Most young, rapidly growing companies don't gain their marketshare by patent litigation.
They get big by whatever other means, and THEN when the growth stops they being looking for other revenue channels. They also look to protect their marketshare. This usually leads to patent litigation to stymie competitors and bring in settlements.
Of course small (arguably the most innovative) companies can't begin to afford to fight, so they settle (which can mean being absorbed for a paltry sum) by the bigcorp.
If people live longer, and world population rate increases significantly, it will reverse and stabilize because people will just kill each other more often.
The developed parts of the world average around 1.3 children per family. Undeveloped birth rates are much higher, even well outpacing infant mortality. However, they have proven to be much more inclined to kill each other in great numbers. That would increase, and the population growth would stall accordingly.
it seems like an improvement, but it contributes in different, sometimes worse ways to degredation of the environment.
in particular, the soot that is ejected from a diesel engine is now known to be far more damaging for the environment (and particularly for people directly). it's actually even worse as the soot particles are reduced in size (and become small enough to enter the blood stream.
Once again they're being the doomed contrarian in the face of rational IT/technological wisdom.
Hardware is already becoming so cheap as to be virtually insignificant for many companies (especially if you use an OS that has much lower requirements than Windows).
Microsoft and other commercial software companies have demonstrated that high software and licensing costs are the most hated aspect of IT budgeting.
Sun's just demonstrating once again that they have no clue which direction to turn, and by some sad misfortune they've pointed themselves backwards.
I know economically (short term) it makes sense to copy existing standards, but someone somewhere needs to rethink how people use computers, and thus create perhaps radically different UIs.
This applies to the OS (desktop motif, ugh), applications, file management, etc.
It's a slam at ESR that at least in this case is unjustified.
ESR's response to the report was reasonable and logical, and his boasts about himself weren't boasts as much as they were supports of his credibility to make the statements about the report he made.
His comment about publishing his change logs is very valid. With a complete, open audit trail, the ethics of OSS developers is usually on display for the world. This is in great contrast to proprietary software, which just based on lawsuits alone we can estimate has frequent theft of code from others.
His statement about being able to write it himself is reasonable. I'm no rocket ship (to quote Butthead), but even I could write a kernel if I had the drive. Using Tanenbaum's own books on computer architecture, as well as other books and examples. It's not magic. The magic comes much later in the tuning and improvement. Even then, that magic is really just very smart people getting involved.
On top of all that, parent poster personally has zero credibility ( Anonymous Coward ).
I have a theory that MS is actually making money somehow by having unsecure products like Outlook and IE.
Of course they are! So are the PC manufacturers. All the time people get spyware/virii/worms on their machines, and since the machine "only" cost 500$ new, they figure they'll just go buy a new one. New PC, new OEM Windows, new OEM Office.
Why pay CompUSA 200$ to clean up (maybe) a year old PC when you can have a new one for 300$ more.
By "collapse" I mean "cease to be productive, cease to make progress".
In other words, if the big companies kill off all competition, much as MS has done on many fronts, then innovation will slow to a crawl. History has shown that without competition, man (the generic term) is generally not compelled to grow.
Do you still use Internet Explorer? It's very poor compared to Firefox/Mozilla. MS has had no incentive to improve it because thus far there has been no significant competition since they killed off Netscape (well, helped Netscape kill itself).
Anyway, I didn't really mean total destruction of an industry, I meant utter stagnation.
In any case, you can't say how many companies have been eliminated due to patent abuse.
What's interesting is that you don't need a patent to bully a company anyway. Consider the several cases where MS blatantly stole another company's technology, knowing that even a court loss would be a minor cost.
And since many small companies just don't have the money to attempt to defensively patent everything they can think of, that means the legitimate first creator of a technology can easily be steamrolled by a patent-wielding second-comer.
This will hopefully hasten the collapse of the software industry, highlighting exactly why software patents are bad.
The next 10 years could really be a mess, but hopefully people will learn from it.
This is all so typical. There is always someone, somewhere trying to twist the system to squeeze out some self-benefit, but always at the greater cost of society (and ironically, also usually at the long term cost of the selfish people themselves.)
How much of your 4$/gallon is EU or local taxes? From my quick search it looks like the UK and France have gas price + 300% tax. That suggests $1gas plus $3taxes. These are 1997 numbers too. It's likely taxes have increased since then. (details)
The US has what we consider high taxes on gas. Hawaii is 53.5c (as of July 2002), California is 50.4c, and Texas is 38.4c/gallon. (details)
I now realize that I do have a moderator fanboi out there somewhere. This person clearly waits with bated breath for me to post so they can -1 me.
So my PETA response landed at 12:22/. time, and the only prior PETA comment was a 12:19/. time. Sadly, that previous message didn't exist in the comment list when I made my post.
Mine being the second PETA post at the root level clearly warrants the use of a mod point to mark it Redundant. In fact I cannot think of a more practical use of mod points but to go hunting for similar obviously karma-whoring theft of other people's previously-invisible ideas.
Cheers, fanboi.
But that brings an idea to mind. What would happen if I intentionally created a fodder post on each article, then waited but 5 minutes to make my serious post? Would the perhaps multiple blunte fanbois burn their mod posts on my feint? That would be a sad shame.
But clearly your friend wasn't a true PETA member, or he/she would have been violent toward you when you received your meal. This also would have kept you distracted while the ELF people lit your SUV on fire in the parking lot.
A small business either has an in house IT person purchasing and installing Linux, or is paying a small support company to do that.
In either case, they should be fine with paying a little more and following strict guidelines if the longer term payoff is (reportedly) there.
Anyway, if a company can't afford to buy a support-included server distro, they will use a free distro and manage it themselves. That requires a level of expertise that should also suggest they'll make reasonable hardware decisions.
Only food and potions are consumable, and they are a very small cost.
The cost to develop a high level of trade skills is mostly player time, since most trade skills require farming of items that cannot be simply purchased.
On the other hand, repeatedly killing creatures in a particular area can result in endless gems and cash.
If items wore out that would really help, but then only if the same items were player craftable. Having some really exotic equipment wear out would be very unfortunate.
This guy misses the mark by being concerned about price. Corporations are less concerned with acquisition price as they are with operation costs.
And as for hardware support, corporations are typically smart enough to buy hardware that is listed as being supported by the software they buy. Any specialized commercial software may have more limited hardware requirements than Windows XP does, and companied will readily comply. The same is true for Linux.
This guy is really just clueless. He sounds like a journalist (I use the term loosely) with no practical experience in the business world. He certainly doesn't have CTO-level experience.
In Everquest, there is virtually no control of the money supply. And since very little of the things EQ money is spent on are consumable, there is nothing to take money out of the economy.
So it's really irrelevant to compare EQ's economy to real economies. The only point of interest is how the trading market works in EQ.
Ignorance, greed, and desire are all prevalent in the trading of items, and those who see and take advantage of it can make lots of money as brokers.
Just because someone is a Fire Chief doesn't mean they know jack about how electricity really works.
I'm no EE, but I can assure you energy discharged when I slide out of my seat in the car and touch the side of the car is hundreds, perhaps thousands of times stronger than the level of electricity used at any given moment on a working cell phone (modified stun-phones notwithstanding).
Perhaps the fireman hates cell phones, and is hoping this ruse will kill cell phone use. I can see that angle.
Slashdot Mirror
Most young, rapidly growing companies don't gain their marketshare by patent litigation.
They get big by whatever other means, and THEN when the growth stops they being looking for other revenue channels. They also look to protect their marketshare. This usually leads to patent litigation to stymie competitors and bring in settlements.
Of course small (arguably the most innovative) companies can't begin to afford to fight, so they settle (which can mean being absorbed for a paltry sum) by the bigcorp.
If people live longer, and world population rate increases significantly, it will reverse and stabilize because people will just kill each other more often.
The developed parts of the world average around 1.3 children per family. Undeveloped birth rates are much higher, even well outpacing infant mortality. However, they have proven to be much more inclined to kill each other in great numbers. That would increase, and the population growth would stall accordingly.
it seems like an improvement, but it contributes in different, sometimes worse ways to degredation of the environment.
in particular, the soot that is ejected from a diesel engine is now known to be far more damaging for the environment (and particularly for people directly). it's actually even worse as the soot particles are reduced in size (and become small enough to enter the blood stream.
Once again they're being the doomed contrarian in the face of rational IT/technological wisdom.
Hardware is already becoming so cheap as to be virtually insignificant for many companies (especially if you use an OS that has much lower requirements than Windows).
Microsoft and other commercial software companies have demonstrated that high software and licensing costs are the most hated aspect of IT budgeting.
Sun's just demonstrating once again that they have no clue which direction to turn, and by some sad misfortune they've pointed themselves backwards.
I know economically (short term) it makes sense to copy existing standards, but someone somewhere needs to rethink how people use computers, and thus create perhaps radically different UIs.
This applies to the OS (desktop motif, ugh), applications, file management, etc.
How is parent interesting?
It's a slam at ESR that at least in this case is unjustified.
ESR's response to the report was reasonable and logical, and his boasts about himself weren't boasts as much as they were supports of his credibility to make the statements about the report he made.
His comment about publishing his change logs is very valid. With a complete, open audit trail, the ethics of OSS developers is usually on display for the world. This is in great contrast to proprietary software, which just based on lawsuits alone we can estimate has frequent theft of code from others.
His statement about being able to write it himself is reasonable. I'm no rocket ship (to quote Butthead), but even I could write a kernel if I had the drive. Using Tanenbaum's own books on computer architecture, as well as other books and examples. It's not magic. The magic comes much later in the tuning and improvement. Even then, that magic is really just very smart people getting involved.
On top of all that, parent poster personally has zero credibility ( Anonymous Coward ).
Shadow President was a great educational game.
A spammer had a prior felony conviction!?
They don't understand it, and since they are emotionally driven, they are not willing to take the time to understand it.
Greens are not into compromise. They want ideal solutions, but these solutions are impractical (even if people made concessions).
You worry about mining costs, but you assume wave and wind energy is free.
It's not. Converting waves to energy takes energy from the movement of the ocean. Enough such change will have (unexpected) impact somewhere.
The same goes for wind. Wind seems free, and sure it's not likely that we'll take much, but we will affect weather subtly (or not so subtly).
Of course they are! So are the PC manufacturers. All the time people get spyware/virii/worms on their machines, and since the machine "only" cost 500$ new, they figure they'll just go buy a new one. New PC, new OEM Windows, new OEM Office.
Why pay CompUSA 200$ to clean up (maybe) a year old PC when you can have a new one for 300$ more.
By "collapse" I mean "cease to be productive, cease to make progress".
In other words, if the big companies kill off all competition, much as MS has done on many fronts, then innovation will slow to a crawl. History has shown that without competition, man (the generic term) is generally not compelled to grow.
Do you still use Internet Explorer? It's very poor compared to Firefox/Mozilla. MS has had no incentive to improve it because thus far there has been no significant competition since they killed off Netscape (well, helped Netscape kill itself).
Anyway, I didn't really mean total destruction of an industry, I meant utter stagnation.
It hasn't been 10 years, thank you.
In any case, you can't say how many companies have been eliminated due to patent abuse.
What's interesting is that you don't need a patent to bully a company anyway. Consider the several cases where MS blatantly stole another company's technology, knowing that even a court loss would be a minor cost.
And since many small companies just don't have the money to attempt to defensively patent everything they can think of, that means the legitimate first creator of a technology can easily be steamrolled by a patent-wielding second-comer.
Indirectly.
This will hopefully hasten the collapse of the software industry, highlighting exactly why software patents are bad.
The next 10 years could really be a mess, but hopefully people will learn from it.
This is all so typical. There is always someone, somewhere trying to twist the system to squeeze out some self-benefit, but always at the greater cost of society (and ironically, also usually at the long term cost of the selfish people themselves.)
How much of your 4$/gallon is EU or local taxes? From my quick search it looks like the UK and France have gas price + 300% tax. That suggests $1gas plus $3taxes. These are 1997 numbers too. It's likely taxes have increased since then. (details)
The US has what we consider high taxes on gas. Hawaii is 53.5c (as of July 2002), California is 50.4c, and Texas is 38.4c/gallon. (details)
Yes, see that worked. Here's another. You fools are playing into my hand.
Evil blunte hater moderators! Strike me down!
I now realize that I do have a moderator fanboi out there somewhere. This person clearly waits with bated breath for me to post so they can -1 me.
/. time, and the only prior PETA comment was a 12:19 /. time. Sadly, that previous message didn't exist in the comment list when I made my post.
So my PETA response landed at 12:22
Mine being the second PETA post at the root level clearly warrants the use of a mod point to mark it Redundant. In fact I cannot think of a more practical use of mod points but to go hunting for similar obviously karma-whoring theft of other people's previously-invisible ideas.
Cheers, fanboi.
But that brings an idea to mind. What would happen if I intentionally created a fodder post on each article, then waited but 5 minutes to make my serious post? Would the perhaps multiple blunte fanbois burn their mod posts on my feint? That would be a sad shame.
Heh heh heh.
But clearly your friend wasn't a true PETA member, or he/she would have been violent toward you when you received your meal. This also would have kept you distracted while the ELF people lit your SUV on fire in the parking lot.
PETA. They'll be all over this. I can't believe you posed the question, sarcasm as it may have been.
A small business either has an in house IT person purchasing and installing Linux, or is paying a small support company to do that.
In either case, they should be fine with paying a little more and following strict guidelines if the longer term payoff is (reportedly) there.
Anyway, if a company can't afford to buy a support-included server distro, they will use a free distro and manage it themselves. That requires a level of expertise that should also suggest they'll make reasonable hardware decisions.
Everquest items do not wear out.
Only food and potions are consumable, and they are a very small cost.
The cost to develop a high level of trade skills is mostly player time, since most trade skills require farming of items that cannot be simply purchased.
On the other hand, repeatedly killing creatures in a particular area can result in endless gems and cash.
If items wore out that would really help, but then only if the same items were player craftable. Having some really exotic equipment wear out would be very unfortunate.
This guy misses the mark by being concerned about price. Corporations are less concerned with acquisition price as they are with operation costs.
And as for hardware support, corporations are typically smart enough to buy hardware that is listed as being supported by the software they buy. Any specialized commercial software may have more limited hardware requirements than Windows XP does, and companied will readily comply. The same is true for Linux.
This guy is really just clueless. He sounds like a journalist (I use the term loosely) with no practical experience in the business world. He certainly doesn't have CTO-level experience.
In Everquest, there is virtually no control of the money supply. And since very little of the things EQ money is spent on are consumable, there is nothing to take money out of the economy.
So it's really irrelevant to compare EQ's economy to real economies. The only point of interest is how the trading market works in EQ.
Ignorance, greed, and desire are all prevalent in the trading of items, and those who see and take advantage of it can make lots of money as brokers.
Just because someone is a Fire Chief doesn't mean they know jack about how electricity really works.
I'm no EE, but I can assure you energy discharged when I slide out of my seat in the car and touch the side of the car is hundreds, perhaps thousands of times stronger than the level of electricity used at any given moment on a working cell phone (modified stun-phones notwithstanding).
Perhaps the fireman hates cell phones, and is hoping this ruse will kill cell phone use. I can see that angle.