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Comment what a fucking douche (Score -1, Troll) 238

by nfms (#33032914) Attached to: Why You Never Ask the Designers For a Favor

What a fucking douchebag, really. Is this supposed to be funny, or humorous in any way? The way I see it, it's just plain cruel and mean. Instead of wasting 4 hours mocking the woman he could have wasted all of 30 seconds putting together a damn pdf with the picture of the cat centered in the middle, a big MISSING in red at the top and the phone number and location at the bottom. Would that be so hard? I guess just humilliating someone that is in a fragile emotional state over the loss of a pet (yes, people actually get attached to their animals and get distressed when they pass away or run away) is much more manly, he can brag about it later to his buddies how he "made that bitch totally cry" and "showed her whos the boss".

What a fucking lame excuse for a human being. What is wrong with the world today? Are we so fucking self centered that we cant take all of 2 minutes to do a favour for someone who works with us? Why the need to belittle, humilliate or mock someone?

As the owner of a cat that ran away two months ago, this one hit very close to home, sorry. If it was me I probably wouldn't be so civil, next time I saw him I'd probably punch him.

Comment Re:Count it yourself... (Score 1) 641

by nfms (#29484833) Attached to: Most Useful UNIX Tool?

Let's save 1 pipe/process. From my .bash_aliases:

freq() { history | awk '{a[$6]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head; }

Also make sure to adjust the $6 if you don't have history with timestamps (I have export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%d %b %X " in .bashrc)
Patents

Oprah Sued For Infringing "Touch and Feel" Patent 249

Posted by kdawson from the where-the-money-is dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Oprah Winfrey, or to be more precise, Oprah's Book Club, is being sued by the inventor/patent attorney Scott C. Harris for infringing upon his patent for 'Enhancing Touch and Feel on the Internet.' So Oprah's Book Club is now one of many people and entities being sued over this patent because they allow people to view part, but not all, of a book online before purchasing it. Mr. Harris also sued Google Books for infringing upon this patent. He actually was fired from his position as partner at Fish & Richardson for that, because Google is a client of that law firm and they had conflict of interest rules to uphold." It would be entertaining to see Oprah give very wide and mainstream publicity to the abuses enabled by our current patent system.

Update: 01/07 22:03 GMT by KD : The blog author Joe Mullin wrote to point out that the lawsuit was not filed by the inventor, Scott C. Harris, but rather by the shell company Illinois Computer Research, which seems to exist for the purpose of filing lawsuits based on this particular patent.
Patents

Groklaw Says Microsoft Patent Portfolio Now Worthless 219

Posted by CmdrTaco from the along-with-most-patents dept.
twitter writes "P.J. concludes her look at the Bilski decision: 'you'll recall patent lawyer Gene Quinn immediately wrote that it was bad news for Microsoft, that "much of the Microsoft patent portfolio has gone up in smoke" because, as Quinn's partner John White pointed out to him, "Microsoft doesn't make machines." Not just Microsoft. His analysis was that many software patents that had issued prior to Bilski, depending on how they were drafted, "are almost certainly now worthless." ... He was not the only attorney to think about Microsoft in writing about Bilski.'"
Censorship

Lessig's "In Defense of Piracy" 218

Posted by Soulskill from the landlubbers-just-don't-understand dept.
chromakey writes "The Wall Street Journal is running an essay from Lawrence Lessig about the fair use of copyrighted material on the Internet. He makes the case that companies who go to extreme lengths to squash minor videos, such as Universal, are stifling creativity in the modern era. Lessig makes specific reference to a YouTube video that was hit by a DMCA takedown notice, in which a 13-month-old child is dancing to a nearly inaudible soundtrack of Prince's 'Let's Go Crazy.' Lawrence Lessig is a board member for the Electronic Frontier Foundation."
Microsoft

Microsoft Treating "Windows-Only" As Open Source 383

Posted by Soulskill from the a-rose-v0.092-BETA-by-any-other-name dept.
mjasay writes "The Register is reporting that Microsoft is hosting Windows-only projects on its 'open source project hosting site,' CodePlex. Miguel de Icaza caught and criticized Microsoft for doing this with its Microsoft Extensibility Framework (MEF), licensing it under the Microsoft Limited Permissive License (Ms-LPL), which restricts use of the code to Windows. Microsoft has changed the license for MEF to an OSI-approved license, the Microsoft Public License, but it continues to host a range of other projects under the Ms-LPL. If CodePlex wasn't an 'open source project hosting site,' this wouldn't be a problem. But when Microsoft invokes the 'open source' label, it has a duty to live up to associated expectations and ensure that the code it releases on CodePlex is actually open source. If it doesn't want to do this — if it doesn't want to abide by this most basic principle of open source — then call CodePlex something else and we'll all move on."

Comment Re:Voicemail uses your minutes (Score 1) 1008

by nfms (#19270059) Attached to: What's the Worst Technical Feature You've Used?
Portuguese mobile operators only start charging for the call 5 seconds after you hear the recorded message (The number you are trying to reach is unavailable, please leave your message after the tone), allowing you to hang up if you don't wish to leave a message. This mechanism has been in place since 2000 or thereabouts when ANACOM (National Communications Authority, the equivalent of the FCC) stepped in after thousands and thousands of complaints from people tired of being billed after calling someone only to find out their mobile was disconnected or outside coverage, forcing operators to implement the 5 second buffer period.

I _think_ landline operators are also under legal obligation to implement a 5 second buffer but I can't be certain -- I haven't had a landline since 1999 or so, and haven't lived in Portugal for a few years now.
Microsoft

So What If Linux Infringes On Microsoft IP? 394

Posted by Zonk from the yeah-that's-right-wait-what dept.
Mr Men writes to mention a ZDNet blog entry by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes wondering aloud if maybe, just maybe, Microsoft isn't lying about having patents that are part of Linux. "Come on, no matter how much of a Linux fan you are, you have to admit that there's at least a chance that Linux does indeed infringe on Microsoft's patents. After all, Microsoft does hold a lot of patents and while Linux is open source and we can all take a look at the source code, only Microsoft has access to most of its source code so it isn't all that difficult for it to prove — to itself at any rate — that there are IP infringements contained in Linux. After all, before IBM handed over some 500 patents to the open source community, it's pretty clear that Linux was infringing some of them. Given that, why is it so hard to believe that the same isn't going on with Microsoft?" Even then, he goes on to say, so what if they do? It's not like they're going to go after us with a 'Linux tax.' Kingsley-Hughes imagines that, for the most part, Microsoft is just going to sit on this info and use it to form more and more profitable deals. Better than the alternative, I guess.

New Google Service Manipulates Caller-ID For Free 116

Posted by kdawson from the party-to-whom-you-are-speaking dept.
Lauren Weinstein writes to raise an alarm about a new Google service, Click-to-Call. As he describes it, the service seems ripe for abuse of several kinds. One red flag is that Google falsifies the caller-ID of calls it originates for the service. From the article: "Up to now, the typical available avenue for manipulating caller-ID has been pay services that tended to limit the potential for large-scale abuse since users are charged for access. Google, by providing a free service that will place calls and manipulate caller-ID, vastly increases the scope of the problem. Scale matters."

The Outlook On AMD's Fusion Plans 122

Posted by Zonk from the playing-oblivion-on-a-handheld dept.
PreacherTom writes "Now that AMD's acquisition of ATI is complete, what do the cards hold for the parent company? According to most experts, it's a promising outlook for AMD . One of the brightest stars in AMD's future could be the Fusion program, which will 'fuse' AMD's CPUs with ATI's GPUs (graphics processing units) in a single, unified processor. The product is expected to debut in late 2007 or early 2008. Fusion brings a hopes of energy efficiency, with the CPU and GPU residing on a single chip. Fusion chips could also ease the impact on users who plan to use Windows Vista with Aero, an advanced interface that will only run on computers that can handle a heavy graphics load. Lastly, the tight architecture provided by Fusion could lead to a new set of small, compelling devices that can handle rich media."

PS3 Scales 1080i To 480p On HDTVs 125

Posted by Zonk from the when-it-rains-it-pours dept.
Dr. Eggman writes "According to an article from IGN, PS3 owners are finding that 1080i-only HDTV sets are scaling down launch games to 480p. The scale-down occurs because the launch games do not support 1080i, however they should be scaling down to an HD resolution of 720 instead of 480p. It is unknown if this is a technical or software issue and if it can be patched soon." ABC news is reporting that a patch which should be available to PS3 owners soon will correct the backward compatibility issues we discussed the other day.
Mars

Warming a Tiny Piece of Mars For Terraforming 205

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the ants-under-the-magnifying-glass dept.
dptalia writes "It's been a dream of science fiction writers everywhere that we would eventually terraform Mars. Now an engineering student has proposed a way to terraform only a kilometer of Mars. By building an array of space based mirrors to focus the sun's light, a small area of Mars could be warmed to about 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) which would make it easier for explorers to work and live there. Since Mars' atmosphere is thin, the mirrors would have to be carefully designed to prevent them from reflecting harmful radiation as well as light and warmth."

The Dark Side of the PlayStation 3 Launch 505

Posted by Zonk from the nothing-nice-to-say dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Kotaku is running an article prompted by an email from a foreign student in Japan. The reader unveils the sad reality of the modern gaming industry. Japanese businessmen made ample use of homeless people and Chinese nationals to obtain PS3s for re-sale. There was also a large amount of pushing and shoving, some fights, and almost no police presence at the most crowded stores." From the article: "Based on my observations of the first twenty PS3s sold at Bic Camera, they were all purchased by Chinese nationals, none of whom bought any software. After making their purchase, television crews asked for interviews but all were declined. These temporary owners of PS3s would then make their way down the street where their bosses waited. After several minutes, a dozen PS3s were rounded up, as their Japanese business manager paid out cash to those who waited in line for them. I witnessed a homeless-looking Chinese man, in his sixties or seventies get paid 20,000 yen for his services and was then sent away." Update: 11/12 05:40 GMT by Z : You're right. Sony only shares a portion of the blame here. Offsides on my part.
Censorship

YouTube Removal Highlights Media Self-Censorship 488

Posted by Zonk from the power-to-the-people-marty dept.
jamie writes "On 'Larry King Live' Wednesday night, Bill Maher said many of 'the people who really run the underpinnings of the Republican Party are gay... Ken Mehlman, OK, there's one I think people have talked about. I don't think he's denied it.' When CNN re-aired the interview, the mention of Mehlman was edited out with no indication anything was missing. When a minute-long video of the original vs. censored clips was posted on YouTube, a DMCA takedown removed it (the original poster plans to resubmit a shorter clip he hopes will qualify as fair use — good luck, since the DMCA doesn't recognize fair use). Relatedly, the Washington Post today was caught silently editing its published stories to make them less informative. Unnamed GOP officials are also saying that Mehlman will step down from his post when his term ends in January."

Broadcom's Treaty In the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD War 146

Posted by Zonk from the everyone-holding-hands dept.
eldavojohn writes "For a while there, I didn't know what to buy. Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? Which would be the leader? Only a fool would buy discs of the technology that would be the next Betamax. Fortunately, my dilemma has been solved by Broadcom. From the article: 'Consumer and communications chip supplier Broadcom Corp. Thurs. (Nov. 9) introduced what the company labeled the first single-chip solution to support both Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD standards.' I guess I'll just wait until I can get a player that will play them both."

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