Almost every corporation that I have been employed by had a term in the employment contract that prospectively assigned the employer all rights in any patents granted to me as a result of my work.
Re:There ARE other ways
on
Fair IP Laws?
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· Score: 2
"... Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Ulysees, Shakespear, Van Gogh, Michaelangelo, and other artists too numerous to mention had all the incentive they needed to create the greatest works our civilization has ever known... " </QUOTE>
Their "incentive to create" was, almost without exception, the fact that they were PAID to do so by a wealthy patron. While there may be a FEW pieces being done on commission nowadays, the near-absence of royalty and the "gentlemanly class" in our more egalitarian society has essentially eliminated the system under which these artists worked.
<QUOTE> "We should be discussing alternatives to copyright which can be implimented to insure that artists get compensated for their work, without imposing artifical, government mandated monopolies upon our society, monopolies which are antithetical to free markets, to freedom of speech, and ultimately, to freedom itself." </QUOTE>
I disagree. Freedom depends, first and foremost, upon the concept of private ownership of property. From that one concept arises the principle that there is something of material value that it is wrong to deprive a person of. This, in turn, leads to the ability of one to provide for him/herself without having to present oneself to one's "superiors" as a penitent in order to secure the necessities for survival. Once you are free to live without being coerced into kowtowing, then, and only then, does freedom of speech/thought/association have meaning.
If I create something where nothing ever existed before, it belongs to me, regardless of what it is. It is mine to do with as I will. I am free to keep it to myself, or give it away for free, or any variation between those extremes.
Copyright laws exist to encourage me NOT to keep my creation to myself, thus increasing the utility available to society.
When they are properly drawn, these laws accomplish their purpose by giving me, the creator, a monopoly on the right to reproduce my creation for a finite period of time. The price imposed for the grant of monopoly rights is that when the copyright expires my creation belongs to the public domain rather than to me. The bargain is, like all things in life, a trade-off. If the "price" of a monopoly is too high because the term of a copyright is too short, I just keep my creation to myself and society is deprived of the benefit of my endeavor.
There are serious problems with the current copyright regime. The recent legislation extending and reviving copyrights to the ridiculous terms they now have amount to theft from the public by Congress. The bargain was struck when the work was released. Retroactively extending the terms of copyrights is analogous to receiving a refund of your dinner bill on your way out of the restaurant. The criminalization of technologies under the DMCA and the CBPDTA is nothing more or less than corporate welfare ("We'll enforce your copyrights by imprisoning infringers so you won't have to pay legal fees Mr. Disney").
The situation with patents is somewhat less egregious, but the extension of patent protection to "soft inventions", life forms, and technologies that that will no longer be viable after the patent expires is ridiculous.
I would propose the following changes in the IP laws:
1. Copyrights on software should have a term of no MORE than 5 years from date of release, non-renewable.
2. Copyrights on literary works, motion pictures and music should revert to the 14-year term contained in the original copyright act.
3. Corporations may not OWN copyrights unless the work was created by their employees (NOT work-for-hire contractors).
3. In the case of a work created by an individual, or an identifiably small group of individuals, the copyright must be OWNED by the creators, and may only be LICENSED (not ASSIGNED) to a corporate entity for distribution.
4. Copyright infringement should be decriminalized except for cases where the infringement was committed in the course of a commercial enterprise's business.
5. Patents on lifeforms, or the components thereof (e.g. DNA patents), should disallowed in toto (personally, I find them immoral... the "inventor" did NOT design the gene, he DISCOVERED it).
6. Patents on software, business methods and extensions of existing technologies should be disallowed in toto.
7. "Extension applications" for patents should be disallowed in toto.
8. Patents should only granted for implementations, NOT for "means of... " inventions.
9. With the exception of pharmaceuticals, patents should have a ten-year non-renewable term.
10. Patents on pharmaceuticals should have a twenty year term, but be subject to a requirement of RAND licensing.
(*)(*)(*)
The temporary monopolies created by intellectual property law belong to the public. We offer them to inventors and authors in exchange for their work, but we rightfully demand that the creators surrender ownership of that work at the end of the monopoly period. By continually extending the terms of copyrights, Congress is stealing from the public that elected them for the benefit of the corporations.
The fact that Congress is empowered to enact copyright and patent law in the Constitution implies that there is no "inalienable" right of exclusivity inherent in inventing/creating something.
<QUOTE> The media industry now is essentially rabidly trying to destroy non-commercial media, as a threat to their profits.
The attitudes the RIAA shows towards independent labels and bands are really the opinions the media industry has about all amateurs, if we start amusing ourselves, we won't need them. This is why content creating is in danger from SSCA/CBDTPA. They want us to be locked into them with no other choice. </QUOTE>
After all the ranting I have seen on/., somebody has FINALLY stated that which SHOULD have been obvious. The whole SSSCA/CBDTPA uproar in Washington has LITTLE, if anything, to do about you and me downloading "mp3z" or "|\/|0\/i3z" over the internet. It's all about the fact that the means of content production and distribution have gotten inexpensive enough that the CREATORS of the content are no longer beholden to the publishers of content.
The "pirates" that scare the bejesus out of the MPAA and the RIAA aren't the "CD-rippers". They are the indie artists who can afford to purchase mixers, etc. and record and digitally encode their own music and distribute it LEGITIMATELY over the 'net without Sony, Time-Warner, MCA, Disney and the rest of the "usual gang of suspects" getting THEIR cut.
It's not about copying, it's about CONTROL. It's about the survival of an outmoded business model that has left many of the original artists of rock dependent on charity in their old age. It's all about preserving the KNOWN historical rip-off (of the artists by the labels) by preventing a future speculative one.
It's all about the fact that digital camcorders and digital audio recording is on the verge of making the studios and labels and their 18 layers of middlemen and IP lawyers as obsolete and dead as the dinosaurs.
The clearest wrong is the limitations it places on our 'fair use' rights.
I respectfully disagree. The "clearest wrong" contained in the DMCA is that it makes the creation and distribution of a class of technology into a "strict liability" criminal offense. NB: a "strict liability" offense is one that requires no showing of wrongful intent on the part of the accused. The mere performance of the act renders one guilty of the offense.)
Since copyright infringement is a crime against property (akin to theft), removal of the essential element of wrongful intent from the offense defined effectively makes an entire class of research and development effort and ANY publication of information on the subject into a crime. The chilling effect of this law on innovation must not be underestimated. Likewise, the impact of this law on the ability of the US (and Europe, if they follow our ill-conceived lead) to remain competitive in the worldwide technology market almost cannot be overstated.
Actually, what Rep. Boucher wants to do is restore the requirement of unlawful intent as an essential element of the offense of circumvention.
All such a requirement would do is raise the bar slightly for prosecutions under the DMCA.
Providing a "circumvention device" for the purpose of enabling infringement would still be a criminal offense. Providing one for the purpose of enabling the exercise of fair use privileges would not. USING such a device or program to infringe copyright always has been and will continue to be an offense.
His bill basically enshrines and extends the Betamax case and the AHRA within the body of legislation as being applicable to all media. This "middle road" approach is not an unreasonable solution to the current situation.
The complaint was not about AOL changing the settings.
What AOL 5.0 did that was so terrible was that it installed tha "AOL Dialup Adapter" in the user's "Networking Components" and twiddled the Windows Registry so that it (the ADA) would be used to the EXCLUSION of Microsoft's own Dialup Adapter.
This configuration rendered connection to any other ISP impossible, and, to make matters worse, merely uninstalling AOL did NOT remove the AOL Dialup Adapter.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I took a support call like this:
User: Your system's down, I can't connect to the internet.
Me: Have you installed any software recently?
User: Just one of those AOL Free CDs.
<then follows approximately 20 minutes of walking User through uninstalling AOL 5 and manually removing the ADA>
Me: Now, don't EVER install AOL again because you'll be right back in the same boat.
"Normally I'm not a fighting type of guy," he said, but the broadness of PanIP's claims and the $30,000 they want in licensing fees led him to decide "we're going to rumble, we're going to fight this thing," he said.
I can't help thinking that the slashdot thread on this situation may have influenced Allan Dickson's thinking on this matter.
However...
without people who have the backbone to fight back, we are at the mercy of those who would claim unlimited IP rights.
Innovation belongs to those who created it. I support IP rights, but those who come along later and file "business method" patents claiming that they created something that was already being done is NOT "innovation."
Re:it's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonde
on
The Years of Rice and Salt
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· Score: 3, Informative
They most likely would not have. While it is true that the Middle Eastern world was the primary center of scientific and mathematical study and knowledge from approximately the Fall of Rome to the coming of the Inquisition, Middle Eastern societies, with the possible exception of Turkey seemed to stagnate somewhere around the 11th Century.
How much of this was due to the destruction that occurred during the Crusades is an open matter for speculation. It is possible that, in a world free from European influences, this stagnation wouldn't have occurred. However, it is just as likely that, absent European influences, the continued intellectual development that occurred in Byzantium might have withered on the vine.
I guess this is the stuff that science fiction, alternative history and other speculative literary genres are made from.
Well, I am not a member of the patent bar, but, having read through the claims in those three patents, it appears to me that two of them are subject to attack on the basis of prior art and one does not apply.
Specifically, 5,309,355 (filed in 1993) is a claim of originality that is quashed by evidence that American Airlines SABRE system went online in the early 80's (I forget exactly when it was but it was WELL before 1986), 5,576,951 appears to be a claim against all of computer networking in general (the first computer network communication occurred in 1967).
6,289,319 doesn't appear to relate to Dickson Supply's business because the claims there relate strictly to automatic screening of loan applications. Now if PanIP, LLC wants to take on Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo and ditek.com, that's their business, but I think those companies can raise a war chest exceeding what even Microsoft could raise.
When I first read this article, I didn't think this matter would be appropriate for class action treatment, but having read the patent claims, if PanIP thinks they can construe the claims broadly enough to cover Dickson Supply's business, then every single e-commerce site on the 'net is threatened. That class of Plaintiffs is DEFINITELY large enough to justify certification as a class.
I would STRONGLY recommend that you bring these lawsuits to the attention of some of the larger companies doing business on the web and see if they have an interest in attacking these ridiculous patents. Somebody has to do SOMETHING or the pain will never end!
Your company should pool resources with the other 30 or so victims and sue to invalidate the patents and for damages.
As for ANYone claiming to have invented anything having to do with the use of text, images and forms on the internet for ANY purpose, I think Tim Berners-Lee and the people at CERN might have a little tiny bit to say about *cough* prior art *cough*.
"Several tons" (let's be conservative and say 10) moving at approximately a million mph yields a kinetic evergy of... oh... let's say several megatons.
If strangelets (1) exist, and (2) are common enough that there were to Earth impacts in one year, then why aren't we all dead from "Nuclear Winter" effects??
186000 miles/second (the classical Michaelson-Morley speed of light) * 60 * 60 =
6.96e+08 mph...
if the strangelets are moving at an average velocity of 1,000,000 mph, they are nowhere CLOSE to 0.1c... more like 0.0014934289c. Barely fast enough to be considered relativistic.
I work at a state uni with an obscenely fat pipe (redundant OC-12s + the I2 hookup), and 40% of that pipe is taken up by the kids in the dorms running Kazaa to download the world while they are in class...
A state law here says that a private entity cannot use state property in a profit-making enterprise...
The day ALTNET goes live Kazaa dies on our campus...
By the way, I can think of one reason why somebody would pay for a Windows license for a Mac: if you want to access services on an NT server (such as printers, file shares, or databases), you have to have a CAL (Client Access License), which you either buy separately, or get included with a copy of Windows.
All the more reason to run Linux fileservers and Samba...
Seriously... there is absolutely NO reason (other than Outlook, which I regard as an unnecessary evil) for a budget-constrained operation like a public school to run Windows servers. With the coming of OS X, Macs now support NFS and lpd natively. AND Apple's licensing terms are not QUITE so onerous as Mickeysoft's.
Check it out... IIRC, it's the leading platform foir curriculum content development and delivery.
We just set up a Blackboard server in the computer lab where I am an admin (University of Houston). Neat system... and it runs Red Hat, Apache, PHP, Perl and MySQL... you know... all that communist Open-Source stuff.
Forgive me if my language gets a little stronger than I usually use here, but I get SO damned tired of hearing special interest groups (ESPECIALLY wealthy trade organizations) yammering "There oughta be a law!"
The truth of the matter is that the content industries want to criminalize exercise of fair-use rights by law-abiding citizens so they can palm off the cost of investigating infringement of their (IMHO) unconstitutionally extended copyrights onto the very people whose long-standing rights they have just trampled.
If the RIAA and MPAA want to protect their intellectual property, including that portion of it that they stole back from the grasp of the public domain by the Sonny Bono Ex Post Facto Copyright Extension Act, let them get off their dead asses and defend their property in the civil courts. There are already PLENTY of laws on the books that empower them to do that.
I object strenuously to the use of MY taxes to pay for prosecution of copyright violators because doing so is the purest form of corporate welfare. Make Valenti and Rosen pay for their OWN damned legal bills.
I would LOVE to see a DMCA prosecution for circumvention of "technical measures" applied to prevent copying of a work on which the copyright would have otherwise (absent the SBCEA) expired. Ex post facto criminalization of otherwise lawful conduct is facially unconstitutional, don't ya know? One, or the other, or both, of these "Media Welfare" laws would HAVE to be struck down because acting together they result in a situation that is blatantly unconstitutional.
I wonder how long it will be before the dinosaurs' (RIAA and NAB) abusive grasping for control at all costs will attract the asteroid that wipes it out?
I can only hope that it is soon so that the mice (developers of new media and distribution technologies) can attain their rightful ascendancy.
Internet radio threatens the monopoly of the National Association of Broadcasters because no FCC license is required for IP-casting. After all, there is no "common property" (spectrum) occupied when the broadcaster has to pay for the bandwidth it consumes.
Internet radio also threatens the monopoly position of the RIAA because IP-casters can provide airtime to anyone who can provide them an MP3. Indie music can live large on the 'net and the labels DON'T like that one little bit. This may be the motivation for the extortionate royalties awarded by the CRAP^H^H^HARP.
Despite what the article says, the RIAA knew that they had exactly ZERO chance of getting the.4 cents per song that they "sought". They asked for that much and hoped for half that because they knew that even one-half of what they asked for would crush the upstart industry.
A new entertainment industry segment has been temporarily destroyed by the entrenched powers. I say temporarily because, given the quality of the music being pushed^H^H^H^H^H^Hpromoted by the RIAA, it won't be long before the ranks of the indies include everyone worth listening to.
I'm an admin in a mixed-platform Unix environment at a university (which means I work with machines that a lot of folks would consider 'legacy').
I admin Solaris (both SPARC and x86) Tru64 on the Alpha, Irix and Linux. The SPARC, Alpha, and MIPS boxen just DON'T go down barring a power outage or a hard drive failure, which can and will happen on ANY architecture.
I work on machines that are older than some Slashdot posters as well as some of the latest and greatest. Buying a RISC box is a long-term investment and the vendors treat it as such. At present, Sun is still issuing bugfix and security patches for Solaris 2.5, even though it's almost six years old. I have tied up multiple Sun support Engineers for hours on end trying to solve a hardware compatibility problem involving a SunPCI card. You just don't get that kind of service on the x86/PPC architectures.
Bzzt.. wrong! nVidia provide binary-only drivers. There are stability issues, and there's no way they're going to be resolved, because no-one's got the source to fix it.
Bzzzzt... wrong!
Sources for both the kernel driver and the GLX driver are available from Nvidia's linux download page in both SRPM and tarball format. This is necessary because NVidia cannot possibly provide binaries for all possible combinations of distro/kernel (the nvidia drivers have to be compiled for a specific kernel version) that might exist, especially since there exists such things as LFS, Rock Linux and Sorcerer Linux.
As for fixing the stability problems... well, I guess you are free to do so, but the drivers are NOT "free software". Technically, I guess they are not REALLY Open Source either since you can't re-distribute the modified driver, but I imagine nvidia might look with favor on receiving a contributed patch, provided it didn't break something else.
The problem with UMAX CSCI scanners is the crapware semi-SCSI interface card they provide with them. Replace the card with an Adaptec, or some other supported REAL SCSI host adapter and you will find that the UMAX scanners are very nicely supported by SANE.
It's called filing suit for a declaratory judgment. It allows someone who has been threatened with litigation, or who reasonably believes that they will be sued, to strike first.
If I am interpreting the press release correctly and they win they will be granted a judgment that will prevent the the nine studios from suing them under the DMCA or for "contributory infringement."
The downside is that if they lose the studios will be awarded attorney's fees and probably an injunction against 321 selling their program.
IIRC, in 1983 there were three separate and distinct OSes for just the "IBM-PC" hardware platform, and one hardware vendor. The user was free to choose among them. These three OSes were CP/M-86, the UCSD P-system and PC-DOS. As I seem to recall, there were NO viruses, trojans or other malware that would attack you 'way back then (this was in the days before the Morris worm).
In 1991, I was adminning a mixed-platform network of Macs running OS6.5 and 7, and PCs running DOS 3... the Macs were all eaten up by resource fork viruses and the PCs were relatively immune because the non-UNIX hosts on the 'net were almost all Macs.
In 2002, if you buy a "brand name PC" you have an infinite number of hardware vendors to choose from but you are immediately thrown into an OS monoculture and, if you have an "always-on" connection to the 'net (DSL/cable or other broadband) you will immediately be attacked by CodeRed/Nimda infected servers.
Would someone explain to me just HOW Microsoft's monopoly power has benefited the worldwide personal computing "ecosystem"???
In ecosystem management, a monoculture is something to be avoided at almost ANY cost. If the 'net is, indeed, an ecosystem Microsoft's monopoly MUST be broken.
Slashdot Mirror
Almost every corporation that I have been employed by had a term in the employment contract that prospectively assigned the employer all rights in any patents granted to me as a result of my work.
"
</QUOTE>
Their "incentive to create" was, almost without exception, the fact that they were PAID to do so by a wealthy patron. While there may be a FEW pieces being done on commission nowadays, the near-absence of royalty and the "gentlemanly class" in our more egalitarian society has essentially eliminated the system under which these artists worked.
<QUOTE>
"We should be discussing alternatives to copyright which can be implimented to insure that artists get compensated for their work, without imposing artifical, government mandated monopolies upon our society, monopolies which are antithetical to free markets, to freedom of speech, and ultimately, to freedom itself."
</QUOTE>
I disagree. Freedom depends, first and foremost, upon the concept of private ownership of property. From that one concept arises the principle that there is something of material value that it is wrong to deprive a person of. This, in turn, leads to the ability of one to provide for him/herself without having to present oneself to one's "superiors" as a penitent in order to secure the necessities for survival. Once you are free to live without being coerced into kowtowing, then, and only then, does freedom of speech/thought/association have meaning.
If I create something where nothing ever existed before, it belongs to me, regardless of what it is. It is mine to do with as I will. I am free to keep it to myself, or give it away for free, or any variation between those extremes.
Copyright laws exist to encourage me NOT to keep my creation to myself, thus increasing the utility available to society.
When they are properly drawn, these laws accomplish their purpose by giving me, the creator, a monopoly on the right to reproduce my creation for a finite period of time. The price imposed for the grant of monopoly rights is that when the copyright expires my creation belongs to the public domain rather than to me. The bargain is, like all things in life, a trade-off. If the "price" of a monopoly is too high because the term of a copyright is too short, I just keep my creation to myself and society is deprived of the benefit of my endeavor.
There are serious problems with the current copyright regime. The recent legislation extending and reviving copyrights to the ridiculous terms they now have amount to theft from the public by Congress. The bargain was struck when the work was released. Retroactively extending the terms of copyrights is analogous to receiving a refund of your dinner bill on your way out of the restaurant. The criminalization of technologies under the DMCA and the CBPDTA is nothing more or less than corporate welfare ("We'll enforce your copyrights by imprisoning infringers so you won't have to pay legal fees Mr. Disney").
The situation with patents is somewhat less egregious, but the extension of patent protection to "soft inventions", life forms, and technologies that that will no longer be viable after the patent expires is ridiculous.
I would propose the following changes in the IP laws:
1. Copyrights on software should have a term of no MORE than 5 years from date of release, non-renewable.
2. Copyrights on literary works, motion pictures and music should revert to the 14-year term contained in the original copyright act.
3. Corporations may not OWN copyrights unless the work was created by their employees (NOT work-for-hire contractors).
3. In the case of a work created by an individual, or an identifiably small group of individuals, the copyright must be OWNED by the creators, and may only be LICENSED (not ASSIGNED) to a corporate entity for distribution.
4. Copyright infringement should be decriminalized except for cases where the infringement was committed in the course of a commercial enterprise's business.
5. Patents on lifeforms, or the components thereof (e.g. DNA patents), should disallowed in toto (personally, I find them immoral
6. Patents on software, business methods and extensions of existing technologies should be disallowed in toto.
7. "Extension applications" for patents should be disallowed in toto.
8. Patents should only granted for implementations, NOT for "means of
9. With the exception of pharmaceuticals, patents should have a ten-year non-renewable term.
10. Patents on pharmaceuticals should have a twenty year term, but be subject to a requirement of RAND licensing.
(*)(*)(*)
The temporary monopolies created by intellectual property law belong to the public. We offer them to inventors and authors in exchange for their work, but we rightfully demand that the creators surrender ownership of that work at the end of the monopoly period. By continually extending the terms of copyrights, Congress is stealing from the public that elected them for the benefit of the corporations.
The fact that Congress is empowered to enact copyright and patent law in the Constitution implies that there is no "inalienable" right of exclusivity inherent in inventing/creating something.
Quoth the poster ---
/., somebody has FINALLY stated that which SHOULD have been obvious. The whole SSSCA/CBDTPA uproar in Washington has LITTLE, if anything, to do about you and me downloading "mp3z" or "|\/|0\/i3z" over the internet. It's all about the fact that the means of content production and distribution have gotten inexpensive enough that the CREATORS of the content are no longer beholden to the publishers of content.
<QUOTE>
The media industry now is essentially rabidly trying to destroy non-commercial media, as a threat to their profits.
The attitudes the RIAA shows towards independent labels and bands are really the opinions the media industry has about all amateurs, if we start amusing ourselves, we won't need them. This is why content creating is in danger from SSCA/CBDTPA. They want us to be locked into them with no other choice.
</QUOTE>
After all the ranting I have seen on
The "pirates" that scare the bejesus out of the MPAA and the RIAA aren't the "CD-rippers". They are the indie artists who can afford to purchase mixers, etc. and record and digitally encode their own music and distribute it LEGITIMATELY over the 'net without Sony, Time-Warner, MCA, Disney and the rest of the "usual gang of suspects" getting THEIR cut.
It's not about copying, it's about CONTROL. It's about the survival of an outmoded business model that has left many of the original artists of rock dependent on charity in their old age. It's all about preserving the KNOWN historical rip-off (of the artists by the labels) by preventing a future speculative one.
It's all about the fact that digital camcorders and digital audio recording is on the verge of making the studios and labels and their 18 layers of middlemen and IP lawyers as obsolete and dead as the dinosaurs.
The clearest wrong is the limitations it places on our 'fair use' rights.
I respectfully disagree. The "clearest wrong" contained in the DMCA is that it makes the creation and distribution of a class of technology into a "strict liability" criminal offense. NB: a "strict liability" offense is one that requires no showing of wrongful intent on the part of the accused. The mere performance of the act renders one guilty of the offense.)
Since copyright infringement is a crime against property (akin to theft), removal of the essential element of wrongful intent from the offense defined effectively makes an entire class of research and development effort and ANY publication of information on the subject into a crime. The chilling effect of this law on innovation must not be underestimated. Likewise, the impact of this law on the ability of the US (and Europe, if they follow our ill-conceived lead) to remain competitive in the worldwide technology market almost cannot be overstated.
Actually, what Rep. Boucher wants to do is restore the requirement of unlawful intent as an essential element of the offense of circumvention.
All such a requirement would do is raise the bar slightly for prosecutions under the DMCA.
Providing a "circumvention device" for the purpose of enabling infringement would still be a criminal offense. Providing one for the purpose of enabling the exercise of fair use privileges would not. USING such a device or program to infringe copyright always has been and will continue to be an offense.
His bill basically enshrines and extends the Betamax case and the AHRA within the body of legislation as being applicable to all media. This "middle road" approach is not an unreasonable solution to the current situation.
The complaint was not about AOL changing the settings.
... okay ...
What AOL 5.0 did that was so terrible was that it installed tha "AOL Dialup Adapter" in the user's "Networking Components" and twiddled the Windows Registry so that it (the ADA) would be used to the EXCLUSION of Microsoft's own Dialup Adapter.
This configuration rendered connection to any other ISP impossible, and, to make matters worse, merely uninstalling AOL did NOT remove the AOL Dialup Adapter.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I took a support call like this:
User: Your system's down, I can't connect to the internet.
Me: Have you installed any software recently?
User: Just one of those AOL Free CDs.
<then follows approximately 20 minutes of walking User through uninstalling AOL 5 and manually removing the ADA>
Me: Now, don't EVER install AOL again because you'll be right back in the same boat.
User: Uh
<Wash, rinse, repeat>
"Normally I'm not a fighting type of guy," he said, but the broadness of PanIP's claims and the $30,000 they want in licensing fees led him to decide "we're going to rumble, we're going to fight this thing," he said.
...
I can't help thinking that the slashdot thread on this situation may have influenced Allan Dickson's thinking on this matter.
However
without people who have the backbone to fight back, we are at the mercy of those who would claim unlimited IP rights.
Innovation belongs to those who created it. I support IP rights, but those who come along later and file "business method" patents claiming that they created something that was already being done is NOT "innovation."
They most likely would not have. While it is true that the Middle Eastern world was the primary center of scientific and mathematical study and knowledge from approximately the Fall of Rome to the coming of the Inquisition, Middle Eastern societies, with the possible exception of Turkey seemed to stagnate somewhere around the 11th Century.
How much of this was due to the destruction that occurred during the Crusades is an open matter for speculation. It is possible that, in a world free from European influences, this stagnation wouldn't have occurred. However, it is just as likely that, absent European influences, the continued intellectual development that occurred in Byzantium might have withered on the vine.
I guess this is the stuff that science fiction, alternative history and other speculative literary genres are made from.
WTF, it's only karma
Well, I am not a member of the patent bar, but, having read through the claims in those three patents, it appears to me that two of them are subject to attack on the basis of prior art and one does not apply.
Specifically, 5,309,355 (filed in 1993) is a claim of originality that is quashed by evidence that American Airlines SABRE system went online in the early 80's (I forget exactly when it was but it was WELL before 1986), 5,576,951 appears to be a claim against all of computer networking in general (the first computer network communication occurred in 1967).
6,289,319 doesn't appear to relate to Dickson Supply's business because the claims there relate strictly to automatic screening of loan applications. Now if PanIP, LLC wants to take on Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo and ditek.com, that's their business, but I think those companies can raise a war chest exceeding what even Microsoft could raise.
When I first read this article, I didn't think this matter would be appropriate for class action treatment, but having read the patent claims, if PanIP thinks they can construe the claims broadly enough to cover Dickson Supply's business, then every single e-commerce site on the 'net is threatened. That class of Plaintiffs is DEFINITELY large enough to justify certification as a class.
I would STRONGLY recommend that you bring these lawsuits to the attention of some of the larger companies doing business on the web and see if they have an interest in attacking these ridiculous patents. Somebody has to do SOMETHING or the pain will never end!
Your company should pool resources with the other 30 or so victims and sue to invalidate the patents and for damages.
As for ANYone claiming to have invented anything having to do with the use of text, images and forms on the internet for ANY purpose, I think Tim Berners-Lee and the people at CERN might have a little tiny bit to say about *cough* prior art *cough*.
"Several tons" (let's be conservative and say 10) moving at approximately a million mph yields a kinetic evergy of ... oh ... let's say several megatons.
...
If strangelets (1) exist, and (2) are common enough that there were to Earth impacts in one year, then why aren't we all dead from "Nuclear Winter" effects??
Enquiring minds want to know
errmmmmmm ....
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... more like 0.0014934289c. Barely fast enough to be considered relativistic.
186000 miles/second (the classical Michaelson-Morley speed of light) * 60 * 60 =
6.96e+08 mph
if the strangelets are moving at an average velocity of 1,000,000 mph, they are nowhere CLOSE to 0.1c
Hear, hear ...
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I work at a state uni with an obscenely fat pipe (redundant OC-12s + the I2 hookup), and 40% of that pipe is taken up by the kids in the dorms running Kazaa to download the world while they are in class
A state law here says that a private entity cannot use state property in a profit-making enterprise
The day ALTNET goes live Kazaa dies on our campus
$ who | grep god
$ ping god
ping: unknown host god
$ nslookup god
Server: NS1.my.domain
Address: XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
*** NS1.my.domain can't find god: Non-existent host/domain
$ traceroute god
traceroute: unknown host god
This person with "God access" doesn't bother me. OTOH, this guy "#" scares me to death.
Although I haven't tried it out, LiteStep looks pretty impressive.
If you like WindowMaker, give it a try.
By the way, I can think of one reason why somebody would pay for a Windows license for a Mac: if you want to access services on an NT server (such as printers, file shares, or databases), you have to have a CAL (Client Access License), which you either buy separately, or get included with a copy of Windows.
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... there is absolutely NO reason (other than Outlook, which I regard as an unnecessary evil) for a budget-constrained operation like a public school to run Windows servers. With the coming of OS X, Macs now support NFS and lpd natively. AND Apple's licensing terms are not QUITE so onerous as Mickeysoft's.
All the more reason to run Linux fileservers and Samba
Seriously
Windows servers? Who needs them?
Check it out ... IIRC, it's the leading platform foir curriculum content development and delivery.
... and it runs Red Hat, Apache, PHP, Perl and MySQL ... you know ... all that communist Open-Source stuff.
.sig
We just set up a Blackboard server in the computer lab where I am an admin (University of Houston). Neat system
I think it's time to change my
Forgive me if my language gets a little stronger than I usually use here, but I get SO damned tired of hearing special interest groups (ESPECIALLY wealthy trade organizations) yammering "There oughta be a law!"
The truth of the matter is that the content industries want to criminalize exercise of fair-use rights by law-abiding citizens so they can palm off the cost of investigating infringement of their (IMHO) unconstitutionally extended copyrights onto the very people whose long-standing rights they have just trampled.
If the RIAA and MPAA want to protect their intellectual property, including that portion of it that they stole back from the grasp of the public domain by the Sonny Bono Ex Post Facto Copyright Extension Act, let them get off their dead asses and defend their property in the civil courts. There are already PLENTY of laws on the books that empower them to do that.
I object strenuously to the use of MY taxes to pay for prosecution of copyright violators because doing so is the purest form of corporate welfare. Make Valenti and Rosen pay for their OWN damned legal bills.
I would LOVE to see a DMCA prosecution for circumvention of "technical measures" applied to prevent copying of a work on which the copyright would have otherwise (absent the SBCEA) expired. Ex post facto criminalization of otherwise lawful conduct is facially unconstitutional, don't ya know? One, or the other, or both, of these "Media Welfare" laws would HAVE to be struck down because acting together they result in a situation that is blatantly unconstitutional.
I wonder how long it will be before the dinosaurs' (RIAA and NAB) abusive grasping for control at all costs will attract the asteroid that wipes it out?
.4 cents per song that they "sought". They asked for that much and hoped for half that because they knew that even one-half of what they asked for would crush the upstart industry.
I can only hope that it is soon so that the mice (developers of new media and distribution technologies) can attain their rightful ascendancy.
Internet radio threatens the monopoly of the National Association of Broadcasters because no FCC license is required for IP-casting. After all, there is no "common property" (spectrum) occupied when the broadcaster has to pay for the bandwidth it consumes.
Internet radio also threatens the monopoly position of the RIAA because IP-casters can provide airtime to anyone who can provide them an MP3. Indie music can live large on the 'net and the labels DON'T like that one little bit. This may be the motivation for the extortionate royalties awarded by the CRAP^H^H^HARP.
Despite what the article says, the RIAA knew that they had exactly ZERO chance of getting the
A new entertainment industry segment has been temporarily destroyed by the entrenched powers. I say temporarily because, given the quality of the music being pushed^H^H^H^H^H^Hpromoted by the RIAA, it won't be long before the ranks of the indies include everyone worth listening to.
Starve the dinosaurs, support IP-casting!
Two words ... reliability and support.
I'm an admin in a mixed-platform Unix environment at a university (which means I work with machines that a lot of folks would consider 'legacy').
I admin Solaris (both SPARC and x86) Tru64 on the Alpha, Irix and Linux. The SPARC, Alpha, and MIPS boxen just DON'T go down barring a power outage or a hard drive failure, which can and will happen on ANY architecture.
I work on machines that are older than some Slashdot posters as well as some of the latest and greatest. Buying a RISC box is a long-term investment and the vendors treat it as such. At present, Sun is still issuing bugfix and security patches for Solaris 2.5, even though it's almost six years old. I have tied up multiple Sun support Engineers for hours on end trying to solve a hardware compatibility problem involving a SunPCI card. You just don't get that kind of service on the x86/PPC architectures.
nvidia
... wrong!
... well, I guess you are free to do so, but the drivers are NOT "free software". Technically, I guess they are not REALLY Open Source either since you can't re-distribute the modified driver, but I imagine nvidia might look with favor on receiving a contributed patch, provided it didn't break something else.
Bzzt.. wrong! nVidia provide binary-only drivers. There are stability issues, and there's no way they're going to be resolved, because no-one's got the source to fix it.
Bzzzzt
Sources for both the kernel driver and the GLX driver are available from Nvidia's linux download page in both SRPM and tarball format. This is necessary because NVidia cannot possibly provide binaries for all possible combinations of distro/kernel (the nvidia drivers have to be compiled for a specific kernel version) that might exist, especially since there exists such things as LFS, Rock Linux and Sorcerer Linux.
As for fixing the stability problems
The problem with UMAX CSCI scanners is the crapware semi-SCSI interface card they provide with them. Replace the card with an Adaptec, or some other supported REAL SCSI host adapter and you will find that the UMAX scanners are very nicely supported by SANE.
It's called filing suit for a declaratory judgment. It allows someone who has been threatened with litigation, or who reasonably believes that they will be sued, to strike first.
If I am interpreting the press release correctly and they win they will be granted a judgment that will prevent the the nine studios from suing them under the DMCA or for "contributory infringement."
The downside is that if they lose the studios will be awarded attorney's fees and probably an injunction against 321 selling their program.
IIRC, in 1983 there were three separate and distinct OSes for just the "IBM-PC" hardware platform, and one hardware vendor. The user was free to choose among them. These three OSes were CP/M-86, the UCSD P-system and PC-DOS. As I seem to recall, there were NO viruses, trojans or other malware that would attack you 'way back then (this was in the days before the Morris worm).
... the Macs were all eaten up by resource fork viruses and the PCs were relatively immune because the non-UNIX hosts on the 'net were almost all Macs.
In 1991, I was adminning a mixed-platform network of Macs running OS6.5 and 7, and PCs running DOS 3
In 2002, if you buy a "brand name PC" you have an infinite number of hardware vendors to choose from but you are immediately thrown into an OS monoculture and, if you have an "always-on" connection to the 'net (DSL/cable or other broadband) you will immediately be attacked by CodeRed/Nimda infected servers.
Would someone explain to me just HOW Microsoft's monopoly power has benefited the worldwide personal computing "ecosystem"???
In ecosystem management, a monoculture is something to be avoided at almost ANY cost. If the 'net is, indeed, an ecosystem Microsoft's monopoly MUST be broken.