Of course, the European gasoline taxes go to fund highway costs. In the US, that's subsidized by the income tax, so the burden is spread to people who don't drive as much as well.
This relates directly to the CueCat story from the other day. It'd be as if the CueCat people were worried that their revenue model wasn't working, and so asked the government for a percentage of all computers sold.
Sure, fine for the publisher to try and make deals with the hardware manufacturers. But doesn't it strike you as a bit scary when they go to the government?
That's not quite true. If the secret got out in a non-legal way, and you know that or have reason to know that and yet continue to spread the information, you could be subject to a (up to) $5,000,000 fine.
So, if someone breaks their NDA, that does not make anything they say completely fair game (although it might for most practical purposes).
Right. So they can't reasonably be claiming that it's a trade secret, copyright doesn't really apply, nor does trademark, and they don't have any applicable patents. So they've got nothing but a bunch of bullying lawyers.
I don't think a clean room is necessary in this case. Reverse engineering is completely legal (except the weird new exceptions put in place by the DMCA, but that doesn't apply here). A clean room scenario is needed when just looking at the original might "contaminate" you -- for example, if it's source code under license. (Java comes to mind.)
There actually is an amazing amount of legal protection for trade secrets in the US. (See us code title 18 chapter 90.) However, it doesn't cover information obtained in normal, legal ways, such as reverse engineering.
Trade secrets are a form of intellectual property in the US. (One of the more disturbing, in fact.) Check out
US code title 18 chapter 90. However, reverse engineering is still legal -- trade secrets can't protect something that is publicly available.
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Re:That's just your sick imagination
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Qt Going GPL
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· Score: 2
There will just be Sun's source, IBM's source, HP's source, Helix source whatever.
Sure, we all know of the historic fragmentation of Unix. But since then, the few examples of major forks in Open Source / Free software are notable for being rare exceptions to the general rule.
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gnome is language-neutral
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Qt Going GPL
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· Score: 3
Sure, most of the gnome core is C. But the whole environment is designed to be language neutral -- you can write Gnome applications in Python, or Perl, or whatever.
The second one sounds a little cooler than you say: you wouldn't have to boot the other OS; it could resume from its saved state. So it'd be a fairly quick switch.
The third one looks like the same thing, but faster and more wasteful of memory. It doesn't look like real "multitasking" of OSes -- rather, they're "task-switched" and don't do anything when not active.
And the fourth looks just a little beyond where VMware is today.
The 8-cpu box is not a cluster, but 8-way SMP. (Which is why no Athlons yet, btw.)
Also, if you want a serious cluster, you're going to want faster interconnects than 100bt. For what it's worth, you can get 1u rackmount nodes with Pentium III 800s and gigabit ethernet from Penguin Computing for about $2000.
Intellectual property is a means to an end -- the betterment of society/humanity. IP isn't a magical natural right: it was created by society/government because in many cases it's beneficial. Copyright makes sure artists get rewarded for their work. Trademarks keep knock-offs from confusing consumers. Patents (in theory at least) reward people for publishing their designs instead of keeping them secret.
Just like most things in the real world, it's a mixed blessing. When IP is doing something that helps society overall, it's good. When it's used to bludgeon people into being intellectual serfs, it's bad.
The original CDDB had a few dozen free mirrors run by volunteers. There's not really that much bandwidth involved -- much less than a popular web site.
In the old days, when the original cddb was free, there were a few dozen CDDB mirror sites. A co-worker and I ran one for a few years. When the thing went proprietary, they of course closed down all of the mirrors. They promised to send us a gift in exchange for all of the work we'd done for them (and bandwidth we'd given them), and asked for our address, which we gave (along with a request to reconsider the decision). Never got anything.
It's easier in a sense (not having to pronounce stuff) but more difficult in another -- all of one's mistakes look really glaring in writing, whereas in conversation, one can usually get away with it -- and perhaps learn more, if the person one is talking with interjects little corrections. On the 'net, of course, what happens is little flamewars about grammar.
Yet, if I go to a Danish site, I'm not suprised to find an english version. In fact, I followed your link, and yup, it's in english. And so is http://www.cs.auc.dk/ (mostly). http://www.auc.dk/ is in Danish, but there's a convenient little british flag to click on to, um, fix the problem. Just food for thought....
Personally, I'm pretty happy about this, as arrogant and lazy as that seems. I wouldn't mind learning one or maybe even two other languages, but eight hundred or so just isn't going to happen. It's extremely convenient to me that a large chunk of the web has standardized on English.
It's good for local web sites to be in the local language. It's also a good thing to have a standard language. It wouldn't have to be English, but Mandarin is entirely beyond what my brain is equiped to learn.
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Re:About the desk-Drawers
on
The LEGO Desk
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· Score: 1
No, not at all. That would totally miss the point of the whole thing.
The problem is that Lego doesn't sell all of their pieces in bulk yet.
Slashdot Mirror
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So, if someone breaks their NDA, that does not make anything they say completely fair game (although it might for most practical purposes).
But again, that's not the case here.
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Sure, we all know of the historic fragmentation of Unix. But since then, the few examples of major forks in Open Source / Free software are notable for being rare exceptions to the general rule.
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The third one looks like the same thing, but faster and more wasteful of memory. It doesn't look like real "multitasking" of OSes -- rather, they're "task-switched" and don't do anything when not active.
And the fourth looks just a little beyond where VMware is today.
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Also, if you want a serious cluster, you're going to want faster interconnects than 100bt. For what it's worth, you can get 1u rackmount nodes with Pentium III 800s and gigabit ethernet from Penguin Computing for about $2000.
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Just like most things in the real world, it's a mixed blessing. When IP is doing something that helps society overall, it's good. When it's used to bludgeon people into being intellectual serfs, it's bad.
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Personally, I'm pretty happy about this, as arrogant and lazy as that seems. I wouldn't mind learning one or maybe even two other languages, but eight hundred or so just isn't going to happen. It's extremely convenient to me that a large chunk of the web has standardized on English.
It's good for local web sites to be in the local language. It's also a good thing to have a standard language. It wouldn't have to be English, but Mandarin is entirely beyond what my brain is equiped to learn.
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The problem is that Lego doesn't sell all of their pieces in bulk yet.
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