So if you are genetically and physically male but weak like a girl (appropriateness of that comparison aside) you shoud be able to compete as a woman? This is a very much more difficult issue than that, since in part what is tested in athletic competition is genetic comparison. If we split on gender then perhaps only true XX and XY properly manifested should be alllowed in at all. That is no more unfair to them than it is to those of us with genetics not lending themselves to athletic prowess at all.
I think a reasonable test would be to ask: is my program still mostly useful even if the GPLd helper/plugin is removed (modulo the specific removed function)?
Step 2: consult a lawyer. The above test may seem "reasonable", but we are talking about the law here. Reasonableness, fairness and common sense have nothing to do with it. The test above is not helpful in the least.
The program is only a derivative work of another if it incorporates the protected expression of another. If the GPL code is in another process entirely, it is very unlikely that your code incorporates protected expression of the other process.
Dynamic linking or dynamic loading, we could have an argument about.
Disclaimer: IAAL, but TINLA. If you want to do this, retain a lawyer. This means you, submitter - you need a technology lawyer to check your particular use.
The lawyer's job is NOT to evaluate your best course of action that balances your wishes to keep the material with your wishes not to be sued. The lawyer will only do two things: (1) advise you to minimize your risks; (2) represent you if you keep the material up.
IAAL, and this is not correct at all.
Lawyers usually advise in terms of probabilities as a CYA technique. Strangely enough, people who consult lawyers are more likely to sue than people who don't, so lawyers spend a lot of time putting in these CYA qualifiers. The following Lawyerese to English translations may help:
May: Yes Might: Probably Unclear: Your guess is as good as mine Unlikely: No Very unlikely: Hell no
Topical example - lawyer advising a paying client: In the situation described in TFA, given the amount of material taken, which appears to be much more than would be necessary for any "fair use", it is very unlikely that a defence of fair use would be successful in court.
Topical example - lawyer making a comment informally without any liability: If you think the situation in TFA amounts to fair use you're out of your ****ing mind!
In places with a divided profession (solicitors and barristers rather than attorneys) you can get the second sort of advice on a paid basis from a barrister (or your solicitor can get it for you), although it will cost a lot more and will still have qualifiers in it indicating where the risks are.
Even where a client insists on doing something risky, a lawyer will be prepared to give advice on steps the client can take to minimise the risk. If a lawyer refuses to do that, you should find another one.
how can a lawyer comment on the technical difference between say fat 12 and fat 16
Some of us can because we started out as techies. I haven't looked at Perens' material yet but the summary here is mostly wrong. US patent law in particular has fairly low standards for "obvious". There are other attacks that might be easier.
Even without damage the plaintiffs here could have recovered nominal damages for the trespass, and maybe even aggravated damages or exemplary damages. The problem is they didn't even claim these damages. They tried to claim damages for something too remote from the trespass. Plus $25,000 was just silly.
With contracts don't get the lawyer to write it, it will cost you a fortune. Write it yourself and then get the lawyer to correct it.
For most people that will actually be less cost effective rather than more. Poor drafting can cost a lot more to fix (and fixing it may not be possible) than getting the lawyer to draft from the start.
Frequently, OpenSource tools like OpenOffice.org or AbiWord read the files perfectly well, and then can save them un-corrupted in ".doc" form. My wife is an attorney, and she has to jump through that hoop all the time.
Lawyers make a lot of use of change tracking. Word does a horrible job in this area and frequently corrupts files, especially when editing with multiple versions (which you do when exchanging draft documents). OpenOffice 3 does a much better job of change tracking in every conceivable way but the problem is the other side is most likely using Word and won't even know what OpenOffice is. The corruption fix via OpenOffice works but change tracking information is likely to be altered in the process and you lose automatic cross references to numbered paragraphs in the process (Ooo 3.0 has them but does not import them from Word documents).
For in-house applications it will always make more sense to spend money on better hardware than a month extra coding, provided throwing the money at hardware will solve the problem. For packaged applications the trade-off is different. That extra month coding adds a negligible amount to the cost of the product when spread over all installations, but the cost of more powerful hardware will be felt in every one of them.
Having all these skills available is useful in web site development, but HTML and CSS must be the primary tool set. If a task can be achieved using just HTML and CSS, it should be. There are far too many web sites out there that use scripting to perform tasks that are easily achievable in HTML and CSS, and the result is that many of those web sites are unusable on some web browsers. And I mean unusable, not "harder to use" - the content is often completely inaccessible.
A web site developer who uses scripting to achieve what can be done in HTML and CSS is less competent than one who only knows HTML and CSS, not more competent. I say this not knowing whether or not you are one of the ones who does this, but this is such a huge problem in web site development that it's a point that needs to be made at every opportunity.
The reason why this will be unsettling to Cisco is because some of the products have integrated key IOS files in order to retain backwards compatibility. Which means that those files now fall under the GPL. And the only way to integrate them is to use various Linux API's. That is, key files are derived works from the GPL. From the bootstrap code on up.
Mere use of an API (assuming dynamic linking - static linking is still a problem but so rare now it should be disregarded) will rarely make the code using it a derivative work since it will not incorporate protected expression in the compiled code. It sounds like what Cisco needeed was to shell out a few dollars for some advice from a lawyer who knows enough about software development to tell them this.
There are some exceptions that arise when the headers contain inline code (but it needs to be significant inline code - a macro "#define min(a,b) ((a) < (b) ? (a) : (b))" won't count.
Are there any other ways you suggest Cisco has been creating derivative works?
But, since these files are key to IOS as well, one could take the view that IOS is now under the GPL.
One could take any view one likes, but one would be wrong. Distributing code in breach does not render the code not released under the GPL to be licensed under the GPL. It just means the code was distributed in breach of copyright, with the usual actions available. Compliance would require the code to be licensed under the GPL. Non-compliance does not result in the code being licensed under the GPL.
So in Australia you're allowed to copyright a list of facts, based solely on the fact that the jackass that typed them in (skill) spent time (labor) doing it?
Yes, unfortunately, the courts have allowed copyright in such circumstances. In fact the seminal US case on the issue (Feist) has a corresponding Australian case (here) going in exactly the opposite direction.
If the High Court is sitting with all 7 judges, however, it may be because they are thinking of changing this, however the way the case has been argued so far this might not arise - the defendants have not disputed the existence of copyright, they have merely disputed that their activities infringe on that copyright.
By the way, I considered a business using the TV guide data in Australia over 10 years ago. Channel 9 (alone) refused to cooperate, and I decided the risk of being sued by them in exactly this way was too great.
Re:Is it ok to keep kids off the internet these da
on
Good Email For Kids?
·
· Score: 1
What looks like a child doing something merely because a parent asks is actually the result of a long period of constantly adapting discipline and diplomacy with the most immature, illogical, demanding, self-centered, and emotional people you have ever met.
I seem to remember hearing something about lipstick and pigs.
I really think you should leave Sarah Palin out of this.
Re:What the problem with Gmail?
on
Good Email For Kids?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Then don't let them have an e-mail account. There is no perfect spam filter... except you filter it by your own.
One solution offers the answer to both of these problems. Maia Mailguard. I'm a huge fan of that project and it is, in my opinion, the single most underpromoted open source app out there. It should be on every sys admin's (at least) radar.
With Mailguard you can set up customised filtering levels (based on spamassassin score). Want manual spam filtering for somebody's account? Set up two email addresses, one for the kid, one for you. Link their address to yours in Mailguard and set the spam threshold score to minus 100. Everything gets treated as spam, and you get a daily notification listing the messages and can go in and manually release the real stuff, and whitelist trusted senders. It even lists things in increasing order of spamminess so the legit stuff will be near the top.
If you are less paranoid, leave the spam detection score at a more reasonable level and let the stuff that is unlikely to be spam go through.
1. You don't have to have any meaningful qualifications to apply for a job in IT. You do to apply for a job in law. 2. An incompetent accountant or lawyer can be easily detected before they get their first pay cheque. An incompetent IT person may not be detected until their first real deliverable is due months later, or until the first real disaster strikes, at which point the employer is really screwed. 3. The lack of objective measures means some IT shops are stacked with idiots so that a person from such a shop may think they're pretty good when in fact they are not.
Honestly, the testing is there for IT people because HR have found there is a higher risk with those candidates. Deal with it.
Re:I don't know if I fully agree with that
on
Fire Your IT Boss
·
· Score: 1
As someone who has moved up through the IT organization and manages a large group, I spend FAR more time managing my boss and his boss than my staff. They get their assignments, with enough authority to get them done and responsibility to get them done. My job is to secure the necessary resources, provide a sounding-board, review technical decisions they make and run LOTS of interference to keep my boss out of their hair so they can actually get the work done.
I did this too, for many years. Then I got a new boss, and not long after so did all my staff.
For reference: cube 2 inches square = measures 2 inches in any of the three dimensions.
This must be that "new math". Since in the "old math" you could not have a cube 2 inches square as cubes were three dimensional objects. My reaction to the summary was "wow, they've created a computer that has no depth whatsoever? Did it have the assistance of some scientists from Gallifrey?
Cube with each side measuring 2 square inches = measures about 1.41 inches in any of the three dimensions (square root of 2).
In the old math this would seem to be referring to a tesseract (but even then the terminology would be unsound).
I can only speak for investment banking but "lines per day" is not a metric which I've ever seen people actually use.
Some people use it, but on its own it's a really bad metric. A top quality developer will do the same task in far fewer lines of code, with better reliability, than a poor quality developer. That means metrics based on lines per day alone may identify the worst programmers rather than the best.
How *much* are you willing to risk to lose for the sake of your principles, and perhaps justifiably so
"Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?"
"I guess I might."
"Would you sleep with me for ten dollars?"
"How dare you, what kind of a woman do you think I am?"
"Madam, we have already established that; now we're merely haggling over the price."
Your question contains a logical paradox - if an answer is given in any number, the truth is there were no principles to begin with.
In order to file the patent, you need to sign a statement, under penalty of perjury, that states that you are not aware of prior art. Claim that you cannot, in good conscious, sign that statement.
The poster hasn't indicated their jurisdiction, but this is generally true of patent claims. The offence may not be perjury, but depending on the country there is almost certain to be a criminal offence of deceiving a public official to induce that official to act or to refrain from acting, and signing the declaration on a patent claim can breach that. If the statement is false, you can, should and must refrain from making it.
If you get fired for this, you have a cause of action - you were requested to do something which is illegal (perjure yourself), and when you refused, you got fired.
This is more problematic. Firstly, many States of the United States have truly draconian employment laws so that an employee has no real rights other than to get paid for work they have actually done. In other places the employee's rights may be greater, but subject to the employer giving adequate notice, even in the most favourable jurisdictions for the employee, the employer can terminate without giving any reason.
Even if the employee can establish a legal right was breached by the employer, fighting for it is likely to be more expensive than it is worth.
The other difficulty for this particular case is that the patenting landscape has changed in the last 20 years. 20 years ago it was easy to find employers who were not into patenting, but for a software developer to find employment today while sticking to their principles (and in this regard note that "ethics" means more than "obedience to law" so saying "it's legal, just do it", misses the point for the submitter) on the wrongness of software patents is somewhat of a challenge. The choices may be either go into business yourself or switch to another profession (and incidentally, I have done the second while holding the first as a plan B for this reason, among others).
It is also worth noting that the job market at the creative end of IT (including software development) is highly vulnerable to economic downturns (don't mention the "R" word). Because software development is something that has a long lead time before it pays off to the employer or customer, it makes business sense for it to be singled out for trimming in leaner times. Given the state of world economies (and the US subprime crisis has affected pretty much the whole of the western world), this consideration may be relevant.
As a final point I feel it appropriate to make a comment on ethics. It will be apparent from what I wrote above that a person who maintains that they have ethics will be faced with a choice between economic security and adhering to their ethical beliefs. However a person who actually has ethics will not have a choice. Ethics only mean something when you stick to them even when it is against your own interests to do so. If you sell them out, it can only be because you never had them in the first place.
So if Hasbro takes them to court for infringing the board design (which IIRC is far shakier than the misuse of the trademark) then they can just delete that.
They don't have to delete anything. They are claiming an account of profits for past infringement, and they'll get it too. Collecting from India may be another question entirely.
What improvement to Scrabble did Scrabulous bring to the table? That you can play it over the internet? Your point doesn't address my question
Whoosh. The OP was making a joke about the state of the Patent system and software and business method patents in particular. It wasn't intended to address your question.
Slashdot Mirror
So if you are genetically and physically male but weak like a girl (appropriateness of that comparison aside) you shoud be able to compete as a woman? This is a very much more difficult issue than that, since in part what is tested in athletic competition is genetic comparison. If we split on gender then perhaps only true XX and XY properly manifested should be alllowed in at all. That is no more unfair to them than it is to those of us with genetics not lending themselves to athletic prowess at all.
I think a reasonable test would be to ask: is my program still mostly useful even if the GPLd helper/plugin is removed (modulo the specific removed function)?
Step 2: consult a lawyer. The above test may seem "reasonable", but we are talking about the law here. Reasonableness, fairness and common sense have nothing to do with it. The test above is not helpful in the least.
The program is only a derivative work of another if it incorporates the protected expression of another. If the GPL code is in another process entirely, it is very unlikely that your code incorporates protected expression of the other process.
Dynamic linking or dynamic loading, we could have an argument about.
Disclaimer: IAAL, but TINLA. If you want to do this, retain a lawyer. This means you, submitter - you need a technology lawyer to check your particular use.
The lawyer's job is NOT to evaluate your best course of action that balances your wishes to keep the material with your wishes not to be sued. The lawyer will only do two things: (1) advise you to minimize your risks; (2) represent you if you keep the material up.
IAAL, and this is not correct at all.
Lawyers usually advise in terms of probabilities as a CYA technique. Strangely enough, people who consult lawyers are more likely to sue than people who don't, so lawyers spend a lot of time putting in these CYA qualifiers. The following Lawyerese to English translations may help:
May: Yes
Might: Probably
Unclear: Your guess is as good as mine
Unlikely: No
Very unlikely: Hell no
Topical example - lawyer advising a paying client: In the situation described in TFA, given the amount of material taken, which appears to be much more than would be necessary for any "fair use", it is very unlikely that a defence of fair use would be successful in court.
Topical example - lawyer making a comment informally without any liability: If you think the situation in TFA amounts to fair use you're out of your ****ing mind!
In places with a divided profession (solicitors and barristers rather than attorneys) you can get the second sort of advice on a paid basis from a barrister (or your solicitor can get it for you), although it will cost a lot more and will still have qualifiers in it indicating where the risks are.
Even where a client insists on doing something risky, a lawyer will be prepared to give advice on steps the client can take to minimise the risk. If a lawyer refuses to do that, you should find another one.
Most people don't put an ethernet jack wherever they have a power connection
And depending on your definition of "close" putting an ethernet outlet close to a power outlet will likely mean breaching wiring laws.
how can a lawyer comment on the technical difference between say fat 12 and fat 16
Some of us can because we started out as techies. I haven't looked at Perens' material yet but the summary here is mostly wrong. US patent law in particular has fairly low standards for "obvious". There are other attacks that might be easier.
Even without damage the plaintiffs here could have recovered nominal damages for the trespass, and maybe even aggravated damages or exemplary damages. The problem is they didn't even claim these damages. They tried to claim damages for something too remote from the trespass. Plus $25,000 was just silly.
With contracts don't get the lawyer to write it, it will cost you a fortune. Write it yourself and then get the lawyer to correct it.
For most people that will actually be less cost effective rather than more. Poor drafting can cost a lot more to fix (and fixing it may not be possible) than getting the lawyer to draft from the start.
Frequently, OpenSource tools like OpenOffice.org or AbiWord read the files perfectly well, and then can save them un-corrupted in ".doc" form. My wife is an attorney, and she has to jump through that hoop all the time.
Lawyers make a lot of use of change tracking. Word does a horrible job in this area and frequently corrupts files, especially when editing with multiple versions (which you do when exchanging draft documents). OpenOffice 3 does a much better job of change tracking in every conceivable way but the problem is the other side is most likely using Word and won't even know what OpenOffice is. The corruption fix via OpenOffice works but change tracking information is likely to be altered in the process and you lose automatic cross references to numbered paragraphs in the process (Ooo 3.0 has them but does not import them from Word documents).
For in-house applications it will always make more sense to spend money on better hardware than a month extra coding, provided throwing the money at hardware will solve the problem. For packaged applications the trade-off is different. That extra month coding adds a negligible amount to the cost of the product when spread over all installations, but the cost of more powerful hardware will be felt in every one of them.
Having all these skills available is useful in web site development, but HTML and CSS must be the primary tool set. If a task can be achieved using just HTML and CSS, it should be. There are far too many web sites out there that use scripting to perform tasks that are easily achievable in HTML and CSS, and the result is that many of those web sites are unusable on some web browsers. And I mean unusable, not "harder to use" - the content is often completely inaccessible.
A web site developer who uses scripting to achieve what can be done in HTML and CSS is less competent than one who only knows HTML and CSS, not more competent. I say this not knowing whether or not you are one of the ones who does this, but this is such a huge problem in web site development that it's a point that needs to be made at every opportunity.
The reason why this will be unsettling to Cisco is because some of the products have integrated key IOS files in order to retain backwards compatibility. Which means that those files now fall under the GPL. And the only way to integrate them is to use various Linux API's. That is, key files are derived works from the GPL. From the bootstrap code on up.
Mere use of an API (assuming dynamic linking - static linking is still a problem but so rare now it should be disregarded) will rarely make the code using it a derivative work since it will not incorporate protected expression in the compiled code. It sounds like what Cisco needeed was to shell out a few dollars for some advice from a lawyer who knows enough about software development to tell them this.
There are some exceptions that arise when the headers contain inline code (but it needs to be significant inline code - a macro "#define min(a,b) ((a) < (b) ? (a) : (b))" won't count.
Are there any other ways you suggest Cisco has been creating derivative works?
But, since these files are key to IOS as well, one could take the view that IOS is now under the GPL.
One could take any view one likes, but one would be wrong. Distributing code in breach does not render the code not released under the GPL to be licensed under the GPL. It just means the code was distributed in breach of copyright, with the usual actions available. Compliance would require the code to be licensed under the GPL. Non-compliance does not result in the code being licensed under the GPL.
So in Australia you're allowed to copyright a list of facts, based solely on the fact that the jackass that typed them in (skill) spent time (labor) doing it?
Yes, unfortunately, the courts have allowed copyright in such circumstances. In fact the seminal US case on the issue (Feist) has a corresponding Australian case (here) going in exactly the opposite direction.
If the High Court is sitting with all 7 judges, however, it may be because they are thinking of changing this, however the way the case has been argued so far this might not arise - the defendants have not disputed the existence of copyright, they have merely disputed that their activities infringe on that copyright.
By the way, I considered a business using the TV guide data in Australia over 10 years ago. Channel 9 (alone) refused to cooperate, and I decided the risk of being sued by them in exactly this way was too great.
What looks like a child doing something merely because a parent asks is actually the result of a long period of constantly adapting discipline and diplomacy with the most immature, illogical, demanding, self-centered, and emotional people you have ever met.
Republicans?
I seem to remember hearing something about lipstick and pigs.
I really think you should leave Sarah Palin out of this.
Then don't let them have an e-mail account. There is no perfect spam filter ... except you filter it by your own.
One solution offers the answer to both of these problems. Maia Mailguard. I'm a huge fan of that project and it is, in my opinion, the single most underpromoted open source app out there. It should be on every sys admin's (at least) radar.
With Mailguard you can set up customised filtering levels (based on spamassassin score). Want manual spam filtering for somebody's account? Set up two email addresses, one for the kid, one for you. Link their address to yours in Mailguard and set the spam threshold score to minus 100. Everything gets treated as spam, and you get a daily notification listing the messages and can go in and manually release the real stuff, and whitelist trusted senders. It even lists things in increasing order of spamminess so the legit stuff will be near the top.
If you are less paranoid, leave the spam detection score at a more reasonable level and let the stuff that is unlikely to be spam go through.
1. You don't have to have any meaningful qualifications to apply for a job in IT. You do to apply for a job in law.
2. An incompetent accountant or lawyer can be easily detected before they get their first pay cheque. An incompetent IT person may not be detected until their first real deliverable is due months later, or until the first real disaster strikes, at which point the employer is really screwed.
3. The lack of objective measures means some IT shops are stacked with idiots so that a person from such a shop may think they're pretty good when in fact they are not.
Honestly, the testing is there for IT people because HR have found there is a higher risk with those candidates. Deal with it.
As someone who has moved up through the IT organization and manages a large group, I spend FAR more time managing my boss and his boss than my staff. They get their assignments, with enough authority to get them done and responsibility to get them done. My job is to secure the necessary resources, provide a sounding-board, review technical decisions they make and run LOTS of interference to keep my boss out of their hair so they can actually get the work done.
I did this too, for many years. Then I got a new boss, and not long after so did all my staff.
Don't forget Deija Thoris Carter.
Who could forget a beautiful blonde chick who was into software development, walking around naked, and sex with geeks... and... er... her own father.
OK, so Heinlein was a dirty old man, but that one book is now the basis for millions of web sites worldwide.
So if the Sun is female, maybe she's pregnant?
For reference: cube 2 inches square = measures 2 inches in any of the three dimensions.
This must be that "new math". Since in the "old math" you could not have a cube 2 inches square as cubes were three dimensional objects. My reaction to the summary was "wow, they've created a computer that has no depth whatsoever? Did it have the assistance of some scientists from Gallifrey?
Cube with each side measuring 2 square inches = measures about 1.41 inches in any of the three dimensions (square root of 2).
In the old math this would seem to be referring to a tesseract (but even then the terminology would be unsound).
I can only speak for investment banking but "lines per day" is not a metric which I've ever seen people actually use.
Some people use it, but on its own it's a really bad metric. A top quality developer will do the same task in far fewer lines of code, with better reliability, than a poor quality developer. That means metrics based on lines per day alone may identify the worst programmers rather than the best.
How *much* are you willing to risk to lose for the sake of your principles, and perhaps justifiably so
"Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?"
"I guess I might."
"Would you sleep with me for ten dollars?"
"How dare you, what kind of a woman do you think I am?"
"Madam, we have already established that; now we're merely haggling over the price."
Your question contains a logical paradox - if an answer is given in any number, the truth is there were no principles to begin with.
In order to file the patent, you need to sign a statement, under penalty of perjury, that states that you are not aware of prior art. Claim that you cannot, in good conscious, sign that statement.
The poster hasn't indicated their jurisdiction, but this is generally true of patent claims. The offence may not be perjury, but depending on the country there is almost certain to be a criminal offence of deceiving a public official to induce that official to act or to refrain from acting, and signing the declaration on a patent claim can breach that. If the statement is false, you can, should and must refrain from making it.
If you get fired for this, you have a cause of action - you were requested to do something which is illegal (perjure yourself), and when you refused, you got fired.
This is more problematic. Firstly, many States of the United States have truly draconian employment laws so that an employee has no real rights other than to get paid for work they have actually done. In other places the employee's rights may be greater, but subject to the employer giving adequate notice, even in the most favourable jurisdictions for the employee, the employer can terminate without giving any reason.
Even if the employee can establish a legal right was breached by the employer, fighting for it is likely to be more expensive than it is worth.
The other difficulty for this particular case is that the patenting landscape has changed in the last 20 years. 20 years ago it was easy to find employers who were not into patenting, but for a software developer to find employment today while sticking to their principles (and in this regard note that "ethics" means more than "obedience to law" so saying "it's legal, just do it", misses the point for the submitter) on the wrongness of software patents is somewhat of a challenge. The choices may be either go into business yourself or switch to another profession (and incidentally, I have done the second while holding the first as a plan B for this reason, among others).
It is also worth noting that the job market at the creative end of IT (including software development) is highly vulnerable to economic downturns (don't mention the "R" word). Because software development is something that has a long lead time before it pays off to the employer or customer, it makes business sense for it to be singled out for trimming in leaner times. Given the state of world economies (and the US subprime crisis has affected pretty much the whole of the western world), this consideration may be relevant.
As a final point I feel it appropriate to make a comment on ethics. It will be apparent from what I wrote above that a person who maintains that they have ethics will be faced with a choice between economic security and adhering to their ethical beliefs. However a person who actually has ethics will not have a choice. Ethics only mean something when you stick to them even when it is against your own interests to do so. If you sell them out, it can only be because you never had them in the first place.
So if Hasbro takes them to court for infringing the board design (which IIRC is far shakier than the misuse of the trademark) then they can just delete that.
They don't have to delete anything. They are claiming an account of profits for past infringement, and they'll get it too. Collecting from India may be another question entirely.
Whoosh. The OP was making a joke about the state of the Patent system and software and business method patents in particular. It wasn't intended to address your question.