Another point that the poster gets wrong is that the monopolies in the article weren't fighting piracy, they were fighting unlicensed competition. In a way, they were really much worse. There would be a parallel if, say, the RIAA owned all patents on electronic music distribution and tried to shut down all independents that chose to distribute their music that way. It's absurd to claim that the RIAA is afraid of Kazaa because they're afraid of *others* using it to distribute their own music, when in fact the vast majority of P2P content is still big-name, copyrighted stuff. It is now a matter of record that Napster (the company) welcomed piracy, because that was the key to the software's popularity, and never considered using it to legally distribute music a viable business plan.
I'm tired of the misconception that the media cartels are trying to "control digital distribution over the Net." They're trying to curtail illegal distribution, which is their right. The fact that they've been consistently heavy-handed and clueless about it doesn't change this fact. Their lawsuits have been utter crap, but this doesn't give us all the right to download all their albums from some college student's PC.
IIRC, it is this alleged contract terms violation amongst other illegal acts that is at the heart of the suit, not whether there is UNIX code in Linux--a point that seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Yes, but SCO's claims have not been limited to IBM's contract violations. They've also declared that some code was copied into the kernel before IBM started working on it, and they've been threatening other companies who didn't have contractual relationships with SCO. They might be able to obtain an injunction to force removal of that code from the kernel, but it's not clear that they would have any basis for suing Linus or one of the other vendors.
You misunderstand the point of RICO. It was designed to take down corrupt organizations that were structured to insulate those in charge from the individual crimes committed by their henchmen. Prior to RICO, it couldn't be proved under existing rules that (for instance) some Mafia boss knew who pumped sixty bullets into Salvatore "The Cleaver" Luchese, or that he'd ordered the hit himself. Under RICO, it became possible to bust him by demonstrating a "preponderance of evidence", showing that there was no way he couldn't have known. Thus Giuliani and others used RICO to nearly demolish the Mafia by accumulating many smaller cases.
RICO has also been applied to fringe religious groups in recent years; I was just reading an article about suing the entire Hare Krishna organization for child abuse. Violent anti-abortion groups have been targeted in a similar way. And though it's too politically explosive to pull off, mention has been made of the Catholic Church. (I'm not sure I like this idea, but the church leadership hasn't helped its case much.)
RICO really isn't applicable to SCO at all. On the other hand, they would be a ripe target for a stockholder suit, if it turns out they lied (and/or gambled the existence of the company on a lawsuit against one of the most aggressive in the business). Someone else mentioned the term "barratry" in an earlier thread, which I believe means the frivolous filing of lawsuits. The 1500 letters could also be actionable if SCO was lying. Finally, it's possible that the SEC could get involved.
I've only heard of Aimee Deep or looked at her site one or two times in the past, but it seemed immediately obvious that it had to be a scam of some sort. Or, at the very least, there's something seriously wrong with her dad. I'm not afraid of attractive or intelligent women, and I've known many who were both, but I've never met anyone who would debase themselves to make a legal argument. Besides, all her views could be compiled by reading Slashdot comments on an RIAA/MPAA article, then run through an "Alicia-Silverstone-in-Clueless" filter.
What's pathetic is how many geeks are fooled by this act. The girl clearly knows virtually nothing about the intricacies or history of copyright law or the economics of the industry, but gets to be an unofficial spokesman for music piracy because she has nice tits. (And no, *I'm* not being sexist, it's this whole bullshit charade that's sexist in the first place.)
[ By the way, she is hot. Some of the other posters need to rejoin the real world and stop looking at too much hentai. ]
I agree, but unfortunately it's not really 'unconstitutional" until the Supremes say so (or until Congress passes a law, which wouldn't make it unconstitutional but would have the same effect). What's needed is for a gene patent to stifle medical research on some high-profile illness, particularly an illness that afflicts some group with lots of money and political clout. Only people realize the damage that gene patents can do, there will be considerable motivation to steamroll over the whining of biotechs and patent lawyers and declare them illegal. I'm a little surprised that Myriad's BRCA1 patent hasn't done this here, though Canada and France seem to be slowly getting the message.
(Again, this is different from, say, AIDS drug patents, which I'd argue are still necessary even though Big Pharma needs to chill the fuck out. People would be far more outraged if a gene patent was used to block the sale of a live-saving drug, though I'm not sure how this is any different from Myriad suing breast-cancer researchers. Call it the difference between greed and spite.)
I would hope that since this is being done at a University that won't happen.
So would I, but bitter experience has proved that this expectation is unreasonable. A number of the existing stem cell lines that have been annointed as available to federally-funded researchers are in fact patented by the University of Wisconsin, if memory serves. However, perhaps the fact that this latest discovery was made in Scotland and Japan will change things.
It's even worse that most of this research is funded by our tax dollars, then we have to turn right back around and pay a high per item cost to help defray research costs.
I hear this a lot on Slashdot, but it misses half of the point. The problem is with patents on basic research, which do not represent a marketable product. A gene patent is commercially useless without extensive further research, e.g. traditional drug development. In contrast, many patents held by academic groups are for inventions that have immediate commercial potential. For instance, the automatic DNA sequencer was invented at Caltech, presumably with federal grant money, then patented. It was immediately commercialized, enabling a high-quality product to get to market quickly. (It was also truly revolutionary at the time.) Gene patents, on the other hand, are usually just used to stifle further research by competitors who might actually be capable of realizing its medical and economic potential.
(This is distinct from junk patents that hardly meet any of the other standards such as novelty and non-obviousness. I've also seen a fair number of those applied for by academic groups. I think this reflects the sad fact that competition has become so much more intense that scientific ethics have increasingly disappeared - this is not limited to patents. Since I'd prefer to keep my job, I can't go into as much details as I'd like.)
The post I was replying to was talking about human colonization of other planets and solar systems. I'm pretty certain this could not be accomplished on NASA's current budget. (Another post pointed out that the moon program was $6 billion, which is more than $30 billion today. That's just for a quick trip there and back.) I would also dispute that "return on investment" argument; the only way this could be true is if you follow the Reagan-administration doctrine of "trickle-down" economics. The return on investment is mainly to stockholders of aerospace contractors.
Besides, the current NASA budget is $15 billion. The current NIH budget (which funds virtually every biomedical research lab in the country) is $27 billion. The space shuttle program alone costs more than $3 billion, which is comparable to what the NIH spends on cancer research.
My point is that the space budget is vastly out of proportion to its usefulness, and that the money we'd be wasting on it is better spent elsewhere.
It's also been pointed out that even our "poor" tend to own televisions and cars, and have clean water and a reasonable amount to eat. I'm certain the claim that our poverty rate is the highest in the world is pure bullshit, but impoverished Americans are still some of the luckiest people in the world.
Me. I'm perfectly happy with big government (it pays my salary), but I don't want my tax dollars wasted so that a bunch of sci-fi geeks can watch Air Force pilots flung into space at extreme risk of bodily harm.
perhaps if there were more people like me and less business-y, money grubbing, power hungry jerks in the world then perhaps we would already be out to Mars and on our way to Jupiter, Saturn, or even Proxima-Centauri...
You're not in a position to claim moral superiority here, since you think we should spend other people's money on your personal dream project. If you want a huge advance-the-human-race project, how about ending famine, or eliminating disease? There are plenty of things we can do *right now* to make our planet a better place, that are far more productive and noble than having the richest country in the world spend billions on risky ego trips.
Space exploration should no longer exist as a competitive sport.
Manned pace exploration has always been a competitive sport. The problem is that so far there have been few economic or scientific rewards from shooting men into space or landing them on the moon, and the expense dwarfs any return. The only reason to do it, in fact, is just for the hell of it, so you can boast of your scientific and technical superiority. China is welcome to do this; I'd rather see my tax dollars spent on cheaper, more useful unmanned missions, and non-space stuff like curing cancer or AIDS.
As for cooperation with China, I get more out of working with native Chinese every day (like virtually everyone else in the scientific community) than I would out of watching a joint moon landing on CNN.
However, every single estimate of modern Chinese (People's Republic) technological prowess has been wrong ever since that nation was formed.
Yes, but never underestimate the willingness of the Chinese government to let its citizens die in the service of bragging rights. The technology to do this is now more than 30 years old, not very hard to replicate, and as long as the Chinese are willing to accept considerable loss of life they'll have no problem reaching their goal, however useless the results. (Example: China vastly increased steel production in the 1950s by encouraging "home industry". A great success on paper, but the steel was so poorly made as to be virtually useless. Meanwhile, millions died from famine.)
I view a Chinese moon shot simply as an attempt to demonstrate to the people that their government leads them to great things, and why should they care if they're being oppressed when they're on the moon and the Americans aren't? If nothing else, it'll artificially boost China's aerospace industry and wean them away from dependence on American collaborators like Boeing.
That's why they have 4 other ways to get the file...
Right now, they only have 4 other ways to get an "Access denied: server too busy" error. I'd BitTorrent it, but I'm at work and behind a firewall, and the system lords work just down the hall from me. Of course it's not illegal, but I probably wouldn't be very popular if I was uploading as well as downloading.
My favorite is the 3D Gamers mirror, which requires that you have a special Windows-only download manager to get the files. When you click on the Linux installer, you get an error message saying "you do not appear to be running IE on Windows". Nice work, guys.
Red Hat is crippled because they can't use MP3, various font enhancements, etc. etc. etc., due to problems with IP law in the US. Mandrake works a lot better because they are free to put in what they want.
This doesn't make much sense, though - the MP3 patent holder is a German group. Why would Mandrake be immune to this? (Besides, I've been ripping my CDs to.ogg anyway - I don't have any use for MP3 now.)
Plus, Bluecurve has pissed me off more and more each day I've used it.
Won't argue with that, though I find WindowMaker continues to provide all the UI I need.
I was just reading the Business Week article and they only talk about suing IBM for breach of contract, not IP issues.
Wrong, McBride claimed it was SCO's intellectual property. And they've been steadily escalating their claims to encompass the entire Linux community, not just IBM. Even if they do back down now, the damage to their case has already been done, and as others have pointed out this leaves them open to multiple lawsuits, including from the shareholders, and SEC action.
we found that IBM had donated some very high-end enterprise-computing technologies into open-source.
The contract between SCO and IBM must be ancient by now. It's very doubtful that any "high-end" technology in the SysV code back then hasn't long since been cloned in Linux. At any rate, according to Novell, McBride is still lying when he says it was SCO's intellectual property, though it might still have been covered by any agreement with IBM.
And IBM took the same team that had been working on a Unix code project with us and moved them over to work on Linux code. If you look at the code we believe has been copied in, it's not just a line or two, it's an entire section -- and in some cases, an entire program.
As has been pointed out many times before, this could be any one of a number of technologies developed by IBM for use in AIX, that would not fall under the agreement. For example, JFS.
If novell decides they need the money (and let's be honest, their market share has been eroding).
Novell's letter suggested that they thought the claims of code theft were bullshit, which doesn't exactly leave them an opening to sue later.
Likewise, it's probably best to migrate away from Unix since Novell could still bring up infringement claims. HuRD or Minix are probably the best alternatives.
Do you mean "migrate away from Linux"? Besides, Hurd and Minix are also Unix clones. Hurd isn't fully functional yet, and Minix was never meant to be anything more than a toy OS. Migrating to the BSDs would be the best bet, but the only real protection would be writing a new OS from scratch in a clean-room environment.
What they're saying is that (supposedly) they own the rights to the contract IBM signed giving it the right to incorporate the SysV code into AIX. Thus, they assume the contractual relationship with IBM, and even if they don't own copyrights/patents over the code they may still enforce the contract terms. So, if IBM did copy SysV code into Linux (still doubtful), SCO would still have a case against them for violation of the contract.
The claim that Linux was ripping off SysV code *before* IBM started doing open-source development is now much shakier, because even if SCO is right about this, they have no legal rights to pursue it- as far as we know, they have no contractual relationship with any of the other Linux companies. Novell might, but they've shown where they stand on the issue. Therefore, SCO's letter to the 1500 companies could get them in huge trouble if they turned out to be lying about the code ownership, and would be construed by the courts as an attempt to extort licensing fees. (We all know this, but what matters is making a judge understand.)
Re:What the CIA needs:
on
IT at the CIA
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· Score: 1
There was another great story sometime last year about how the army had recently expelled no fewer than eight advanced Arabic speakers because they were homosexual, despite a severe shortage of qualified translators. Way to fight terrorism, guys! It's nice to know that with our nation under attack by religious extremists, the Pentagon hasn't forgotten what really matters: keeping the queers in order.
So are you going to admit that by your own criteria the statement was 'pathetic' or are you going to continue to bluster like right wing reactionaries always do when their bubble gets pricked?
Blow me, asshole. I'm a registered Democrat, and voted for Gore. At any rate, I don't see anything wrong with what Bush said; it's hard to interpret that as a call for a boycott. Besides, the boycott talk started well over a month before Bush made those remarks.
Well you are certainly in with a good chance of breaking free of the GOP brainwashing here. Ashcroft is scary, Poindexter is scary as all hell. Bandying arround accusations of treason was McCarthy's favorite trick.
Um, yeah, my point. That's quite a bit different from a bunch of rednecks burning country music CDs.
On a side note, you have very weird ideas about political affiliations. Don't be so quick to assume that anyone who doesn't share your hatred of Bush is a right-wing reactionary or a victim of Republican brainwashing. I do not support most of Bush's policies and am not a fan of his leadership style (which should have been obvious from my post), and I genuinely despise much of the GOP congressional delegation, but I'm amazed at the pathological hatred many liberals have for Bush. Although the Democratic politicians have been very restrained (perhaps too much) in their criticisms, the words of Democratic voters seem more and more like an echo of all the right-wing bile directed at Clinton for eight years. And, ignoring what happened to the Republicans in 1998, Democrats spent so much time stewing over the 2000 election that they let themselves be blindsided in 2002.
Offtopic, but -- when did Bush call for a boycott of the Dixie Chicks? Any links for such a thing?
He didn't - it was some random radio host(s). Would have been pretty pathetic if he did, but any number of left-wingers say far worse things about him every day and the administration never bats an eyelash. They have armies of sycophants to do that for them.
Liberal cries of McCarthyism have sounded pretty dumb for this reason. What *is* scary is when Ashcroft accuses critics of the DOJ's incompetence of aiding terrorists, or when the GOP Congressional leadership accused Daschle of treason. This administration has never dealt very well with honest criticism, even if it ignores halfwit entertainers.
My boss has a top-of-the-line Dell workstation running XP, and it craps out all the time - we've had to do hard reboots in the past. There really isn't anything nonstandard about it, though he's installed so much software on it that god knows what instabilities have been introduced. At any rate, we haven't been very impressed. Meanwhile, my mom's laptop needs a complete reinstall, because it has gradually become slower and slower. XP certainly doesn't seem immune to the problems with decay that have plagued past versions of Windows.
Even 2000 didn't have that many bluescreens, and XP does seem better in this regard. However, I remember the first time I saw Sony's 16" Vaio was walking past a storefront in NYC. I looked in, and saw the Vaio sitting there bluescreened. Nice advertising, guys.
Jeez, sounds like you're having an even worse weekend than I am. Lighten up, man.
I agree that the philosophical aspects of The Matrix are overblown. Unlike most of the reviewers who cite the debt owed to Philip K Dick and "visionary" authors, I have actually read Dick (and Stephenson, but no Gibson yet), and I am totally unimpressed with the plot twists and ponderous questions posed by the movies. Any one of Dick's novels is a far weirder mindfuck than the Wachkowskis could hope to pull off. And the whole hacker analogy was covered in "Snow Crash" (and, I'm told, in most of Gibson's books).
However, I still loved the movies (but the first is far superior to the second). The Wachkowskis understand what George Lucas so superbly realized in Star Wars (and then forget around 1982): if you're going to make a derivative pastiche, do it well. The concepts in either set of movies are not revolutionary or particularly insightful - what distinguishes them is how well the mess holds together, and how well the finished product works. Heck, even a lot of the action is derivative if you've seen enough Jet Li or John Woo flicks, but they did a swell directing job too.
I know it makes you seem l33t to bash these movies, just like it's cool to be the voice of reason on Slashdot and interject random comments about how crapulent Linux is and how Microsoft really has its shit together. However, you need to understand that quite a few of us enjoyed the movies in spite of their flaws, and that even if they're ripoffs with a phony layer of pseudo-philosophy, we still liked seeing these ideas committed to film with such style and intensity. Finally, The Matrix did not seem at all trendy when it came out - rather, it set the trend for a lot of less-talented filmmakers.
By the way, I'm very curious about how you think The Matrix was "offensive", unless you're one of those types who think video games were to blame for Columbine.
You know, I don't know this guy, or have any mod points, but its really sad this was modded a troll as it obviously isn't. Maybe off topic, but in that case its just as off topic as the post he's replying to. I can tell you if this comes up in meta mod its getting an Unfair.
Thanks, dude. The moderators can eat me.
BTW: the_gnat, you'd be less likely to get modded down on stuff like this if you avoided cursing. Just a tip.
Point taken, but I spend too much time dealing with this sort of nonsense at work. Besides, the idiot I was replying to managed to be far more offensive without swearing at all (or is that your point?).
People who think the answer to every problem is to buy a new computer should stick to non-technical jobs so they can't make life miserable for those of us who have to deal with the consequences of their stupidity.
Slashdot Mirror
Another point that the poster gets wrong is that the monopolies in the article weren't fighting piracy, they were fighting unlicensed competition. In a way, they were really much worse. There would be a parallel if, say, the RIAA owned all patents on electronic music distribution and tried to shut down all independents that chose to distribute their music that way. It's absurd to claim that the RIAA is afraid of Kazaa because they're afraid of *others* using it to distribute their own music, when in fact the vast majority of P2P content is still big-name, copyrighted stuff. It is now a matter of record that Napster (the company) welcomed piracy, because that was the key to the software's popularity, and never considered using it to legally distribute music a viable business plan.
I'm tired of the misconception that the media cartels are trying to "control digital distribution over the Net." They're trying to curtail illegal distribution, which is their right. The fact that they've been consistently heavy-handed and clueless about it doesn't change this fact. Their lawsuits have been utter crap, but this doesn't give us all the right to download all their albums from some college student's PC.
IIRC, it is this alleged contract terms violation amongst other illegal acts that is at the heart of the suit, not whether there is UNIX code in Linux--a point that seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Yes, but SCO's claims have not been limited to IBM's contract violations. They've also declared that some code was copied into the kernel before IBM started working on it, and they've been threatening other companies who didn't have contractual relationships with SCO. They might be able to obtain an injunction to force removal of that code from the kernel, but it's not clear that they would have any basis for suing Linus or one of the other vendors.
Maybe there's a RICO case here.
You misunderstand the point of RICO. It was designed to take down corrupt organizations that were structured to insulate those in charge from the individual crimes committed by their henchmen. Prior to RICO, it couldn't be proved under existing rules that (for instance) some Mafia boss knew who pumped sixty bullets into Salvatore "The Cleaver" Luchese, or that he'd ordered the hit himself. Under RICO, it became possible to bust him by demonstrating a "preponderance of evidence", showing that there was no way he couldn't have known. Thus Giuliani and others used RICO to nearly demolish the Mafia by accumulating many smaller cases.
RICO has also been applied to fringe religious groups in recent years; I was just reading an article about suing the entire Hare Krishna organization for child abuse. Violent anti-abortion groups have been targeted in a similar way. And though it's too politically explosive to pull off, mention has been made of the Catholic Church. (I'm not sure I like this idea, but the church leadership hasn't helped its case much.)
RICO really isn't applicable to SCO at all. On the other hand, they would be a ripe target for a stockholder suit, if it turns out they lied (and/or gambled the existence of the company on a lawsuit against one of the most aggressive in the business). Someone else mentioned the term "barratry" in an earlier thread, which I believe means the frivolous filing of lawsuits. The 1500 letters could also be actionable if SCO was lying. Finally, it's possible that the SEC could get involved.
I've only heard of Aimee Deep or looked at her site one or two times in the past, but it seemed immediately obvious that it had to be a scam of some sort. Or, at the very least, there's something seriously wrong with her dad. I'm not afraid of attractive or intelligent women, and I've known many who were both, but I've never met anyone who would debase themselves to make a legal argument. Besides, all her views could be compiled by reading Slashdot comments on an RIAA/MPAA article, then run through an "Alicia-Silverstone-in-Clueless" filter.
What's pathetic is how many geeks are fooled by this act. The girl clearly knows virtually nothing about the intricacies or history of copyright law or the economics of the industry, but gets to be an unofficial spokesman for music piracy because she has nice tits. (And no, *I'm* not being sexist, it's this whole bullshit charade that's sexist in the first place.)
[ By the way, she is hot. Some of the other posters need to rejoin the real world and stop looking at too much hentai. ]
I agree, but unfortunately it's not really 'unconstitutional" until the Supremes say so (or until Congress passes a law, which wouldn't make it unconstitutional but would have the same effect). What's needed is for a gene patent to stifle medical research on some high-profile illness, particularly an illness that afflicts some group with lots of money and political clout. Only people realize the damage that gene patents can do, there will be considerable motivation to steamroll over the whining of biotechs and patent lawyers and declare them illegal. I'm a little surprised that Myriad's BRCA1 patent hasn't done this here, though Canada and France seem to be slowly getting the message.
(Again, this is different from, say, AIDS drug patents, which I'd argue are still necessary even though Big Pharma needs to chill the fuck out. People would be far more outraged if a gene patent was used to block the sale of a live-saving drug, though I'm not sure how this is any different from Myriad suing breast-cancer researchers. Call it the difference between greed and spite.)
I would hope that since this is being done at a
University that won't happen.
So would I, but bitter experience has proved that this expectation is unreasonable. A number of the existing stem cell lines that have been annointed as available to federally-funded researchers are in fact patented by the University of Wisconsin, if memory serves. However, perhaps the fact that this latest discovery was made in Scotland and Japan will change things.
It's even worse that most of this research is funded by our tax dollars, then we have to turn right back around and pay a high per item cost to help defray research costs.
I hear this a lot on Slashdot, but it misses half of the point. The problem is with patents on basic research, which do not represent a marketable product. A gene patent is commercially useless without extensive further research, e.g. traditional drug development. In contrast, many patents held by academic groups are for inventions that have immediate commercial potential. For instance, the automatic DNA sequencer was invented at Caltech, presumably with federal grant money, then patented. It was immediately commercialized, enabling a high-quality product to get to market quickly. (It was also truly revolutionary at the time.) Gene patents, on the other hand, are usually just used to stifle further research by competitors who might actually be capable of realizing its medical and economic potential.
(This is distinct from junk patents that hardly meet any of the other standards such as novelty and non-obviousness. I've also seen a fair number of those applied for by academic groups. I think this reflects the sad fact that competition has become so much more intense that scientific ethics have increasingly disappeared - this is not limited to patents. Since I'd prefer to keep my job, I can't go into as much details as I'd like.)
The post I was replying to was talking about human colonization of other planets and solar systems. I'm pretty certain this could not be accomplished on NASA's current budget. (Another post pointed out that the moon program was $6 billion, which is more than $30 billion today. That's just for a quick trip there and back.) I would also dispute that "return on investment" argument; the only way this could be true is if you follow the Reagan-administration doctrine of "trickle-down" economics. The return on investment is mainly to stockholders of aerospace contractors.
Besides, the current NASA budget is $15 billion. The current NIH budget (which funds virtually every biomedical research lab in the country) is $27 billion. The space shuttle program alone costs more than $3 billion, which is comparable to what the NIH spends on cancer research.
My point is that the space budget is vastly out of proportion to its usefulness, and that the money we'd be wasting on it is better spent elsewhere.
It's also been pointed out that even our "poor" tend to own televisions and cars, and have clean water and a reasonable amount to eat. I'm certain the claim that our poverty rate is the highest in the world is pure bullshit, but impoverished Americans are still some of the luckiest people in the world.
I say to that, Who the hell CARES???
Me. I'm perfectly happy with big government (it pays my salary), but I don't want my tax dollars wasted so that a bunch of sci-fi geeks can watch Air Force pilots flung into space at extreme risk of bodily harm.
perhaps if there were more people like me and less business-y, money grubbing, power hungry jerks in the world then perhaps we would already be out to Mars and on our way to Jupiter, Saturn, or even Proxima-Centauri...
You're not in a position to claim moral superiority here, since you think we should spend other people's money on your personal dream project. If you want a huge advance-the-human-race project, how about ending famine, or eliminating disease? There are plenty of things we can do *right now* to make our planet a better place, that are far more productive and noble than having the richest country in the world spend billions on risky ego trips.
Space exploration should no longer exist as a competitive sport.
Manned pace exploration has always been a competitive sport. The problem is that so far there have been few economic or scientific rewards from shooting men into space or landing them on the moon, and the expense dwarfs any return. The only reason to do it, in fact, is just for the hell of it, so you can boast of your scientific and technical superiority. China is welcome to do this; I'd rather see my tax dollars spent on cheaper, more useful unmanned missions, and non-space stuff like curing cancer or AIDS.
As for cooperation with China, I get more out of working with native Chinese every day (like virtually everyone else in the scientific community) than I would out of watching a joint moon landing on CNN.
However, every single estimate of modern Chinese (People's Republic) technological prowess has been wrong ever since that nation was formed.
Yes, but never underestimate the willingness of the Chinese government to let its citizens die in the service of bragging rights. The technology to do this is now more than 30 years old, not very hard to replicate, and as long as the Chinese are willing to accept considerable loss of life they'll have no problem reaching their goal, however useless the results. (Example: China vastly increased steel production in the 1950s by encouraging "home industry". A great success on paper, but the steel was so poorly made as to be virtually useless. Meanwhile, millions died from famine.)
I view a Chinese moon shot simply as an attempt to demonstrate to the people that their government leads them to great things, and why should they care if they're being oppressed when they're on the moon and the Americans aren't? If nothing else, it'll artificially boost China's aerospace industry and wean them away from dependence on American collaborators like Boeing.
That's why they have 4 other ways to get the file...
Right now, they only have 4 other ways to get an "Access denied: server too busy" error. I'd BitTorrent it, but I'm at work and behind a firewall, and the system lords work just down the hall from me. Of course it's not illegal, but I probably wouldn't be very popular if I was uploading as well as downloading.
My favorite is the 3D Gamers mirror, which requires that you have a special Windows-only download manager to get the files. When you click on the Linux installer, you get an error message saying "you do not appear to be running IE on Windows". Nice work, guys.
Red Hat is crippled because they can't use MP3, various font enhancements, etc. etc. etc., due to problems with IP law in the US. Mandrake works a lot better because they are free to put in what they want.
.ogg anyway - I don't have any use for MP3 now.)
This doesn't make much sense, though - the MP3 patent holder is a German group. Why would Mandrake be immune to this? (Besides, I've been ripping my CDs to
Plus, Bluecurve has pissed me off more and more each day I've used it.
Won't argue with that, though I find WindowMaker continues to provide all the UI I need.
I was just reading the Business Week article and they only talk about suing IBM for breach of contract, not IP issues.
Wrong, McBride claimed it was SCO's intellectual property. And they've been steadily escalating their claims to encompass the entire Linux community, not just IBM. Even if they do back down now, the damage to their case has already been done, and as others have pointed out this leaves them open to multiple lawsuits, including from the shareholders, and SEC action.
we found that IBM had donated some very high-end enterprise-computing technologies into open-source.
The contract between SCO and IBM must be ancient by now. It's very doubtful that any "high-end" technology in the SysV code back then hasn't long since been cloned in Linux. At any rate, according to Novell, McBride is still lying when he says it was SCO's intellectual property, though it might still have been covered by any agreement with IBM.
And IBM took the same team that had been working on a Unix code project with us and moved them over to work on Linux code. If you look at the code we believe has been copied in, it's not just a line or two, it's an entire section -- and in some cases, an entire program.
As has been pointed out many times before, this could be any one of a number of technologies developed by IBM for use in AIX, that would not fall under the agreement. For example, JFS.
Big deal. I'm holding my breath for a delisting in the near future, at which time you'll find me in the local pub.
If novell decides they need the money (and let's be honest, their market share has been eroding).
Novell's letter suggested that they thought the claims of code theft were bullshit, which doesn't exactly leave them an opening to sue later.
Likewise, it's probably best to migrate away from Unix since Novell could still bring up infringement claims. HuRD or Minix are probably the best alternatives.
Do you mean "migrate away from Linux"? Besides, Hurd and Minix are also Unix clones. Hurd isn't fully functional yet, and Minix was never meant to be anything more than a toy OS. Migrating to the BSDs would be the best bet, but the only real protection would be writing a new OS from scratch in a clean-room environment.
What they're saying is that (supposedly) they own the rights to the contract IBM signed giving it the right to incorporate the SysV code into AIX. Thus, they assume the contractual relationship with IBM, and even if they don't own copyrights/patents over the code they may still enforce the contract terms. So, if IBM did copy SysV code into Linux (still doubtful), SCO would still have a case against them for violation of the contract.
The claim that Linux was ripping off SysV code *before* IBM started doing open-source development is now much shakier, because even if SCO is right about this, they have no legal rights to pursue it- as far as we know, they have no contractual relationship with any of the other Linux companies. Novell might, but they've shown where they stand on the issue. Therefore, SCO's letter to the 1500 companies could get them in huge trouble if they turned out to be lying about the code ownership, and would be construed by the courts as an attempt to extort licensing fees. (We all know this, but what matters is making a judge understand.)
There was another great story sometime last year about how the army had recently expelled no fewer than eight advanced Arabic speakers because they were homosexual, despite a severe shortage of qualified translators. Way to fight terrorism, guys! It's nice to know that with our nation under attack by religious extremists, the Pentagon hasn't forgotten what really matters: keeping the queers in order.
So are you going to admit that by your own criteria the statement was 'pathetic' or are you going to continue to bluster like right wing reactionaries always do when their bubble gets pricked?
Blow me, asshole. I'm a registered Democrat, and voted for Gore. At any rate, I don't see anything wrong with what Bush said; it's hard to interpret that as a call for a boycott. Besides, the boycott talk started well over a month before Bush made those remarks.
Well you are certainly in with a good chance of breaking free of the GOP brainwashing here. Ashcroft is scary, Poindexter is scary as all hell. Bandying arround accusations of treason was McCarthy's favorite trick.
Um, yeah, my point. That's quite a bit different from a bunch of rednecks burning country music CDs.
On a side note, you have very weird ideas about political affiliations. Don't be so quick to assume that anyone who doesn't share your hatred of Bush is a right-wing reactionary or a victim of Republican brainwashing. I do not support most of Bush's policies and am not a fan of his leadership style (which should have been obvious from my post), and I genuinely despise much of the GOP congressional delegation, but I'm amazed at the pathological hatred many liberals have for Bush. Although the Democratic politicians have been very restrained (perhaps too much) in their criticisms, the words of Democratic voters seem more and more like an echo of all the right-wing bile directed at Clinton for eight years. And, ignoring what happened to the Republicans in 1998, Democrats spent so much time stewing over the 2000 election that they let themselves be blindsided in 2002.
Offtopic, but -- when did Bush call for a boycott of the Dixie Chicks? Any links for such a thing?
He didn't - it was some random radio host(s). Would have been pretty pathetic if he did, but any number of left-wingers say far worse things about him every day and the administration never bats an eyelash. They have armies of sycophants to do that for them.
Liberal cries of McCarthyism have sounded pretty dumb for this reason. What *is* scary is when Ashcroft accuses critics of the DOJ's incompetence of aiding terrorists, or when the GOP Congressional leadership accused Daschle of treason. This administration has never dealt very well with honest criticism, even if it ignores halfwit entertainers.
My boss has a top-of-the-line Dell workstation running XP, and it craps out all the time - we've had to do hard reboots in the past. There really isn't anything nonstandard about it, though he's installed so much software on it that god knows what instabilities have been introduced. At any rate, we haven't been very impressed. Meanwhile, my mom's laptop needs a complete reinstall, because it has gradually become slower and slower. XP certainly doesn't seem immune to the problems with decay that have plagued past versions of Windows.
Even 2000 didn't have that many bluescreens, and XP does seem better in this regard. However, I remember the first time I saw Sony's 16" Vaio was walking past a storefront in NYC. I looked in, and saw the Vaio sitting there bluescreened. Nice advertising, guys.
Jeez, sounds like you're having an even worse weekend than I am. Lighten up, man.
I agree that the philosophical aspects of The Matrix are overblown. Unlike most of the reviewers who cite the debt owed to Philip K Dick and "visionary" authors, I have actually read Dick (and Stephenson, but no Gibson yet), and I am totally unimpressed with the plot twists and ponderous questions posed by the movies. Any one of Dick's novels is a far weirder mindfuck than the Wachkowskis could hope to pull off. And the whole hacker analogy was covered in "Snow Crash" (and, I'm told, in most of Gibson's books).
However, I still loved the movies (but the first is far superior to the second). The Wachkowskis understand what George Lucas so superbly realized in Star Wars (and then forget around 1982): if you're going to make a derivative pastiche, do it well. The concepts in either set of movies are not revolutionary or particularly insightful - what distinguishes them is how well the mess holds together, and how well the finished product works. Heck, even a lot of the action is derivative if you've seen enough Jet Li or John Woo flicks, but they did a swell directing job too.
I know it makes you seem l33t to bash these movies, just like it's cool to be the voice of reason on Slashdot and interject random comments about how crapulent Linux is and how Microsoft really has its shit together. However, you need to understand that quite a few of us enjoyed the movies in spite of their flaws, and that even if they're ripoffs with a phony layer of pseudo-philosophy, we still liked seeing these ideas committed to film with such style and intensity. Finally, The Matrix did not seem at all trendy when it came out - rather, it set the trend for a lot of less-talented filmmakers.
By the way, I'm very curious about how you think The Matrix was "offensive", unless you're one of those types who think video games were to blame for Columbine.
You know, I don't know this guy, or have any mod points, but its really sad this was modded a troll as it obviously isn't. Maybe off topic, but in that case its just as off topic as the post he's replying to. I can tell you if this comes up in meta mod its getting an Unfair.
Thanks, dude. The moderators can eat me.
BTW: the_gnat, you'd be less likely to get modded down on stuff like this if you avoided cursing. Just a tip.
Point taken, but I spend too much time dealing with this sort of nonsense at work. Besides, the idiot I was replying to managed to be far more offensive without swearing at all (or is that your point?).
People who think the answer to every problem is to buy a new computer should stick to non-technical jobs so they can't make life miserable for those of us who have to deal with the consequences of their stupidity.