If they won't even identify their patent numbers then they are obviously full of crap and just trying to hold you up for money. However, you can look up patents yourself online at http://www.uspto.gov and search by things like the name and city/state of the inventor or assignee. You could then see if the company even has any patents, and if they do if there is any merit at all to their claims your software infringes on them. That information should be very useful to your lawyer in advising you on whether you can just blow them off or not.
Actually, the Itanium can run existing x86 software, but slowly, in an emulation mode. Its much slower at it than a P4. Comparatively, the AMD64 (Athlon64 and Opteron) can not only run 32 but x86 software, they run it as fast if not faster than an Athlon XP. Combine that with the Itanium being significantly more expensive than the AMD CPUs, and you can see why the Itanium is tanking.
I've had good luck with numerous different Duruns, Athlons and Athlon XPs and various motherboards using chipsets from VIA and SiS. The only problem I've had with motherboards using the nVidia chipsets is the non-open drivers for Linux which makes it so all of the features won't work out-of-the-box until you download and install nVidia's drivers. Once the drivers are installed they seem to work O.K. too. I'm sure there are combinations of AMD CPU and some chipsets that have problems, I just haven't run into them -- then again, I read the reviews before I buy. And not all Intel CPU/chipset combinations are completely bug free and stable either. And not all motherboards for Intel CPUs use Intel chipsets either. Your assertion that all AMDs are unstable because of your problems doesn't mean that everyone will have those same problems, and doesn't mean that nobody will have problems with Intel CPUs.
AMD apparently did not patent x86-64, since Intel's 64-bit extended Xeon is supposed to be compatible, and I have't heard of anything that says Intel is paying to license anything new from AMD. The companies already have cross-licensing in place for older designs and patents largely as a result of lawsuits, but one would think that probably wouldn't cover newer patents. Then again, the things that AMD did to the x86 architecture to create x86-64 are in many ways pretty obvious, so perhaps they felt that getting defendable patents wouldn't be that easy or worthwhile. Since the AMD64 family (Opteron and Athlon64) appears to be a big success, and Intel's cloning of the x86-64 architecture serves to validate AMD as a design leader as much as it gives AMD competition in that market niche from Intel I don't think most AMD investors are going to be that upset. Given that AMD's financial performance lately has been much better than it was for a long time, AMD investors are likely to be willing to give AMD management a little bit of leeway.
Yes, because it worked so well for Zilog when they pitched the Z8000 as a follow-on to the Z80.
Oh wait, what happened to Zilog...
Speaking of Zilog though, it is funny to see Intel starting to lose out to clone-chip vendors again, given that it happened back in the 70's. Intel apparently hasn't learned from history and is set on repeating it, badly.
Where you are wrong, and the Washington Post is correct is that Windows doesn't have to be intentionally flawed to be 'flawed by design'. Something can be flawed by design as far as security goes just in neglecting to design a proper security model to begin with. Windows is flawed because it wasn't designed to be secure from the beginning, and newer versions, even those written after Microsoft started to become more aware of the need for security, have been hamstrung by their need to retain backwards compatibility with older versions and for software written for older versions which in many cases just won't install and/or run correctly on a properly locked down installation of Windows. Whether Microsoft intentionally designed in security flaws isn't what matters, what matters is Windows, as it is currently designed and implemented has some inherent design flaws which make it less secure than it needs to be. Among them are the fact that so much Windows software relies on being able to write to system directories (to add DLLs, etc) to be installed, which leads most people to allow too many users to be able to access too many files. Another is the fact that Microsoft built in scripting which allows too much access to low-level functionality (in other words, it doesn't run everything in a restricted sandbox) into just about everything, including the email clients and office software most Windows users depend on. Another is the fact that executability is based on file extension and not by permissions, if it wasn't, then people wouldn't be able to accidently execute malicious downloads so easily. This problem is compounded by the fact that by default most Windows facilities and software likes to hide the file extension.
The Washington Post article is not a troll or flamebait, it is a very necessary wake up call to the average Joe Windows users. If more of them had patched their systems and used mail clients other than Outlook or Outlook Express as you have, then these viruses/worms wouldn't be such a big problem. Without the mainstream press letting these people know, they will not get the message.
The college I went to used that book in its OS course... XINU was running on these awful, crufty old LSI-11 (single chip PDP-11 implementation) based machines made by Terak.
That is a good point... As long as the bulk mailers are paying their fair share of postage, then they are actually helping subsidize the postal system as well as the companies who manufacture the CDs and packaging, which is the exact opposite of email spammers who are acting as a leech on the internet and contribute nothing to any manufacturers. About the only way that email spammers are slightly less loathsome than postal junk mailers is that they may be less of a nuisance in terms of environmental impact, but that doesn't excuse them much.
Your Highlander, I assume is the 4x4 version and has the 2.4L 4cyl (based on that is the only model rated at 24 highway). I'd personally never buy a 4 cylinder truck product, especially not a 4x4, but that is just me. And as for your assertion that japanese cars have "better milage and are cheaper", a quick search on Yahoo found a number of north american built models that have better milage ratings and lower sticker prices than the Highlander including the Jeep Liberty, Ford Escape, Mazda Tribute and Saturn VUE. Heck, for that matter, the V6 Pontiac Aztek is less expensive and has the same highway rating (although rated 1 mpg less city).
And as for your assertion that japanese cars are always so much better than domestics, you've got a right to your opinion, but all I can say is that I've had virtually no complaints about the last several domestic vehicles I've owned, and I drive everything hard.
As for my most recent vehicle purchase, it is a 2003 Silverado 1500. The closest japanese competitor is the Toyota Tundra, and it doesn't stack up well at all. I'd rate it dead last compared to the Chevy/GMC, Ford and Dodge full sized trucks. Its V6 is way undersized and underpowered in comparison to the domestics, and its V8 not only has 25 less horsepower than the smallest GM V8, the Toyota costs several thousand dollars more, and has a noticeably smaller cab. There is supposed to be a better replacement for the Tundra coming soon, but it will be built in San Antonio, Texas.
When I go car shopping I look for cars made in Japan. They are made better, and more fuel effient, and usually cheaper.
sarcasm on
Oh, by all means, the Toyota Corolla is made better, more fuel efficient and cheaper than the Chevy Prizm, because the Toyota is a japanese car and the Chevy is an american car. Its not like they are made in the same factory in California or something.
sarcasm off
Do you even know where the cars you are looking at while shopping are made? You can't always tell just by the nameplates. Many cars with import nameplates are built in the US. Many cars with US nameplates are made outside the US (Canada, Mexico, Europe or the pacific rim). Many cars, such as the Corolla and Prizm are sold under both domestic and import nameplates.
IBM and HP have their own *nix operating systems which have long been superior to Linux
Oh really. I work with AIX every day, have worked with HP/UX in the past and have both an RS/6000 and a HP 9000 workstation at home (in addition to several SparcStations, a couple of Alpha boxes, etc). Saying that AIX and HP/UX are superior to Linux is over simplistic to the point of being inaccurate. It simply depends an awful lot on the criteria you are using to judge and the particular needs and purpose for which you are using it. Certainly in price to performance, Linux on x86 hardware is superior, and the fact that it allows IBM and HP to compete in market segments that AIX and HP/UX are not competitive in is reason enough to explain why both of them are supporting Linux. Even ignoring economics and looking strictly at technical merits, Linux actually beats both AIX and HP/UX in a number of areas, especially in the richness and completeness of applications and tools that most Linux distros ship with out of the box compared to commercial Unixes. I've got nothing against commercial Unixes, especially for certain high end server applications but for most things these days I'd be hard pressed to recommend anything other than Linux.
Printscreen either won't be permitted when DRMed documents are open, or the DRMed portion of the screen will be redacted in the output. Cut and Paste will be disabled in DRMed documents.
4. Printers used in conjunction with scanners... (hackneyed but hey it happens)
Printing of DRMed documents will not be permitted.
But at any rate, even if it is possible to bypass the DRM, the real reason for it is to kill interoperability with competing office software.
Re:I hated his Ultima 1, first release, it had bug
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Spector, Garriott on Games
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· Score: 4, Informative
His second major product, was Ultima 1 for the Apple II.
Correct, I remember it well. Spent many too many hours playing it back in the early 80's.
It was written in Pascal P-Code I think, As was Wizardry 1 by another author.
Wizardry was indeed written in Apple Pascal (UCSD), but Ultima 1 was mostly written in Applesoft BASIC, as anyone who has perused the cracked copies that floated around the 'warez' circles back in those days could tell you.
Chances are Ultima 1 would have been less buggy had it been written in Pascal than in BASIC.
the unfortunate truth that it is still hard to do anything meaningful with a Mac.
I'm not a big Mac apologist, but may I ask what meaningful things are harder to do on a Mac than on Windows? It can't be using Microsoft Office documents, because there is an official Microsoft Office for MacOS, even OSX. That is the thing most people seem to complain about with other non-Windows OSes. So what are you talking about "anything meaningful" is awfully open ended.
closed source software gets debugged before shipping
Sometimes, maybe. But I've certainly seen plenty of shipping closed source packages that were buggier than a south Florida swamp in July... So it isn't always true.
I believe that in the US, patents are valid for 17 years after the date they are granted. In many cases there is a significant delay between the time a patent is applied for and when it is granted. And in most cases there is a significant delay between when an 'innovation' occurs and when a patent is applied for. If memory serves, it is possible to wait up to 1 year from the time you publish/produce and when you apply for a patent under current law. I also think it may be possible to sue for prior damages even if a patent has expired.
You are full of crap. The beer they serve at McDonald's in Belgium (Maes Pils) is much better than what they serve in France. That difference alone makes Belgium worthwhile.:-)
Only one of the three major networks' anchors are Canadian (ABC's Peter Jennings). Dan Rather of CBS (from Texas) and Tom Brokaw (from South Dakota) of NBC are both American. 1/3 is hardly what I'd call "most". And even Peter Jennings tries to sound like he is from the midwestern US, which is considered the "weatherman" dialect in the US.
Yes, I have a machine with that motherboard in it, and it has been running Linux since I got it. Most Linux distros (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc) have a couple floppy disk images on the CD which you can write to a floppy (either from another Linux box, or with some MS-DOS/Windows tools that are usually also on the CD such as RAWRITE.EXE). Once you boot the appropriate boot/install disk, it should be able to find the CD and away you go.
There aren't current versions of AutoCAD for non-Windows platforms since MS put the pressure on AutoDesk to stop supporting *nix and MacOS several years ago. I believe that R13 was the last version that was available on *nix and R12 the last that was available on MacOS. I also think that there is a reason that PTC's Pro-E and Bentley's Microstation have grabbed up a chunk of AutoCAD's market share over the past 5 or 6 years...
Tim is for real, I've met him in person, back when I lived in Des Moines, IA (where Tim lives). The interview doesn't seem out of character for him at all.
www.codeweavers.com maybe? They list a few other explicitly supported products like Lotus Notes, Quicken, Internet Explorer, Visio and Outlook. They have a partial listing of other packages, as well as a list of those known not to work and some packages listed as unknown.
$60 for 512M of PC133? You are paying too much. Fry's is selling 256M PC133 sticks for $15 this week, and the 512M ones are only a little more than double that. But who wants PC133 these days... most of the new motherboards support DDR...
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Too bad they have other cash cows that can cover for losing 1/3 billion a quarter on a failing product line...
If they won't even identify their patent numbers then they are obviously full of crap and just trying to hold you up for money. However, you can look up patents yourself online at http://www.uspto.gov and search by things like the name and city/state of the inventor or assignee. You could then see if the company even has any patents, and if they do if there is any merit at all to their claims your software infringes on them. That information should be very useful to your lawyer in advising you on whether you can just blow them off or not.
Actually, the Itanium can run existing x86 software, but slowly, in an emulation mode. Its much slower at it than a P4. Comparatively, the AMD64 (Athlon64 and Opteron) can not only run 32 but x86 software, they run it as fast if not faster than an Athlon XP. Combine that with the Itanium being significantly more expensive than the AMD CPUs, and you can see why the Itanium is tanking.
I've had good luck with numerous different Duruns, Athlons and Athlon XPs and various motherboards using chipsets from VIA and SiS. The only problem I've had with motherboards using the nVidia chipsets is the non-open drivers for Linux which makes it so all of the features won't work out-of-the-box until you download and install nVidia's drivers. Once the drivers are installed they seem to work O.K. too. I'm sure there are combinations of AMD CPU and some chipsets that have problems, I just haven't run into them -- then again, I read the reviews before I buy. And not all Intel CPU/chipset combinations are completely bug free and stable either. And not all motherboards for Intel CPUs use Intel chipsets either. Your assertion that all AMDs are unstable because of your problems doesn't mean that everyone will have those same problems, and doesn't mean that nobody will have problems with Intel CPUs.
AMD apparently did not patent x86-64, since Intel's 64-bit extended Xeon is supposed to be compatible, and I have't heard of anything that says Intel is paying to license anything new from AMD. The companies already have cross-licensing in place for older designs and patents largely as a result of lawsuits, but one would think that probably wouldn't cover newer patents. Then again, the things that AMD did to the x86 architecture to create x86-64 are in many ways pretty obvious, so perhaps they felt that getting defendable patents wouldn't be that easy or worthwhile. Since the AMD64 family (Opteron and Athlon64) appears to be a big success, and Intel's cloning of the x86-64 architecture serves to validate AMD as a design leader as much as it gives AMD competition in that market niche from Intel I don't think most AMD investors are going to be that upset. Given that AMD's financial performance lately has been much better than it was for a long time, AMD investors are likely to be willing to give AMD management a little bit of leeway.
Yes, because it worked so well for Zilog when they pitched the Z8000 as a follow-on to the Z80.
Oh wait, what happened to Zilog...
Speaking of Zilog though, it is funny to see Intel starting to lose out to clone-chip vendors again, given that it happened back in the 70's. Intel apparently hasn't learned from history and is set on repeating it, badly.
Where you are wrong, and the Washington Post is correct is that Windows doesn't have to be intentionally flawed to be 'flawed by design'. Something can be flawed by design as far as security goes just in neglecting to design a proper security model to begin with. Windows is flawed because it wasn't designed to be secure from the beginning, and newer versions, even those written after Microsoft started to become more aware of the need for security, have been hamstrung by their need to retain backwards compatibility with older versions and for software written for older versions which in many cases just won't install and/or run correctly on a properly locked down installation of Windows. Whether Microsoft intentionally designed in security flaws isn't what matters, what matters is Windows, as it is currently designed and implemented has some inherent design flaws which make it less secure than it needs to be. Among them are the fact that so much Windows software relies on being able to write to system directories (to add DLLs, etc) to be installed, which leads most people to allow too many users to be able to access too many files. Another is the fact that Microsoft built in scripting which allows too much access to low-level functionality (in other words, it doesn't run everything in a restricted sandbox) into just about everything, including the email clients and office software most Windows users depend on. Another is the fact that executability is based on file extension and not by permissions, if it wasn't, then people wouldn't be able to accidently execute malicious downloads so easily. This problem is compounded by the fact that by default most Windows facilities and software likes to hide the file extension.
The Washington Post article is not a troll or flamebait, it is a very necessary wake up call to the average Joe Windows users. If more of them had patched their systems and used mail clients other than Outlook or Outlook Express as you have, then these viruses/worms wouldn't be such a big problem. Without the mainstream press letting these people know, they will not get the message.
The college I went to used that book in its OS course... XINU was running on these awful, crufty old LSI-11 (single chip PDP-11 implementation) based machines made by Terak.
That is a good point... As long as the bulk mailers are paying their fair share of postage, then they are actually helping subsidize the postal system as well as the companies who manufacture the CDs and packaging, which is the exact opposite of email spammers who are acting as a leech on the internet and contribute nothing to any manufacturers. About the only way that email spammers are slightly less loathsome than postal junk mailers is that they may be less of a nuisance in terms of environmental impact, but that doesn't excuse them much.
Your Highlander, I assume is the 4x4 version and has the 2.4L 4cyl (based on that is the only model rated at 24 highway). I'd personally never buy a 4 cylinder truck product, especially not a 4x4, but that is just me. And as for your assertion that japanese cars have "better milage and are cheaper", a quick search on Yahoo found a number of north american built models that have better milage ratings and lower sticker prices than the Highlander including the Jeep Liberty, Ford Escape, Mazda Tribute and Saturn VUE. Heck, for that matter, the V6 Pontiac Aztek is less expensive and has the same highway rating (although rated 1 mpg less city).
And as for your assertion that japanese cars are always so much better than domestics, you've got a right to your opinion, but all I can say is that I've had virtually no complaints about the last several domestic vehicles I've owned, and I drive everything hard.
As for my most recent vehicle purchase, it is a 2003 Silverado 1500. The closest japanese competitor is the Toyota Tundra, and it doesn't stack up well at all. I'd rate it dead last compared to the Chevy/GMC, Ford and Dodge full sized trucks. Its V6 is way undersized and underpowered in comparison to the domestics, and its V8 not only has 25 less horsepower than the smallest GM V8, the Toyota costs several thousand dollars more, and has a noticeably smaller cab. There is supposed to be a better replacement for the Tundra coming soon, but it will be built in San Antonio, Texas.
When I go car shopping I look for cars made in Japan. They are made better, and more fuel effient, and usually cheaper.
sarcasm on
Oh, by all means, the Toyota Corolla is made better, more fuel efficient and cheaper than the Chevy Prizm, because the Toyota is a japanese car and the Chevy is an american car. Its not like they are made in the same factory in California or something.
sarcasm off
Do you even know where the cars you are looking at while shopping are made? You can't always tell just by the nameplates. Many cars with import nameplates are built in the US. Many cars with US nameplates are made outside the US (Canada, Mexico, Europe or the pacific rim). Many cars, such as the Corolla and Prizm are sold under both domestic and import nameplates.
IBM and HP have their own *nix operating systems which have long been superior to Linux
Oh really. I work with AIX every day, have worked with HP/UX in the past and have both an RS/6000 and a HP 9000 workstation at home (in addition to several SparcStations, a couple of Alpha boxes, etc). Saying that AIX and HP/UX are superior to Linux is over simplistic to the point of being inaccurate. It simply depends an awful lot on the criteria you are using to judge and the particular needs and purpose for which you are using it. Certainly in price to performance, Linux on x86 hardware is superior, and the fact that it allows IBM and HP to compete in market segments that AIX and HP/UX are not competitive in is reason enough to explain why both of them are supporting Linux. Even ignoring economics and looking strictly at technical merits, Linux actually beats both AIX and HP/UX in a number of areas, especially in the richness and completeness of applications and tools that most Linux distros ship with out of the box compared to commercial Unixes. I've got nothing against commercial Unixes, especially for certain high end server applications but for most things these days I'd be hard pressed to recommend anything other than Linux.
3. Printscreen + CTRL-V
Printscreen either won't be permitted when DRMed documents are open, or the DRMed portion of the screen will be redacted in the output. Cut and Paste will be disabled in DRMed documents.
4. Printers used in conjunction with scanners... (hackneyed but hey it happens)
Printing of DRMed documents will not be permitted.
But at any rate, even if it is possible to bypass the DRM, the real reason for it is to kill interoperability with competing office software.
His second major product, was Ultima 1 for the Apple II.
Correct, I remember it well. Spent many too many hours playing it back in the early 80's.
It was written in Pascal P-Code I think, As was Wizardry 1 by another author.
Wizardry was indeed written in Apple Pascal (UCSD), but Ultima 1 was mostly written in Applesoft BASIC, as anyone who has perused the cracked copies that floated around the 'warez' circles back in those days could tell you.
Chances are Ultima 1 would have been less buggy had it been written in Pascal than in BASIC.
the unfortunate truth that it is still hard to do anything meaningful with a Mac.
I'm not a big Mac apologist, but may I ask what meaningful things are harder to do on a Mac than on Windows? It can't be using Microsoft Office documents, because there is an official Microsoft Office for MacOS, even OSX. That is the thing most people seem to complain about with other non-Windows OSes. So what are you talking about "anything meaningful" is awfully open ended.
closed source software gets debugged before shipping
Sometimes, maybe. But I've certainly seen plenty of shipping closed source packages that were buggier than a south Florida swamp in July... So it isn't always true.
I believe that in the US, patents are valid for 17 years after the date they are granted. In many cases there is a significant delay between the time a patent is applied for and when it is granted. And in most cases there is a significant delay between when an 'innovation' occurs and when a patent is applied for. If memory serves, it is possible to wait up to 1 year from the time you publish/produce and when you apply for a patent under current law. I also think it may be possible to sue for prior damages even if a patent has expired.
You are full of crap. The beer they serve at McDonald's in Belgium (Maes Pils) is much better than what they serve in France. That difference alone makes Belgium worthwhile. :-)
Only one of the three major networks' anchors are Canadian (ABC's Peter Jennings). Dan Rather of CBS (from Texas) and Tom Brokaw (from South Dakota) of NBC are both American. 1/3 is hardly what I'd call "most". And even Peter Jennings tries to sound like he is from the midwestern US, which is considered the "weatherman" dialect in the US.
Yes, I have a machine with that motherboard in it, and it has been running Linux since I got it. Most Linux distros (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc) have a couple floppy disk images on the CD which you can write to a floppy (either from another Linux box, or with some MS-DOS/Windows tools that are usually also on the CD such as RAWRITE.EXE). Once you boot the appropriate boot/install disk, it should be able to find the CD and away you go.
There aren't current versions of AutoCAD for non-Windows platforms since MS put the pressure on AutoDesk to stop supporting *nix and MacOS several years ago. I believe that R13 was the last version that was available on *nix and R12 the last that was available on MacOS. I also think that there is a reason that PTC's Pro-E and Bentley's Microstation have grabbed up a chunk of AutoCAD's market share over the past 5 or 6 years...
Tim is for real, I've met him in person, back when I lived in Des Moines, IA (where Tim lives). The interview doesn't seem out of character for him at all.
www.codeweavers.com maybe? They list a few other explicitly supported products like Lotus Notes, Quicken, Internet Explorer, Visio and Outlook. They have a partial listing of other packages, as well as a list of those known not to work and some packages listed as unknown.
I think he meant both Linux, and open source software for Windows on the same CD... Not Windows on the same cd as Linux...
$60 for 512M of PC133? You are paying too much. Fry's is selling 256M PC133 sticks for $15 this week, and the 512M ones are only a little more than double that. But who wants PC133 these days... most of the new motherboards support DDR...