Comment Re:Location-based reminders? (Score 1) 250
The whole concept of "obvious to a person skilled in the art" has been ground into the dirt for 20+ years now.
Comment Re:They need to stop arresting the FINDERS (Score 1) 466
No, but park it in my parking space, don't remove it after I have you served with a notice to either do so or that I will go to court and get title of it, and guess what - I *can* go to court and get title transferred.
Uhhhh...what?? What law is this? IAAL and I've never heard of this legal maneuver.
He's talking about adverse possession.
It wouldn't directly apply here (it's not real estate, so he'd have to look at the more general doctrine of laches), but if you can't spot it, you should brush up on your property law. IANAL, but I've got a J.D.
Comment Re:Patent Fees and Supreme court decision (Score 1) 427
Shouldn't the patent obligation been handled between the licensor and the media company? Aren't we in fact, entity "C?"
We are, in so much as we are not liable for patent infringement for owning or transferring media on which resides the patented subject matter, i.e., the encoded data.
Submission + - Guaranteed Network Neutral ISP (arstechnica.com)
greedyturtle writes: Arstechnica released an interesting article on the first ISP to guarantee neutrality, called COmmunityPOwered Internet, aka Copowi. Which offers it's neutrality at a higher price, albeit mostly due to uncompetitive telco line pricing schemes.
Copowi's main pitch is a fully neutral network, which it defines as one that provides "equal access to all web sites and online services." The idea is that usage will be unrestricted and traffic will not be shaped, throttled, or prioritized. According to Matafonov, the major telecommunications companies want to "privatize the Internet" because greater control leads to greater profits. The eventual outcome could become something more like cable television than like the open Internet we know now, and Copowi strongly supports SavetheInternet.com's campaign to preserve an open 'Net.
The owner claims to only need 5000 subscriptions to move his ISP out of Washington, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and California and into the national arena. With 256 DSL at $33.95, 1.5Mbs for $49.95, and 7Mbs for $59.99, are you willing to spend the extra dollar for network neutrality?
Copowi's main pitch is a fully neutral network, which it defines as one that provides "equal access to all web sites and online services." The idea is that usage will be unrestricted and traffic will not be shaped, throttled, or prioritized. According to Matafonov, the major telecommunications companies want to "privatize the Internet" because greater control leads to greater profits. The eventual outcome could become something more like cable television than like the open Internet we know now, and Copowi strongly supports SavetheInternet.com's campaign to preserve an open 'Net.
The owner claims to only need 5000 subscriptions to move his ISP out of Washington, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and California and into the national arena. With 256 DSL at $33.95, 1.5Mbs for $49.95, and 7Mbs for $59.99, are you willing to spend the extra dollar for network neutrality?
Submission + - Algorithm That Seemlesly Patches Holes in Images (cmu.edu)
Beetle B. writes: "From the site:
'What can you do with a million images? In this paper we present a new image completion algorithm powered by a huge database of photographs gathered from the Web. The algorithm patches up holes in images by finding similar image regions in the database that are not only seamless but also semantically valid. Our chief insight is that while the space of images is effectively infinite, the space of semantically differentiable scenes is actually not that large. For many image completion tasks we are able to find similar scenes which contain image fragments that will convincingly complete the image. Our algorithm is entirely data-driven, requiring no annotations or labelling by the user. Unlike existing image completion methods, our algorithm can generate a diverse set of image completions and we allow users to select among them. We demonstrate the superiority of our algorithm over existing image completion approaches.'
English translation: The algorithm replaces arbitrarily shaped blank areas in an image with portions of images from a huge catalog in a totally seamless manner."
'What can you do with a million images? In this paper we present a new image completion algorithm powered by a huge database of photographs gathered from the Web. The algorithm patches up holes in images by finding similar image regions in the database that are not only seamless but also semantically valid. Our chief insight is that while the space of images is effectively infinite, the space of semantically differentiable scenes is actually not that large. For many image completion tasks we are able to find similar scenes which contain image fragments that will convincingly complete the image. Our algorithm is entirely data-driven, requiring no annotations or labelling by the user. Unlike existing image completion methods, our algorithm can generate a diverse set of image completions and we allow users to select among them. We demonstrate the superiority of our algorithm over existing image completion approaches.'
English translation: The algorithm replaces arbitrarily shaped blank areas in an image with portions of images from a huge catalog in a totally seamless manner."
Journal Journal: What is your favorite 20th-century OS? 1
What is your favorite 20th-century OS version or distribution? Mainframe OSes are fair game.
The main rule is has to be officially unsupported as of January 1, 2000. Rule #2 is you had to actually USE it at least once. No "I heard the Amiga was cool."
I like the Commodore 64 and MacOS 2.0.
Word 2007 Flaws Are Features, Not Bugs 411
PetManimal writes "Mati Aharoni's discovery of three flaws in Word using a fuzzer (screenshots) has been discounted by Microsoft, which claims that the crashes and malformed Word documents are a feature of Word, not a bug. Microsoft's Security Response Center is also refusing to classify the flaws as security problems. According to Microsoft developer David LeBlanc, crashes aren't necessarily DoS situations: 'You may rightfully say that crashing is always bad, and having a server-class app background, I agree. Crashing means you made a mistake, bad programmer, no biscuit. However, crashing may be the lesser of the evils in many places. In the event that our apps crash, we have recovery mechanisms, ways to report the crash so we know what function had the problem, and so on. I really take issue with those who would characterize a client-side crash as a denial of service.' Computerworld's Frank Hayes responds to LeBlanc and questions Microsoft's logic.'"
Feed Intel set to showcase China operation (com.com)
Chipmaker's decision to hold developer conference in Beijing next week emphasizes how important China is to its future.
Feed Google, PennySaver do ad, content sharing deal (com.com)
Blog: Google and PennySaverUSA.com are working on a deal in which free "shopper" publications would contribute classified listings to...
Submission + - Jumping to Conclusions on BIOS, Phoenix & Wind
tomlasusa writes: In a post on LinuxQuestions.org, user "chessonly" cites a 2003 article from Networkcomputing.com by writer Steven J. Schuchart as evidence of that Phoenix Technologies Technologies has made its BIOS more Windows-friendly — thereby locking out users from using other OSs. In a rebuttal posted at NWC.com, Shuchart says that this is just not true.
http://www.networkcomputing.com/blog/dailyblog/arc hives/2007/04/jumping_to_conc.html
Feed Editors' Notes: The iPhone isn't a distraction, it's the point (macworld.com)
Feed Improving Air Quality For 2008 Beijing Olympics (sciencedaily.com)
Scientists have been working to improve the air quality of Beijing and ensure a healthy atmosphere for athletes and spectators at the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Feed Satellite Images Aid Implementation Of Agricultural Reforms (sciencedaily.com)
An ESA-backed project has demonstrated how Earth observation satellites can assist in the cross compliance measures -- a set of environmental and animal welfare standards that farmers have to respect to receive full funding from the European Union -- included in the 2003 reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy.
Feed Sex And Prenatal Hormone Exposure Affect Cognitive Performance (sciencedaily.com)
In one of the first research studies to assess sex differences in cognitive performance in nonhuman primates, researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center have found the tendency to use landmarks for navigation is typical only of females.
Feed Early Diagnosis Of Alzheimer's Boosted By Study (sciencedaily.com)
Electroencephalograms can help in the diagnosis of early-stage Alzheimer's disease, indicates a multi-year study by three institutions for the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Aging.
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