T. John Ward, as well as his son (one of the most sought-after litigators for patent trolls, not coincidentally), are in fact Texans.
The tactic by the patent trolls of adding Texas entities to their complaints is in response to a Writ of Mandamus (an order to comply with the rules) from the Federal Court of Appeals regarding his denial of a motion to move a case to a more appropriate venue in Lear v TS Tech. Shortly before that, in a matter not related to patents but related to venue (In re VW), the 5th District reversed his order that a consumer lawsuit stay in the Eastern District in another mandamus order.
I'm guessing that at this point, courts above Ward's court are no longer snowed by the esoteric nature of patent cases. So the trolls are making sure that their complaints have at least a superficial claim to the venue, to protect their cases from higher (and less friendly) courts.
It's not technically true that a judge is in for life; they can be impeached, and Ward is unlikely to keep on collecting mandamus orders indefinitely.
An impeachment resolution sponsored by a member of the Texas delegation would be taken very seriously in the House. Samuel B. Kent of the Southern District of Texas resigned in the face of an impeachment only a month ago. In fact, Representative Lamar Smith led the effort. He could elect to do the same if Ward keeps up his contempt of superior courts. Of course, Rep Smith will likely choose not to do so (he's a thoroughly corrupt advocate of the wrong side of IP Law, imho: http://www.google.com/search?q=lamar+smith+dmca). If by "local legislators" you mean our federal delegation, then yes, they do have some control.
You were saying that before the "Community Promise". Funny, right?
And yes, the "community promise" doesn't make your statement true. The "Promise" only covers ECMA 334 and 335 (C# language and CLI), as you're well aware.
Astute readers will point out that Mono contains much more than the ECMA standards, and they will be correct.
Indeed. The wikipedia article talks about its NeXT roots.
The article suggests, though, that the move to WebCore in 2003 (and then to a custom WebKit version) was due to its inability to do things like CSS.
I didn't know about OmniWeb previously, but I have a thing for NeXT/Open/GNU step. I bet it was pretty nice.
But the original point stands, I think. The point at which the Omniweb Group decided that the open source solution (LGPL-licensed KHTML + Apple sauce) was superior to the closed one was mid or late 2002. The contemporary IE version was 6, and KHTML had already implemented the W3C DOM in early 2000.
At the time that Microsoft was spending the most on Explorer (ver 5), 1999, KHTML was just getting rolling. By the time of the 1.0 release, in October 2000, it was already superior.
Yes, Microsoft rested between 2001 and 2006, but only after spending hundreds of millions of dollars. It's a bit unfair to the KHTML and Gecko folks to say that their success was due to Microsoft's inaction.
Microsoft is (and has been for a couple of years) trying very hard to make IE better, and they have failed. They're not losing because of lack of trying, they're burning mountains of money on it and it's still inferior. Open source development has in fact far outpaced Microsoft's best effort (and they are still totally paranoid about platform independence, now expressed as webapps).
we must be prepared to take account of the fact that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers
Google is your friend, if those are serious questions for you.
I accept your opinions at face value; but now that you have expressed them, if you are intellectually honest, you will never again attempt to placate someone who is concerned about proprietary (pwned, ha!) software by implying that they have nothing to fear from an "ISO/IEC standard" (or ECMA, etc).
The only reason you guys want Ogg Theora declared the official standard is because it doesn't have a shot in hell of becoming the standard on its own merits.
That's obviously not true. We just want a codec that isn't patent encumbered, and we don't want a licensing scheme that is impossible for open source browsers. We're not so much for Theora as we are against h.264 being the standard. Which, perhaps, is why W3C is saying "none of the above" rather than kicking open source software off of the web (to reiterate: it would mean that Mozilla could never fully implement HTML5).
On the advocacy of Theora as the standard: I didn't have a horse in this race. I will grant that the FOSS community is reading tea leaves on what MPEG LA will do in 2011, but the suspicions are not at all unfounded. MPEG LA on the client end is currently relatively easy with the licensing, but history shows numerous examples of patent ambushes, where companies and consortium waited for ubiquity before choosing to enforce or change the terms of their patents. The terms change in 2011; part 13 will be mandatory.
You ended your comments with what should have been the beginning.
MPEG LA terms are going to be nastier in 2011.
Mozilla can't implement h.264.
If by "intelligent people" you mean corporations.
Software patents are stupid and bad for the web.
Was there anything else? I'm not sure more conversation is going to get us anywhere. You support h.264 for your reasons (software patents are good, and minuscule performance differences are more important than unencumbered software), and I don't for mine (I have FOSS to thank for my career and favorite activity, and I think that software patents are stupid).
Obviously, the phrase "It means nothing" is rhetorical in scope. Yes, it means something; it just means something other than what you imply. As I said in the very next sentence.
What the hell does this have to do with DRM?
Read the MPEG-4 standard. MPEG LA is totally free to stipulate that licensees implement part 13.
You're upset because people are using the word "standards" to describe things that are actually standards?
You contradict yourself. Your original point was "It's not like anybody is suggesting that Windows Media Video should be the baseline standard". You were saying that one was a standard and the other wasn't.
The issue is that h.264 would end Firefox and enrich a patent cabal (besides damaging the web, imho).
And no, "proprietary" has a very specific meaning in this context, infinitely more so than your "standard" (tip: "infinitely more" also rhetorical).
I'm not missing your point. I'm saying you're wrong.
And I think that you evaded every point I raised.
It's possible that you just honestly disagree with the notion of the video tag and a standard video codec for the web; but you must know that this argument (ie "lock-in is lock-in") is used as a red herring by those who would like to see libre software disappear forever, in all areas of software development.
Cut to the chase here... h.264 and Theora are different beast in many respects. The salient point here is not that FOSS wishes to impose its cult on the world; it is that if h.264 were to become the standard, Mozilla could not ever be HTML5 compliant. h.264 means no current open-source browser.
But that's OK, as long as it's an "open" format, right?
Well... Yes. That's the whole point. Prevent licensing of video on the web from becoming a weapon.
Judging by your use of the scare quotes, you believe that MPEG LA licensing and standards bodies make it similarly open. You're totally wrong, even ignoring the changes coming in 2011. Theora is "open"; relevantly, it's open in that it can't be used by a cabal to smash FOSS, control the web, and dictate implementation of part 13 in client software.
MPEG LA and all this RAND crap is killing this conversation by muddying the waters. That something is a standard does not imply that a license is usable by libre software. I suspect that this is not a problem for you, but it is for many of us.
If h.264 were to become the standard for the video tag, it could very well sink Mozilla and an open Webkit (Apple is really pooing where it eats on that one). "Reasonable" is such a subjective term... The cost wouldn't be reasonable to Mozilla, nor would the terms; Mozilla couldn't be expected to keep track of all users of its browsers for the MPEG LA fees, and it couldn't force GPL/MPL-incompatible terms on its users. And, all the misinformation aside, we know that something horrible will happen on 2010/12/31. And all of this is to say nothing about MPEG-4 part 13.
You need to parse Microsoft's statements better. They have not. I'm not feeling like searching the web for you, but I believe the sentence goes "royalty-free or otherwise RAND". And also it only mentions C# and the CLR. And what will these "potential licenses" look like? They've left themselves plenty of room.
Even in the best case scenario where Microsoft is unable to torpedo the big distros, this state of affairs (patent FUD) retards Linux adoption in corporate systems. Do you really think that 348 million dollars exchanged hands for no reason?
Anyway, this argument sucks. Every two weeks, you guys read the same responses from us and then promptly forget them. Every Mono story, we're dragged back to first principles.
I can't take it seriously anymore; you have to be faking it. I know you read a comment in the last Mono story (or in the thousands of comments in mailing lists, forums, blogs, or even my comment further up this very thread!) that described both Miguel's statements at MIX 08 and Novell's official statements about the patent covenant, which makes this semantic exercise utterly pointless.
Either you're true believer or you got a free laptop. In either case, I'm not interested debating small details anymore. Google is your friend.
Btw, I know what it's like to fall in love with a framework. But take a step back from VS and take a look at what's out there. Or just look at the history of development since Smalltalk. I promise it will be rewarding.
Apologies if I wasn't clear or if I'm misunderstanding your comment, but I am definitely on the "Avoid Mono" side of this argument.
It's funny that with RAND Microsoft doesn't even need to sue to hurt FOSS. All they would have to do is charge a penny for it. It would be a GPL crisis, with all the big Linux vendors suddenly being forced to keep track of copies of Mono, or drop it.
This whole thing is so crappy that I'm about to avoid Gnome altogether. I can only hope that Gnome is all we would have to cauterize if the worst was to happen. I'm almost positive that the damage will at least go that deep; Microsoft won't pull the trigger until they have a good shot.
For the particulars on what they're going to do, you would have ask Novell or Miguel. However, it's pretty clear that Microsoft is reserving the option.
There is a patent covenant for anyone that downloads [Moonlight] from Novell [...] as to extending the patents to third parties -- you have to talk to Microsoft.
Miguel de Icaza, MIX '08
Q. What does the patent agreement cover with regard to Mono and OpenOffice? A. Under the patent agreement, customers will receive coverage for Mono, Samba, and OpenOffice.org as well as.NET and Windows Server. All of these technologies will be improved upon during the five years of the agreement and there are some limits on the coverage that would be provided for future technologies added to these offerings. The collaboration framework we have put in place allows us to work on complex subjects such as this where intellectual property and innovation are important parts of the conversation.
Also, a lot of people like GP are going to talk about standards. They don't really know what they're talking about, and are victims of a little semantic game. That something is a "standard" or even an "official" ECMA standard doesn't say anything about how patent-encumbered it is. ECMA standards are allowed to have so-called "reasonable and non-discriminatory" patent licensing. RAND licensing is incompatible with free software.
Hey ClosedSource. You can refer to our previous conversation for links; but for the others, you can get it from the horse's mouth:
There is a patent covenant for anyone that downloads [Moonlight] from Novell [...] as to extending the patents to third parties -- you have to talk to Microsoft.
Miguel de Icaza, MIX '08
He was apparently unhappy about it, and the news made Slashdot. He wasn't, however, unhappy enough to stop playing Microsoft's game.
Keep in mind that this in addition to (and separate from) the licensing deal struck in 2005, which is its own ball of nastiness. Again, we can go straight to the source (I'm not linking to boycottnovell or anything): http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq.html.
A relevant excerpt:
Q. What does the patent agreement cover with regard to Mono and OpenOffice? A. Under the patent agreement, customers will receive coverage for Mono, Samba, and OpenOffice.org as well as.NET and Windows Server. All of these technologies will be improved upon during the five years of the agreement and there are some limits on the coverage that would be provided for future technologies added to these offerings. The collaboration framework we have put in place allows us to work on complex subjects such as this where intellectual property and innovation are important parts of the conversation.
As for your favorite talking point about "Mono predating Novell involvement", Miguel has never understood that RAND != FREE. Again, check out our previous conversation, I'm not going to do the work twice. Readers can find everything they need to know on Miguel's blog.
What you fail to understand or accept is that any Microsoft IP in the FOSS ecosystem is destructive. I recall that this was your last stand in our debate: There is defensible Microsoft IP in mono, but it's "reasonable". If that is the case, then FOSS has good reason to be wary.
I don't want another debate with you, as you were totally willing to ignore the evidence I gave you previously. I am posting this for other readers' sakes.
As far as I have seen, the media cartel pulled a fast one with upscaled DVD. While a good idea in theory, all the DVD players except for the boutique stuff requires using HDMI for HD resolutions (even though the component connection is capable of 720p/1080i), and will not work without an HDCP-compliant display.
There are players out there that will send the upscaled signal down DVI (unHDCP'd) and component, but everything I have seen at big box retailers just forces HDCP on people. Caveat emptor.
Some GRBs are supernova emanations. There are several progenitors of GRBs and GRB-like effects, each with their own unique signature predicted by models. GRB Progenitors
Sounds like you may have been out of the loop for a while. They've come a long way in detecting and observing GRBs in the past couple of years, and GRB signatures (energy, afterglow, and even quantum effects) observed match up with the models very nicely. They can now say what blew up with some certainty.
I think there are two main reasons that OpenDNS got popular.
First, it was an temporary solution for people whose ISPs were late in patching the Kaminsky flaw. Lots of people found that OpenDNS was faster and more reliable than their ISP and never switched back.
Second, after the Conficker algorithm for generating hostnames was figured out, OpenDNS and Kaspersky went proactive and started blocking predicted hostnames. Microsoft, Symantec and Verisign quickly did a "me too" on that as well; it's debatable whether or not they would have done so on their own.
Their web tools aren't so bad, either.
I agree that OpenDNS breaks DNS, but everything is so screwed up right now that I don't think playing by the rules counts for much. I don't know what the solution is; nobody's really trustworthy, for most people it's blind trust in somebody no matter how you slice it.
That's not a serious question. We're a country of laws.
Would you like a simpler tax code or not? It takes teams of researchers to discover what the tax burden of corporations actually is, and even those studies are really fuzzy and widely divergent. Corporations need to come into compliance (good-faith) before there's any possibility of changing tax law. An informed discussion is impossible otherwise (I said as much in my original comment).
The situation right now is that a corporation can take taxable income and turn it into exempt income with a memo. The IRS doesn't even know what they're really making.
If I was any more cynical about large corporations, I'd describe this whole process as a kind of amnesty for serial tax cheats. They should be grateful that the administration extended a hand at all; tax evasion is a crime, not a virtue.
Of course, making damages larger is not the goal of opponents of tort reform.
From an outsider's perspective, it looks like there is also a constitutional issue. It's led to one of the most interesting SCOTUS situations in our generation: BMW v Gore. It was a 5-4 decision, with Scalia and Ginsburg writing dissenting opinions. While the court reduced the damages, they noted that in other cases, higher damages can be awarded to "deter future conduct". The latitude of the courts to award higher damages in such cases must be preserved. Attempting to limit awards by statute is problematic in and of itself, raising even deeper Federalist concerns.
Looks like a rare conflict between the business right and the Strict Constructionists (though I have no doubt that Roberts and Alito will side with business).
Arguing from my position now: I think it is a solution to a non-problem with side-effects that benefit business. I saw the rise of the issue as a high-water mark for the influence of corporations in government. I think the "trial lawyers' bar" is a strawman. Even if it were true, it would not be worth tying the hands of the courts.
Tort "reform", as so far put forward, just makes the "Fight Club calculation" simpler. Corporations will have hard numbers on settlements, instead of relying on average settlements. I see no reason to afford them this luxury.
Slashdot Mirror
T. John Ward, as well as his son (one of the most sought-after litigators for patent trolls, not coincidentally), are in fact Texans.
The tactic by the patent trolls of adding Texas entities to their complaints is in response to a Writ of Mandamus (an order to comply with the rules) from the Federal Court of Appeals regarding his denial of a motion to move a case to a more appropriate venue in Lear v TS Tech. Shortly before that, in a matter not related to patents but related to venue (In re VW), the 5th District reversed his order that a consumer lawsuit stay in the Eastern District in another mandamus order.
I'm guessing that at this point, courts above Ward's court are no longer snowed by the esoteric nature of patent cases. So the trolls are making sure that their complaints have at least a superficial claim to the venue, to protect their cases from higher (and less friendly) courts.
It's not technically true that a judge is in for life; they can be impeached, and Ward is unlikely to keep on collecting mandamus orders indefinitely.
An impeachment resolution sponsored by a member of the Texas delegation would be taken very seriously in the House. Samuel B. Kent of the Southern District of Texas resigned in the face of an impeachment only a month ago. In fact, Representative Lamar Smith led the effort. He could elect to do the same if Ward keeps up his contempt of superior courts. Of course, Rep Smith will likely choose not to do so (he's a thoroughly corrupt advocate of the wrong side of IP Law, imho: http://www.google.com/search?q=lamar+smith+dmca). If by "local legislators" you mean our federal delegation, then yes, they do have some control.
http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com/
5 minute sessions are free, subscriptions and VNC available.
There is no patent mess.
You were saying that before the "Community Promise". Funny, right?
And yes, the "community promise" doesn't make your statement true. The "Promise" only covers ECMA 334 and 335 (C# language and CLI), as you're well aware.
Astute readers will point out that Mono contains much more than the ECMA standards, and they will be correct.
- Miguel
Indeed, Mono is officially being split in half. But you already knew that.
Indeed. The wikipedia article talks about its NeXT roots.
The article suggests, though, that the move to WebCore in 2003 (and then to a custom WebKit version) was due to its inability to do things like CSS.
I didn't know about OmniWeb previously, but I have a thing for NeXT/Open/GNU step. I bet it was pretty nice.
But the original point stands, I think. The point at which the Omniweb Group decided that the open source solution (LGPL-licensed KHTML + Apple sauce) was superior to the closed one was mid or late 2002. The contemporary IE version was 6, and KHTML had already implemented the W3C DOM in early 2000.
At the time that Microsoft was spending the most on Explorer (ver 5), 1999, KHTML was just getting rolling. By the time of the 1.0 release, in October 2000, it was already superior.
Yes, Microsoft rested between 2001 and 2006, but only after spending hundreds of millions of dollars. It's a bit unfair to the KHTML and Gecko folks to say that their success was due to Microsoft's inaction.
Microsoft is (and has been for a couple of years) trying very hard to make IE better, and they have failed. They're not losing because of lack of trying, they're burning mountains of money on it and it's still inferior. Open source development has in fact far outpaced Microsoft's best effort (and they are still totally paranoid about platform independence, now expressed as webapps).
You may already know this, but I think it should be noted that OmniWeb is a WebKit-based browser.
we must be prepared to take account of the fact that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
Google is your friend, if those are serious questions for you.
I accept your opinions at face value; but now that you have expressed them, if you are intellectually honest, you will never again attempt to placate someone who is concerned about proprietary (pwned, ha!) software by implying that they have nothing to fear from an "ISO/IEC standard" (or ECMA, etc).
The only reason you guys want Ogg Theora declared the official standard is because it doesn't have a shot in hell of becoming the standard on its own merits.
That's obviously not true. We just want a codec that isn't patent encumbered, and we don't want a licensing scheme that is impossible for open source browsers. We're not so much for Theora as we are against h.264 being the standard. Which, perhaps, is why W3C is saying "none of the above" rather than kicking open source software off of the web (to reiterate: it would mean that Mozilla could never fully implement HTML5).
On the advocacy of Theora as the standard: I didn't have a horse in this race. I will grant that the FOSS community is reading tea leaves on what MPEG LA will do in 2011, but the suspicions are not at all unfounded. MPEG LA on the client end is currently relatively easy with the licensing, but history shows numerous examples of patent ambushes, where companies and consortium waited for ubiquity before choosing to enforce or change the terms of their patents. The terms change in 2011; part 13 will be mandatory.
You ended your comments with what should have been the beginning.
MPEG LA terms are going to be nastier in 2011.
Mozilla can't implement h.264.
If by "intelligent people" you mean corporations.
Software patents are stupid and bad for the web.
Was there anything else? I'm not sure more conversation is going to get us anywhere. You support h.264 for your reasons (software patents are good, and minuscule performance differences are more important than unencumbered software), and I don't for mine (I have FOSS to thank for my career and favorite activity, and I think that software patents are stupid).
Of course it means something.
Obviously, the phrase "It means nothing" is rhetorical in scope. Yes, it means something; it just means something other than what you imply. As I said in the very next sentence.
What the hell does this have to do with DRM?
Read the MPEG-4 standard. MPEG LA is totally free to stipulate that licensees implement part 13.
You're upset because people are using the word "standards" to describe things that are actually standards?
You contradict yourself. Your original point was "It's not like anybody is suggesting that Windows Media Video should be the baseline standard". You were saying that one was a standard and the other wasn't.
The issue is that h.264 would end Firefox and enrich a patent cabal (besides damaging the web, imho).
And no, "proprietary" has a very specific meaning in this context, infinitely more so than your "standard" (tip: "infinitely more" also rhetorical).
I'm not missing your point. I'm saying you're wrong.
And I think that you evaded every point I raised.
It's possible that you just honestly disagree with the notion of the video tag and a standard video codec for the web; but you must know that this argument (ie "lock-in is lock-in") is used as a red herring by those who would like to see libre software disappear forever, in all areas of software development.
Cut to the chase here... h.264 and Theora are different beast in many respects. The salient point here is not that FOSS wishes to impose its cult on the world; it is that if h.264 were to become the standard, Mozilla could not ever be HTML5 compliant. h.264 means no current open-source browser.
The argument is over Ogg versus H.264, which is an ISO/IEC standard.
That means nothing! That it is a standard does not mean that it won't be used to smash FOSS and force DRM on everyone.
Man... This "standard" thing is killing me. WMV is a "standard", too (SMPTE 421M). This term is being thrown around, cynically, to muddy the waters.
But that's OK, as long as it's an "open" format, right?
Well... Yes. That's the whole point. Prevent licensing of video on the web from becoming a weapon.
Judging by your use of the scare quotes, you believe that MPEG LA licensing and standards bodies make it similarly open. You're totally wrong, even ignoring the changes coming in 2011. Theora is "open"; relevantly, it's open in that it can't be used by a cabal to smash FOSS, control the web, and dictate implementation of part 13 in client software.
"Cheeply licensed" is still a problem.
MPEG LA and all this RAND crap is killing this conversation by muddying the waters. That something is a standard does not imply that a license is usable by libre software. I suspect that this is not a problem for you, but it is for many of us.
If h.264 were to become the standard for the video tag, it could very well sink Mozilla and an open Webkit (Apple is really pooing where it eats on that one). "Reasonable" is such a subjective term... The cost wouldn't be reasonable to Mozilla, nor would the terms; Mozilla couldn't be expected to keep track of all users of its browsers for the MPEG LA fees, and it couldn't force GPL/MPL-incompatible terms on its users. And, all the misinformation aside, we know that something horrible will happen on 2010/12/31. And all of this is to say nothing about MPEG-4 part 13.
You need to parse Microsoft's statements better. They have not. I'm not feeling like searching the web for you, but I believe the sentence goes "royalty-free or otherwise RAND". And also it only mentions C# and the CLR. And what will these "potential licenses" look like? They've left themselves plenty of room.
Even in the best case scenario where Microsoft is unable to torpedo the big distros, this state of affairs (patent FUD) retards Linux adoption in corporate systems. Do you really think that 348 million dollars exchanged hands for no reason?
Anyway, this argument sucks. Every two weeks, you guys read the same responses from us and then promptly forget them. Every Mono story, we're dragged back to first principles.
I can't take it seriously anymore; you have to be faking it. I know you read a comment in the last Mono story (or in the thousands of comments in mailing lists, forums, blogs, or even my comment further up this very thread!) that described both Miguel's statements at MIX 08 and Novell's official statements about the patent covenant, which makes this semantic exercise utterly pointless.
Either you're true believer or you got a free laptop. In either case, I'm not interested debating small details anymore. Google is your friend.
Btw, I know what it's like to fall in love with a framework. But take a step back from VS and take a look at what's out there. Or just look at the history of development since Smalltalk. I promise it will be rewarding.
"royalty-free and otherwise RAND" != Libre
Additionally
(C# + CLI) != Mono
Apologies if I wasn't clear or if I'm misunderstanding your comment, but I am definitely on the "Avoid Mono" side of this argument.
It's funny that with RAND Microsoft doesn't even need to sue to hurt FOSS. All they would have to do is charge a penny for it. It would be a GPL crisis, with all the big Linux vendors suddenly being forced to keep track of copies of Mono, or drop it.
This whole thing is so crappy that I'm about to avoid Gnome altogether. I can only hope that Gnome is all we would have to cauterize if the worst was to happen. I'm almost positive that the damage will at least go that deep; Microsoft won't pull the trigger until they have a good shot.
Link to Novell Microsoft FAQ
For the particulars on what they're going to do, you would have ask Novell or Miguel. However, it's pretty clear that Microsoft is reserving the option.
There is a patent covenant for anyone that downloads [Moonlight] from Novell [...] as to extending the patents to third parties -- you have to talk to Microsoft.
Miguel de Icaza, MIX '08
Q. What does the patent agreement cover with regard to Mono and OpenOffice? A. Under the patent agreement, customers will receive coverage for Mono, Samba, and OpenOffice.org as well as .NET and Windows Server. All of these technologies will be improved upon during the five years of the agreement and there are some limits on the coverage that would be provided for future technologies added to these offerings. The collaboration framework we have put in place allows us to work on complex subjects such as this where intellectual property and innovation are important parts of the conversation.
Also, a lot of people like GP are going to talk about standards. They don't really know what they're talking about, and are victims of a little semantic game. That something is a "standard" or even an "official" ECMA standard doesn't say anything about how patent-encumbered it is. ECMA standards are allowed to have so-called "reasonable and non-discriminatory" patent licensing. RAND licensing is incompatible with free software.
Hey ClosedSource. You can refer to our previous conversation for links; but for the others, you can get it from the horse's mouth:
There is a patent covenant for anyone that downloads [Moonlight] from Novell [...] as to extending the patents to third parties -- you have to talk to Microsoft.
Miguel de Icaza, MIX '08
He was apparently unhappy about it, and the news made Slashdot. He wasn't, however, unhappy enough to stop playing Microsoft's game.
Keep in mind that this in addition to (and separate from) the licensing deal struck in 2005, which is its own ball of nastiness. Again, we can go straight to the source (I'm not linking to boycottnovell or anything): http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/faq.html.
A relevant excerpt:
Q. What does the patent agreement cover with regard to Mono and OpenOffice? A. Under the patent agreement, customers will receive coverage for Mono, Samba, and OpenOffice.org as well as .NET and Windows Server. All of these technologies will be improved upon during the five years of the agreement and there are some limits on the coverage that would be provided for future technologies added to these offerings. The collaboration framework we have put in place allows us to work on complex subjects such as this where intellectual property and innovation are important parts of the conversation.
As for your favorite talking point about "Mono predating Novell involvement", Miguel has never understood that RAND != FREE. Again, check out our previous conversation, I'm not going to do the work twice. Readers can find everything they need to know on Miguel's blog.
What you fail to understand or accept is that any Microsoft IP in the FOSS ecosystem is destructive. I recall that this was your last stand in our debate: There is defensible Microsoft IP in mono, but it's "reasonable". If that is the case, then FOSS has good reason to be wary.
I don't want another debate with you, as you were totally willing to ignore the evidence I gave you previously. I am posting this for other readers' sakes.
A note to people considering this route:
As far as I have seen, the media cartel pulled a fast one with upscaled DVD. While a good idea in theory, all the DVD players except for the boutique stuff requires using HDMI for HD resolutions (even though the component connection is capable of 720p/1080i), and will not work without an HDCP-compliant display.
There are players out there that will send the upscaled signal down DVI (unHDCP'd) and component, but everything I have seen at big box retailers just forces HDCP on people. Caveat emptor.
Some GRBs are supernova emanations. There are several progenitors of GRBs and GRB-like effects, each with their own unique signature predicted by models. GRB Progenitors
Sounds like you may have been out of the loop for a while. They've come a long way in detecting and observing GRBs in the past couple of years, and GRB signatures (energy, afterglow, and even quantum effects) observed match up with the models very nicely. They can now say what blew up with some certainty.
I think there are two main reasons that OpenDNS got popular.
First, it was an temporary solution for people whose ISPs were late in patching the Kaminsky flaw. Lots of people found that OpenDNS was faster and more reliable than their ISP and never switched back.
Second, after the Conficker algorithm for generating hostnames was figured out, OpenDNS and Kaspersky went proactive and started blocking predicted hostnames. Microsoft, Symantec and Verisign quickly did a "me too" on that as well; it's debatable whether or not they would have done so on their own.
Their web tools aren't so bad, either.
I agree that OpenDNS breaks DNS, but everything is so screwed up right now that I don't think playing by the rules counts for much. I don't know what the solution is; nobody's really trustworthy, for most people it's blind trust in somebody no matter how you slice it.
That's not a serious question. We're a country of laws.
Would you like a simpler tax code or not? It takes teams of researchers to discover what the tax burden of corporations actually is, and even those studies are really fuzzy and widely divergent. Corporations need to come into compliance (good-faith) before there's any possibility of changing tax law. An informed discussion is impossible otherwise (I said as much in my original comment).
http://www.google.com/search?q=book-tax+gap
The situation right now is that a corporation can take taxable income and turn it into exempt income with a memo. The IRS doesn't even know what they're really making.
If I was any more cynical about large corporations, I'd describe this whole process as a kind of amnesty for serial tax cheats. They should be grateful that the administration extended a hand at all; tax evasion is a crime, not a virtue.
I agree about ideological purity.
Of course, making damages larger is not the goal of opponents of tort reform.
From an outsider's perspective, it looks like there is also a constitutional issue. It's led to one of the most interesting SCOTUS situations in our generation: BMW v Gore. It was a 5-4 decision, with Scalia and Ginsburg writing dissenting opinions. While the court reduced the damages, they noted that in other cases, higher damages can be awarded to "deter future conduct". The latitude of the courts to award higher damages in such cases must be preserved. Attempting to limit awards by statute is problematic in and of itself, raising even deeper Federalist concerns.
Looks like a rare conflict between the business right and the Strict Constructionists (though I have no doubt that Roberts and Alito will side with business).
Arguing from my position now: I think it is a solution to a non-problem with side-effects that benefit business. I saw the rise of the issue as a high-water mark for the influence of corporations in government. I think the "trial lawyers' bar" is a strawman. Even if it were true, it would not be worth tying the hands of the courts.
Tort "reform", as so far put forward, just makes the "Fight Club calculation" simpler. Corporations will have hard numbers on settlements, instead of relying on average settlements. I see no reason to afford them this luxury.