You're right, there's no reason that IIS should run as a kernel level device driver, and in fact it doesn't and never has even had the option to run as a kernel level device driver.
Sorry, HTTP.sys in Windows server 2003 is a kernel mode device driver.
if you have never bothered either blocking ports at the firewall, or turning on TCP/IP filtering in window
Granted that worms like Code Red were a problem for enterprise environments
Worms like Code Red are a problem because they propagate on ports that are normally open to provide services. SQL Slammer and MS Blaster got into many corps through users carrying it in on laptops.
The most telling argument that there is a REAL problem and it lies with MS, not the users is that SQL Slammer got into MS's own servers. If MS itself can't keep up with the patching and security requirements necessary to keep out the attacks, how can they expect their users to accept the concept that the problems are the fault of users not being able to keep up with the patches?
you still didn't answer how it's Microsoft's fault that users run foreign attachments. Do you want Bill Gates to go door-to-door?
Being able to run attachements from an external source within a mail client is such an absurdly broken feature that it boggles the mind that you are trying to place the blame for what happens on the user. Even worse is the nightmarish situation that most users are doing it with Administrator level access!!! Bill Gates SHOULD go door to door to personally apologize for shipping a system that behaves in such a manner!
I have three brothers and a father who access the Internet via dial up. Every one of them was hit with the MS Blaster worm. Do you know why they didn't patch their systems? Because there are so many patches and service packs that it takes hours per month to download them all via modem. It is utterly RIDICULOUS to blame users for problems do to lack to patching when in fact the patching process is so time consuming that most users don't have the time to keep up with it.
Generally I think this is a step in the right direction, however I have some comments on the details -
1. Let the customer see the contract before the sale.
I really don't see this as mandatory or practical, especially with machines that come with a lot of bundled software. What is critical is that users get a no-cost chance to return the product if they don't agree to the EULAs.
Another requirement should be that EULAs must be in plain language.
Finally, the EULA must be good for the life of the product. The practice of modifying a EULA for patches is despicable and should flat out be illegal.
2. Disclose known defects.
Actually this is very difficult. MS Windows 95 has 200,000 known bugs. How is anyone going to make sense of this?
3. The product (or information service) must live up to the manufacturer's and seller's claims.
In general I think that this is an area where the current problems are not terribly severe because of existing laws that govern these issues - we have seen things like Apple getting sued because their DVD player software didn't work as advertised.
4. User has right to see and approve all transfers of information from her computer. Before an application transmits any data from the user's computer, the user should have the ability to see what's being sent.
Spyware and malware that steals information from users should be illegal. This in conjunction with EULA changes in updates are my two pet peeves.
5. A software vendor may not block customer from accessing his own data without court approval.
The question is, how does a piece of software know who the data belongs to? Doesn't this force implementation of DRM?
6. A software vendor may not prematurely terminate a license without court approval.
Not sure what is meant by 'premature'. Clearly if the software is pirated or at the end of it's contracted license termination is not an issue. Otherwise the software owner has legal recourse.
7. Mass-market customers may criticize products, publish benchmark study results, and make fair use of a product.
Free speach. I do not think that this should be limited to mass-market products.
8. The user may reverse engineer the software.
Rough one. Contract prohibitions on reverse engineering of technical products have a long legal standing under trade secret law.
9. Mass-market software should be transferrable.
Yes, but provisions requiring notification of license transfer including a service fee are reasonable. Otherwise the software vendor is left in the lurch. Does it make economic sense to support transfers of $29.95 products? I don't think so.
Selling a software package includes support and upgrade rights not inherent in the sale of a book.
In addition, I would think that it would be reasonable to exclude waranty rights in third party sales, much like what occurs with many other products.
10. When software is embedded in a product, the law governing the product should govern the software.
That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Software has a special set of issues not inherent in hardware. I think that there should be special provisions for products with embedded software.
Or are you talking about that e-mail attachment virus, the one for which you apparently expect Bill Gates to show up at people's houses telling them not to run the attachment?
You would think that after 10 years of this crap that Microsoft, with all their money and resources would have figured out how to provide their customers with a mail client or OS that any halfway intelligent 15 year old couldn't bring to it's knees after spending an afternoon on an IRC channel with his buddies.
The only way that I can see a company like MS being able to get away with this b.s. is that they have a monopoly where people have no alternative.
Is it Linus Torvalds' fault when there's a sendmail hole? Is that suddenly a "Linux hole?"
That is ridiculous and you know it. Linux is a stone soup proposition, not a monolithic deal like you get when you buy into Microsoft. With Microsoft you get the line "we will fulfill all your needs, no others need be considered". Well the Microsoft way sounds good to an IT director, until you ask what happens when MS falls down on the job and leaves you nowhere else to go.
I am sure Linus would say "if you don't like sendmail, switch to another MTA, there are many". With Gates all you get as a choice is "we are doing the best we can".
People who don't like sendmail's long history of problems can switch to a different MTA. Many do. Products like QMail and PostFix don't have these sendmail's problems, and I personally would not run sendmail on a bet.
Unfortunately MS has the world by the short hairs when it comes to choice and users who don't like it often have no choice but to eat the crumbs that fall from Microsoft's table.
As a sysadmin that has to support both Linux and MS servers, I personally feel sick to my stomach every time I have to deploy a MS solution because of the problems this brings - high cost, both up front with licensing and license compliance bookeeping, with maintenance, and crummy reliability. It is ridiculous that companies buy into this. The fact is that with the problems that occur with MS's patching mechanisms you will be continually patching and testing the patched systems, AND never knowing if one patch is going to cancel out the effects of a critical fix applied previously (and yes I have been bitten by this).
The fact is that MS ships a broken product. There is no reason that IIS should run as a kernel level device driver making any IIS exploit a system level exploit or that your laptop should arrive with an administrative account with a blank password. Stuff like this shows that MS just does not care about long term issues like security and reliability, just being able to show a few pages per second more in benchmark studies.
Now Microsoft users are in a real bind. They have bought into a closed system that is broken, and there are lots of disaffected teenage males looking to make a splash on the evening news with a virus they've written or modified.
It is not hard to predict that Sobig.F is not the final Sobig, and that Blaster and Slammer are going to be followed by other similar efforts.
MS users had better strap in. It's going to be rough ride.
I'd like to see what you are smoking. It must be really good stuff.
Patents, copyrights and contract law are three separate issues. Just because there is a contract it doesn't mean that copyrights or patents are excluded.
Bash scripts are akin to writing batch files, ugly.
Only a true idiot would proclaim such a patent absurdity. UNIX shell scripts enable a programming paradigm completely absent from the Windows world; chaining small tools through filters and pipes. It's and extremely powerful methodology that Windows admins are missing completely.
Yes, compared to SNMP. I can query/change programs, OS settings, drivers, services, users, etc. using SQL in about 2 lines of code. You?
You are dodging the issue of instrumentation. As for changes UNIX sysadmins have great flexibilty for invoking system changes using RPC over secure connections via ssh using command shells that are two to three orders of magnitude more capable than any such Windows capability.
You can get the standard editions of the IDE, which do SIGNIFICANTLY more than any piece of shit IDE available on Linux , for around $100.
A lot of people prefer Eclipse to the VS IDE because it supports a large number of free plugins that support software engineering features (refactoring, etc) that are missing from VS. In addition, I certainly cannot get the VS IDE for $100 - that is some sort of educational discount working professionals don't have access to. In addition VS.Net Standard is useless to a lot of people because it is feature limited. My company had to buy a subscription for MSDN Universal for me ($2000/yr) to get all the tools needed for the.Net project I am currently working on.
Sounds to me like Schadler is out of touch with the Java app server market. Tomcat is free, and there are decent low cost alternatives like Resin, JRun etc.
- Remote Desktop/Terminal Services (you don't even need a RD client, just a browser, which nearly every modern machine has, unlike ssh
Bzzt. Every modern Linux machine comes with ssh.
- VBScript (horrid, but gets the job done most of the time)
VBScript compared to perl/bash etc.? lol.
- WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation, do damn near anything remotely, but be sure to properly secure your network)
Compared to UNIX instrumentation tools like SNMP? lol x2.
- The MMC tools (ADUC, etc etc), which fully operate remotely, as well.
MMC tools vs. UNIX remote admin ? hahaha
- The.NET development tools, to quickly code up anything you need that can't be covered by the above.
$1000 IDE license for the above vs what you get for free in Linux? You don't have a clue as to what you are talking about. And.Net is hardly quick to learn or code in. It's a bloated OOP framework in the Java tradition. Fine for applications, sux for writing sysadmin tools.
I really love watching Windows admins paging through dialog boxes looking for incorrect settings. It's hilarious.
Try remote admining your Windows box from a PDA on a train on your way to work, fella.
I'm skeptical, and would love to see a benchmark of common graphics operations on gimp/linux vs photoshop/osx and photoshop/windoze.
It doesn't sound far-fetched to me. I have had some dealings with Adobe in the past, and from those experiences I've reached the conclusion that Photoshop filters are extremely carefully written and optimized. It would not suprise me one bit if Adobe's implementations make much better use of processor extensions and represent a lot more care and investment in hand optimized assembly than Gimp does.
the fact that someone maintians a network doesn't give them ownership of it, especially at a university.
If you are maintaining a network, your first responsibility is to keep the network as a whole operating. Anyone bringing malware into that environment is a threat to every other user and the network as a whole.
1.Applicants must show a working example of their patent that implements all the claims contained in the patent. If they dont, they dont get the patent. (this would probobly get rid of some of the shonky patents)
That has already been tried and abandoned as unworkable. There are actually museums full of working models of inventions from the days where this was art of patent law.
2.The patent office should do better searches for prior art and if things are found that should have been found by the applicant, the applicant must pay the patent office money (to discorage the filing of "obvious" patents and so on)
Obviousness has nothing to do with prior art searches. The fact is that it is essentially economically impossible to search prior art with any degree of rigor, so the patent system rightly defers exhaustive searching to the case where an infringement lawsuit is brought.
3.If you dont enforce your patent, you risk loosing it (i.e. it would be similar to what happens with trademarks now). This would actually be good since it would prevent things like what happened in the Unisys LZW case.
The business with sleeper patents has been made a lot harder by the PTO implementing fees to keep patents active. If you don't pay the fee, the patent lapses. IMHO this will eliminate most such cases. But I do agree that there should be a rule that requires companies to start infringement proceeding within a year of the time they discover an infringement.
Once a patent has been submitted, it cant be changed. Also, the patent must be published publicly as soon as it is submitted. (as a Pending Patent or something) Also, the date a patent expires goes from when the patent was submitted not when it was granted. (this would prevent e.g. patents that are submitted then modified then modified again then delayed and so on in an attempt to make the patent last longer)
Most of these are already in place. Patent applications are published (after a delay or 18 months I believe). Patents life is already determined from application date. Changes to a patent application are already limited in a lot of ways - however if you didn't permit changes at all, companies would just abandon a patent and reapply. Changes are actually preferrable to the refiling process because it is faster to process a change than a new application.
5.You cant patent a formula or algortihim (genetic, biological, chemical or mathematical).
That would automatically cripple commercial R&D in the chemical and pharmacuetical industries where most innovative R&D is based on finding new chemical formulas. EXTREMELY bad idea. Patenting algorithms is already banned unless you can show an implementation of the algorithm and patent that.
The issue here is patents are being applied to abstract _ideas_ with no instantiation whatsoever
Nice statement, but without any evidence. The fact is that patent law prohibits this; in fact a patent is expressly designed to protect implementations, not ideas.
The problem with treating software solely under copyright law is that it does not recognize the functional, technological component inherent in software.
Music is not a functional, algorithmic implementation of a transformative process. There is no mapping of a range to a domain inherent in a piece of music.
Patents are awarded for Inventions (also sometimes termed Implementations), and copyrights for Expressions. If someone were to take an existing well known algorithm, say the bubble sort, and code it up in his language of choice, that work is an expression and is protectable by copyright.
If somebody were to examine and existing piece of mathematics and realize for the first time that it has applicability in solving a sorting problem, and then code it up, he would have both an invention (use of the math in the contect of the sorting problem on a computer) and an expression (the computer code). Clearly this qualifies in some protean sense as an invention.
Heck, the author would even be able to take the result as a working model to the patent office - on his laptop computer, satisfying the old 19th century requirement for a working model.
The concept of a working model of a piece of music just does make sense.
Nor does the concept that a piece of software is solely an expression.
Globalization is going to be painful occasionally because of the disparate incomes in various parts of the world. It isn't just IT and manufacturing, it's all jobs - Intel has a marketing division in India, Boeing has a design center in Japan, and so on. If you aren't delivering some value that can't be offshored, you are vulnerable.
In the IT industry that means you need to learn to be close to your customer - so they can't replace you with a coder in China.
What is happening is simple - we used to talk about automation replacing manufacturing workers, and code writers being replaced by RAD tools. Maybe someday. But first we have to elevate the worth of human being worldwide so that their pay makes the cost of this automation economically valuable.
Some people question the wisdom of globalization because of the painful changes it forces in an economy. That is not tenable long-term. The planet is shrinking and if we are going to avoid devastating wars and dislocations we must make the nations of the world so interdependent that there is no potential for gain in anything but full participation on a global society.
Kodak Gold Ultima CD-Rs were made using the same dye that Misui uses for their gold media. When my cache of Kodak media runs out, I'll start buying the Mitsui CDs.
Kodak has published some interesting test results showing that their Gold Ultima CD-Rs have error rates in accelerated lifetime studies that are comparable to pressed CDs when other product is degrading severely.
Whatever happened to UFO theories? Are we SURE that space aliens didn't cause this? Didn't the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still" predict this nearly exactly?
Since when does open source == good and closed source == evil?
Hmmm. To me progress == good and supression of competition and new ideas == evil. In the world of software Microsoft is the supressor and is therefore the evil. The fact that Bill Gates invented the idea of closed source, software licensing and copyrights for microcomputer software may only be a side effect and we may be associating closed source with evil unfairly.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see any difference at all between
fix to Apache bundled with RedHat or fix to IIS bundled with XP,
IIS is not an XP feature.
fix to Mozilla bundled with RedHat or fix to IE bundled with XP,
IE is the only browser bundled with XP. RedHat comes with several choices.
fix to PHP bundled with RedHat or fix to ASP bundled with XP.
ASP is not an XP feature.
It's not their fault users are stupidly running the attachments.
Nice - blame users for poorly designed product. Now THAT's a winning strategy.
You're right, there's no reason that IIS should run as a kernel level device driver, and in fact it doesn't and never has even had the option to run as a kernel level device driver.
Sorry, HTTP.sys in Windows server 2003 is a kernel mode device driver.
A bonehead move if I do say so myself.
if you have never bothered either blocking ports at the firewall, or turning on TCP/IP filtering in window
Granted that worms like Code Red were a problem for enterprise environments
Worms like Code Red are a problem because they propagate on ports that are normally open to provide services. SQL Slammer and MS Blaster got into many corps through users carrying it in on laptops.
The most telling argument that there is a REAL problem and it lies with MS, not the users is that SQL Slammer got into MS's own servers. If MS itself can't keep up with the patching and security requirements necessary to keep out the attacks, how can they expect their users to accept the concept that the problems are the fault of users not being able to keep up with the patches?
you still didn't answer how it's Microsoft's fault that users run foreign attachments. Do you want Bill Gates to go door-to-door?
Being able to run attachements from an external source within a mail client is such an absurdly broken feature that it boggles the mind that you are trying to place the blame for what happens on the user. Even worse is the nightmarish situation that most users are doing it with Administrator level access!!! Bill Gates SHOULD go door to door to personally apologize for shipping a system that behaves in such a manner!
I have three brothers and a father who access the Internet via dial up. Every one of them was hit with the MS Blaster worm. Do you know why they didn't patch their systems? Because there are so many patches and service packs that it takes hours per month to download them all via modem. It is utterly RIDICULOUS to blame users for problems do to lack to patching when in fact the patching process is so time consuming that most users don't have the time to keep up with it.
Generally I think this is a step in the right direction, however I have some comments on the details -
1. Let the customer see the contract before the sale.
I really don't see this as mandatory or practical, especially with machines that come with a lot of bundled software. What is critical is that users get a no-cost chance to return the product if they don't agree to the EULAs.
Another requirement should be that EULAs must be in plain language.
Finally, the EULA must be good for the life of the product. The practice of modifying a EULA for patches is despicable and should flat out be illegal.
2. Disclose known defects.
Actually this is very difficult. MS Windows 95 has 200,000 known bugs. How is anyone going to make sense of this?
3. The product (or information service) must live up to the manufacturer's and seller's claims.
In general I think that this is an area where the current problems are not terribly severe because of existing laws that govern these issues - we have seen things like Apple getting sued because their DVD player software didn't work as advertised.
4. User has right to see and approve all transfers of information from her computer. Before an application transmits any data from the user's computer, the user should have the ability to see what's being sent.
Spyware and malware that steals information from users should be illegal. This in conjunction with EULA changes in updates are my two pet peeves.
5. A software vendor may not block customer from accessing his own data without court approval.
The question is, how does a piece of software know who the data belongs to? Doesn't this force implementation of DRM?
6. A software vendor may not prematurely terminate a license without court approval.
Not sure what is meant by 'premature'. Clearly if the software is pirated or at the end of it's contracted license termination is not an issue. Otherwise the software owner has legal recourse.
7. Mass-market customers may criticize products, publish benchmark study results, and make fair use of a product.
Free speach. I do not think that this should be limited to mass-market products.
8. The user may reverse engineer the software.
Rough one. Contract prohibitions on reverse engineering of technical products have a long legal standing under trade secret law.
9. Mass-market software should be transferrable.
Yes, but provisions requiring notification of license transfer including a service fee are reasonable. Otherwise the software vendor is left in the lurch. Does it make economic sense to support transfers of $29.95 products? I don't think so.
Selling a software package includes support and upgrade rights not inherent in the sale of a book.
In addition, I would think that it would be reasonable to exclude waranty rights in third party sales, much like what occurs with many other products.
10. When software is embedded in a product, the law governing the product should govern the software.
That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Software has a special set of issues not inherent in hardware. I think that there should be special provisions for products with embedded software.
Or are you talking about that e-mail attachment virus, the one for which you apparently expect Bill Gates to show up at people's houses telling them not to run the attachment?
You would think that after 10 years of this crap that Microsoft, with all their money and resources would have figured out how to provide their customers with a mail client or OS that any halfway intelligent 15 year old couldn't bring to it's knees after spending an afternoon on an IRC channel with his buddies.
The only way that I can see a company like MS being able to get away with this b.s. is that they have a monopoly where people have no alternative.
Is it Linus Torvalds' fault when there's a sendmail hole? Is that suddenly a "Linux hole?"
That is ridiculous and you know it. Linux is a stone soup proposition, not a monolithic deal like you get when you buy into Microsoft. With Microsoft you get the line "we will fulfill all your needs, no others need be considered". Well the Microsoft way sounds good to an IT director, until you ask what happens when MS falls down on the job and leaves you nowhere else to go.
I am sure Linus would say "if you don't like sendmail, switch to another MTA, there are many". With Gates all you get as a choice is "we are doing the best we can".
People who don't like sendmail's long history of problems can switch to a different MTA. Many do. Products like QMail and PostFix don't have these sendmail's problems, and I personally would not run sendmail on a bet.
Unfortunately MS has the world by the short hairs when it comes to choice and users who don't like it often have no choice but to eat the crumbs that fall from Microsoft's table.
As a sysadmin that has to support both Linux and MS servers, I personally feel sick to my stomach every time I have to deploy a MS solution because of the problems this brings - high cost, both up front with licensing and license compliance bookeeping, with maintenance, and crummy reliability. It is ridiculous that companies buy into this. The fact is that with the problems that occur with MS's patching mechanisms you will be continually patching and testing the patched systems, AND never knowing if one patch is going to cancel out the effects of a critical fix applied previously (and yes I have been bitten by this).
The fact is that MS ships a broken product. There is no reason that IIS should run as a kernel level device driver making any IIS exploit a system level exploit or that your laptop should arrive with an administrative account with a blank password. Stuff like this shows that MS just does not care about long term issues like security and reliability, just being able to show a few pages per second more in benchmark studies.
Now Microsoft users are in a real bind. They have bought into a closed system that is broken, and there are lots of disaffected teenage males looking to make a splash on the evening news with a virus they've written or modified.
It is not hard to predict that Sobig.F is not the final Sobig, and that Blaster and Slammer are going to be followed by other similar efforts.
MS users had better strap in. It's going to be rough ride.
Can we say "legal contradiction" boys and girls?
I'd like to see what you are smoking. It must be really good stuff.
Patents, copyrights and contract law are three separate issues. Just because there is a contract it doesn't mean that copyrights or patents are excluded.
Bash scripts are akin to writing batch files, ugly.
.Net Standard is useless to a lot of people because it is feature limited. My company had to buy a subscription for MSDN Universal for me ($2000/yr) to get all the tools needed for the .Net project I am currently working on.
Only a true idiot would proclaim such a patent absurdity. UNIX shell scripts enable a programming paradigm completely absent from the Windows world; chaining small tools through filters and pipes. It's and extremely powerful methodology that Windows admins are missing completely.
Yes, compared to SNMP. I can query/change
programs, OS settings, drivers, services, users, etc. using SQL in about 2 lines of code. You?
You are dodging the issue of instrumentation. As for changes UNIX sysadmins have great flexibilty for invoking system changes using RPC over secure connections via ssh using command shells that are two to three orders of magnitude more capable than any such Windows capability.
You can get the standard editions of the IDE, which do SIGNIFICANTLY more than any piece of shit IDE available on Linux , for around $100.
A lot of people prefer Eclipse to the VS IDE because it supports a large number of free plugins that support software engineering features (refactoring, etc) that are missing from VS. In addition, I certainly cannot get the VS IDE for $100 - that is some sort of educational discount working professionals don't have access to. In addition VS
Fucking Slishtard.
M.S.C.P.
(Microsoft Certified Peckerhead)
Sounds to me like Schadler is out of touch with the Java app server market. Tomcat is free, and there are decent low cost alternatives like Resin, JRun etc.
Cancel the above - as others have pointed out this is an obvious troll. Boxed set of Debian 3.1? Very Funny. Also, Epson Stylus Pro 5000 is supported.
- Remote Desktop/Terminal Services (you don't even need a RD client, just a browser, which nearly every modern machine has, unlike ssh
.NET development tools, to quickly code up anything you need that can't be covered by the above.
.Net is hardly quick to learn or code in. It's a bloated OOP framework in the Java tradition. Fine for applications, sux for writing sysadmin tools.
Bzzt. Every modern Linux machine comes with ssh.
- VBScript (horrid, but gets the job done most of the time)
VBScript compared to perl/bash etc.? lol.
- WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation, do damn near anything remotely, but be sure to properly secure your network)
Compared to UNIX instrumentation tools like SNMP? lol x2.
- The MMC tools (ADUC, etc etc), which fully operate remotely, as well.
MMC tools vs. UNIX remote admin ? hahaha
- The
$1000 IDE license for the above vs what you get for free in Linux? You don't have a clue as to what you are talking about. And
I really love watching Windows admins paging through dialog boxes looking for incorrect settings. It's hilarious.
Try remote admining your Windows box from a PDA on a train on your way to work, fella.
I'm skeptical, and would love to see a benchmark of common graphics operations on gimp/linux vs photoshop/osx and photoshop/windoze.
It doesn't sound far-fetched to me. I have had some dealings with Adobe in the past, and from those experiences I've reached the conclusion that Photoshop filters are extremely carefully written and optimized. It would not suprise me one bit if Adobe's implementations make much better use of processor extensions and represent a lot more care and investment in hand optimized assembly than Gimp does.
the fact that someone maintians a network doesn't give them ownership of it, especially at a university.
If you are maintaining a network, your first responsibility is to keep the network as a whole operating. Anyone bringing malware into that environment is a threat to every other user and the network as a whole.
1.Applicants must show a working example of their patent that implements all the claims contained in the patent. If they dont, they dont get the patent. (this would probobly get rid of some of the shonky patents)
That has already been tried and abandoned as unworkable. There are actually museums full of working models of inventions from the days where this was art of patent law.
2.The patent office should do better searches for prior art and if things are found that should have been found by the applicant, the applicant must pay the patent office money (to discorage the filing of "obvious" patents and so on)
Obviousness has nothing to do with prior art searches. The fact is that it is essentially economically impossible to search prior art with any degree of rigor, so the patent system rightly defers exhaustive searching to the case where an infringement lawsuit is brought.
3.If you dont enforce your patent, you risk loosing it (i.e. it would be similar to what happens with trademarks now). This would actually be good since it would prevent things like what happened in the Unisys LZW case.
The business with sleeper patents has been made a lot harder by the PTO implementing fees to keep patents active. If you don't pay the fee, the patent lapses. IMHO this will eliminate most such cases. But I do agree that there should be a rule that requires companies to start infringement proceeding within a year of the time they discover an infringement.
Once a patent has been submitted, it cant be changed. Also, the patent must be published publicly as soon as it is submitted. (as a Pending Patent or something) Also, the date a patent expires goes from when the patent was submitted not when it was granted. (this would prevent e.g. patents that are submitted then modified then modified again then delayed and so on in an attempt to make the patent last longer)
Most of these are already in place. Patent applications are published (after a delay or 18 months I believe). Patents life is already determined from application date. Changes to a patent application are already limited in a lot of ways - however if you didn't permit changes at all, companies would just abandon a patent and reapply. Changes are actually preferrable to the refiling process because it is faster to process a change than a new application.
5.You cant patent a formula or algortihim (genetic, biological, chemical or mathematical).
That would automatically cripple commercial R&D in the chemical and pharmacuetical industries where most innovative R&D is based on finding new chemical formulas. EXTREMELY bad idea. Patenting algorithms is already banned unless you can show an implementation of the algorithm and patent that.
The issue here is patents are being applied to abstract _ideas_ with no instantiation whatsoever
Nice statement, but without any evidence. The fact is that patent law prohibits this; in fact a patent is expressly designed to protect implementations, not ideas.
The problem with treating software solely under copyright law is that it does not recognize the functional, technological component inherent in software.
Music is not a functional, algorithmic implementation of a transformative process. There is no mapping of a range to a domain inherent in a piece of music.
Patents are awarded for Inventions (also sometimes termed Implementations), and copyrights for Expressions. If someone were to take an existing well known algorithm, say the bubble sort, and code it up in his language of choice, that work is an expression and is protectable by copyright.
If somebody were to examine and existing piece of mathematics and realize for the first time that it has applicability in solving a sorting problem, and then code it up, he would have both an invention (use of the math in the contect of the sorting problem on a computer) and an expression (the computer code). Clearly this qualifies in some protean sense as an invention.
Heck, the author would even be able to take the result as a working model to the patent office - on his laptop computer, satisfying the old 19th century requirement for a working model.
The concept of a working model of a piece of music just does make sense.
Nor does the concept that a piece of software is solely an expression.
Globalization is going to be painful occasionally because of the disparate incomes in various parts of the world. It isn't just IT and manufacturing, it's all jobs - Intel has a marketing division in India, Boeing has a design center in Japan, and so on. If you aren't delivering some value that can't be offshored, you are vulnerable.
In the IT industry that means you need to learn to be close to your customer - so they can't replace you with a coder in China.
What is happening is simple - we used to talk about automation replacing manufacturing workers, and code writers being replaced by RAD tools. Maybe someday. But first we have to elevate the worth of human being worldwide so that their pay makes the cost of this automation economically valuable.
Some people question the wisdom of globalization because of the painful changes it forces in an economy. That is not tenable long-term. The planet is shrinking and if we are going to avoid devastating wars and dislocations we must make the nations of the world so interdependent that there is no potential for gain in anything but full participation on a global society.
patents on mechanical devices are valid uses, because you have to have the damn thing in the first place to show the PTO.
The PTO stopped requiring models about 1890.
One benefit of having a variety of viruses in the wild is that they help provide guidance when it comes time to choose an operating system.
but XP home is not designed to be on a network.
Obviously!
Quality is a dying industry.
i a/ Kodak.html
Kodak Gold Ultima CD-Rs were made using the same dye that Misui uses for their gold media. When my cache of Kodak media runs out, I'll start buying the Mitsui CDs.
Kodak has published some interesting test results showing that their Gold Ultima CD-Rs have error rates in accelerated lifetime studies that are comparable to pressed CDs when other product is degrading severely.
http://www.cd-info.com/CDIC/Technology/CD-R/Med
It is unfortunate that cheap crap at low prices usually drives the good stuff out of the market.
Whatever happened to UFO theories? Are we SURE that space aliens didn't cause this? Didn't the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still" predict this nearly exactly?
Since when does open source == good and closed source == evil?
Hmmm. To me progress == good and supression of competition and new ideas == evil. In the world of software Microsoft is the supressor and is therefore the evil. The fact that Bill Gates invented the idea of closed source, software licensing and copyrights for microcomputer software may only be a side effect and we may be associating closed source with evil unfairly.
Nah.
Don't like the Mac mouse? Plug in something else. Mac OS X supports USB mice with up to 100 buttons.