Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that in general software patents are all fundamentally business method patents, even the overly vague ones that by saying, "A method for doing X," really are attempts to patent, "Any method for doing X," and often get away with it. It's the only way they can really get away with patenting something that, essentially, is just a complex algorithm.
I don't know about every university, but every one that I've used the network on is basically totally open. Can't recall ever having to authenticate or do anything other than simply plug in and go. That's how it was in the dorms I lived in (albeit 6 or so years ago), as well as the public access points (libraries) of my and other nearby universities.
I have no doubt there are universities that do more, but I sure wouldn't assume that to be the case by default. In fact, I've been to more than one university that had unsecured wireless access pretty easily available from common public locations, and the argument that such a situation is actually beneficial to the educational process seems an easy one to make.
While Premiere is a great tool and all, I'd hardly go as far as saying that its UI is completely straightforward. Honestly, my first time messing with it was an experience very much akin to trying to figure Blender out for the first time. Granted, I'm not an experienced "film junkie" or anything, but I really don't think it's accurate to call Premiere so much more naturally intuitive than Blender. At least, it sure as hell wasn't for me.
Now, that's not to say I would ever want to do video editing in Blender. Really seems like a case of everything looking like a nail to your new hammer.
If I install Open Office on my laptop, that doesn't mean that I would have bought proprietary software and put that on there if there were no Open Source options.
To be fair, I think that's a much safer assumption in this case than it is for music. Music is a luxury good, while word processors (and most other open source software) aren't.
That said, all this latest round of petty bitching really amounts to is, "People are spending money on other goods and resources, when they clearly should be spending it on us!" There are a lot of people out there who simply can't seem to cope with software-as-product becoming a thing of the past. The future of software is pretty clearly turning into software-as-service (just take a look at the license to print money that World of Warcraft has turned into).
Most major corporate/government users would simply not abide anything other than complete and total ownership of their documents. Imagine a law firm with privileged attorney-client communications, or something like JPL with research data. Any version of Office that even thought to claim any sort of ownership rights over documents produced would indeed be a more or less immediate and outright death sentence for the product. It would instantly be consigned to the fringe uses where privacy doesn't really matter, meaning basically nothing in the corporate or government world.
He deliberately sprayed round up on his own crop while it was still growing and then saved what survived for seed.
That's all well and good, except:
The appellants' profits were precisely what they would have been had they planted and harvested ordinary canola. Nor did they gain any agricultural advantage from the herbicide resistant nature of the canola since no finding was made that they sprayed with Roundup herbicide to reduce weeds. On this evidence, the appellants earned no profit from the invention and the respondents are entitled to nothing on their claim of account.
When it came down to it he never actually used Roundup for his crop. 0% or 95%, it doesn't matter one whit that it was Roundup Ready, because if he's not using Roundup for all intents and purposes it's just regular ol' canola. And it should be further noted that he's not planning on suddenly starting, as he's settled with Monsanto with the agreement that Monsanto will pay all costs for removing all Roundup Ready crops from his field.
The history of the ordeal, as I understand it, went something like this:
1. Percy is informed that Roundup Ready crops are contaminating his field.
2. Percy refuses Monsanto's draconian requirements for having the field cleaned of these crops (they basically demanded a gag order on the cleanup process, and an agreement never to sue Monsanto for anything at any time in the future).
3. Percy forces the issue in the courts (admittedly by going to some extremes with intentionally progressing the contamination).
4. Courts rule in favor of Percy (no damages awarded).
5. Percy accepts Monsanto's new settlement offer to pay for all cleanup, this time without the ridiculous draconian requirements.
So yeah, I think he is the victim, although not exactly in the way things are portrayed. It would have been foolish of him to accept their initial offer; Monsanto's requirements on cleanup were patently ridiculous. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I understand the situation. I can't say I blame him for forcing the issue.
I've become familiar with the man's work by way of certain academic brushings up I've had with many-worlds theories. I have great respect for the sort of man it takes to ask, and strive to answer such wildly difficult, even incomprehensible, questions.
The great ones are gone and going, and I fear we shall not see their like again.
How about a link to the actual ruling. "Monsanto wins Canada seed battle" is very misleading to say the least--I'm surprised to see such horrible spin from BBC--at least from my reading of the decision. I'd be inclined to say that, all things considered, the victory is squarely in Percy's hands. Don't agree with me? Here's a quote from the decision:
Accordingly, the cultivation of plants containing the patented gene and cell does not constitute an infringement.
Your point is all well and good for the farmers who decide they want to use Monsanto products. They have no problems--they've made an informed decision to (for better or worse) buck the several thousands of years of farming tradition and buy new seeds every year. Most people, while they may find it distasteful, don't care that much about this half of the story.
The problem, and what everybody thinks is just so indescribably vile, is faced by farmers who don't want to use Roundup Ready business. Believe it or not, there are a great many farmers and even generational farming families who have spent countless decades manually engineering their crop. This is the problem. You have a farmer who has spent the last, say, 50 years, manually culling and selecting seeds from his best crops to engineer that crop to his liking. Then his neighbor moves in and plants Roundup Ready seeds. At first there's no problem, but gradually the neighbor's crops will pollinate our farmer's land. Well, naturally this is to be expected, and our farmer would normally just select around the intruders. The problem is, Monsanto takes it upon themselves to sue our farmer and force him to stop using the same farming technique he's been using his entire life. He never bought Monsanto seeds. He would very much prefer to have nothing to do with the Monsanto seeds. Monsanto seeds give him absolutely nothing he cares about. So now, through no act or choice of his own, he has no OPTION but to either give in and buy Monsanto's seeds (which may even be inferior to the seeds he has tailored to his particular needs), or to start over from scratch.
This isn't some hypothetical situation. This exact same pattern has played out repeatedly with Monsanto, and I (along with many others) find it absolutely disgusting. Maybe your father is very happy with Monsanto seeds. If so, more power to him, but if that's the case he is simply lacking a proper perspective on the harm they can cause. It's people like Percy Schmeiser who have suffered for it. Notice that the eventual finding in his case was that the contaminated roundup crops provided him no additional profit over the crops he has been harvesting previously. All they gave him was a decade of legal headache.
"Why can't I just download a piece of software and double-click on it to install?!?!"
I don't really understand this. How much software is there that isn't available in the package manager? Why would you want to manually find, download, an execute an installer when a package manager is available? And even for something that isn't available there, how hard is it to type./configure, make, then make install? Either one I would argue is simpler than any Windows installation procedure. They're just different.
"What is the difference between KDE and Gnome and why should it matter?!?!"
I'll answer the second question first. It doesn't matter. At all. Hell, install them both and pick and choose which you want to use on a given day, works all the same. Just a matter of preference, and one might argue it's NICE to have a few different options.
"Why do I have to go to the command line interface to do even basic stuff?"
And I might ask, why do I have to search through umpteen levels of GUI menus to try to find the options for basic stuff, when a single simple command line argument does it? It's no harder, either to actually execute or to remember how to do, again it's just different. It should be noted here that there was a time when the command line was common for even novice users to employ.
Hell, until the latest release, Ubuntu wouldn't even let me attach a projector without a complicated edit to the Xorg config file. ARGHHHHH!!!
I think this is the one meaningful point. Xorg still needs a little improvement when it comes to recognizing and configuring peripherals. It's definitely happening though. As I understand, the latest version of xorg will run without even needing a configuration file, and still recognize basic peripherals fine (keyboard, mouse, video). Hooking up digital projectors is an activity most casual users who don't want to be editing config files won't be doing anyway, and even that soon won't be an issue at the rate of things.
I didn't say go out, buy a camera, come home, search for files, dig through the crap that is search results, install package. I'm talking out-of-box support
You seem to be seeing peripheral installation on Windows through some very heavily rose tinted glasses. In my experience you're just as likely to have to spend time searching for drivers, trying to get them to install correctly, figuring out bugs, etc... on Windows as you are on Linux with this kind of thing.
point is, if they had to call comcast then they wouldn't be the kind of person who can googleshoot their own network problems. Besides, if the internet isn't working, how do they google it?
Under Linux, if your network isn't working, it's for a reason that's more complex than Comcast would ever actually help you with even if they did support Linux. All any telecom support will do under Windows is basically tell you to reboot and then click a button or two in your network settings. It's not like they'll configure your computer's WiFi for you, they're much more useless than that.
I find it hard to believe that the example applications I used would run in Wine without some degree of noticable loss of performance.
Crysis? Of course not. That's a silly example though. I can think of a more popular game that I've found to be pretty indistinguishable between running on Linux and Windows. Crysis is definitely a fringe example. The problem with your argument is that it's written from the perspective of a gamer who needs to be on the bleeding edge of technology. That's still a market that's mostly exclusive to Windows (on the computer, obviously consoles are the vast majority of the gaming industry these days anyway). For everybody else who either doesn't game, or games on consoles (read: the majority of people), that argument doesn't work.
Yes. They are called themes.
Only if you use a hacked version of the Windows theming DLL, because they official one doesn't allow custom themes. On top of that, Windows theming isn't even remotely as flexible as what's available under most xorg environments.
Please, cite for me a real-world example where the average user would EVER need to install 50 programs at once?
Yes, but not under Windows. Linux is much more modular, so when you install a program each of its libraries and dependencies is installed separately and individually. Mind you, this is all still much simpler than installing anything on Windows. Most distributions this is done by typing a single command at the prompt: it downloads your program directly from its source on the internet, downloads any dependencies, compiles whatever needs to be compiled, and installs it all. On my distro, I type "pacman -S " and when it's done I have a new icon in my app menu. Once you actually use a package manager you'll wonder how Windows could possibly be so archaic in the way it handles program installation.
Who backs up settings? Linux users? Guess what the vast majority of us don't care about doing? That's right, back up our settings.
Ever have to reinstall Windows? Enjoy setting hundreds of things up all over again. Want the same settings on your desktop and laptop? Have fun with setting that up. I know personally I've found being able to back up "/home/user" immensely useful. Just having things localized where you know where to find it is useful enough.
Um... aren't the statistics from your link generated by user agents strings from web browsers? Meaning they have nothing to do with sales figures? Meaning they're totally irrelevant to the post you are responding to? Reading comprehension here: "market share" does not in any way, shape, or form, equate to "market share on new machines."
All things fall. If Rome and Britain don't demonstrate that sufficiently for you, the rest of human history should be more than adequate. Only the arrogant or deluded would try to claim otherwise. Microsoft will have its time too, through when that will be is still anybody's guess.
Leaves them right where they were before. e360 won default judgment against Spamhaus because Spamhaus didn't even deign come to court. This is, of course, because Spamhaus operates totally outside the jurisdiction of US courts, and they simply don't care. Not to mention I don't think any court will be inclined to do anything meaningful to actually enforce that judgment, so e360 has a nice big $11 million judgment that's effectively worthless. Especially considering Spamhaus is a non-profit, e360 will absolutely never collect a single penny.
That's not really the problem with the analogy. The REAL problem with the analogy in his post is that the premise isn't even true. How much evidence gets thrown out on a regular basis because of failure to Mirandize the suspect, failure to get a search warrant, failure to show due cause for investigation? A whole goddamn lot. We do have rules in this country about the kind of evidence that can be admitted (much as the current treasonous administration would like to think otherwise).
Unless your idea is created while on somebody else's dime. For example, any new device I might engineer, automatically becomes the property of my employer, per my contract. Likewise anything Ainsworth created while in the employ of Fox, becomes Fox Studios property.
Allow me to quote my post to which you were responding if you will...
The real question here, it seems to me, is whether the terms of this costume designer's employment specifically gave those rights up.
Like I said, certainly some contracts sign your rights to your creation away in the process, but that's something that generally needs to be part of the contract last I checked. So, again like I said, this really all seems to just depend on whether the guy signed is rights away or not.
To put it another way, just because you're paying me money to make something, doesn't necessarily mean copyright of what is being made is transferred to you. In fact, it's pretty common for the actual creator to retain full copyright and the employer to obtain an unlimited license for use. I'd be inclined to say this is the "default" under copyright law where contracts don't explicitly state otherwise, but I'm not well versed enough in it to go that far.
As for my use of coat hangers, I was referring to this little test. Hardly scientific I know, and I would certainly never argue that a coat hanger makes any kind of optimal transfer medium, but it certainly goes to show how silly the cabling business really is.
It's increasingly pissing me off the degree of naivete that everybody approaches the oil situation these days. Oooh, 1 billion barrels, that's a WHOLE LOT, right? Yeah, might want to consider that the U.S. alone uses over 20 million barrels a day. That's a whole whopping 50 days out of that one billion barrels. Tell me again about this energy independence nonsense? Not as long as we're depending on crude oil for it friends. Even assuming that's a HUNDRED billion barrels in there that can actually be extracted (and I'm going to say I kinda doubt it), that's a bit over ten years at current rates of consumption, less if you consider growth. Still not even approaching anything resembling meaningful independence.
At 120db signal-to-noise ratio, to hear the difference you need hi-fi components starting from $600, loudspeakers starting at $400 for piece and cables for $300. And even then you (as most others) probably wouldn't be able to tell difference.
There is no reason you should ever spend this much on cables. Ever. In fact, go ahead and do a blind test between Monster Cable and a coat hanger, and I defy you to be able to tell which is which. It's even extra-funny when people spend these kind of prices for digital cabling.
Now, maybe I'm missing something here, but when a person manufactures some artistic creation, that person by default has the right to profit from said creation. The real question here, it seems to me, is whether the terms of this costume designer's employment specifically gave those rights up. If not, my guess is he has every legal right to sell storm trooper armor to his heart's content.
Seems like Freenet is really pursuing their namesake, and setting themselves up specifically to provide a means of communication within otherwise locked down and totalitarian environments. A commendable goal I think. I have to wonder though, if this level of security is actually necessary, who CAN you really trust to use this new "darknet" with? Seems like the sort of place you'd use it would also be the sort of place where you could trust no one.
Slashdot Mirror
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that in general software patents are all fundamentally business method patents, even the overly vague ones that by saying, "A method for doing X," really are attempts to patent, "Any method for doing X," and often get away with it. It's the only way they can really get away with patenting something that, essentially, is just a complex algorithm.
I don't know about every university, but every one that I've used the network on is basically totally open. Can't recall ever having to authenticate or do anything other than simply plug in and go. That's how it was in the dorms I lived in (albeit 6 or so years ago), as well as the public access points (libraries) of my and other nearby universities.
I have no doubt there are universities that do more, but I sure wouldn't assume that to be the case by default. In fact, I've been to more than one university that had unsecured wireless access pretty easily available from common public locations, and the argument that such a situation is actually beneficial to the educational process seems an easy one to make.
While Premiere is a great tool and all, I'd hardly go as far as saying that its UI is completely straightforward. Honestly, my first time messing with it was an experience very much akin to trying to figure Blender out for the first time. Granted, I'm not an experienced "film junkie" or anything, but I really don't think it's accurate to call Premiere so much more naturally intuitive than Blender. At least, it sure as hell wasn't for me.
Now, that's not to say I would ever want to do video editing in Blender. Really seems like a case of everything looking like a nail to your new hammer.
That said, all this latest round of petty bitching really amounts to is, "People are spending money on other goods and resources, when they clearly should be spending it on us!" There are a lot of people out there who simply can't seem to cope with software-as-product becoming a thing of the past. The future of software is pretty clearly turning into software-as-service (just take a look at the license to print money that World of Warcraft has turned into).
Most major corporate/government users would simply not abide anything other than complete and total ownership of their documents. Imagine a law firm with privileged attorney-client communications, or something like JPL with research data. Any version of Office that even thought to claim any sort of ownership rights over documents produced would indeed be a more or less immediate and outright death sentence for the product. It would instantly be consigned to the fringe uses where privacy doesn't really matter, meaning basically nothing in the corporate or government world.
I'll just direct you to my reply to another post in this thread, as I feel it addresses yours as well.
When it came down to it he never actually used Roundup for his crop. 0% or 95%, it doesn't matter one whit that it was Roundup Ready, because if he's not using Roundup for all intents and purposes it's just regular ol' canola. And it should be further noted that he's not planning on suddenly starting, as he's settled with Monsanto with the agreement that Monsanto will pay all costs for removing all Roundup Ready crops from his field.
The history of the ordeal, as I understand it, went something like this:
So yeah, I think he is the victim, although not exactly in the way things are portrayed. It would have been foolish of him to accept their initial offer; Monsanto's requirements on cleanup were patently ridiculous. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I understand the situation. I can't say I blame him for forcing the issue.1. Percy is informed that Roundup Ready crops are contaminating his field.
2. Percy refuses Monsanto's draconian requirements for having the field cleaned of these crops (they basically demanded a gag order on the cleanup process, and an agreement never to sue Monsanto for anything at any time in the future).
3. Percy forces the issue in the courts (admittedly by going to some extremes with intentionally progressing the contamination).
4. Courts rule in favor of Percy (no damages awarded).
5. Percy accepts Monsanto's new settlement offer to pay for all cleanup, this time without the ridiculous draconian requirements.
I've become familiar with the man's work by way of certain academic brushings up I've had with many-worlds theories. I have great respect for the sort of man it takes to ask, and strive to answer such wildly difficult, even incomprehensible, questions.
The great ones are gone and going, and I fear we shall not see their like again.
How about a link to the actual ruling. "Monsanto wins Canada seed battle" is very misleading to say the least--I'm surprised to see such horrible spin from BBC--at least from my reading of the decision. I'd be inclined to say that, all things considered, the victory is squarely in Percy's hands. Don't agree with me? Here's a quote from the decision:
Your point is all well and good for the farmers who decide they want to use Monsanto products. They have no problems--they've made an informed decision to (for better or worse) buck the several thousands of years of farming tradition and buy new seeds every year. Most people, while they may find it distasteful, don't care that much about this half of the story.
The problem, and what everybody thinks is just so indescribably vile, is faced by farmers who don't want to use Roundup Ready business. Believe it or not, there are a great many farmers and even generational farming families who have spent countless decades manually engineering their crop. This is the problem. You have a farmer who has spent the last, say, 50 years, manually culling and selecting seeds from his best crops to engineer that crop to his liking. Then his neighbor moves in and plants Roundup Ready seeds. At first there's no problem, but gradually the neighbor's crops will pollinate our farmer's land. Well, naturally this is to be expected, and our farmer would normally just select around the intruders. The problem is, Monsanto takes it upon themselves to sue our farmer and force him to stop using the same farming technique he's been using his entire life. He never bought Monsanto seeds. He would very much prefer to have nothing to do with the Monsanto seeds. Monsanto seeds give him absolutely nothing he cares about. So now, through no act or choice of his own, he has no OPTION but to either give in and buy Monsanto's seeds (which may even be inferior to the seeds he has tailored to his particular needs), or to start over from scratch.
This isn't some hypothetical situation. This exact same pattern has played out repeatedly with Monsanto, and I (along with many others) find it absolutely disgusting. Maybe your father is very happy with Monsanto seeds. If so, more power to him, but if that's the case he is simply lacking a proper perspective on the harm they can cause. It's people like Percy Schmeiser who have suffered for it. Notice that the eventual finding in his case was that the contaminated roundup crops provided him no additional profit over the crops he has been harvesting previously. All they gave him was a decade of legal headache.
Um... aren't the statistics from your link generated by user agents strings from web browsers? Meaning they have nothing to do with sales figures? Meaning they're totally irrelevant to the post you are responding to? Reading comprehension here: "market share" does not in any way, shape, or form, equate to "market share on new machines."
All things fall. If Rome and Britain don't demonstrate that sufficiently for you, the rest of human history should be more than adequate. Only the arrogant or deluded would try to claim otherwise. Microsoft will have its time too, through when that will be is still anybody's guess.
No players capable of reproducing DRM-encumbered media, no DRM-encumbered media. That argument goes both ways.
Leaves them right where they were before. e360 won default judgment against Spamhaus because Spamhaus didn't even deign come to court. This is, of course, because Spamhaus operates totally outside the jurisdiction of US courts, and they simply don't care. Not to mention I don't think any court will be inclined to do anything meaningful to actually enforce that judgment, so e360 has a nice big $11 million judgment that's effectively worthless. Especially considering Spamhaus is a non-profit, e360 will absolutely never collect a single penny.
That's not really the problem with the analogy. The REAL problem with the analogy in his post is that the premise isn't even true. How much evidence gets thrown out on a regular basis because of failure to Mirandize the suspect, failure to get a search warrant, failure to show due cause for investigation? A whole goddamn lot. We do have rules in this country about the kind of evidence that can be admitted (much as the current treasonous administration would like to think otherwise).
To put it another way, just because you're paying me money to make something, doesn't necessarily mean copyright of what is being made is transferred to you. In fact, it's pretty common for the actual creator to retain full copyright and the employer to obtain an unlimited license for use. I'd be inclined to say this is the "default" under copyright law where contracts don't explicitly state otherwise, but I'm not well versed enough in it to go that far.
As for my use of coat hangers, I was referring to this little test. Hardly scientific I know, and I would certainly never argue that a coat hanger makes any kind of optimal transfer medium, but it certainly goes to show how silly the cabling business really is.
It's increasingly pissing me off the degree of naivete that everybody approaches the oil situation these days. Oooh, 1 billion barrels, that's a WHOLE LOT, right? Yeah, might want to consider that the U.S. alone uses over 20 million barrels a day. That's a whole whopping 50 days out of that one billion barrels. Tell me again about this energy independence nonsense? Not as long as we're depending on crude oil for it friends. Even assuming that's a HUNDRED billion barrels in there that can actually be extracted (and I'm going to say I kinda doubt it), that's a bit over ten years at current rates of consumption, less if you consider growth. Still not even approaching anything resembling meaningful independence.
I've always thought the real value of KDE is it doesn't slow my old laptop to a crawl. Lord knows why, but there you have it.
Now, maybe I'm missing something here, but when a person manufactures some artistic creation, that person by default has the right to profit from said creation. The real question here, it seems to me, is whether the terms of this costume designer's employment specifically gave those rights up. If not, my guess is he has every legal right to sell storm trooper armor to his heart's content.
Seems like Freenet is really pursuing their namesake, and setting themselves up specifically to provide a means of communication within otherwise locked down and totalitarian environments. A commendable goal I think. I have to wonder though, if this level of security is actually necessary, who CAN you really trust to use this new "darknet" with? Seems like the sort of place you'd use it would also be the sort of place where you could trust no one.