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X10 Pays $4.3 million In Damages For Pop-Unders

Black Perl writes "The Seattle Times is running an article entitled "California brothers win $4.3 million award against X10." Apparently, pop-unders are "proprietary" technology and a "business model" that X10 stole. I have mixed feelings about this. I love to see X10 get its due for the pop-unders, but proprietary technology it is not." Haha. Patents are funny.

9 of 288 comments (clear)

  1. My X10 system made First Post on my behalf... by ErnstKompressor · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    My X10 system made First Post on my behalf...

    --
    We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
  2. Sick page by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
  3. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Once again, a lethal setback has smitten the already suffering *BSD
    community. Forrester has confirmed what we already knew: *BSD market
    share has dropped yet again, recently settling at just over a fraction
    of 1 percent of all corporate installations. This sad news immediately
    follows a recent Netcraft survey which demonstrates unequivocally that
    *BSD has lost more credibility since July - something almost nobody
    thought possible. *BSD has sunk into intractable chaos, as fittingly
    demonstrated by finishing dead last in March's Daemon News networking
    roundup. Some are asking themselves if BSD's archaic development model
    could be partly responsible. As local *BSD user groups hold their final
    meetings in the coming months, the atmosphere is expected to be one of
    wistful nostalgia instead of the aggressive advocacy which once
    characterized the community. Seems that everyone is talking about *BSD's
    failure and imminent demise. The recently disclosed performance
    deficiencies in the 5.0 branch of FreeBSD are a painful topic for *BSD
    zealots, but one that most are beginning to face.

    As we dissect the demise of BSD, we'll expose a story of fatal mistakes,
    poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to
    avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

    Let's give credit where it is due to BSD for its early successes. In the
    1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to
    the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as
    the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD
    product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract. As personal egos took
    attention away from producing a quality product, BSD's codebase became
    steadily more kluged. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD
    distribution make code sharing a dicey proposition. Research conducted
    at MIT found BSD's process management implementation to be "very poorly
    performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind,
    according to this study. The failure of BSD culminated in the
    resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core
    team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier
    vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and
    stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the
    mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies
    to BSD's demise.

    If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers.
    Things are looking very bad for *BSD. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing
    short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. The sudden and
    unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and
    Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. The hand
    writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. For all practical
    purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

    *BSD is dying troll generator version Wed Oct 22 13:50:05 CEST 2003

  4. Doesnt make sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Sell foo and making money is a business model for somebody. I wonder who'll patent that?

  5. I am sure slashdot is next.. by joeldg · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    slashdot gets sued for message-postings on articles.. next on cnet...

  6. Definitely Bad by jetkust · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    All this will do is send a message that worthless patents are both acceptable and profitable.

  7. note to Black Perl: use of "entitled" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    AFAIK, "entitled" means that you are the one doing the naming of something. If it already has a name, as in this case, you would just say it is "titled."

  8. Re:Xs by DJ+Spencer · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Yeah, kinda like OS X. Those people suck too...

  9. Re:Xs by pclminion · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Yeah!

    Down with X Windows, MacOS X, LinuX, and UNIX in general!

    Screw the letter X!