No, this is not 'nonsense' and we must not think of it that way. It is propaganda of the most blatant sort. Having produced several 'studies' that try to make corporate officers and staff fear Open Source, they have now moved on to inoculating ordinary IT workers against the idea. Have most 'rank & file' IT workers thought much about Open Source even if they have heard of it? Probably not as they are too busy trying to keep up with their workload. But they might well read some of the website and magazines that this article will be featured on.
This is advertising a point of view, just like commerical or political ads. And it will work if it is not countered, just as it has worked for countless candidates and businesses already. It doesn't matter if the reasoning is flawed any more than it matters for other forms of advertising. It's not aimed at people who are calmly analyzing what they read. It's aimed at harried IT workers who are skimming the IT journal of their choice for any 'trends' they need to be aware of to keep up with their job. They'll swallow it whole just like most people swallow political 'soundbite' ads whole. People tend to believe what they hear repeated over and over. Dismissing it as 'nonsense' is as stupid and dangerous as Dukakis dismissing the Willie Horton smear campaign as nonsense.
How much 'public relations' work do Open Source businesses do? Maybe it's about time for the FSF and other bodies to actually purchase advertising and increase their other explicit efforts to promote understanding of the Open Source movement. If they let Microsoft sponsored propaganda defined them, they are headed for the same sort of high-minded defeat that Dukakis suffered.
This is standard corporate double-talk. Compare to Bill Gates responding to the anti-trust verdict that went against him. It's always someone else being uncooperative, unhelpful, inflexible. It's never the corporation's fault. They've got spin control down to a science in both government and corporate PR departments.
I can only hope that this move in California will raise questions about Diebold machines in some other states like Ohio. I don't want to have to use them.
While it is true that the actual word 'privacy' is not used in the Constitution you will find something interesting if you look that word up in any common dictionary...
--- privacy n.
1. a. The quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others. b. The state of being free from unsanctioned intrusion: a person's right to privacy.
2. The state of being concealed; secrecy. --- (From the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition)
Gosh, that 2nd part of the first definition sure reminds me of the wording of the 4th Amendment... How much would you like to bet that this definition of privacy can be found in dictionaries going right back to the time when the Constitution was written?
Unfortunately, it is true that this was meant to apply to the government. The powers that corporations would accrue were not envisioned at that time. The 'corporation' did not even exist at that time. But here we are today with this expectation of the right to control our own lives and property, based on our history of expecting the government to respect our rights, and yet we see the 'corporation' (many corporations as a class, not just this one spyware company) trying to take away that control and use us and our property for its own ends. Since the Founders had the good sense to include the amendment process for unforseen developments, maybe we should use it? Some sort of amendment along the lines of the European Union's privacy rights would seem to be a good idea.
Many crops are being engineered to produce pharmaceuticals now. Yes, chemicals with active functions in the human body. Slashdot had coverage of this in a recent story:
You can install Real Alternative with RealPlayer 8 installed and it can find the new codecs. At least it did with version 1.20 when I first tried it. So yes, you can have the latest formats with the relatively non-spammy older player. Realizing I didn't have to put up with even the periodic "Upgrade Now!" spasms if I just used the included Media Player Classic I removed it and used Microsoft's own 'RegClean' to make sure it was gone.
If the hcclnet.nl servers are being slashdotted at the moment, you might try some of the other sources for Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative such as:
These two domains are mirros of each other, and also good source of many video codecs and even some free/OSS media players.
Re:Terraforming Mars?
on
Methane on Mars?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
There is one very important question to be answered if Mars is going to be terraformed and I have never seen anyone even ask it. We know that the smaller (and closer) moon is going to crash into the planet in 'a few thousand years' at the current rate of orbital decay. So what happens when we build up the atmosphere (assuming we find a way to do it) to many times its current density for human habitability? Isn't this inevitably going to increase the drag on that satellite? Figuring out how much it will increase the drag would seem to me a very important issue. We might make the thing crash in only a few centuries instead of millenia if we create an earth-like atmosphere on Mars. Millions of tons of rock crashing down on the surface will not be a 'plus' factor for habitability. Solutions to this problem could be as tricky as terraforming. Should we 'force' it to crash before terraforming? Or try to boost it further away? Or maybe it could be broken up and either crashed in smaller pieces or boosted away in smaller pieces.
China and Brazil have already had their eyes opened on this score. They are both large, resource rich countries.
Add India to that list. The Indian government was outraged at a US company patenting Basmati rice. That variety was developed in India by Indian farmers over a period of centuries. But some US corporation has filed a patent and apparently won the right to control the name 'Basmati Rice' and prevent even native Indian growers from using the name or selling this variety of rice in the US! Lots of other countries in the world are getting fed up with Stupid Lawyer Tricks in the US.
BOTH require, for guilty verdict in criminal law (and with very few exceptions), the accused to have the intention to commit a crime as well as actually performing the action. For example, if I took your new iPod, but in the honest belief that it was my new iPod, it would not be theft. The idea that it's an offence to carry a box of matches is ridiculous. It's an offence to carry a box of matches if it can be proved that you were on the way to burn down a house. A big difference.
Then why in many states of the USA can you be charged with carrying 'burglary tools' merely for possessing lockpicks without being a registered locksmith? Is this not a 'presumption' of guilt? There are many legitimate uses for lockpicks. An owner of a storage rental site might need to remove the locks from expired storage rooms so he can remove the stuff now occupying his space without payment. An owner of rental units, house or apartment, might need to get into units where the former tenant has changed the locks and didn't give him the key before moving out. But there are no exceptions in these laws. They don't differentiate between driving down a main business thoroughfare during business hours vs. wearing a mask and driving around a residential neighborhood at night. Mere possession of a tool is guilt.
We also need research on the effects of radiation and how to shield against it. Realize that with all the 'experience' we think we have in space to date, only the Apollo astronauts have ever been outside the shielding of the earth's magnetic field! And only for a very short time. They were lucky that no major solar flares occured during those moon expeditions.
More satellites similar to this mouse habitat need to be fitted with radiation shielding of various types and launched out to a distant orbit, but not so distant that they can't be recovered. After we've got several years of data on mice or othr animals living in radiation shielded habitats outside the earth's magnetosphere we'll finally be able to start estimating the possible health effects on humans and designing interplanetary vehicles for humans.
In a vacuuum, yes. But there is no such thing as a creative 'vacuum'. Nothing it utterly new and original. There is always some prior work with similarities to yours. Now that copyrights are effectively perpetual there is no way to ever escape from prior works. There will always be something that bears some resemblance to your 'new' work and thanks to perpetual copyright there will always be someone who can claim that you have infringed their work and suppress your NEW work, preventing you from making any money from it. Ergo, copyright has gone too far and discourages creativity.
Proxomitron is a local proxy that lets you write powerful scripts the alter your incoming and out-going browser data-stream 'in real time'. Yes, you can intercept Shockwave/flash as easily as any other sort of file, as well as Javascript and.CSS files. You can not only block ads and pop-ups and cookies, you can customize your entire browsing experience! You can also SEND things like spoofed cookies and other codes that let you control your browsing experience. The add-blocker CSS for Mozilla/Firebird is good but but this is an order of magnitude better.
Proxomitron. Get it, learn it, keep up with the cookie snoopers and pop-up pushers.
Proxomitron is a local proxy that lets you write powerful scripts the alter your incoming and out-going browser data-stream 'in real time'. Yes, you can intercept Shockwave/flash as easily as any other sort of file, as well as Javascript and.CSS files. You can not only block ads and pop-ups and cookies, you can customize your entire browsing experience! You can also SEND things like spoofed cookies and other codes that let you control your browsing experience. The add-blocker CSS for Mozilla/Firebird is good but but this is an order of magnitude better.
Proxomitron. Get it, learn it, keep up with the cookie snoopers and pop-up pushers.
Quote from the page: The Full Screen Superstitial(R) uses Unicast's patented delivery methods, the foundation for which the Superstitial has been trusted for over 4 years. Ads play in the proper transitional space as the consumer moves between pages, as opposed to units that 'play when ready' or distract consumers in the middle of reading an article, researching a purchase, composing e-mail or searching for information. The only format that loads completely before it is allowed to play, the Full Screen Superstitial is guaranteed to play perfectly for every consumer, every time.
Conctact Us for more information
"the foundation for which the Superstitial has been trusted for over 4 years."???
"Conctact Us for more information"???
Why do I suspect that these 'clever' people won't be very difficult to out-smart?
Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
---
privacy n.
1. a. The quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others. b. The state of being free from unsanctioned intrusion: a person's right to privacy.
2. The state of being concealed; secrecy.
The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition
---
Yes, the 4th Amendment DOES enumerate a right to privacy. In plain English. Only the sophistry of stupid lawyer tricks could interpret it otherwise. It only shows how far gone we are into double-speak and double-think that this is not considered a truism of American law.
True. The problem is property laws that allow excessive concentration of wealth. Going in after the fact and taking some of the accumulated wealth away from the winners of the rigged game is just a kludge. Bailing is only a stop-gap until you fix the leak in your boat. The way the economy actually works needs to be adjusted.
Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on.... The small landowners are the most precious part of a state. -- The Letters of Thomas Jefferson (Letter to James Madison)
The same observation applies to large companies using byzantine finance laws to hold on to gazillions of dollars of assets of all sorts (plain money, or property -- physical or 'intellectual') while millions of quite competant people who could be running businesses with those assets are unemployed.
Yes, they have finally tipped their hand and admitted their real motivation in this case. They've all but cut and pasted from the Microsoft anti-Open Source rants we've seen from Steve Ballmer and Bill gates in the past. Is there a.DOC file or just HTML? If it's available as a.DOC the anal record-keeping properties of MS-WORD that have tripped so many other people up in the past might also catch MS and SCO in their game if it proves the link between MS and this anti-Open Source campaign. Heck, even if it's HTML you'd better read the souce and see if the comments indicate it was really written in Redmond.
The value of GPL as a 'business model' has absolutely nothing to do with their legal claims against IBM. The fact that they state it as if it is part of the case betrays that this lawsuit itself is just the vehicle that gets them the attention they want so they can propogandize for their real cause. They know they can't prevail legally. They are just going for the negative publicity to scare people away from Open Source products, and whatever possible delays they can cause with legal entanglements before they get sued into oblivion. SCO is executing the corporate equivalent of a suicide bombing.
Linux users who are interested in additional information or purchasing an IP License for Linux should contact their local SCO sales representative or call SCO at 1-800-726-8649 or visit our web site
Yes, call and say that you're going to join a class-action fraud suit against SCO for trying to claim that it owns Linux. A few hundred calls to this effect just might rattle them enough to make them publicly disclose what they think they own in the kernel. Then... it can be replaced in short order.
If SCO/Caldera claims to own the 'IP' to Unix and also claims that their IP is in the Linux kernel, could it now be said that they have 'contributed' their IP to Linux and everyone can now use Unix 'IP' (CODE in normal person speech) in Linux with impunity? It looks like that's what IBM is saying in pointing this out, after all. Would be nice for the open source movement if they had 'tossed their cookies' as it were and opened the door to consolidating all the *IX variants into one -- Linux.
Note that the article is talking about scientific discoveries. How do we usually measure scientific discoveries? It's different for science than for most other types of creativity. We measure the importance of a scientific 'contribution' by how much of the old way of thinking it over-throws and/or replaces. E.G. Einstein's relativity vs. Newtonian physics.
Artists don't necessarily have to win their way to the top of the heap and 'discredit' other artists in order to be considered great artists. Not that many of them don't try to destroy/discredit others... Artists are often driven by testosterone, too.:) But it's not essential to the definition of a great work of art that it destroys/discredits some other work of art.
So, you're a young scientist and you make a 'big break through' in some technical field like physics or biology. It destroys some old school of thought and puts hundreds or thousands of other scientists into 'catchup' mode to understand what you've done. You get accolades, and job offers at important universities/research labs. You start raking in the cash and enjoying your status. What next? Hmm, time to get married and have kids. You'll have a much better choice of mates than you would have before the 'big breakthrough' thanks to your new status.
Now you're successful and all that. You could try to investigate your own theory and see if there's anything new to learn. But now you are the 'established school of thought'... why discredit your own work? It's gotten you all these perks! And besides, you've got all these colleagues now who like your theory. If you try to change it you could end up in conflict with many of them, and endanger your status! See the disincentive to break the mold and make any more 'great discoveries' in science once you've arrived? You'll have strong incentives to maintain your theory and build on it, even if it's only 'wrong in a different way than the old one':) -- not make new breakthroughs.
It's not that getting married and having kids ruins genius. It's that geniuses who want to relax and enjoy life get married and have kids.
Expose the current state of copyright law for the fraud that it is! We need to ask questions that give Lessig the chance to point out how copyright law has been perverted by corporate lobbyists.
INFORMATION IS NOT PROPERTY.
It cannot be. There would be no need for 'copyright' if it could be. Yet corporate lobbyists have hammered the word 'intellectual property' into dozens of laws over the past couple of decades and have managed to replace copyright law with a fraudulent redefiniton of the concept of 'property'.
You can ask obvious things like "Why is copyright so different from what it was 30 or 40 years ago?" and "Exactly what IS 'intellectual property' and how is it different from copyright? or you can go for something more subtle if you have a good understanding of some particular issue that will leed into this. But we must get this one issue exposed as much as possible.
There is a growing realization that the source of petroleum is not 'dead dinosaurs' or even dead plants and/or bacteria as had been believed for so long. It seems that what we consider 'organic' chemistry (in chemistry btw, 'organic' just means carbon containing compounds)) might be quite common in the natural world even without what we would recognize as life to create it. Some Google searches on terms like 'non-organic', 'inorganic' and 'petroleum' will turn up lots of articles about the new theories. This one, for example. Or This one in a respected journal of geology. It's looking more and more like the term 'fossil fuels' is a misnomer. That's not to say that the supply isn't limited, however...
Slashdot Mirror
No, this is not 'nonsense' and we must not think of it that way. It is propaganda of the most blatant sort. Having produced several 'studies' that try to make corporate officers and staff fear Open Source, they have now moved on to inoculating ordinary IT workers against the idea. Have most 'rank & file' IT workers thought much about Open Source even if they have heard of it? Probably not as they are too busy trying to keep up with their workload. But they might well read some of the website and magazines that this article will be featured on.
This is advertising a point of view, just like commerical or political ads. And it will work if it is not countered, just as it has worked for countless candidates and businesses already. It doesn't matter if the reasoning is flawed any more than it matters for other forms of advertising. It's not aimed at people who are calmly analyzing what they read. It's aimed at harried IT workers who are skimming the IT journal of their choice for any 'trends' they need to be aware of to keep up with their job. They'll swallow it whole just like most people swallow political 'soundbite' ads whole. People tend to believe what they hear repeated over and over. Dismissing it as 'nonsense' is as stupid and dangerous as Dukakis dismissing the Willie Horton smear campaign as nonsense.
How much 'public relations' work do Open Source businesses do? Maybe it's about time for the FSF and other bodies to actually purchase advertising and increase their other explicit efforts to promote understanding of the Open Source movement. If they let Microsoft sponsored propaganda defined them, they are headed for the same sort of high-minded defeat that Dukakis suffered.
The last high-profile use of voxels would be Master of Orion III...
Which shows you why no one takes them seriously.
This is standard corporate double-talk. Compare to Bill Gates responding to the anti-trust verdict that went against him. It's always someone else being uncooperative, unhelpful, inflexible. It's never the corporation's fault. They've got spin control down to a science in both government and corporate PR departments.
I can only hope that this move in California will raise questions about Diebold machines in some other states like Ohio. I don't want to have to use them.
So not only can the elephant tap-dance, it can also play chess? ")
While it is true that the actual word 'privacy' is not used in the Constitution you will find something interesting if you look that word up in any common dictionary...
---
privacy n.
1.
a. The quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others.
b. The state of being free from unsanctioned intrusion: a person's right to privacy.
2. The state of being concealed; secrecy.
---
(From the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition)
Gosh, that 2nd part of the first definition sure reminds me of the wording of the 4th Amendment... How much would you like to bet that this definition of privacy can be found in dictionaries going right back to the time when the Constitution was written?
Unfortunately, it is true that this was meant to apply to the government. The powers that corporations would accrue were not envisioned at that time. The 'corporation' did not even exist at that time. But here we are today with this expectation of the right to control our own lives and property, based on our history of expecting the government to respect our rights, and yet we see the 'corporation' (many corporations as a class, not just this one spyware company) trying to take away that control and use us and our property for its own ends. Since the Founders had the good sense to include the amendment process for unforseen developments, maybe we should use it? Some sort of amendment along the lines of the European Union's privacy rights would seem to be a good idea.
(4) Monsanto/Scott thinks that you are responsible for their inability to control their products.
Crops contaminated by GM organisms
GM Canola spreading out of control
Farmers are now suing Monsanto in self-defense, and even suing each other:
Litigation in the Wind
And it's not just pesticide resistance that is spreading:
New Scientist Article
Many crops are being engineered to produce pharmaceuticals now. Yes, chemicals with active functions in the human body. Slashdot had coverage of this in a recent story:
Would You Like Drugs in Your Rice?
You can install Real Alternative with RealPlayer 8 installed and it can find the new codecs. At least it did with version 1.20 when I first tried it. So yes, you can have the latest formats with the relatively non-spammy older player. Realizing I didn't have to put up with even the periodic "Upgrade Now!" spasms if I just used the included Media Player Classic I removed it and used Microsoft's own 'RegClean' to make sure it was gone.
Another happy Real Alternative User!
If the hcclnet.nl servers are being slashdotted at the moment, you might try some of the other sources for Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative such as:
Free-Codecs.com
and
CodecsDownload.com
These two domains are mirros of each other, and also good source of many video codecs and even some free/OSS media players.
There is one very important question to be answered if Mars is going to be terraformed and I have never seen anyone even ask it. We know that the smaller (and closer) moon is going to crash into the planet in 'a few thousand years' at the current rate of orbital decay. So what happens when we build up the atmosphere (assuming we find a way to do it) to many times its current density for human habitability? Isn't this inevitably going to increase the drag on that satellite? Figuring out how much it will increase the drag would seem to me a very important issue. We might make the thing crash in only a few centuries instead of millenia if we create an earth-like atmosphere on Mars. Millions of tons of rock crashing down on the surface will not be a 'plus' factor for habitability. Solutions to this problem could be as tricky as terraforming. Should we 'force' it to crash before terraforming? Or try to boost it further away? Or maybe it could be broken up and either crashed in smaller pieces or boosted away in smaller pieces.
China and Brazil have already had their eyes opened on this score. They are both large, resource rich countries.
Add India to that list. The Indian government was outraged at a US company patenting Basmati rice. That variety was developed in India by Indian farmers over a period of centuries. But some US corporation has filed a patent and apparently won the right to control the name 'Basmati Rice' and prevent even native Indian growers from using the name or selling this variety of rice in the US! Lots of other countries in the world are getting fed up with Stupid Lawyer Tricks in the US.
http://www.biotech-info.net/basmati_patent.html
http://www.poptel.org.uk/panap/latest/lost.htm
BOTH require, for guilty verdict in criminal law (and with very few exceptions), the accused to have the intention to commit a crime as well as actually performing the action. For example, if I took your new iPod, but in the honest belief that it was my new iPod, it would not be theft. The idea that it's an offence to carry a box of matches is ridiculous. It's an offence to carry a box of matches if it can be proved that you were on the way to burn down a house. A big difference.
Then why in many states of the USA can you be charged with carrying 'burglary tools' merely for possessing lockpicks without being a registered locksmith? Is this not a 'presumption' of guilt? There are many legitimate uses for lockpicks. An owner of a storage rental site might need to remove the locks from expired storage rooms so he can remove the stuff now occupying his space without payment. An owner of rental units, house or apartment, might need to get into units where the former tenant has changed the locks and didn't give him the key before moving out. But there are no exceptions in these laws. They don't differentiate between driving down a main business thoroughfare during business hours vs. wearing a mask and driving around a residential neighborhood at night. Mere possession of a tool is guilt.
We also need research on the effects of radiation and how to shield against it. Realize that with all the 'experience' we think we have in space to date, only the Apollo astronauts have ever been outside the shielding of the earth's magnetic field! And only for a very short time. They were lucky that no major solar flares occured during those moon expeditions.
More satellites similar to this mouse habitat need to be fitted with radiation shielding of various types and launched out to a distant orbit, but not so distant that they can't be recovered. After we've got several years of data on mice or othr animals living in radiation shielded habitats outside the earth's magnetosphere we'll finally be able to start estimating the possible health effects on humans and designing interplanetary vehicles for humans.
In a vacuuum, yes. But there is no such thing as a creative 'vacuum'. Nothing it utterly new and original. There is always some prior work with similarities to yours. Now that copyrights are effectively perpetual there is no way to ever escape from prior works. There will always be something that bears some resemblance to your 'new' work and thanks to perpetual copyright there will always be someone who can claim that you have infringed their work and suppress your NEW work, preventing you from making any money from it. Ergo, copyright has gone too far and discourages creativity.
Proxomitron is a local proxy that lets you write powerful scripts the alter your incoming and out-going browser data-stream 'in real time'. Yes, you can intercept Shockwave/flash as easily as any other sort of file, as well as Javascript and .CSS files. You can not only block ads and pop-ups and cookies, you can customize your entire browsing experience! You can also SEND things like spoofed cookies and other codes that let you control your browsing experience. The add-blocker CSS for Mozilla/Firebird is good but but this is an order of magnitude better.
Proxomitron. Get it, learn it, keep up with the cookie snoopers and pop-up pushers.
http://www.proxomitron.info/
Proxomitron is a local proxy that lets you write powerful scripts the alter your incoming and out-going browser data-stream 'in real time'. Yes, you can intercept Shockwave/flash as easily as any other sort of file, as well as Javascript and .CSS files. You can not only block ads and pop-ups and cookies, you can customize your entire browsing experience! You can also SEND things like spoofed cookies and other codes that let you control your browsing experience. The add-blocker CSS for Mozilla/Firebird is good but but this is an order of magnitude better.
Proxomitron. Get it, learn it, keep up with the cookie snoopers and pop-up pushers.
http://www.proxomitron.info/
Quote from the page:
The Full Screen Superstitial(R) uses Unicast's patented delivery methods, the foundation for which the Superstitial has been trusted for over 4 years. Ads play in the proper transitional space as the consumer moves between pages, as opposed to units that 'play when ready' or distract consumers in the middle of reading an article, researching a purchase, composing e-mail or searching for information. The only format that loads completely before it is allowed to play, the Full Screen Superstitial is guaranteed to play perfectly for every consumer, every time.
Conctact Us for more information
"the foundation for which the Superstitial has been trusted for over 4 years."???
"Conctact Us for more information"???
Why do I suspect that these 'clever' people won't be very difficult to out-smart?
Actually, it's even more stark than that.
---
Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
---
privacy n.
1.
a. The quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others.
b. The state of being free from unsanctioned intrusion: a person's right to privacy.
2. The state of being concealed; secrecy.
The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition
---
Yes, the 4th Amendment DOES enumerate a right to privacy. In plain English. Only the sophistry of stupid lawyer tricks could interpret it otherwise. It only shows how far gone we are into double-speak and double-think that this is not considered a truism of American law.
Do you suppose Michael Jackson can "moonwalk" in genuine lunar gravity?
True. The problem is property laws that allow excessive concentration of wealth. Going in after the fact and taking some of the accumulated wealth away from the winners of the rigged game is just a kludge. Bailing is only a stop-gap until you fix the leak in your boat. The way the economy actually works needs to be adjusted.
... The small landowners are the most precious part of a state. -- The Letters of Thomas Jefferson (Letter to James Madison)
Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on.
The same observation applies to large companies using byzantine finance laws to hold on to gazillions of dollars of assets of all sorts (plain money, or property -- physical or 'intellectual') while millions of quite competant people who could be running businesses with those assets are unemployed.
Yes, they have finally tipped their hand and admitted their real motivation in this case. They've all but cut and pasted from the Microsoft anti-Open Source rants we've seen from Steve Ballmer and Bill gates in the past. Is there a .DOC file or just HTML? If it's available as a .DOC the anal record-keeping properties of MS-WORD that have tripped so many other people up in the past might also catch MS and SCO in their game if it proves the link between MS and this anti-Open Source campaign. Heck, even if it's HTML you'd better read the souce and see if the comments indicate it was really written in Redmond.
The value of GPL as a 'business model' has absolutely nothing to do with their legal claims against IBM. The fact that they state it as if it is part of the case betrays that this lawsuit itself is just the vehicle that gets them the attention they want so they can propogandize for their real cause. They know they can't prevail legally. They are just going for the negative publicity to scare people away from Open Source products, and whatever possible delays they can cause with legal entanglements before they get sued into oblivion. SCO is executing the corporate equivalent of a suicide bombing.
Linux users who are interested in additional information or purchasing an IP License for Linux should contact their local SCO sales representative or call SCO at 1-800-726-8649 or visit our web site
Yes, call and say that you're going to join a class-action fraud suit against SCO for trying to claim that it owns Linux. A few hundred calls to this effect just might rattle them enough to make them publicly disclose what they think they own in the kernel. Then... it can be replaced in short order.
If SCO/Caldera claims to own the 'IP' to Unix and also claims that their IP is in the Linux kernel, could it now be said that they have 'contributed' their IP to Linux and everyone can now use Unix 'IP' (CODE in normal person speech) in Linux with impunity? It looks like that's what IBM is saying in pointing this out, after all. Would be nice for the open source movement if they had 'tossed their cookies' as it were and opened the door to consolidating all the *IX variants into one -- Linux.
Note that the article is talking about scientific discoveries. How do we usually measure scientific discoveries? It's different for science than for most other types of creativity. We measure the importance of a scientific 'contribution' by how much of the old way of thinking it over-throws and/or replaces. E.G. Einstein's relativity vs. Newtonian physics.
:) But it's not essential to the definition of a great work of art that it destroys/discredits some other work of art.
:) -- not make new breakthroughs.
Artists don't necessarily have to win their way to the top of the heap and 'discredit' other artists in order to be considered great artists. Not that many of them don't try to destroy/discredit others... Artists are often driven by testosterone, too.
So, you're a young scientist and you make a 'big break through' in some technical field like physics or biology. It destroys some old school of thought and puts hundreds or thousands of other scientists into 'catchup' mode to understand what you've done. You get accolades, and job offers at important universities/research labs. You start raking in the cash and enjoying your status. What next? Hmm, time to get married and have kids. You'll have a much better choice of mates than you would have before the 'big breakthrough' thanks to your new status.
Now you're successful and all that. You could try to investigate your own theory and see if there's anything new to learn. But now you are the 'established school of thought'... why discredit your own work? It's gotten you all these perks! And besides, you've got all these colleagues now who like your theory. If you try to change it you could end up in conflict with many of them, and endanger your status! See the disincentive to break the mold and make any more 'great discoveries' in science once you've arrived? You'll have strong incentives to maintain your theory and build on it, even if it's only 'wrong in a different way than the old one'
It's not that getting married and having kids ruins genius. It's that geniuses who want to relax and enjoy life get married and have kids.
Expose the current state of copyright law for the fraud that it is! We need to ask questions that give Lessig the chance to point out how copyright law has been perverted by corporate lobbyists.
INFORMATION IS NOT PROPERTY.
It cannot be. There would be no need for 'copyright' if it could be. Yet corporate lobbyists have hammered the word 'intellectual property' into dozens of laws over the past couple of decades and have managed to replace copyright law with a fraudulent redefiniton of the concept of 'property'.
You can ask obvious things like "Why is copyright so different from what it was 30 or 40 years ago?" and "Exactly what IS 'intellectual property' and how is it different from copyright? or you can go for something more subtle if you have a good understanding of some particular issue that will leed into this. But we must get this one issue exposed as much as possible.
There is a growing realization that the source of petroleum is not 'dead dinosaurs' or even dead plants and/or bacteria as had been believed for so long. It seems that what we consider 'organic' chemistry (in chemistry btw, 'organic' just means carbon containing compounds)) might be quite common in the natural world even without what we would recognize as life to create it. Some Google searches on terms like 'non-organic', 'inorganic' and 'petroleum' will turn up lots of articles about the new theories. This one, for example. Or This one in a respected journal of geology. It's looking more and more like the term 'fossil fuels' is a misnomer. That's not to say that the supply isn't limited, however...