If Microsoft ever gets to the point of threatening a suit over specific code, as opposed to vague "we think some large open source projects might be infringing some of our patents" noisemaking, they will list specific patents.
That's a pretty silly attempt at an analogy. Try harder.
Re:Here come the DRM whiners
on
Apple iPad Reviewed
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Let me ask you something in advance of the inevitable comments, for a chance: do you complain because the firmware in your TV set, microwave oven, and dishwasher is "locked down," too?
Actually, my microwave oven firmware includes a section of recipes. It would be nice to be able to add my own (or replace theirs with mine if there isn't room for more). It also has a bunch of built-in settings for cooking or reheating various named food. It would be nice to be able to add to these or replace them to better match what I eat.
The dishwasher could also use a little bit of hacking. The instructions tell me to run the hot water at the faucet nearest the dishwasher until the water gets hot, then start the dishwasher. I'd prefer that the dishwasher just assume that I have not done that, and so instead of assuming that it has instant access to hot water, run the water for about 30 seconds, then drain it, then start the normal cycle.
As for the TV, that too could use a tweak. It's an LED-backlit LCD, using edge lighting. Even though I have the "dynamic contrast" feature turned off, it still varies the backlight intensity on occasion, and that can be annoying. I would like a setting that says "do not fiddle with the backlight".
Your first quote does not confirm the story. In fact, your first quote has nothing whatsoever to do with the story. You might want to look at dates next time. When a regulatory body is in the middle of a large anti-trust case against a company, it is perfectly normal for their to be email between the head regulator and the chief counsel of the company.
You second quote is from the article that the Slashdot story cites. You can't cite something to confirm it itself.
The French magazine cited for confirmation doesn't say anything about Microsoft.
So all that leaves is with is that some guy twittered that the bogeyman^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMicrosoft is coming, and when we look at the latest draft of the Digital Agenda document--its still fine.
You keep on bring this up. The answer is, and always will be, because software is math [wikipedia.org]. Under US patent law math is not supposed to be patentable.
Software is math in the same sense that any physical device is physics, and so you could make the exact same argument against all non-software, non-business method patents, since physics is not patentable.
Wine is an emulator--they just stopped calling it one in late 1998 (if I recall the year correctly) basically for PR reasons. Most users were only familiar with emulators in the context of blazingly slow emulators of hardware, so tended to think "emulator == slow", not realizing that this was not true for emulators that are emulating an alien software system rather than emulating alien hardware. Some felt, therefore, that the term 'emulator' would scare users away.
A few years before that, there had been a suggestion to adopt the "Wine is not an emulator" name, in response to the fear that Microsoft might cause trouble over the Windows trademark, but that suggestion went nowhere, and the release notes continued to announce new releases of it as the "Windows emulator". The FAQ said it stood for either "WINdows Emulator" or "Wine Is Not an Emulator" and said you should take your pick.
Then quite suddenly they dropped the alternatives, from the release notes and FAQ, and it has been just the "not an emulator" language ever since.
Go look at how HTML evolved, and which browsers supported which features, and you'll see that they didn't do anything the other browser makers weren't also doing. Grab older editions of, say, O'Reilly's HTML Definitive Guide, and you'll find a large chunk of the tags are marked as non-standard Netscape extensions, for instance.
The web got big on these non-standard tags. Many eventually became standard (although sometimes in not quite compatible ways). The big difference between IE and the others is that Microsoft, until recently, has been less willing to break sites (especially corporate intranet sites) that use the old stuff.
You might want to take your own advice about brain using. You assumed VB means little.NET. I assumed it means significant.NET. Considering that VB.NET has been available for something like 9 years, whereas VB not.NET was last offered back in the days of Visual Studio 6, and even extended support for it ran out a coupe years ago, my assumption is almost certainly far closer to the truth than yours.
I'd say check the Tiobe index [tiobe.com] for a more accurate record. You'd think that a major corporation like Microsoft could garner more popularity than PHP instead of less than half.
Looking at your link, I see 10.8% for Microsoft, 9.9% for PHP. Did you forget that.NET supports multiple programming languages?
Other stories about this have stated that contributors to the engine had to assign copyright, in which case there might not be a problem.
Most of the files in the current head of their Subversion repository have an Id Software copyright notice. The company doing the PS3 game has a license from Id, so appears to have their bases covered on that front.
There is no patent system equivalent to "trademark dilution" whereby lack of enforcement can jeopardise validity
Lack of enforcement won't jeopardize validity of the patent, but it will jeopardize one's ability to successfully sue specific infringers. If you unreasonably delay in suing someone you think is infringing, you are very likely to find the defendant successfully raising a laches defense.
Such a defense is almost certain to succeed where the patent owner has encouraged the infringers.
Android uses a modified Linux kernel. The stuff on top of that is Google stuff, not Linux stuff, with Java on top--but a Googleated Java. I suspect that anyone going after Android with patents will go after patents covering the Google parts, not the Linux kernel parts.
The iPad is for your Ma, Pa, Grandma and Grandpa.
In other words, everyone else in the world that isn't a nerd/geek/tech-head
I'm a major geek, and I pre-orded an iPad 15 minutes after the Apple store came back up this morning. (No, I did not stay up all-night just for that. I was up hacking some scripts I was writing to convert a big svn repository to hg).
A lot of geeks will buy iPads. Just because we geeks and smart enough to overcome inferior software when we encounter it doesn't mean we don't appreciate a well-designed appliance device. Out of the box, with no software added other than iWork plus the upcoming OmniGroup stuff, the iPad will be very useful to me.
This strongly worded page at Boycott Novell features copious links to support the above characterization
Those "copious links" point to other Boycott Novell pages. And the cites in most of those also point to Boycott Novell pages. If you actually follow all of these until you get external links, the external links don't back the Boycott Novell claims.
This is typical of that site. It will make some claim, sometimes being semi-honest and marking it as speculation or just suspicious, and cite an external source. Then, a bit later, it will repeat the claim, without marking it as speculative, and it will cite the earlier BN page, not the original source. By the third time, it is reporting it as fact, and only citing tertiary or later BN pages.
Slashdot Mirror
If Microsoft ever gets to the point of threatening a suit over specific code, as opposed to vague "we think some large open source projects might be infringing some of our patents" noisemaking, they will list specific patents.
That's a pretty silly attempt at an analogy. Try harder.
Let me ask you something in advance of the inevitable comments, for a chance: do you complain because the firmware in your TV set, microwave oven, and dishwasher is "locked down," too?
Actually, my microwave oven firmware includes a section of recipes. It would be nice to be able to add my own (or replace theirs with mine if there isn't room for more). It also has a bunch of built-in settings for cooking or reheating various named food. It would be nice to be able to add to these or replace them to better match what I eat.
The dishwasher could also use a little bit of hacking. The instructions tell me to run the hot water at the faucet nearest the dishwasher until the water gets hot, then start the dishwasher. I'd prefer that the dishwasher just assume that I have not done that, and so instead of assuming that it has instant access to hot water, run the water for about 30 seconds, then drain it, then start the normal cycle.
As for the TV, that too could use a tweak. It's an LED-backlit LCD, using edge lighting. Even though I have the "dynamic contrast" feature turned off, it still varies the backlight intensity on occasion, and that can be annoying. I would like a setting that says "do not fiddle with the backlight".
If they do this, does that mean they're wide open for countersuits by anyone uploading their wedding movies?
No. Hint: people who upload their wedding movies are implicitly giving downloaders permission to download.
Shooting yourself in the foot, 20000 law suits at a time
Actually, it's 5 lawsuits, not 20000. It's 20000 defendants.
Your first quote does not confirm the story. In fact, your first quote has nothing whatsoever to do with the story. You might want to look at dates next time. When a regulatory body is in the middle of a large anti-trust case against a company, it is perfectly normal for their to be email between the head regulator and the chief counsel of the company.
You second quote is from the article that the Slashdot story cites. You can't cite something to confirm it itself.
The French magazine cited for confirmation doesn't say anything about Microsoft.
So all that leaves is with is that some guy twittered that the bogeyman^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMicrosoft is coming, and when we look at the latest draft of the Digital Agenda document--its still fine.
This is fucking math. How do you even begin to deny this?
Have you ever actually done either math or software? I suspect not.
Nope. Physical devices are merely an application of physics. Software is maths
Software is not math. It is at best an application of math.
You keep on bring this up. The answer is, and always will be, because software is math [wikipedia.org]. Under US patent law math is not supposed to be patentable.
Software is math in the same sense that any physical device is physics, and so you could make the exact same argument against all non-software, non-business method patents, since physics is not patentable.
Algorithms are math, and math is not patentable. There are various reasons for this, and many of them are good ones.
Mechanical devices are physics, and physics is not patentable. There are various reasons for this, and many of them are good ones.
and so software shouldn't be patentable.
and so mechanical devices shouldn't be patentable.
Wine is an emulator--they just stopped calling it one in late 1998 (if I recall the year correctly) basically for PR reasons. Most users were only familiar with emulators in the context of blazingly slow emulators of hardware, so tended to think "emulator == slow", not realizing that this was not true for emulators that are emulating an alien software system rather than emulating alien hardware. Some felt, therefore, that the term 'emulator' would scare users away.
A few years before that, there had been a suggestion to adopt the "Wine is not an emulator" name, in response to the fear that Microsoft might cause trouble over the Windows trademark, but that suggestion went nowhere, and the release notes continued to announce new releases of it as the "Windows emulator". The FAQ said it stood for either "WINdows Emulator" or "Wine Is Not an Emulator" and said you should take your pick.
Then quite suddenly they dropped the alternatives, from the release notes and FAQ, and it has been just the "not an emulator" language ever since.
Go look at how HTML evolved, and which browsers supported which features, and you'll see that they didn't do anything the other browser makers weren't also doing. Grab older editions of, say, O'Reilly's HTML Definitive Guide, and you'll find a large chunk of the tags are marked as non-standard Netscape extensions, for instance.
The web got big on these non-standard tags. Many eventually became standard (although sometimes in not quite compatible ways). The big difference between IE and the others is that Microsoft, until recently, has been less willing to break sites (especially corporate intranet sites) that use the old stuff.
You might want to take your own advice about brain using. You assumed VB means little .NET. I assumed it means significant .NET. Considering that VB.NET has been available for something like 9 years, whereas VB not.NET was last offered back in the days of Visual Studio 6, and even extended support for it ran out a coupe years ago, my assumption is almost certainly far closer to the truth than yours.
So, a major author of free software thinks Microsoft could have done better by being more open. Why is this interesting?
I'd say check the Tiobe index [tiobe.com] for a more accurate record. You'd think that a major corporation like Microsoft could garner more popularity than PHP instead of less than half.
Looking at your link, I see 10.8% for Microsoft, 9.9% for PHP. Did you forget that .NET supports multiple programming languages?
The data in the actual paper doesn't support the conclusion in the title of the Slashdot story.
Because otherwise, you know, derivative work, and a thousand years bad juju
You don't need a clean room implementation to avoid a derivative work. You merely need to avoid copying protected elements from the first work.
Other stories about this have stated that contributors to the engine had to assign copyright, in which case there might not be a problem.
Most of the files in the current head of their Subversion repository have an Id Software copyright notice. The company doing the PS3 game has a license from Id, so appears to have their bases covered on that front.
A couple million a day is clearly low. Just look at the various milestones listed here.
For instance, it took two months to from 2 billion to 3 billion. That's 16 million a day average as recently as two months ago.
There is no patent system equivalent to "trademark dilution" whereby lack of enforcement can jeopardise validity
Lack of enforcement won't jeopardize validity of the patent, but it will jeopardize one's ability to successfully sue specific infringers. If you unreasonably delay in suing someone you think is infringing, you are very likely to find the defendant successfully raising a laches defense.
Such a defense is almost certain to succeed where the patent owner has encouraged the infringers.
Android uses a modified Linux kernel. The stuff on top of that is Google stuff, not Linux stuff, with Java on top--but a Googleated Java. I suspect that anyone going after Android with patents will go after patents covering the Google parts, not the Linux kernel parts.
Come on Slashdot editors. Try actually editing. That kind of crap is just stupid.
The iPad is for your Ma, Pa, Grandma and Grandpa. In other words, everyone else in the world that isn't a nerd/geek/tech-head
I'm a major geek, and I pre-orded an iPad 15 minutes after the Apple store came back up this morning. (No, I did not stay up all-night just for that. I was up hacking some scripts I was writing to convert a big svn repository to hg).
A lot of geeks will buy iPads. Just because we geeks and smart enough to overcome inferior software when we encounter it doesn't mean we don't appreciate a well-designed appliance device. Out of the box, with no software added other than iWork plus the upcoming OmniGroup stuff, the iPad will be very useful to me.
This strongly worded page at Boycott Novell features copious links to support the above characterization
Those "copious links" point to other Boycott Novell pages. And the cites in most of those also point to Boycott Novell pages. If you actually follow all of these until you get external links, the external links don't back the Boycott Novell claims.
This is typical of that site. It will make some claim, sometimes being semi-honest and marking it as speculation or just suspicious, and cite an external source. Then, a bit later, it will repeat the claim, without marking it as speculative, and it will cite the earlier BN page, not the original source. By the third time, it is reporting it as fact, and only citing tertiary or later BN pages.