Recently Microsoft has been claiming that the Judge was biased during the trial, because afterwards he said a few choice words about the company. Their Lawyers are trying to use this to wriggle out of the judgement, however the simple fact is that once the judgement has been reached by due process in a court of law then the judge is allowed to be predjudiced - he has to sentence them, after all.
Having said that, some elements of this trial do worry me. As an American ex-patriot, now living in London, I am worried about the ideaology that this trial represents. It didn't seem to be about Justice, it seemed to be about the government imposing its economic ideals.
Since I have lived in Britain for a few years, I have come to think that in affairs like this expediency is often the best way. Idealogy should be left to students and High School pupils - there is no place for it in the grown up world, because it leads to a divorce from reality/
Also, the hypocrisy of many people in the tech industry worries me. It seems that they are libertarian in their outlook everywhere, except for when it comes to Microsoft. Why the two-faced attitude? It is emotion clouding their viewpoint.
I am an expatriate; events like this are turning me into an ex-patriot.
Sorry, Jon, but you try because you've bought into a particularly well-designed meme: that *you* will be saved only if *you* try to save others.
No, you're totally missing the point. I will be saved. I know this, because I accept the love of Jesus Christ into my life as saviour. Nothing more is needed. I do not have to do anything about anyone else to qualify for Heaven.
But it is my moral duty to try and help the misguided and ignorant to achieve salvation as well. As a decent Christian I cannot stand back and let these people descend into Hell without trying to save them.
It's people like you however, that make our job so difficult, and Satan's so easy.
Not everyone follows the christian path and believes in the ten commandments.
Not everyone believes that it's wrong to molest children. So what?
Besides, it says thou shall not kill, not thou shall not maim, harm, injure, defend thyself, or beat the shit outta someone who deserves it.
Love thy neighbour? Turn the other cheek? I take it you've heard of these things? And besides, just because it doesn't explicitly say these things doesn't mean that they are permitted. To hide behind the exact letter of the Bible is no excuse for evil-doing.
Jeez.. you come off sounding like a real clueless fuckwit, you know that?
Many people who YOU might consider geeks are IT professionals who work in teams DAILY to do their job. Teamwork is a very important skill and many people know that. Just because there may be those that don't know how to work as a team but they are most certainly the MINORITY
Just things I've noticed when working in various projects. The project managers tend to be reviled for ensuring that the coders actually do their job as part of a team, rather than just sitting down and hacking out some "oh, it'll do the job" code.
And this certainly wasn't the minority attitude. Just look at all of the acronyms used here for the people in charge, like PHB. They're all derogatory.
Easy, tiger! I don't recall saying anything about you in particular at all. I can accept that people with misguided beliefs can be good people who think they are doing the right thing. It's just not their fault that they are wrong, and it's the job of decent Christians like me to show them the error of their ways.
People can't help being wrong. Today's society has lost it's moral compass, and instead preaches moral relativism as if it were true.
That sounds SO weak and whiney it's amazing and EXACTLY the sort of crap that many 'religious' types spout. 'Because you don't conform to what WE think, you're crap'.
I'm sorry if you feel challenged by the truth. Once you accept the light of the Lord into your heart things will become a lot clearer.
The reason concerned Christians attempt to teach others the error of their ways is simple - without accepting Jesus into your life as your saviour you are destined to end up in Hell paying for your sins.
We try because we care.
Only those who do not truly love their fellow men could ignore the misguided beliefs of the athiest and the heathen - compassion forces one to act to save their eternal souls.
See Chairman Mao as an example of the 'elite' 'functioning' outside their training.
I very much doubt that the average geek has anywhere near the necessary force of personality and interpersonal skills required to mobilise a group of people, let alone the amount that Mao did.
And the thing about survival is that it takes a whole load of people functioning together as a team, not people who are more used to doing things there own way and bitching about people who organise things.
Along with team-building exericses, plenty of physical training and real-life combat simulations as well. Not just Quake and pizza I'm afraid.
You may think you're some kind of 1337 killing machine because you can hit a 3D representation of another player over the net whilst maintaining low ping times, but you're not. Sorry.
Despite their love for violent computer games and anime, I vey much doubt that a group full of geeks, no matter what their skills, would be able to compete with some of the violent people that would exist in such a world.
There would be those that would create nothing and instead live by stealing from others, using violence as their weapon. Would your average geek, more interested in building for the future, be able to deal with this sort of person?
This is just another typical geek response to the end of the world scenario. "But how would be get our computers back" the geek wails, utterly oblivious to the fact that in any kind of realistic scenario that could destroy all of the computing power in the world, people would be more concerned about surviving than being able to play Quake deathmatches.
One question that I've thought about is "If the end of the world was coming, what good would you do?". Some people would be leaders, some would have the skills to grow food or hunt whilst doctors could help the injured.
But geeks? They would be the first ones to perish.
The typical *nix sysadmin or Perl hacker has a very specialised set of skills that only counts within the narrow environment in which they are confortable operating in. Take that environment away, and said hacker is like a fish out of water. And with the vast lack of social skills they possess, they can't even integrate into the hunter-gatherer groups of the post-apocolyptic world.
Computing is not the first priority in this situation, nor is it even in the top ten. Asking this question shows nothing other than how tenuous the grasp of geeks is on reality, and just how little chance of survivial they would have in such a scenario...
"Another example is Shannon's 1949 paper entitled Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems. This work is now generally credited with transforming cryptography from an art to a science."
By providing a firm mathematical basis Shannon managed to turn cryptography from a messy discipline without any real means of proof into a real science where mathematical methods could be used to ensure the security of cryptographic systems. Today, we wouldn't dream of thinking of cryptography as an art, it is well-established as a branch of applied mathematics.
But despite similar techniques being available for programming, coders still stick to their "tried and tested" methods of programming which owe less to science and more to guesswork. Rather than using formal techniques to ensure that code is 100% correct, they would rather just sit down and knock something out that sort of works. And this has led to the proliferation of buggy and insecure software we see today.
Why is it that programmers feel that they are somehow above the need for these techniques? It seems to me to be pretty arrogant to avoid using tools that would make their code better, almost as if they would rather not have perfect code. They would sneer at a cryptographic system that hadn't been rigourously proven, but be happy with any old hack that another coder knocks out whilst eating cold pizza and drinking Mountain Dew.
Why is there such a reluctance to produce properly proven code, when they demand it for other algorithmic systems?
As much as Microsoft have abused the position they currently occupy in the software market, they do have several points worth considering. Of course, this isn't to say that they shouldn't be broken up, but it's not the black and white issue that it is often presented as in the more Linux friendly media.
Microsoft got to where they are today through two things - a comination of ruthless business tactics and complete incompetance on the part of potential competitors. Without both of these, Microsoft wouldn't have their current near-monopoly and we'd see several competing commercial desktop operating systems being popular.
But would this be a good thing?
For the server market competition is all for the better - servers need to be robust platforms from which to run network services, and the fact that all the important protocols are open means that they can live side by side without problems. We've seen how having Linux and BSD have forced Microsoft to improve their code or be left behind.
But is this true for the desktop? At this end the majority of users aren't technically accomplished and simply want to get things done. If there are half a dozen different types of system, each with their own way of doing things, then people are either going to have to be trained for each one, or lose out on potential employment at offices using an OS they don't know. This all adds to employer's costs, and cuts down on profitability. The effects will be subtle, but in the long-run it'll damage the economy, which has become increasingly reliant on companies utilising technology.
So maybe Microsoft should be split instead into desktop and server divisions. Linux isn't really competing with Microsoft on the desktop anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem. Then Microsoft's server OS can stand or fall on it's own merits, or lack of.
It is the most free licence there is if you mean freedom of code rather than freedom of its users.
Code is an abstraction. How can code be free? Much the same as the phrase "information wants to be free" it's nonsense - what people really mean is that they want information to be free. You can't ascribe motivations and desires to a piece of code, no more than you can do to an instruction manual.
Only when they apply to something which could have been kept a secret had it not been patented.
Name one of those that applies to software.
The RSA encryption algorithm? That was just released into the public domain to the benefit of everyone. Better luck next time eh?
There are plenty of things which could easily be kept secret due to their complexity - encryption algorithms, compression routines, signal processing techniques etc etc. All of these are valid examples of software patents.
And I choose to GPL my code because I want others to have the freedom to improve it (but not the freedom to steal it.) I'm not saying that's better, but it's my choice as the copyright holder. (until copyrights are abolished, but again thats another story).
And as long as you're not claiming that the GPL is about freedom, then fine. It is your choice as the author, nobody is disputing your rights over what you produce.
Which brings me onto copyrights? If you want copyrights abolished, then I assume you're fine with the idea of people being able to do as they please with your code? How is this compatible with your use of the GPL, which forbids this?
And yet I have yet to actually see someone come up with evidence of prior art. There have been some claiming existence of evidence as early as August '97. But that doesn't predate the patent application.
IIRC, once a patent has been granted there is a period of a year in which if the same idea is reimplemented then it is taken as proof that the idea is obvious and the patent is invalid. So these claims, whilst not prior art, do show that the patent isn't nonobvious. See here for more info.
You still haven't shown me how patents increase freedom "be definition" You have simply explained that they are supposed to.
*sigh* They increase it by definition because part of that definition is the fact that they expire.
Yes, various unfair mechanisms like patents for example. (lets leave copyright for another day)
No, more like things like exclusive contracts, which prevent other companies from competing in a level playing field.
I don't know which "they" you're speaking for. I write GPLd software (well, I try anyway) and its not because im forced, its because i want to. How can you say people have no choice about it? There are at least tens of thousands of programmers who write code that's not GPL, including some for linux.
Because the basic libraries for Linux are GPLed, and by using them you are forced to adopt the GPL as your license. Yes, there are non-GPLed pieces of software, but most of them are either very limited or have ended up reimplementing standard functions just to avoid the GPL.
And how do you explain GPL software for windows as well? (yes - its increasing fast)
Easy. Because some people out there are as anti-freedom as RMS (unless it's his kind of freedom of course) and will stick a GPL on their software to be malicious. And the fact that the Windows libraries don't force you into using a specific license, unless those on Linux.
Show me where the definition says it increses freedom.
Because otherwise the knowledge would be locked away as a trade secret and nobody else would be able to benefit from it, even indirectly. And there wouldn't be any clause causing it to expire either. So yes, a patent does increase freedom. That's the whole point of them.
Too much govermnent control and intervention is the whole problem.
I think America shows the limits of laissez-faire capitalism in a global economy. It may be a nice theoretical model to study in economics class, but in the real world corporations tend to dominate markets and impose resitrictions upon others through various mechanisms.
When a corporation gets too big, only the government is powerful enough to level the playing field again. Here, more government control works to increase competition and bolster the free market.
Name a software related patent that does this or could have done this. How exactly would Amazons one click "technique" have remained a secret if they hadn't patented it?
Encryption techniques or compression algorithms could easily be kept secret without patents.
Firstly, the GPL most certainly does not prevent the originator from making a profit.
Okay, technically not, but it makes it as difficult as possible. The only way to make a profit is to wriggle through loopholes in the GPL, and even then it's a struggle.
The incorrect assumption you have made is that people do not do work voluntarily for others unless they can demand payment - after all why should they let others benefit from their superior abilities you might ask?
They can in their spare time, sure. But open source rarely pays the bills, which is why most programmers work in closed source environments where there is enough money to pay their paychecks.
Well, whatever the reasons you might think that, it is wrong. If it were correct, nobody would be releasing GPLd software. Quite clearly, people (including many innovators) are releasing a lot of GPLd software.
Because they have little choice. Thanks to the careful crafting of the GPL, it's next to impossible to write a Linux application that doesn't have to be GPLed.
Sometimes I think that RMS is right and that all forms of patents are worthless, but then I realise that he's actually pretty damn wrong and we don't live in his world of so-called "freedom".
The trouble with patents is not what they're for, it's how they're used. By definition patents increase freedom because they allow others to benefit from research and innovation done by people and companies, which would otherwise be held secret. They "open source" knowledge to the betterment of all. Of course, unlike the GPL they let the originator make a profit, but that's good in a capitalist society.
However when patents are awarded for anything and everything then we end up with problems like this one, where a company gets a patent on something with obvious prior art that is already ubiquitous. It's partly the underfunded USPTO's fault and partly greedy corporate lawyers fault, but the end result is a mess of litigation and demands for licensing fees.
Thankfully, this one is way too obvious to stick.
I think personally that we need more government control over corporate IP, to prevent such abuses from happening. Then when a company starts throwing its weight around because it's got some dumb patent, the government can step in and ensure that it doesn't go any further. It'll save a hell of a lot of time and money for everyone, which will benefit smaller businesses and private citizens the most, and get rid of a major source of income for those fatcat corporate lawyers:)
If you were caught jerking off to your favourite pics at goatse.cx, you would be prosecuted for *distribution* of obscene material.
LOL, now that would never happen. Pornography is morally wrong in that it degrades women, and ethically wrong in that women are often forced in to it by their boyfriends, and are treated like objects for the lusts of men who cannot find themselves a wife.
But in a "hypothetical" situation like you describe then I would rather have a jury of my technical peers than some monkeys off of the streets of London. After all, the dubious morality of the average "geek" is well known, as is their love of pornography and acceptance of dubious lifestyle choices like homosexuality.
I stand by my original assertion that juries should be representative of society and not selected by education.
No, people in the jury should be representative of the society in which we live in, so that they make decisions on what is acceptable to them, a section of society, not what is acceptable to one's person's beliefs and opinions due to their education, ie: the judge, or some stuck up bigoted twat who "has been to university".
*sigh* Juries are never going to be representative of society as a whole because a) there aren't enough of them to be a statistically valid sample and b) they're comprised of people too stupid to avoid jury detail. So if anything the average intelligence of a jury is somewhat lower than the mean.
Besides, most people are used to being manipulated by charismatic talkers. After a lifetime of watching such classy television experiances as "When Good Pets Go Bad", "Married With Children" and, God forbid, "Will and Grace" they aren't used to things like rational thinking or logical analysis.
On the other hand, people in more cognitive fields are used to analysing a situation rationally and logically. Just look at the cut and thrust of debate here on/. It's very similar to how a courtroom should be, and by having people in the jury who can cut through bullshit and misdirection we can make sure justice is done correctly.
Not being a teenager I'm not really sure about the answer to this question, but what does the arcade really have to offer any more?
Home console systems now have pretty much all the power we need to run arcade-quality games, and every year sees a huge leap in performace with the release of new systems. The only thing I can see that traditional arcades offer is games with novelty controllers, like those huge ones that have fake motorcycles. And those cost so much that they're hardly economical...
So where does this leave the traditional arcade? It seems to be to be a doomed business...
I've been with companies that have been involved in court before over technical issues, and it's not pretty! Because when it comes to matters of technical intellectual property, most people even in the field would have difficulty deciding which way to go, and that's when they can understand the arguments...
I think what we need is to ensure that for tech cases that the judge is technically qualified, otherwise it all comes down to whichever side can put foward the slickest presentation of why they are "right". That's exactly what happened to one company I worked for, and it caused them to go bankrupt in the end.
But perhaps we need to take it further and ensure that in all cases juries are at least familiar with technical issues. Foresnic evidence and statistical analysis of such is now an important part of many criminal investigations, and there are numerous studies showing how unreliable witeness evidence is. But most people just blindly accept eyewitness accounts, which has led to any number of miscarraiges of justice.
I think we need to ensure that people serving in the jury have a minimum of education to ensure that they can weight the evidence in a rational manner. This would ensure that the facts are the most important part of the case, rather than the words of a fancy lawyer. In the end, this can only led more a more just court system.
This seems to have captured the interest of many in the IT market at the moment, and general opinion is that it will be a good thing for both companies. The two are well-matched and the takeover should give the new company the ability to provide a more complete service to its customers.
I think however that this will be part of a larger trend in the Linux and open source business community. What with the massive over-hyping of the potential market over the last few years we're in a saturation situation in which there are too many companies and not enough clients. So those companies that can't find business will either fail, or be bought out by the more successful companies, as we've seen here.
In fact, the market as a whole is somewhat skewed by the whole "Linux community" concept. We've seen companies give out shares to people for no real reason, and companies seem to have forgotten that they have a bottom line to think about in their rush to acquire assets that don't fit in with their business model. Expect to see companies that want to succeed start paring down the cruft and sticking to their core business.
With that in mind, start wondering who will be willing to take on/. when VA find it necessary to get rid of OSDN. I bet Microsoft would love to have it:)
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Simple then - get a new judge. MS are trying to use this to abandon the entire trial, which will prejudice everyone against them, in the long run.
Having said that, some elements of this trial do worry me. As an American ex-patriot, now living in London, I am worried about the ideaology that this trial represents. It didn't seem to be about Justice, it seemed to be about the government imposing its economic ideals.
Since I have lived in Britain for a few years, I have come to think that in affairs like this expediency is often the best way. Idealogy should be left to students and High School pupils - there is no place for it in the grown up world, because it leads to a divorce from reality/
Also, the hypocrisy of many people in the tech industry worries me. It seems that they are libertarian in their outlook everywhere, except for when it comes to Microsoft. Why the two-faced attitude? It is emotion clouding their viewpoint.
I am an expatriate; events like this are turning me into an ex-patriot.
Sorry, Jon, but you try because you've bought into a particularly well-designed meme: that *you* will be saved only if *you* try to save others.
No, you're totally missing the point. I will be saved. I know this, because I accept the love of Jesus Christ into my life as saviour. Nothing more is needed. I do not have to do anything about anyone else to qualify for Heaven.
But it is my moral duty to try and help the misguided and ignorant to achieve salvation as well. As a decent Christian I cannot stand back and let these people descend into Hell without trying to save them.
It's people like you however, that make our job so difficult, and Satan's so easy.
Not everyone follows the christian path and believes in the ten commandments.
Not everyone believes that it's wrong to molest children. So what?
Besides, it says thou shall not kill, not thou shall not maim, harm, injure, defend thyself, or beat the shit outta someone who deserves it.
Love thy neighbour? Turn the other cheek? I take it you've heard of these things? And besides, just because it doesn't explicitly say these things doesn't mean that they are permitted. To hide behind the exact letter of the Bible is no excuse for evil-doing.
Jeez.. you come off sounding like a real clueless fuckwit, you know that?
Many people who YOU might consider geeks are IT professionals who work in teams DAILY to do their job. Teamwork is a very important skill and many people know that. Just because there may be those that don't know how to work as a team but they are most certainly the MINORITY
Just things I've noticed when working in various projects. The project managers tend to be reviled for ensuring that the coders actually do their job as part of a team, rather than just sitting down and hacking out some "oh, it'll do the job" code.
And this certainly wasn't the minority attitude. Just look at all of the acronyms used here for the people in charge, like PHB. They're all derogatory.
How dare you say that about me?!?!?!
Easy, tiger! I don't recall saying anything about you in particular at all. I can accept that people with misguided beliefs can be good people who think they are doing the right thing. It's just not their fault that they are wrong, and it's the job of decent Christians like me to show them the error of their ways.
People can't help being wrong. Today's society has lost it's moral compass, and instead preaches moral relativism as if it were true.
That sounds SO weak and whiney it's amazing and EXACTLY the sort of crap that many 'religious' types spout. 'Because you don't conform to what WE think, you're crap'.
I'm sorry if you feel challenged by the truth. Once you accept the light of the Lord into your heart things will become a lot clearer.
*sigh*
The reason concerned Christians attempt to teach others the error of their ways is simple - without accepting Jesus into your life as your saviour you are destined to end up in Hell paying for your sins.
We try because we care.
Only those who do not truly love their fellow men could ignore the misguided beliefs of the athiest and the heathen - compassion forces one to act to save their eternal souls.
See Chairman Mao as an example of the 'elite' 'functioning' outside their training.
I very much doubt that the average geek has anywhere near the necessary force of personality and interpersonal skills required to mobilise a group of people, let alone the amount that Mao did.
And the thing about survival is that it takes a whole load of people functioning together as a team, not people who are more used to doing things there own way and bitching about people who organise things.
Along with team-building exericses, plenty of physical training and real-life combat simulations as well. Not just Quake and pizza I'm afraid.
You may think you're some kind of 1337 killing machine because you can hit a 3D representation of another player over the net whilst maintaining low ping times, but you're not. Sorry.
Despite their love for violent computer games and anime, I vey much doubt that a group full of geeks, no matter what their skills, would be able to compete with some of the violent people that would exist in such a world.
There would be those that would create nothing and instead live by stealing from others, using violence as their weapon. Would your average geek, more interested in building for the future, be able to deal with this sort of person?
I doubt it.
This is just another typical geek response to the end of the world scenario. "But how would be get our computers back" the geek wails, utterly oblivious to the fact that in any kind of realistic scenario that could destroy all of the computing power in the world, people would be more concerned about surviving than being able to play Quake deathmatches.
One question that I've thought about is "If the end of the world was coming, what good would you do?". Some people would be leaders, some would have the skills to grow food or hunt whilst doctors could help the injured.
But geeks? They would be the first ones to perish.
The typical *nix sysadmin or Perl hacker has a very specialised set of skills that only counts within the narrow environment in which they are confortable operating in. Take that environment away, and said hacker is like a fish out of water. And with the vast lack of social skills they possess, they can't even integrate into the hunter-gatherer groups of the post-apocolyptic world.
Computing is not the first priority in this situation, nor is it even in the top ten. Asking this question shows nothing other than how tenuous the grasp of geeks is on reality, and just how little chance of survivial they would have in such a scenario...
One quote from the obituary interested me:
"Another example is Shannon's 1949 paper entitled Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems. This work is now generally credited with transforming cryptography from an art to a science."
By providing a firm mathematical basis Shannon managed to turn cryptography from a messy discipline without any real means of proof into a real science where mathematical methods could be used to ensure the security of cryptographic systems. Today, we wouldn't dream of thinking of cryptography as an art, it is well-established as a branch of applied mathematics.
But despite similar techniques being available for programming, coders still stick to their "tried and tested" methods of programming which owe less to science and more to guesswork. Rather than using formal techniques to ensure that code is 100% correct, they would rather just sit down and knock something out that sort of works. And this has led to the proliferation of buggy and insecure software we see today.
Why is it that programmers feel that they are somehow above the need for these techniques? It seems to me to be pretty arrogant to avoid using tools that would make their code better, almost as if they would rather not have perfect code. They would sneer at a cryptographic system that hadn't been rigourously proven, but be happy with any old hack that another coder knocks out whilst eating cold pizza and drinking Mountain Dew.
Why is there such a reluctance to produce properly proven code, when they demand it for other algorithmic systems?
As much as Microsoft have abused the position they currently occupy in the software market, they do have several points worth considering. Of course, this isn't to say that they shouldn't be broken up, but it's not the black and white issue that it is often presented as in the more Linux friendly media.
Microsoft got to where they are today through two things - a comination of ruthless business tactics and complete incompetance on the part of potential competitors. Without both of these, Microsoft wouldn't have their current near-monopoly and we'd see several competing commercial desktop operating systems being popular.
But would this be a good thing?
For the server market competition is all for the better - servers need to be robust platforms from which to run network services, and the fact that all the important protocols are open means that they can live side by side without problems. We've seen how having Linux and BSD have forced Microsoft to improve their code or be left behind.
But is this true for the desktop? At this end the majority of users aren't technically accomplished and simply want to get things done. If there are half a dozen different types of system, each with their own way of doing things, then people are either going to have to be trained for each one, or lose out on potential employment at offices using an OS they don't know. This all adds to employer's costs, and cuts down on profitability. The effects will be subtle, but in the long-run it'll damage the economy, which has become increasingly reliant on companies utilising technology.
So maybe Microsoft should be split instead into desktop and server divisions. Linux isn't really competing with Microsoft on the desktop anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem. Then Microsoft's server OS can stand or fall on it's own merits, or lack of.
It is the most free licence there is if you mean freedom of code rather than freedom of its users.
Code is an abstraction. How can code be free? Much the same as the phrase "information wants to be free" it's nonsense - what people really mean is that they want information to be free. You can't ascribe motivations and desires to a piece of code, no more than you can do to an instruction manual.
Only when they apply to something which could have been kept a secret had it not been patented.
Name one of those that applies to software.
The RSA encryption algorithm? That was just released into the public domain to the benefit of everyone. Better luck next time eh?
There are plenty of things which could easily be kept secret due to their complexity - encryption algorithms, compression routines, signal processing techniques etc etc. All of these are valid examples of software patents.
And I choose to GPL my code because I want others to have the freedom to improve it (but not the freedom to steal it.) I'm not saying that's better, but it's my choice as the copyright holder. (until copyrights are abolished, but again thats another story).
And as long as you're not claiming that the GPL is about freedom, then fine. It is your choice as the author, nobody is disputing your rights over what you produce.
Which brings me onto copyrights? If you want copyrights abolished, then I assume you're fine with the idea of people being able to do as they please with your code? How is this compatible with your use of the GPL, which forbids this?
And yet I have yet to actually see someone come up with evidence of prior art. There have been some claiming existence of evidence as early as August '97. But that doesn't predate the patent application.
IIRC, once a patent has been granted there is a period of a year in which if the same idea is reimplemented then it is taken as proof that the idea is obvious and the patent is invalid. So these claims, whilst not prior art, do show that the patent isn't nonobvious. See here for more info.
You still haven't shown me how patents increase freedom "be definition" You have simply explained that they are supposed to.
*sigh* They increase it by definition because part of that definition is the fact that they expire.
Yes, various unfair mechanisms like patents for example. (lets leave copyright for another day)
No, more like things like exclusive contracts, which prevent other companies from competing in a level playing field.
I don't know which "they" you're speaking for. I write GPLd software (well, I try anyway) and its not because im forced, its because i want to. How can you say people have no choice about it? There are at least tens of thousands of programmers who write code that's not GPL, including some for linux.
Because the basic libraries for Linux are GPLed, and by using them you are forced to adopt the GPL as your license. Yes, there are non-GPLed pieces of software, but most of them are either very limited or have ended up reimplementing standard functions just to avoid the GPL.
And how do you explain GPL software for windows as well? (yes - its increasing fast)
Easy. Because some people out there are as anti-freedom as RMS (unless it's his kind of freedom of course) and will stick a GPL on their software to be malicious. And the fact that the Windows libraries don't force you into using a specific license, unless those on Linux.
Show me where the definition says it increses freedom.
Because otherwise the knowledge would be locked away as a trade secret and nobody else would be able to benefit from it, even indirectly. And there wouldn't be any clause causing it to expire either. So yes, a patent does increase freedom. That's the whole point of them.
Too much govermnent control and intervention is the whole problem.
I think America shows the limits of laissez-faire capitalism in a global economy. It may be a nice theoretical model to study in economics class, but in the real world corporations tend to dominate markets and impose resitrictions upon others through various mechanisms.
When a corporation gets too big, only the government is powerful enough to level the playing field again. Here, more government control works to increase competition and bolster the free market.
Name a software related patent that does this or could have done this. How exactly would Amazons one click "technique" have remained a secret if they hadn't patented it?
Encryption techniques or compression algorithms could easily be kept secret without patents.
Firstly, the GPL most certainly does not prevent the originator from making a profit.
Okay, technically not, but it makes it as difficult as possible. The only way to make a profit is to wriggle through loopholes in the GPL, and even then it's a struggle.
The incorrect assumption you have made is that people do not do work voluntarily for others unless they can demand payment - after all why should they let others benefit from their superior abilities you might ask?
They can in their spare time, sure. But open source rarely pays the bills, which is why most programmers work in closed source environments where there is enough money to pay their paychecks.
Well, whatever the reasons you might think that, it is wrong. If it were correct, nobody would be releasing GPLd software. Quite clearly, people (including many innovators) are releasing a lot of GPLd software.
Because they have little choice. Thanks to the careful crafting of the GPL, it's next to impossible to write a Linux application that doesn't have to be GPLed.
Sometimes I think that RMS is right and that all forms of patents are worthless, but then I realise that he's actually pretty damn wrong and we don't live in his world of so-called "freedom".
The trouble with patents is not what they're for, it's how they're used. By definition patents increase freedom because they allow others to benefit from research and innovation done by people and companies, which would otherwise be held secret. They "open source" knowledge to the betterment of all. Of course, unlike the GPL they let the originator make a profit, but that's good in a capitalist society.
However when patents are awarded for anything and everything then we end up with problems like this one, where a company gets a patent on something with obvious prior art that is already ubiquitous. It's partly the underfunded USPTO's fault and partly greedy corporate lawyers fault, but the end result is a mess of litigation and demands for licensing fees.
Thankfully, this one is way too obvious to stick.
I think personally that we need more government control over corporate IP, to prevent such abuses from happening. Then when a company starts throwing its weight around because it's got some dumb patent, the government can step in and ensure that it doesn't go any further. It'll save a hell of a lot of time and money for everyone, which will benefit smaller businesses and private citizens the most, and get rid of a major source of income for those fatcat corporate lawyers :)
(Assume for a moment you lived in the UK)
I do now.
If you were caught jerking off to your favourite pics at goatse.cx, you would be prosecuted for *distribution* of obscene material.
LOL, now that would never happen. Pornography is morally wrong in that it degrades women, and ethically wrong in that women are often forced in to it by their boyfriends, and are treated like objects for the lusts of men who cannot find themselves a wife.
But in a "hypothetical" situation like you describe then I would rather have a jury of my technical peers than some monkeys off of the streets of London. After all, the dubious morality of the average "geek" is well known, as is their love of pornography and acceptance of dubious lifestyle choices like homosexuality.
I stand by my original assertion that juries should be representative of society and not selected by education.
And I stand by my assertion you are wrong.
No, people in the jury should be representative of the society in which we live in, so that they make decisions on what is acceptable to them, a section of society, not what is acceptable to one's person's beliefs and opinions due to their education, ie: the judge, or some stuck up bigoted twat who "has been to university".
*sigh* Juries are never going to be representative of society as a whole because a) there aren't enough of them to be a statistically valid sample and b) they're comprised of people too stupid to avoid jury detail. So if anything the average intelligence of a jury is somewhat lower than the mean.
Besides, most people are used to being manipulated by charismatic talkers. After a lifetime of watching such classy television experiances as "When Good Pets Go Bad", "Married With Children" and, God forbid, "Will and Grace" they aren't used to things like rational thinking or logical analysis.
On the other hand, people in more cognitive fields are used to analysing a situation rationally and logically. Just look at the cut and thrust of debate here on /. It's very similar to how a courtroom should be, and by having people in the jury who can cut through bullshit and misdirection we can make sure justice is done correctly.
Not being a teenager I'm not really sure about the answer to this question, but what does the arcade really have to offer any more?
Home console systems now have pretty much all the power we need to run arcade-quality games, and every year sees a huge leap in performace with the release of new systems. The only thing I can see that traditional arcades offer is games with novelty controllers, like those huge ones that have fake motorcycles. And those cost so much that they're hardly economical...
So where does this leave the traditional arcade? It seems to be to be a doomed business...
I've been with companies that have been involved in court before over technical issues, and it's not pretty! Because when it comes to matters of technical intellectual property, most people even in the field would have difficulty deciding which way to go, and that's when they can understand the arguments...
I think what we need is to ensure that for tech cases that the judge is technically qualified, otherwise it all comes down to whichever side can put foward the slickest presentation of why they are "right". That's exactly what happened to one company I worked for, and it caused them to go bankrupt in the end.
But perhaps we need to take it further and ensure that in all cases juries are at least familiar with technical issues. Foresnic evidence and statistical analysis of such is now an important part of many criminal investigations, and there are numerous studies showing how unreliable witeness evidence is. But most people just blindly accept eyewitness accounts, which has led to any number of miscarraiges of justice.
I think we need to ensure that people serving in the jury have a minimum of education to ensure that they can weight the evidence in a rational manner. This would ensure that the facts are the most important part of the case, rather than the words of a fancy lawyer. In the end, this can only led more a more just court system.
This seems to have captured the interest of many in the IT market at the moment, and general opinion is that it will be a good thing for both companies. The two are well-matched and the takeover should give the new company the ability to provide a more complete service to its customers.
I think however that this will be part of a larger trend in the Linux and open source business community. What with the massive over-hyping of the potential market over the last few years we're in a saturation situation in which there are too many companies and not enough clients. So those companies that can't find business will either fail, or be bought out by the more successful companies, as we've seen here.
In fact, the market as a whole is somewhat skewed by the whole "Linux community" concept. We've seen companies give out shares to people for no real reason, and companies seem to have forgotten that they have a bottom line to think about in their rush to acquire assets that don't fit in with their business model. Expect to see companies that want to succeed start paring down the cruft and sticking to their core business.
With that in mind, start wondering who will be willing to take on /. when VA find it necessary to get rid of OSDN. I bet Microsoft would love to have it :)