Slashdot Mirror

Officially, only in Louisiana.Still chilling and disappointing nonetheless.

German federal patent court declares Microsoft FAT patent invalid

Setting aside the idiocy in assuming that the patents are valid after being rejected twice by the USPTO before finally being revalidated and ...

GPL V2 Terms and Conditions

11. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Library at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Library by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Library.

Microsoft does have the presidence in their favor due to the final decision of the USPTO and forcing Lexar to pay them off for their lame patents, but only a fool would simply give in to extortion.

rocket scientists... all of them... it only took them from the inception of gaming to realize their prices are assinine...

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/20/steams-left-4-dead-sale-increased-purchase-infection-by-3000/ 50% off 3000% increase in sales...

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/03/ut3-steam-sale-extended-due-to-2000-play-increase.ars 40% off 2000% percent increase in sales

The Firefox devs got away with it by fixing their memory problems. They made Firefox use less memory than other browsers. What was it they were unable or unwilling to fix again?

WB: strike one?

SONY: strike one?

FOX: strike one?

VIACOM: strike one?

DISNEY: strike one?

MPAA: strike one?

(let's not forget politicians)

SEN ORIN HATCH: strike one?

The supreme court says otherwise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobbs-Merrill_Co._v._Straus

Copyright, as the name suggests, is the right to copy a work of some form. If one resells or gives as a gift a book (or CD or DVD) that one has bought, a new copy has not been made, therefore it is legal under US copyright law.

The owner can choose when and where to distribute their copyrighted works, but do not have any control, under law, over what the user does, or who they sell or give that copy too. Microsoft lawyers and FUDdites would like you to think otherwise, but you can sell your CDs/Software/etc to anyone for any price.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/05/court-smacks-autodesk-affirms-right-to-sell-used-software.ars -- Timothy S. Vernor v. Autodesk

Irony is seeing And Apple has no idea what's going on or the state of things. and clicking on it and getting a 500 error. Seems more like Ars Technica has no clue what's going on.

My firefox has been running for 8 days, has adblock, flashblock and firebug running, and it using 230 MB of RSS at the moment. Have you tried removing all your extensions and seeing if it improves? I expect you saw this article last year:

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2008/03/firefox-3-goes-on-a-diet-eats-less-memory-than-ie-and-opera.ars

Don't know about you, but my 'thin client' can do motion video analysis, using a large amount of processing power: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/02/mozilla-demos-impressive-firefox-31-features-at-scale.ars

Ah, bugger. Wrong bill. It was the D.C. Voting Rights bill, not the stimulus, which was not a pure party-line vote, though it was still primarily Democratic-backed even with this amendment. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/02/senate-bans-fairness-doctrine-revival-87-11.ars

In the beginning of February, the FCC started looking into Comcast for throttling competing VoiP traffic. So while not double dipping, they were allegedly giving their service a competitive advantage.

Reverse is also true: a large number of US workers are consistently being looked over for being "overqualified" after being dumped onto the market in favor of more and more H1-B's the past few years.

Consider the following: if you are married, if you have more than 5 years experience, you are more likely to (a) be fired and (b) be passed over for a "new grad" or H1-B.

Why? Benefits and pay grade. H1-B's at companies like Microsoft have been the latest in a series of BELL-like maneuvers (look up Continental Can Co. and the "Bell Plan" if you want to understand how insidious this kind of behavior is) by major US firms.

Up until they started announcing layoffs, Microsoft was pushing for more and more H1-B's. It's not that there weren't very qualified US workers applying for those jobs, but that they didn't want to pay the market wage for people with real experience when they could pay the H1-B's less AND get away with forcing the H1-B's to work 80-90 hour weeks because they wouldn't have family back home to complain about it.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Atom profit margin is higher than an average desktop CPU (obviously not the $1000+ i7s, but I doubt margins are high on the typical low-clocked dual-cores that compete with Athlons). Sure, the profit per sale is lower, but it they sell more then that compensates.

I have one Atom system here already, and I'm thinking of building a couple more in the next year because they're cheap, run Linux decently and use relatively little power; I wouldn't buy three Core 2s in a year.

Actually, Atom chips in quantity are really cheap. We're talking in the range of $12 each for the low-end models, and maybe $70 for the super high-end ones. The margins aren't huge.

In fact, Ars Technica speculates the reason for outsourcing to TSMC is that fabs are expensive, and making large volumes of low-margin parts (that may or may not sell) may not pay for the expensive shiny new 32nm fab Intel is rolling out. Instead, Intel will let TSMC do the investment in their fabs, and have them amortize the cost of the fabs among all its customers. Intel's 32nm fab will be used to make higher margin chips. If the new 32nm Atoms sell poorly, then Intel just reduces the quantity ordered from TSMC. If they take off and Intel finds their 32nm fab has spare capacity, hey, make more.

http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2009/03/atom-cant-feed-rd-monster-intel-outsources-chips-to-tsmc.ars

Basically, Intel's betting that people will want higher-margin higher end chips, and that the whole market won't suddenly collapse into purchasing Atoms only. Thus, rather than risk making Atoms on an expensive new fab line that may not sell, make chips that will probably sell and pay off the fab sooner. TSMC's 32nm fabs will be paid for partly by Intel, and mostly by all the other customers of TSMC.

Everyone blames Commodore, but let's face it, the early 90s was a rough time for the computer industry. Atari went bankrupt (goodbye ST), Commodore went bankrupt (goodbye Amiga), and Apple would have gone bankrupt too (goodbye Macintosh) if it had not been saved at the last minute by Gates. The industry was consolidating around the Intel 486 platform, and I don't think ST, Amiga, or Macintosh would have survived even if run by someone as brilliant as Andrew Carnegie. What they offered looked unattractive to early 90s computer users who believed alternative platforms were as obsolete as newspapers today, and that everyone should be using the soon-to-arrive Windows95. In fact I can still remember the near-hatred from my fellow students: "You use an Amiga??? Everyone knows companies use IBM, and so too should you. You wasted your money."

Statistics show that less than 7% were interested in a non-IBM-compatible platform in 1994. That was quite a blow to Commodore who just eight years earlier controlled 40% of the market. Even now I can't believe Macintosh is still alive (3% share). I suspect if Gates focused his energies, and stopped Ballmer from making boneheaded decisions, he could kill-off the Mac fairly easily..... just as he almost succeeded in doing circa 1994.

Point - Nothing could have saved Commodore. Just as nothing could save JVC from losing its VHS market. The market had changed. (link - http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/12/total-share.ars/10 )

Apart from still selling netbook pros and actively selling tens of thousands in 2006.

Well, Ars suggests Psion's revenue claims are suspect.

These numbers are somewhat suspect for two reasons. First, Psion claims that peak netBook revenue occurred in 2006, three years after the netBook Pro went off the market and the same year Psion renewed its trademark. How could users buy two million dollars of accessories for only $135,000 worth of netBooks? The timing is off.

Second, the numbers seem too small. The netBook sold for $1300, so Psion's $5.35 million in total sales over the last ten years would amount to a mere 4100 netbooks. This seems too low, even for a fizzled product, especially considering the relative success of the Psion 3 and Psion 5 in the 90s.

Just taking Psion's revenue claims of US$2073207 (from the Ars article) in 2006 (their alleged peak year). $2073207 divided by $1300 is just under 1600 units. Hardly tens of thousands.

But I don't know enough to make a judgement, I'm just saying.

Most of M$ patents are invalid, invented by somebody else, or invalidated by prior disclosure & sale.

Delorme beat M$ to the punch (mapping software + laptop in auto/plane/etc) back in 1995.. Their GPS receiver had NO physical user interface! To make it operate, one connected it (via rs-232) to a laptop running Delorme real-time mapping software.

To add even more salt to the wounds, nearly all of M$ Fat patents are defeated by their own EARLY BETA releases of Windows which often predate M$ patent filings by over a year.

Add to the mess.. Microsoft's Linux Labs internal distributions required agreement to GPL distribution/patent licensing terms.

Back in June of 2008 Netflix was going to shutdown the feature for managing separate queues. They sent an email and I canceled my account that day. Not sure how many of us there were, but they reversed course quickly. If you're pissed about the silverlight player. Close your account and email them a note to say why you did it. Maybe this will be a non-issue in the morning... Here is a link to the original plan on Ars Technica: Netflix killing extra queues

Take all of your arguments against the inevitability of e-books and substitute the word "horse" for "book" and the word "car" for "e-book." Here are a few examples to whet your appetite for the (really) inevitable debate in the discussion section at the end of this article.

"Books will never go away." True! Horses have not gone away either.

"Books have advantages over e-books that will never be overcome." True! Horses can travel over rough terrain that no car can navigate. Paved roads don't go everywhere, nor should they.

"Books provide sensory/sentimental/sensual experiences that e-books can't match." True! Cars just can't match the experience of caring for and riding a horse: the smells, the textures, the sensations, the companionship with another living being.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Did you ride a horse to work today? I didn't. I'm sure plenty of people swore they would never ride in or operate a "horseless carriage"--and they never did! And then they died.

Just an addendum to this little story to deal with those who are still trying to get over a false persecution complex. Ars Technica ran an update story on this today. Among the nuggests:

Microsoft responded, "In regards to sexual orientation, for gamertags or profiles we do not allow expression of any type of orientation, be that hetero or other...[We] just wanted to reemphasize that we take any harassment seriously and would encourage the woman mentioned in the Consumerist story to come forward and report the harassment so that we can take action against those individuals."

Sounds pretty damn fair to me, and it encompasses the two main points I made above: 1) the policy applies to straight people just as much as it does to gay people, and 2) the people who were "gay bashing" are just as subject to being banned, probably even more. As I said, this is not about homophobia. They're not applying different standards between gay and straight people. If you still want to claim that the policy is treating gay people unfairly, then put up or shut up. Show me your proof.

It is simply about a user breaking the Terms of Use, getting suspended for it, and pitching a fit about it. The most important point to me is that it is the gay person asking for special treatment here, and as such, they are harming the very cause—gay and straight being treated equally—that they are supposedly trying to advance. As I've said before, I'm a supporter of gay rights, a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and this expectation of special treatment disgusts me.

"Do you have numbers that indicate the orginal iPhone was actually a "flop" in Europe (the ONLY placed outside the US it was sold)?"

Sure have a look here:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=1433&blogid=4

http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/04/18/europe.low.iphone.sales/

http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/04/19/iphone-european-fire-sales-spreading-to-france/

http://lifestyle.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=11303

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/04/lackluster-iphone-sales-in-europe.ars

http://techwag.com/index.php/2007/11/11/apples-european-iphone-debut-a-royal-flop/

Coulda fooled me. I'm pretty active with the Japanese community on campus where I go to school (including having a Japanese roommate) and a lot of them are going to Softbank as soon as they go back home to take advantage of the free iPhone deal.

According to arstechnica Microsoft has confirmed that she was banned due to violating their policy against including anything of a sexual nature in users profiles, including sexual orientation.

Vista Media Center refuses to record certain TV shows:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9943631-7.html

Loose all your music when you upgrade or reinstall
http://forums.legitreviews.com/about14833.html

Get falsely accused by Microsoft of piracy - "Windows Genuine Advantage falsely accuses millions"
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/01/8690.ars
Now it can lead to "Reduced functionality mode"

"Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server)"
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

Jon

Or the fact that besides that complete bullshit slashdot article that was posted makes everything think there is some massive DRM in Windows 7.

My previous comment sums up that slashdot article quite nicely: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1130241&cid=26882509

or Ars Tech article: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/02/oh-the-humanity-windows-7s-draconian-drm.ars

TL;DR version: Windows 7 has DRM but same DRM from Vista and almost all users will not be bothered by it. You can crack Photoshop and record audio once software gets properly updated (and their cracks).

More important than Google's browser is their web services. Google wants to use new web technologies and wants faster javascript, IE has neither.

For example, "In order to make Google Maps work in IE, Google had to develop ExCanvasâ"a complex library that implements many of the Canvas element's features with VML, Microsoft's proprietary alternative to SVG."(Article)

In fact, most people seem to agree that Chrome is more intended to push adoption of newer technologies than as an actual end product.

Yes, Baen 'embraces' the e-book market; with a subscription model, and with texts that have been in print for a long time, as a promotional tool to drive paperback sales (The Baen Free Library).

This isn't meant as a stab at Baen, by the way; I'm a big fan of them in general. But that's one of the more forward-looking companies, and they're still not genuinely moving into real, honest to god, "We sell you an e-book" sales.

Here's an article I found really interesting by someone who was on the inside of the e-reader market the first time around. Link.

The initial plan: Create a master image on a PC running Windows XP, then upgrade that PC from XP to Vista Service Pack 1 to Windows 7 beta

Headline and most of the article say it's Windows 7, with a lame disclaimer at the very end that it's a beta.

Yet, it boggles the mind that the laptop upgraded fairly easy to Vista Service Pack 1 and then flat-lined with Windows 7. So much for the Microsoft mantra "If it works in Vista, it will work in Windows 7."

MS didn't say Windows 7 Beta, you numbnut. And then this:

A testing of XP to Vista to Windows 7 on a custom-built desktop, with newer components including an AMD (NYSE:AMD) quad-core Athlon and motherboard, went smoothly.

I'm getting tired of this anti-MS drivel on here. And technology sites are noticing. Read the first line of this article http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/02/oh-the-humanity-windows-7s-draconian-drm.ars

The popular technology website Slashdot plumbed new depths on Tuesday with a post about the terrible DRM situation in Windows 7. Proving that some sites will publish just about anything as long as it's anti-Microsoft, the post enumerated the DRM restrictions that Windows 7 apparently inflicts on the honest and upstanding computer user.

Before long, Slashdot will lose whatever reputation it has if drivel like this is posted. There's lots of stuff to bash MS on, please don't post nonsense.

Were you born an idiot or did it come with your ATT subscription plan? iPhone usage is less than 1% of all web users. It does absolutely nothing whatsoever to Flash usage except in your irrelevant little Cupertino-centric universe. iPhone usage is, at most, half the amount of Linux usage. It hardly even registers. Only web sites catering specifically to Apple fans care about that negligible user base. Being one of them, you probably observe empirically what you're saying. But in the real world, the iPhone's lack of Flash support doesn't mean anything.

The Last.fm "Techcrunch are full of shit" blog entry links to a little bit of digging done by Ars Technica showing that the leak originally came from a totally legit online MP3 store that started selling the album early.

So yes, some or many of those could have actually paid money for a legal copy of the album.

It's rather a pity Slashdot's jokes and memes do not come with an expiration date.

It would make for clearer thinking:

Oh, the humanity: Windows 7's draconian DRM?

You know you've reached rock bottom when every Microsoft-bashing story from kdawson is met with gales of laughter across the Internet.

Vista is close to taking 25% of the client OS market: Top Operating System Share Trend

Linux has yet to scratch its way into the single digit.

OEM Vista is the 64 Bit OS that runs on the dual or quad core PC with four to eight gigabytes of RAM that you can buy at any WalMart.

The same WalMart which unloaded its Linux inventory in favor of XP on the netbook.

Ars Technica recently had a great writeup on the state of wireless video, which included a lot of info on UWB.

It's worth a read.

I care about points? I seriously doubt anyone has bothered to read that far down. Dell has the largest PC market share. I'd say it's pretty significant when Dell offer computers with Linux installed. http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/1q08us-1.png As for Walmart, check out the gPC http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=7754614

Um, like this one ?

Simon

The shortcomings of their approach are well described above, and not worth discussing. Meanwhile, a more entertaining error has landed on U2.

If the "netbook" trademark also applies to Psions "netbook pro" device, that was still on sale in late 2005, as this post by one of the Ars Technica editors says: http://arstechnica.com/staff/carthage/2005/09/1389.ars

That pretty much destroys all of the five year arguments regarding the trademark term (there are also reviews online newer than 5 years old, e.g., late 2004, so it isn't just a one-off). Never mind that in the UK it is 10 years, so companies selling netbooks (in the name, documentation, etc) will still be infringing in the UK and other countries where it is longer than 5 years.

I see that the Wikipedia article on netbooks has been altered by the anti-Psion people to argue their side of the story. Apparently the Psion Netbook was discontinued in November 2003 (what a convenient time), the Psion Netbook Pro was released to completely replace the Netbook range which Psion never sold a single device, not even refurb, after that. It appears that the Psion Netbook Pro is not a use of their Netbook trademark in any form or matter, etc.

Because it doesn't actually do sharing at all. As usual, TFS is half crap and Taco didn't RTFA. A better article is here.

All it does is associate your Live ID with your login - that's why they call it Sign-in Assistant instead of iShare. It enables other [potential] apps to e.g. share files, amongst other things, but there's no functionality like that in this MS release.

What you can do is e.g. set up a Win7 Homegroup (read: private network), share drives/folders in the usual way, and allow only specified Live IDs access (as opposed to allowing local or domain accounts access). The only new part here is auto-sign-in to your Live ID to make this all more seamless.

What to you mean?

Microsoft just launched a new music service for cell phones, with DRM that ties the music to that specific phone.

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/01/microsoft-misses-memo-launches-drm-laden-mobile-music-store.ars

With most innovative pricing: ...offers songs for $2.07 (£1.50), ringtones for $4.05 (£3), and videos for $2.77 (£2). These prices include a fairly steep premium over the standard 99 charged for most MP3s, though MSN Mobile Music is compatible with over 130 handsets

I guess there are a lot of handsets out there that ONLY support Microsoft DRM'ed media files and not even MP3 files...

And I love this quote from the head of Microsoft's UK Mobile division:
"We'll be looking to enhance the service if we get some interest from consumers."

and from the service's web site (quoted from the article, as the web site isn't accessible outside the UK):
"When you purchase the music, you get unlimited plays for the content whilst it remains on the device."

So, for the privilege of paying double the going rate for music, you can ONLY listen to it on the phone you purchased it on. Change your phone, buy everything again.

Slashdot confirms it, Windows 7 has draconian DRM.

Would kdawson really lie to me?

Really? All articles about it online disagree with you.

here is the most comprehensive one I can find in 30 seconds on google....

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/05/michigan-man-arrested-for-using-cafes-free-wifi-from-his-car.ars

I can find may more as well as the original TV coverage of it.

Ars Technicia response: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/02/oh-the-humanity-windows-7s-draconian-drm.ars

Gamers need to stop worrying about the sales numbers of the PS3 and arguing over the merits of PlayStation Home. The truth is that the system is flush with excellent, exclusive games, and we're way past the point where you can call yourself a hardcore gamer and not own the hardware.

That is something I would expect to read on a fan-boy site and not a tech blog.

I was just at the AAAS conference in Chicago, and there was an entire session on synthetic biology and programming with DNA and RNA. Quite fascinating. Perhaps most intriguing (and promising) is the ability to add logic to RNA sequences, giving clinicians control over cell therapies. I wrote a summary of the session over at Ars if anyone is interested.

Arstechnica had an article over this same topic just the other day: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/02/scientists-learning-to-program-synthetic-life-with-dna.ars As someone who does research in synthetic biology (I'm a first year PhD student), I take issue with the proclivity of tech people to try to use the computer metaphor when talking about synthetic biology. It really isn't that good of a metaphor, and it tends to be stretched to the point where it no longer makes sense. Just look at the arstechnica article; even I had trouble figuring out what the writer is talking about. Synthetic biology is essentially genetic engineering of microbes to create synthetic systems to achieve a particular goal. The computer metaphor just mucks up the dialog and sounds silly, IMO. I loath seeing the term 'hacking' in reference to biology.

They repealed the luxury tax on telephones a few years ago. It was enacted to pay for the Spanish-American war. So they do repeal them, but sometimes it takes 107 years. http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/06/5056.ars

Yes, but that's only because they've found some new opportunity to tax us in some other area.

They lost the first round, but I believe they're going to appleal.

They repealed the luxury tax on telephones a few years ago. It was enacted to pay for the Spanish-American war. So they do repeal them, but sometimes it takes 107 years. http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/06/5056.ars

The summary is an exact copy of the opening paragraph of Ars Technica's article, without any citation or even link to the original story.

I was mostly referring to desktop or server hardware, but notebook-wise, it's still a huge rip-off. Here are two alternatives:

It's not 1/4th the price, but it is also not $2799; How about the Voodoo Envy? Or the Dell Studio ($799 CAD)?

If by "thin and cool", you mean "trendy fashion statement that runs OS X", then no, these machines are not for you.. I mean, they might run OS X. But if you meant a machine that has a favourable price per performance ratio, forget the MBP. It's just not worth it.
If you don't mind using a 15.4" LCD instead of 17", the Lenovo T61p is a nice machine (Oh, and it includes firewire!)

You are absolutely, unequivocably, incorrect.

Courts have recently held EULAs to be perfectly valid contracts (see Blizzard Entertainment Inc vs MDY Industries, LLC).

The specific quote that applies is:

Blizzard argued, and Judge Campbell agreed, that when users violated the World of Warcraft EULA, they no longer had a license to play the game and were therefore guilty of copyright infringement. As Siy noted in a blog post last year, Blizzard's theory, if taken literally, would mean that violating any of the rules in the EULA and Terms of Service, such as choosing a screen name that didn't meet Blizzard's guidelines, would be an act of copyright infringement