Slashdot should create a poll for a new company name. If they don't have enought brains to use a search engine they need all the help we can give them.
To keep the snake motif I would suggest the following:
DumbAsp RattlerBrains Mambasement Adder-all Krait and Barefaced
Likeliness calculated off of some random model -- now that there's "science". Yee-haw!
It's idiocy to compare test anomalies as a deviance from a *random* model. Intelligence itself is a deviance from a random model.
Understanding, and even mis-understanding of subject matter or test wording in a classroom by students can be highly correlated or somewhat clustered or not. Even those poor student that choose some answers randomly may subconsciously use the same patterns to do so. Small clusters outside a large "baseline" correlation are conclusive proof of cheating only to an ignoramus, or to someone who's selling you something.
So all it takes is two like-minded thinkers to coincide in their understanding and mis-understanding on some number of answers and they're branded cheaters?
Applying this to pirate content is kind of lame, since payments aren't what drives that. BUT I've always thought the Visa+Mastercard collectively have always had the power to end 90% of all spam, and could do it in a matter of weeks.
All it would take is:
1) terms of service forbidding UCE for products.
2) a few effectively placed honeypot/canary accounts
3) a couple tiger teams to place orders for the products that get spammed, and
4) kick the plug on the commercial accounts that deposit the money.
I would venture to guess that the financial services sector spends more overall on anti-spam/excess bandwidth/malware removal for their own infrastructure than they make from those few stinking transactions.
I've seen that N.H.S. Pinafore show before. I can even still hum some of the snappy lyrics.
I hold when diagnosing a disease, The expression, "if you please", A particularly gentlemanly tone implants. And so do my sisters, and my cousins, and my aunts!
Stick close to your desk And never check a pulse and you may all be rulers of our hospitals.
Sorry to hear that. I'd like to chime in on this one.
I have 3 lovely, well adjusted, funny, principled, intelligent daughters. I do not deserve them.
All 3 were valedictorians of their HS, without pushing by us.
Anecdotal? Perhaps, but harder to argue with results * 3.
I've never before shared this much info about what we did. FWIW, YMMV, etc.
1) Give them the gift of self esteem. Demonstrate your believe in their intrinsic worth, and act out of love only. This does not mean giving them every toy they want, but it does mean make sacrifices when you can for the best aspirations of your kids, and constantly showing them how much you appreciate them. Be sentimental and approachable. I think my kids knew I would have been no less their fan if they were D students.
2) They need you, give them all of you. Don't hold back and don't ever fake it with them. They know you; no double standards! If that movie is bad for your kids, parents can do without watching it. Schedule regular whole-family time and 1:1 time. Family dinners together are important.
3) Humor and curiosity are some of the best tools. Demonstrate them. Memorize funny poems, make music together, show how to take things apart, and keep it all upbeat, even crazy.
4) Don't let anyone else raise your kids. That includes daycare and school systems. I lean toward public school system over homeschooling, and it worked out for us, but that depended on what the system had to work with. Social development and problem solving is important. So are friends. Be involved parents, room mothers, etc. Know the kids in their K-6 classes; they end up on your doorstep asking for dates. Here's the tough part, but it proved extremely important: I barely made a living wage and my wife made more than me when we decided one would stay home. It was her call who would. I don't know if I would be able to look my kids in the eyes if we hadn't sacrificed.
5) Money incentives? Oh ya. Make cash match effort was my philosophy. They got a pittance for base allowances but kept job-journals as they learned to write and were richly rewarded for finding new ways to help. In school, the first A is the easiest, even hard not to get. That last A is a bear, it's the subject they don't like. My kids got $1 for the first A, and the pay doubled for each additional A. They nearly bankrupted me. Long term, the investment works out. The youngest just took her MCAT.
Since I see little evidence that timothy or Mr. Chapman read the article, I'll do them a favor so they don't have to click:
< article paycheck="undeserved" >
Hi I'm Agam Shah and I'm writing an article about multicore processors, but these concepts are so new to me that I'm putting quotees around "race conditions" like it's frickin' sharks with lasers.
So then I did a Google search on "parallel programming tools" and it help me get another paragraph out of the way.
Oh, and I quote some lamer analyst who has never heard of NUMA or libhoard, so I'll try to fabricate some crisis that the problems they address might never be solved.
Parallel programming is hard, WAH! WAH!
Oh, except when it's not, as in that trivial application named Photoshop. I'll write one of those next weekend.
It seems the article and the report casts the net too wide.
Some mega-corps (like Coca-Cola and Cisco) actually do business everywhere, and even though they show considerable numbers of businesses in tax havens, those are a small fraction (10%) of the total number of countries in which they have offices. For companies like that, I'd be surprised to find a country where they are *not* operating.
Others, like Chevron and Goldman Sachs, show over half of their foreign operations in tax-haven locales. To me, that sounds very slimy.
Others are somewhere in between, probably representing a somewhat disproportionate presence in tax havens.
What else would you expect? Corporations do behave like psychopaths.
Not fair at all. First of all, if the blog and myspace post are accurate, then the ISP is citing their TOS as the agreement that requires this. The TOS here dated June 16:
says *nothing* about copyright registrations being required or any other provenance for hosted content. If they don't have some other reason for the service outage, I'd speculate that they're making up the "terms" as they go.
>why record label dude doesn't simply register
I see no indication of how many files we're talking about. Depending on how it's structured, $35/file could add up to cash that a struggling artist does not have. They probably would not be needed later either, as I think most folks are inclined to respect CC license provisions.
Still, it's hardly a problem going forward. If the label's report bears scrutiny, then the IX brand is toxic.
The summary is a little misleading. The judge *already* ruled that SCO Group does not own much of anything, including the UNIX SYSV copyrights, in a summary judgment motion last year.
The biggest issue remaining to be resolved by this trial is how much of the "license" monies given to SCO Group by Microsoft and SUN were for that which SCO Group had no right to license (SYSV), and how much was for SCO Group's product. Given the non-dizzying speed at which SCO's products have been improved and maintained, Novell argues that the vast majority of those millions was due to Novell.
In the mean time it has been entertaining to read the SCO Group's arguments for why they should keep the money to which they have no right, or at least how they should not be required to turn the swag over to Novell. As if our opinion of them could have previously been lower.
The most lucrative of Microsoft's business models seem to have been based on the exploitation of customer and regulatory naivete in a new market. If this is true, and as long as Microsoft doesn't really change, their biggest threat is to have there market grow up, mature, and educate themselves about what has been going on.
Both FOSS and Google help that education process, to different extents, and in different ways. So both are threats. Which is the biggest immediate threat? Whichever one manages to get its message into the dense brains of middle managers first. It's a hard call to make from here.
FOSS's advanced messages (freedom, collaboration, transparency, technical education, etc.) will take a long time to be understood. The FOSS "Free & Cheap Stuff" message is already catching on, but it's not enough of an education in its own right to undo Microsoft's abuses. FOSS supporters who work to thoroughly school their organizations and contacts in the issues do make a big impact.
But I think Google is in a somewhat better position to be the immediate threat. Why? It has a greater power to punch simple "soundbyte" messages, one at a time, into the psyche of of the huddled masses yearning to breath free. I don't know if they're going to do that or not, but they could, and that's the threat.
It's close to the topic of politics -- I don't like soundbytes but recognize their power over the naive. Political discourse would be different if the electorate were uniformly wise and educated on the issues. Not the way it should be, but more the way I think things are, and just my opinion.
1) Be very careful with whom you negotiate. It probably does not help to negotiate specifically with, for example, a HR secretary. That will only get cause him/her to report to an executive, "Joe Schmo is being difficult," Even if you're being nice. A good rule of thumb is not to spend much time dickering with someone who says "No" unless that person also has the authority to say "Yes." Instead carefully find out who all this is coming from and what their concerns really are.
2) When applying or interviewing elsewhere, you don't need any better excuse than, "My employer is trying to unilaterally change employment terms in a way that encumbers me for six months, and I don't think that's right. You want my ideas from my first week here, right? That means you don't have any provision like this one, right?" Showing how the agreement is not favorable to a prospective employer as well as to you is a great way to identify unreasonable candidates when you're interviewing new bosses.
3) That same reasoning may be persuasive to you current employer. (I did not try it..) "You wanted and got my ideas from the first day working here, right? Wouldn't I have been less employable if my previous employer had owned all my ideas for the first six months? I did (insert list of accomplishments) in that time. Why are you trying to reduce my employability? What does the DOL think about such tactics?
While asking a lawyer might be a good idea, a lawyer cannot give you all the information you need to make this decision. You really need a good handle on:
1) Your relationship with your boss
2) Where this initiative is coming from (how far removed from your boss and how influential)
3) The perceived value of you personally to the company
4) The level of your own personal negotiation skills
5) Your perceived integrity
Unless you can accurately assess all of those items, in addition to the legal questions of enforceablilty and compliance with labor regulations, you cannot answer your question. Remember that the legal questions, especially enforeceability, only matter if you have the cash, stamina, strength of will, etc. to go to court. Most people don't. Don't expect the company to give hoot about what your lawyer thinks.
I faced a nearly identical situation 5 years ago, an additional agreement, even the language reads remarkably like what I saw. I had a strong enough position and was perceived to have sufficiently rare skills that I was able to stare down the requests, but not without some *very careful* negotiations. I had to answer verbal cajoling like the following:
"Aww, the company doesn't ever really expect to enforce those provisions, we trust you, they're just to make the lawyers happy" -> "If you don't then we don't need a signed agreement, right?"
"You're the last one not to sign this." -> "I'm the only one left who invents stuff around here."
"It's perfectly legal." -> "Are you practicing law now? I'm still waiting to hear from my lawyers and the Department of Labor."
"You're an at-will employee." -> "Then why should I agree to a contract that extends my obligations, but not yours? What's my consideration?"
"We don't want anything but ideas that you invented here." -> "You've already got those, and besides that's not what the contract says."
So my advice is:
0) Be nice about it. Express honest misgivings. Don't be a prick, and don't confront. 1) Delay delay delay. You may be on your next job anyways by the time it's resolved. 2) Go out on the market immediately, and assess your hireability elsewhere. Have an offer in your back packet just in case. DO NOT BLUFF. (You may just find you're happier elsewhere anyway..) 3) Consult a good labor lawyer IFF you have the will to go to court to enforce whatever rights he says you have in your venue.
I did all the above exept #3, and was offered a much better place to work while the issue dragged out over 3 years. I did not sign, and I left voluntarily. YMMV.
When you wish to take somebody to civil court you must first show them your intention to do so.
You must clearly state your grounds for claim and allow the other party reasonable time (weeks to months, usually) to either counter your argument or settle your claim.
IANAL. Clearly, by your misguided assertions you are not either.
One does not need to look far to see numerous counter-examples. SCO Group's suits, for example.
There may be some venues where your descriptions begin to apply, but not in US Federal courts. The US court system is badly broken. Not coincidentally, the same congressional judiciary committee members who regulate the courts also regulate copyright law.
That said, the US political system is broken too. And not just at the top, but at the bottom. When was the last time that members of a US congressional judiciary committees heard en masse from voting college students? From slashdotters? Or even individually from you? Congress loves you. They wear your apathy and your ignorance like royal robes.
I wonder if a court would allow "laws" to be expansive enough to mean the physical laws of nature. That is, if (part of) a patent's claim is simply an optimization dictated by, say, mathematics or physics, why should any party be given the power to exclude others from using those principles?
When we treat a discovery or a process as an invention, we run into such problems.
I think this instance of abuse could be used a to get the legal industry thinking more critically about patents, and how an invention differs from a discovery or a process. Can they be helped to recognize the similarities between this tax patent and thousands of expansive scientific patents which are considered legitimate but are actually a restatement of a discovered principle or dictated entirely by external physical laws?
It seems all those old growth forests were getting in the way of that fragile air circulation. I'm so glad we deforested the entirety of North America enough to make the climate liveable.
We should cut the rest down now, just to make sure.
I was thinking maybe Darl would be completely gone and Eben would look fresh and exfoliated: one less wrinkle. The two may be polar opposites, but one certainly has more substance.;)
This is a case of RMS getting his knickers in a twist
Hardly.
Read Eblen Moglen's analysis, 3rd to the last paragraph. What he seems to describe is how Apache's new license would make it difficult for an entity to use patents defensively in some cases. He then goes on to describe a example situation the will ring *very* familiar to those watching the SCO case. Without naming names he essentially says that with such restrictions in place, IBM would not be able to use patents to countersue an abuser such as SCO (who might make contractual/trade secret claims) without losing the license to his free code that uses such patents.
It's not like we need to give SCO, or their successors in vice, any more reasons to behave badly. And that's regardless of which license philosophy you like.
As someone who has lived in Utah and out, I would say that Utah doesn't necessarly have more serious scamming going on than elswhere, but they do have a uniquely multi-polar society with more than their share of gullible ninnies are comingled with another (though more typical) group of greedy perpetrators who never needed to evolve into intelligent scammers with such easy pickin's around.
The combo (clueless greedies + naive ninnies) makes for robust traffic in multilevel skin products and vitamins-that-promise-to-cure-cancer scams.
So Utah is not really more corrupt than other places, but it's different. I believe, for example, that the Olympic scam was typical of other Olympic venues when it happened at Utah, but the notable difference was that the whistle was blown and the (naive) local public reacted with admirable shock.
Darl seems to have emerged from this subculture of manipulators-among-the-naive, but with additional drive from his apparent megalomaniacal personality disorder: why peddle antioxidant vitamins when you can go for three, no five BILLION (with pinky-to-mouth).
No more planning going on here than with the pyramid scheme moguls. He knows he's a scammer (or else his answers at, say Harvard, would be less evasive.) I think that he simply hopes enough people are gullible or naive or complacent enough for him to get away with some fraction of the loot.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot should create a poll for a new company name. If they don't have enought brains to use a search engine they need all the help we can give them.
To keep the snake motif I would suggest the following:
DumbAsp
RattlerBrains
Mambasement
Adder-all
Krait and Barefaced
Parrots and Crows may think they're smart, but it takes a lizard to be Anole-Retentive.
Likeliness calculated off of some random model -- now that there's "science". Yee-haw!
It's idiocy to compare test anomalies as a deviance from a *random* model. Intelligence itself is a deviance from a random model.
Understanding, and even mis-understanding of subject matter or test wording in a classroom by students can be highly correlated or somewhat clustered or not. Even those poor student that choose some answers randomly may subconsciously use the same patterns to do so. Small clusters outside a large "baseline" correlation are conclusive proof of cheating only to an ignoramus, or to someone who's selling you something.
So all it takes is two like-minded thinkers to coincide in their understanding and mis-understanding on some number of answers and they're branded cheaters?
Applying this to pirate content is kind of lame, since payments aren't what drives that. BUT I've always thought the Visa+Mastercard collectively have always had the power to end 90% of all spam, and could do it in a matter of weeks.
All it would take is:
1) terms of service forbidding UCE for products.
2) a few effectively placed honeypot/canary accounts
3) a couple tiger teams to place orders for the products that get spammed, and
4) kick the plug on the commercial accounts that deposit the money.
I would venture to guess that the financial services sector spends more overall on anti-spam/excess bandwidth/malware removal for their own infrastructure than they make from those few stinking transactions.
I've seen that N.H.S. Pinafore show before. I can even still hum some of the snappy lyrics.
I hold when diagnosing a disease,
The expression, "if you please",
A particularly gentlemanly tone implants.
And so do my sisters, and my cousins, and my aunts!
Stick close to your desk
And never check a pulse
and you may all be rulers
of our hospitals.
or something like that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9-ZZRXBEcM with "please" goodness at 4:00 and 5:40
Just who does this Doctor Dick Deadeye think he is? Doesn't he know that a British lab technician is any man's equal, (excepting, of course, mine).
I can see it now: Method and process for reducing MRSA infections by not using drugs.
Don't even try it without paying.
Sorry to hear that. I'd like to chime in on this one.
I have 3 lovely, well adjusted, funny, principled, intelligent daughters. I do not deserve them.
All 3 were valedictorians of their HS, without pushing by us.
Anecdotal? Perhaps, but harder to argue with results * 3.
I've never before shared this much info about what we did. FWIW, YMMV, etc.
1) Give them the gift of self esteem. Demonstrate your believe in their intrinsic worth, and act out of love only. This does not mean giving them every toy they want, but it does mean make sacrifices when you can for the best aspirations of your kids, and constantly showing them how much you appreciate them. Be sentimental and approachable. I think my kids knew I would have been no less their fan if they were D students.
2) They need you, give them all of you. Don't hold back and don't ever fake it with them. They know you; no double standards! If that movie is bad for your kids, parents can do without watching it. Schedule regular whole-family time and 1:1 time. Family dinners together are important.
3) Humor and curiosity are some of the best tools. Demonstrate them. Memorize funny poems, make music together, show how to take things apart, and keep it all upbeat, even crazy.
4) Don't let anyone else raise your kids. That includes daycare and school systems. I lean toward public school system over homeschooling, and it worked out for us, but that depended on what the system had to work with. Social development and problem solving is important. So are friends. Be involved parents, room mothers, etc. Know the kids in their K-6 classes; they end up on your doorstep asking for dates. Here's the tough part, but it proved extremely important: I barely made a living wage and my wife made more than me when we decided one would stay home. It was her call who would. I don't know if I would be able to look my kids in the eyes if we hadn't sacrificed.
5) Money incentives? Oh ya. Make cash match effort was my philosophy. They got a pittance for base allowances but kept job-journals as they learned to write and were richly rewarded for finding new ways to help. In school, the first A is the easiest, even hard not to get. That last A is a bear, it's the subject they don't like. My kids got $1 for the first A, and the pay doubled for each additional A. They nearly bankrupted me. Long term, the investment works out. The youngest just took her MCAT.
Since I see little evidence that timothy or Mr. Chapman read the article, I'll do them a favor so they don't have to click:
< article paycheck="undeserved" >
Hi I'm Agam Shah and I'm writing an article about multicore processors, but these concepts are so new to me that I'm putting quotees around "race conditions" like it's frickin' sharks with lasers.
So then I did a Google search on "parallel programming tools" and it help me get another paragraph out of the way.
Oh, and I quote some lamer analyst who has never heard of NUMA or libhoard, so I'll try to fabricate some crisis that the problems they address might never be solved.
Parallel programming is hard, WAH! WAH!
Oh, except when it's not, as in that trivial application named Photoshop. I'll write one of those next weekend.
It seems the article and the report casts the net too wide.
Some mega-corps (like Coca-Cola and Cisco) actually do business everywhere, and even though they show considerable numbers of businesses in tax havens, those are a small fraction (10%) of the total number of countries in which they have offices. For companies like that, I'd be surprised to find a country where they are *not* operating.
Others, like Chevron and Goldman Sachs, show over half of their foreign operations in tax-haven locales. To me, that sounds very slimy.
Others are somewhere in between, probably representing a somewhat disproportionate presence in tax havens.
What else would you expect? Corporations do behave like psychopaths.
>Fair enough
Not fair at all. First of all, if the blog and myspace post are accurate, then the ISP is citing their TOS as the agreement that requires this. The TOS here dated June 16:
http://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.tos#q21
says *nothing* about copyright registrations being required or any other provenance for hosted content. If they don't have some other reason for the service outage, I'd speculate that they're making up the "terms" as they go.
>why record label dude doesn't simply register
I see no indication of how many files we're talking about. Depending on how it's structured, $35/file could add up to cash that a struggling artist does not have. They probably would not be needed later either, as I think most folks are inclined to respect CC license provisions.
Still, it's hardly a problem going forward. If the label's report bears scrutiny, then the IX brand is toxic.
Are you suggesting that Jupiters migrate?
--
Incoming!
The summary is a little misleading. The judge *already* ruled that SCO Group does not own much of anything, including the UNIX SYSV copyrights, in a summary judgment motion last year.
The biggest issue remaining to be resolved by this trial is how much of the "license" monies given to SCO Group by Microsoft and SUN were for that which SCO Group had no right to license (SYSV), and how much was for SCO Group's product. Given the non-dizzying speed at which SCO's products have been improved and maintained, Novell argues that the vast majority of those millions was due to Novell.
In the mean time it has been entertaining to read the SCO Group's arguments for why they should keep the money to which they have no right, or at least how they should not be required to turn the swag over to Novell. As if our opinion of them could have previously been lower.
The most lucrative of Microsoft's business models seem to have been based on the exploitation of customer and regulatory naivete in a new market. If this is true, and as long as Microsoft doesn't really change, their biggest threat is to have there market grow up, mature, and educate themselves about what has been going on.
Both FOSS and Google help that education process, to different extents, and in different ways. So both are threats. Which is the biggest immediate threat? Whichever one manages to get its message into the dense brains of middle managers first. It's a hard call to make from here.
FOSS's advanced messages (freedom, collaboration, transparency, technical education, etc.) will take a long time to be understood. The FOSS "Free & Cheap Stuff" message is already catching on, but it's not enough of an education in its own right to undo Microsoft's abuses. FOSS supporters who work to thoroughly school their organizations and contacts in the issues do make a big impact.
But I think Google is in a somewhat better position to be the immediate threat. Why? It has a greater power to punch simple "soundbyte" messages, one at a time, into the psyche of of the huddled masses yearning to breath free. I don't know if they're going to do that or not, but they could, and that's the threat.
It's close to the topic of politics -- I don't like soundbytes but recognize their power over the naive. Political discourse would be different if the electorate were uniformly wise and educated on the issues. Not the way it should be, but more the way I think things are, and just my opinion.
Three more pointers:
1) Be very careful with whom you negotiate. It probably does not help to negotiate specifically with, for example, a HR secretary. That will only get cause him/her to report to an executive, "Joe Schmo is being difficult," Even if you're being nice. A good rule of thumb is not to spend much time dickering with someone who says "No" unless that person also has the authority to say "Yes." Instead carefully find out who all this is coming from and what their concerns really are.
2) When applying or interviewing elsewhere, you don't need any better excuse than, "My employer is trying to unilaterally change employment terms in a way that encumbers me for six months, and I don't think that's right. You want my ideas from my first week here, right? That means you don't have any provision like this one, right?" Showing how the agreement is not favorable to a prospective employer as well as to you is a great way to identify unreasonable candidates when you're interviewing new bosses.
3) That same reasoning may be persuasive to you current employer. (I did not try it..) "You wanted and got my ideas from the first day working here, right? Wouldn't I have been less employable if my previous employer had owned all my ideas for the first six months? I did (insert list of accomplishments) in that time. Why are you trying to reduce my employability? What does the DOL think about such tactics?
Oh, and good luck.
While asking a lawyer might be a good idea, a lawyer cannot give you all the information you need to make this decision. You really need a good handle on:
1) Your relationship with your boss
2) Where this initiative is coming from (how far removed from your boss and how influential)
3) The perceived value of you personally to the company
4) The level of your own personal negotiation skills
5) Your perceived integrity
Unless you can accurately assess all of those items, in addition to the legal questions of enforceablilty and compliance with labor regulations, you cannot answer your question. Remember that the legal questions, especially enforeceability, only matter if you have the cash, stamina, strength of will, etc. to go to court. Most people don't. Don't expect the company to give hoot about what your lawyer thinks.
I faced a nearly identical situation 5 years ago, an additional agreement, even the language reads remarkably like what I saw. I had a strong enough position and was perceived to have sufficiently rare skills that I was able to stare down the requests, but not without some *very careful* negotiations. I had to answer verbal cajoling like the following:
"Aww, the company doesn't ever really expect to enforce those provisions, we trust you, they're just to make the lawyers happy" -> "If you don't then we don't need a signed agreement, right?"
"You're the last one not to sign this." -> "I'm the only one left who invents stuff around here."
"It's perfectly legal." -> "Are you practicing law now? I'm still waiting to hear from my lawyers and the Department of Labor."
"You're an at-will employee." -> "Then why should I agree to a contract that extends my obligations, but not yours? What's my consideration?"
"We don't want anything but ideas that you invented here." -> "You've already got those, and besides that's not what the contract says."
So my advice is:
0) Be nice about it. Express honest misgivings. Don't be a prick, and don't confront.
1) Delay delay delay. You may be on your next job anyways by the time it's resolved.
2) Go out on the market immediately, and assess your hireability elsewhere. Have an offer in your back packet just in case. DO NOT BLUFF. (You may just find you're happier elsewhere anyway..)
3) Consult a good labor lawyer IFF you have the will to go to court to enforce whatever rights he says you have in your venue.
I did all the above exept #3, and was offered a much better place to work while the issue dragged out over 3 years. I did not sign, and I left voluntarily. YMMV.
That's a plus from my viewpoint, at least for us westerners. Much more intuitive.
Stellarium and KStars both need manual fixups to get those.
When you wish to take somebody to civil court you must first show them your intention to do so.
You must clearly state your grounds for claim and allow the other party reasonable time (weeks to months, usually) to either counter your argument or settle your claim.
IANAL. Clearly, by your misguided assertions you are not either.
One does not need to look far to see numerous counter-examples. SCO Group's suits, for example.
There may be some venues where your descriptions begin to apply, but not in US Federal courts. The US court system is badly broken. Not coincidentally, the same congressional judiciary committee members who regulate the courts also regulate copyright law.
That said, the US political system is broken too. And not just at the top, but at the bottom. When was the last time that members of a US congressional judiciary committees heard en masse from voting college students? From slashdotters? Or even individually from you? Congress loves you. They wear your apathy and your ignorance like royal robes.
I wonder if a court would allow "laws" to be expansive enough to mean the physical laws of nature. That is, if (part of) a patent's claim is simply an optimization dictated by, say, mathematics or physics, why should any party be given the power to exclude others from using those principles?
When we treat a discovery or a process as an invention, we run into such problems.
I think this instance of abuse could be used a to get the legal industry thinking more critically about patents, and how an invention differs from a discovery or a process. Can they be helped to recognize the similarities between this tax patent and thousands of expansive scientific patents which are considered legitimate but are actually a restatement of a discovered principle or dictated entirely by external physical laws?
We were already reversing it!
It seems all those old growth forests were getting in the way of that fragile air circulation. I'm so glad we deforested the entirety of North America enough to make the climate liveable.
We should cut the rest down now, just to make sure.
Two Words: Jog Dial.
On the first >Sony Clie. Much more applicable than a mouse wheel as prior art.
both Darl and him are vaporised
;)
I was thinking maybe Darl would be completely gone and Eben would look fresh and exfoliated: one less wrinkle. The two may be polar opposites, but one certainly has more substance.
Did you ever wonder what would happen if we get this guy into the same room with Mr. McBride?
My guess: A flash of gamma rays.
This is a case of RMS getting his knickers in a twist
Hardly.
Read Eblen Moglen's analysis, 3rd to the last paragraph. What he seems to describe is how Apache's new license would make it difficult for an entity to use patents defensively in some cases. He then goes on to describe a example situation the will ring *very* familiar to those watching the SCO case. Without naming names he essentially says that with such restrictions in place, IBM would not be able to use patents to countersue an abuser such as SCO (who might make contractual/trade secret claims) without losing the license to his free code that uses such patents.
It's not like we need to give SCO, or their successors in vice, any more reasons to behave badly. And that's regardless of which license philosophy you like.
As someone who has lived in Utah and out, I would say that Utah doesn't necessarly have more serious scamming going on than elswhere, but they do have a uniquely multi-polar society with more than their share of gullible ninnies are comingled with another (though more typical) group of greedy perpetrators who never needed to evolve into intelligent scammers with such easy pickin's around.
The combo (clueless greedies + naive ninnies) makes for robust traffic in multilevel skin products and vitamins-that-promise-to-cure-cancer scams.
So Utah is not really more corrupt than other places, but it's different. I believe, for example, that the Olympic scam was typical of other Olympic venues when it happened at Utah, but the notable difference was that the whistle was blown and the (naive) local public reacted with admirable shock.
Darl seems to have emerged from this subculture of manipulators-among-the-naive, but with additional drive from his apparent megalomaniacal personality disorder: why peddle antioxidant vitamins when you can go for three, no five BILLION (with pinky-to-mouth).
No more planning going on here than with the pyramid scheme moguls. He knows he's a scammer (or else his answers at, say Harvard, would be less evasive.) I think that he simply hopes enough people are gullible or naive or complacent enough for him to get away with some fraction of the loot.
But each side advancing MD5 sums of the entire codebase is cheaper.