As in, Freeyellow (subdomain) . com (domain) and switchboard (subdomain) . com (domain). These frickin' crackheads used prior art three+ years before they filed the patent, and referenced it in the patent. Tell me it's April Fools' Day.
If I understand the GPL correctly, you can't distribute binaries of GPL'd code unless you give users of the binaries the right to change the program and also distribute their modifications under the same license. If MS has a patent on the long-filename extensions of FAT, then you can't offer users a right to freely distribute modifications that use that patent--nobody but MS can--and so you can't distribute programs that use those patents.
So it looks like this will cause a change in Linux--when reading FAT drives, it will have to use the "PROGRA~1" filenames instead of the long ones.
By the way, Google has attempted to acheive this concept of human ranking by watching to see how long you stay at a page you clicked on. If they rank a page 1, and you click it, and immediately return to the search page, they penalize that page. So if even Google is trying the same abstract concept, it probably has a future on the web.
If that's true, then the way I do searches is counter-productive. I load the google search page, and then middle-click all the links that look the most promising and read them in tabs. No wonder Google's searches have seemed to get worse and worse for me lately, I'm training it to think my most promising results are no good!
I thought a DOS attack was a single attacker exploiting a vulnerability in code to break a service, while a DDOS was a large set of attackers or zombies overwhelming a single host with normal traffic.
A "boilerplate" suit might be a good idea, as it would be a major financial burden to deal with subpoenas and courts in lots of different districts all over the country, but aren't those things usually done with class-action suits? (obviously IANAL)
I've heard the only people who really win with class action suits are lawyers, but if a lawyer wanted to start one on SCO a lot of/.'ers and kernel devs might join it, and the point wouldn't be so much to "win" a lot of money as to win injunctive relief from SCO's lawsuit-mongering tactics, and the punitive awards could go on to the lawyers, for all I care.
SCO will also be drained of money addressing this lawsuit. In fact, if all the companies that are hurt by SCO's grandstanding barratry did this at once, it would really turn the tap on SCO's money pipe, and the nuisance would be over as soon as it was done. Sort of a DDOS, only with lawyers.
They're called "corporations" and they already have equal (or-better) protection under the law. Unfortunately, they don't seem very interested in ethics.
Hey, this could be good either way it turns out. On one hand, if anybody has the legal/political muscle to reform software patent silliness it's Microsoft.
On the other hand, if InterTrust wins the patent licensing fees will probably make DRM much less of a nuisance, at least for another 14 years. And it will totally kick MS in the balls.
Most giveaways are explicitly required to have rules that allow people to be eligible to win without purchasing a product. If such a rule applies to this contest, they'll have to have a way for people to enter without purchasing Windows, won't they?
Pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars a year selling drugs for diseases. What interest do they have in curing diseases?
A drug that cures a disease has a distinct competitive advantage over a drug that merely treats the symptoms. If there were only one big drug company this might be a problem, but there are competitors and upstarts, even in a high-barrier-to-entry industry like pharmaceuticals.
I guess the current politicians figure their only shot at getting re-elected is to disenfranchise the Napster generation before the kids who grew up filesharing start replacing them with copyright-reform candidates.
Not that it would work -- what jury in the world would convict someone of a felony for sharing and listening to music? How could it not be cruel and unusual punishment to take away someone's voting rights for the copyright equivalent of going ten miles over the speed limit?
I'm not worried about this law passing--it would be political suicide (I hope) to support something so broadly unpopular--but you know how this works. There's one outrageous law that everybody knee-jerks at, and then there's another that's still horrible, but seems reasonable in comparison. That's the one to look out for. (Not that it's not a good time to write your congresscritters now.)
I was thinking the same thing! The only thing I can figure is, maybe it is part of some fancy all-in-one mail gateway and web caching system that gets installed on the server.
Wait a minute, there are 10 coders working on Mozilla and 450 (down 10% from 500) working on Netscape, even though Netscape is practically just a skin and some annoying AOL branding on top of Mozilla??? What's wrong with this picture?
I can run RH 6.2, but I won't get support for it. And in most cases having the source is irrelevant - contrary to popular belief companies don't want the source code, they want the support.
I think you still don't understand one of the big advantages of open source. If you have source, you can get support for it, even if you can't get it from the vendor, and even if ou can't do anything with the source yourself.
The "forced upgrade" doesn't come when you can't get it new, it happens when a bug or security vulnerability is discovered.
If NT4 has a show-stopping bug in it (think Y2K) and MS doesn't support it, you will never, ever get a patch. If RH6.2 has a show-stopping bug and RedHat doesn't support it--well, for one, there are enough legacy RedHat users that the community would probably fix it as fast as you needed it. But even without that, you can hire a consultant or service company or even get a staff programmer to get your show running again. Or, if you determine that upgrading is a better alternative, you can upgrade (only the parts you need) to a new version, or to a similar version from a different vendor. The point is, you have choices, and (partly because vendors know you have choices) they are all more affordable than dealing with a single vendor that gives you a single choice. People like choices, and they just can't get that when you're locked in to a monopoly.
Do we have to pinch pennies for the land mines we drop on Afghan soil?
Minor nitpick: We don't drop landmines in Afghanistan, we clear landmines (at least in our latest action.) You're probably thinking of cluster-bombs, which can land without exploding until later, they're stepped on or picked up by a child. Big difference.
You know, Windows2000 appears to be overrepresented here, considering how much more popular Linux/Apache are compared to Win2k/IIS. There are like twice as many Linux/Apache servers as there are IIS servers, according to this page.
Hmm, no, actually looking at that page I see it doesn't say whether Apache is running on BSD or Linux, so it's more like 12 IIS vs. 38 Apache (assuming that's what the other providers are running.) That would leave Windows somewhat underrepresented, but you gotta admit, that's still not a bad showing.
And whatever the admin of that NT4 box makes, he deserves a raise.
"The Courier mail transfer agent (MTA) is an integrated mail/groupware server based on open commodity protocols such as ESMTP, IMAP, POP3, LDAP, SSL, and HTTP. Courier provides ESMTP, IMAP, POP3, Webmail, calendaring, and mailing list services"
Unfortunately, still in beta, but it's very active. There are a lot of people who want to throw out their Exchange box.
What happens if South Africa falls into disfavour with the mighty America and we cease to be able to get software or support, but all our data is tied into MS proprietary formats.
Just cut out the middle man and get support from India.
I'm not sure what to make of this. I mean, sure, I hate spammers as much as everybody else in the world who isn't getting rich off it, but this smacks of China's crackdown on "terrorists" including not only realy terrorists, but all sorts of people and groups who don't get along with the Chinese government.
Two to one says somewhere on a bookshelf in Redmond lies a business plan to extend their monopoloy into the spamming business after they legally cripple all competition. That's what "establish standards that evolve over time" means to MS--"establish standards that require everyone to give us money." I've never seen them act any differently.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure some university way back used the same naming convention.
Easier than that. The patent was filed in November 1999. In the patent itself it references websites, including:
Webpage: Freeyellow.com, Apr., 1998.*
Webpage: switchboard.com, Jun. 1996.*
As in, Freeyellow (subdomain) . com (domain) and switchboard (subdomain) . com (domain). These frickin' crackheads used prior art three+ years before they filed the patent, and referenced it in the patent. Tell me it's April Fools' Day.
If I understand the GPL correctly, you can't distribute binaries of GPL'd code unless you give users of the binaries the right to change the program and also distribute their modifications under the same license. If MS has a patent on the long-filename extensions of FAT, then you can't offer users a right to freely distribute modifications that use that patent--nobody but MS can--and so you can't distribute programs that use those patents.
So it looks like this will cause a change in Linux--when reading FAT drives, it will have to use the "PROGRA~1" filenames instead of the long ones.
Still no cure for Reovirus
Grandma is protected. Grandma has gone down the stairs.
By the way, Google has attempted to acheive this concept of human ranking by watching to see how long you stay at a page you clicked on. If they rank a page 1, and you click it, and immediately return to the search page, they penalize that page. So if even Google is trying the same abstract concept, it probably has a future on the web.
If that's true, then the way I do searches is counter-productive. I load the google search page, and then middle-click all the links that look the most promising and read them in tabs. No wonder Google's searches have seemed to get worse and worse for me lately, I'm training it to think my most promising results are no good!
I'm just waiting for the "Linus sues SCO" slashdot headline. I'm sure he's thought about it.
I thought a DOS attack was a single attacker exploiting a vulnerability in code to break a service, while a DDOS was a large set of attackers or zombies overwhelming a single host with normal traffic.
/.'ers and kernel devs might join it, and the point wouldn't be so much to "win" a lot of money as to win injunctive relief from SCO's lawsuit-mongering tactics, and the punitive awards could go on to the lawyers, for all I care.
A "boilerplate" suit might be a good idea, as it would be a major financial burden to deal with subpoenas and courts in lots of different districts all over the country, but aren't those things usually done with class-action suits? (obviously IANAL)
I've heard the only people who really win with class action suits are lawyers, but if a lawyer wanted to start one on SCO a lot of
SCO will also be drained of money addressing this lawsuit. In fact, if all the companies that are hurt by SCO's grandstanding barratry did this at once, it would really turn the tap on SCO's money pipe, and the nuisance would be over as soon as it was done. Sort of a DDOS, only with lawyers.
They're called "corporations" and they already have equal (or-better) protection under the law. Unfortunately, they don't seem very interested in ethics.
Since when is the New York Times part of the British press?
That's right! the new robot workforce will open up lots of new jobs in the robot insurance industry.
Hey, this could be good either way it turns out. On one hand, if anybody has the legal/political muscle to reform software patent silliness it's Microsoft.
On the other hand, if InterTrust wins the patent licensing fees will probably make DRM much less of a nuisance, at least for another 14 years. And it will totally kick MS in the balls.
That's not a bug, it's just an Exchange compatibility feature.
Most giveaways are explicitly required to have rules that allow people to be eligible to win without purchasing a product. If such a rule applies to this contest, they'll have to have a way for people to enter without purchasing Windows, won't they?
Pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars a year selling drugs for diseases.
What interest do they have in curing diseases?
A drug that cures a disease has a distinct competitive advantage over a drug that merely treats the symptoms. If there were only one big drug company this might be a problem, but there are competitors and upstarts, even in a high-barrier-to-entry industry like pharmaceuticals.
I guess the current politicians figure their only shot at getting re-elected is to disenfranchise the Napster generation before the kids who grew up filesharing start replacing them with copyright-reform candidates.
Not that it would work -- what jury in the world would convict someone of a felony for sharing and listening to music? How could it not be cruel and unusual punishment to take away someone's voting rights for the copyright equivalent of going ten miles over the speed limit?
I'm not worried about this law passing--it would be political suicide (I hope) to support something so broadly unpopular--but you know how this works. There's one outrageous law that everybody knee-jerks at, and then there's another that's still horrible, but seems reasonable in comparison. That's the one to look out for. (Not that it's not a good time to write your congresscritters now.)
I was thinking the same thing! The only thing I can figure is, maybe it is part of some fancy all-in-one mail gateway and web caching system that gets installed on the server.
Wait a minute, there are 10 coders working on Mozilla and 450 (down 10% from 500) working on Netscape, even though Netscape is practically just a skin and some annoying AOL branding on top of Mozilla??? What's wrong with this picture?
I can run RH 6.2, but I won't get support for it. And in most cases having the source is irrelevant - contrary to popular belief companies don't want the source code, they want the support.
I think you still don't understand one of the big advantages of open source. If you have source, you can get support for it, even if you can't get it from the vendor, and even if ou can't do anything with the source yourself.
The "forced upgrade" doesn't come when you can't get it new, it happens when a bug or security vulnerability is discovered.
If NT4 has a show-stopping bug in it (think Y2K) and MS doesn't support it, you will never, ever get a patch. If RH6.2 has a show-stopping bug and RedHat doesn't support it--well, for one, there are enough legacy RedHat users that the community would probably fix it as fast as you needed it. But even without that, you can hire a consultant or service company or even get a staff programmer to get your show running again. Or, if you determine that upgrading is a better alternative, you can upgrade (only the parts you need) to a new version, or to a similar version from a different vendor. The point is, you have choices, and (partly because vendors know you have choices) they are all more affordable than dealing with a single vendor that gives you a single choice. People like choices, and they just can't get that when you're locked in to a monopoly.
Do we have to pinch pennies for the land mines we drop on Afghan soil?
Minor nitpick: We don't drop landmines in Afghanistan, we clear landmines (at least in our latest action.) You're probably thinking of cluster-bombs, which can land without exploding until later, they're stepped on or picked up by a child. Big difference.
You know, Windows2000 appears to be overrepresented here, considering how much more popular Linux/Apache are compared to Win2k/IIS. There are like twice as many Linux/Apache servers as there are IIS servers, according to this page.
Hmm, no, actually looking at that page I see it doesn't say whether Apache is running on BSD or Linux, so it's more like 12 IIS vs. 38 Apache (assuming that's what the other providers are running.) That would leave Windows somewhat underrepresented, but you gotta admit, that's still not a bad showing.
And whatever the admin of that NT4 box makes, he deserves a raise.
If people are already using Linux on the desktop, they don't need to read a report about Linux on the desktop, do they?
...)
(not to mention that every "desktop" distro in the past two or three years has come with a pdf viewer by default
There's a project for this as well.
"The Courier mail transfer agent (MTA) is an integrated mail/groupware server based on open commodity protocols such as ESMTP, IMAP, POP3, LDAP, SSL, and HTTP. Courier provides ESMTP, IMAP, POP3, Webmail, calendaring, and mailing list services"
Unfortunately, still in beta, but it's very active. There are a lot of people who want to throw out their Exchange box.
What happens if South Africa falls into disfavour with the mighty America and we cease to be able to get software or support, but all our data is tied into MS proprietary formats.
Just cut out the middle man and get support from India.
I'm not sure what to make of this. I mean, sure, I hate spammers as much as everybody else in the world who isn't getting rich off it, but this smacks of China's crackdown on "terrorists" including not only realy terrorists, but all sorts of people and groups who don't get along with the Chinese government.
Two to one says somewhere on a bookshelf in Redmond lies a business plan to extend their monopoloy into the spamming business after they legally cripple all competition. That's what "establish standards that evolve over time" means to MS--"establish standards that require everyone to give us money." I've never seen them act any differently.