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Has Microsoft's Patent War Against Linux Begun?
Glyn Moody writes "Microsoft has filed a suit against TomTom, 'alleging that the in-car navigation company's devices violate eight of its patents — including three that relate to TomTom's implementation of the Linux kernel.' What's interesting is that the intellectual property lawyer behind the move, Horacio Gutierrez, has just been promoted to the rank of corporate vice president at Microsoft. Is this his way of announcing that he intends going on the attack against Linux?"
3 patents relate to car navigation systems and I can't really tell who's right...
But patent 5579517 is very simple for all to understand: it's the infamous way of Windows 95 to offer long file names (32 characters) over DOS, which only allowed 8-character names.
So Microsoft patented the way to store a cross-reference between the nice, readable filename, and the ugly, DOS name.
Does Linux do that? Sure, there might be a FAT driver somewhere... But I hope TomTom doesn't use FAT. If so, Microsoft is abusing the patent process.
And am I the only one to see irony in the fact that Microsoft patented a software defect?
People who live in glass houses not an issue here!
.. need to die.
Now what has Linux ever done to you... Tux has fellings too.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
Microsoft has patented a bunch of stuff related to FAT32 and has aggressively licensed FAT32. They would have pursued this regardless of the OS underneath the TomTom software.
is to get companies to start using a different FS on memory cards. In particular, it might be useful to pick one of the OSS FS and see it dominate the industry. All it would take is several large companies to decide to change NOW, and the rest would follow.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Skip the ads and get the PDF of the complaint:
http://media.techflash.com/documents/tomtomComplaint.pdf
A quickie read of it still has me going "WTF!?" a lot. Seriously - they patented such things like:
"Vehicle Computer System with Wireless Connectivity"
"Portable Computing Device-Integrated Appliance"
A quick look at the dates these things were granted, and most gadget geeks' memories should spark something: Most of this crap shouldn't have been patentable in the first place (wish they appended the patents to the complaint, though... it'd make things a lot easier to eyeball and evaluate in one spot).
I'm guessing MSFT is just hoping to force a settlement, so that they can then use it as a cudgel... thing is, Microsoft is using a lot of OSS code nowadays too (IIRC in MSN/Live Messenger, Visual Studio 2008, and etc - linky here).
It actually means he has too many friends, but has been isolated from anywhere where he might continue to do damage.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
they are scared with net books and all these cheap embedded devices.
But its growth can be stunned. The lawsuits are not designed to stop Linux; a defendant with sufficiently deep pocket can fend off the attack, EVENTUALLY. The real intend of these suits are to stun the growth of Linux through FUD.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Netbooks are a serious threat to them, and they know it. To follow the netbooks will be larger machines with limited processing for the avg joes out there.
On a personal note, I find it very delightful that a company that Embraced, Enhanced, Extinguished, might be brought down by a tiny, cheap machine called EEE.
I know that it's always silly to try to predict the future, but here I go none the less. For the most part, all of the core computing applications have already been developed. Unless business processes change significantly, there are only so many systems that a company will ever need to deploy. There will be word processing applications, spreadsheets, databases, webpages, file servers, print servers and a slew of other devices. However the core of the network and the computing environment will remain rather static. Over the last decade, Microsoft developed a lot of core business applications in the form of Windows, Windows Server, Office and Exchange. As the room for innovation in the IT world shrinks, Microsoft will have to fall back to the patent portfolio. If their lawyers were smart, they patented every single technology that they could with the foreknowledge that sooner or later, someone else would want to develop software to do the same thing.
I think we are going to see Microsoft leveraging their patents more and more aggressively as time goes on. They have poured untold billions of dollars in R&D. It seems to me like they need to pursue patent litigation to generate some sort of ROI on all those R&D dollars.
TomTom were found to be a gpl violator in '04, sued Garmin in '07 and Toyota in '08 for infringing TomTom patents, and have a very restrictive EULA.
A sig?!? I don't think so.....
A patent is supposed to protect a commercial product from being copied by the market. This is to promote people to share their ideas and collaborate while protecting the inventor. Patenting software concepts is counter intuitive to this process where no ingenuity of solving a problem is demonstrated. A lot of the patents that make it though now a days are really abusive of the protection and way to generalized to the technology they use.
Microsoft has been totally consistent in their rants on this topic. They are all for "Open Source" so long as they get a per copy patent royalty when it gets deployed in a shipping product. Because nobody can do anything without infringing their all encompassing patent portfolio. And they are probably right. And Linux is infringing patents held by every other tech company. Normally they just cross license between each other and little money actually changes hands, it is just a gate keeping new competitors without patents of their own to cross license at a disadvantage. Which is exactly where Linux is.
The patent system needs to be fixed. But every large company has billions invested in the current broken system AND, as noted above, depends on patents to keep new unexpected competitors from springing up.
Democrat delenda est
As the room for innovation in the IT world shrinks, Microsoft will have to fall back to the patent portfolio
You think the room for innovation in the IT world shrinks. It doesn't shrink. If anything, there's more room for innovation than ever as more people recognize the value of software. It's just that, its a lot harder to understand where to innovate than it was before, but the rewards are there.
Microsoft's problem isn't so much that there's no more room to innovate then, its that, its not as sure as where to go as it was in the past. Linux shows that you can't just rest on the complexity of a product and hope people can't figure out how to make it. Even if every single Microsoft patent holds, that basically means the core of their business expires within a decade, and a lot of it has expired already.
Even though patents exist, even though they exist for what some may say too long, they are only a delay against the inevitable. If Microsoft does not leverage their know-how into new products and new services, successfully, reinventing its own core technologies and assumptions, then it will die.
This is my sig.
This'll probably mean TomTom will (have to) retract from the US market and leave some 300 million people to find their ways using dead tree maps.
I use a TomTom myself and find it a great little Linux device but I'm less than impressed with the way they treat the Linux community, for example you can only update via a Windows application that doesn't even run in wine.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Why is the third link in the summary to a blog about the first link? Ok so the first link is the story itself then the third one which only has three statements of thought:
It's been in the air for ages, and now it's happening:
/*He copies in some summary sentences from the article. */
Presumably those are the three that relate to Linux, in which case this is likely to have broader implications than just the in-car navigation market.
Here's a nice statement of how Microsoft views all this:
/* He then posts a small quote from the first article. */
In other words, Microsoft "respects and appreciates" open source until it actually starts to replace Microsoft's offerings, in which case the charming smile is replaced with the shark's grimace.
It may not be a coincidence that Gutierrez has just been promoted to the rank of corporate vice president: could this legal action be his way of announcing the direction he and Microsoft will now take in the battle against Linux?
Is someone trying to get page hits here? What's the "direct hits to my blog" form of Slashvertisement?
Looking at the pdf, it looks like Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Mapquest, et al. are infringing on Microsoft's patent too.
When does Ford sue GM for making vehicles?
better gird your loins. Anybody know the website number?
The patents that are not car-GPS-specific have to deal with: short filenames, Flash filesystems, and GUI objects.
Short filenames doesn't seem like a "Linux" issue to me since Linux doesn't do this. If Linux does have a driver that does this, then there may be some validity toward their claims. Perhaps that driver should be removed from Linux.
Linux isn't really about Flash file systems, but obviously it contains drivers that do this. Some penguin out there who has passed the bar should chime in on this one.
The final issue is GUI objects. How MS got a patent on this one befuddles me. Obviously, Xerox/Parc beat them to this one. Why doesn't anyone overturn this patent?
> Has Microsoft's Patent War Against Linux Begun?
That's patently not true!
The first two patents are related to fat and long file names. They should expire in a couple of years, so I wouldn't worry too much.
The file system on flash seems obvious to me, but just in case I've got the following ideas.
a file system on any device, memory, or storage media that can store data.
a manager to manage storage on any device, memory, or storage media that can store data
a manager to make any character, bit, multi-bit, multi-character, trinary bit, multi-trinary bit, or other storage device with a minimal storage element smaller than a filesystem block appear as an appropriate sized block device to a file system.
a manager to make a storage device with blocks larger than a file system block appear as a device with appropriate sized blocks to a file system.
a manager to make a storage media with minimal storage bit that is not a factor of the file system block appear as a storage media with appropriate size blocks for the file system.
a character based filesystem in stead of a block based file system.
A single bit based file system.
a small block based filesystem.
Using one or more of the above in concert to put access a storage media with a file system.
I think all of those are obvious, but they should provide prior art at least as of today.
If every OS except Windows is able to
then Windows isn't the right OS for Grandma.
I know Windows still has major market penetration in many segments of society, but Grandmas just aren't where it should be. Get 'er a Mac. Or if you'll install it for her, get her Linux.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Just wait for the truckload of legal papers from IBM, Google, etc tomorrow morning in MS's curb.
how long until
But Microsoft promised they wouldn't use their growing portfolio of patents this way.. They wouldn't lie to me would they?
And if you believed them, or are surprised, you are a fool. ( tho i wasn't expecting them to start for another year or two )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Roll on Haiku finally getting an ISO of their OS ready. Then real work on getting an Ubunutu equivalent of Haiku can start. Haiku has been non-ISO for too long, but recent developments (native GCC/G++ 4.0) mean that may end soon.
Ditto for ReactOS.
Then issues like this can go away (I hope).
For the record: I make my living writing software for MS operating systems. MSDN is awesome and makes OSDN look pathetic. But this type of thing by Microsoft only works against them, so I wish for a solution that sidesteps that mentality, hence Haiku and ReactOS.
Software patents should be abolished - compete on the quality of implementation.
While we may hate them for it, they were legally awarded the patent and they offer licenses to use it.. I don't see that as abuse as that is how the patent process should work.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I find it very delightful that a company that Embraced, Enhanced, Extinguished, might be brought down by a tiny, cheap machine called EEE.
Asus's EEE has been running Windows for a while.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I dislike having to borrow a Windows box every time I want to update my TomTom.
For the most part, all of the core computing applications have already been developed.
Yea, who would ever need more than 640K RAM?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Should've been "SteveSteve GO"
The current situation is like John Wayne saying 'I'm not gunna hit ya ...' with the threat of a confrontation looming over anyone who would dare challenge M$ dominance. For M$ it will signal their long coming slide into irrelevance if they do and their impotence if they don't.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The RIGHT answer to this is to starting working to invalidate Microsoft's patent portfolio. Hit them where it HURTS.
In case you aren't paying attention, the point of this suit is to coerce companies that use Linux to pay Microsoft for their so-called "intellectual property". TomTom is being sued (in part) for using an open source technology that Microsoft claims infringes their patents. Telling other companies to use Open Source is not going to fight this FUD, it's falling into Microsoft's trap.
Microsoft is going to lose more in public opinion than they will ever gain from patent licensing, fat32 or otherwise
because there is no good public opinion to lose.
TomTom's shares are on an historical low. This might be one of M$ ways to kill them off for good and get into the mapping business for real. I presume that they are not so happy with Google being in it. Only a wild guess, but it might be that they are on their normal evil path again. Not against Linux, but against a weak company that might be suitable for a take over.
Here's a Dutch link, but the picture and amounts tell a clear story:
http://www.telegraaf.nl/dft/bedrijven/tomtom/?tabid=bedrijven&tab=7
Just for the sake of discussion, where do you see the evolution going?
Though I wouldn't want any for now, Bionics, Cybernetics or implants.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
From the shorter PDF:
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6175789.html — Vehicle computer system with open platform architecture
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7054745.html — Method and system for generating driving directions
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6704032.html — Methods and arrangements for interacting with controllable objects within a graphical user interface environment using various input mechanisms
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7117286.html — Portable computing device-integrated appliance
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6202008.html — Vehicle computer system with wireless internet connectivity
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5579517.html — Common name space for long and short filenames
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5758352.html — Common name space for long and short filenames
http://www.google.com/patents?id=02YIAAAAEBAJ&dq=6,256,642 — Method and system for file system management using a flash-erasable, programmable, read-only memory.
Some other text seems necessary in order to type stuff and get links in.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
to abuse their monopoly. As convicted monopolists, they should be forced to forfeit the patent. This is a perfect place to apply what I said before in the EU thread.
What?
Microsoft isn't the only company that can play the fear game.
Andt he easiest way to allay that fear is to use software / OS from a vendor that indemnifies its customers. Sun has for a very long time for Solaris (and their Linux-based JDS), and Red Hat also started to a little while ago. QNX does in the RTOS realm as well.
Who's TomTom using?
Just when PJ thought she'd need to find something "interesting" for Groklaw to do.
Yeah, but I'd watch for the Democrat-majority congress and along with the new Democrat administration to Bono-ize patent terms just as was done for copyright terms. If they'll do it for Disney, why not for the US' largest OS vendor Microsoft?
Because many other large corporations will also be adversely affected by extending patent terms. Also it's not just Democrats who extended copyrights, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 was also called the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act after the artist/performer Sonny Bono who was a Republican. Also though a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, signed it the Republicans controlled congress. 55 Senators and 228 members of the House, a majority in both cases, were Republicans.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If this could set precedent that some part of the Linux kernel could infringe upon Microsoft's patents (or make it appear that way if TomTom has to settle), it's still bad news for us.
So we should support them even if we don't like them because the alternative is worse.
learn to read fanbois.
your little states of delusions are showing themselves.
Obvious troll is obvious
As soon as yesterday, TomTom will complain to EC of MS anti-competitive tactics, specially with regard to the so called "interoperationality".
As for the file system, TomTom has nothing to do with it as the cards are pre-formated by the manufactors. If anyone may be infringing, are those manufactors.
The rest of the patents are just very common useless patents of joining two things in an obvious way and claim it to be an "invention". Very thin patents indeed.
Alas...
Do you have any idea how much embedded equipment out there uses FAT? Everything from nuclear power plants to integrated circuit production furnaces.
Buy TomTom's now to help recover from the payout being extracted by the Gates series. Then send them as gifts to your favorite senator or representative with a quick note. You know they are down to $49-$99 in some places now.
I have been wondering what filesystem I should use for a flash card. Especially if I need compatibility. FAT doesn't quite fit the bill, especially if MS starts suing people over it. UDF seems to be the answer. (Wikipedia page)
It already has native drivers in most, if not all operating systems, MS windows (apparently XP doesn't have write support), Macs, Linux and even FreeBSD (as I understand). Frome what I understand, it is intended to reduce the number of writes (intended for rewritable CDs/DVDs), so it should give the longest life to the card. It supports many Posix / Unix filesystem features (hard/sym linking, sparse files, long filenames without ugly hacks, etc...)
However, I have troubles figuring out how to make Linux autodetect UDF, so I am not sure in my experiments I am creating the FS correctly.
What other choices are out there? For linux specific, ext2 seems to be the choice for native stuff, plus cramfs (sp?) for read-only. (I'm thinking of making a bootable flash card for my Asus EEE). I will probably have to use FAT for my digital camera as this is the only format it supports, but it appears to be the old-fashoned DOS shortname (not vfat or 32), so I guess these patents are not a problem?
This is what my research tells me, but it is not much.
And now it's sprung.
Now anybody can read this and then ask themselves, "What's the purpose for Moonlight?" Could the reason Microsoft paid all that money to Novell be to get them to hire some impressionable engineer to import Microsoft IP into Linux? Say it ain't so.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Hmmm... it seems part of my problem was not having the correct tools for UDF ( I think I was trying to use mkisofs with the udf option ). The proper tools for Linux appear to be on Sourceforge.
Thank you Sourceforge, Inc. for both slashdot and your open source site. :-) I should really be thinking about renewing my subscription to slashdot. I'm sure it helps pay for both sites...
Could UMSDOS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umsdos) be seen as prior art for at long file name patent (http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT5579517)?
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
In the imagination of paranoid Linux geeks? Yes. To anybody at Microsoft? No.
Comment of the year
DRIVER DOWNLOAD. How often do the MS ppl install unknown apps, let alone drivers? ALL THE TIME. And you think that adding a driver will cause an issue?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Talk about making all the wrong moves. M$ is struggling to find itself in the post MS Office, post internet, post open source device world. This is just FUD in an attempt to preserve market share by scaring people away from products that pose a future threat to them. M$ wants to be a consumer company like Apple, hence the 'stores', etc. The trouble is, there CEO is a clueless idiot compared to Jobs.
You might say this is an attack on one small company, not on Linux. Here's the thing. Microsoft doesn't have to go after every user of Linux. All they have to do is set a precendent that any embedded device manufacturer could be selectively sued by Microsoft at any time if they base their device on Linux, and Linux will immediately be under an embargo for use in embedded devices (at least, devices for sale in jurisdictions that recognize the validity of the patents which the lawsuit is based on). At that point, those companies will likely stop making or selling any more devices based on Linux, and begin using Windows CE, WindRiver, Symbian, Palm, etc.
Now, I want to add here that, just because some journalist says the alleged patent infringment is because of the use of Linux, doesn't necessarily mean that is the case, but if it is the case, and if those patents are held to be valid, then that single lawsuit against TomTom could destroy the Linux device marketplace.
Meet the refrigerator
Thank you, thank you, I'll be hear all week....
I don't therefore I'm not.
I was thinking about building a trebuchet and launching shit at his house... Underground or not, his freaking Yacht will be messy.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
It's possible, of course, that Microsoft does hold patents that cover portions of NTFS, which haven't yet been identified as doing so. But the NTFS-3g people at least claim that "no NTFS patent is known in any country".
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
i don't mean to be naive but this is so pathetic. I read the patent violation claims and while microsoft is probably operating in the scope of the ridiculous patent system (designed to enrich patent lawyers). the concepts they have patented are so banal and obvious they should never have been admitted in the first place. ive used ms products since win 3.1 and have made a living using them, and now use ms, apple and linux. this litigation makes me WANT to stop using ms as they are just c***s. we cant beat them, so sue them. well if someone comes up with a boycott ms drive count me in to sign up. maybe i will. f*** them.
Where can I get my copy of Microsoft Linux ?
The reign of the dark side is coming.
Theses are the 8 patents that are being disputed.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
you insert your thingy for the fun and then it says pay a million dollars or i wont let your thingy out. Pay or get castrated...
Read this story a couple of times and think about trusting the very same company for your future.
I suspect MS has tried to push WinCE on Tomtom to replace Linux, and threatened them to sue them if they refused. These days, we see windows coming on devices where we would not expect it, and it is possible that there is some back pressure from MS.
You are right, of course. I hadn't realized the tactic at first, but you are dead on the money. I strongly suspect that their real target isn't TomTom; it's Asus, or one of the other Linux-shipping vendors.
It would be a great service to the world's technology companies if a company like IBM or Apple, or a coalition of companies, came together and proposed an open alternative to FAT. I doubt it'd happen, but something does need to be done: it's just as important as doing something like standardizing on a cell phone charger adapter.
In the face of it, this is ridiculous. It is, no pun intended, patently absurd. Every device I can think of that has been made in the past 15, 20 years that can read or write to CF cards or use USB has had FAT support: cameras, laptops, etc. Every OS supports it, and has for at least 15 years.
Isn't there some sort of statute of limitations on how long you can wait to try and enforce a patent? Never mind the fact that this, like most other patents, really shouldn't be valid due to their "no shit" nature.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Microsoft to government: "You made the economy SUCK dude"
Government to MS: "So go make some money, that's like your JOB"
MS back: "OK but the economy SUCKS so bad that we're going to start low-intensity patent wars all over the place so we can start raking in dough and building precedents so we can make MORE money later, so don't sue us, k"
Government: "FINE just stop complaining about us and make your stockholders some MONEY morons. And give us a lot of money while you're at it"
Believe me or not, the cost of defending (TomTom is the defendant) a patent infringement case is at least $1 million to get through trial. That cost doesn't include any settlement or licensing fees should you loose the case. The length of a case, through trial, is anywhere from 2 to 4 years depending on the venue. The cost to the plaintiff is far less and jury's are partial to the US Patent office. "Hey, that guy was issued a patent by the USPTO, it must be valid and truly inventive."
TomTom has been sued with eight patents and thus they are looking at defensive costs in the multiple millions of dollars with a high likelyhood of loosing in a jury trial. This will eventually settle and MS will make big bucks from it. I haven't counted the independent claims in the patents yet, but just take the 8 patents and multiply them by say, 8 independent claims each and you're looking at 64 claims to defend against. If TomTom is found to have infringed on even one of these claims, they're in deep financial trouble.
If this is an attack on Linux I don't see it. It simply seems that MS beginning to explore it's role as a big time patent licensing organization. I figure that 10 to 20% of their revenue will come from licensing deals within 5 years. Since they are not a non-practicing entity, the phrase "patent troll" does not so directly apply.
Intellectual Ventures (IV), on the other hand, is prepping to be the worlds largest and most profitable patent troll. Wait for it.... wait for it.... and IV will own 2 inch strips of the road which you will cross every 10 feet and have to pay a nickle. That's their business model.
Unfortunately for all of us, TomTom's best move is going to be to settle as fast as possible for as little as possible. They could, however, choose to fight but at a cost of many millions of dollars and lost opportunity to focus on producing new products. Patent litigation is hell on earth.
udftools is included in most distros. You don't even need to download from SF directly.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
When you run out of innovation you hire lawyers to enforce your remaining patents. It worked so well for SCO, Microsoft doesn't want to be left out.
3) Hold my entire music collection.
:-O
Where did you find the 120GB version?
my new rating: BBB-; target price: 8 USD (-2)
Big fucking explosions.
It's been a good while since we had any used to set some assholes back on the straight and narrow. I think it's time we started up again and had a good ol' time doing so.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
One thing to add into this debate: Microsoft can have a big imposing patent portfolio and can patent something like the filename table mentioned above, but its patents *can* be bypassed by similar inventions. The original point of the patent system (as I understand it) was both to allow inventors to earn money from their inventions by giving them an exclusive right to them AND to give others an incentive to develop *new* mechanisms to work around patented ideas.
Basically, if your competitor had patented something and was successful, the only way you can make money is if you figure out how to develop around your competitor's patent (thus, supposedly spurring innovation). This is also, I guess, why software patents are significantly more difficult to administer than hardware patents.
It makes many patent cases (and patent portfolios) seem less intimidating when you look at them in this way.
can fuck off. Nuff said. They as well as much/most/all of the patent system for everything else, everywhere in the world, need to be banished like a plague. They only slow the progress of development and science.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
According to Pubpat, the '517 patent was rejected in 2004. IANAL so I have no idea what that means for the lawsuit.
Why has none discussed that ISO9660 without RockRidge extension should just be assembled by TOM TOM and stuck onto the Compact Flash disc? The one thing I dislike more than a filesystem itself is a file system ontop of a true file system (block device). Microsoft's FAT32 is nothing more than an extension subset of natural silicon raw in the making: there isn't even any inherint sorting mechanism in the file access to transparently re-arrange and organize data in the FAT32 protocol itself (they call a proprietary program like ScanDisk or DeFrag to do it). NTFS is an actual database ontop of silicon. FAT32 is atrocious read+write procedure in that regard, perhaps considered the cubic zirconia of jewels that should be utilized as are in read-only like ISO9660.
The problem with filesystems today is they were considered such overhead to actualy implement one artificially as did Microsoft; it's all an impediment when compared to a true database abstract; where true craft artificial complements defacto silicon. Everyone that repeats the trend is the result of failed entrepreneurs squatting on students to stifle research long enough to retire without having to actualy do somthing important other than teach what they failed.
Remember back when GIF was the number one image type on the internet? And then there was a licensing issue?
Almost killed the use of GIF as a filetype. Gave rise to the predominance of JPG and the growth of the PNG format.
I can't remember the last time I saw a gif that wasn't animated (Which seems to the be preferred small moving animatic format. For now.)
And MS make minimal profit from each EEE/XP. They make almost nothing on XP itself, and most people who buy an EEE won't install Office on it (too difficult to do, as EEEs have no CDROM drive).
If the netbook takes over a huge chunk of the computing market, watch Microsoft starve.
Didn't the commercials used to say it's NOT SueSue?
Maybe they were thinking ahead...
Is what you really meant.
hmmmm... meh. I'd post a link but I'm feeling lethargic.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
8 billion dollars a year in R&D Expenses and THIS is the return on that 'investment'? Patent litigation for floppy disk filesystems?
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
And should not have been patented.
gzip...........Targus
Vorbis.........Sony
Theora.........Kodak
PNG............Motorolla
SVG............GIMP
OpenDocument...FOIA
I shed a tear for all those who support any patent system and believe in such a system.
This sort of behavior should really help the world out in these times of recession/depression
Im so pleased i stoped using microsoft products about 8 years ago as microsoft behaves like a child sociopath most to all of the time like a troubled brother you never wanted as he has caused nothing but shame to the family.
Profile of a Sociopath
* Glibness and Superficial Charm
* Manipulative and Conning
* Grandiose Sense of Self Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
* Pathological Lying Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis.
* Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities.
* Shallow Emotions When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive.
* Incapacity for Love
* Need for Stimulation Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.
* Callousness/Lack of Empathy Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others
* Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
* Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency Usually has a history of behavioral and academic difficulties, yet "gets by" by conning others. Problems in making and keeping friends.
* Irresponsibility/Unreliability Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
* Promiscuous Behavior/Infidelity Promiscuity, acting out of all sorts.
* Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle Tends to move around a lot or makes all encompassing promises for the future, poor work ethic but exploits others effectively.
* Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution.
= Profit ?
A vehicle computer system has a housing sized to be mounted in a vehicle dashboard or other appropriate location. A computer is mounted within the housing and executes an open platform, multi-tasking operating system.
The computer runs multiple applications on the operating system, including both vehicle-related applications (e.g., vehicle security application, vehicle diagnostics application, communications application, etc.) and non-vehicle-related applications (e.g., entertainment application, word processing, etc.). The applications may be supplied by the vehicle manufacturer and/or by the vehicle user.
Methods and arrangements for interacting with controllable objects within a graphical user interface environment using various input mechanisms
.. The behavior models consider the notion that the user interface will most likely include various focusing (e.g., function selection) and/or editing (e.g., parameter modifying) capabilities. As such, the methods and arrangements can support several different behavior models, including, for example, a full-focus mode, a focus-free mode, and an edit-free mode'.
'Improved methods and arrangements provide user interface platforms
Buddy over at mickeysoft better watch his fingers. When you play with matches, sometimes they get burned. Thats the nicest way of saying it. Another way is this: If idiot stick tries to pull this crap, hello patent nuclear war. The Free Software community has the upper hand on this one, We have IBM in our camp (and a crapload of others too). Plus a big fat patent portfolio of our own. Windows could be forced to recall every product from dos 3 to windblows 7 and everything in between. They tried to pull this crap before with SCO. They got their fanny slapped. (SCO basically died). Short answer: if they even half try this, they are in for a world of hurt.
There was an interesting point in these posts. Linux's FS ARE under GPL. 4 ways around that.
My own suggestion is that the Linux world should consider LGPLing the ext2 FS (yes, have to get ALL the authors to agree, but that is limited).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Reading of all UDF revisions (1.02 - 2.60) on both block device (e.g., hard drives and USB drives) and most optical media is supported. Writing to block devices, DVD-RW and DVD+RW is supported with the following exceptions: (1) Cannot write Finder Info, Resource Fork, or other extended attributes in UDF volumes of revision 1.02 and 1.50; (2) Cannot write to mirrored metadata partition.
Most platforms that Wikipedia claims have write support have other limitations.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Falcon, you are right. Republicans do support strong IP legislation for the benefit of Hollywood and I've never understood why.
When it comes down to the brass tacks, both political parties basically fight for federal dollars and rights for their constituencies. In the case of Republicans, they really don't have any constituencies in the media business. They have Clint, Arnold and the late Charleton, but all of those guys are more libertarian Republicans than the core conservative Republicans. Charleton supported black civil rights big time in his day, Clint has put out a number of thoughtful movies that celebrate freedom and challenge stereotypes and Arnold's always been about America as an economic proposition. Incidentally, those are the kind of Republicans I like.
But that's really about it. The bulk of today's Hollywood is never going to approve of Orin Hatch, who was at the time the real leader of the Republican IP movement. If you are going to be a conservative in an environment where the media business is out to get you, and you generally demonize media all the time, then why support legislation that you perceive will help it? Democrats have no problem going after Republican bedrocks of oil, mining and agriculture. Why should Republicans stick up for Michael Moore and Barbara Streisand? Did they really think that Babs would suddenly say, "oh, I like Republicans now that I can get Yentil royalties for 70 years after I'm dead?" None of these artists have the right to their works anyway for that long.
If Republicans REALLY wanted to attract Hollywood's support, what they need to do is put legislation on the table that gives the actual Actors, Actresses, Writers and Directors, all a share of the cut of the sales of internet downloads, DVDs, iTunes, and more. They could have supported the strike, for one thing. All the owners getting striked against are all Democrats - like Speilberg, Geffen, Katzenberg and more... taking some money out of their pockets to give to the actual people that make the films would have split Hollywood politically.
But alas, it's not just that the Republicans of the last 15 years have been unable to keep to their own promise of limited government, they haven't even been good politicians! IT's one thing to look at a policy and say a candidate or a party is stupid. But when that party isn't even capable of seeing and then doing what it needs to do to attract support, then, my friend, is really when you have to say that they are all idiots.
I mean, I know you hate Bush, but as a politician, there are so many things he could have done at any given time to improve his own situation. Bush always had it in his head that if he did his policies successfully, then his personal popularity didn't matter. But what he didn't get, is that, in a democracy, you have to be popular to succeed.
This is my sig.
Can you make a case?
If you got money, we can make any case!
What about winning?
The court is not about justice, it's about who's the better liar.
Last I checked that wasn't the requirement--the LGPLv3 requirement was that the downstream user (no such thing as an "end user") had to be as able to replace the implementation as easily as the author/upstream user can. That means things like signing keys, etc.
If it's in ROM and no one can replace it, that's fine (the license doesn't say you can't put binaries on write-once media. Seriously. Start grepping for it.)
You still have to distribute source and follow the rest of the rules.
Perhaps IBM could be persuaded to step into the fray. In a patent pissing match they could probably shut M$ down until M$ agreed to play nice.
The company does NOT have to distribute source as long as they use the reference code. A simple link on their site takes care of that. And if the company makes changes to the code, they would be smart to simply upload it to the site that has the reference code.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Umm, where are all the IP defenders that want to call out piracy as stealing?
Perhaps Tom Tom has violated a patent, don't you guys agree that they should pay up?
Can someone explain to me how Microsoft is supposed to remain profitable without a government backed monopoly?
I strongly support Microsoft's effort in suing everyone in sight on FAT*. I hope that they so poison the environment with lawsuits that all manufacturers start flocking in droves to Open Source alternatives. Then the rest of the planet can sue Microsoft for voilating Open Source licenses......
The patents in question are idiotic.
In two patents, Microsoft basically tries to claim rights to running a general purpose OS on a computer designed for a car and having Internet access on such a machine. This is trying to patent a market niche.
In two other patents, they are trying to claim rights to the awful long/short filenames compatibility hack in FAT file systems. One patent is trying to claim allocating space from flash erasable memory in blocks. And the last patent is related to modes in user interfaces. All of these are trying to patent what any competent software developer would come up with when faced with such a programming task.
I hope Microsoft will be shredded to pieces in court.
Well, it looks like I was sleeping for the last decade... I can't remember PNG displacing GIF.
Rethinking email
Did you really think that Microsoft tying with Novell was a good idea?
This is just the beginning. We've seen what Microsoft is prepared to do... everything and anything to make the most money, ever.
Why trust them? They always say one thing and often do another. You aren't their friend, you are their source of money.
So what? Do you know how many vice presidents Microsoft employs? If it's anything like a bank, the title is rather meaningless.
I don't think this is about FAT at all. MS has been mapping the Earth in great detail for the past how many years now? I think they want to enter the navigation business and a good way to start is to take out their biggest competitor even before they enter the market. But I'm not sure what the status of software patents in Europe is (TomTom is a Dutch company), so maybe the only thing they can achieve is the elimination of TomTom from the American market. Anyway, I am surprised that the free software community hasn't come up with a good alternative for FAT because this whole issue was in the pipeline for years.
-- Cheers!
Aside from the FAT issues, these are even more troubling:
6175789 - Vehicle computer system with open platform architecture
6202008 - Vehicle computer system with wireless internet connectivity
There are a lot of people in the geek community who build Linux-based car computers: http://www.mp3car.com/ . These patents, at first reading, seem to lock up that entire product space. Or at least, that's how Microsoft is going to spin it...
What if they lose?
FUD will be rebranded
Failure,
Unreliability and
Downward Spiral of the Stock Price.
What if the judge's Vista Laptop Blue Screened.
What if a white knight bankrolls a dream team for Tom Tom?
What if Obama by fiat says NO. What if Obama is pro open source?
What if the Judge is pro open source?
Microsoft has been found guilty in the courts of breaking numerous anti-monopoly laws. They simply pay the fines and continue the same bad behavior. We should put teeth into the laws by stripping the right to hold patents from the offending companies. The resulting patents should be made public domain. This would end Microsoft's bad behavior and even better would probably end Microsoft as we know it.
This isn't about Linux, this about MSFT purchase of TellMe and the deal they have going with Ford do to the same functionality that TomTom does. This is about eliminating the competition for in this market space, business as usual.
I'm 50, dude, and I've probably forgotten more about computers than you'll ever know.
And while the idiot that was Bush didn't know a filesystem from a flyswatter, I'd be willing to bet your ballsack that Obama does.
Yes, this should be the way it falls out, but as has been mentioned, law lags WELL behind technology. FAT was allowed to be used with no consequence, a consequence of expecting people to use the platform you provided. MS didn't license the use of fat to every software developer that ever had to write a save function. If it did, the software industry today might be stuck somewhere in the early 90s, and MS would have killed itself by scaring away the good developers from wanting to write anything, and the corps away from overly complex domain intersections of legal and software before the business world was ready to consider such things.
Now that EULAs are a mainstay in business practice (and some trying to write them to override right of first sale), MS can easily pursue this line of legal action because it was 'always' their prerogative to do so. MS doesn't do things because they are right, they do them because the legal landscape permits them to. Now that they have monopolistic leverage and billions stored up in cash and assets, getting rulings against these actions is going to be difficult to say the least.
My suggestion would be to leverage the free software market to leverage the online community to sign or write for action requests and send them all to the appropriate geomapped governor/senator emails AS they roll into the servers. Microsoft wants to play hardball with lobbyists? Why not turn the entire 'net into a giant lobbyist machine with auto-forwards to elected emails? MS's consumer base is easily larger than any lobbyist base it could buy. Why can't we show officials, in this manner or something similar, that the paths MS has been pursuing and the lobbyists it hires are NOT in the democratic interests?
Just wondering ... what if my company manufactures/sells a device that is similar to FAT32, but only uses 31 bits ... let's call this
the FAT31 FS. Can I patent that? If not, why not?
(To answer that, I'm guessing I'd need a lawyer, and/or a lawyer's understanding of patent law).
Gotta go .. I'm filing patents for FAT31, FAT33, FAT34, and so on, and so forth.
I know suspend/resume on Windows isn't the best supported feature, but can it be stopped???!!!
Look at me on a freshly installed Windows 7:
Start->(1500 menu clicks)->shutdown
See, it can be stopped perfectly.
Oh, wait...
WTF?
??
Still here?
[ An exception 0E has occurred at 000E:C29325654 ]
Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart your comput
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
Except to the moderators.