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Lucky Green vs. Palladium
CodeTrap writes "Wired has an interesting story "Can a Hacker Outfox Microsoft" on a fellow named Lucky Green that is attempting to force the issue surrounding MS's Palladium Gambit using a very creative method involving patents. If his patents are granted, MS will be unable to use Palladium to enforce software licensing. If MS challenges his patent, then we all know thier true intentions. Very clever indeed."
Why would Microsoft every want to challenge the patents when they have enough money to buy this guy's soul outright?
If a potential patent challenge does ever get to court, who do you think is going to win? MS's $40bln dollar lawyers who have honed their skills playing delay games vs. the DOJ's anti trust suit or this guy and whatever pro-bono legal defense he can drum up?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Doesn't the fact that the guy's name is Lucky Green sort of tip you off that he's playing Patent Lottery?
Microsoft will make him An Offer He Can't Refuse, and they will buy his patent (if they even need to.)
Hmmm... I didn't realize there was one to be damaged.
Bill G. Hey 'Lucky', can I license your patented process?
Lucky Pound sand Gates, I 0wn j00!
Bill G. Here's 100 million dollars.
Lucky I'm your b1tch.
Trolling is a art,
As seen on The Simpsons , all Bill Gates has to do is "buy him out".
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
If you were logged in, you would get Slashdot karma points.
Since you are not logged in, you get real life universe karma points instead of Slashdot karma points, and these are even more valuable.
So not only are you still a whore, you are a particularly successful/promiscuous/dripping one.
But "lucky green" sounds like a cleaning agent and "palladium" sounds like some moldly crap growing on my sink... so "lucky green" vs "palladium" sounds like some commerical where a frustrated house wife is tired of scrubbing, so she sprays on the cleaner and voila, its brand spanking new...
then again, maybe its just me...
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
I've filed for a patent on using a software monopoly to force hardware vendors to implement a hardware based authenication scheme, in order to prevent free open source software from running on on said hardware without my permission. Thus if M$ tries to use Palladium to screw Linux, i've got them by the balls.
Well, since we all know MS monitors /.:
/. for screwing over this plan.
MS now knows this guy's intent, and probably is already getting the ball rolling on how to thwart it. Most likely, they are already drafting a letter to the patent office on why this is an invalid patent (using whatever legalise they can come up with).
So, thanks
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
That makes me wonder. Why hasn't MS gotten around to buying themselves a small country yet? (Or, possibly, just buying an island and delcaring sovereignity, which might make them one of the first to do that and become actually recognized, as far as I know...) You'd think it'd be easier for them. They could just make up their own laws. (Open Source is illegal! Everyone must upgrade every product they own as soon as the next one comes out! )
Nope. Wouldn't work. Microsoft can demonstrate prior art.
TyZone
LOL! Buy their own island, and force its two inhabitants to upgrade to XP Second Edition because, um, (flips Excuse-Of-The-Day card).. they live on the East side and not the West side - if they had lived on the west side they would have gotten free upgrades for life. :)
Switch?
I used to have a Windows machine. I would try to get the latest nuclear modeling programs to run, but they were like "duh".
Then I got a Macintosh, and the modelling programs I got where just like "yeah!"
I'm only sad I didn't switch earlier. I'm Omar Sadii, and I'm a nuclear weapons specialist.
Of course, if you can't afford to pirate Windows, you sure as hell can't afford to pirate MacOS (or buy the hardware).
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
Well, I guess we could try patenting that, but I'm pretty sure people will stick with using water or foam. And I don't think MS will care either way.
Lucky has a nice idea, but I don't think the timing is really going to work. Here's the problem.
He wants to know if Microsoft is going to use Palladium for copy protection. We'd all like to know that. Well, of course, we're going to find out sooner or later, at least by the time they release Palladium, maybe around 2005. And chances are we'll find out sooner than that, because Microsoft will release specs and APIs to the developer community in order to have applications ready when the technology is released. So maybe we'll find out about 2004.
Lucky wants to speed up this process, so he files a patent hoping that Microsoft will either challenge it, or it will turn out that they have a patent of their own. But it's likely to take a couple of years for his patent to go through. So he's not going to find out until around 2004 anyway.
The timing doesn't really work. Waiting to see if Microsoft contests the patent won't give information for a couple of years. And by that time, chances are Microsoft will have revealed enough information about Palladium that we'll know the answer anyway.
The one thing that isn't going to happen, I guarantee, is that Microsoft will say "Oh no! Our secret plan to use Palladium for copy protection is ruined due to Lucky Green! Curses, foiled again!" If Microsoft does plan to use Palladium like this, they'll have the patent protection in place well in advance.
"it's been proven time and time again that a hacker can outfox Microsoft. Look at all the copies of windows and office and other MS products out there that have product activation. There were hacks and cracks for that technology out before the software's release date."
Heh yeah, script kiddies are executing DoS attacks with patents instead of packets.
"2.13.8.4: As with the levitating car (patent #540911245), the technique exploits a natural phenomenon known as "magic".
Where do we put a statue for this guy? ;-)
We make an ASCII-art image and spam global IRC networks with it, leaving the image in the logfiles of millions of chatters worldwide; such that when all his base are belong to m$ and only his legend remains people will be able to look at their logfiles and remember the great....
Oh, hang on. Their logfiles won't be digitally signed, so in a few years they'll be unreadable.
sorry, forget that...
==
'No publisher will ever pay you enough to successfully sue them' - Dave Sim
The latetest and greatest hacker tool, IP spoofing. Not in the Internet protocols, but Intelectual Property spoofing..
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
But the discovery would be fun!!!
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?