Don't get me wrong, but I think they were right... It is perfectly legal to own such a box
...as long as you never actually use it.
This made me think of...
on
Global Dimming
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
... this article which pointed out that in 2001 from Sept 11-14 when all the airplanes were grounded, there was a measurable increase in Diurnal Temperature Range (i.e. how much the temperature changes day to night).
Sure, for big displays you're probably going to end
up with a Real Light Bulb (i.e. projection bulb),
or maybe a Carbon Arc setup like in a spotlight (though they're awfully high maintenance for a
home TV set...)
But couldn't you make a smaller display with
3 lcos chips
1 each red, green, blue high output LED
translucent screen
The LED's pretty much never burn out, so it would
be a really long-life solution. On the other hand I'm not sure how bright of an LED you can get these days...
Except that Microsoft doesn't have a trademark on
"Windows", only on "Microsoft Windows". Too many other pre-existing things (i.e. the "X Window System") have trademarks involving the word "Window".
So if the package was called "Licrosoft Windows"
or "Microshaft Windows", I think they'd have a case.
Ahh... but you see, they're not regulating commerce. They're regulating fraud -- that is, faking your email headers.
If the fake email header is seen by a mail host in
Virginia, you are still defrauding that host.
They may not be able to arrest you until you physically enter the state of Virginia, but they can sure make something that ends up in Virginia illegal. I'm not sure if they can ask another state to extradite you. Are there any of those IAAL types out there who can say?
I don't think that's the real reason. Even in the non-security-clearance corners of the government, it takes 3 months on average to get approval to actually hire someone. Most folks who are worth hiring have found another job by then, and don't want to wait another 2 months to see if the request to hire them gets approved...
Another aspect it seems to me these guys overlook is that forks are sometimes temporary. Witness the 8 or so
forks of gcc that got folded into "egcs". Within a year or so of its formation, egcs became the dominant gcc branch, and was officially so noted soon thereafter.
Unlike religion, when you merge several forks of an open source project effectively, you steal all the followers. Contrast this with religion -- somehow this doesn't seem to have worked for the Unitarians
As long as you make sure it's formatted as FAT (1980's, no patent) and not VFAT (long filenames),
I don't see how you're running afoul of the patent.
So where's the beef?
AT&T had a fairly weak derivative code claim
(surprisingly like the current SCO one, actually)
saying that even though all of the actual AT&T code
had been removed from BSD's Net-4 release, somehow by a process of transitive derivation it was still a
derivative work.
Berkely had a much stronger, classic copright case on the printed manuals for vi, netstat, etc. that would have required AT&T to apologize publicly, and hunt down and destroy all System V based User Guides (i.e ones for AT&T System V, IRIX, HP-UX, etc. etc.)
Berkely really didn't care to press their case except to make the AT&T one go away.
As somone pointed out earlier, never sue a University with a good law school.
At Fermilab where I work, the larger experiments are
expecting to generate 1PB/year of data in around 2005, up from
somewhere around 300TB/year currently.
I'd much prefer means that are reasonable, and don't hurt everyone else, as well. For example,
nuking Redmond to get rid of Microsoft is a bad way to solve the problem.
Similarly a patent that makes every web browser much less useful just to hurt Microsoft loses.
Personally, I think having handed out patents for arbitrarily programmable computing devices, handing out more patents for using those devices with a particular set of programming is silly. It's just like letting someone patent setting their washing machine on "Cold Cold" to save hot water bills.
The readership is confused.
Microsoft bad.
Software patents bad.
Poetic Justice?!?
Remember, it could just as easily have been the Mozilla or Konquerer developers being sued, (legally speaking), in which case the folks in this forum would be all up in
arms about it and supporting the W3C.
Gets you to a slightly more descriptive
article, which mentions:
" The IT Week Labs tests used Ziff-Davis
NetBench file server benchmark with 48 client systems. We selected a low-specification but otherwise modern server for our tests. We used an HP ProLiant BL10 eClass Server fitted with a 900MHz Pentium III chip, a single 40GB ATA hard disk and 512MB of RAM. We did not tune any of the software to improve performance."
Acutally, no. If the spam filter is in front of the valid-recipient check on your email system, then all the spam message attempts yeild web-hits, meaning they get "verification" of lots of invalid email addresses. Soon the belief that a web hit from an email address makes it more valuable goes the way of the dodo bird...
Actually, all of the set {anti-spam, anti-virus, policemen, homeland-security} collect money from people who
are afraid of being victims, not neccesarily from those who are or have been victims.
So the incentive in all such cases is to hype up the fear and loathing of the item you claim to protect against, and of course you have to protect against it in a fashion that doesn't solve the underlying problem, in order to preserve your organization's existence.
[Of course, I must credit a cross-product of _Bowling for Columbine_ and _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_ for this meme:-)]
Well, take for example the fact that most restaurants go out of business in the first few months. Often this isn't because the food is so bad at the restaurant, it's because the folks running the restaurant know how to cook, but not how to do accounting and run a business.
If there was a software package that helped restaurants with inventory, ordering, advertising, etc. that helped them get the business end right, that would keep more waiters, cooks, etc. employed more of the time.
This is probably true for lots of small businesses; if there was an open-source software solution that helped you run the business effectively, lots more people could get a business of that type up and running, and keep it running.
No, no no... That's not
Xenu of Scientology fame, that's
Xinu of Douglas Comer fame.
Sheez, obviously if it was Xenu, the line would have started way to the left of the whole Unix hierarchy on the chart -- we're talking 95,000,000 years ago, after all.
Now we just need to get a hold of Mr. Eric Levenez and have him sue SCO for publishing an incorrectly marked up, derivative work of his Unix history diagram, I expect without his permission.
Slashdot Mirror
So I blame jet airplane contrails.
$199 printer
$ 40 cartridge
sounds to me like %20 of the purchase price...
That of course leads to (by analogy) cheaper third party light bulbs that turn out not to last as long, and home filament repair kits...
But couldn't you make a smaller display with
- 3 lcos chips
- 1 each red, green, blue high output LED
- translucent screen
The LED's pretty much never burn out, so it would be a really long-life solution. On the other hand I'm not sure how bright of an LED you can get these days...On the other hand, most anonymizers actually rig it so you *can* send a reply, you just don't know where it goes...
So if the package was called "Licrosoft Windows" or "Microshaft Windows", I think they'd have a case.
But not for "Lindows".
If the fake email header is seen by a mail host in Virginia, you are still defrauding that host.
They may not be able to arrest you until you physically enter the state of Virginia, but they can sure make something that ends up in Virginia illegal. I'm not sure if they can ask another state to extradite you. Are there any of those IAAL types out there who can say?
I don't think that's the real reason. Even in the non-security-clearance corners of the government, it takes 3 months on average to get approval to actually hire someone. Most folks who are worth hiring have found another job by then, and don't want to wait another 2 months to see if the request to hire them gets approved...
Unlike religion, when you merge several forks of an open source project effectively, you steal all the followers. Contrast this with religion -- somehow this doesn't seem to have worked for the Unitarians
If GPL is not valid:
-
SCO has been releasing Linux illegally
else:As long as you make sure it's formatted as FAT (1980's, no patent) and not VFAT (long filenames), I don't see how you're running afoul of the patent. So where's the beef?
-
AT&T had a fairly weak derivative code claim
(surprisingly like the current SCO one, actually)
saying that even though all of the actual AT&T code
had been removed from BSD's Net-4 release, somehow by a process of transitive derivation it was still a
derivative work.
-
Berkely had a much stronger, classic copright case on the printed manuals for vi, netstat, etc. that would have required AT&T to apologize publicly, and hunt down and destroy all System V based User Guides (i.e ones for AT&T System V, IRIX, HP-UX, etc. etc.)
Berkely really didn't care to press their case except to make the AT&T one go away.As somone pointed out earlier, never sue a University with a good law school.
At Fermilab where I work, the larger experiments are expecting to generate 1PB/year of data in around 2005, up from somewhere around 300TB/year currently.
Personally, I think having handed out patents for arbitrarily programmable computing devices, handing out more patents for using those devices with a particular set of programming is silly. It's just like letting someone patent setting their washing machine on "Cold Cold" to save hot water bills.
Microsoft bad.
Software patents bad.
Poetic Justice?!?
Remember, it could just as easily have been the Mozilla or Konquerer developers being sued, (legally speaking), in which case the folks in this forum would be all up in arms about it and supporting the W3C.
You have to use 3M Velostat to make mind-control-prevention hats.
Aluminum foil doesn't work nearly as well.
Everybody knows that now, thanks to the web.
It does bring that whole RoboCop thing into perspective, though, doesn't it?
Acutally, no. If the spam filter is in front of the valid-recipient check on your email system, then all the spam message attempts yeild web-hits, meaning they get "verification" of lots of invalid email addresses. Soon the belief that a web hit from an email address makes it more valuable goes the way of the dodo bird...
Or of course, someone could also use a replacement attack as a previous developer's article discussed.
So the incentive in all such cases is to hype up the fear and loathing of the item you claim to protect against, and of course you have to protect against it in a fashion that doesn't solve the underlying problem, in order to preserve your organization's existence.
[Of course, I must credit a cross-product of _Bowling for Columbine_ and _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_ for this meme :-)]
If there was a software package that helped restaurants with inventory, ordering, advertising, etc. that helped them get the business end right, that would keep more waiters, cooks, etc. employed more of the time.
This is probably true for lots of small businesses; if there was an open-source software solution that helped you run the business effectively, lots more people could get a business of that type up and running, and keep it running.
No, no no... That's not Xenu of Scientology fame, that's Xinu of Douglas Comer fame.
Sheez, obviously if it was Xenu, the line would have started way to the left of the whole Unix hierarchy on the chart -- we're talking 95,000,000 years ago, after all.
Now we just need to get a hold of Mr. Eric Levenez and have him sue SCO for publishing an incorrectly marked up, derivative work of his Unix history diagram, I expect without his permission.