Errr, why? What form of intellectual property is holding it back? (Other than the mpeg2 issue mentioned elsewhere.) If it *was* a trade secret, it can't have been copyrighted. Trademark law doesn't seem applicable, and I haven't heard of any CSS patents....
People have been complaining about this since day 2 on slashdot. And it's been silly and ridiculous the whole time -- never "informative" or "insightful". If you want *journalism*, basic or otherwise, go to some representative of the press. For example, for serious g4ek-related journalism, I recommend LWN -- but that's *never* what Slashdot has been or even pretended to be. So, basically, quit whining.
If you do this, *please* make sure to e-mail the maintainers of the website. Tell them you use Mozilla, and what you had to do -- and whether or not their site actually *does* work with standards.
Otherwise, the fake user agent string just continues to tell them "everyone uses IE anyway, so we're doing the right thing by ignoring those losers".
Sure, it's *different*, but it's still social. The barbecue, drinking, etc., is nice and all (personally, I'll all for it) but that doesn't mean chatting online can't be social too.
Is there something that people sign when they receive a screener which says that if the screener shows up on the net they are somehow liable?
Yes, as the article linked-to says. It also mentions that only 80% of voters actually signed and returned the forms -- but apparently the other 20% got to vote anyway. So the whole thing doesn't really seem to be taken seriously.
I mean, who is to say how the damn thing ended up on the Internet? Who knows what happened while burning the screener, in the mail room at the studios, during the mail delivery process, etc.
Or maybe he just dumped it in his trash after watching it (or before), and someone picked it up from there.
Lego sets haven't been cheap on ebay for years. Notice that the reserve isn't even met on the collection you link to. And complete mindstorms sets are going for over what I paid for them new. No thanks.
Have you been to a movie recently? Every one I've been to in the past couple of years has been prefixed with a Lego ad of some sort. Before, they were mostly Bionicle(*spit*) ads, but recently it's been for their new creator / designer / inventer sets.
These new lines make me feel more secure for Lego's future -- for a while, they were very distracted by "action toys", instead of focusing on the one thing they do better than anything else: making supplies for *creative* building. It looks like someone inside has finally realized that if they're trying to be just another action figure company, they're going to die, and that the emphasis must be on *actual building sets*.
As for the prices -- yeah, they're a pretty expensive toy, but the quality is much higher than one gets with clones.
Maybe a lot more companies than we know are paying SCO's licensing fees.
This at least is easily answered. They lost $1.6 million on revenue of $24.3 million, $10.3 million of that on licensing agreements, entirely with Sun and Microsoft.
Read more directly from SCO. They spin the press release as if $9 million for lawyers shouldn't really be counted as an actual expense, and that if you ignore that, they're making money hand-over-fist. Heh -- feel free to invest your life savings with them if you believe that.
But if you follow what's going on (I read GROKLAW regularly) you see that SCO is just plain in flail mode. IBM's version of the SysV contract has an appendix that says "but anything IBM invents, IBM still owns." Whoops, there goes SCO's whole claim to JFS and just about everything else.
The continued argument goes like this: Sure, IBM has that extra bit in their contract. But Sequent didn't, and code developed by them as part of Dynix/ptx doesn't fall under that agreement, even though IBM later bought Sequent. And we know for sure that the Linux read-copy update code is based on that from Dynix.
This is the strongest argument SCO has, and it will have to be fought by proving that RCU was developed independently of Dynix and Unix per se -- that it's separate code that can be plugged in anywhere. From the RCU development whitepapers I've read, it looks like this is indeed demonstrable, but it's very unfortunately not cut and dried.
Or maybe IBM can show that their license addendum does or should apply to code developed by someone they've purchased. That's *way* over my legal head.
In conclusion, the rising stock price is a function of Wall Street's perception of the odds of this lottery ticket.
Well, exactly. So why, as the story asks, has SCO's stock continued to trend upwards over the last few months, even as the odds of SCO getting anything at all look worse and worse to most of us Linux geeks?
If Wall Street is seeing that lottery ticket as a better investment, one of two things is happening: a) the odds of getting anything at all are increasing or b) the potential payout is seen as higher.
From my perspective, both a) and b) have decreased significantly from my earlier worries. What am I missing that makes Wall Street think the opposite?
Hey, Kozmo.com! Spells it wrong, and not selected as one of the grand failures, but still mentioned. The real sad thing, as I understand it, is that the service was actually profitable in Boston and New York -- markets where a service like that makes sense. But they tried to extend way too far, and into cities like Dallas and Chicago, where I could have told them it wasn't likely to work. And then they got into so much debt they had to shut the whole thing down, just when Bostonians were getting really addicted.
Slashdot Mirror
X *is* an efficient system for local display.
sure. but that's not an issue of licensing technology -- it's a whole separate problem.
Errr, why? What form of intellectual property is holding it back? (Other than the mpeg2 issue mentioned elsewhere.) If it *was* a trade secret, it can't have been copyrighted. Trademark law doesn't seem applicable, and I haven't heard of any CSS patents....
yeah, probably. *sigh*.
[...] Basic journalistic integrity [...]
People have been complaining about this since day 2 on slashdot. And it's been silly and ridiculous the whole time -- never "informative" or "insightful". If you want *journalism*, basic or otherwise, go to some representative of the press. For example, for serious g4ek-related journalism, I recommend LWN -- but that's *never* what Slashdot has been or even pretended to be. So, basically, quit whining.
I know; annoying. But if enough people do it, it starts to have an impact.
Cute, but probably doesn't show up in their aggregate browser reports....
If you do this, *please* make sure to e-mail the maintainers of the website. Tell them you use Mozilla, and what you had to do -- and whether or not their site actually *does* work with standards.
Otherwise, the fake user agent string just continues to tell them "everyone uses IE anyway, so we're doing the right thing by ignoring those losers".
Y'know what's like New Coke? The change of the color grey for 2004 sets. Your old lego doesn't match your new stuff anymore!
Sure, it's *different*, but it's still social. The barbecue, drinking, etc., is nice and all (personally, I'll all for it) but that doesn't mean chatting online can't be social too.
In what way are IRC and Instant Messaging *not* social activities? Unless you're spending all your time interacting with bots, I mean.
Is there something that people sign when they receive a screener which says that if the screener shows up on the net they are somehow liable?
Yes, as the article linked-to says. It also mentions that only 80% of voters actually signed and returned the forms -- but apparently the other 20% got to vote anyway. So the whole thing doesn't really seem to be taken seriously.
I mean, who is to say how the damn thing ended up on the Internet? Who knows what happened while burning the screener, in the mail room at the studios, during the mail delivery process, etc.
Or maybe he just dumped it in his trash after watching it (or before), and someone picked it up from there.
Well, lucky all of us, really. That seems to be exactly the new strategy. Check out the Make & Create stuff.
Either you're not looking closely enough, or your sense of humor is broken....
Lego sets haven't been cheap on ebay for years. Notice that the reserve isn't even met on the collection you link to. And complete mindstorms sets are going for over what I paid for them new. No thanks.
What "lack of technical skill"? A lot of the creations in the background are very nicely constructed.
Have you been to a movie recently? Every one I've been to in the past couple of years has been prefixed with a Lego ad of some sort. Before, they were mostly Bionicle(*spit*) ads, but recently it's been for their new creator / designer / inventer sets.
These new lines make me feel more secure for Lego's future -- for a while, they were very distracted by "action toys", instead of focusing on the one thing they do better than anything else: making supplies for *creative* building. It looks like someone inside has finally realized that if they're trying to be just another action figure company, they're going to die, and that the emphasis must be on *actual building sets*.
As for the prices -- yeah, they're a pretty expensive toy, but the quality is much higher than one gets with clones.
This BBC news story says 12 images. Hard-hitting investigative journalism exposes the cover-up!
Maybe a lot more companies than we know are paying SCO's licensing fees.
This at least is easily answered. They lost $1.6 million on revenue of $24.3 million, $10.3 million of that on licensing agreements, entirely with Sun and Microsoft.
Read more directly from SCO. They spin the press release as if $9 million for lawyers shouldn't really be counted as an actual expense, and that if you ignore that, they're making money hand-over-fist. Heh -- feel free to invest your life savings with them if you believe that.
But if you follow what's going on (I read GROKLAW regularly) you see that SCO is just plain in flail mode. IBM's version of the SysV contract has an appendix that says "but anything IBM invents, IBM still owns." Whoops, there goes SCO's whole claim to JFS and just about everything else.
The continued argument goes like this: Sure, IBM has that extra bit in their contract. But Sequent didn't, and code developed by them as part of Dynix/ptx doesn't fall under that agreement, even though IBM later bought Sequent. And we know for sure that the Linux read-copy update code is based on that from Dynix.
This is the strongest argument SCO has, and it will have to be fought by proving that RCU was developed independently of Dynix and Unix per se -- that it's separate code that can be plugged in anywhere. From the RCU development whitepapers I've read, it looks like this is indeed demonstrable, but it's very unfortunately not cut and dried.
Or maybe IBM can show that their license addendum does or should apply to code developed by someone they've purchased. That's *way* over my legal head.
In conclusion, the rising stock price is a function of Wall Street's perception of the odds of this lottery ticket.
Well, exactly. So why, as the story asks, has SCO's stock continued to trend upwards over the last few months, even as the odds of SCO getting anything at all look worse and worse to most of us Linux geeks?
If Wall Street is seeing that lottery ticket as a better investment, one of two things is happening: a) the odds of getting anything at all are increasing or b) the potential payout is seen as higher.
From my perspective, both a) and b) have decreased significantly from my earlier worries. What am I missing that makes Wall Street think the opposite?
sure, but isn't having *more* registers helpful?
Errr, or there's the other alternative, the one the original post suggested -- ditch TV altogether. It's amazing how well it works.
Well, right. And so, too bad for the excusivity of Champagne from France -- too late.
Hey, Kozmo.com! Spells it wrong, and not selected as one of the grand failures, but still mentioned. The real sad thing, as I understand it, is that the service was actually profitable in Boston and New York -- markets where a service like that makes sense. But they tried to extend way too far, and into cities like Dallas and Chicago, where I could have told them it wasn't likely to work. And then they got into so much debt they had to shut the whole thing down, just when Bostonians were getting really addicted.