ehhhh, I think they've amended their claims now. The IBM suit is all about contract law, but the noises they're making suggest lawsuits against other companies or individuals based on copyright violations. The "analyst" statements they've bought have been almost entirely focused on code copying rather than incorporation of features developed by outsiders. (Although this has little to do with their legal strategy, and seems rather to be a part of their long-term business plan.)
If a company as large as Microsoft suffers because of bullshit patents, maybe our legislators will finally do something about it.
Bingo! I think this is exactly what will happen. Our government needs to see the kind of damage this madness is able to inflict upon our economy before they will act in a fashion that would appear "anti-business". I'm predicting that gene patents will meet a similar end, along the same lines (though they may die out anyway for other reasons).
One of the reasons I dislike Microsoft (Or at least its business practices) is because of the degree they have egendered/exacerbated the very IP problem mentioned in the parent comment.
With regards to software piracy, perhaps - although I tend towards Microsoft's side in that case. However, they have been relatively less agressive in enforcing patents. Bill Gates himself pointed out more than years ago that the growing patent frenzy would have prevented the past few decades of technical advances, if companies had been that zealous when the computer was invented. Thus, he said, Microsoft would have to be constantly on the lookout for other companies (specifically, large ones like IBM) who would try to screw it with patents - the solution being, therefore, for Microsoft itself to assemble a defensive patent portfolio.
Microsoft has definitely used the threat of litigation to scare off competition in a few cases, and they've made rumbling noises about various open-source projects that aim for compatability. However, they've never truly used their patents for outright extortion, unlike *cough* IBM and seem generally content to sit on their portfolio unless directly threatened. I don't trust them for a second, but I'm not going to attack them without cause.
If they are granted a copyright and they choose to enforce it, it's up to the people being sued for non-compliance to prove that SCO is wrong.
Okay, bring it on. The burden of proof is currently on SCO. If they decide to sue, the violating code will have to be shown in court, and it will no longer be public. Unfortunately, some companies will undoubtedly decide to cough up licensing fees rather than challenge the claim. But it takes a hell of a lot of balls to ask people to pay you to license code they won't even tell about, and threaten them with a lawsuit unless they stop using infringing code that hasn't been identified.
Anyway, they still haven't been honest or clear about whether the infringing code was developed by AT&T/SCO, or whether it was developed by IBM. There's a huge difference - basically, if only the latter applies, copyright is irrelevant. SCO is being deliberately vague because they hope to sucker CTOs who don't understand enough IP law, or are too cheap to force a showdown.
I didn't follow this controversy too closely when it came out (I could care less about kernels), but my impression then was that the best argument for moving away from BitKeeper was that Larry McVoy clearly had some personality issues. Now that he's promised to deliberately break interoperability with any compatible product, RMS looks reasonable in comparison. I know Linus is very agnostic about licenses, but it doesn't seem wise to collaborate with someone who has stated his opposition to one of the main reasons so many people use Linux in the first place. Is it really worth dealing with that asshole?
Oh, and LKML's web server isn't a very good advertisement for free software right now.
Don't think of it as a license. Think of it as a pre-emptive out-of-court settlement. Anyway, SCO's claim is that some of the code in Linux never should have been distributed under the GPL anyway because permission was not obtained from all parties with copyrights or other IP protection, i.e. SCO or the former rights holders. This is ignoring the issue of SCO's own distribution of Linux - the people they're going for with this licensing program either won't understand it, or won't trust it as a defense against a suit.
Of course, a lot of these people seem to be much less enthusiastic about states rights' if "states rights" seems to mean that a federal anti-abortion law would be unconstitutional (if they're on the right) or that a state that doesn't allow same-sex mairrages would be allowed to view as invalid a same-sex mairrage initiated in a state that does allow them (if they're on the left).
Hmm, that's sort of weird that you mention this, because my opinion is that both of these should be state matters. However, they're really not. The reason abortion isn't a state matter any more is Roe v. Wade, which invalidated all sorts of state laws; gay marriage wasn't ever a state matter because of the "full faith and credit" clause. At any rate, the right wing looks hypocritical on both counts, because they now believe the federal government should be able to meddle in these matters (another example would be the DOJ attacking medical marijuana - one stupid idea following another). The left is at least consistent in its disregard for states rights or constitutional boundaries.
I've always claimed that I wouldn't use Microsoft products if you paid me. This changes nothing.
But seriously, wouldn't this normally set off red flags in the antitrust department (if it wasn't gutted)? Paying people to use your product as a method of moving into a new market sounds a little dicey coming from someone like Microsoft. Normally I'd have nothing against this kind of gimmick, but it seems rather sleazy compared to Microsoft's normal tactic of assaulting me with MSN ads and breaking competing products.
I have read the Constitution, and both of you are missing the point. Although the growth of federal power can be troubling, there are cases where independence of the states has been taken too far. Like segregation. I'm just saying that we should be careful about putting too much faith in localized popular rule, because it may have a tendency to squash those not in power without some oversight.
Lobbyist's and big politcal money have largely ended any sort of grassroots effect.
Yes, but a lot of that political money in turn comes from grassroots sources. The whole abortion debate is an excellent example. It's ridiculously polarized, neither side makes any sense, but no matter what position you take you'll be denounced as a women-hater, a baby-killer, or both, and thus we see Supreme Court judges being screened out (by both sides!) for insufficiently extreme views. This is not a corporate money issue; the people supporting this are small-time donors like urban feminists and rural Christians, but they've been duped into caring about this issue for so long that they contribute enough money to power large lobbying groups.
This is the future of political advocacy. You can no longer make a difference with petitions and letters; you need a PAC. Thus we have representative democracy in advocacy groups, which in theory should be a good way to pool political power and ensure that citizens still have a voice (by contributing to the groups they feel are worthwhile). Unfortunately, the product of this system is competing lobbies which require constant money to survive, which means they're always making appeals to the grassroots for donations, and have to whip up hysteria to motivate the troops. So I get letters warning me that "the queers are coming for your kids" or "Ashcroft wants to 0wn your uterus", and as a result our political system remains sharply polarized.
Which kind of sucks, since I consider myself a centrist, and most of my views fall squarely in between the positions advocated by the lobbies.
Bear in mind when you say this that the modern "states rights" movement largely grew out of the federal government's efforts to end segregation. This isn't a general rule, but there certainly are some occasions where we need a strong federal government that won't listen to popular opinion.
I think that's rather unfair, but actually, this is *exactly* why I use Linux. Microsoft has always seemed to follow the philosophy of "Shut up, we know what's good for you", which is fine for most users but drives me up the fucking wall. I spent months learning to use Linux, but I can now finally set my computer up exactly the way I want it which I never could with Windows.
This is the main reason I like the open-source movement, not the philosophy or supposed superiority of the code.
Maybe the American market is radically different, but European publishers don't really only accept jobs in Photoshop or Illustrator. If it is a pixel graphic then send a TIFF, if it is a vector graphic, or a combination of the two then send an EPS.
Yup. The journals I've published in required me to send electronic copies of my figures in TIFF format, using CMYK colors. Actually, one of these was run by an American publisher.
Are you trying to say that this was illicit modding?
Illicit, not illegal. I think the project is actually quite cool. My point is that it's (necessarily) very of secretive, definitely not what the manufacturer intended, and possibly illegal under the current fucked-up technology laws we have. It's just enough of a gray area that Microsoft (or the MPAA, etc.) will take any chance they get to lump it in with breakins and piracy. But I don't think it's wrong: that was the point.
A person who knows how to "r00t" your box and erase your entine root partition, but chooses not to and rather decides to help to solve that problem
If they break in, as far as I'm concerned it's just as bad, because we can't assume anything about their intentions. Unless they're specifically employed to police our boxes/network, they have no business and no right to gain unauthorized access to our systems, and I'll assume that any breakin is malicious.
What you are describing is still a system cracker. The "do no harm" philosophy is pure ignorance. Someone breaking into a machine and covering his tracks can do a lot of unintentional harm.
Standard operating procedure for dealing with a break-in where I work: nuke the system and restore from backups. I guess we could avoid this, if we instead spent several days auditing the system. Unfortunately, one must always assume the worst- there's no way to tell how badly the system has been compromised, so all breakins must be treated as complete losses. As for unintentional damage, the last few hacks I witness involved no data loss whatsoever, but the root-granting exploit caused the system to become unstable over time and we had to endure repeated crashes before we finally realized what had happened.
I'd be willing to bet that none of the people who defend "ethical" crackers have ever had to professionally admin a server.
In this world of script kiddies, it's very important to disguinish between kiddies and people who are true hackers. Mad props to him for showing that hacking is most certainly an art.
Um, that's not a very good distinction: you need to be clear what meaning of "hacker" you're using. Someone who r00ts my box and types "rm -rf/*" is not an artist, he's a criminal who should have his nuts ripped off - no matter how 1337 his 5ki11z are. Although the legality of hacking the X-Box is questionable, it's in a different world entirely from the vandalism associated with computer break-ins, and the community is doing this to a product they paid for and own.
By confusing the illicit modding and the website defacing, you're making it all the harder to defend against future DMCAs. Many of the big corporate lobbyists and lawyers we so love to bash on Slashdot would love for the public and politicians to view hobbyists and crackers as the same thing.
No, the idea was that large tax reductions would leave more money in the productive economy which would fuel growth and job creation
Shit, maybe I was thinking about supply-side economics. Hell, just lump it all together as "Voodoo economics". At any rate, a specific portion of the overall platform was the concept that the government would stimulate the economy by creating an essentially artificial demand, which would increase supply/production. (Which, come to think of it, sounds oddly like some of the many failed Communist policies.)
I wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing that potentially hundreds of thousands of people will die using a machine I proudly built and put into the hands of one of the most prolific users of war machinery in the world.
This reflects your particular view of US military engagements and geopolitics. No doubt the people working on it view themselves as contributing to the defense of America and the promotion of democracy and human rights. Whether their worldview is flawed is another matter entirely (which I have no desire to debate here), but you're making the mistake of assuming that everyone will have the same opinion as you. There's no reason to believe they're doing any rationalization whatsoever - their pride may be genuine and based on more than just the groovy technology they got to play with.
It's one of the most technologically advanced military vehicles ever created. If you don't like it, don't read the fucking article. There's some SCO news further down the page.
Reagan was pro-defense (USSR hadn't fallen yet) but not really pro-big-goverment.
True, but remember that the concept of trickle-down economics was invented in the Reagan era as a faux-conservative justification for massive deficit spending. The idea was that heavy government purchasing would boost the economy without involving direct meddling. I guess it worked, sort of, at least better than whatever the Commies were doing (not that this wsa difficult) but it did lead us with that pesky deficit.
Reagan did also slash quite a bit of government spending in other areas, but he certainly didn't set much of an example for fiscal moderation. It remains to be seen whether Bush will surpass Reagan's record of bloat (or Clinton's record of lying. . . heh).
As far as Vietnam is concerned, remember that Reagan first became politically prominent campaigning for Goldwater, who didn't think JFK was tough enough. And NASA isn't exactly cheap, but it's nowhere in the neighborhood of military spending over the past few decades.
Slashdot Mirror
ehhhh, I think they've amended their claims now. The IBM suit is all about contract law, but the noises they're making suggest lawsuits against other companies or individuals based on copyright violations. The "analyst" statements they've bought have been almost entirely focused on code copying rather than incorporation of features developed by outsiders. (Although this has little to do with their legal strategy, and seems rather to be a part of their long-term business plan.)
If a company as large as Microsoft suffers because of bullshit patents, maybe our legislators will finally do something about it.
Bingo! I think this is exactly what will happen. Our government needs to see the kind of damage this madness is able to inflict upon our economy before they will act in a fashion that would appear "anti-business". I'm predicting that gene patents will meet a similar end, along the same lines (though they may die out anyway for other reasons).
One of the reasons I dislike Microsoft (Or at least its business practices) is because of the degree they have egendered/exacerbated the very IP problem mentioned in the parent comment.
With regards to software piracy, perhaps - although I tend towards Microsoft's side in that case. However, they have been relatively less agressive in enforcing patents. Bill Gates himself pointed out more than years ago that the growing patent frenzy would have prevented the past few decades of technical advances, if companies had been that zealous when the computer was invented. Thus, he said, Microsoft would have to be constantly on the lookout for other companies (specifically, large ones like IBM) who would try to screw it with patents - the solution being, therefore, for Microsoft itself to assemble a defensive patent portfolio.
Microsoft has definitely used the threat of litigation to scare off competition in a few cases, and they've made rumbling noises about various open-source projects that aim for compatability. However, they've never truly used their patents for outright extortion, unlike *cough* IBM and seem generally content to sit on their portfolio unless directly threatened. I don't trust them for a second, but I'm not going to attack them without cause.
If they are granted a copyright and they choose to enforce it, it's up to the people being sued for non-compliance to prove that SCO is wrong.
Okay, bring it on. The burden of proof is currently on SCO. If they decide to sue, the violating code will have to be shown in court, and it will no longer be public. Unfortunately, some companies will undoubtedly decide to cough up licensing fees rather than challenge the claim. But it takes a hell of a lot of balls to ask people to pay you to license code they won't even tell about, and threaten them with a lawsuit unless they stop using infringing code that hasn't been identified.
Anyway, they still haven't been honest or clear about whether the infringing code was developed by AT&T/SCO, or whether it was developed by IBM. There's a huge difference - basically, if only the latter applies, copyright is irrelevant. SCO is being deliberately vague because they hope to sucker CTOs who don't understand enough IP law, or are too cheap to force a showdown.
Even the best servers have only a finite amount of bandwidth. Pipes are only so big.
It ain't the bandwidth. Page loads are fine, but every other page gets me a MySQL/PHP error.
I didn't follow this controversy too closely when it came out (I could care less about kernels), but my impression then was that the best argument for moving away from BitKeeper was that Larry McVoy clearly had some personality issues. Now that he's promised to deliberately break interoperability with any compatible product, RMS looks reasonable in comparison. I know Linus is very agnostic about licenses, but it doesn't seem wise to collaborate with someone who has stated his opposition to one of the main reasons so many people use Linux in the first place. Is it really worth dealing with that asshole?
Oh, and LKML's web server isn't a very good advertisement for free software right now.
Don't think of it as a license. Think of it as a pre-emptive out-of-court settlement. Anyway, SCO's claim is that some of the code in Linux never should have been distributed under the GPL anyway because permission was not obtained from all parties with copyrights or other IP protection, i.e. SCO or the former rights holders. This is ignoring the issue of SCO's own distribution of Linux - the people they're going for with this licensing program either won't understand it, or won't trust it as a defense against a suit.
Of course, a lot of these people seem to be much less enthusiastic about states rights' if "states rights" seems to mean that a federal anti-abortion law would be unconstitutional (if they're on the right) or that a state that doesn't allow same-sex mairrages would be allowed to view as invalid a same-sex mairrage initiated in a state that does allow them (if they're on the left).
Hmm, that's sort of weird that you mention this, because my opinion is that both of these should be state matters. However, they're really not. The reason abortion isn't a state matter any more is Roe v. Wade, which invalidated all sorts of state laws; gay marriage wasn't ever a state matter because of the "full faith and credit" clause. At any rate, the right wing looks hypocritical on both counts, because they now believe the federal government should be able to meddle in these matters (another example would be the DOJ attacking medical marijuana - one stupid idea following another). The left is at least consistent in its disregard for states rights or constitutional boundaries.
I've always claimed that I wouldn't use Microsoft products if you paid me. This changes nothing.
But seriously, wouldn't this normally set off red flags in the antitrust department (if it wasn't gutted)? Paying people to use your product as a method of moving into a new market sounds a little dicey coming from someone like Microsoft. Normally I'd have nothing against this kind of gimmick, but it seems rather sleazy compared to Microsoft's normal tactic of assaulting me with MSN ads and breaking competing products.
I have read the Constitution, and both of you are missing the point. Although the growth of federal power can be troubling, there are cases where independence of the states has been taken too far. Like segregation. I'm just saying that we should be careful about putting too much faith in localized popular rule, because it may have a tendency to squash those not in power without some oversight.
Lobbyist's and big politcal money have largely ended any sort of grassroots effect.
Yes, but a lot of that political money in turn comes from grassroots sources. The whole abortion debate is an excellent example. It's ridiculously polarized, neither side makes any sense, but no matter what position you take you'll be denounced as a women-hater, a baby-killer, or both, and thus we see Supreme Court judges being screened out (by both sides!) for insufficiently extreme views. This is not a corporate money issue; the people supporting this are small-time donors like urban feminists and rural Christians, but they've been duped into caring about this issue for so long that they contribute enough money to power large lobbying groups.
This is the future of political advocacy. You can no longer make a difference with petitions and letters; you need a PAC. Thus we have representative democracy in advocacy groups, which in theory should be a good way to pool political power and ensure that citizens still have a voice (by contributing to the groups they feel are worthwhile). Unfortunately, the product of this system is competing lobbies which require constant money to survive, which means they're always making appeals to the grassroots for donations, and have to whip up hysteria to motivate the troops. So I get letters warning me that "the queers are coming for your kids" or "Ashcroft wants to 0wn your uterus", and as a result our political system remains sharply polarized.
Which kind of sucks, since I consider myself a centrist, and most of my views fall squarely in between the positions advocated by the lobbies.
It's not worth it. With the last president, $100,000 got you a night in the White House.
Bear in mind when you say this that the modern "states rights" movement largely grew out of the federal government's efforts to end segregation. This isn't a general rule, but there certainly are some occasions where we need a strong federal government that won't listen to popular opinion.
It is built by developers...for developers.
I think that's rather unfair, but actually, this is *exactly* why I use Linux. Microsoft has always seemed to follow the philosophy of "Shut up, we know what's good for you", which is fine for most users but drives me up the fucking wall. I spent months learning to use Linux, but I can now finally set my computer up exactly the way I want it which I never could with Windows.
This is the main reason I like the open-source movement, not the philosophy or supposed superiority of the code.
Maybe the American market is radically different, but European publishers don't really only accept jobs in Photoshop or Illustrator. If it is a pixel graphic then send a TIFF, if it is a vector graphic, or a combination of the two then send an EPS.
Yup. The journals I've published in required me to send electronic copies of my figures in TIFF format, using CMYK colors. Actually, one of these was run by an American publisher.
Are you trying to say that this was illicit modding?
Illicit, not illegal. I think the project is actually quite cool. My point is that it's (necessarily) very of secretive, definitely not what the manufacturer intended, and possibly illegal under the current fucked-up technology laws we have. It's just enough of a gray area that Microsoft (or the MPAA, etc.) will take any chance they get to lump it in with breakins and piracy. But I don't think it's wrong: that was the point.
A person who knows how to "r00t" your box and erase your entine root partition, but chooses not to and rather decides to help to solve that problem
If they break in, as far as I'm concerned it's just as bad, because we can't assume anything about their intentions. Unless they're specifically employed to police our boxes/network, they have no business and no right to gain unauthorized access to our systems, and I'll assume that any breakin is malicious.
What you are describing is still a system cracker. The "do no harm" philosophy is pure ignorance. Someone breaking into a machine and covering his tracks can do a lot of unintentional harm.
Standard operating procedure for dealing with a break-in where I work: nuke the system and restore from backups. I guess we could avoid this, if we instead spent several days auditing the system. Unfortunately, one must always assume the worst- there's no way to tell how badly the system has been compromised, so all breakins must be treated as complete losses. As for unintentional damage, the last few hacks I witness involved no data loss whatsoever, but the root-granting exploit caused the system to become unstable over time and we had to endure repeated crashes before we finally realized what had happened.
I'd be willing to bet that none of the people who defend "ethical" crackers have ever had to professionally admin a server.
In this world of script kiddies, it's very important to disguinish between kiddies and people who are true hackers. Mad props to him for showing that hacking is most certainly an art.
/*" is not an artist, he's a criminal who should have his nuts ripped off - no matter how 1337 his 5ki11z are. Although the legality of hacking the X-Box is questionable, it's in a different world entirely from the vandalism associated with computer break-ins, and the community is doing this to a product they paid for and own.
Um, that's not a very good distinction: you need to be clear what meaning of "hacker" you're using. Someone who r00ts my box and types "rm -rf
By confusing the illicit modding and the website defacing, you're making it all the harder to defend against future DMCAs. Many of the big corporate lobbyists and lawyers we so love to bash on Slashdot would love for the public and politicians to view hobbyists and crackers as the same thing.
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilb ert-20030619.html
:)
thanks, that's going up above the monitor.
Try reading up on supply side economics and the Laffer curve for a real explaination.
Yeah, I know, I got them mixed up. The coffee isn't very strong today. However, nobody really took Laffer seriously until the Reagan administration.
No, the idea was that large tax reductions would leave more money in the productive economy which would fuel growth and job creation
Shit, maybe I was thinking about supply-side economics. Hell, just lump it all together as "Voodoo economics". At any rate, a specific portion of the overall platform was the concept that the government would stimulate the economy by creating an essentially artificial demand, which would increase supply/production. (Which, come to think of it, sounds oddly like some of the many failed Communist policies.)
I wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing that potentially hundreds of thousands of people will die using a machine I proudly built and put into the hands of one of the most prolific users of war machinery in the world.
This reflects your particular view of US military engagements and geopolitics. No doubt the people working on it view themselves as contributing to the defense of America and the promotion of democracy and human rights. Whether their worldview is flawed is another matter entirely (which I have no desire to debate here), but you're making the mistake of assuming that everyone will have the same opinion as you. There's no reason to believe they're doing any rationalization whatsoever - their pride may be genuine and based on more than just the groovy technology they got to play with.
It's one of the most technologically advanced military vehicles ever created. If you don't like it, don't read the fucking article. There's some SCO news further down the page.
Reagan was pro-defense (USSR hadn't fallen yet) but not really pro-big-goverment.
True, but remember that the concept of trickle-down economics was invented in the Reagan era as a faux-conservative justification for massive deficit spending. The idea was that heavy government purchasing would boost the economy without involving direct meddling. I guess it worked, sort of, at least better than whatever the Commies were doing (not that this wsa difficult) but it did lead us with that pesky deficit.
Reagan did also slash quite a bit of government spending in other areas, but he certainly didn't set much of an example for fiscal moderation. It remains to be seen whether Bush will surpass Reagan's record of bloat (or Clinton's record of lying. . . heh).
As far as Vietnam is concerned, remember that Reagan first became politically prominent campaigning for Goldwater, who didn't think JFK was tough enough. And NASA isn't exactly cheap, but it's nowhere in the neighborhood of military spending over the past few decades.