And if you do perform some research beforehand, you could be liable for treble damages if they can prove you knew about their patent when they sue you over it. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Unfortunately, ignorance is probably the best policy, unless you can afford to hire an expensive lawyer with a patent background to do the search for you. Under no circumstances should you attempt to do the search yourself, because you'll only taint yourself.
If you want to protect yourself from software patents, there's only one way to do it. Get rid of them entirely. You may not agree with RMS on his free software philosophy, but you should be able to agree with him on his software patent philosophy.
Quit trying to pick a fight. Sure, it's possible some democrat supporters voted more than once by scamming the voting system, but that's not to say that republican supporters didn't do the same. And the republican practice of challenging voters was no less scummy, and I believe that the democrats would've done it in a heartbeat if they believed they could gain from it. There's obvious problems with the system, and pointing fingers at either the republicans or the democrats doesn't help matters, but rather distracts from the real problems.
Also, you want to know why you hear about democrat shorts by electronic voting. It's because it's already assumed that it is going to bias the system against them based on the words of the founder of Diebold. He said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president", and was a republican supporter and participated in their campaign. Now, he could be the most honest person alive, who'd never dream of manipulating the vote to get the results he wanted and he'd STILL be accused of this because of the conflict of interest. Given how you feel about the democrats, how would you feel if the quote had been reversed, and he had said he was committed to helping Ohio deliver it's vote to Kerry, and it happened?
Perhaps you could start fixing the federal election process by having federal standards for the vote, rather than the mixed up mash of individual state laws you have today. You know, something everyone can understand about how the vote works (elegibility, etc), how it's tabulated, and how the winner is decided.
Very well said. However, I would add one thing. You may need to ask yourself, "Is it worth spending a large amount of time developing skills in another field?" While having a somewhat diversified skill set is useful, you should never try to do everything yourself, because you'll just end up spreading yourself too thin. On the other hand, if you think you'll enjoy it, and use it often in the future, it may be worth it.
But what better way to encourage funding of their project? I mean, if you come out and say, "We found some stuff under the ocean that looks like it'd be interesting to explore", how would you ever expect to get funding. On the other hand, if you claim your found the lost city of Atlantis, then the bucks should come rolling in.
"Intellectual property", or rather the components that comprise that term (trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights and patents) each have their use, and abolishing some of them would just be silly. Take trade secret and trademark law. For the honest company that builds it's own stuff from scratch, trade secrets should never be an issue for them. As for trademarks, few people would argue that giving Coca Cola the exclusive use of the word for identifying their product is a bad thing (the usually baseless threats that some trademark owners use to control people criticizing them is a different matter).
It's the other two categories most of us have problems with -- patents and copyrights. Patents on things that would be obvious to someone solving that particular problem (using XOR for writing cursors without destroying the background, for example), or abusing their copyright by attaching their copyright works to EULAs that go well beyond copyright or by insuring their precious works never have to enter the public domain by continual copyright extensions.
These companies are merely parasites, and ought to be treated as such. However, I fear that they will kill a number of companies and independant developers before their reach and influence is able to be controlled. And government, who is responsible for creating these parasites is unlikely to do anything about it until the problem gets uncontrollable, and by then there will be powerful interests opposing such a change.
Actually, photo inkjets produce better images (usually quite a bit more vibrant with better color mixing) than color laser printers. Modern inkjets can change the intensity of the color by changing how much ink it applies to the paper for a particular dot, as well, it can mix several of the colors on the same spot on the page. Laser printers don't have this option. Either the toner sticks to a particular place on the page or it doesn't, and color mixing doesn't really work as well.
There's also a vast difference between color lasers, too. I've printing digital photos on a Laserjet 4500 and 2500, and the image came out very nice. I tried the same on a Samsung CLP-500, and I was dismayed with the dismal print quality. The image came out dull, dark and poorly halftoned with obvious banding.
Don't forget the current management practices which put short term quarterly profits and stock prices over long term profits and stability. A project that would modernize a process, and would pay back it's investment in savings in a few short years may be rejected simply because it would create a series of poor quarters and would negatively affect stock price.
It's obvious they were misquoted. It obviously should've been, "President Bush strongly opposes any treaty or policy that would cause the loss of a single American dollar"
Actually, they're hard at work on the first two options, but it's not ready yet. The INDUCE Act has been introduced (but not yet passed?) which would basically reverse the Betamax decision. The broadcast flag, and the new DVD format is on the way, but adoption of digital TV and HD DVD is still fairly low.
Since when have web developers ever cared about compatibility issues? How many really care if your screen is too small to view something that is 600px from the left side of your monitor or if 10px Arial is too small or 20px Times New Roman is too big for you? Pixel measurements in CSS or even elaborate table layouts is the worst thing that happened to HTML, IMO. With the possible exception of aligning something with an image and defining visible borders (not padding), using pixel measurements on a CSS is a sure sign you're doing something wrong.
The same holds for owning a book. You own the paper, but not the organization of the words on that paper. However, in the case of the book, the doctrine of first sale still applies.
You can't expect the job to be done well entirely by the government - external organisations will need to help.
This is an attitude I have a problem with. Why shouldn't I expect the government to be able to do a good job? You MIGHT get more efficient results from the private sector where greed is a big motivator, but that doesn't mean the private sector will do a better or worse job. Only that it ought to be more financially efficient.
Microsoft didn't make most of those fonts, but rather just licensed them from Monotype and B&H. Comic Sans MS, Georgia, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Verdana and Wingdings are the only ones that MS created (presumably). Arial, Times New Roman, and the other very well known ones are Monotype fonts.
Part of it is etiquette, and the other part is some BSD license fanatics who insist their software can not be relicensed under the GPL. By asking, even if you can fairly safely assume the answer is yes, you avoid nasty situations like that. Most of the people who support the BSD license are reasonable just like most of the people who support the GPL license are reasonable. It's the extremists that are a bit of a problem.
It's pretty obvious that Dvorak chose #3 for one or more features that he uses frequently.
I've seen this, but not with features designated 'run from cd', but from features set to install on first use. The program asks for the cd over and over again, never installing the requested feature, until you just break down, run the entire install again, and root out each and every one of those 'install on first use' items and set them to either install or don't install.
In particular, I've seen this with Microsoft Outlook 2000, when opening a message with a vCard attachment. On this particular machine, Outlook's appetite for the CD to install this feature could never be satisfied without installing the feature from the installer itself.
I suppose your spell checker dictionaries include people's proper names? Didn't think so. Might be fine if all your e-mail comes from John Bell, or Will Silvers, but mine doesn't.
So, you're saying "Linux zealot" used in this context is not a juvenile term? The article was basically fine, albeit a little one-sided up to that point (IBM doesn't say anything to the press about on-going lawsuits, so it's not unexpected), but it was downhill from there on. If that single paragraph was dropped from the article, it would've been a fine news piece, but I doubt Mr. Lyons can resist the temptation to insult Linux users.
Besides, until we see something happen in court, it IS a PR ploy. What happens in the court is all that matters, and unless SCO files another lawsuit, or somehow manages to convince the judge to ammend their claims yet again, it will remain that way.
According to the article, they recieved it when they were working with The Santa Cruz Operation (not to be confused with SCOX) on Project Monterey. Of course, you'd know this if you read the article. The real question is why they needed IBM e-mails to discover this, when IBM has supplied them with AIX source code already. Should be a simple matter to check the differences between SVR3 and SVR4, and see if those same differences show up in AIX, should it not? IF this is true, then this might be the first solid claim SCOX has against IBM. Maybe...
The problem with the titles is not the obscurity, but rather that they are all titles that the music industry expected to do well, but did not, and are using them to dump into the libraries. The music titles themselves have no cultural, political, or historical significance. Instead of throwing away these titles, as they would've inevitably done, they're dumping it into the library system.
Customs can be a little ridiculous. Packages a bit too often go 'missing' in customs, for some strange reason, or are delivered after being very badly repacked (e.g. damaged) after an inspection.
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If you want to protect yourself from software patents, there's only one way to do it. Get rid of them entirely. You may not agree with RMS on his free software philosophy, but you should be able to agree with him on his software patent philosophy.
Also, you want to know why you hear about democrat shorts by electronic voting. It's because it's already assumed that it is going to bias the system against them based on the words of the founder of Diebold. He said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president", and was a republican supporter and participated in their campaign. Now, he could be the most honest person alive, who'd never dream of manipulating the vote to get the results he wanted and he'd STILL be accused of this because of the conflict of interest. Given how you feel about the democrats, how would you feel if the quote had been reversed, and he had said he was committed to helping Ohio deliver it's vote to Kerry, and it happened?
Perhaps you could start fixing the federal election process by having federal standards for the vote, rather than the mixed up mash of individual state laws you have today. You know, something everyone can understand about how the vote works (elegibility, etc), how it's tabulated, and how the winner is decided.
Very well said. However, I would add one thing. You may need to ask yourself, "Is it worth spending a large amount of time developing skills in another field?" While having a somewhat diversified skill set is useful, you should never try to do everything yourself, because you'll just end up spreading yourself too thin. On the other hand, if you think you'll enjoy it, and use it often in the future, it may be worth it.
But what better way to encourage funding of their project? I mean, if you come out and say, "We found some stuff under the ocean that looks like it'd be interesting to explore", how would you ever expect to get funding. On the other hand, if you claim your found the lost city of Atlantis, then the bucks should come rolling in.
It's the other two categories most of us have problems with -- patents and copyrights. Patents on things that would be obvious to someone solving that particular problem (using XOR for writing cursors without destroying the background, for example), or abusing their copyright by attaching their copyright works to EULAs that go well beyond copyright or by insuring their precious works never have to enter the public domain by continual copyright extensions.
These companies are merely parasites, and ought to be treated as such. However, I fear that they will kill a number of companies and independant developers before their reach and influence is able to be controlled. And government, who is responsible for creating these parasites is unlikely to do anything about it until the problem gets uncontrollable, and by then there will be powerful interests opposing such a change.
There's also a vast difference between color lasers, too. I've printing digital photos on a Laserjet 4500 and 2500, and the image came out very nice. I tried the same on a Samsung CLP-500, and I was dismayed with the dismal print quality. The image came out dull, dark and poorly halftoned with obvious banding.
Don't forget the current management practices which put short term quarterly profits and stock prices over long term profits and stability. A project that would modernize a process, and would pay back it's investment in savings in a few short years may be rejected simply because it would create a series of poor quarters and would negatively affect stock price.
It's obvious they were misquoted. It obviously should've been, "President Bush strongly opposes any treaty or policy that would cause the loss of a single American dollar"
Actually, they're hard at work on the first two options, but it's not ready yet. The INDUCE Act has been introduced (but not yet passed?) which would basically reverse the Betamax decision. The broadcast flag, and the new DVD format is on the way, but adoption of digital TV and HD DVD is still fairly low.
At least it isn't exploding power supplies and batteries packs
Wouldn't chicago.il.us be even better? It's more geographical!
Since when have web developers ever cared about compatibility issues? How many really care if your screen is too small to view something that is 600px from the left side of your monitor or if 10px Arial is too small or 20px Times New Roman is too big for you? Pixel measurements in CSS or even elaborate table layouts is the worst thing that happened to HTML, IMO. With the possible exception of aligning something with an image and defining visible borders (not padding), using pixel measurements on a CSS is a sure sign you're doing something wrong.
Novell BorderManager did something similar, and I know it existed in 1999, so it had to have been developed earlier.
The same holds for owning a book. You own the paper, but not the organization of the words on that paper. However, in the case of the book, the doctrine of first sale still applies.
Microsoft didn't make most of those fonts, but rather just licensed them from Monotype and B&H. Comic Sans MS, Georgia, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Verdana and Wingdings are the only ones that MS created (presumably). Arial, Times New Roman, and the other very well known ones are Monotype fonts.
Part of it is etiquette, and the other part is some BSD license fanatics who insist their software can not be relicensed under the GPL. By asking, even if you can fairly safely assume the answer is yes, you avoid nasty situations like that. Most of the people who support the BSD license are reasonable just like most of the people who support the GPL license are reasonable. It's the extremists that are a bit of a problem.
In particular, I've seen this with Microsoft Outlook 2000, when opening a message with a vCard attachment. On this particular machine, Outlook's appetite for the CD to install this feature could never be satisfied without installing the feature from the installer itself.
I suppose your spell checker dictionaries include people's proper names? Didn't think so. Might be fine if all your e-mail comes from John Bell, or Will Silvers, but mine doesn't.
Besides, until we see something happen in court, it IS a PR ploy. What happens in the court is all that matters, and unless SCO files another lawsuit, or somehow manages to convince the judge to ammend their claims yet again, it will remain that way.
According to the article, they recieved it when they were working with The Santa Cruz Operation (not to be confused with SCOX) on Project Monterey. Of course, you'd know this if you read the article. The real question is why they needed IBM e-mails to discover this, when IBM has supplied them with AIX source code already. Should be a simple matter to check the differences between SVR3 and SVR4, and see if those same differences show up in AIX, should it not? IF this is true, then this might be the first solid claim SCOX has against IBM. Maybe...
The problem with the titles is not the obscurity, but rather that they are all titles that the music industry expected to do well, but did not, and are using them to dump into the libraries. The music titles themselves have no cultural, political, or historical significance. Instead of throwing away these titles, as they would've inevitably done, they're dumping it into the library system.
Customs can be a little ridiculous. Packages a bit too often go 'missing' in customs, for some strange reason, or are delivered after being very badly repacked (e.g. damaged) after an inspection.