Unfortunately, it is technicalities like these that ultimately win the day in court.
Unfortunately for SCO, this is a technicality that does not do them any favors. Section 5 states:
You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or
distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are
prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.
And section 2 prohibits the distribution of GPLed and proprietary code in one package. So SCO is either admitting to violating the GPL, or violating copyright law, or maybe both. Although, when they claim that technologies such as RCU and JFS are their IP while simultaneously admiting that they do not own the copyrights or patents to those technologies, it makes me wonder if they even understand what a copyright is in the first place. Their arguments so far consist of nothing more than a series of mutually exclusive assersions. One day Darl is insisting that this is an IP violation case, and the next day some other SCO monkey is insisting that there is no IP issue at all. I'm just waiting for the day when Darl starts yelling "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"
But that's not all. SCO is also distributing kernel 2.4.19 (released Aug. 2, 2002) in compiled form only. If you want, you could download it and demand a copy of the source code (complete with a GPL license).
That file does not appear to contain a compiled kernel, but the contents reveal just how moronic the monkeys at SCO are. While they removed the regular source, they neglected to remove the patch files. In the patch tarball, you can find gems such as 020_rcu-poll. That's right, the very same IBM-copyrighted RCU code that SCO claims is infringing their IP by being present in Linux. The patch file even includes the complete copyright and GPL licensing statement from IBM.
How can they not know about this?
They are distributing the supposedly infringing version of Linux as I type this. Regardless of what they may or may not have known in the past, they certainly do know that whatever code they believe they own is in Linux right now, yet they continue to distribute it in blatant violation of the license.
A complete Linux source distribution can be found here: ftp.sco.com/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/Server/CSS A-2003-020.0/SRPMS
SCO has removed the real source from many of the Linux distributions on their FTP site, but they still have it in two places that I know of. It is extremely difficult to understand how they can be unintentionally distributing the code under the terms of the GPL when it is still available on THEIR FTP site months after they claimed that it is tainted. If this was ever a case of unintentional distribution, it is certainly not now. At this point they have either released the entire kernel under the terms of the GPL (and thus have no ability to assert additional IP rights) or they are distributing the code without a license and violating the copyrights of thousands of Linux developers. The GPL is very clear about this. Either you agree to the terms of the GPL unconditionally, or you are subject to normal copyright laws which give you no right to redistribute. This may be an unconventional use of copyright, but if it is ever "tested" in court the judge will rule based on the same principles of copyright and contract law that apply to everything else. There is nothing special about the GPL in that regard that requires testing in a court.
I don't think you understand how managers work. There are many people in this world who believe that logic is optional and, unfortunately, many managers fall into that category. This becomes more extreme as you approach the higher levels of an organization. These people will agree that your argument is logically correct and that your proposed course of action seems more reasonable. But they will continue to insist that their alternative is more correct even though they can't say why. They just know that whatever bizarre scheme they have come up with will work. It may sound like I'm joking or exagerating, but I have seen this happen countless times in real life. It is no mystery to me why so many large IT projects go down in flames.
There is not constitutional right to having your vote counted fairly or acurately.
Are you daft? A right to vote implies a right to have that vote counted correctly. And you also have rights beyond what the Constitution explicitely lays out, Scalia notwithstanding. Read the Ninth Amendment and ponder its meaning.
I think you mean that you can freely choose not to buy products from companies that use this technology as long as you know which companies are and are not using it. Just like you can freely choose not to buy food products that contain genetically modified organisms. Except that no one actually advertises their products as containing GMOs and US labeling laws make it illegal to advertise that a product does not contain GMOs (how's that for logic?). Expect the same thing to happen with RFID. Good plan.
It's an excellent argument except for the fact that it reveals a fundamental ignorance of how Freenet works. Oppenheim wants to obfuscate the discussion by pretending that Freenet was designed with the same goals and capabilities as the other P2P technologies, but it wasn't. Freenet was not designed to be an easily searchable medium. It was designed to make it difficult to erase information or track down who published it. One of the biggest early criticisms of Freenet was that the technology makes searching incredibly difficult.
So it is correct to say that people are not going to do Freenet searches for "Main Street Kansas" to find real eastate listings. But that does not mean that the information is unavailable. A person would instead find a Freenet site that lists Kansas real estate (probably finding the site key with the help of a Freenent directory service) and would then search or browse that specific site for Main Street listings.
IBM assigned many (all?) of its linux copyrights to the FSF. So they do have a direct interest in kernel, and probably in the code that SCO claims is their's.
So, according to SCO, Linux itself became a derivative work of SCO IP once IBM contributed any code. Now, years later, much has been added to the Linux kernel by others and much other software has been developed using GCC on Linux. SCO's claim is that none of this would have been possible if it wasn't for the fact that Linux became a derivative of Unix System V, and thus, all kernel code or userspace code since then are essentially Unix System V derivatives as well.
This has been baffling me. I don't understand why in the world SCO would make such a blanket claim because it essentially kills their case. As has been pointed out several billion times now, SCO distributed Linux (and continue to distribute it -- I downloaded a full copy off their FTP server last night). It is conceivable that they could convince a judge that they didn't know that there was system v code in the kernel when they were distributing it, so they should not be held to the terms of the GPL. But by claiming that everything IBM did is a derivative of system v they have expanded the claims to the point that they could not possibly have just noticed it. If they know now that any technology contained in AIX is a derivative work even if no SCO code is in the specific components, how could they have not known that before? That is not something that requires any experience with the Linux code at all and, if true, would have to have been obvious to them all along. They can't just suddenly "discover" that all of these systems are derivative work even if they share no code.
In any case, the point is that if they knew about these broad "rights" since they purchased the system v rights, then they have no defense against the GPL. Not only are they prohibited from making these claims now, but their right to distribute Linux under the GPL has been revoked by the fact that they made the claims at all. Which means that they are currently violating the Linux (and maybe GNU) copyrights. I hope some of the major copyright holders are taking notice.
They probably will come up will some sort of nonsense like that. But their defense against GPL violations when they sent out the 1500 letters in May was that the GPL only applies to code that has a properly attached copyright notice according to section 0. So the sections of "copied" code are not under the GPL, while everything else is. Of course, sections 3 and 7 close up that loop hole, but this is even more problematic for their defense. Even if IBM was contractually prohibited from distributing the RCU code, they still own the copyright. There is no way that SCO can claim that the copyright is somehow theirs because you can't transfer copyrights by contract. They have to be physically signed over after the fact (there is a short discussion of this somewhere on the FSF web site). So even if IBM violated a contract with SCO, the copyright notices for the RCU code are correct and SCO loses its only feeble defense.
Invalidating the GPL won't really help SCO at all. If the GPL becomes invalid, then everything reverts to standard copyright law, which means that know one has a legal right to distribute Linux at all, including SCO. They wouldn't be able to collect much licensing revenue because most commercial users would just migrate to *BSD. Suing over BSD would be much more difficult for them because their predecessors already settled a lawsuit involving that code (and essentially lost).
I don't see any reason why the GPL would be invalidated, however. The GPL grants people rights that they do not have under normal copyright law, unlike most licenses that seek to remove rights. There are rules that the distributors have to follow in order to be granted the GPL rights, but it's hard to see how that could possibly be a problem. If it was invalidated, the court would be saying that the GPL grants people additional rights that are too restrictive. That's not logically coherent. And the GPL doesn't prevent anyone from asserting IP rights. By agreeing to follow the terms of the GPL, they are agreeing to not assert additional IP rights over that code. The agreement is the important part. Nobody is forced to distribute GPL'd code, it is done by choice. Any loss of IP rights on the part of SCO is because they chose to give them up.
They seem to have removed all of the kernels, at least in every place I looked. But they aren't nearly as clever as they think they are. From the file kernel-source-2.4.19.SuSE-106.nosrc.rpm (notice that they removed the source from the source rpm -- I confirmed that). But there are quite a few patches left. Inside patches.tar.bz is the file 020_rcu-poll. To quote...
+ * Read-Copy Update mechanism for mutual exclusion + * + * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify + * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
and a little farther down is
+ * Copyright (c) International Business Machines Corp., 2001 + * + * Author: Dipankar Sarma <dipankar@in.ibm.com> + * + * Based on the original work by Paul McKenney <paul.mckenney@us.ibm.com> + * and inputs from Andrea Arcangeli, Rusty Russell, Andi Kleen etc.
What have you got to say for yourselves now, dumbasses? This may not contain the exact stuff that they're all worked up about (although it sounds like they want to claim RCU entirely), but it is a patch for source that does contain the offending material and therefore a derivative work.
SCO will continue to honor all contractual obligations with existing customers including product updates, service, and support.
In other words, they have every intention of continuing to distribute Linux to at least some of their current customers. They have not only violated the GPL in the past, but they are planning to violate it in the future.
That's a protest?? That sounds more like a friendly dispute between old women to me.
Where are the angry chants? Where are the mad rushes on the SCO building to break into McBride's office and hold it hostage? Where are the flying bags of flaming poop? Where are the riot police for God sake???
Those people should come to Seattle and see how to do it right (or go to Italy, which beats Seattle hands down). If they don't break out the tear gas and pepper spray, it isn't a protest. Clubbings are an extra bonus.
Protecting copyrights and trademarks is one thing, elliminating competition with legal bullying is something entirely different. The fact that workers at Blizzard have families to feed is completely irrelevant. They are not entitled to be free from competition, even if the competition is giving its product away.
Would you care to identify what IP is being infringed upon that Blizzard needs to protect? It can't be copyright. Copyright does not protect ideas, it protects implementations. I don't think there is any accusation of Freecraft taking code from Blizzard. It can't be trademark because the supreme court recently ruled that actual economic harm has to be demonstrated for infringement to have occured. And it has to be harm caused by consumers confusing one product or company with another. Being reminded of another product or company is not enough (ie soundalike names are alright as long as no confusion can be proven). That leaves patent infringement. Has FreeCraft violated any patents? I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that they didn't.
It is completely proper for people to be upset by a company harrassing a bunch of hobbyists by claiming IP infringement when they know very well that no infringement has taken place. They should compete with products, not with lawyers. If you have evidence of IP infringement, then by all means post it and prove me wrong.
BTW... I program Free software and I also have a real job, a wife, and a child. I have not lived with my parents for many, many years. I can write Free software because I make a lot of money writing software in my regular job. That is the case for most Free software programmers. I have yet to meet a single Free software programmer working on a serious project (mp3 players et al excluded) who fits your slacker stereotype.
The ruling was that the plaintif has to demonstrate that actual economic harm has been done. It isn't enough for a company to simply state that harm has been done, or even to show that the potential for harm exists. The opinion even acknowleges that providing the level of proof that is required would be extremely difficult and expensive. This is good because it places the burden of proof back on the plaintif where it should be. And it should put an end to lawsuits about one name sounding like another (of course, nothing will stop legal bullying of hobbyists). The trademark laws are intended to prevent someone other than Blizzard from making a game called StarCraft or WarCraft. It is not intended to stop competitors from making similar games or even making games with similar titles. No one is going to think that FreeCraft it a version of WarCraft that Blizzard decided to publish on SF for free and then not buy WarCraft. They may not buy WarCraft because they think using FreeCraft is good enough, but competition is not trademark infringement.
It is too bad that despite a unanimous ruling from the supreme court, companies are still engaging in this nonsense. Most likely, it would be enough to have an IP lawyer send them a response saying "you know you can't win a case like this anymore." But even that can be prohibitively expensive for hobbyists. What is really needed is a legal defense fund for Free software projects. However, it is doubtful that anyone will actually set one up, or that many Free software programmers (or users) would donate to it even though it would be in everyone's best interest.
I think the second claim is the most interesting because it is relevant to McBride's and Sontag's previous comments on why SCO is not in violation of the GPL. When they originally sent out the infamous 1500 letters, several interviewers asked them if they were in violation of the GPL. The response then was that they were not in violation because the GPL did not apply to the sections of code they were concerned with. Their reasoning was that section 0 of the GPL states that in order to apply the GPL to some code, the copyright owner has to put a copyright notice and reference to the GPL in the file. Since the "stolen" code was copyright SCO, the terms of section 0 were never met (because someone other than the copyright holder placed the notice in the file). Of course, this is a ridiculous argument because other sections of the GPL close up the loophole SCO believes it found.
But now SCO has gone beyond claiming that it is just code copied from system V that is in violation. They are making all sorts of claims about having IP rights to JFS, RCU, etc. By making these additional claims, they have trashed their own defense against GPL violations! Even if it is true that they have some sort of right to prevent IBM from distributing that code, that right would have to be based on a contract, not the copyright. IBM owns the copyright to the original JFS code, and they assigned the copyright for the Linux port to the FSF. So, the JFS and other code clearly conforms to section 0 and SCO's only defense against GPL violations is gone. The code was published with the proper copyright attributions and SCO redistrbuted it under the terms of the GPL. Now what have the got to say for themselves?
This will also make it far more difficult for them to make any claims of inadvertent distribution of their IP. That kind of argument might be possible for the system V code, but they cannot possibly say that they didn't know the JFS and SMP code was in there and there was never any question about where the JFS code came from.
Another new claim that is really weird is the restricted technology claim. They say that IBM violated the law by making the Linux technologies available to Syria and other banned countries (since it is possible to build supercomputers out of Linux clusters). But again, SCO was a Linux distributer, and they made the exact same technology available to the same people! And they did a lot more of it than IBM ever did. SCO had better hope that the government doesn't side with them, because they can expect criminal prosecution if that interpretation is correct. SCO may become its own prosecutor if it makes that argument in court.
Re:Heres some evidence. To anyone who argued with
on
Working with ADHD?
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· Score: 1
This demonstrates that using your brain can prevent dementia, or at least lessen the effects. The study is specifically concerned with maintenance of memory functions, not concentration or attentiveness which is affected by ADD. While memory problems can have a negegative impact on concentration, having a good memory does not guarantee good concentration. Memory is a prerequisite for concentration, but it is not the only prerequisite.
With regard to ADD, one of the results of increasing dopamine levels (what the meds do) is to decrease the frequency of randomly firing neurons. In other words, it reduces the amount of background noise in areas of the brain that respond to dopamine. This was even mentioned in one of the articles you posted earlier. The reduction in background noise has implications for concentration, but it also has profound implications for the way memories are formed. One of my areas of research is the influence of background noise on Hebbian learning in neural networks, so I have dealt with this exact subject in my own experiments and simulations (these are biologically realistic neural nets, so the critisism that artificial nets are poor representations of biological nervous systems does not apply). It turns out that a certain level background noise is required for Hebbian learning to work correctly. There is an optimum level of noise -- too much or too little and the network will still learn, but it will not learn anything useful and the learning may actually remove useful functions from the network. A person whose dopamine levels are out of whack will not receive the same benefit from brain exercises as someone who has normal dopamine levels (this probably applies to other neurotransmitters as well). There will still be some benefit, but not to the same degree. So it is true that you can rewire your brain, but it is not true that the rewiring will always be useful. In the case of people who suffer from mental disorders, their brains are likely to be physically incapable of "learning" their way out of the illness. Once medicated and functioning properly, it is sometimes possible for a brain to learn how to remain normal (become more resilient to background noise in the case of ADD). If successful, a person may be able to go off of the medication at some point. This ability will vary from person to person and will not be constant across all disorders. What works for some people will not work for everyone. Some people will always require medication to function normally, and some people will not respond to medication or cognitive therapy. Luckily, they are the exception and not the rule.
You are designed in a way which is not compatible with certain aspects of society, so what? Everyone else has design problems too, no ones a perfect fit.
I don't give a rat's ass about the rest of society. I treat my ADD because it has a negative impact on my life, not because it prevents me from adhering to social norms. Medication makes my life more coherent and that is a desirable effect. You can argue all day about how many people have ADD and to what degree and whether or not it is a deliberate feature of the human species (whatever that is supposed to mean). The fact remains that I have a condition that negatively impacts my life and the medication that treats this condition improves the quality of my life. I really don't understand why some people have a problem with that.
You keep on talking about the medications as if they can be used for a mental boost when you are having a bad day. The newer drugs are not amphetimenes and will not have that kind of instant effect. Wellbutrin, for example, often has to be taken for over a month before it reaches its full potency. Popping a few of those pills on a whim might make you vomit, but it will not help you concentrate. And none of the drugs will be benificial to people who already have a normal or above normal level of dopamine. Increasing dopamine beyond the optimum level decreases concentration.
ADD is not chronic, its not permenant, in fact you could wake up toomorrow and it could be gone.
Do you even know what chronic means? Let me tell you. In relation to medical conditions, chronic means that the condition is present for the majority of the time over a long period (months or years). It does not mean permanent. My ADD is chronic, meaning that it doesn't go away from day to day. Maybe it will go away someday, but in the meantime it is always there.
I've done plenty of research on this, I'm telling you that its a fact, an absolute FACT that ADD is something everyone has in various degrees.
Maybe you should do some research into the medical definition of ADD/ADHD instead of listening to a bunch of crackpots who seem to believe that the fact that everyone suffers from occasional problems with concentration has some sort of significance. It is not a fact that everyone has ADD to some degree because the definition rules out occasional and isolated symptoms. To have ADD, you have to have most of the symptoms most of the time. That is what the definition says. To say that everyone has most of the symptoms most of the time to various degrees is nonsensical. It is a self-contradictory statement.
It is also a FACT that alot of kids simply grow out of ADD as their brain develops.
And your point is what? No one is arguing that no one grows out of ADD. We are talking about adults who have ADD and did not grow out of it as children.
What happens is, as you reach around age 18-25, your brain stops building new wires at the same rate, this means that yes your brain can go foggy, it also means that if your brain doesnt rebuild new wires in your frontal lobes you could actually lose your ability to concentrate until your brain builds new wires.
You don't know what you're talking about. Scientist have a poor understanding of how cortical circuits work. They don't even know how circuits of a few hundred neurons are structured, let alone large sections of cortex. Concentration is a complicated phenomenon and we are not even close to reaching an explanation. Until we understand how it works, any talk of the rate of "wiring" being related to concentration is pure speculation.
By the adult age the (usually by age 25) the brains wires build a protective coating on its wiring, and its this coating that keeps the so called normal people from having ADD like symptoms.
Progressive myelination has already been demonstrated to be one of the mechanisms that f
I keep trying to tell you its not a disease. Everyone gets angry, everyone gets depressed, everyone loses focus from time to time, these pills would help everyone under certain situations.
It is a disease. Everyone has days when they have some of the symptoms of ADD, but the difference is that those with ADD have a large number of the symptoms all the time. It's chronic. It does not go away. If you have a headache once in a while, it is probably just a headache and nothing more. If you have a headache all the time and it never goes away then there is a good chance that it is being caused by an underlying disease (brain tumors, for example, can have that effect). The fact that ADD is a chronic and disruptive condition is what makes it a disease (or a disorder, to be more precise).
People with normally functioning brains will generally not benefit from the drugs used to treat ADD. Taking a drug will not make their bad day go away. While they may be having trouble concentrating once in a while, the cause is most likely not the same as the cause of ADD.
Yes, I can lose a train of thought in the middle of a movie. And people who really have ADD do have symptoms that are of comparable severity. One of the diagnostic criteria for ADD is that it must substantially interfere with your life in a negative way. That's why treating it with drugs is acceptable -- the side effects are generally far easier to deal with that the disorder. I'm not considered to have a severe case of ADD. I'm only moderate. There are a lot of people who are far worse than I am.
If the goal of this is not to be labeled a victim, well why not let everyone access these pills? Why should only the ADHD victims get special privlages, you see my point now? Do you see how it looks?
That's a special privlege??? The pills aren't sold over the counter because that is how the law is written. The FDA has to give special permission for a drug to be sold over the counter, and they don't do that very often. Their criteria for approval are not based on how helpful they are to some people -- that is satisfied by allowing drs to prescribe it.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately for SCO, this is a technicality that does not do them any favors. Section 5 states:
You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.
And section 2 prohibits the distribution of GPLed and proprietary code in one package. So SCO is either admitting to violating the GPL, or violating copyright law, or maybe both. Although, when they claim that technologies such as RCU and JFS are their IP while simultaneously admiting that they do not own the copyrights or patents to those technologies, it makes me wonder if they even understand what a copyright is in the first place. Their arguments so far consist of nothing more than a series of mutually exclusive assersions. One day Darl is insisting that this is an IP violation case, and the next day some other SCO monkey is insisting that there is no IP issue at all. I'm just waiting for the day when Darl starts yelling "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"
How can they not know about this? They are distributing the supposedly infringing version of Linux as I type this. Regardless of what they may or may not have known in the past, they certainly do know that whatever code they believe they own is in Linux right now, yet they continue to distribute it in blatant violation of the license.
It is still there.
SCO has removed the real source from many of the Linux distributions on their FTP site, but they still have it in two places that I know of. It is extremely difficult to understand how they can be unintentionally distributing the code under the terms of the GPL when it is still available on THEIR FTP site months after they claimed that it is tainted. If this was ever a case of unintentional distribution, it is certainly not now. At this point they have either released the entire kernel under the terms of the GPL (and thus have no ability to assert additional IP rights) or they are distributing the code without a license and violating the copyrights of thousands of Linux developers. The GPL is very clear about this. Either you agree to the terms of the GPL unconditionally, or you are subject to normal copyright laws which give you no right to redistribute. This may be an unconventional use of copyright, but if it is ever "tested" in court the judge will rule based on the same principles of copyright and contract law that apply to everything else. There is nothing special about the GPL in that regard that requires testing in a court.
I don't think you understand how managers work. There are many people in this world who believe that logic is optional and, unfortunately, many managers fall into that category. This becomes more extreme as you approach the higher levels of an organization. These people will agree that your argument is logically correct and that your proposed course of action seems more reasonable. But they will continue to insist that their alternative is more correct even though they can't say why. They just know that whatever bizarre scheme they have come up with will work. It may sound like I'm joking or exagerating, but I have seen this happen countless times in real life. It is no mystery to me why so many large IT projects go down in flames.
Are you daft? A right to vote implies a right to have that vote counted correctly. And you also have rights beyond what the Constitution explicitely lays out, Scalia notwithstanding. Read the Ninth Amendment and ponder its meaning.
I think you mean that you can freely choose not to buy products from companies that use this technology as long as you know which companies are and are not using it. Just like you can freely choose not to buy food products that contain genetically modified organisms. Except that no one actually advertises their products as containing GMOs and US labeling laws make it illegal to advertise that a product does not contain GMOs (how's that for logic?). Expect the same thing to happen with RFID. Good plan.
So it is correct to say that people are not going to do Freenet searches for "Main Street Kansas" to find real eastate listings. But that does not mean that the information is unavailable. A person would instead find a Freenet site that lists Kansas real estate (probably finding the site key with the help of a Freenent directory service) and would then search or browse that specific site for Main Street listings.
IBM assigned many (all?) of its linux copyrights to the FSF. So they do have a direct interest in kernel, and probably in the code that SCO claims is their's.
Here's a new link.
This has been baffling me. I don't understand why in the world SCO would make such a blanket claim because it essentially kills their case. As has been pointed out several billion times now, SCO distributed Linux (and continue to distribute it -- I downloaded a full copy off their FTP server last night). It is conceivable that they could convince a judge that they didn't know that there was system v code in the kernel when they were distributing it, so they should not be held to the terms of the GPL. But by claiming that everything IBM did is a derivative of system v they have expanded the claims to the point that they could not possibly have just noticed it. If they know now that any technology contained in AIX is a derivative work even if no SCO code is in the specific components, how could they have not known that before? That is not something that requires any experience with the Linux code at all and, if true, would have to have been obvious to them all along. They can't just suddenly "discover" that all of these systems are derivative work even if they share no code.
In any case, the point is that if they knew about these broad "rights" since they purchased the system v rights, then they have no defense against the GPL. Not only are they prohibited from making these claims now, but their right to distribute Linux under the GPL has been revoked by the fact that they made the claims at all. Which means that they are currently violating the Linux (and maybe GNU) copyrights. I hope some of the major copyright holders are taking notice.
They probably will come up will some sort of nonsense like that. But their defense against GPL violations when they sent out the 1500 letters in May was that the GPL only applies to code that has a properly attached copyright notice according to section 0. So the sections of "copied" code are not under the GPL, while everything else is. Of course, sections 3 and 7 close up that loop hole, but this is even more problematic for their defense. Even if IBM was contractually prohibited from distributing the RCU code, they still own the copyright. There is no way that SCO can claim that the copyright is somehow theirs because you can't transfer copyrights by contract. They have to be physically signed over after the fact (there is a short discussion of this somewhere on the FSF web site). So even if IBM violated a contract with SCO, the copyright notices for the RCU code are correct and SCO loses its only feeble defense.
I don't see any reason why the GPL would be invalidated, however. The GPL grants people rights that they do not have under normal copyright law, unlike most licenses that seek to remove rights. There are rules that the distributors have to follow in order to be granted the GPL rights, but it's hard to see how that could possibly be a problem. If it was invalidated, the court would be saying that the GPL grants people additional rights that are too restrictive. That's not logically coherent. And the GPL doesn't prevent anyone from asserting IP rights. By agreeing to follow the terms of the GPL, they are agreeing to not assert additional IP rights over that code. The agreement is the important part. Nobody is forced to distribute GPL'd code, it is done by choice. Any loss of IP rights on the part of SCO is because they chose to give them up.
What have you got to say for yourselves now, dumbasses? This may not contain the exact stuff that they're all worked up about (although it sounds like they want to claim RCU entirely), but it is a patch for source that does contain the offending material and therefore a derivative work.
In other words, they have every intention of continuing to distribute Linux to at least some of their current customers. They have not only violated the GPL in the past, but they are planning to violate it in the future.
Where are the angry chants? Where are the mad rushes on the SCO building to break into McBride's office and hold it hostage? Where are the flying bags of flaming poop? Where are the riot police for God sake???
Those people should come to Seattle and see how to do it right (or go to Italy, which beats Seattle hands down). If they don't break out the tear gas and pepper spray, it isn't a protest. Clubbings are an extra bonus.
Would you care to identify what IP is being infringed upon that Blizzard needs to protect? It can't be copyright. Copyright does not protect ideas, it protects implementations. I don't think there is any accusation of Freecraft taking code from Blizzard. It can't be trademark because the supreme court recently ruled that actual economic harm has to be demonstrated for infringement to have occured. And it has to be harm caused by consumers confusing one product or company with another. Being reminded of another product or company is not enough (ie soundalike names are alright as long as no confusion can be proven). That leaves patent infringement. Has FreeCraft violated any patents? I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that they didn't.
It is completely proper for people to be upset by a company harrassing a bunch of hobbyists by claiming IP infringement when they know very well that no infringement has taken place. They should compete with products, not with lawyers. If you have evidence of IP infringement, then by all means post it and prove me wrong.
BTW... I program Free software and I also have a real job, a wife, and a child. I have not lived with my parents for many, many years. I can write Free software because I make a lot of money writing software in my regular job. That is the case for most Free software programmers. I have yet to meet a single Free software programmer working on a serious project (mp3 players et al excluded) who fits your slacker stereotype.
It is too bad that despite a unanimous ruling from the supreme court, companies are still engaging in this nonsense. Most likely, it would be enough to have an IP lawyer send them a response saying "you know you can't win a case like this anymore." But even that can be prohibitively expensive for hobbyists. What is really needed is a legal defense fund for Free software projects. However, it is doubtful that anyone will actually set one up, or that many Free software programmers (or users) would donate to it even though it would be in everyone's best interest.
But now SCO has gone beyond claiming that it is just code copied from system V that is in violation. They are making all sorts of claims about having IP rights to JFS, RCU, etc. By making these additional claims, they have trashed their own defense against GPL violations! Even if it is true that they have some sort of right to prevent IBM from distributing that code, that right would have to be based on a contract, not the copyright. IBM owns the copyright to the original JFS code, and they assigned the copyright for the Linux port to the FSF. So, the JFS and other code clearly conforms to section 0 and SCO's only defense against GPL violations is gone. The code was published with the proper copyright attributions and SCO redistrbuted it under the terms of the GPL. Now what have the got to say for themselves? This will also make it far more difficult for them to make any claims of inadvertent distribution of their IP. That kind of argument might be possible for the system V code, but they cannot possibly say that they didn't know the JFS and SMP code was in there and there was never any question about where the JFS code came from.
Another new claim that is really weird is the restricted technology claim. They say that IBM violated the law by making the Linux technologies available to Syria and other banned countries (since it is possible to build supercomputers out of Linux clusters). But again, SCO was a Linux distributer, and they made the exact same technology available to the same people! And they did a lot more of it than IBM ever did. SCO had better hope that the government doesn't side with them, because they can expect criminal prosecution if that interpretation is correct. SCO may become its own prosecutor if it makes that argument in court.
With regard to ADD, one of the results of increasing dopamine levels (what the meds do) is to decrease the frequency of randomly firing neurons. In other words, it reduces the amount of background noise in areas of the brain that respond to dopamine. This was even mentioned in one of the articles you posted earlier. The reduction in background noise has implications for concentration, but it also has profound implications for the way memories are formed. One of my areas of research is the influence of background noise on Hebbian learning in neural networks, so I have dealt with this exact subject in my own experiments and simulations (these are biologically realistic neural nets, so the critisism that artificial nets are poor representations of biological nervous systems does not apply). It turns out that a certain level background noise is required for Hebbian learning to work correctly. There is an optimum level of noise -- too much or too little and the network will still learn, but it will not learn anything useful and the learning may actually remove useful functions from the network. A person whose dopamine levels are out of whack will not receive the same benefit from brain exercises as someone who has normal dopamine levels (this probably applies to other neurotransmitters as well). There will still be some benefit, but not to the same degree. So it is true that you can rewire your brain, but it is not true that the rewiring will always be useful. In the case of people who suffer from mental disorders, their brains are likely to be physically incapable of "learning" their way out of the illness. Once medicated and functioning properly, it is sometimes possible for a brain to learn how to remain normal (become more resilient to background noise in the case of ADD). If successful, a person may be able to go off of the medication at some point. This ability will vary from person to person and will not be constant across all disorders. What works for some people will not work for everyone. Some people will always require medication to function normally, and some people will not respond to medication or cognitive therapy. Luckily, they are the exception and not the rule.
I don't give a rat's ass about the rest of society. I treat my ADD because it has a negative impact on my life, not because it prevents me from adhering to social norms. Medication makes my life more coherent and that is a desirable effect. You can argue all day about how many people have ADD and to what degree and whether or not it is a deliberate feature of the human species (whatever that is supposed to mean). The fact remains that I have a condition that negatively impacts my life and the medication that treats this condition improves the quality of my life. I really don't understand why some people have a problem with that.
You keep on talking about the medications as if they can be used for a mental boost when you are having a bad day. The newer drugs are not amphetimenes and will not have that kind of instant effect. Wellbutrin, for example, often has to be taken for over a month before it reaches its full potency. Popping a few of those pills on a whim might make you vomit, but it will not help you concentrate. And none of the drugs will be benificial to people who already have a normal or above normal level of dopamine. Increasing dopamine beyond the optimum level decreases concentration.
Do you even know what chronic means? Let me tell you. In relation to medical conditions, chronic means that the condition is present for the majority of the time over a long period (months or years). It does not mean permanent. My ADD is chronic, meaning that it doesn't go away from day to day. Maybe it will go away someday, but in the meantime it is always there.
Maybe you should do some research into the medical definition of ADD/ADHD instead of listening to a bunch of crackpots who seem to believe that the fact that everyone suffers from occasional problems with concentration has some sort of significance. It is not a fact that everyone has ADD to some degree because the definition rules out occasional and isolated symptoms. To have ADD, you have to have most of the symptoms most of the time. That is what the definition says. To say that everyone has most of the symptoms most of the time to various degrees is nonsensical. It is a self-contradictory statement.
And your point is what? No one is arguing that no one grows out of ADD. We are talking about adults who have ADD and did not grow out of it as children.
You don't know what you're talking about. Scientist have a poor understanding of how cortical circuits work. They don't even know how circuits of a few hundred neurons are structured, let alone large sections of cortex. Concentration is a complicated phenomenon and we are not even close to reaching an explanation. Until we understand how it works, any talk of the rate of "wiring" being related to concentration is pure speculation.
Progressive myelination has already been demonstrated to be one of the mechanisms that f
People with normally functioning brains will generally not benefit from the drugs used to treat ADD. Taking a drug will not make their bad day go away. While they may be having trouble concentrating once in a while, the cause is most likely not the same as the cause of ADD.
Yes, I can lose a train of thought in the middle of a movie. And people who really have ADD do have symptoms that are of comparable severity. One of the diagnostic criteria for ADD is that it must substantially interfere with your life in a negative way. That's why treating it with drugs is acceptable -- the side effects are generally far easier to deal with that the disorder. I'm not considered to have a severe case of ADD. I'm only moderate. There are a lot of people who are far worse than I am.