It was clearly behind, even at the time--at least a couple of years behind the other 8086 and 68k machines available. It sold for three reasons: I, B, & M, at about $500/per:)
That loss of business would just be sales that amazon *would* have gotten if they hadn't gone to B&N *solely* because of the interface. But if amazon wins, they get a royalty on every B&N sale through the web page. Put in that way, I'm not even sure *why* they want the injunction--the royalties are probably better than the extra business . . .
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. If you need legal advice, please see a lawyerin your own jurisdiction.
While there is no final finding of fact, one of the conditions of the preliminary injunction is that the plaintiff show a substantial likelihood of ultimately prevailing in the case.
Irreparable harm is another consideration, but this surprises me here--damages to amazon from the patent violation can be compensated later with money; they don't seem irreparable. However, damages to B&N would seem irreparable (how do you figure out the lost business?)
>Microsoft has always tried to be in the language >business, no matter how much they suck at it.
How quickly they forget:)
Microsoft's base *was* the language business. They parlayed this into an OS business with IBM, although on the 8 bit machines (nto CP/M), the OS (what there was of it) was hashed into microsoft extended disk basic.
In 1982, microsoft was the good guy that was going to protect us from the evil dominance of IBM, since you could buy ms-dos for other machines rather than ibm & pc-dos.
Usage based pricing isn't necessarily socially desirable. Most goods get classified as private goods, where a public good such as a park or lighthouse is distinguished by two characteristics: 1) nonrival--one person's usage doesn't diminish the value of the good to another, and 2) non-exclusion--it's difficult or impossible to stop anyone else from using it.
Another class of good is "excess capacity," which is nonrival, but possible to exclude people from, such as a movie theatre.
Internet access might (depending upon conditions) fall into this category.
Digress for a moment to your favorite public park. Suppose you go 20 times a year, and pay $100 in taxes to support it, and that you're satisfied with this arrangement. Now suppose that instead of the tax, you pay $5 every time you go. Would you still go as often? Or turn this around: you go 10 times a year, paying $10 each time. If it was a $100 tax, you would go more often (20 times).
Either way, the park is $100. Assuming that it isn't overcrowded, you're much better off with the flat rate. But take it a step further: if you pay the 10x10, you would likely be happier paying $125 for a park with unlimited use--or better yet, the $100 is all that's needed for that park, and you help build yet another one.
There's plenty of ways to manipulate these numbersl, but the point is that there are combinations where you will happily pay *more* for unlimited use than you would have paid in total for metered use. You're happier, and the park system gets better revenue.
*if* the ISP is not running into bandwidth limits (i.e., nonrival), it may see better revenue by flatrate pricing than by usage pricing, while its costs remain the same. If usage is forcing it to lay new lines, it *may* be better with metered usage. However, if technology causes capacity to grow faster than demand, this will not necessarily be the case.
For more info, take a course in public goods or finance at your favorite university:)
Officers Penelopy Persimmons and April Apricot closed in on Dangerous Dan. "Watch out, Penny," cried April. "He's got a gun!" Dangerous Dan snarled at Penny. "You'll never take me alive, copper!"
"No good will come of this," I said. "Ruination and doom." "We don't need it any more; the system is too sophisticated for that." "And when something goes wrong??? How will you boot. " "We've solved it. go away." "Ruination. Doom."
And with that, the barbarians removed the front panel and all the switches that came with it, leaving us to the mercy of the machine as to whether or not it would boot.
The FBI may or may not do all kinds of rotten and devious things. But they're *very good* at what they do, and they're professionals. There is *no* possibility that they are or were investigating these acts as treason, as treason is quite explicitly defined in the Constitution. Maybe they investigated him, but this wasnt' why.
Somebody needs to tell those folks that if you're going to invent stories to make yourself look like a victim, invent plausible ones. This one's a couple of steps behind black helicopters . . .
We have y2k stickers on everything in this university. Hmm, I installed linux *after* they put the sticker on the computer; maybe I should ad a "but not 2038" sticker:)
The *typewriter* has a sticker. And the college has a manual typewriter on standby, in case there's no power for the electrics--but this building would be unusable without poiwer . . .
Growing up in the 1940's, my father decided to put on a puppet show. All of the programs at the time had a sponsor, so he wrote to Kellog asking if Rice Crispies would sponsor his puppet show.
They not only told him yes, they sent him a case of empty boxes to use (and probably had a good chuckle).
Several months ago, when I actually had a few minutes (/. slow that morning?), i found the Kellog's site, and sent a complaint that the brown sugar pop-tarts were consistently underfrosted. They sent a message back with an 800 number and a reference code, asking me to call, but I still haven't had a chance.
Harness the/. effect for good rather than evil. If you're frustrated by the failure to fully frost the brown sugar pop-tarts, and normally buy Kellog instead of generic due to the mor thorough frosting, let them know:) [please, no wannabes, and they're not going to GPL poptarts, so don't ask:)]
Hmm, while I'm on Kellogs . . ..Dr. Kellog produced his corn flakes for the same reason that Dr. Grahm introduced his cracker. These folks were of the Malthusian bent, and were opposed to sex *within* marriage. Both of these products were meant to suppress the sexual appetite. While history has kept this information, it does not record Mrs. Grahm's and Mrs. Kellog's feelings on the matter . . .
:)
This is a real fun one to bring up when we hit that unit in my econ classes . . .
The Bush campaign did *not* originate the willie horton issue--it had been an issue (wiht ads) for one of Dukakis' democratic rivals. After Dukakis had the nomination, the Bush folks started using the formerly democratic issue.
> might help to keep the 40-50 intelligent >posters talking with each other,
exactly >and restrict the 10-20 odd flame-idiots to the >lowest of lows.
As in, "no access." I don't see any reason for a private operation with this intent to provide access to the troublemakers. In the one-line BBS period, this was done by simply revoking accounts.
>Over here, we only get to post stuff well after >discussions have ended over there in Yankeeland. >I think the reason for this is that slashdot is >organised on a day-by-day basis. After >discussions are more than a day or two old, they >die.
I think it's more the story-by-story orientation than the day-by-day. With usenet, topics can last for days, months, or years (are the heinlein flamewars still running in whatever net.scifi was renamed? And talk.origins seems to be still running the same arguments (with the same people?) as used to be in net.religion.
>* Different people have different concepts of >"intelligent discourse".
no problem. They'll choose different forums. Part of the problem that led to the second mailing list was that those who came afterwards wanted somethign entirely different than we did (ok, that was the major part. They also complained about anything non-football, and got vicious about the 8-10 line signatures of one of the core members). I thought that better than 90% of the boards in San Diego at the time were infantile (or less!), so I stuckwith 2 or 3 that I liked.
>* Somebody needs to do the rating; they need to >do it _VERY_ well,
I think this is the easy part, actually. At bbs size, it can even be a single person. On our private list, nominations require affirmative votes by two-thirds of the members, with any member able to veto. This is practical for the twenty or so of us, it wouldn't be practical at 50 or 100 (but we don't want to get that big. The list is already larger than originally conceived, and new members are usually close relatives or close friends, though occasionally we invite someone with intelligence & wit from the first group [yeah, a couple of us are still active there]).
That's not how they do it, though. They ship with the GPL, and the authors even frequently think that it's GPL software. But it's not, and this is done without changing a word of the GPL--the actions override the text.
This usually happens because the GPL was a poor choice for the project, and that the developers didn't fully understand the consequences of the viral nature of the license. That is, it usually happens in projects that can't possibly be GPL'd.
The solution is not editing the text, but another file that explains what the text means in light of what really happened. Alternatively, a LICENSE file could state that the terms in the file in the directory GPL apply save as follows. Either way, the copyright isn't violated.
It hasn't necessarily disappeared, but perhaps just changed form.
Several years ago, our football newsgroup was overrun with yahoos from another team, and we formed an open mailing list. This too quickly became obnoxious, and a handful of us sececeded and formed a private list--invitation only. It runs off topic as often as on-topic, which is how we like it. It has the flavor of the old small BBS's.
THen again, the multi-line BBS's were on the rise about the same time I moved and stopped using them (1990), so my take may be a little different.
At times, I toy with a hybrid of these ideas on the internet--a general site, with open access to the lower levels, with users being invited up as they show signs of intelligence/conscious thought.
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. If you need legal advice, see a laywer licensed in your jurisdiction.
Reality is that there are plenty of GPL-derived, or Quasi-GPL (QGPL) licenses already out there.
*Every* time someone purports to release something under the GPL but codes to a non-GPL library (KDE & QT, lyx & xforms, etc.), the result is not GPL, simply by the way the law works.
These products *do not* violate their own license; this is legally impossible. Instead, the actions taken by the authors amend to purported license. With LyX, we made the qualifications explicit a couple of releases ago; KDE may be too far into flamewar for this to be possible.
>I copylefted some source files by slapping on a ^^^^ >"Copyright (C) 199 Neil Halelamien". ^^^^^ a) These don't match; this makes no sense. b) your copyright protection ended about 1700 years ago:)
Caveat: I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. I'm probably not licensed in your jurisdiction, and I'm certainly not licensed in Australia. See an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction if you need legal advice on this or any other matter.
I have no direct familiarity with Australian constitutional issues (save that silly idea to add a president with political power; at least a distant figurehead queen is harmless . ..). However, Australia and the rest of the English speaking world draw their rule of law and notion of government from the Common Law of England, with which I am familiar.
Whether expressed explicitly, as in the U.S. Bill of Rights, or through tradition, as in England, the law puts finite limits on the powers of government. THat is, there are limits on the ability of the government to pass legislation that changes the law in certain ways, and legislation that purports to do so simply is not the law.
In the U.S., this wouldn't get out of committee in Congress (though state legislatures regularly turn out attempts this stupid, and initiative processes do far worse). In Britain, I'm fairly certian that this wouldn't fly (except when dealing with wartime emergencies). I'll be sadly disappointed if the Australian system doesn't have sufficient checks & balances to handle this. Good Lord, these folks just reinvented the general warrant . . .
OK, just checking. SO it is that you're ignorant about both past and present; at least you're consistent.
[Either that or he has a rational explanation about how the Catholic Church (as an institution, not just Christian morality) caused the collapse of the Roman Empire, rather than a rant about the knowledge the Church preserved as society collapsed was kept to itself for too long.
But then again, it's an AC, so it needn't be rational . ..]
>C and Unix -with a lot of help from Microsoft- >have plunged the computer industry into the >dark ages like the Catholic Church plunged Europe >into the Dark Ages.
intriguing, I don't see how to parse this. Is this supposed to mean that C, unix, and MS are all horrible, by the analogy that the Catholic Church actually plunged Europe into the dark ages?
Or is it using the falsity of the latter statement to claim that C, unix, and ms are all free of guilt, and that there is no dark age?
Yes. ALthough when most states lay out their philosophy, they at most use 3.
> The "R" with the greatest potential for reducing >costs for the average citizen is the one which > you discount: Rehabilitation.
It's not that I discount it--I used to believe in it. But with very few exceptions, it just plain doesn't work. It's not any bias that I have, but a bitter conclusion from dealing with criminals.
>If we could get at, understand,
This we have. It's easier to steal, and they have a weak understanding (at best) of the correllation between crime and being sent back to prison.
> and change the >reasons for so many people returning to prison, >we would dramatically reduce the cost of criminal >justice, as well as save a few souls.
Yes, if we could find a way. I no longer have much hope, but still think we should give them chances to learn productive skills while incarcerated.
Incidentally, the notion of a penitentiary comes from the Quakers. The idea was (roughly) to leave them in the cell with nothing but a Bible, and eventually they might find the error of their ways, become penitent, and leave a good person.
Slashdot Mirror
It was clearly behind, even at the time--at least a couple of years behind the other 8086 and 68k machines available. It sold for three reasons: I, B, & M, at about $500/per :)
That loss of business would just be sales that amazon *would* have gotten if they hadn't gone to B&N *solely* because of the interface. But if amazon wins, they get a royalty on every B&N sale through the web page. Put in that way, I'm not even sure *why* they want the injunction--the royalties are probably better than the extra business . . .
hawk, esq.
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. If you need legal advice, please see a lawyerin your own jurisdiction.
While there is no final finding of fact, one of the conditions of the preliminary injunction is that the plaintiff show a substantial likelihood of ultimately prevailing in the case.
Irreparable harm is another consideration, but this surprises me here--damages to amazon from the patent violation can be compensated later with money; they don't seem irreparable. However, damages to B&N would seem irreparable (how do you figure out the lost business?)
>Microsoft has always tried to be in the language
:)
:)
>business, no matter how much they suck at it.
How quickly they forget
Microsoft's base *was* the language business. They parlayed this into an OS business with IBM, although on the 8 bit machines (nto CP/M), the OS (what there was of it) was hashed into microsoft extended disk basic.
In 1982, microsoft was the good guy that was going to protect us from the evil dominance of IBM, since you could buy ms-dos for other machines rather than ibm & pc-dos.
The roles seem to have reversed
\begin{professor_of_economics}
:)
Usage based pricing isn't necessarily socially desirable. Most goods get classified as private goods, where a public good such as a park or lighthouse is distinguished by two characteristics:
1) nonrival--one person's usage doesn't diminish the value of the good to another, and
2) non-exclusion--it's difficult or impossible to stop anyone else from using it.
Another class of good is "excess capacity," which is nonrival, but possible to exclude people from, such as a movie theatre.
Internet access might (depending upon conditions) fall into this category.
Digress for a moment to your favorite public park. Suppose you go 20 times a year, and pay $100 in taxes to support it, and that you're satisfied with this arrangement. Now suppose that instead of the tax, you pay $5 every time you go. Would you still go as often? Or turn this around: you go 10 times a year, paying $10 each time. If it was a $100 tax, you would go more often (20 times).
Either way, the park is $100. Assuming that it isn't overcrowded, you're much better off with the flat rate. But take it a step further: if you pay the 10x10, you would likely be happier paying $125 for a park with unlimited use--or better yet, the $100 is all that's needed for that park, and you help build yet another one.
There's plenty of ways to manipulate these numbersl, but the point is that there are combinations where you will happily pay *more* for unlimited use than you would have paid in total for metered use. You're happier, and the park system gets better revenue.
*if* the ISP is not running into bandwidth limits (i.e., nonrival), it may see better revenue by flatrate pricing than by usage pricing, while its costs remain the same. If usage is forcing it to lay new lines, it *may* be better with metered usage. However, if technology causes capacity to grow faster than demand, this will not necessarily be the case.
For more info, take a course in public goods or finance at your favorite university
\end{professor_hawk}
Bad ganster mvoies, maybe?
Officers Penelopy Persimmons and April Apricot closed in on Dangerous Dan.
"Watch out, Penny," cried April. "He's got a gun!"
Dangerous Dan snarled at Penny. "You'll never take me alive, copper!"
:)
"No good will come of this," I said. "Ruination and doom."
"We don't need it any more; the system is too sophisticated for that."
"And when something goes wrong??? How will you boot. "
"We've solved it. go away."
"Ruination. Doom."
And with that, the barbarians removed the front panel and all the switches that came with it, leaving us to the mercy of the machine as to whether or not it would boot.
hawk, who really wants his front panels back
The FBI may or may not do all kinds of rotten and devious things. But they're *very good* at what they do, and they're professionals. There is *no* possibility that they are or were investigating these acts as treason, as treason is quite explicitly defined in the Constitution. Maybe they investigated him, but this wasnt' why.
Somebody needs to tell those folks that if you're going to invent stories to make yourself look like a victim, invent plausible ones. This one's a couple of steps behind black helicopters . . .
We have y2k stickers on everything in this university. Hmm, I installed linux *after* they put the sticker on the computer; maybe I should ad a "but not 2038" sticker :)
The *typewriter* has a sticker. And the college has a manual typewriter on standby, in case there's no power for the electrics--but this building would be unusable without poiwer . . .
Growing up in the 1940's, my father decided to put on a puppet show. All of the programs at the time had a sponsor, so he wrote to Kellog asking if Rice Crispies would sponsor his puppet show.
/. effect for good rather than evil. If you're frustrated by the failure to fully frost the brown sugar pop-tarts, and normally buy Kellog instead of generic due to the mor thorough frosting, let them know :) [please, no wannabes, and they're not going to GPL poptarts, so don't ask :)]
.Dr. Kellog produced his corn flakes for the same reason that Dr. Grahm introduced his cracker. These folks were of the Malthusian bent, and were opposed to sex *within* marriage. Both of these products were meant to suppress the sexual appetite. While history has kept this information, it does not record Mrs. Grahm's and Mrs. Kellog's feelings on the matter . . .
They not only told him yes, they sent him a case of empty boxes to use (and probably had a good chuckle).
Several months ago, when I actually had a few minutes (/. slow that morning?), i found the Kellog's site, and sent a complaint that the brown sugar pop-tarts were consistently underfrosted. They sent a message back with an 800 number and a reference code, asking me to call, but I still haven't had a chance.
Harness the
Hmm, while I'm on Kellogs . . .
:)
This is a real fun one to bring up when we hit that unit in my econ classes . . .
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice.
Essentially everything you say about copyright here is just plain wrong.
Charging for the infringing use is not relevant.
Scanning library books would violate the copyrights of the books' authors.
"His words become public" has no meaning. Being a politician does *not* cause forfeiture of other rights. Besides, it's the pictures.
hawk, who thinks slashdot needs a -1 counterpart for "informative," perhaps "just plain wrong."
The Bush campaign did *not* originate the willie horton issue--it had been an issue (wiht ads) for one of Dukakis' democratic rivals. After Dukakis had the nomination, the Bush folks started using the formerly democratic issue.
> very similar to the phenomenon of
:)
>Five-Member-Male-Vocalist-Groups
proof positive that our educational system is declining--folks can't even get the number of singers in a quartet right anymore
It starts in Nevada, and continues for 12,500 miles in all directions :)
hawk, esq., who refuses to wear those silly eastern ties stolen from 19th century british officers' uniforms
> might help to keep the 40-50 intelligent
>posters talking with each other,
exactly
>and restrict the 10-20 odd flame-idiots to the
>lowest of lows.
As in, "no access." I don't see any reason for a private operation with this intent to provide access to the troublemakers. In the one-line BBS period, this was done by simply revoking accounts.
>Over here, we only get to post stuff well after
>discussions have ended over there in Yankeeland.
>I think the reason for this is that slashdot is
>organised on a day-by-day basis. After
>discussions are more than a day or two old, they
>die.
I think it's more the story-by-story orientation than the day-by-day. With usenet, topics can last for days, months, or years (are the heinlein flamewars still running in whatever net.scifi was renamed? And talk.origins seems to be still running the same arguments (with the same people?) as used to be in net.religion.
>* Different people have different concepts of
>"intelligent discourse".
no problem. They'll choose different forums. Part of the problem that led to the second mailing list was that those who came afterwards wanted somethign entirely different than we did (ok, that was the major part. They also complained about anything non-football, and got vicious about the 8-10 line signatures of one of the core members). I thought that better than 90% of the boards in San Diego at the time were infantile (or less!), so I stuckwith 2 or 3 that I liked.
>* Somebody needs to do the rating; they need to
>do it _VERY_ well,
I think this is the easy part, actually. At bbs size, it can even be a single person. On our private list, nominations require affirmative votes by two-thirds of the members, with any member able to veto. This is practical for the twenty or so of us, it wouldn't be practical at 50 or 100 (but we don't want to get that big. The list is already larger than originally conceived, and new members are usually close relatives or close friends, though occasionally we invite someone with intelligence & wit from the first group [yeah, a couple of us are still active there]).
That's not how they do it, though. They ship with the GPL, and the authors even frequently think that it's GPL software. But it's not, and this is done without changing a word of the GPL--the actions override the text.
This usually happens because the GPL was a poor choice for the project, and that the developers didn't fully understand the consequences of the viral nature of the license. That is, it usually happens in projects that can't possibly be GPL'd.
The solution is not editing the text, but another file that explains what the text means in light of what really happened. Alternatively, a LICENSE file could state that the terms in the file in the directory GPL apply save as follows. Either way, the copyright isn't violated.
hawk, esq.
It hasn't necessarily disappeared, but perhaps just changed form.
Several years ago, our football newsgroup was overrun with yahoos from another team, and we formed an open mailing list. This too quickly became obnoxious, and a handful of us sececeded and formed a private list--invitation only. It runs off topic as often as on-topic, which is how we like it. It has the flavor of the old small BBS's.
THen again, the multi-line BBS's were on the rise about the same time I moved and stopped using them (1990), so my take may be a little different.
At times, I toy with a hybrid of these ideas on the internet--a general site, with open access to the lower levels, with users being invited up as they show signs of intelligence/conscious thought.
someday, in my spare time . . .
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. If you need legal advice, see a laywer licensed in your jurisdiction.
Reality is that there are plenty of GPL-derived, or Quasi-GPL (QGPL) licenses already out there.
*Every* time someone purports to release something under the GPL but codes to a non-GPL library (KDE & QT, lyx & xforms, etc.), the result is not GPL, simply by the way the law works.
These products *do not* violate their own license; this is legally impossible. Instead, the actions taken by the authors amend to purported license. With LyX, we made the qualifications explicit a couple of releases ago; KDE may be too far into flamewar for this to be possible.
>I copylefted some source files by slapping on a :)
^^^^
>"Copyright (C) 199 Neil Halelamien".
^^^^^
a) These don't match; this makes no sense.
b) your copyright protection ended about 1700 years ago
I figured that one deserved at least one funny point . . . er, pointum, no, pointon, awe, nuts. . .
Yikes! does that mean they're all female, as in "alumnae"?
hawk, who learned to be careful about greek & latin endings when taking classes from Jesuits who were fluent in both
Caveat: I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. I'm probably not licensed in your jurisdiction, and I'm certainly not licensed in Australia. See an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction if you need legal advice on this or any other matter.
.). However, Australia and the rest of the English speaking world draw their rule of law and notion of government from the Common Law of England, with which I am familiar.
I have no direct familiarity with Australian constitutional issues (save that silly idea to add a president with political power; at least a distant figurehead queen is harmless . .
Whether expressed explicitly, as in the U.S. Bill of Rights, or through tradition, as in England, the law puts finite limits on the powers of government. THat is, there are limits on the ability of the government to pass legislation that changes the law in certain ways, and legislation that purports to do so simply is not the law.
In the U.S., this wouldn't get out of committee in Congress (though state legislatures regularly turn out attempts this stupid, and initiative processes do far worse). In Britain, I'm fairly certian that this wouldn't fly (except when dealing with wartime emergencies). I'll be sadly disappointed if the Australian system doesn't have sufficient checks & balances to handle this. Good Lord, these folks just reinvented the general warrant . . .
hawk, esq.
OK, just checking. SO it is that you're ignorant about both past and present; at least you're consistent.
.]
[Either that or he has a rational explanation about how the Catholic Church (as an institution, not just Christian morality) caused the collapse of the Roman Empire, rather than a rant about the knowledge the Church preserved as society collapsed was kept to itself for too long.
But then again, it's an AC, so it needn't be rational . .
>C and Unix -with a lot of help from Microsoft-
>have plunged the computer industry into the
>dark ages like the Catholic Church plunged Europe
>into the Dark Ages.
intriguing, I don't see how to parse this. Is this supposed to mean that C, unix, and MS are all horrible, by the analogy that the Catholic Church actually plunged Europe into the dark ages?
Or is it using the falsity of the latter statement to claim that C, unix, and ms are all free of guilt, and that there is no dark age?
> [four R's]
Yes. ALthough when most states lay out their philosophy, they at most use 3.
> The "R" with the greatest potential for reducing
>costs for the average citizen is the one which
> you discount: Rehabilitation.
It's not that I discount it--I used to believe in it. But with very few exceptions, it just plain doesn't work. It's not any bias that I have, but a bitter conclusion from dealing with criminals.
>If we could get at, understand,
This we have. It's easier to steal, and they have a weak understanding (at best) of the correllation between crime and being sent back to prison.
> and change the
>reasons for so many people returning to prison,
>we would dramatically reduce the cost of criminal
>justice, as well as save a few souls.
Yes, if we could find a way. I no longer have much hope, but still think we should give them chances to learn productive skills while incarcerated.
Incidentally, the notion of a penitentiary comes from the Quakers. The idea was (roughly) to leave them in the cell with nothing but a Bible, and eventually they might find the error of their ways, become penitent, and leave a good person.