That line just bugs me on so many levels. Why can't they prosecute those cases without having the data on someone's laptop? What can someone have on a laptop that can be so important that without it it becomes impossible to convince a jury?

Honestly, I think if the prosecution is unable to move forward without that data, then they had no hope in the first place.

I disagree. In cases of fraud, logs, emails, and spreadsheets could all be used to guarantee a case— especially if it's the online variety.

From my understanding, you're basically asking for the prosecution to prosecute a murder case but not allow them to use the murder weapon— with the person's prints on it— as evidence.

Wouldn't an obvious case be possession of child pornography?

PulseAudio has been one of those love/hate things. Per application audio is great when you want to mute an application that you can't mute otherwise (like a flash application for school simply won't shut up).

I hate how it keeps touching the volume level for the system/hardware.

Tell them they are losing key votes and getting a huge smear campaign coming their way.

Intel is still in the mobile game? Sorry this is kind of news to me, I haven't been keeping up.

I wonder if they would use Android or MeeGo...

Meego was originally a joint effort between Intel and Nokia.

And since Nokia's bailed it wouldn't really shock the world if Intel eventually gave up on Meego too.

There was a fair amount of community involvement and some other companies. Intel and Nokia were the major players here. Also Nokia is supposed to release a Meego phone; they said that they will be using Windows mobile to replace Symbian in low and middle tier devices, and they haven't really commented on upper tier. To be honest, I probably won't be buying a Meego phone from Nokia if they ship one. My N900 is fun, but I feel it doesn't get enough attention from them.

Obviously, the biggest factor for Meego's success is if it can get any real attention from the media and consumers.

I'm curious if it would stand up in court.

Microsoft owns the trademark for "Windows", but walk into a hardware store and you'll see dozens of companies that freely use windows in their name. I've never heard of Microsoft going after them.

Trademarks are granted for certain products and services. In Microsoft's case, it's computer services or something. If you try to offer an operating system with a name that has Windows in it, then you would be sued.

Here's an example: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Microsoft_vs....

You're right in general, but that example doesn't support it: MS didn't win, but bought the trademark. For $20 million.

Here's a list of other trademark litigation cases: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Microsoft_lit...

No one is likely to confuse panes of glass with an operating system. If those same hardware companies started selling branded software, or probably even computer hardware for that matter, it would likely be a different story.

Legend has it that DEC and Hoover periodically sued each other over the trademark for VAX.

That's because trademarks only apply to a particular line of business - specific 'goods and services'. Along the same lines, if I wanted to open a business called Dell in the line of plumbing, that would be fine as long as I stayed away from the computing business under that name. Sometimes, there's a conflict when the definitions may overlap - Apple Corps (Records) vs. Apple Computer, for instance.

In the US, there are two ways to infringe trademarks: 1) Using the trademark in a way likely to cause confusion - generally has to be in the same line of business. 2) Trademark dilution - using a famous, distinctive brand and making it a generic term.

Entrepreneur, Apple and Windows aren't distinctive in their own rights (the logos might be, however), but some names certainly are.

Some seminal examples of this (in Australia at least) include "McDonald's" (pretty much impossible to brand any good or service, no matter its class, as such) and "Nike" (the shoe manufacturer prevented the manufacture of "Nike" perfume).

Trademarks are usually registered in one or several international classes (there are 45 of them), but there's a cost per class, so most companies don't try to cover the whole spectrum:

http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/notices/international.jsp

So, you can have a "Widgets" trademark for class 9 (Electrical and scientific apparatus), and another company can own the "Widgets" trademark for class 29 (Toys and sporting goods).

Some companies do register their trademark across the whole spectrum, like Coca-Cola, and probably Nike too.

Note that pharmaceuticals are a whole different story, as there are so many of them that you can have similar-sounding ones as long as they do something very different.

Maemo is brilliant, except it's a dead end in favor of Meego, whose future is uncertain.

What's wrong with a dead end? Isn't SSH a dead end, since we haven't seen any major modifications ina while? Maemo still has SSH, it's still linux, and it's still debian. There are community projects to update software and fix bugs.

> What's wrong with a dead end?

No new phones, obviously.

SSH is in active development. It isn't a dead end at all. While Maemo/Meemo will be going the way of the dodo probably.