We did have an OS programming course (which apparently involved writing an OS for the PC from scratch), but it was dropped, on the grounds that "very few people will ever work as OS developers, so it's not relevant to our students' needs." Read into that what you will.
The companion OS theory subject remained, but the only coding/practical work we did there was to simulate a few different scheduling algorithms to study their behaviour, and a bit of concurrency.
Oh, well. At least we got a good grounding in the theory (I hope).
IANAL, but I believe that one kind of patent (the statutary patent) already allows this. The point of such patents is to simply say, "I discovered this." You can't charge license fees, but neither can anybody else, and you go on record as the inventor.
Of course, a better idea would be to patent something, and license it under a variant of the GPL for patents, eg "You can use this to produced a derived work, and patent that, but you must license that patent under the PGPL".
I'm unsure of whether existing patent law would allow this kind of thing, though.
Is this a legal threat or a PR move? It seems to me that Thompson/Fraunhofer would be better served if they were able to scare people away from a technology that they thought was illegal, rather than get the negative publicity associated with any corporation using big legal sticks to beat independent whatevers into submission. This could simply be the opening move in creating that public perception. Remember, most people aren't even aware of the existence of the GPL let alone its implications in this case, so the concept of "defense through openness", although laudible and valid, is irrelevant.
Perhaps they've learnt from DeCSS et al that legal brute force isn't as effective on the Net as in real life, and so are opting for a more subtle approach. It'll be interesting to see what they do from here.
Or maybe I'm being excessively paranoid and conspiratorial.
There was a story about the sale of the Tonga genome and follow-up interview with Joe Gutnick (chairman of the purchasing company, Autogen) on ABC's Lateline last month.
The article states that metal objects within the generated field cause this apparent force. Therefore, any reaction force should act on these metal objects. The article does not state what happens to these objects, so I can only assume that they stay rock still for this whole phenomenon to be of any note.
Of course, the weak reaction force we're dealing with here could probably be overcome by static friction, so I would be interested in reading a more detailed description of the whole setup.
This is the one piece of management wisdom I wholeheartedly subscribe to. Of all the methodologies I have encountered, it seems that each is tailored towards a specific organization or class of applications, and consequently fall down when applied in other situations.
The most important thing to know is which methodology is best suited for which situation, and apply the one you think is most suitable for your own project/organization. Mindlessly worshipping at the altar of the latest management fad is a sure recipe for disaster.
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The companion OS theory subject remained, but the only coding/practical work we did there was to simulate a few different scheduling algorithms to study their behaviour, and a bit of concurrency.
Oh, well. At least we got a good grounding in the theory (I hope).
Of course, a better idea would be to patent something, and license it under a variant of the GPL for patents, eg "You can use this to produced a derived work, and patent that, but you must license that patent under the PGPL".
I'm unsure of whether existing patent law would allow this kind of thing, though.
Perhaps they've learnt from DeCSS et al that legal brute force isn't as effective on the Net as in real life, and so are opting for a more subtle approach. It'll be interesting to see what they do from here.
Or maybe I'm being excessively paranoid and conspiratorial.
Isn't public broadcasting wonderful?
Of course, the weak reaction force we're dealing with here could probably be overcome by static friction, so I would be interested in reading a more detailed description of the whole setup.
The most important thing to know is which methodology is best suited for which situation, and apply the one you think is most suitable for your own project/organization. Mindlessly worshipping at the altar of the latest management fad is a sure recipe for disaster.