rvalkass - Slashdot User

Comment Freedom of Movement (Score 1) 663

by rvalkass on Tuesday February 12, 2008 @05:05AM (#22389640) Attached to: Hostile ta Vista, Baby

... what can you do with Linux that you can't do with Windows, to make it worth switching over to?

Drive. That 200-and-odd quid saved by using Linux went towards driving lessons. Linux literally gave me freedom of movement, which Vista stopped me having. IIRC that's Article 13. Vista generally might also come under Article 5...

Submission + - Patent Reformers O'Reilly, Bezos Mum on 1-Click

Submitted by

theodp

on Saturday October 27, 2007 @03:28AM

theodp writes: "Brought together 7 years ago by a threatened boycott over Amazon's 1-Click patent, Tim O'Reilly and Jeff Bezos vowed to reform the U.S. patent system. So in The Register's Open Season podcast (@12:25), Andrew Orlowski finds it very ironic that news of a victory by LOTR choreographer Peter Calveley against Bezos' 1-Click patent broke as O'Reilly was once again busy trotting out Amazon-tied speakers to headline a Web 2.0 conference, this one sponsored by Fenwick & West, the prestigious law firm bested by Calveley. Orlowski notes that O'Reilly, who now counts Bezos among his investors, was oddly silent for a self-described software patent protestor, especially one who once vowed to torpedo 1-Click. Equally untalkative was Bezos, who deflected questions on the damage done by Calveley's DIY legal effort, telling a Wall Street analyst to 'refer to our public filings' (although nothing on the subject appears in the 8-K and 10-Q filings). One last dose of irony — in explaining the prior art he used to reject the 1-Click claims, a USPTO Examiner cited the very same TV remote control patent that was deemed to be unsuitable in a 1-Click prior art contest run by the O'Reilly and Bezos-bankrolled BountyQuest (just last year, Amazon testified to Congress that the contest failed to find prior art for Bezos' patent)."

Submission + - Paranormal Investigators' Technology Use

Submitted by

Esther Schindler

on Friday October 26, 2007 @04:34PM

Esther Schindler writes: "Sure, everyone uses technology on the job. But you may not have contemplated the tools used by paranormal investigators (at least, not until you began thinking about Halloween) who look for the truth in ghosts and other things that go Bump in the Night. In Paranormal Investigations and Technology: Where Ghosts and Gadgets Meet, CIO's Al Sacco writes about the most unusual of tool chests, with everything from thermometers to blimp cams."

Submission + - Mom Sues Music Company Over Baby Video Removal 8

Submitted by penguin_dance on Friday October 26, 2007 @04:29PM

penguin_dance writes: A Pennsylvania mom is fighting back, suing Universal Music Publishing Group for having a home movie taken down off of YouTube. The movie, featuring her 18-month old bouncing to Prince's song, "Let's Go Crazy," was cited for removal by the Group for copyright infringement. Mom Stephanie Lenz was first afraid they'd come after her — then she got angry. She got YouTube to put the video back up and now she's enlisted the help of Electronic Frontier Foundation and filed a civil lawsuit.

"I thought even though I didn't do anything wrong that they might want to file some kind of suit against me, take my house, come after me. And I didn't like feeling afraid," she continued. "I didn't like feeling that I could get in trouble for something as simple as posting a home video for my friends and family to see."

Looking for gPhone Clues in Google Patents 41

Posted by Zonk on Friday October 26, 2007 @03:32PM from the it's-like-sleuthing dept.

iced_tea writes "What do Google patents say about the company's possible plans for a Google phone? News.com took a look at some of the related technologies. Just one example: 'This image shows a diagram from a patent filed June 30, 2005 and published October 12, 2006, called "Non-Standard Locality-Based Text Entry." The inventor is listed as Shumeet Baluja, a senior staff research scientist at Google, and the assignee is listed as Google. The invention would allow an English speaker, for example, to use the keypad of any mobile phone to enter Chinese characters, according to Google patent scrutinizer Stephen Arnold.'"

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