phone number (i.e. (123) 456-7890) then you can also memorize a 10-character randomized password. No excuses...there are sites out there that will generate tons of good passwords for you and you can just use the one you want.

The book was way better than that movie they made back in the 90s.

Linux Mint 14. Did you experience the vertical lines problem (lots of red, green, and blue vertical lines on the display instead of a visible picture) during the LiveCD session? I did and the only way I could make it work was to use the "nomodeset" argument (instead of "quiet splash") in Grub. The only downside is nomodeset forces the lowest common denominator graphics so I couldn't get higher than 1024x768 resolution. However, the display works fine after the installation (I could achieve native screen resolution) unless I close the lid or allow the screen to go blank after X minutes. It's really strange.

I can't recommend a specific current model (my last laptop was bought around 3 years ago) but every time I go computer shopping I bring a live USB stick (containing the newest Linux Mint or Ubuntu of the time) with me. If a computer can't handle the distro on the USB stick w/o minimal issues, I don't buy that model. I shopped like this until I found a HP that had everything (including wireless) work just fine out of the box.

The Inspiron 1501 belonged to a friend (I recently set them up with Linux Mint 14). Since that laptop would have failed my in-store USB stick test I never would have bought it in the first place.

I haven't used a new Inspiron lately but putting Linux on an Inspiron 1501 (Windows Vista-era laptop) was an absolutely hateful experience. The video card was badly supported (producing vertical lines after closing and reopening the lid) and the fucking Broadcom wireless wouldn't work (even after I installed the firmware) until I configured the startup to modprobe b43 at every boot.

I hope the buyers appealed. It sounds like that judge really fucked them over (or was crooked to begin with). Now that you've captured my interest, I can't help but wonder why the judge ruled that way.

From my experience, all paid dating sites are shit. If they work as advertised it means you basically got lucky. You have no idea if the matches you get are still current or if they are old dead accounts that never get looked at anymore (and you have no idea who is really on the other end if you do get a bite). It's also interesting how people suddenly start "communicating" with you when you try to cancel your subscription (i.e. shills that try to bait you into staying).

When were these servers shut down? I was still able to activate my CS2 last year. I've been using CS2 all these years and never bothered to upgrade.... CS2 has always done what I needed so why pay more for a new version?

Mod up. Photoshop CS2 is acceptable on Wine the last time I checked (kind of wonky but still usable). However, other CS2 apps like Indesign and Illustrator were unusable for me, maybe other people have had better luck.