While it is nice to see IBM and Sun jumping on the bandwagon and it is a really cool gesture, the real benefit of a patent portfolio is when it can be used to force another company to cross-license. If IBM (or Sun) were to take the position that any company that initates a sleazy IP attack against an OSS project may find itself defending against IBM's entire patent portfolio, that would be very useful.
Perhaps, Novell would be willing to let IBM and Sun "copy" this
When the FBI wants some record (they sometimes call it "evidence") from me, they can serve me with a subpoena or a warrant. I then perform a cursory check for the evidence they seek and turn the results over to them. I think that sounds much more civilized than many of the current practices.
Oh, wait...
This only applies to lawful requests for them to produce documents.
That's a big step in the wrong direction.
I spent 10 years as a Paramedic in Pensylvania. During that time, the trend was to REDUCE the amount of base communications. There is a reason the old caridac telemetry systems (like the old "Emergency" show) disappeared. It turns out that it is far more effective to have the person who is nose to nose with the patient making the treatment decisions in the field. ("Treat the patient, not the monitor")
As a result, paramedics have been tethered less and less to the base hospital and generally call in only for permission to use highly restricted narcotics and to request special facilities be prepared. It is relatively rare that a paramedic calls in for advice.
One of the best ways to spend an extra $20K has been found to be to upgrade the EKG equipment in the field so that the paramedic can do all of the preliminaries in the field for thrombolytic drugs (which are too fragile to keep in the field) can be administered the moment the patient hits the ER instead of the typical 90 minutes.
So, just sent a registered letter to the patent examiner with a registered copy to the attorneys pointing out that there is prior art for claim one.
this 1998 ISO comment,
this 1997 IBM document
or a few zillion others.
Finjan has notified Microsoft of the vulnerabilities and has shared all relevant technical details with the company.
Step 2: Be polite to Microsoft:
Per its usual policy, Finjan has no plans to go public with details of the flaws until Microsoft has patches available for them.
Step 3: Reap benefits of being polite to Microsoft:
"Our early analysis indicates that Finjan's claims are potentially misleading and possibly erroneous regarding the breadth and severity of the alleged vulnerabilities in Windows XP SP2," the Microsoft statement said.
It is foolish to let such decisions be made by hysteria...
1) You have to compare the hazards of nuclear power against ALL of the health hazards resulting from using coal. (including mine and air pollution) If you were to assume that we had a major disaster today and then repeated the history of nuclear power over and over (doing no better), you might still be better off than with coal.
2) More readlily available power is a key factor in making electric vehicles more cost effective.
3) If we stop burning natural gas for fixed power, then it is available for heat (instead of burining heating oil, a.k.a. diesel fuel) and becomes a better option for natural-gas powered vehicles.
4) global warming, global warming, global warming
The power debate has neglected a sane analysis of the appropriate role of nuclear power in the mix. I dont advocate plopping nuclear plants right in the middle of urban areas or doing a sloppy job of building and runnign them. I think we should be seriously considering them where appropriate.
If you RTFB,
it is clear the the work must be commercial and you must not have a license to distribute it, otherwise this does not apply.
excerpt....
SECTION 1. Section 653aa is added to the Penal Code, to read: 653aa. (a) Any person, except a minor, who is located in California, who, knowing that a particular recording or audiovisual work is commercial, knowingly electronically disseminates all or substantially all of that commercial recording or audiovisual work to more than 10 other people without disclosing his or her e-mail address, and the title of the recording or audiovisual work is punishable by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), imprisonment in a county jail for a period not exceeding one year, or by both that fine and imprisonment. (b) Any minor who violates subdivision (a) is punishable by a fine not exceeding two hundred fifty dollars ($250). Any minor who commits a third or subsequent violation of subdivision (a) is punishable by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000), imprisonment in a county jail for a period not to exceed one year, or by both that imprisonment and fine. (c) Subdivisions (a) and (b) do not apply: (1) To a person who electronically disseminates a commercial recording or audiovisual work to his or her immediate family, or within his or her personal network, defined as a restricted access network controlled by and accessible to only that person or people in his or her immediate household. (2) If the copyright owner, or a person acting under the authority of the copyright owner, of a commercial recording or audiovisual work has explicitly given permission for all or substantially all of that recording or audiovisual work to be freely disseminated electronically by or to anyone without limitation. (3) To a person who has been licensed either by the copyright owner or a person acting under the authority of the copyright owner to disseminate electronically all or substantially all of a commercial audiovisual work or recording.
Ever notice that the same legislators who argue against gun control (like waiting periods and background checks) on the grounds that the gun has nothing to do with people getting shot have no problem accepting the argument that machines violate copyrights all by themselves?
Well, as long as the people that don't hold the copyrights are suggesting that those who do change their licenses, I think Slashdot should suggest that Microsoft switch the license for Office to (GPL or) BSD.
The good professor is really trying to study just how many people will blindly open a word doc from an untrusted source. What do you want to bet that opening the document in word triggers a counter somewhere?
So flog the person who talks on the cell phone in the theater with the nearest appropriate object. It's time to stop blocking signals because some people might abuse them. It's also time to realize that we shouldn't keep people from using computers and recording equipment because some people might violate copyrights.
There is no reason to block those of us who put the phone in silent.
I glance at the callerid if the phone vibrates. When an apparrently urgent call comes in either in a theater or in a restaurant, you hit answer and walk out the door. Anybody calling me in the off hours is accustomed to calling a second time if I ignore the first (calling again a moment after the first attempt is a good signal of urgency) and waiting for me to get out the door between the time I hit answer and the time I speak. Most also make sure they call my cell FROM their cell so that callerid works and I can just call them back.
This may also be a preparation for an attack of meritless lawsuits. Microsoft could build an arsenel of patents that are each possible to invalidate but each expensive to invalidate. Then, they launch suits against FOSS products and simply throw more lawyers into the mix than FSF can afford to react to.
After all the screaming about software patents on this list, we get a nice demonstration from IBM about what they are really good for. I, for one, am glad that IBM kept busy filing them. They have not behaved like a bully, but are not a pushover when someone else misbehaves.
25 years ago, if you told me that IBM would be the champion of the little guy, I would have told you that you were nuts.
Those of us in the US get angry enough about the heavy-handed way that Microsoft forces anything it chooses down the throats of users, the closed formats that require access to a Microsoft-based system in order to interoperate with some companies and government agencies, the concerns about an untrustworthy company deciding that they know better than the system's owner what should be done with a system, etc....
Now, imagine that a company you distrust that much is in bed with a government that cannot be trusted. A government that feels free to impose its will on anyone anywhere, and had no respect for anyones privacy. That requires little or no imagination these days. Now, imagine that it isn't even your own government. How would you feel?
Even true US patriots can see why any sane government would want to ensure that they rely only on OPEN computing systems instead of coverting their governments and populations into MicroSerfs.
Note: US patriots do not blindly agree with everything that the government says and does. Quite the opposite.
If your read the actual ordinance, it is aimed at keeping the polystyrene out of the landfills and the "chemical" issue is just an add-on to the justification. That is a laudable goal. Too bad they overplayed their hand with the H20 issue.
This really isn't much different than open-source vs closed-source though, is it...if the person selling it wants to lock you out of the internals, well, your choices include not buying from them.
The problem is that in monopoly or near-monopoly environments, you don't really have that choice. If you want to rent videotapes but do not like Blockbuster, you are probably out of luck. Similarly, you probably have exceedingly few choices of grocery stores in a reasonably distance. Same goes for Microsoft. Same goes for the "Automotive industry" or the "airline industry."
Think I'm wrong? Try avoiding all stores with a customer tracking (loyalty) card for 3 months. Then, we'll talk.
Plaintiff - OK, SCO, you are distributing my copyrighted work, nmap, without a valid license.
SCO - But you released that code under the GPL. I can use it without any further license. [But please pay me $699/cpu for the code I shipped under GPL which I claim does not grant you the right to use or distribute it]
or
SCO - You are right, I have no license and that is, indeed, your copyright.
or
SCO - That copyright notice is not really a copyright notice.
Using pat2pdf, I got a PDF of the whole document including the images. If anyone has a place to host this, I'll email it to them.
Some of the illustrations show a gnome display right down to the foot. What Microsoft seems to be trying to claim is... 1) When you preview, then entire screen is filed with tiled preview images large enough so you can really see what is in each window. 2) The mini-images on the toolbar have the same background properties as the full-scale window.
Not the most innovative patent in the world, but not a slimy attempt to patent the work of others either.
This is one of the things that people who have done little hiring understand. There are different paths to get a resume considered.
1) Resume is referred to the hiring manager by someone who knows you along with some message that causes you to be taken seriously.
2) It is routed through an HR department, a recruiter, a headhunter, etc...
In the first case, you can expect to bypass all the customary filters and have an opportunity for someone to read between the lines and really analyze you.
In the second case, the hiring manager is facing a pile of hundreds of resumes that is growing by hundreds per week (even in a time of relatively full employment). A typical resume gets between 15 and 30 seconds. If it doesn't get tossed at that point, then it stays around for a re-read. The re-read is less prone to snap judgment. I haven't been doing any hiring since the bust, but I suspect that this has gotten worse.
It generally takes 6 months for new employees to make themselves valuable. A mistake in hiring generally takes 18 months to correct. My average employee sticks around for 5-10 years. The last thing I would want to do is hire someone who either routinely job-hops or had a series of jobs where he didn't work out.
Put yourself in the position of the person with the resume pile. If there is something that will raise a "this person is a flake" flag, address it in the same breath as the item. Adding a note like "project cancelled," "company closed," "contract," or "temporary" can resolve that question before it gets you thrown into the reject pile.
In some cases, you may have the luxury of knowing which path a resume is going to follow. I generally suggest having 2 resumes.
One needs to be extremely concise and begin with a goal that makes it clear that you are someone who wants to contribute. (Notice I said contribute, not use the job as a stepping stone to get somewhere else)
The second one is more elaborate. That is for cases where you have somehow gotten the attention of a human being.
If you get a call as a result of the first resume, you may want to offer the manager the more detailed resume.
Also, think twice before listing the alphabet soup as the job function or skills. If you must include it, put it in a section that is the "list of..." so it will survuve stupid filters. In good jobs, the fact that you can think is MUCH more important.
The key is getting past people who might toss your resume because of the short stint. If they took the trouble to even have a conversation, you are past that.
I'd suggest you list the dates as...
"10/2003-11/2003 (project cancelled)"
to prevent the quick discard. After that, just be honest about your history and show no bitterness.
I've hired over 100 engineers. One short hop (less than 2 or 3 years) requires explaining. Two short hops get the resume tossed.
1) You try to board a plane but are strip-searched because you were somewhere other than church last Easter. 2) You get audited because you were scanned near an anti-war rally. 3) At your job interview, you are asked what movie you saw last week at the theater that was showing an action flick and a politically unpopular movie.
Ever visit a friend who is a druggie?
Ever visit a friend who is gay?
Ever interview for a job while you still had one?
Freedom of movment and freedom of association are very precious. When you can be tracked at all times and constantly live under the threat of being "categorized" by having your movements tracked, you give up a very important fundamental freedom.
I use a custom Apache/Perl front-end to a MySQL databse for the retail end and M$ACCESS/MyODBC as a report generator and general table-update tool in front of that same databse. I would love to find a good report generator to make Access go away. Quickbooks could not handle tracking items on consignment and was too closed to integrate with anything that could. I do 20-40 consignment transactions for every check I write.
Checkprinting would be handy, but is far less important than good consigned inventory tracking.
If I ever get around to cleaning up my code, perhaps I will GPL it.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps, Novell would be willing to let IBM and Sun "copy" this
Oh, wait...
This only applies to lawful requests for them to produce documents.
That's a big step in the wrong direction.
I spent 10 years as a Paramedic in Pensylvania. During that time, the trend was to REDUCE the amount of base communications. There is a reason the old caridac telemetry systems (like the old "Emergency" show) disappeared. It turns out that it is far more effective to have the person who is nose to nose with the patient making the treatment decisions in the field. ("Treat the patient, not the monitor")
As a result, paramedics have been tethered less and less to the base hospital and generally call in only for permission to use highly restricted narcotics and to request special facilities be prepared. It is relatively rare that a paramedic calls in for advice.
One of the best ways to spend an extra $20K has been found to be to upgrade the EKG equipment in the field so that the paramedic can do all of the preliminaries in the field for thrombolytic drugs (which are too fragile to keep in the field) can be administered the moment the patient hits the ER instead of the typical 90 minutes.
So, just sent a registered letter to the patent examiner with a registered copy to the attorneys pointing out that there is prior art for claim one. this 1998 ISO comment, this 1997 IBM document or a few zillion others.
There is only one way to tell how rampant Microsoft's piracy practices are....
Search Microsoft's offices and sieze all computers as evidence. After they are inspected, they can be returned unharmed with no damage done.
We must protect the intellectual property that drives our economy. Any minor inconvenience this causes Microsoft is certainly well justified.
It is foolish to let such decisions be made by hysteria...
1) You have to compare the hazards of nuclear power against ALL of the health hazards resulting from using coal. (including mine and air pollution) If you were to assume that we had a major disaster today and then repeated the history of nuclear power over and over (doing no better), you might still be better off than with coal.
2) More readlily available power is a key factor in making electric vehicles more cost effective.
3) If we stop burning natural gas for fixed power, then it is available for heat (instead of burining heating oil, a.k.a. diesel fuel) and becomes a better option for natural-gas powered vehicles.
4) global warming, global warming, global warming
The power debate has neglected a sane analysis of the appropriate role of nuclear power in the mix. I dont advocate plopping nuclear plants right in the middle of urban areas or doing a sloppy job of building and runnign them. I think we should be seriously considering them where appropriate.
excerpt....
Ever notice that the same legislators who argue against gun control (like waiting periods and background checks) on the grounds that the gun has nothing to do with people getting shot have no problem accepting the argument that machines violate copyrights all by themselves?
Well, as long as the people that don't hold the copyrights are suggesting that those who do change their licenses, I think Slashdot should suggest that Microsoft switch the license for Office to (GPL or) BSD.
The good professor is really trying to study just how many people will blindly open a word doc from an untrusted source. What do you want to bet that opening the document in word triggers a counter somewhere?
Looks like a plea agreement. read it and weep^h^h^h^hlaugh here(pdf).
There is no reason to block those of us who put the phone in silent.
I glance at the callerid if the phone vibrates. When an apparrently urgent call comes in either in a theater or in a restaurant, you hit answer and walk out the door. Anybody calling me in the off hours is accustomed to calling a second time if I ignore the first (calling again a moment after the first attempt is a good signal of urgency) and waiting for me to get out the door between the time I hit answer and the time I speak. Most also make sure they call my cell FROM their cell so that callerid works and I can just call them back.
This may also be a preparation for an attack of meritless lawsuits. Microsoft could build an arsenel of patents that are each possible to invalidate but each expensive to invalidate. Then, they launch suits against FOSS products and simply throw more lawyers into the mix than FSF can afford to react to.
25 years ago, if you told me that IBM would be the champion of the little guy, I would have told you that you were nuts.
Now, imagine that a company you distrust that much is in bed with a government that cannot be trusted. A government that feels free to impose its will on anyone anywhere, and had no respect for anyones privacy. That requires little or no imagination these days. Now, imagine that it isn't even your own government. How would you feel?
Even true US patriots can see why any sane government would want to ensure that they rely only on OPEN computing systems instead of coverting their governments and populations into MicroSerfs.
If your read the actual ordinance, it is aimed at keeping the polystyrene out of the landfills and the "chemical" issue is just an add-on to the justification. That is a laudable goal. Too bad they overplayed their hand with the H20 issue.
The problem is that in monopoly or near-monopoly environments, you don't really have that choice. If you want to rent videotapes but do not like Blockbuster, you are probably out of luck. Similarly, you probably have exceedingly few choices of grocery stores in a reasonably distance. Same goes for Microsoft. Same goes for the "Automotive industry" or the "airline industry."
Think I'm wrong? Try avoiding all stores with a customer tracking (loyalty) card for 3 months. Then, we'll talk.
Plaintiff - OK, SCO, you are distributing my copyrighted work, nmap, without a valid license.
SCO - But you released that code under the GPL. I can use it without any further license. [But please pay me $699/cpu for the code I shipped under GPL which I claim does not grant you the right to use or distribute it]
or
SCO - You are right, I have no license and that is, indeed, your copyright.
or
SCO - That copyright notice is not really a copyright notice.
Using pat2pdf, I got a PDF of the whole document including the images. If anyone has a place to host this, I'll email it to them.
Some of the illustrations show a gnome display right down to the foot. What Microsoft seems to be trying to claim is...
1) When you preview, then entire screen is filed with tiled preview images large enough so you can really see what is in each window.
2) The mini-images on the toolbar have the same background properties as the full-scale window.
Not the most innovative patent in the world, but not a slimy attempt to patent the work of others either.
This is one of the things that people who have done little hiring understand. There are different paths to get a resume considered.
1) Resume is referred to the hiring manager by someone who knows you along with some message that causes you to be taken seriously.
2) It is routed through an HR department, a recruiter, a headhunter, etc...
In the first case, you can expect to bypass all the customary filters and have an opportunity for someone to read between the lines and really analyze you.
In the second case, the hiring manager is facing a pile of hundreds of resumes that is growing by hundreds per week (even in a time of relatively full employment). A typical resume gets between 15 and 30 seconds. If it doesn't get tossed at that point, then it stays around for a re-read. The re-read is less prone to snap judgment. I haven't been doing any hiring since the bust, but I suspect that this has gotten worse.
It generally takes 6 months for new employees to make themselves valuable. A mistake in hiring generally takes 18 months to correct. My average employee sticks around for 5-10 years. The last thing I would want to do is hire someone who either routinely job-hops or had a series of jobs where he didn't work out.
Put yourself in the position of the person with the resume pile. If there is something that will raise a "this person is a flake" flag, address it in the same breath as the item. Adding a note like "project cancelled," "company closed," "contract," or "temporary" can resolve that question before it gets you thrown into the reject pile.
In some cases, you may have the luxury of knowing which path a resume is going to follow. I generally suggest having 2 resumes.
One needs to be extremely concise and begin with a goal that makes it clear that you are someone who wants to contribute. (Notice I said contribute, not use the job as a stepping stone to get somewhere else)
The second one is more elaborate. That is for cases where you have somehow gotten the attention of a human being.
If you get a call as a result of the first resume, you may want to offer the manager the more detailed resume.
Also, think twice before listing the alphabet soup as the job function or skills. If you must include it, put it in a section that is the "list of..." so it will survuve stupid filters. In good jobs, the fact that you can think is MUCH more important.
I'd suggest you list the dates as... "10/2003-11/2003 (project cancelled)" to prevent the quick discard. After that, just be honest about your history and show no bitterness.
I've hired over 100 engineers. One short hop (less than 2 or 3 years) requires explaining. Two short hops get the resume tossed.
I ordered a dozen-long stem (clown) noses from the circus world museum gift shop. She loved them and they still haven't wilted.
1) You try to board a plane but are strip-searched because you were somewhere other than church last Easter.
2) You get audited because you were scanned near an anti-war rally.
3) At your job interview, you are asked what movie you saw last week at the theater that was showing an action flick and a politically unpopular movie.
Ever visit a friend who is a druggie?
Ever visit a friend who is gay?
Ever interview for a job while you still had one?
Freedom of movment and freedom of association are very precious. When you can be tracked at all times and constantly live under the threat of being "categorized" by having your movements tracked, you give up a very important fundamental freedom.
Checkprinting would be handy, but is far less important than good consigned inventory tracking.
If I ever get around to cleaning up my code, perhaps I will GPL it.