but I don't know how many of them have only a 4x difference
I doubt if there is any country on Earth with a a gap this small. Even Japan, which has a very narrow gap between CEO and mailboy has numbers around 10x.
Personally, I wish the center in the US were further to the left.
My main problem with politics here is not so much the center, but the extremism of some right wingers who have gotten elected into Congress. Particulalry those who propose all sorts of crazy constitutional amendments to push their agendas' i.e. school prayer, ban on flag burning and so on.
Last election I worked for a candidate to get a representative that have voted for SEVEN constitutional amendments in his two year term out of office. This guy was flat out dangerous.
You can live with policies that may be slightly to the right or left of what you think optimum should be.
The wackos who would rewrite the Constitution - these get me out in the street.
As to the geek community being clustered more closely around the center than the rest of the population - I would say it probably is. I don't think the geek community is particularly likely to contain people that are way way WAY off the deep end; the members of the Posse Comitatas, KKK and Brothers of Islam are not likely to be geeks.
Bioremediation has been around as long as there have been septic tanks and cesspools - it is certainly nothing new.
The concept of engineering organisms to do this has been around in the '60s.
The first person to do this using early genetic engineering methods was Dr. Ananda Chakrabarty. He used a method of selection to develop a bacterial culture that feeds on PCB's in the late 1960s.
Dr. Chakrabarty later became famous because he became the first person to patent a genetically engineered life form. The case (Diamond vs. Chakrabarty), ultimately decided by the Supreme Court was fought tooth and nail by the patent office. It is one of the landmark patent cases of the 20th century. US 3,813,316 is the patent number.
Oh? That's codified in written law in the U.S. like in Europe and Australia?
I don't know what it is like in Europe, but in the US the general rule is that if there are no laws against it, it is legal. Now maybe you live in a different sort of society, where everything is ILLEGAL unless governemts pass laws ALLOWING you to do something, but I sure hope not.
The ZDNet article associated with this story has some statements from an Intellectual Property lawyer on this you may find illuminating.
There is also some information about reverse engineering and the law in the US at the link below.
It may actually be impossible to make a law against reverse engineering in the US is because of the statements in the Constitution regarding the patent system - by making reverse engineering illegal you eliminate the incentive to patent. In fact some lawyers believe reverse engineering is a Constitutionally protected freedom because of the discussion of patents in the Constitution.
Great. Then what's the fuss all about?
Anyone can file a lawsuit. Whether or not it goes anywhere is a different issue.
The only thing the movie industry has going for it is the end user license agreement. I really doubt this is going to do them any good.
Lawyers on the other hand, their sole job and existance is to bend those laws or cloud the truth/law to the point that it is in their favor.
People need to realize that THIS IS IN FACT PART OF THE LAW. We have a legal system based trials that occur through an adversarial process. It is the way the legal system is SUPPOSED to work. Both sides take their best shot, and the judge/jury sorts out the result.
if you're in a court, the highest bidder get's to buy the judge.
Now you are just being stupid. There are any number of large, well financed companies that have been sued into bankruptcy by less well financed opponents. Sure, if you have more money you can hire a better lawyer. But the fact is that juries are also biased against large companies.
Look at the crazy case where a little old lady got a million dollars from McDonald's after spilling her coffee and tell me the deep pocket always wins.
Why is it every time something like this is posted on slashdot some ignoramous from Europe starts making chauvanistic comments? Is it something in the water over there?
The fact of the matter is that reverse engineering is legal in the US, too.
There are no absolute rights to freedom of speech or the press.
Slander/libel, unauthorized publication of copyrighted material or stolen trade secrets, advocation of violent overthrow of the government, publication of classified defense documents, shouting FIRE in theater and so on can all be restricted because of their potential damage to society.
What is very rare are 'prior restraints', that is court orders that prohibit publication before the act. Much more common are suits after the publication.
No more so than any other activity. Examples include watching TV while driving,
Another example of something that is illegal.
Some drugs are showing effects on third and fourth generations.
In spite of current prescription laws.
These laws limited the impact of these tragedies.
Thalidomide actually does have valid medical use (leprosy). It like many other things should have a strong warning label.
Alcohol has a strong warning label too. It doesn't stop tragedies from happening.
Thalidomide is still (thankfully) illegal in the US except for clinical trials.
The problem with prosecution for child abuse is that it is an after the fact remedy.
You are still left with a crippled child.
Drug laws can and do PREVENT such cases from occurring.
For every problem due to lack of prescription laws, there is likely a problem of someone who might have avoided serious illness with early treatment had a doctor visit not been required (not everyone can afford a doctor visit, but many antibiotics are quite inexpensive).
Selling antibiotics over the counter is a public health disaster, PERIOD. They are many antibiotics that have dangerous side effects, including birth defects. Wide unregulated availability in third world countries has been PROVEN to lead to the genesis of antibiotic resistant diseases. While we have a problem with such diseases in the US, the fact is that these are predominately imported from outside the US.
Many drugs require sophisticated laboratory testing to determine the correct dose, and to insure the drug is working as intended without side effects. Many diseases, especially chronic diseaases require such testing to detect before they become problems. There is no way these can be self-dosed.
The fact that some patients cannot afford a doctor's visit is a public health problem due to the crappy medical insurance system we have in the US. This leads to a lot of bad results, including high infant mortality rates that cannot be solved by merely removing prescription restrictions.
Universal access to a health professional is the correct solution that will have a large number of public health benefits. Removal of prescription controls would be a disaster, period.
The issue here is weather or not I have the right to buy and use a drug that has all ready passed those studies without a doctor's permission
The short answer is NO, because your taking any old drug can in fact affect others in a lot of different ways.
When the FDA says something ok to market, it means that in some clinical trial it looks like the benefits of the drug outweigh the risks. NOT that it is 'safe'. There is no such thing as a 'safe' drug.
Right now there is a lot of concern because death rates from prescription drugs are rising rapidly - a lot of new powerful drugs are coming on the market. While these are a great boon, their power also increases the risks.
Your wise or unwise use of drugs affects no only yourself, but can effect your decendents because of genetic effects when misused. Some drugs are showing effects on third and fourth generations.
Even simple drugs like alcohol have bad effects on the fetus. Some drugs are such potent teratogens that just traces of the drug in the male sperm are suspected of being able to cause severe birth defects.
Not only that, but who decides what drugs your children get? We already have too many tragic cases of kids harmed by simple overdoses of liquid Tylenol. I shudder to think what would happen when parents have the ability to buy stronger drugs freely and give them to their children.
In addition, things like overuse of antibiotics lead to spread of resistant bacteria. Many countries outside the US have VERY severe problems with this becasue they do not regulate the sale of antibiotics.
IN ADDITION, a lot of people resent the FDA controlling drugs at all. They take off to Mexico or wherever to take whatever some quack can talk them into. The same libertarian philosophy that rejects the concept of prescriptions also rejects the idea that ANY drugs, be it marijuana, heroin, LSD or thalidomide should be controlled.
I couldn't give a shit if you, as a mature adult go to hell in a handbasket. But you are NOT operating in a vacuum when it comes to drugs.
I do NOT want to be saddled with the taxes to support a brain damaged kid with flippers where his arms should have been, or having to worry about my kid getting a antibiotic resistant form of TB just because you felt you had an overriding right to take any drug you wanted.
Removing prescription controls would unleash a night of horrors on our society. To suggest such is the height of irresponsibility.
If you walk into the lobby of the FDA there is a large portrait of the comissioner who refused to approve thalidomide for sale in the US despite it being approved in Canada and Europe.
If you want to see what a bad prescription can do, read "Slaughter of The Innocent" by H. Ruesch.
Pharmacies are basically glorified pill counters these days.
So you are a great expert on the effectiveness of the databases that pharmacies use to catch drug interactions, eh?
still need to be made in a manner that they are safe to consume...if not then they are selling dangerous product
There is no such thing as a safe drug. You might feel you have a right to dose yourself, but I think society should protect your children at least. And that includes preventing you from dosing yourself with teratogens.
Even worse is that the overuse of some drugs, i.e. antibiotics is a national health issue. For simple public health reasons these have to be controlled.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how they plan to verify a patient's prescription. Do you have to mail them a copy of the paper-prescription?
Many of us are already on medical insurance plans that handle the bulk of our prescriptions by mail. I can't see why this would be any different than doing it via the internet, except you won't have to deal with a stupid voice menu system.
Mail the prescription in, and the supplier sets up a code number for that prescription. Need a refill? Enter the code and an ID number.
Whenever my doctor wants me on something right away, he gives me a couple of weeks worth of samples ot tide me over until I get the prescription going.
In short, I think this is a good idea, but as is the case with all good ideas, it need a good implementation plan for it to be universally accepted.
I used to work or a company named Solutia. Sounds like a disease to me. Used to call up in the morning, and say I have a bad case of solutia, so I won't be coming in today...
IANAL, But I would think that this plea must fail because of the shear fact that granting an injunction would do nothing to stop the distribution of decss.
How are they going to prevent somebody in Afganistan from setting up a cron job that posts the source to rec.movies every Friday?
When this many worms are out of the can, you really are out of luck. There isn't a can big enough to put them all back.
This brings whack-a-mole to a new level. You have one bat, and there are 100 million holes.
This stuff was never publicly released, correct? So why don't we patent it?
Because you are NOT the inventor, that's why. Duh.
You can try claiming that you were the inventor, but if you are caught you could be proven guilty of patent fraud.
People considering posting this code on their web site may want to examine this. It includes the interesting news that by disseminating this bit of code you may have been violating a federal law that carries a maximum 10 year prison sentence and $500,000 fine.
From my understanding, your point is totally correct. The purpose of a trade secret is to provide a legal means of prosecuting whens somebody "spills the beans" and discloses stuff they've seen, such as what Xerox should have done with Steve Jobs at the PARC with their GUI interfaces.
Snort. How do you keep a GUI/Windows a trade secret when you are selling computers with these features to every Tom, Dick and Harry? Hell, Dick Engelbart gave a demo in 1969 of a computer with a mouse and windowing user interface BEFORE the founding of Xerox PARC.
Really man, four sites. Is that all you could come up with. A couple no name sites. No mp3.com or Yahoo, or Netcraft.com for that matter..
Really. All I needed was one to prove my point. The man said NO high volume Linux web sites. Do you think I am going to sit here and do a flippin' web survey and list all of them? I have at least part of a life. As far as being no name, I think you look pretty foolish claiming Netcraft is a bigger name than any of the ones I listed.
Novell, NT, SCO and many other Operating systems can as well.
So what? I never said they couldn't.
just look at the Caldera vs MS suit...
Yeah, just look at it. The judge recently threw out all of Microsoft's efforts to prevent a trial. Last I heard the jury convenes in early February.
This is the US of A. It dosnt matter who is right-It matters who has the most $$$.
A very cynical view not born out by fact. Examples:
STAC vs. Microsoft - Microsoft loses. Apple Records vs. Apple Computer - Apple Computer Loses. Dow Corning vs. various private parties. Dow Corning now bankrupt. Phillip-Morris vs. various private parties - Phillip Morris loses. Johns-Manville vs. various private parties - Johns Manville bankrupt. McDonald's vs. old lady who spills coffee - McDonalds loses. Exxon Corp (Oil Spill) vs. various parties - Exxon loses. Hooker Chem vs. Love Canal residents - Hooker Chem no longer exists. GAF vs. Woburn MA residents. - GAF loses. man who invents intermittant wipers vs. Ford. Ford loses.
A number of these cases are quite questionable as to whether the large company did anything really wrong.
While money allows you to buy a lot of nice fancy lawyers, jurys have a heavy bias against large corporations. If you go into a lawsuit against somebody like the Free Software Foundation you are in trouble right from the beginning.
In a default-setup Windows computer with Outlook Express and Microsoft Word, the user is warned, not once, but twice that the file they are opening could be dangerous.
This is very dependent on version and patch level. There are cases where this is not true.
Check out netcraft and any HIGH volume site. None of them run Linux.
There are many large, high volume sites that run Linux. Google, for example is a 2000 CPU based Linux site. Other examples include eToys, dejanews and RealNetworks.
The idea that Linux cannot support a large website is misinformation, easily disproven by the facts of what is happening on the net today.
Linux demands the user community to disclose modifications. That won't last. It can't.
Have you no clue as to the provisions of the GPL? The day RedHat tries to hide moddifications is the day the Free Software Foundation sues them.
This is in fact one of the STRENGTHS of Linux vs. BSD - the BSD license makes it easy for companies to take modifications private, while the GPL makes it impossible.
I'd much rather have a company rely on obscurity to protect their inventions, and allow me to code anything I think of, safe from patents that I didn't know existed.
The problem with this is that a lot of scientific research has commercial applications. Suppose you are AT&T and are sitting on the invention of the transistor and laser. Would you publish your results in the scientific literature knowing that you would lose billions in potential license fees? Or would you keep these breakthroughs secret for as long as possible, resulting in the postponing the information revolution?
The patent system was developed in the late 17th century in England, and was almost immediately followed by the industrial revolution in England. While it is tough to prove cause and effect, there is a powerful correlative fact here.
The patent system was developed as a result of corporations and trade guilds keeping technologies secret to protect their technologies. If you look at the histories of the time, the lengths that were taken are astounding and definitely harmful to both commerce and the progress of technology. The developers of the patent system believed that free exchange of ideas in the form of publication of the technology is well worth the price of a temporary monopoly.
These days there are entire industries that might not exist if not for patent protection. Who is going to invest a billion dollars in development of a small molecule drug that can be easily reverse engineered without the availability of patent protection?
Slashdot Mirror
but I don't know how many of them have only a 4x difference
I doubt if there is any country on Earth with a a gap this small. Even Japan, which has a very narrow gap between CEO and mailboy has numbers around 10x.
Personally, I wish the center in the US were further to the left.
My main problem with politics here is not so much the center, but the extremism of some right wingers who have gotten elected into Congress. Particulalry those who propose all sorts of crazy constitutional amendments to push their agendas' i.e. school prayer, ban on flag burning and so on.
Last election I worked for a candidate to get a representative that have voted for SEVEN constitutional amendments in his two year term out of office. This guy was flat out dangerous.
You can live with policies that may be slightly to the right or left of what you think optimum should be.
The wackos who would rewrite the Constitution - these get me out in the street.
As to the geek community being clustered more closely around the center than the rest of the population - I would say it probably is. I don't think the geek community is particularly likely to contain people that are way way WAY off the deep end; the members of the Posse Comitatas, KKK and Brothers of Islam are not likely to be geeks.
Bioremediation has been around as long as there have been septic tanks and cesspools - it is certainly nothing new.
The concept of engineering organisms to do this has been around in the '60s.
The first person to do this using early genetic engineering methods was Dr. Ananda Chakrabarty. He used a method of selection to develop a bacterial culture that feeds on PCB's in the late 1960s.
Dr. Chakrabarty later became famous because he became the first person to patent a genetically engineered life form. The case (Diamond vs. Chakrabarty), ultimately decided by the Supreme Court was fought tooth and nail by the patent office. It is one of the landmark patent cases of the 20th century. US 3,813,316 is the patent number.
Oh? That's codified in written law in the U.S. like in Europe and Australia?
e s/copy_article2.htm
I don't know what it is like in Europe, but in the US the general rule is that if there are no laws against it, it is legal. Now maybe you live in a different sort of society, where everything is ILLEGAL unless governemts pass laws ALLOWING you to do something, but I sure hope not.
The ZDNet article associated with this story has some statements from an Intellectual Property lawyer on this you may find illuminating.
There is also some information about reverse engineering and the law in the US at the link below.
http://www.carolinapatents.com/copyright_articl
It may actually be impossible to make a law against reverse engineering in the US is because of the statements in the Constitution regarding the patent system - by making reverse engineering illegal you eliminate the incentive to patent. In fact some lawyers believe reverse engineering is a Constitutionally protected freedom because of the discussion of patents in the Constitution.
Great. Then what's the fuss all about?
Anyone can file a lawsuit. Whether or not it goes anywhere is a different issue.
The only thing the movie industry has going for it is the end user license agreement. I really doubt this is going to do them any good.
Lawyers on the other hand, their sole job and existance is to bend those laws or cloud the truth/law to the point that it is in their favor.
People need to realize that THIS IS IN FACT PART OF THE LAW. We have a legal system based trials that occur through an adversarial process. It is the way the legal system is SUPPOSED to work. Both sides take their best shot, and the judge/jury sorts out the result.
if you're in a court, the highest bidder get's to buy the judge.
Now you are just being stupid. There are any number of large, well financed companies that have been sued into bankruptcy by less well financed opponents. Sure, if you have more money you can hire a better lawyer. But the fact is that juries are also biased against large companies.
Look at the crazy case where a little old lady got a million dollars from McDonald's after spilling her coffee and tell me the deep pocket always wins.
What really pisses me off is that all of the articles linked to say it's about piracy.
WRITE TO THE AUTHOR OF THE ARTICLE. Eventually they may get the message.
Why is it every time something like this is posted on slashdot some ignoramous from Europe starts making chauvanistic comments? Is it something in the water over there?
The fact of the matter is that reverse engineering is legal in the US, too.
There are no absolute rights to freedom of speech or the press.
Slander/libel, unauthorized publication of copyrighted material or stolen trade secrets, advocation of violent overthrow of the government, publication of classified defense documents, shouting FIRE in theater and so on can all be restricted because of their potential damage to society.
What is very rare are 'prior restraints', that is court orders that prohibit publication before the act. Much more common are suits after the publication.
No more so than any other activity. Examples include watching TV while driving,
Another example of something that is illegal.
Some drugs are showing effects on third and fourth generations.
In spite of current prescription laws.
These laws limited the impact of these tragedies.
Thalidomide actually does have valid medical use (leprosy). It like many other things should have a strong warning label.
Alcohol has a strong warning label too. It doesn't stop tragedies from happening.
Thalidomide is still (thankfully) illegal in the US except for clinical trials.
The problem with prosecution for child abuse is that it is an after the fact remedy.
You are still left with a crippled child.
Drug laws can and do PREVENT such cases from occurring.
For every problem due to lack of prescription laws, there is likely a problem of someone who might have avoided serious illness with early treatment had a doctor visit not been required (not everyone can afford a doctor visit, but many antibiotics are quite inexpensive).
Selling antibiotics over the counter is a public health disaster, PERIOD. They are many antibiotics that have dangerous side effects, including birth defects. Wide unregulated availability in third world countries has been PROVEN to lead to the genesis of antibiotic resistant diseases. While we have a problem with such diseases in the US, the fact is that these are predominately imported from outside the US.
Many drugs require sophisticated laboratory testing to determine the correct dose, and to insure the drug is working as intended without
side effects. Many diseases, especially chronic diseaases require such testing to detect before they become problems. There is no way these can be self-dosed.
The fact that some patients cannot afford a doctor's visit is a public health problem due to the crappy medical insurance system we have in the US. This leads to a lot of bad results, including high infant mortality rates that cannot be solved by merely removing prescription restrictions.
Universal access to a health professional is the correct solution that will have a large number of public health benefits. Removal of prescription controls would be a disaster, period.
The issue here is weather or not I have the right to buy and use a drug that has all ready passed those studies without a doctor's permission
The short answer is NO, because your taking any old drug can in fact affect others in a lot of different ways.
When the FDA says something ok to market, it means that in some clinical trial it looks like the benefits of the drug outweigh the risks. NOT that it is 'safe'. There is no such thing as a 'safe' drug.
Right now there is a lot of concern because death rates from prescription drugs are rising rapidly - a lot of new powerful drugs are coming on the market. While these are a great boon, their power also increases the risks.
Your wise or unwise use of drugs affects no only yourself, but can effect your decendents because of genetic effects when misused. Some drugs are showing effects on third and fourth generations.
Even simple drugs like alcohol have bad effects on the fetus. Some drugs are such potent teratogens that just traces of the drug in the male sperm are suspected of being able to cause severe birth defects.
Not only that, but who decides what drugs your children get? We already have too many tragic cases of kids harmed by simple overdoses of liquid Tylenol. I shudder to think what would happen when parents have the ability to buy stronger drugs freely and give them to their children.
In addition, things like overuse of antibiotics lead to spread of resistant bacteria. Many countries outside the US have VERY severe problems with this becasue they do not regulate the sale of antibiotics.
IN ADDITION, a lot of people resent the FDA controlling drugs at all. They take off to Mexico or wherever to take whatever some quack can talk them into. The same libertarian philosophy that rejects the concept of prescriptions also rejects the idea that ANY drugs, be it marijuana, heroin, LSD or thalidomide should be controlled.
I couldn't give a shit if you, as a mature adult go to hell in a handbasket. But you are NOT operating in a vacuum when it comes to drugs.
I do NOT want to be saddled with the taxes to support a brain damaged kid with flippers where his arms should have been, or having to worry about my kid getting a antibiotic resistant form of TB just because you felt you had an overriding right to take any drug you wanted.
Removing prescription controls would unleash a night of horrors on our society. To suggest such is the height of irresponsibility.
how does regulation prevent bad prescriptions?
If you walk into the lobby of the FDA there is a large portrait of the comissioner who refused to approve thalidomide for sale in the US despite it being approved in Canada and Europe.
If you want to see what a bad prescription can do, read "Slaughter of The Innocent" by H. Ruesch.
Pharmacies are basically glorified pill counters these days.
So you are a great expert on the effectiveness of the databases that pharmacies use to catch drug interactions, eh?
still need to be made in a manner that they are safe to consume...if not then they are selling dangerous product
There is no such thing as a safe drug. You might feel you have a right to dose yourself, but I think society should protect your children at least. And that includes preventing you from dosing yourself with teratogens.
Even worse is that the overuse of some drugs, i.e. antibiotics is a national health issue. For simple public health reasons these have to be controlled.
The Federal Government is the largest it's been ever.
l
I wish I knew where people got this stuff. It's completely wrong.
The total Federal workforce has shrunk by about a million employees since 1993. It's the state and local governments that are growing.
http://www.ncpa.org/~ncpa/pd/state/slmar98b.htm
And the reason your taxes are highest now is because of the growth in state and local taxes, not federal taxes.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how they plan to verify a patient's prescription. Do you have to mail them a copy of the paper-prescription?
Many of us are already on medical insurance plans that handle the bulk of our prescriptions by mail. I can't see why this would be any different than doing it via the internet, except you won't have to deal with a stupid voice menu system.
Mail the prescription in, and the supplier sets up a code number for that prescription. Need a refill? Enter the code and an ID number.
Whenever my doctor wants me on something right away, he gives me a couple of weeks worth of samples ot tide me over until I get the prescription going.
In short, I think this is a good idea, but as is the case with all good ideas, it need a good implementation plan for it to be universally accepted.
This mechanism already exists.
Intel today is the king of the chip world. Why?
Because when IBM was looking for a CPU for their PC, Motorola couldn't guarantee they could make enough 68K's.
It's too bad, because the 8086 set PC software back 5 years.
Itanium... sounds like an element.
It's made from pure unobtanium.
I used to work or a company named Solutia. Sounds like a disease to me. Used to call up in the morning, and say I have a bad case of solutia, so I won't be coming in today...
Good thing my boss had a sense of humor.
IANAL, But I would think that this plea must fail because of the shear fact that granting an injunction would do nothing to stop the distribution of decss.
How are they going to prevent somebody in Afganistan from setting up a cron job that posts the source to rec.movies every Friday?
When this many worms are out of the can, you really are out of luck. There isn't a can big enough to put them all back.
This brings whack-a-mole to a new level. You have one bat, and there are 100 million holes.
why would the studio care more
The studios have their panties in a bunch because there is no loss of fidelity when making a digital copy.
This refers to THEFT of trade secrets. It doesn't apply to secrets that are "being
readily ascertainable through proper means by the public."
IANAL, but the use of crypto might rule out the "readily ascertainable" part.
Folks who got the letter might want to take a look at this. It isn't pretty.
This stuff was never publicly released, correct? So why don't we patent it?
Because you are NOT the inventor, that's why. Duh.
You can try claiming that you were the inventor, but if you are caught you could be proven guilty of patent fraud.
People considering posting this code on their web site may want to examine this. It includes the interesting news that by disseminating this bit of code you may have been violating a federal law that carries a maximum 10 year prison sentence and $500,000 fine.
From my understanding, your point is totally correct. The purpose of a trade secret is to provide a legal means of prosecuting whens somebody "spills the beans" and discloses stuff they've seen, such as what Xerox should have done with Steve Jobs at the PARC with their GUI interfaces.
Snort. How do you keep a GUI/Windows a trade secret when you are selling computers with these features to every Tom, Dick and Harry? Hell, Dick Engelbart gave a demo in 1969 of a computer with a mouse and windowing user interface BEFORE the founding of Xerox PARC.
Really man, four sites. Is that all you could come up with. A couple no name sites. No mp3.com or Yahoo, or Netcraft.com for that matter..
Really. All I needed was one to prove my point. The man said NO high volume Linux web sites. Do you think I am going to sit here and do a flippin' web survey and list all of them? I have at least part of a life. As far as being no name, I think you look pretty foolish claiming Netcraft is a bigger name than any of the ones I listed.
Novell, NT, SCO and many other Operating systems can as well.
So what? I never said they couldn't.
just look at the Caldera vs MS suit...
Yeah, just look at it. The judge recently threw out all of Microsoft's efforts to prevent a trial. Last I heard the jury convenes in early February.
This is the US of A. It dosnt matter who is right-It matters who has the most $$$.
A very cynical view not born out by fact. Examples:
STAC vs. Microsoft - Microsoft loses.
Apple Records vs. Apple Computer - Apple Computer Loses.
Dow Corning vs. various private parties. Dow Corning now bankrupt.
Phillip-Morris vs. various private parties - Phillip Morris loses.
Johns-Manville vs. various private parties - Johns Manville bankrupt.
McDonald's vs. old lady who spills coffee - McDonalds loses.
Exxon Corp (Oil Spill) vs. various parties - Exxon loses.
Hooker Chem vs. Love Canal residents - Hooker Chem no longer exists.
GAF vs. Woburn MA residents. - GAF loses.
man who invents intermittant wipers vs. Ford. Ford loses.
A number of these cases are quite questionable as to whether the large company did anything really wrong.
While money allows you to buy a lot of nice fancy lawyers, jurys have a heavy bias against large corporations. If you go into a lawsuit against somebody like the Free Software Foundation you are in trouble right from the beginning.
In a default-setup Windows computer with Outlook Express and Microsoft Word, the user is warned, not once, but twice that the file they are opening could be dangerous.
This is very dependent on version and patch level. There are cases where this is not true.
Check out netcraft and any HIGH volume site. None of them run Linux.
There are many large, high volume sites that run Linux. Google, for example is a 2000 CPU based Linux site. Other examples include eToys, dejanews and RealNetworks.
The idea that Linux cannot support a large website is misinformation, easily disproven by the facts of what is happening on the net today.
Linux demands the user community to disclose modifications. That won't last. It can't.
Have you no clue as to the provisions of the GPL? The day RedHat tries to hide moddifications is the day the Free Software Foundation sues them.
This is in fact one of the STRENGTHS of Linux vs. BSD - the BSD license makes it easy for companies to take modifications private, while the GPL makes it impossible.
I'd much rather have a company rely on obscurity to protect their inventions, and allow me to code anything I think of, safe from patents that I didn't know existed.
The problem with this is that a lot of scientific research has commercial applications. Suppose you are AT&T and are sitting on the invention of the transistor and laser. Would you publish your results in the scientific literature knowing that you would lose billions in potential license fees? Or would you keep these breakthroughs secret for as long as possible, resulting in the postponing the information revolution?
The patent system was developed in the late 17th century in England, and was almost immediately followed by the industrial revolution in England. While it is tough to prove cause and effect, there is a powerful correlative fact here.
The patent system was developed as a result of corporations and trade guilds keeping technologies secret to protect their technologies. If you look at the histories of the time, the lengths that were taken are astounding and definitely harmful to both commerce and the progress of technology. The developers of the patent system believed that free exchange of ideas in the form of publication of the technology is well worth the price of a temporary monopoly.
These days there are entire industries that might not exist if not for patent protection. Who is going to invest a billion dollars in development of a small molecule drug that can be easily reverse engineered without the availability of patent protection?