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Oracle "retained" Florian Müller as a consultant ref. Groklaw answering Florian Mueller FUD ref ref.

Oracle "retained" Florian Müller as a consultant ref. Groklaw answering Florian Mueller FUD ref ref.

Things that people with short memories will have forgotten by now since they happened all of three years ago. Detailed summaries of his doing can still be found on Groklaw though.

You see, mr. Mueller is not just *any* publicist. He's a publicist who is, basically, for hire by large companies to provide a congenial account of their doings and their position. In short: he is a lobbyist. His (former) clients seem to include SCO (the company who tried to claim crippling copyrights on Linux and engaged in an intense campaign of legal blackmail aimed at companies using Linux) and one of his current clients seems to be Oracle (the company that reied to shut down Android by claiming copyright on Java library API's).

As summarised by the following posts:

http://www.groklaw.net/article...

http://www.dailytech.com/Top+A...

http://techrights.org/2010/08/...

My only question to him would be: who is on your current client list?

Tomorrow it'll be competitors.

What are you talking about? Microsoft has a long and glorious history of shutting out competitors with shady practices. You're making it sound like this would be a new thing.

Tomorrow it'll be competitors.

What are you talking about? Microsoft has a long and glorious history of shutting out competitors with shady practices. You're making it sound like this would be a new thing.

Well, reason #1 would probably be a massive class action lawsuit that would destroy the coveted relationship that these companies have with their user base.

Class actions won't mean shit when there's enough {bribe} money on the other side. (Sony winning most of them for example. http://www.groklaw.net/article...)

And, based on consumer sales, not much of anythign will do anythign to these companies. All we can do as consumers is keep a ready supply of lube around.

@raydobbs: "Why the fsck should we listen to anything this dishonest vulture says or wants?"

"Because we are adults and therefore able to distinguish what is being said from who is saying it?"

Myhrvold is patently a patent troll and extortionist ref

I've followed trial very closely, and I read every line of the court transcripts of the original trial, although not every exhibit or submittal. They did not make this argument. They also did not make it on appeal, as far as I know. ("The parties have not disputed the district court's analogy: Oracle's collection of API packages is like a library, each package is like a bookshelf in the library, each class is like a book on the shelf, and each method is like a how-to chapter in a book." pg.7) Instead they used poor analogies for what the API is and does, and allowed it to be defined badly.

Having finished reading the ruling... pg 28 is about the doctrine of merger (expression being dictated by idea). That's not what I am talking about. But it does discuss the issue I suggest on pg. 19. I'm talking about 37 C.F.R. Â 202.1(c). The only reference I can find to that statute in this case is in http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/Or..., where the idea of blank forms is only tangentially mentioned. There was some discussion of Baker v. Selden, but mostly in the context of the SSO of the API. Oracle actually concede in that that the individual method specifications are like a blank form, but not explicitly. Google never picked that up.

*plonk*

Regards,
-Jeremy

you cannot volunteer your technology to become part of a standard and then later hold the industry (or competitors in the industry) to ransom by selectively refusing to license that technology on FRAND terms

You're got it backwards. It's Samsung that has "essential" patents and demanding payment but it's Apple that's refusing to pay anything for them. So ironically, thanks to the US's obvious native-company favouritism, a company with essential patents (like Samsung's) can't get money or redress, while a company with trivial, obvious patents (like Apple with rounded corners, hyperlinks, search bars, etc) can sue, and sue, and sue, and sue till the sun dies. Basically, Apple gets to pirate Samsung's essential patents in the US, thanks to govt protectionism.

Apple wants a royalty rate of $24 per unit from Samsung for its alleged use of Apple's design patent, the notorious tablet shape with rounded corners ... when Samsung asked Apple for a much lower amount per unit that everybody else in the market pays for Samsung's standards patents, Apple refused, offered no counter-offer, and sued instead. To date, it's paid nothing at all for those patents or for the other regular patents Samsung is accusing Apple of infringing. In its trial brief, Apple states in one header:
        To The Extent That Samsung Is Entitled To Any Remedy, its FRAND Damages Cannot Exceed $0.0049 Per Unit for Each Infringed Patent
        Less than a penny should be Samsung's lot for patents that are essential to even be in the mobile phone business, but Apple wants Samsung to pay $24 for rounded corners, plus from $2.02 and up to $3.10 per unit for its utility patents.

The Commission also found that Apple had failed to argue other FRAND-based defenses, such as promissory estoppel, laches or fraud. Finally, the Commission determined that even if Apple had offered evidence of the proper interpretation of ETSI’s IPR policy and had shown that the patents at issue were actually necessary to practice the standard, that the FRAND declaration was a legally enforceable obligation, and that Samsung was required to grant irrevocable licenses under FRAND terms to any party, it still would not have found in Apple’s favor, because the parties’ final offers were sufficiently close to each other that Samsung did not violate its obligation to negotiate in good faith.

@jcr: "More like, the first guy in a long line that Bill Gates ripped off."

"Microsoft Litigation"

http://www.businessweek.com/st...
http://www.groklaw.net/article...
http://www.basicallytech.com/b...
http://www.digitalresearch.biz...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
"The PC world might have looked very different today had Kildall's Digital Research prevailed as the operating system of choice for personal computers. DRI offered manufacturers the same low-cost licensing model which Bill Gates is today credited with inventing by sloppy journalists - only with far superior technology. DRI's roadmap showed a smooth migration to reliable multi-tasking, and in GEM, a portable graphical environment which would undoubtedly have brought the GUI to the low-cost PC desktop years before Microsoft's Windows finally emerged as a standard. But then Kildall was motivated by technical excellence, not by the need to dominate his fellow man."

Yet, consider what came from Chuck Moore of pre-Bayh-Dole true academic traditions of MIT & Stanford and then internal support in manufacturing and then supporting government-funded Astronomical research:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
http://www.colorforth.com/HOPL...
"NRAO, 1971 ... NRAO appreciated what I had wrought. They had an arrangement with a consulting firm to identify spin-off technology. The issue of patenting Forth was discussed at length. But since software patents were controversial and might involve the Supreme Court, NRAO declined to pursue the matter. Whereupon, rights reverted to me. I don't think ideas should be patentable. Hindsight agrees that Forth's only chance lay in the public domain. Where it has flourished."

Forth still can be a great BIOS and command line system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

Although IBM deserves credit for popularizing the VM idea with System 360 and then VM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...

Smalltalk by Alan Kay and Dan Ingalls and others was a another great option.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

Kildall, Moore, and Kay/Ingalls all got the idea of virtual machines (with their own ways). Lisp-ers may have got a bit of that too.

We had choices as a society. I saw some of them first hand in the 1970s and 1980s when I started in computing. I bought Forth cartridges for the Commodore VIC and C64. I worked very briefly on a computer with CP/M (although using Forth on it though). The OS choice pushed by the person born with a million dollar trust fund who "dumpster dived" for OS listings won (who did little of the development work himself) -- with an empire built on QDOS which has shaky legal standing as a clone of CP/M which is probably why IBM did not buy it itself. And we were the worse for it as a society IMHO.
http://philip.greenspun.com/bg...
http://www.complex.com/tech/20...

But that problematical path would not have been possible without political and legal decisions to base the development of computing around the idea of "artificial scarcity" via copyright

Umm, she shut up shop because of Snowden.

Blame the messenger much? Her decision to stop working on Groklaw was triggered by an announcement by the owner of Lavabit:

The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too.

There is no way to do Groklaw without email. Therein lies the conundrum.

The reason she stopped was the invasive and Unconstitutional spying by the NSA.

OOXML in not an example of speed as much as it is one of corruption and irregularities. The speed was a byproduct of the corruption. It was covered in detail at Groklaw and the EFFI, among others. Pretty much every single country involved displayed irregularities in their process. These irregularities included but were far from limited to stacking committees, whittling down committees and overriding committee decisions. There was a strong correlation between national corruption and OOXML but as stated problems with the process were everywhere. Even "low" corruption regions like Sweden and Norway. The Norwegian committee was overridden and most quit in protest, not that M$ or ISO cared about protest.

Further, the specification was "fast tracked" within ISO despite not qualifying for such treatment. M$ and ISO kept selectively ignoring rules until they could finally push the specification through the approval process, despite initial disapproval. It was so bad that some considered a possible secondary purpose of the action a discrediting of ISO itself.

There's not enough that can be said on the problems and it was well-documented at the time in disparate news coverage. What's needed now for history is a central summary. It's enough to fill a book.

Actually, the jury foreman stated in a post trial interview that he told the rest of the jury that because the code from one example of prior art couldn't be dropped into the iPhone and run, it wasn't valid as prior art. This was against juror instructions, and the rest of the jury went along because he claimed to know what he was talking about. http://www.bbc.com/news/techno... http://www.groklaw.net/article...

Samsung has nothing to worry about. The judge is Korean.

This judge is North Korean and seems to have a major grudge against the people (Koreans) who mistreated her daddy. She has had it in for Samsung since the very beginning. She Allowed Apple to show that Samsung phones were similar to Apple phones (rectangular with rounded corners) whilst she excluded evidence that Apple phones were also similar to earlier Samsung phones (rectangular with rounded corners) and even more similar to LG phones (look up the "Prada" phone).

The judge gave explicit instructions that the jury were to do calculations based on evidence of actual damages. When it was clear that they had punished Samsung on a completely different basis (they gave damages to Apple for a tablet they found non infringing) and that this was driven by a patent holding jury foreman with a grudge against Samsung instead of declaring a mistrial (as she must) she found a way to fix up the wrongly inflicted damages.

This is the most perfect example that no non-American company can expect justice from a US court.

There's a partial list from:

  http://www.groklaw.net/article...

But we can show damages from unconstitutional spying. Groklaw shut down after realizing that the government would be violating attorney-client-privilege with it's spying. Press intimidation with the erosion of confidentiality and ability to protect sources. People being put on no-fly lists for undisclosed reasons and having to spend years fighting for their freedom to travel.

The legal blogs are a bit different, but they're not without their own unique hazards...

I mean, PJ's little blog (I'm sure the readers have heard of it ) got a metric ton of attention, and likely boosted Pamela's career nicely, but she had to put up with some rather vicious human beings trying to root her out (and force her to testify) during SCO v. IBM, and eventually shut down thanks to the NSA, and continued harassment from various corners.

Agreed on Feynman, though... Me, I think that Albert Einstein would have made a truly badassed blogger, if his surviving witticisms are any measure. :)

Well, if someone fscking picked up the ball, there would be no need for him to speak up again. But just like the hush machine stifled all information about the totally non-working, systematically broken secret quasi-oversight, now the "is he a traitor" distraction is fully working and fscking nobody articulates what the consequences and vision of a life without privacy are. The closest to a serious comment I have seen is what Pamela Jones wrote before shuttering Groklaw.

Short of that: nothing. I can't believe that humanity is so totally broken that Snowden was the only person with a conscience in the NSA (well, there are quite a few documented to have been silenced), and now is basically the only person telling people what privacy is about.

It's time the fscking sheep started doing some thinking for themselves, or he'll be better off trying to convince Russians about the value of freedom, privacy, and democratic control.

U.S. citizens clearly don't understand its value any more and are satisfied sinking further and further into despondency.

Well, if someone fscking picked up the ball, there would be no need for him to speak up again. But just like the hush machine stifled all information about the totally non-working, systematically broken secret quasi-oversight, now the "is he a traitor" distraction is fully working and fscking nobody articulates what the consequences and vision of a life without privacy are. The closest to a serious comment I have seen is what Pamela Jones wrote before shuttering Groklaw.

Short of that: nothing. I can't believe that humanity is so totally broken that Snowden was the only person with a conscience in the NSA (well, there are quite a few documented to have been silenced), and now is basically the only person telling people what privacy is about.

It's time the fscking sheep started doing some thinking for themselves, or he'll be better off trying to convince Russians about the value of freedom, privacy, and democratic control.

U.S. citizens clearly don't understand its value any more and are satisfied sinking further and further into despondency.

Lots of people don't like how Google is handling the integration of all their services, including social media. Certainly I'm not a fan of the whole "real name" thing, having been online for so long I know how that story ends. But what to do? They work in a world where this is how to succeed. For some things like social media real names work. For passionate discourse there are still forums where you can use your "handle" like in days of yore.

At least here is not another example of Microsoft's "stacked panels" from when they got their byzantine document formats accepted as an international standard.

BTW: some AC troll is trying to make me look bad by counter-replying in threads I comment in. That wasn't me, obviously.

I'm one of the people who is still mad about the OtherOS removal. Yes, I'm aware that due to how the PS3 hypervisor limits the system that running Linux on a PS3 is comparable to running it on a Raspberry Pi. Heck, you've got more usable RAM on the current Pi than on the PS3. That's not the point.

The end result of the SCEA v. Hotz fiasco is that once the warranty period is up, Sony can do whatever the hell they want to your console. Any feature is fair game. Sony could legally push an update that turns it into a paperweight if they desired and you would have no recourse. As an addendum, the warranty isn't transferable so this could legally kill the used system market if they so desired.

The warranty time used to be a safe period at the beginning of a piece of consumer electronics usable life where if it broke you would be able to get a replacement. Now, it should be seen as the entirety of the devices usable life.

If you are planning on buying a PS4, make sure that you buy the extended (2yr) warranty. Make sure that you get your $450 worth over then next 3 years. Go into this with eyes wide open.

Yes, this doesn't just apply to Sony but they are the ones specifically have it in their warranty clause, went to court to confirm the legality of it, and are otherwise actively hostile to their customers.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/02/otheros-class-action-lawsuit-geohot-sony-now-share-same-charge/
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110218181557455

That would be quite generous considering that each license is a $699 retail value.

Did they include these files ..

Index of /iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org

Comes v. Microsoft Homepage

Read PJ's final post. She shut down as a direct result of the Lavabit situation.

She relied heavily on email for communication with sources, and because she couldn't guarantee the security of her communications with them, shut down.

Slashdot story: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/08/20/0750237/.

PJ's final Groklaw post: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175.

Yes, it's barely-supported analyst wank, not any sort of proper industry survey. But it's from Forrester, and this sort of thing is their bread and butter.

"Analysts sell out - that's their business model. But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with."

Microsoft used secret APIs to give its programs an advantage over competitors. That had a big effect in the 1990's. It is apparently still going on in some things but we'll have to wait, as usual, a long time before it turns up in court records. And like before, the damage will have been done. The only way to stop it is to stop using M$ products.

You can find more like that if you wade through the material of the Comes V Microsoft case at the now archived Groklaw site. Basically anything bad that has been said about M$ and the people that work there is true.

Samsung didn't put its patents under FRAND because of the goodness of their hearts - it's because they get guaranteed royalties at a Fair and Reasonable rate from every participant with the standard. That's a nice income stream, provided they don't start being jerks about it and demanding unreasonable rates from people they don't like.

Who said they're being jerks, Perhaps its Apple that's being unreasonable. As far as I know the ITC agreed that Samsung's requests were reasonable, but no one knows the exact nature of the negotiations.

If you have a non-standard patent, you can get an injunction against import, because the infringer has the option to design around the patent. If you have a standard patent, you have already agreed that you will not get injunctions as part of promoting the standard, and can only get monetary damages.

Do you have a source for that? Is it in the agreement? Also this quote from groklaw "That told the world that injunctions are available to FRAND patent owners"

The extortionists don't want their new targets to know how much they extorted from prior victims.

This is why they always want the victim to sign a NDA.

Just another attack by the darkside, nothing more.

Barnes & Noble Exposes Microsoft's "Trivial" Patents and Strategy Against Android

Barnes & Noble did not put up with the BS, and neither will Samsung.

Groklaw noted a number of instances where websites were changed as a result of information revealed in court ... or on Groklaw as a result of research prompted by court documents.

If I recall this has been addressed.
There may be some case law but a real legal beagle
should cite it. Not a bystander like me.

Whistle blowers and reporters have had tenuous exceptions
as has legal counsel.

Apparently, You can invoke the 5th and then be compelled to answer the
question in some cases. Any fall out from this testimony is fruit of a poisoned tree
or some such. The reality is that any testimony that demonstrated you had been involved in
a crime makes you an investigative target for other crimes. As anyone sitting
in a criminal proceedings might note the long list of charges presented
can prove astounding and can fence witnesses in as well as the defendant.

News media has an interesting shield but in these cases of national security
things get tangled. The confidentiality of legal counsel is also under attack.
Sure you may be protected from prosecution for crime "A" but protection
from persecution for "B", "C", "D"..... for all time past and future seems to be
under attack.

The massive data collections are virtual time machines. Thus your history
well beyond any statute of limitations is opened up and those childhood
connections make you one degree away from a criminal. All that is needed
is to have a k-12 classmate be convicted of a felony to connect you to a
criminal element.

For many on /. Hans Thomas Reiser may be the necessary direct or one
removed criminal connection to permit digging into your stuff to any degree
some zealot wishes (kernel.org mailing list for example). In too many cases
it is the connection not the nature of the connection that opens the gate.

Some might doubt the legal umbrella -- http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175
but if any or all communication in and out is monitored it gets tangled as heck to
be a legal firm. Umbrellas are near worthless in a high wind -- and here we go
hang on to your hat Mary.

I should add- this is one of the reasons I have never applied to large companies like Google and Yahoo. They just know way way too much about me.

You're going to sit across a desk in an interview with someone who knows absolutely everything about everywhere you've ever surfed at any time in your life, or at least, as deep as that person cares to know.

You've got to be crazy.

You think you're sitting there presenting yourself in your best light, as you do in an interview but trust me, the full force of dehumanization-via-transparency is in effect. It's not that they'll let on, it's that they'll know at all. I don't have anything THAT bad to hide, but just like everyone else online, I have surfed some kinky (some would say! ) porn and flamed out into angry trolling (some would say!) in online arguments . They know all about that or can find out.

The power imbalance is incredible. You're effectively stripped bare with none of the dignity that PRIVACY is supposed to have afforded you. Without privacy, you cannot create a face for the faces you meet. Someone who is watched and recorded loses their humanity and becomes an object to the watcher's subject.

You are no longer a person with any mystery. You lose the ability to define how others see you and in that you lose the incentive to be something more, to realize your potentiality and re-define yourself to yourself and others, perhaps defining yourself as something great, or noble or extraordinary. All that happening, that mechanism, that thing we have always done over the course of human history is totally shot to hell when you're rendered like a piece of meat, categorized, transparent, marked and grade and delimited by others - others whose lives you don't have an equal view into and whose process is invisible to you.

Dignity and humanity is something you can never ever have at a Google interview or a Yahoo interview, no matter how far down how many Googlers mod this post and no matter how much they deny it, rest assured, it's true.

Here's a great quote - an excerpt from an excerpt - that appeared here:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175

One way of beginning to understand privacy is by looking at what happens to people in extreme situations where it is absent. Recalling his time in Auschwitz, Primo Levi observed that "solitude in a Camp is more precious and rare than bread." Solitude is one state of privacy, and even amidst the overwhelming death, starvation, and horror of the camps, Levi knew he missed it.... Levi spent much of his life finding words for his camp experience. How, he wonders aloud in Survival in Auschwitz, do you describe "the demolition of a man," an offense for which "our language lacks words."...

One function of privacy is to provide a safe space away from terror or other assaultive experiences. When you remove a person's ability to sequester herself, or intimate information about herself, you make her extremely vulnerable....

The totalitarian state watches everyone, but keeps its own plans secret. Privacy is seen as dangerous because it enhances resistance. Constantly spying and then confronting people with what are often petty transgressions is a way of maintaining social control and unnerving and disempowering opposition....

And even when one shakes real pursuers, it is often hard to rid oneself of the feeling of being watched -- which is why surveillance is an extremely powerful way to control people. The mind's tendency to still feel observed when alone... can be inhibiting. ... Feeling watched, but not knowing for sure, nor knowing if, when, or how the hostile surveyor may strike, people often become fearful, constricted, and distracted.

I've quoted from that book before, back when the CNET reporters' emails were read by HP. We thought that

Please, if you haven't followed the previous patent stories here, just google florian mueller. That guy has already admitted being on the payroll of both Oracle and Microsoft. He was debunked several times by Groklaw - here is one of them - http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120419070127103 [groklaw.net]. His "articles" have as much value as microsoft PR.

Here's a curious thing. I often heard when someone complains about groklaw that no matter how biased their opinions might be, they are reporting facts. But then when Florian Müller writes something (and I have called him an idiot in an exchange with him on Slashdot when his interpretation of something was totally wrong in my opinion), he is biased and facts that he reports don't count because he is biased.

There was a lot of debunking on groklaw that was only debunking if you believed it. And a lot of analysis that was entirely based on the goals of the analysis.

Please, if you haven't followed the previous patent stories here, just google florian mueller. That guy has already admitted being on the payroll of both Oracle and Microsoft. He was debunked several times by Groklaw - here is one of them - http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120419070127103. His "articles" have as much value as microsoft PR.

Reading (and worst, quoting) his drivel isn't reading "opposing sides", as you state. It is reading and giving support to what is basically paid PR from Microsoft and Oracle.

Actually, the case is not about the amount. The case is about whether companies negotiating a patent licensing deal should have to negotiate, or whether they can get a jury to set a rate (or deny one) for them (after the court wisely decided not to do so).

Microsoft was the company that *proposed* the 2.5% rate, and then had the temerity to call it exorbitant after Google accepted their offer.

Why wouldn't the average person want something like that, and why are there so few alternatives out there that do the job?

The problem is that, when you rely on another person to provide information, then it can disappear. They can do that a moment which is really really inconvenient to you. The "average" person has some problem thinking straight about this and will always tell you "oh I don't do anything important there" just like they say "oh there's nothing important to backup" and then find out that they lost all their grandchildren's photos. Even most of the rest of us that "know better" simply don't have the time.

Look, for example, at the recent betrayal by Groklaw, which gathered a whole load of interesting ideas and now leaves no clear place for it's community to go to.

What is needed is a reimplementation of Usenet with a limited subset of HTML (no external content) and automatic multi-source cryptographic moderation by default (so that anyone can moderate any group; nobody can censor, but you only listen to the people you want to). This could be gatewayed through tor for those that need privacy.

Anything less will always either be unusable for normal people (e.g. Freenet) or will be vulnerable to commercial destruction for example Yahoo; Groklaw; Skype; Google Reader; MSN TV.

Do you know the scam game with three cups and a pea? Where you win money if you guess right under which cup the pea is after some shuffling?

The "Nokia basic essential mobile telecom patents" pea is no longer under the Nokia cup for some time now. It's now under the cup labelled "Vringo or I/P Engine". Watch where that cup moves and when the pea gets exchanged.
Here's an older article on Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20130601134450374

Yeah.. but PJ? She/He/It works for IBM. Some idiots believe the cover story about some paralegal chick that suddenly turned militant-FOSS activist. I mean, have you read her story? Phony baloney. I'm not saying Florian is any better. If you ask me they're both turds floating in the same cesspool.

Microsoft's foray into portable devices has been an abject failure. The smartest thing to do would be to focus on the business licenses that actually bring in the big bucks...

Did you mean just like this?

But even Groklaw has shut down due to the mere fact it is impossible to communicate in private, and Groklaw never did a single illegal thing as far as I can tell.

We think that making multiple copies cached around the world will keep the information public, but that is probably not correct. Look at the "practice run" the authorities are carrying out with Child Porn and a training exercise of how to combat access to any information, even when you don't control where that information is stored.

Having Snowden's windfall on a million drives all decrypted and open for all to see wouldn't help, because anyone accessing it at any time from any computer on the net could and would be instantly tracked, and forced to have a computer bashing party in their own basement.

We are on the tipping point of losing ALL freedoms. Anyone who sees this as anything but the beginning of end of freedom is an utter fool. The frog in the water and the heat is on.

Considering this news...

Amateur politicians doing amateur things is not as dangerous as a global police state.

I'd gladly read a story every day about what a knucklehead Julian Assange is, if I could be certain that an out-of-control surveillance apparatus is not upskirting every conversation everybody has, even those of the most private, personal nature.

Fuck Julian Assange. He's nothing, nobody. He's not 1/100th as significant as the least of the leakers.

Today, we have a story about a long-time blogger - a serious person, doing seriously good work - is closing down a widely-read web site because she can no longer expect privacy in communications, in the United States of America. We had the founders and operators of an encrypted mail system, Lavabit, close their business and not be able to even say why under threat of prosecution.

Who knew that Aaron Schwartz was so far ahead of his time, now that important online businesses are following his lead.

If you can not be private, you cannot, in any sense, be free.

Let's see what Primo Levi has to say on the matter:

One way of beginning to understand privacy is by looking at what happens to people in extreme situations where it is absent. Recalling his time in Auschwitz, Primo Levi observed that "solitude in a Camp is more precious and rare than bread." Solitude is one state of privacy, and even amidst the overwhelming death, starvation, and horror of the camps, Levi knew he missed it.... Levi spent much of his life finding words for his camp experience. How, he wonders aloud in Survival in Auschwitz, do you describe "the demolition of a man," an offense for which "our language lacks words."...

One function of privacy is to provide a safe space away from terror or other assaultive experiences. When you remove a person's ability to sequester herself, or intimate information about herself, you make her extremely vulnerable....

The totalitarian state watches everyone, but keeps its own plans secret. Privacy is seen as dangerous because it enhances resistance. Constantly spying and then confronting people with what are often petty transgressions is a way of maintaining social control and unnerving and disempowering opposition....

And even when one shakes real pursuers, it is often hard to rid oneself of the feeling of being watched -- which is why surveillance is an extremely powerful way to control people. The mind's tendency to still feel observed when alone... can be inhibiting. ... Feeling watched, but not knowing for sure, nor knowing if, when, or how the hostile surveyor may strike, people often become fearful, constricted, and distracted.

[h/t Groklaw]

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175

Nope, but 2+ years ago, she did say she would stop updating Groklaw with articles. Did she stick to that?

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110409161444432

No one is using it as a weapon. Apple decided not to negotiate for licensing at all, nor did it pay the standard licensing fees. It decided to take whatever FRAND tech it wanted and see if the courts did anything about it. Meanwhile they throw their own patents around. Everybody else is either paying for it, or providing cross licensing. Apple is leeching off the industry. R&D costs money, and the only way we avoid proprietary repinned USB on everything is through SEPs being worthwhile. The whole system falls apart if an entity (apple, here) can steal FRAND tech for free. We are just getting out of the everyone-has-a-seperate-charging-scheme device paradigm Do you really want to go back? How about device specific accessories? Finally: Samsung is not the troll here.... http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130728091353477 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130723123630784 etc

No one is using it as a weapon. Apple decided not to negotiate for licensing at all, nor did it pay the standard licensing fees. It decided to take whatever FRAND tech it wanted and see if the courts did anything about it. Meanwhile they throw their own patents around. Everybody else is either paying for it, or providing cross licensing. Apple is leeching off the industry. R&D costs money, and the only way we avoid proprietary repinned USB on everything is through SEPs being worthwhile. The whole system falls apart if an entity (apple, here) can steal FRAND tech for free. We are just getting out of the everyone-has-a-seperate-charging-scheme device paradigm Do you really want to go back? How about device specific accessories? Finally: Samsung is not the troll here.... http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130728091353477 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130723123630784 etc

Pardon me. Apple said they would refuse to accept a court-ordered rate in the Motorola suit.

See http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2012110322254380. PJ uses only court documents as her sources.

Now, given that, what should Samsung assume about Apple's good faith in any negotiations?

Apple doesn't actually donate much to politicians at all...

And yet judges and presidents seem to display a consistent bias. Funny that.

Yes, very funny... especially since the bias is against Apple.

(That's not even including the decisions that led to needing this overruling in the first place).

It's a shame that the two of them cozied up - the stand B&N took when Microsoft tried to extort patent settlements out of them for their use of Android was worthy of respect.

This is directly based on the Constitutional purpose of a Patent - to give inventors an "exclusive right to practice" their invention.

Actually, the text is this:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

There is no "right to practice", and no expectation that the inventor must "practice" his invention. They are guaranteed something but that something can take the form of money.

I don't disagree with your assessment, simply that the form that "exclusivity" must take in the modern world.

Exclusive RIGHTS might mean that royalty payments would satisfy this right. Judges have already found that if you can be made whole by money, then you normally don't get an import ban. (see first para of linked article)

So it seems that monetary transfer is already considered sufficient in the eyes of the court.

Mono is like a parallel world's .NET. It compiles and runs C# but it won't run arbitrary .NET because it lacks what you could call .NET's standard library. It has reverse engineered versions of some of it but not anywhere near capable of running the usual Windows application.

However run C# at your own risk, MS owns everything related to it and it has specifically licensing it to the public and has the capacity to shutdown Mono at any time.

*sigh* unfortunately this comment is going to attract a lot of MS chills repeating ad nauseam phrases like "community promise" and "estoppel".

The gist of it is that rather than an actual license MS published a statement, a (quote) "promise not to sue". This, and the fact that MS has cooperated with Mono before creates "estoppel" which is legalese to mean that MS can't back down from it's promise.

THE PROBLEM
The problem is that the promise specifically states that MS "won't sue for properties they control" related to .NET.
They didn't promise to hold onto the property, and a third party acquiring it is not bound by the promise. So MS can sell 1 or more patents related to .NET, C# and other CLI languages to a third party from which they can then obtain a use license, for a price.

And the stinger is that MS has been caught marketing Linux patents to patent trolls before. Mind you, those were Linux, not .NET patents, but the intention is obvious.

And now get ready for the flurry of comments defending .NET most of which will fall in one of the following 4 categories.

1. Completely ignoring the above and pretend that the promise is exactly the same as a license in every way. In other words, lie.
2. Dramatic displays of indignation at how we dare ask for a license instead of merrily infringing on patents for which we have been promised not to be sued over (by MS).
3. Confident declarations that Mono can code around any possible legal threat that could possibly arise.
4. Vehement assertions that MS will never ever ever ever ever ever exercise this option that they prepared for themselves by not actually issuing a license. ...aaaand combinations of the above along with random insults as usual.