The only real reason Microsoft kept some of its' API a secret was that it allowed them to make applications that get more out of the os than any other application.
If you split it into apps and os as far as the company goes, keeping the api secret doesn't make any sense since Microsoft will want to draw as many developers as possible.
Thats actually the point of the article, in the opposite direction. He was basically jailed and had him computer taken from him for what he did. The article however mentions that he put these pages up in response to a Gossip Column in the school paper that said cruel things about a friend of his. If he is to be charged for criminal libel, maybe the writers of the column should be too. If it weren't for the fact that he included the faculty in his own "gossip" column, there's little doubt that he would have been left alone. What he did was wrong, but what was done about it was far from reasonable.
Apple really doesn't have a case here, even if they do decide to go with it, looking at the system, it does have a translucent monitor case, but the style is not "iMacish". This is also not an "all in one" pc, there's the pc, monitor and other peripherals. My opinion is that having a colored translucent case isn't enough of an original idea to justify going on a rampage every time someone else uses it, it's not a new idea either, (anyone ever see those tacky transparent phones?) Apple is spending so much money on defending the "look and feel" of their products that one wonders of the quality of performance suffers because of it, even when the "look and feel" isn't all that similar. Like I said, apart from the translucent case on the monitor, the similarity of appearance ends quite distinctly there, the style and implementation of the system is too markedly different to be worth suing over.
Just remember, defamation and libel are no more legal in the US than it is in the UK, the first amendment does not cover that. The problem in the UK is that the law seems to allow individuals to define the meaning of libel, even if it isn't defamitory. The point of the article is that he contacted the isp's first, and most said they would react unequivocally for the the complainer, With british law, such an allegation could mean certain doom for an isp, being a business, it would stand to lose a lot in financial resources, not to mention the loss of reputation. The problem is not with libel, but the change in dealing with it. If a statement is defamitory, the first person to deal with should alway be the poster, not the host. It's akin to suing a library because is has within it a book that is offensive. Doing such a thing would be absurd, but thats exactly what an isp is, with regard to web space, it's a storage place for information, just like a library.
As a regular player of EQ, this is something that affects me. The patch message actually states that they did a survey of people and got a pretty positive response, but decided to back down because they thought it was a rash decision, and too much of an invasion into a persons privacy. I plan on in the future of proxying my EQ connection throught a linux server, (the os that showEQ runs on) I have no intention of cheating, ever. However their tough stance against cheating is in my opinion a good thing. It's no fun when everybody cheats, the games no fun. UO's policy of stoicly(sp?) tolerating cheating led to some major problems. Banning a cheater on the first offense is fine in my book though, if they can't play fair, the shouldn't play at all.
> If I own a piece of unused land in the middle of > an area that some big corporation wants to build > on, do they have a right to take that away from > me?
Actually, yes they do, even if you are using it, if the government feels it is in the best interests of the people to let the corporation have it, they can take it, provided they compensate you for it. Of course that is the US, not switzerland, I don't know what the Swiss law is, would someone who does care to elaborate?
Althought the gist of the article is that open source isn't secure, (which is completely bunk, since most crackers find bugs in other ways) It does go on to say that most of the security is up to the administrator. I could do a default install of linux on a system and it would be terrible insecure, a little tweaking, disabling some services and enabling others and it's secure. And constant vigilance to keep it secure. They of course don't mention that open source is not only open to crackers but everyone else, so the source is a pretty poor weapon when everybody has it.
Of course, thats not the problem, the problem is that MCSE used to be a permenant certification, where you got certified and that was it. Now they require recertification every year. (people who were already permenantly certified were grandfathered in.) This means, that institutions running NT 4.0 if they had someone certified within the last year, have to keep him certified. This actually isn't that much of a problem, as keeping your personel updated on changes and such is a good thing. The problem is that microsoft is dropping NT 4.0 certification completely, so those who certified within the last year or just getting certified now will find out quickly, that the money and time they spent on NT 4.0 certification will have to be spend with windows 2000 certification. Spend $2000 on a certification, and then spend another $2000 another one and you'll find you get a little upset that the first $2000 doesn't mean anything to anyone except you. If microsoft offered NT 4.0 training for a few more years, this wouldn't be such a big deal. Theres not a huge rush to upgrade to 2000 and there are plenty of NT 4.0 machines that need to be maintained.
Patent 5,993,366 is not for "Playing tennis with a kneepad", it appears to be for a method, or substance to improve the quality of copiers and/or laser printers, made by a rubber company. Sorry to be so specific, but it's the wrong patent number.
Wrong, the KX133 violates NONE of Intels intellectual property, however the Apollo Pro might so you could buy the KX but not the AP. (That is my understanding, I could be wrong) Besides, there are other ways to aquire matierials banned by the ftc.
What business would possibly purchase software that legally allowed the creator of the software to shut it down remotely at a whim. That kind of clause would make go elsewhere if the developer put something so laughably ridiculous in thier license agreement. Open Source would certainly get a boost, as well as software companies that basically look at this an idiotic attempt by the larger companies to gain control. (damn, i'm in paranoid mode, sorry) After all, if you advertise "We won't shut your system down like *THEY* could", also putting an nda into the license agreement is pure lunacy. How does technical support help the client if by virtue of license agreement aren't allowed to talk about it. Or especially if someone else decided to help a friend navigate a specific program. Doing so under such an agreement would be tantamount to corporate espiage (sp?). Sure an nda makes perfect sense in beta software, in a controlled release environment. But releasing such an agreement to the general public would be like giving everybody a Ferarri and saying you cant drive it because someone might see it. I may be ignorant here, I might be makeing a mountain out of a mole hill here, is that what I *think* is going on here?
I'm surprised that I didn't see something more significant. There are at least two inventions that helped make our civilization what it is today, they are,
a. The steam engine b. The printing press
The steam engine allowed countries to distribute goods and transport people longer and faster than had been before. It also made the world seem so much smaller than it was before, making a trip to faraway place easier and safer than it was to go by sea.
The printing press made it possible to mass produce information. It put more books into the hands of people who would normally not know how to read a word, now had a reason to learn to read.
Arguably, the time, place and people who invented these are contested, they contributed greatly to our civilization, which would be very different without either.
Quite true...for senators and represenatives, for the president, it is not true, for one reason. No matter what the country votes, it's the electoral college that decides who will be the next president, and have decided contrary to the people they are representing more than once. It's perhaps an old argument, but I think the world would be a better place without the electoral college. Otherwise whats the point of voting, other than to raise a number that does not factor into the presidential election.
I'm sorry if I sound näive, but if it's such a problem, why not rewrite the source for the server and the client in order to eliminate the possibility of this problem occuring, then posting the binary for both win32 and linux clients, and eliminate the possibility of older clients from connecting. If it's open source it can be changed and fixed.
If the president pushes the little red button and starts a nuclear war, do we place the blame on the button, or the one who pushed it?
Honestly, if the person racks up $25,000 in gambling debt, he's got larger problems. He's basically suing the credit card company for his own idiocy. I'd like to see this guy lose and have to pay up the $25,000 smackers. I have no love for credit card companies, but it's everyone else who loses because of increased interest rates the companies (supposedly) use to cover their legal costs.
Actually, that's not restricted to canada, most states where it snows have something like that, Here in sioux city IA you are responsible for shovelling your own sidewalk, neglecting to do so after a snowstorm (withing a reasonable amount of time) is a $100 fine if they have to do it. It's not dumb at all, it's quite reasonable since the snow has a tendancy to turn into ice.
I believe that what is meant by patenting, they probably mean their own version of the data. Like someone mentioned in a previous slashdot article (I forget the name) like a surveyors maps, if you put a copy of that map in your report, you should at least acknowledge the source, and even inform them that you're using the maps. Information from the HGC, would be free, that information could not be copywrited or patented by someone else because HGC got the information themselves.
This seems to be an interesting way to address this problem. Of course, certain issues still remain. For instance, how will these people from the industry be paid? (i.e. what incentive does the industry have to send its employees to teach) Two words, Future Workforce (not sure if workforce is one word or two:) ) The computer industry is having a major shortage of qualified programmers, the problem, getting a company to invest in something that you won't see returns in for a few years is hardest part.
The K6-III will ID and an AMD K6-3D+ (K6-2 is just K6-3D), it still has a stepping value of 5 because it still uses socket 7. Windows 95, may just id it as an amd K6 since neither the K6-2 or K6-III existed when it came out. If the bios is identifying it as a K6-III, It more than likely is, since that is pulled from cpuid, which, even by the most crafty of frauds is impossible to do without changing the silicon itself. I wouldn't see any big companies remarking cpus simply for the fact that these companies rely so much on reputation, to risk that would be death, also companies like, Dell, Gateway, Compaq, Micron, etc... are likely to get their processors from intel/amd themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
The only real reason Microsoft kept some of its' API a secret was that it allowed them to make applications that get more out of the os than any other application.
If you split it into apps and os as far as the company goes, keeping the api secret doesn't make any sense since Microsoft will want to draw as many developers as possible.
Thats actually the point of the article, in the opposite direction. He was basically jailed and had him computer taken from him for what he did. The article however mentions that he put these pages up in response to a Gossip Column in the school paper that said cruel things about a friend of his. If he is to be charged for criminal libel, maybe the writers of the column should be too. If it weren't for the fact that he included the faculty in his own "gossip" column, there's little doubt that he would have been left alone. What he did was wrong, but what was done about it was far from reasonable.
Apple really doesn't have a case here, even if they do decide to go with it, looking at the system, it does have a translucent monitor case, but the style is not "iMacish". This is also not an "all in one" pc, there's the pc, monitor and other peripherals. My opinion is that having a colored translucent case isn't enough of an original idea to justify going on a rampage every time someone else uses it, it's not a new idea either, (anyone ever see those tacky transparent phones?) Apple is spending so much money on defending the "look and feel" of their products that one wonders of the quality of performance suffers because of it, even when the "look and feel" isn't all that similar. Like I said, apart from the translucent case on the monitor, the similarity of appearance ends quite distinctly there, the style and implementation of the system is too markedly different to be worth suing over.
Just remember, defamation and libel are no more legal in the US than it is in the UK, the first amendment does not cover that. The problem in the UK is that the law seems to allow individuals to define the meaning of libel, even if it isn't defamitory. The point of the article is that he contacted the isp's first, and most said they would react unequivocally for the the complainer, With british law, such an allegation could mean certain doom for an isp, being a business, it would stand to lose a lot in financial resources, not to mention the loss of reputation. The problem is not with libel, but the change in dealing with it. If a statement is defamitory, the first person to deal with should alway be the poster, not the host. It's akin to suing a library because is has within it a book that is offensive. Doing such a thing would be absurd, but thats exactly what an isp is, with regard to web space, it's a storage place for information, just like a library.
(random rant/rave mode on)
As a regular player of EQ, this is something that affects me. The patch message actually states that they did a survey of people and got a pretty positive response, but decided to back down because they thought it was a rash decision, and too much of an invasion into a persons privacy. I plan on in the future of proxying my EQ connection throught a linux server, (the os that showEQ runs on) I have no intention of cheating, ever. However their tough stance against cheating is in my opinion a good thing. It's no fun when everybody cheats, the games no fun. UO's policy of stoicly(sp?) tolerating cheating led to some major problems. Banning a cheater on the first offense is fine in my book though, if they can't play fair, the shouldn't play at all.
(random rant/rave mode off)
OMG! I'm not the only one to think of red dwarf! Funny episode, future echos!
> If I own a piece of unused land in the middle of > an area that some big corporation wants to build > on, do they have a right to take that away from > me?
Actually, yes they do, even if you are using it, if the government feels it is in the best interests of the people to let the corporation have it, they can take it, provided they compensate you for it. Of course that is the US, not switzerland, I don't know what the Swiss law is, would someone who does care to elaborate?
Althought the gist of the article is that open source isn't secure, (which is completely bunk, since most crackers find bugs in other ways) It does go on to say that most of the security is up to the administrator. I could do a default install of linux on a system and it would be terrible insecure, a little tweaking, disabling some services and enabling others and it's secure. And constant vigilance to keep it secure. They of course don't mention that open source is not only open to crackers but everyone else, so the source is a pretty poor weapon when everybody has it.
Of course, thats not the problem, the problem is that MCSE used to be a permenant certification, where you got certified and that was it. Now they require recertification every year. (people who were already permenantly certified were grandfathered in.) This means, that institutions running NT 4.0 if they had someone certified within the last year, have to keep him certified. This actually isn't that much of a problem, as keeping your personel updated on changes and such is a good thing. The problem is that microsoft is dropping NT 4.0 certification completely, so those who certified within the last year or just getting certified now will find out quickly, that the money and time they spent on NT 4.0 certification will have to be spend with windows 2000 certification. Spend $2000 on a certification, and then spend another $2000 another one and you'll find you get a little upset that the first $2000 doesn't mean anything to anyone except you. If microsoft offered NT 4.0 training for a few more years, this wouldn't be such a big deal. Theres not a huge rush to upgrade to 2000 and there are plenty of NT 4.0 machines that need to be maintained.
Patent 5,993,366 is not for "Playing tennis with a kneepad", it appears to be for a method, or substance to improve the quality of copiers and/or laser printers, made by a rubber company. Sorry to be so specific, but it's the wrong patent number.
It let me download the specs just fine.
Theres a utility that I use at work on our second systems, called LinNeighborhood that does exactly what you are asking for.
They don't have to release the source. (They don't *have* to do anything, but sales determine *have* and *want*)
But it would be nice to have a decent player or library to play these files on non windows/macOs machines.
Wrong, the KX133 violates NONE of Intels intellectual property, however the Apollo Pro might so you could buy the KX but not the AP. (That is my understanding, I could be wrong) Besides, there are other ways to aquire matierials banned by the ftc.
What business would possibly purchase software that legally allowed the creator of the software to shut it down remotely at a whim. That kind of clause would make go elsewhere if the developer put something so laughably ridiculous in thier license agreement. Open Source would certainly get a boost, as well as software companies that basically look at this an idiotic attempt by the larger companies to gain control. (damn, i'm in paranoid mode, sorry) After all, if you advertise "We won't shut your system down like *THEY* could", also putting an nda into the license agreement is pure lunacy. How does technical support help the client if by virtue of license agreement aren't allowed to talk about it. Or especially if someone else decided to help a friend navigate a specific program. Doing so under such an agreement would be tantamount to corporate espiage (sp?). Sure an nda makes perfect sense in beta software, in a controlled release environment. But releasing such an agreement to the general public would be like giving everybody a Ferarri and saying you cant drive it because someone might see it. I may be ignorant here, I might be makeing a mountain out of a mole hill here, is that what I *think* is going on here?
I'm surprised that I didn't see something more significant. There are at least two inventions that helped make our civilization what it is today, they are,
a. The steam engine
b. The printing press
The steam engine allowed countries to distribute goods and transport people longer and faster than had been before. It also made the world seem so much smaller than it was before, making a trip to faraway place easier and safer than it was to go by sea.
The printing press made it possible to mass produce information. It put more books into the hands of people who would normally not know how to read a word, now had a reason to learn to read.
Arguably, the time, place and people who invented these are contested, they contributed greatly to our civilization, which would be very different without either.
Quite true...for senators and represenatives, for the president, it is not true, for one reason. No matter what the country votes, it's the electoral college that decides who will be the next president, and have decided contrary to the people they are representing more than once. It's perhaps an old argument, but I think the world would be a better place without the electoral college. Otherwise whats the point of voting, other than to raise a number that does not factor into the presidential election.
Thats my rant for the day.
I'm sorry if I sound näive, but if it's such a problem, why not rewrite the source for the server and the client in order to eliminate the possibility of this problem occuring, then posting the binary for both win32 and linux clients, and eliminate the possibility of older clients from connecting. If it's open source it can be changed and fixed.
Honestly, if the person racks up $25,000 in gambling debt, he's got larger problems. He's basically suing the credit card company for his own idiocy. I'd like to see this guy lose and have to pay up the $25,000 smackers. I have no love for credit card companies, but it's everyone else who loses because of increased interest rates the companies (supposedly) use to cover their legal costs.
Actually, that's not restricted to canada, most states where it snows have something like that, Here in sioux city IA you are responsible for shovelling your own sidewalk, neglecting to do so after a snowstorm (withing a reasonable amount of time) is a $100 fine if they have to do it. It's not dumb at all, it's quite reasonable since the snow has a tendancy to turn into ice.
Dremmel Tool works really nice for that.
I thought someone already addressed this, that redhat offered and corel flat out refused.
I believe that what is meant by patenting, they probably mean their own version of the data. Like someone mentioned in a previous slashdot article (I forget the name) like a surveyors maps, if you put a copy of that map in your report, you should at least acknowledge the source, and even inform them that you're using the maps. Information from the HGC, would be free, that information could not be copywrited or patented by someone else because HGC got the information themselves.
This seems to be an interesting way to address this problem. Of course, certain issues still remain. For instance, how will these people from the industry be paid? (i.e. what incentive does the industry have to send its employees to teach) Two words, Future Workforce (not sure if workforce is one word or two :) ) The computer industry is having a major shortage of qualified programmers, the problem, getting a company to invest in something that you won't see returns in for a few years is hardest part.
The K6-III will ID and an AMD K6-3D+ (K6-2 is just K6-3D), it still has a stepping value of 5 because it still uses socket 7. Windows 95, may just id it as an amd K6 since neither the K6-2 or K6-III existed when it came out. If the bios is identifying it as a K6-III, It more than likely is, since that is pulled from cpuid, which, even by the most crafty of frauds is impossible to do without changing the silicon itself. I wouldn't see any big companies remarking cpus simply for the fact that these companies rely so much on reputation, to risk that would be death, also companies like, Dell, Gateway, Compaq, Micron, etc... are likely to get their processors from intel/amd themselves.