The client will happily update itself to the latest 'testing' version.
Built nightly, I might add---
These changes (version changes) propagate themselves through the network version.
In the windows version, you need to click on a menu choice. In the linux version, you need to run update.sh
There are plenty of interim versions, and they have VASTLY improved the project, and VASTLY improved performance.
They aren't willing to release a new 'stable', but the project is coming along quickly---
Tell me, do you think Debian deserves no more patience? Should the community just cut and run?
It's not that their lazy, far from it---they are just very, very conservative when it comes to issuing new 'stable' releases, and for good reason too----
Freenet is designed to be safe for use by individuals in countries with an oppressive orwellian state------
How would the developers feel if a security 'bug' in the latest version got some people imprisoned, or even executed?
Take a second look, my friend----Freenet is delivering results.
P.S. Clarke's said that it doesn't work very well. But he KNOWS, 100%, that the new algorithm DOES solve the problem. Because that new algorithm is implemented on MOST of the network already--->Before implementation, at the critical point, 95% of messages in the average node's queue were "out of queue space".
Now that figure is around 5%, and dropping. The changes WORKED......
Infact, I think this is an indication that Freenet is growing---the old routing algorithm was not capable of scaling to the number of new users, but the next generation algorithm is working just fine.
AT&T's network WAS TDMA, as another poster has indicated.
You can get their digital advantage plan, which is GSM, and works most everywhere (seriously, I had it for over a year).
You can get their digital one rate plan, which is TDMA, and it works in slightly more places. (had this for two years).
Their customer service, however, blows, and they overcharged me for four months in a row.
They did fix the charges---they credited back the money each month----
But the following month I would have to call in, wait on hold for 50+ minutes, explain the situation to someone, wait 10+ minutes while they credited my account.
It sucked, so I switched to T-Mobile, and I couldn't be happier.
And everything works, just about, right out of the box. On one system, with a Geforce FX, everything just works. Installed the NVIDIA drivers using YaST2 update (SuSE's installer). Configured NVIDIA drivers using SaX2 (SuSE's X setup). Everything else worked without setup, and far faster than a Windows install would take.
Minor problems: My nforce system needed the nforce rpms from Nvidia's site. My ATI Radeon 9800 Pro needed the rpms from ATI site.
Both of which installed without a problem----
The only text-based setup I had to do was the graphics card, because for some reason SaX2 can't handle the fglrx driver (you can use the DRI for ATI without using ATI's drivers, but ATI's drivers are 200% faster than the XFree86 opensource module).
My USB printer? Check. My Palm? Check. My home network? Check. Samba? Check. Printing and file sharing? Check.
Plus, buy the boxed set. $70, but the 500 pages of manuals you get are AWESOME, are usable by a non-geek (like, for example, my parents), and go through the usage of many of the more important apps you get with the distro (CD-burning? How to use K3B----- Wordprocessing? OpenOffice, etc. ..)
It's really a great product, and its finally the linux distro I've needed to not dual boot (well, most of my systems---I've got one gaming rig that dual boots XP for the stubborn titles that simply won't run under WineX))
Cheers, WhiteWolf
P.S. If you are having serious problems with printing, its probably because your printer is a discount one:) I've got a pile of those, and I find that they never last very long. Its worth your time/energy to upgrade to an HP OfficeJet or an HP PSC All-in-one printer. I've got the oldest OfficeJet LX, and two fairly modern PSC 750s, a PSC 2210, and a PSC 1110....... (the last four are USB). All work right out of the box on SuSE.
Dump Mandrake, it's been way too buggy since 8.2 (9.2 was a nightmare for me). All the stuff you expect to work in SuSE, does work (Flash, Java, RealPlayer), and if you get the WineRack, you have a great deal of windows compatability too (Crossover Office, Crossover Plugin, Transgaming WineX).
Great Product! Can't endorse it enough! It really is what got me using linux on a daily basis without dual booting!
However, this happens less in the software markets, because it really doesn't save money to take out features.
It DOES save money to take out feature in hardware, even if they don't actually remove the features from the chips....I'll explain, in just a second.
Several Points: 1: Microsoft makes monopoly profits on software. In a 100% efficent market, there are no profits. Corporations make exactly the amount of revenue necessary to cover all costs (note that this includes the CEO's paychecks). This is a good thing in a capitalist economy----You have optimal generation of wealth for all involved, consumers+producers.
Monopoly profits are the other end of the spectrum. When there is only 1 supplier of a product, and no competing products (or substitutes), you can set the prices high enough to maximize your profits---Note:This does not allow you to set the prices astronomically high, just high enough such that you maximize your profit function---You still are subject to supply and demand, you just reduce supply such that the reduction in units sold does not overwhelm the increased profit per unit.
Technically, Microsoft is not a complete monopoly, so they aren't right at the monopoly end of the spectrum, but they are pretty DAMN close.
2:You are kind of right about the two ways to make profit. You are also kind of wrong. More sales+less per unit means greater efficency in the market. If you have a billion competitors, you have to sell things at the lowest possible price--->These 'two ways' of making profits are actually just two scenarios you have picked on a greater spectrum, where the extremes are monopoly profits and no profits.
3:Cripplware, at least in this market (Microsoft) is an attempt to stem off competitors. Even though Microsoft gains some sales from the crippled product, my guess is that this strategy is a loser for them overall.
However, it is preferable to loosing marketshare---this just moves them in the direction of being a more competitive (as opposed to monopolistic) corporation.
4: Hardware versus software crippleware. One need to remember that in hardware, you get manufacturing errors. If I make a processor with 2 MB cache, which is my high end version, I end up loosing, say, 40%, mainly because of inconsistencies in the wafers. (On a technical note, cache is one of the largest space users on processor dies). I can take these reject processors, only enable 128KB of cache, and Voila!, I can ignore flawed components on 75% of my reject processors.
This also works with processors that have multiple execution units (Radeon 9500 versus Radeon 9700, or Geforce FX 5800 versus Geforce FX 5600). If I only enable half of the 'pipelines', I only need to have a 1 working set of pipelines---I can take a whole lot of my rejects and sell them as a lower end part.
This, as you can understand, substantially lowers the number of chips that I need to discard.
More importantly, in the world of non-intellectual property, this is a cost-saving measure that I can implement regardless of how much profit I'm making---monopoly or no, it always helps me.
5: In a more competitive market (oligopolistic probably wouldn't be enough, we would need quite a few competitors), crippled software would not make any sense at all----
Since it doesn't cost you anything to sell your top product at the crippled price, you would need to do this to protect marketshare. As the market becomes more fluid, and there are more substitionary products, profit margin per unit becomes less important, and market share becomes all important.
You do whatever it takes to hold on to market share, which means bringing your full product to the marketplace at the minimum possible price.
To me, this sort of rebranding is an indication that the market is not operating efficently.
However, this doesn't mean that the government should get involved----we are seeing low level movements in the ma
I've got the T-Mobile Sierra Wireless aircard too.
Sure its slow. But I use it a lot.
It's like a flaky dialup----you just need to have some patience.
I figure that by the time someone has a good, national (or even Chicagoland) wireless broadband service, my T-mobile contract will expire (I'm on a 1 year).
And the price is unbeatable. $29.99 for unlimited on your Sierra Wireless Aircard, and $19.99 if you piggy-back it on a phone (I've got it both on my Aircard, and on my Nokia 3650, which is a bluetooth GPRS modem for my iPaq)
I just LOVE being online on the go. Broadband on the go makes me salivate......
1. MS controls 95% of the browser market. This $500 million is for that % of dominance. Any fine levied against any other browser manufacturer would be minimal.
2. The worse that can happen is we go back to square one. No-one can use the technology.
I doubt #2 will happen, he's already committed to licensing his 'patent' for free for open-source projects.
The only real risk is that MS buys him out, and then uses his patent to smash the competition.
But I doubt that. He's mad at them.
He's won his $500 million settlement.
He's talked about how shameful it is that MS 'cooperates' with companies, and then rams them into the ground.
I really think the risks are small in this situation...But, that's neither here nor there---the judge in the case has supposedly considered quite a bit of prior art, and has decided it doesn't apply (That is on the University of California's Q&A regarding Eolas).
I really believe this situation will turn out for the best.
And you know what? If it were me, I'd beat the hell out of MS with my patent club, and then license my patent to anyone else, for free, as long as it isn't MS.
Remember, there is nothing to stop your from arbitrarily licensing your patents.
You could refuse to license someone because their dog smelled bad.
This guy has a bone to pick with MS. He's got his 1/2 billion dollar victory. He's got the opportunity to become a big player in the browser market---
He could license his patent to everyone else, for free, because everyone else accounts for what, 5% of the market?
The Internet Browser market is dominated by MS. He doesn't need to sue the Mozilla Foundation, Opera, Netscape, etc. . . It doesn't do him any good, and any money to be made along those lines would pale in comparison to the $500 mil he got from MS.
He's said as much, and that he is more than willing to grant said licenses.
If it were me (and this guy sounds like a good guy, from all the interviews I've read, and from the University of California endorsement), I'd be doing EXACTLY what he is doing.
I wouldn't cry foul until he refuses a free license to the Mozilla foundation, etc. . . .
This series of threads is really starting to bother me.
You people don't know who Eolas even is--
It's not a really a company, its just one guy, Dr. Michael Doyle, at the University of California.
He has specifically stated that he has NO intention to hurt the rest of the community---Just Microsoft.
Microsoft has worked with him at one point, and he is peeved off that he never got compensated for his work.
Let me point you at this Cringley interview: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pul pit20021107. html
The meat of the article: "It would sure be nice for someone to actually consider all of this from our point of view, rather than MS's," wrote Doyle in a recent message to me. "It amazes me that everyone just assumes that MS will be able to merely write a check and make the whole thing go away. What if someone went through the following, purely theoretical, of course;-), logical analysis?"
"Is there any practical settlement amount that is worth more to Eolas than a victory at trial? Considering the facts in the case and the magnitude of the stakes here, a highly likely outcome is that it will actually go to trial, and, once it does, that a jury will award us both damages and an injunction. Injunction is the key word here. That is what patent rights provide: the power to exclude. What if we were to just say no? Or, what if some other big player were to acquire or merge with us? What if only one best-of-breed browser could run embedded plug-ins, applets, ActiveX controls, or anything like them, and it wasn't IE? How competitive would the other browsers be without those capabilities? How would that change the current dynamics in the Industry?"
"One possible scenario is that Eolas would have the power necessary to re-establish the browser-as-application-platform as a viable competitor to Windows. That would be an interesting outcome, wouldn't it? How much would that be worth? The Web-OS concept, where the browser is the interface to all interactive apps on the client side, was always a killer idea. It still is. It lost momentum not because it wasn't economically or technically feasible, but because MS made it unlikely for anybody but them to make money on the Web-client side. Therefore, nobody could justify the necessary investment to take a really-serious shot at it. It doesn't have to be that way, does it? Just think of how we could use this patent to re-invigorate and expand the competitive landscape in this recently-moribund industry. What if we could do what the DOJ couldn't, and in the process make Eolas and everybody else, possibly excluding MS, richer? Wouldn't Eolas stand to profit more in such a scenario than any kind of pre-trial settlement could provide? Wouldn't everybody else?"
"The last couple of years in IT seem to have convinced people that the current status quo will continue indefinitely. They seem to have forgotten what seemed so obvious as little as three years ago, that change is the only invariance. That axiom has always proven out in the past, and I'm certain it will continue to do so in the future."
Seems like a FINE idea to me---Not like MS doesn't hold enough patents on various aspects of the browser.
The fight against MS is a war, harsh and cruel. MS is willing to break the rules. MS is willing to use unreasonable patents. MS is willing to be dirty and underhanded.
There is nothing wrong with a little bit of underhandedness against them.
Microsoft knew full well that they were going to be sued regarding this patent.
The professor (the sole employee of Eolas) in this situation was working with Microsoft to develop a 'plugin' archietecture for IE. Part of this work became ActiveX.
The man in question was unable to negotiate a deal with Microsoft. They felt that his demands were too large.
So they blew him off, like many other companies that they have cooperated with in the past.
Unfortunately for them, he had been awarded a patent for his research.
Now he has a bone to pick with Microsoft. I'm not sure where I filed the link (I'm at work, and I do most of my/.ing at home), but Eolas has no intention of going after anyone BUT Microsoft.
And Eolas has no intention of licensing the patent to Microsoft, at ANY price---
He specifically stated that he would like to see the Mozilla project+Netscape+Others have a 'leg up' on Microsoft.
The EXTREMELY weird thing---is the estimated lifetime of Spirit&Opportunities solar panels.
3 months
Seriously.
Apparently, dust will settle on the solar panels, and in 3 months this will reduce their effectiveness enough such that the rovers will not be able to operate....
Bummer, eh?
I'm hoping it doesn't work out that way....Why couldn't they push some kind of cleaning brush on the rovers?
An RTG would not have burned out in 3 months. I don't remember off hand, but weren't the Pioneer probes RTG powered? I think they transmitted data for decades.
WideOpenWest (avaliable in some ComCast areas) is a GREAT cable ISP.
Cable video, Cable internet---- They out do ComCast in both regards.
There is no bandwidth cap (though if you go over something like 100-150 gigs a month they threaten to throttle your throughput at some point in the future), and their speeds are faster to boot (4 Mbps tops, and 512 kbps upload). Did I say they also give you three IPs? And they don't bother you about running servers unless you use more than 30 gigs/s upload a month? And their IPs rarely, if ever, change?
They also roll out new technology much faster than other providers. We saw them go from 1.5 mbps, to 2 mbps, to 3 mbps, to 4 mbps, in a course of maybe 2 years? (I might be wrong on that, they didn't advertise the upper tiers for quite some time).
Plus, their customer services is shockingly good and fast. Short hold times, and they get technicians out FAST (2-3 days, tops).
I love them. They rock. They are a fantastic alternative to comcast, and quiet a bit faster than DSL---
I have a great deal of difficulty believing so.....
Usually, they take infants with no brain function off of life support, but this one must have found a job with Darl&Co.
"Can't let IBM get away with this"
Basically: They(whoever the hell THEY may be(Linux community? Linus Torvalds? IBM? Caldera?) beat us fair and square, so we have every right to play dirty!
Yeah. Brilliant. Why didn't I think of that!!
So, because IBM's stated goal was to 'kill' Unix (which is BS, AIX is Unix, and one of their biggest products), SCO is allowed to generate revenue based upon the hardwork of others (Linux community)?
While your at it, why don't you cut me a check, too? As long SCO is getting money for other people's work, can I have some money for other people's work, too?
Who, exactly, are you at SCO? I don't believe you.
Anyone that stupid would have managed to suicide someway or another---Darwinism, and all, ya know?
I was a little pissy, not necessairly because of who I was responding to, but I get tired of individuals on both sides of the issues talking about commiting genocide....
"Push the Jews into the water!!!"
"Send the Palestinian's back to their Arab brothers!!!"
That stuff makes me really, really, angry.
Anyways.....IMHO, separation from the Palestinians is not really possible.
Whenever I studied the issue (several years ago), I thought that Palestinian labor was fairly important to the Jewish state.
Furthermore, the boundariers are so interwoven, and the divisive nature of the border wall require too much of the Israeli army.
The Israeli army chief of staff said as much.
I can't remember the title, but there was also a book published fairly recently about the abuses of power that went on at a certain security check point by Israeli military personnel.
That book was writting by an Israeli army memeber, and I remeber the Israeli press mentioning that Knesset members thought that 'the soldier should seek psychological help for psychotic tendancies'.
Not that I believe it's Israeli government policy. I believe that the Israeli policy makers want their military to maintain a highly professional and impersonal attitude.
But given the crushing psychological burden of maintaining such a long military perimeter in such a small land mass, I don't know that it is really possible.
People on both sides are going to get REALLY REALLY ANGRY, all the time. Aggressiveness, stupidity, and psychotic behavior IS going to happen.
Further worsening the burden on the Israeli military is these crazy settlers. Even the settlements that the government has agreed to disband have to be literally torn apart by the army.
Tensions rise, tempers peak----
Serparation by force is not a longer term (or even intermediate term) solution for Israel, IMHO.
One way or another, the two nations (well, one nation, and a proto-nation) need to be able to coexist, and form economic bonds.
I understand that there are people on BOTH sides of the fence that don't want to see this happen. (Extremist Settlers, Palestinian terrorists).
The problem is, the more you oppress the Palestinians, the strong you entrech the very people we need to eliminate. Random settlements+Border wall are just too extreme---The miltary burden in maintaining that situation is just too high over the long run----The grunts on the low end 'enforcing' the peace are going to loose it, and become cruel+vicious.
Slashdot Mirror
Err....
Their page is somewhat misleading....
The client will happily update itself to the latest 'testing' version.
Built nightly, I might add---
These changes (version changes) propagate themselves through the network version.
In the windows version, you need to click on a menu choice. In the linux version, you need to run update.sh
There are plenty of interim versions, and they have VASTLY improved the project, and VASTLY improved performance.
They aren't willing to release a new 'stable', but the project is coming along quickly---
Tell me, do you think Debian deserves no more patience? Should the community just cut and run?
It's not that their lazy, far from it---they are just very, very conservative when it comes to issuing new 'stable' releases, and for good reason too----
Freenet is designed to be safe for use by individuals in countries with an oppressive orwellian state------
How would the developers feel if a security 'bug' in the latest version got some people imprisoned, or even executed?
Take a second look, my friend----Freenet is delivering results.
P.S. Clarke's said that it doesn't work very well. But he KNOWS, 100%, that the new algorithm DOES solve the problem. Because that new algorithm is implemented on MOST of the network already--->Before implementation, at the critical point, 95% of messages in the average node's queue were "out of queue space".
Now that figure is around 5%, and dropping. The changes WORKED......
Infact, I think this is an indication that Freenet is growing---the old routing algorithm was not capable of scaling to the number of new users, but the next generation algorithm is working just fine.
AT&T's network WAS TDMA, as another poster has indicated.
You can get their digital advantage plan, which is GSM, and works most everywhere (seriously, I had it for over a year).
You can get their digital one rate plan, which is TDMA, and it works in slightly more places. (had this for two years).
Their customer service, however, blows, and they overcharged me for four months in a row.
They did fix the charges---they credited back the money each month----
But the following month I would have to call in, wait on hold for 50+ minutes, explain the situation to someone, wait 10+ minutes while they credited my account.
It sucked, so I switched to T-Mobile, and I couldn't be happier.
Lots, suprisingly.
.conf file, you can specify that Wine try to emulate NT, 2k, or XP.
It has changed gradually. People just keep writing more and more comprehensive DLLs.
In your
98 mode, however, works much better than any of the NT modes, but the NT modes are coming along nicely.
The NT modes do not integrate well with native DLLs, which is a problem---most of that stuff needs to be written from scratch.
But it is coming.
I've been in the same boat....
.)
:) I've got a pile of those, and I find that they never last very long. Its worth your time/energy to upgrade to an HP OfficeJet or an HP PSC All-in-one printer. I've got the oldest OfficeJet LX, and two fairly modern PSC 750s, a PSC 2210, and a PSC 1110....... (the last four are USB). All work right out of the box on SuSE.
Except, I now have SuSE 9.0....
And everything works, just about, right out of the box. On one system, with a Geforce FX, everything just works. Installed the NVIDIA drivers using YaST2 update (SuSE's installer). Configured NVIDIA drivers using SaX2 (SuSE's X setup). Everything else worked without setup, and far faster than a Windows install would take.
Minor problems: My nforce system needed the nforce rpms from Nvidia's site. My ATI Radeon 9800 Pro needed the rpms from ATI site.
Both of which installed without a problem----
The only text-based setup I had to do was the graphics card, because for some reason SaX2 can't handle the fglrx driver (you can use the DRI for ATI without using ATI's drivers, but ATI's drivers are 200% faster than the XFree86 opensource module).
My USB printer? Check. My Palm? Check. My home network? Check.
Samba? Check. Printing and file sharing? Check.
Plus, buy the boxed set. $70, but the 500 pages of manuals you get are AWESOME, are usable by a non-geek (like, for example, my parents), and go through the usage of many of the more important apps you get with the distro (CD-burning? How to use K3B----- Wordprocessing? OpenOffice, etc. .
It's really a great product, and its finally the linux distro I've needed to not dual boot (well, most of my systems---I've got one gaming rig that dual boots XP for the stubborn titles that simply won't run under WineX))
Cheers,
WhiteWolf
P.S. If you are having serious problems with printing, its probably because your printer is a discount one
Dump Mandrake, it's been way too buggy since 8.2 (9.2 was a nightmare for me).
All the stuff you expect to work in SuSE, does work (Flash, Java, RealPlayer), and if you get the WineRack, you have a great deal of windows compatability too (Crossover Office, Crossover Plugin, Transgaming WineX).
Great Product! Can't endorse it enough! It really is what got me using linux on a daily basis without dual booting!
Err......
Yes, basically....
However, this happens less in the software markets, because it really doesn't save money to take out features.
It DOES save money to take out feature in hardware, even if they don't actually remove the features from the chips....I'll explain, in just a second.
Several Points:
1: Microsoft makes monopoly profits on software. In a 100% efficent market, there are no profits. Corporations make exactly the amount of revenue necessary to cover all costs (note that this includes the CEO's paychecks). This is a good thing in a capitalist economy----You have optimal generation of wealth for all involved, consumers+producers.
Monopoly profits are the other end of the spectrum. When there is only 1 supplier of a product, and no competing products (or substitutes), you can set the prices high enough to maximize your profits---Note:This does not allow you to set the prices astronomically high, just high enough such that you maximize your profit function---You still are subject to supply and demand, you just reduce supply such that the reduction in units sold does not overwhelm the increased profit per unit.
Technically, Microsoft is not a complete monopoly, so they aren't right at the monopoly end of the spectrum, but they are pretty DAMN close.
2:You are kind of right about the two ways to make profit. You are also kind of wrong. More sales+less per unit means greater efficency in the market. If you have a billion competitors, you have to sell things at the lowest possible price--->These 'two ways' of making profits are actually just two scenarios you have picked on a greater spectrum, where the extremes are monopoly profits and no profits.
3:Cripplware, at least in this market (Microsoft) is an attempt to stem off competitors. Even though Microsoft gains some sales from the crippled product, my guess is that this strategy is a loser for them overall.
However, it is preferable to loosing marketshare---this just moves them in the direction of being a more competitive (as opposed to monopolistic) corporation.
4: Hardware versus software crippleware. One need to remember that in hardware, you get manufacturing errors. If I make a processor with 2 MB cache, which is my high end version, I end up loosing, say, 40%, mainly because of inconsistencies in the wafers. (On a technical note, cache is one of the largest space users on processor dies). I can take these reject processors, only enable 128KB of cache, and Voila!, I can ignore flawed components on 75% of my reject processors.
This also works with processors that have multiple execution units (Radeon 9500 versus Radeon 9700, or Geforce FX 5800 versus Geforce FX 5600). If I only enable half of the 'pipelines', I only need to have a 1 working set of pipelines---I can take a whole lot of my rejects and sell them as a lower end part.
This, as you can understand, substantially lowers the number of chips that I need to discard.
More importantly, in the world of non-intellectual property, this is a cost-saving measure that I can implement regardless of how much profit I'm making---monopoly or no, it always helps me.
5: In a more competitive market (oligopolistic probably wouldn't be enough, we would need quite a few competitors), crippled software would not make any sense at all----
Since it doesn't cost you anything to sell your top product at the crippled price, you would need to do this to protect marketshare. As the market becomes more fluid, and there are more substitionary products, profit margin per unit becomes less important, and market share becomes all important.
You do whatever it takes to hold on to market share, which means bringing your full product to the marketplace at the minimum possible price.
To me, this sort of rebranding is an indication that the market is not operating efficently.
However, this doesn't mean that the government should get involved----we are seeing low level movements in the ma
AIM on Wine?
Gnomemeeting (IMHO) sucks....
Maybe I just don't understand how to use it, but at the highest (of whatever settings I can find) settings are nowhere near what I want.
It is designed with dialup in mind, and I think that the multimegabit connections of today can do better than that.
So----Whats the best way to do this on linux? Easy, cheap video conferencing---
Someone must have a solution....
Hear Hear!
I've got the T-Mobile Sierra Wireless aircard too.
Sure its slow. But I use it a lot.
It's like a flaky dialup----you just need to have some patience.
I figure that by the time someone has a good, national (or even Chicagoland) wireless broadband service, my T-mobile contract will expire (I'm on a 1 year).
And the price is unbeatable. $29.99 for unlimited on your Sierra Wireless Aircard, and $19.99 if you piggy-back it on a phone (I've got it both on my Aircard, and on my Nokia 3650, which is a bluetooth GPRS modem for my iPaq)
I just LOVE being online on the go. Broadband on the go makes me salivate......
Hear Hear!
I would find it difficult to define Freedom of Speech as in 'you get to say it before they shoot you'
Not true.
Your allowed to enforce patents as arbitrarily as you want. The American spirit has little to do with it.
Unlike trade marks, or trade secrets, patents can be arbitrarily enforced and still retain their full weight.
For 400 million USD
(flamesuit)
It must be one of those new G5s.
(/flamesuit)
Overtime?
;)
For me, they'd probably chalk it up as vacation days.
All of 'em, for the rest of my life.
As I understand it, the first thing they did once they got Opportunity on the ground was to clear out all the spaceflight 'cruise' data.
I imagine that someone is keeping an eye on it.
2 reasons.
1. MS controls 95% of the browser market. This $500 million is for that % of dominance. Any fine levied against any other browser manufacturer would be minimal.
2. The worse that can happen is we go back to square one. No-one can use the technology.
I doubt #2 will happen, he's already committed to licensing his 'patent' for free for open-source projects.
The only real risk is that MS buys him out, and then uses his patent to smash the competition.
But I doubt that. He's mad at them.
He's won his $500 million settlement.
He's talked about how shameful it is that MS 'cooperates' with companies, and then rams them into the ground.
I really think the risks are small in this situation...But, that's neither here nor there---the judge in the case has supposedly considered quite a bit of prior art, and has decided it doesn't apply (That is on the University of California's Q&A regarding Eolas).
I really believe this situation will turn out for the best.
My 2 cents.
The thing is---he's been burned by MS.
I'd say the same thing.
And you know what? If it were me, I'd beat the hell out of MS with my patent club, and then license my patent to anyone else, for free, as long as it isn't MS.
Remember, there is nothing to stop your from arbitrarily licensing your patents.
You could refuse to license someone because their dog smelled bad.
This guy has a bone to pick with MS. He's got his 1/2 billion dollar victory. He's got the opportunity to become a big player in the browser market---
He could license his patent to everyone else, for free, because everyone else accounts for what, 5% of the market?
The Internet Browser market is dominated by MS. He doesn't need to sue the Mozilla Foundation, Opera, Netscape, etc. . . It doesn't do him any good, and any money to be made along those lines would pale in comparison to the $500 mil he got from MS.
He's said as much, and that he is more than willing to grant said licenses.
If it were me (and this guy sounds like a good guy, from all the interviews I've read, and from the University of California endorsement), I'd be doing EXACTLY what he is doing.
I wouldn't cry foul until he refuses a free license to the Mozilla foundation, etc. . . .
This series of threads is really starting to bother me.
l pit20021107. html
;-), logical analysis?"
You people don't know who Eolas even is--
It's not a really a company, its just one guy, Dr. Michael Doyle, at the University of California.
He has specifically stated that he has NO intention to hurt the rest of the community---Just Microsoft.
Microsoft has worked with him at one point, and he is peeved off that he never got compensated for his work.
Let me point you at this Cringley interview:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pu
The meat of the article:
"It would sure be nice for someone to actually consider all of this from our point of view, rather than MS's," wrote Doyle in a recent message to me. "It amazes me that everyone just assumes that MS will be able to merely write a check and make the whole thing go away. What if someone went through the following, purely theoretical, of course
"Is there any practical settlement amount that is worth more to Eolas than a victory at trial? Considering the facts in the case and the magnitude of the stakes here, a highly likely outcome is that it will actually go to trial, and, once it does, that a jury will award us both damages and an injunction. Injunction is the key word here. That is what patent rights provide: the power to exclude. What if we were to just say no? Or, what if some other big player were to acquire or merge with us? What if only one best-of-breed browser could run embedded plug-ins, applets, ActiveX controls, or anything like them, and it wasn't IE? How competitive would the other browsers be without those capabilities? How would that change the current dynamics in the Industry?"
"One possible scenario is that Eolas would have the power necessary to re-establish the browser-as-application-platform as a viable competitor to Windows. That would be an interesting outcome, wouldn't it? How much would that be worth? The Web-OS concept, where the browser is the interface to all interactive apps on the client side, was always a killer idea. It still is. It lost momentum not because it wasn't economically or technically feasible, but because MS made it unlikely for anybody but them to make money on the Web-client side. Therefore, nobody could justify the necessary investment to take a really-serious shot at it. It doesn't have to be that way, does it? Just think of how we could use this patent to re-invigorate and expand the competitive landscape in this recently-moribund industry. What if we could do what the DOJ couldn't, and in the process make Eolas and everybody else, possibly excluding MS, richer? Wouldn't Eolas stand to profit more in such a scenario than any kind of pre-trial settlement could provide? Wouldn't everybody else?"
"The last couple of years in IT seem to have convinced people that the current status quo will continue indefinitely. They seem to have forgotten what seemed so obvious as little as three years ago, that change is the only invariance. That axiom has always proven out in the past, and I'm certain it will continue to do so in the future."
Seems like a FINE idea to me---Not like MS doesn't hold enough patents on various aspects of the browser.
The fight against MS is a war, harsh and cruel. MS is willing to break the rules. MS is willing to use unreasonable patents. MS is willing to be dirty and underhanded.
There is nothing wrong with a little bit of underhandedness against them.
Your obviously not familar with the Eolas case.
/.ing at home), but Eolas has no intention of going after anyone BUT Microsoft.
Microsoft knew full well that they were going to be sued regarding this patent.
The professor (the sole employee of Eolas) in this situation was working with Microsoft to develop a 'plugin' archietecture for IE. Part of this work became ActiveX.
The man in question was unable to negotiate a deal with Microsoft. They felt that his demands were too large.
So they blew him off, like many other companies that they have cooperated with in the past.
Unfortunately for them, he had been awarded a patent for his research.
Now he has a bone to pick with Microsoft. I'm not sure where I filed the link (I'm at work, and I do most of my
And Eolas has no intention of licensing the patent to Microsoft, at ANY price---
He specifically stated that he would like to see the Mozilla project+Netscape+Others have a 'leg up' on Microsoft.
Anyways, just my 2 cents.
The EXTREMELY weird thing---is the estimated lifetime of Spirit&Opportunities solar panels.
3 months
Seriously.
Apparently, dust will settle on the solar panels, and in 3 months this will reduce their effectiveness enough such that the rovers will not be able to operate....
Bummer, eh?
I'm hoping it doesn't work out that way....Why couldn't they push some kind of cleaning brush on the rovers?
An RTG would not have burned out in 3 months. I don't remember off hand, but weren't the Pioneer probes RTG powered? I think they transmitted data for decades.
WideOpenWest (avaliable in some ComCast areas) is a GREAT cable ISP.
Cable video, Cable internet---- They out do ComCast in both regards.
There is no bandwidth cap (though if you go over something like 100-150 gigs a month they threaten to throttle your throughput at some point in the future), and their speeds are faster to boot (4 Mbps tops, and 512 kbps upload). Did I say they also give you three IPs? And they don't bother you about running servers unless you use more than 30 gigs/s upload a month? And their IPs rarely, if ever, change?
They also roll out new technology much faster than other providers. We saw them go from 1.5 mbps, to 2 mbps, to 3 mbps, to 4 mbps, in a course of maybe 2 years? (I might be wrong on that, they didn't advertise the upper tiers for quite some time).
Plus, their customer services is shockingly good and fast. Short hold times, and they get technicians out FAST (2-3 days, tops).
I love them. They rock. They are a fantastic alternative to comcast, and quiet a bit faster than DSL---
Do the puppet governments that the US put in place count as other countries?
You haven't been wearing your tinfoil hat lately, eh?
Obviously, the Chinese government controls world politics.....
Read the article....
They say 12 miles----
Seems awful high to me, but what do I know....
I'm not so certain----
They need to LOOK like they believe what they are saying, otherwise the pump and dump wouldn't work.
Regardless of whether or not they are sincere, they need to look like they believe every word of their BS---
Otherwise, the scam would all be for naught....
This is a troll, right?
It's meant to be funny, right?
Could anyone actually be quite so stupid?
I have a great deal of difficulty believing so.....
Usually, they take infants with no brain function off of life support, but this one must have found a job with Darl&Co.
"Can't let IBM get away with this"
Basically: They(whoever the hell THEY may be(Linux community? Linus Torvalds? IBM? Caldera?) beat us fair and square, so we have every right to play dirty!
Yeah. Brilliant. Why didn't I think of that!!
So, because IBM's stated goal was to 'kill' Unix (which is BS, AIX is Unix, and one of their biggest products), SCO is allowed to generate revenue based upon the hardwork of others (Linux community)?
While your at it, why don't you cut me a check, too? As long SCO is getting money for other people's work, can I have some money for other people's work, too?
Who, exactly, are you at SCO? I don't believe you.
Anyone that stupid would have managed to suicide someway or another---Darwinism, and all, ya know?
As far as I can tell (and I believe many other /.'ers realize)
Kiss lets you download source on their website....
EAT THAT!
Seriously---don't flame a company till you check----
As it stands, if this really is their source, than I'm going to go out and buy a Kiss DVD player.
(About Keyensianism) Sure....
But 'Military' Keyensianism would have made John Maynard Keyes turn over in his grave.
The 'Military' version was a bunch of four-star clowns who said "Spend more money on our crazy programs! It'll help the economy!!!"
I'll try not to be so much of a jerk this time.
I was a little pissy, not necessairly because of who I was responding to, but I get tired of individuals on both sides of the issues talking about commiting genocide....
"Push the Jews into the water!!!"
"Send the Palestinian's back to their Arab brothers!!!"
That stuff makes me really, really, angry.
Anyways.....IMHO, separation from the Palestinians is not really possible.
Whenever I studied the issue (several years ago), I thought that Palestinian labor was fairly important to the Jewish state.
Furthermore, the boundariers are so interwoven, and the divisive nature of the border wall require too much of the Israeli army.
The Israeli army chief of staff said as much.
I can't remember the title, but there was also a book published fairly recently about the abuses of power that went on at a certain security check point by Israeli military personnel.
That book was writting by an Israeli army memeber, and I remeber the Israeli press mentioning that Knesset members thought that 'the soldier should seek psychological help for psychotic tendancies'.
Not that I believe it's Israeli government policy. I believe that the Israeli policy makers want their military to maintain a highly professional and impersonal attitude.
But given the crushing psychological burden of maintaining such a long military perimeter in such a small land mass, I don't know that it is really possible.
People on both sides are going to get REALLY REALLY ANGRY, all the time. Aggressiveness, stupidity, and psychotic behavior IS going to happen.
Further worsening the burden on the Israeli military is these crazy settlers. Even the settlements that the government has agreed to disband have to be literally torn apart by the army.
Tensions rise, tempers peak----
Serparation by force is not a longer term (or even intermediate term) solution for Israel, IMHO.
One way or another, the two nations (well, one nation, and a proto-nation) need to be able to coexist, and form economic bonds.
I understand that there are people on BOTH sides of the fence that don't want to see this happen. (Extremist Settlers, Palestinian terrorists).
The problem is, the more you oppress the Palestinians, the strong you entrech the very people we need to eliminate. Random settlements+Border wall are just too extreme---The miltary burden in maintaining that situation is just too high over the long run----The grunts on the low end 'enforcing' the peace are going to loose it, and become cruel+vicious.
And it'll be damn expensive for Israeli, too.