Re:Can we establish a society to honor these peopl
on
Genetic Stone Soup
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· Score: 2
People that give their talents for humanity instead of profit should be honored accordingly. Do the nobel prizes in sciences require this?
Of course not, and in fact it is not clear to me what the IP status of this work would be. While Jim Kent may himself lay no claim to this, it may well turn out that the board of regents at UCSC may have other ideas.
In any case the the truth of the matter is that discoveries rating Nobel recognition are generally fundamental enough to benefit humankind widely and deeply, long after any IP rights to the application have expired.
This year the Nobel in Physics was shared by Jack Kilby, inventor of the IC. While TI no doubt profited handsomely from patent licenses thereone, the impact of his device far transcends this short lived grant.
MOVE 'ZIG'.
Rumors of BSD Death Exaggurated
on
Is BSD Dying?
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· Score: 4
It seems silly to propose the death of BSD as March 24 (the release date of Mac OS X) approaches. With one swell foop the installed base of BSD will grow by millions of machines.
The BSD license will always be attractive to companies who want a free code base unencumbered by a viral license - so as they say, I'm not dead yet.
After living in the snow belt for 20 years, I have reached the conclusion that the main problem with snowplowing is that they destroy mailboxes. Every year I have had to battle to keep a place to accept snail mail open, but to have it destroyed/buried by snow plows. At first I had a standard mailbox. That lasted until middle of December when it was crushed by the plow into a flat piece of sheet metal. Then I got a replacement plastic one. That took a few hits and sprung back, until a serious whack sent it off down the road somewhere not to be found until the thaw.
The next step was to teather the mailbox with a length of rope so I could recover it after being sheared off. This worked until the plow took out the support arm, at which point I gave up for the year.
The following year I had a friend make a contraption that included a pivoting arm on a shear pin. This worked for almost half a year until we got hit with a big one and the snow bank built up to 14 feet high.
Anyway, what I REALLY want to know is if all the fancy gizmos on this thing can detect MAILBOXES!!!
this could be just what the Internet needs to remove the filth and perversion
I totally reject the idea that somebody else should take it upon themselves to decide what is filth and perversion. I am a rational intelligent adult perfectly capable of making my own decisions in such matters.
no one has a legitimate need to view pornography or bomb making schematics or the formulas for illicit drugs
Absolutely and incontrovertably wrong.
There are many people for whom pornography is necessary to achieve normal sexual function. Bomb making schematics are an essential part of police and emergency response training. A degree in chemistry or chemical engineering requires an understanding of exactly the principles that are used to make these bombs in order to avoid their construction accidentally in a manufacturing or laboratory environment. Formulae for illicit (and illegal) drugs are required for physicians and chemists to be able to understand and treat the effects of these substances. In many cases any illicit drug is in fact a legal drug, just taken by someone without a prescription for the drug.
The fact is that there are many people that benefit from the free availability of these materials.
Your posting is one of the most dangerous and ill-advised that I have ever seen on this site. What you are advocating is an almost complete evisceration of both freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and supression of much knowledge that is fundamental to our technology based civilization.
with the kind of engineering brainpower that India has been exporting over the last few years, they'll have no problem developing their own technology fast.
Industrialization depends a lot more on having the right institutions than any other factor. Unfortunately India has a long history of stifling their private sector with a layers of inefficient bureaucracy.
You're confusing a time limit on filing a lawsuit with losing IP rights. They are not the same.
What is an IP right anyway but a right to sue an infringer? If you don't take action against the infringer, you have effectively lost any value of your IP vis-a-vis that infringer.
Once you have one organization that has the right to make a copy free of encumberance you might as well pack it in, for you have no control over how many copies they make. In effect you HAVE lost your copyright.
I have an idea, or a thought about how to do things, but I refuse to tell you or anyone what the thought is because I, and solely I, want to reap the benefits.
I think you are missing the point of IP law. Patents and copyrights give the author the ability to share their ideas in return for legal protection for exclusivity for a limited period of time. A patent is a contract between you and the government where you disclose the idea in return for a right of exclusivity. What you described, keeping an idea secret, was the state of affairs before the idea of patents took hold.
Not enforcing a copyright does not cost you the copyright.
STILL WRONG.
Take a look at THIS link. It clearly states that one of the reasons that Xerox failed in it's suit is that it waited too long to bring charges of copyright infringement and thereby had to rely on weaker arguments.
But what I'm saying is that these industries could be in an even *better* position if they didn't have these restrictions. Why is sharing illegal?
Sharing isn't illegal. It's copying that might be.
The problem that you have to deal with in the absence of IP laws is how are you going to get people to invest money in projects if once they finish anyone can use it freely.
All that fancy lab equipment isn't free, while you are asking that the results be free. How are you going to make that equation work?
Depends. If it's something like the credit card fraud protection, there are all sorts of penalties and nasty consequences if the credit card company tries any games, so you are likely to get reimbursed quickly.
On the other hand, if it's a case of your tires blowing up, then it will be a long fight - but generally the lawyers figure it's worth the mega-fees and will take it on.
Where you lose is the middle ground. If your case is too small to interest a land-shark, er lawyer and big enough to annoy the company, well, you are going to have a tough time.
What would happen if a company said "we have invented the exhaust system, no one can use it", and other companies said similar things about ideas/techniques they had come up with. Could you imagine what cars would be like today?
You are joking, right? Early car manufacturers were keenly aware of patents and used them as a regular part of their business. The Selden patent was THE most famous patent infringement trial.
A major reason the Henry Ford was able to get venture capital was that he had a strong patent portfolio - including a basic patent on the transmission.
Another famous case was the breaking of Otto's patents on the Otto cycle engine based on some prior art. This allowed Damlier to go into business.
Patents had a major affect on the early automotive industry.
Another reason they may have been laughed out of court is that they recieved Apple stock for that little visit at Palo Alto.
No, the reason that it was laughed out of court was US Code 35, PART III, CHAPTER 29, "Remedies". You will find that paragraph 286 clearly states that you have to sue within six (6) years to be able to collect damages.
Patents do not have to be enforced to remain valid
WRONG. If you do not enforce a patent, and allow an industry to build up around it, THEN try to enforce the patent you will get laughed out of court. The perfect example of this are the Xerox GUI patents - in 1989 Xerox brought suit against Apple for infringing them - and got tossed out on their ass because they had waited too long.
What makes you folks think Apple is acting in an unusual fashion? Haven't you folks ever heard of the concept of 'trade dress'???
Go out there and try selling a soft drink in a wasp waisted bottle shpae and see how long you last before Coca-Cola is serving you papers.
Slashdot seems to be the center of the rip-off universe. It seems to be the prevailing opinion that it's just fine to go out and rip off copies of ANYTHING that people have worked hard to create in order to earn a living. You folks really should GROW UP.
Raskin has a clear vision - and the first iteration he tried to realize failed in the marketplace.
Nothing too surprising about that - those with original ideas are seldom the same people that realize the commercial implementation of the idea.
Jef's vision is with us today in several succesful forms, including the Palm Pilot.
The problem with the Xerox Star was that it was hideously expensive - $10,000+ and very poorly marketed.
You are also wrong about the use of text files for system administration. Implemented as XML they are the best method. Using binary files to control critical system operations puts your ass in a crack if something goes wrong when an application screws up the writing of said files.
Oracle on RedHat is VERY version specific. Because of the install process you need to run a specific version of RedHat to get Oracle to install/work properly.
Right now that means RedHat 6.2. Sure, there are patches and other stuff that MICHT get Oracle to work on 7.x, but they are not reliable.
There is a LONG bug report in the Redhat bugzilla site that describes the situation with Oracle and RedHat 7 very well.
It's not RedHat's fault - it's the way Oracle links to glib on install.
Microsoft has been great at offering products fro free to snuff out competitors. No when they face the same problem they are whining about it. Well, SORRY.
Re:strange quote from the linux consultant...
on
Linux Is Going Down
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· Score: 2
This is typical MS straw man market-speak. They are great at pointing out some deficiency in their competition as a negative, regardless of whether or not it applies to their own product as well.
Another reason extreme uncontrolled capatalism is actually very wastefull. Do we really need palm pushers and paid liars? What value are they really adding to society?
Administration and marketting for a pharmaceutical company includes such activities as financial management, manufacturing operations and supplying technical information to the doctors whom you are selling you product to.
Slashdot Mirror
People that give their talents for humanity instead of profit should be honored accordingly. Do the nobel prizes in sciences require this?
Of course not, and in fact it is not clear to me what the IP status of this work would be. While Jim Kent may himself lay no claim to this, it may well turn out that the board of regents at UCSC may have other ideas.
In any case the the truth of the matter is that discoveries rating Nobel recognition are generally fundamental enough to benefit humankind widely and deeply, long after any IP rights to the application have expired.
This year the Nobel in Physics was shared by Jack Kilby, inventor of the IC. While TI no doubt profited handsomely from patent licenses thereone, the impact of his device far transcends this short lived grant.
MOVE 'ZIG'.
It seems silly to propose the death of BSD as March 24 (the release date of Mac OS X) approaches. With one swell foop the installed base of BSD will grow by millions of machines.
The BSD license will always be attractive to companies who want a free code base unencumbered by a viral license - so as they say, I'm not dead yet.
MOVE 'ZIG'.
After living in the snow belt for 20 years, I have reached the conclusion that the main problem with snowplowing is that they destroy mailboxes. Every year I have had to battle to keep a place to accept snail mail open, but to have it destroyed/buried by snow plows. At first I had a standard mailbox. That lasted until middle of December when it was crushed by the plow into a flat piece of sheet metal. Then I got a replacement plastic one. That took a few hits and sprung back, until a serious whack sent it off down the road somewhere not to be found until the thaw.
The next step was to teather the mailbox with a length of rope so I could recover it after being sheared off. This worked until the plow took out the support arm, at which point I gave up for the year.
The following year I had a friend make a contraption that included a pivoting arm on a shear pin. This worked for almost half a year until we got hit with a big one and the snow bank built up to 14 feet high.
Anyway, what I REALLY want to know is if all the fancy gizmos on this thing can detect MAILBOXES!!!
MOVE 'ZIG'.
this could be just what the Internet needs to remove the filth and perversion
I totally reject the idea that somebody else should take it upon themselves to decide what is filth and perversion. I am a rational intelligent adult perfectly capable of making my own decisions in such matters.
no one has a legitimate need to view pornography or bomb making schematics or the formulas for illicit drugs
Absolutely and incontrovertably wrong.
There are many people for whom pornography is necessary to achieve normal sexual function. Bomb making schematics are an essential part of police and emergency response training. A degree in chemistry or chemical engineering requires an understanding of exactly the principles that are used to make these bombs in order to avoid their construction accidentally in a manufacturing or laboratory environment. Formulae for illicit (and illegal) drugs are required for physicians and chemists to be able to understand and treat the effects of these substances. In many cases any illicit drug is in fact a legal drug, just taken by someone without a prescription for the drug.
The fact is that there are many people that benefit from the free availability of these materials.
Your posting is one of the most dangerous and ill-advised that I have ever seen on this site. What you are advocating is an almost complete evisceration of both freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and supression of much knowledge that is fundamental to our technology based civilization.
MOVE 'ZIG'.
with the kind of engineering brainpower that India has been exporting over the last few years, they'll have no problem developing their own technology fast.
Industrialization depends a lot more on having the right institutions than any other factor. Unfortunately India has a long history of stifling their private sector with a layers of inefficient bureaucracy.
You're confusing a time limit on filing a lawsuit with losing IP rights. They are not the same.
What is an IP right anyway but a right to sue an infringer? If you don't take action against the infringer, you have effectively lost any value of your IP vis-a-vis that infringer.
Once you have one organization that has the right to make a copy free of encumberance you might as well pack it in, for you have no control over how many copies they make. In effect you HAVE lost your copyright.
I have an idea, or a thought about how to do things, but I refuse to tell you or anyone what the thought is because I, and solely I, want to reap the benefits.
I think you are missing the point of IP law. Patents and copyrights give the author the ability to share their ideas in return for legal protection for exclusivity for a limited period of time. A patent is a contract between you and the government where you disclose the idea in return for a right of exclusivity. What you described, keeping an idea secret, was the state of affairs before the idea of patents took hold.
Not enforcing a copyright does not cost you the copyright.
STILL WRONG.
Take a look at THIS link. It clearly states that one of the reasons that Xerox failed in it's suit is that it waited too long to bring charges of copyright infringement and thereby had to rely on weaker arguments.
But what I'm saying is that these industries could be in an even *better* position if they didn't have these restrictions. Why is sharing illegal?
Sharing isn't illegal. It's copying that might be.
The problem that you have to deal with in the absence of IP laws is how are you going to get people to invest money in projects if once they finish anyone can use it freely.
All that fancy lab equipment isn't free, while you are asking that the results be free. How are you going to make that equation work?
How can any industry really flourish when you are constantly afraid off stepping on all these land mines.
The early automotive industry seems to have flourished just fine.
The current industry that relies most strongly on patents is pharmacueticals, and they seem to be flourishing too.
Depends. If it's something like the credit card fraud protection, there are all sorts of penalties and nasty consequences if the credit card company tries any games, so you are likely to get reimbursed quickly.
On the other hand, if it's a case of your tires blowing up, then it will be a long fight - but generally the lawyers figure it's worth the mega-fees and will take it on.
Where you lose is the middle ground. If your case is too small to interest a land-shark, er lawyer and big enough to annoy the company, well, you are going to have a tough time.
What would happen if a company said "we have invented the exhaust system, no one can use it", and other companies said similar things about ideas/techniques they had come up with. Could you imagine what cars would be like today?
You are joking, right? Early car manufacturers were keenly aware of patents and used them as a regular part of their business. The Selden patent was THE most famous patent infringement trial.
A major reason the Henry Ford was able to get venture capital was that he had a strong patent portfolio - including a basic patent on the transmission.
Another famous case was the breaking of Otto's patents on the Otto cycle engine based on some prior art. This allowed Damlier to go into business.
Patents had a major affect on the early automotive industry.
Another reason they may have been laughed out of court is that they recieved Apple stock for that little visit at Palo Alto.
No, the reason that it was laughed out of court was US Code 35, PART III, CHAPTER 29, "Remedies". You will find that paragraph 286 clearly states that you have to sue within six (6) years to be able to collect damages.
We don't have any laws concerning "look and feel."
l /d esign.htm
WRONG. Ever hear of a design patent?
Take a look at:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/genera
Perhaps Xerox should've sued Apple for stealing THEIR intellectual property!!!
They did. Xerox's case was thrown out because they waited for 8 years after the intro of the Mac to bring suit.
Patents do not have to be enforced to remain valid
WRONG. If you do not enforce a patent, and allow an industry to build up around it, THEN try to enforce the patent you will get laughed out of court. The perfect example of this are the Xerox GUI patents - in 1989 Xerox brought suit against Apple for infringing them - and got tossed out on their ass because they had waited too long.
Do they actually think their financial security as a corporation is threatened?
In this case the answer is YES. Apple's main distinguishing market advantage is the DESIGN of it's computers - the distinctive cases, the UI, etc.
Mac OS X is based on BSD - a completely free and open OS. If you were to put an Aqua skin on BSD, you are damn close to having a copy of Mac OS X.
Innovate don't legislate
It seems to me that it is crystal clear that Apple is doing the innovating here.
What makes you folks think Apple is acting in an unusual fashion? Haven't you folks ever heard of the concept of 'trade dress'???
Go out there and try selling a soft drink in a wasp waisted bottle shpae and see how long you last before Coca-Cola is serving you papers.
Slashdot seems to be the center of the rip-off universe. It seems to be the prevailing opinion that it's just fine to go out and rip off copies of ANYTHING that people have worked hard to create in order to earn a living. You folks really should GROW UP.
Raskin has a clear vision - and the first iteration he tried to realize failed in the marketplace.
Nothing too surprising about that - those with original ideas are seldom the same people that realize the commercial implementation of the idea.
Jef's vision is with us today in several succesful forms, including the Palm Pilot.
The problem with the Xerox Star was that it was hideously expensive - $10,000+ and very poorly marketed.
You are also wrong about the use of text files for system administration. Implemented as XML they are the best method. Using binary files to control critical system operations puts your ass in a crack if something goes wrong when an application screws up the writing of said files.
experience with RedHat and Oracle ?
Oracle on RedHat is VERY version specific. Because of the install process you need to run a specific version of RedHat to get Oracle to install/work properly.
Right now that means RedHat 6.2. Sure, there are patches and other stuff that MICHT get Oracle to work on 7.x, but they are not reliable.
There is a LONG bug report in the Redhat bugzilla site that describes the situation with Oracle and RedHat 7 very well.
It's not RedHat's fault - it's the way Oracle links to glib on install.
Value to whom?
Microsoft has been great at offering products fro free to snuff out competitors. No when they face the same problem they are whining about it. Well, SORRY.
This is typical MS straw man market-speak. They are great at pointing out some deficiency in their competition as a negative, regardless of whether or not it applies to their own product as well.
Any Fool knows that means the customer is going to get ripped off with unfair prices. And that is exactly what is happening.
Given the fact that the profit margin is no higher than that of a washing machine, how can you say that these are unfair prices?
Another reason extreme uncontrolled capatalism is actually very wastefull. Do we really need palm pushers and paid liars? What value are they really adding to society?
Administration and marketting for a pharmaceutical company includes such activities as financial management, manufacturing operations and supplying technical information to the doctors whom you are selling you product to.
Feel free to eliminate it, and see what you get.