Surprisingly in this case apparently the FTC and the governements appears to do the right thing (if very slowly) and will (hopefully) punish all these crooks.
Todays Lesson: Evil transpires quickly, while Good takes a while to get up, pull it's boots on and do something about it. Whomever is in power may accelerated or retard either.
Of course in the meantime consumers have payed more that they should have and the punishement will not change this..
When is this a new thing? I predict the oil companies will be sued in a few years time for activities they are doing now, that the US Federal Government is not noticing. Nobody ever gets their money back.
If I interpret this correctly, their share price is down 25% on the news.
Yes, I saw the drop. Most precipitous. They have been in the dumps before and risen back. If you're a gambler, pick up a few shares and see if they appeal.
Whatever, Rambus are idiots. They should have just patented the technology and then sued everyone out of existance. Not proactively suing was their downfall.
Evidently you have missed the recent trend in technology --
Patent your idea, in the broadest terms possible
Let someone else develop the same idea, or an idea close enough to yours
Allow them to deliver product employing these ideas, thus damning them
Cry foul and sue for huge damages
Profit!!!
Why risk being an illegal monopoly when the USPTO offers you a perfectly legal way to do so??
They evidently believed the same tactics which led to wide deployment of SDRAM (which was dependent upon some of the technologies covered by patents (and amended patents)) were OK and they could continue to play games like this. Habit forming, I suppose.
How many years have we been following this travesty? Seems like 12, but my own (non-SDRAM) memory is a bit fuzzy with age. I recall battles on
many fronts, in Europe some shopping for courts in Italy by Rambus while pursuing Infineon, suits in the USA in Virginia which were found against
Rambus for the very activity of submarining the patents at JEDEC (Keeping their traps shut while JEDEC members adopted technology standards
which played directly into their hands, in violation of the spirit and agreements with JEDEC), then fines against Rambus reduced, then overturned and years of watching
Rambus very nearly pull the whole thing off. Finally, the FTC arrives at a decision. Of course, all players in the SDRAM game have been
a bit dirty for years, with price fixing and such (isn't it a wonder someone actually makes money on this stuff?) I suppose the
bottom-line question is: Will the FTC revoke the patents? (In any case, you know by now that Rambus is actually an Intellectual Property company which is
chiefly legal teams, and anything will be appealed.)
Nobody I know ever says that they "Yahooed it".
I think it's a pretty strong indication of brand value when the name of your company becomes a commonly used verb in the english language.[link to wikipedia/googling]
Not sure Yahooligans caught on. I'm certain it was even frowned upon in some countries where Hooligan has a stronger negative connotation than it carries in the USA
I seem to remember about a zillion companies in the 90s that did this. A good example is PeoplePC. Does this patent things have no sanity.
Ah, but this is Microsoft. They've just invented it so it must be be new. They even have the Buckets o' Lawyers necessary to make that true if they so desire. Wouldn't be the first time they threw billions down a hole, probably won't be the last.
Didn't People PC and a few other companies try this already...and give up on it after it didn't work?
Yes, something like that at Fry's. PC's for about $200 back in the late 90's because you had to sit and look at all the avertising that came with it, since you had to connect with a internet provider as a condition of purchase. Later came eMachines which were inexpensive, but required a longterm contract with AOL or sommat.
On the other tentacle, it's the breeding ground for the next generation's spy thrillers, cloak and dagger, tales of heroics, etc. Just like the Cold War gave us James Bond, 'I was a communist for the FBI' and Get Smart.
The stupid part of this is that we shouldn't have to do this... but with the way the wind is blowing inside the beltway, you need to adapt and avoid the risk. The FCC & NSA can walk all over you until the climate changes, be patient and resist.
Right. Ever notice those things you had to affirm when downloading things with strong encryption, why you had to? Even though sourcecode for such could easily be downloaded from Sourceforge or numerous other development sites? This was to keep high technology from falling into the wrong hands (It really was a laughable exercise in futility), as it could just as easily be developed by those the government most feared laying their hands on it.
They'll simply do it again and ban you from using an encrypted phone because you might be talking to terrorists!
Haven't we learned any lessons from the hideous Bolsheviks?
Go on, pull the other one. It's got bells on.
Looking back over the past century, of all the horrors of war and repression, it's depressing to see how many of the means of those vile regimes, which brought such death and hardship to so many, have been adopted because they're so gosh darn effective.
Raise your hand if you thought VoIP was a really neat idea when it first came out.
Now raise your hand if you still think it is.
Granted it's not really too different from recording Voice, but now you could expect yourself to be extraordinarily rendered if you
choose to encrypt your converstations because you have the gall to actually believe the government has no right to recording
and storing your conversations, Dub's dirty tricks or not.
Hell, they'll probably outlaw encrypting your own phone calls, next,
because (the flag waving)
it's (an eagle poses rampant)
in (strains of The Star Bangled Banner)
the (In God We Trust)
best(the blue angels fly overhead)
interests (cascading images of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, etc.)
of (Betsy Ross adds another star to her handicraft)
America (fanfare of fife and drum) and everybody knows the real patriots don't question any of this.
"sir, you served potential enemies of uh-merika with strong encryption" and we can't be having that.
Ebay constantly in hot water would probably love to score some points with Washington, they're probably already serving
tea and crumpets with the NSA right now, along with a side order of Skype backdoors.
Clearly you have fallen hard from your turnip truck and struck your head quite forcefully. I see you as a complete apologist for those who are happy to legislate our freedoms into oblivion. Perhaps when they take away something you treasure you might at least grunt coherently before rolling over anyway. Not I.
The concept of fighting these sorts of violations of basic rights in court, rather then defeating in in committee or vote before house and/or senate is far more desireable as it eliminates the period of suppression prior to overturning, futher it eliminates any artifacts which may remain in place (as this will affect programmings, filtering and structure of information access) after subsequent overturn by a court. In these cases an ounce of prevention is truly worth more than a pound of cure.
There were a number of books that the school board had determined were too mature for young minds, but they didn't want to ban them outright.
Meanwhile, there are those who want to ban Harry Potter because it portrays witchcraft in a positive light. Never mind that there is the classic battle of Good vs. Evil taking place in Rowling's fantasy world and some of it implies violence on persons (Nearly-Headless Nick, not quite beheaded and the moaning ghost of the girl in the lav who commited suicide.) We have children 8 and 9 years old reading 900 page books, ffs!
Then there's the Holy Bible, all sorts of bad things in there, you can't read it without proper supervision, right? Might take away the wrong message and then where would the world be?
if I ask for any filter to be taken off something, they're legally obligated by federal law to comply.
No. They are not obligated by federal law to comply (under terms of this bill) they could decide they don't want to, or they could take all day about it. What rubbish, "as long as it's not illegal in that jurisdiction" -- this bill throws open the doors for each individual custodian of a public terminal to decide what is and is not objectionable to them. They could simply be pricks about it and you'd waste time and breath arguing it.
No, it takes away nothing. Ignoring the almost certain fact that it was passed merely as a promotional ploy with the full intent being that it be struck down with the first court challenge, anybody interpreting the educational clause that strictly would be easily overruled by even the most idiotically anti-freedom judge.
Here's a clue for you. For years there were laws on the books, Jim Crow laws, which were finally all struck down in the 1950's and 1960's. Nothing wrong immediately goes away just because it is wrong. Even this Gitmo anti-Geneva Convention fiasco has denied people Due Process for years. These things need to be fought before they are passed into law.
The time to fight is now, by writing to your senators and advising them to drop this like a bad habit before Dubya puts pen to it surrounded by a bunch of doe-eyed waifs on the White House lawn.
Yeah, and public libraries shouldn't stock fiction, such as trashy romance novels either.
I was a bit surprised, in retrospect, that Farley Mowat's book "Never Cry Wolf", a staple in middle schools glorifies an alcoholic beverage - Wolf Juice. Yet it wasn't pulled from shelves and classrooms (though with the whacks in charge these days, it may yet, despite the other lessons of the book) IIRC, another book I read, Enchanted Pilgrimage (Simak?) also had some passage about how good drink can be.
Carrie Nation would doubtless find a new lease on life with some of the ultra conservatives interfering with schools these days.
Of course, what your reactionary nonsense keenly disregards is the fact that, predominantly, MySpace is comprised of none of those things, and sites that are comprised predominantly of those things would fall into the "educational" clause that would merit their unblocking.
However, this is the thing: These sites can now simply all be thrown into the restricted bucket in one fell swoop. Everywhere you go you will have to request they review their policy on a particular site to allow you to access it from a public terminal. That's not a problem for you? You don't mind waiting while they deliberate, because your time has no other purpose or value?
Before you knee-jerk phrases like 'reactionary' you should see how you respond to bills and laws, which so easily take away that which would require time and effort to roll back at each individual turn.
By your argument, jails are just a haven for completely wonderful people who have never done anything wrong, since there's undoubtedly a tiny handful of inmates who were put in their wrongly.
You know what the other boot looks like, don't you? After they have banned these sites and the move offshore, they'll pass another law, like Internet Gambling, to ban access to foreign internet social sites from public terminals.
All these years I wondered why the Librarian shushed people from talking in libraries. I didn't realise the plan was to prevent them from socially networking in a public place.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as Mozilla stuff doesn't ship with Real Networks crap, I'm fine with it.
No worse than selling computers with Windows on it with Mozilla installed, really.
Surprisingly in this case apparently the FTC and the governements appears to do the right thing (if very slowly) and will (hopefully) punish all these crooks.
Todays Lesson: Evil transpires quickly, while Good takes a while to get up, pull it's boots on and do something about it. Whomever is in power may accelerated or retard either.
Of course in the meantime consumers have payed more that they should have and the punishement will not change this..
When is this a new thing? I predict the oil companies will be sued in a few years time for activities they are doing now, that the US Federal Government is not noticing. Nobody ever gets their money back.
If I interpret this correctly, their share price is down 25% on the news.
Yes, I saw the drop. Most precipitous. They have been in the dumps before and risen back. If you're a gambler, pick up a few shares and see if they appeal.
Whatever, Rambus are idiots. They should have just patented the technology and then sued everyone out of existance. Not proactively suing was their downfall.
Evidently you have missed the recent trend in technology --
Why risk being an illegal monopoly when the USPTO offers you a perfectly legal way to do so??
They evidently believed the same tactics which led to wide deployment of SDRAM (which was dependent upon some of the technologies covered by patents (and amended patents)) were OK and they could continue to play games like this. Habit forming, I suppose.How many years have we been following this travesty? Seems like 12, but my own (non-SDRAM) memory is a bit fuzzy with age. I recall battles on many fronts, in Europe some shopping for courts in Italy by Rambus while pursuing Infineon, suits in the USA in Virginia which were found against Rambus for the very activity of submarining the patents at JEDEC (Keeping their traps shut while JEDEC members adopted technology standards which played directly into their hands, in violation of the spirit and agreements with JEDEC), then fines against Rambus reduced, then overturned and years of watching Rambus very nearly pull the whole thing off. Finally, the FTC arrives at a decision. Of course, all players in the SDRAM game have been a bit dirty for years, with price fixing and such (isn't it a wonder someone actually makes money on this stuff?) I suppose the bottom-line question is: Will the FTC revoke the patents? (In any case, you know by now that Rambus is actually an Intellectual Property company which is chiefly legal teams, and anything will be appealed.)
A Pro-Rambus site is here
"How do you power your cooling process?"
"With that nulcear power plant in the next town over."
Microsoft is always playing catch up to Google:
Heinz watch out! - Microsoft Ketchup!
Nobody I know ever says that they "Yahooed it".
I think it's a pretty strong indication of brand value when the name of your company becomes a commonly used verb in the english language.[link to wikipedia/googling]
Google (as a verb) is accepted in the Oxford On-line Dictionary, too.
Not sure Yahooligans caught on. I'm certain it was even frowned upon in some countries where Hooligan has a stronger negative connotation than it carries in the USA
Number 1, Coca-Cola had better watch their back for Number 2, Microsoft!
With Microsoft's flair for chumming up to other businesses, just before "innovating" their own brands right into that market, one must be cautious.
New from Microsoft: Microsoft Cola Soft Drinks! Available in the following popular flavours (as determined by Microsoft's own R&D department.)
Please check www.microsoftcola.com/support periodically for updates and patches to our famous beverages
Caught in a web of their own lies, like common politicians.
Seems to me it's up to MySpace to either condone this sort of thing or ban users for it, never mind what the weasels at Zango do or say.
I seem to remember about a zillion companies in the 90s that did this. A good example is PeoplePC. Does this patent things have no sanity.
Ah, but this is Microsoft. They've just invented it so it must be be new. They even have the Buckets o' Lawyers necessary to make that true if they so desire. Wouldn't be the first time they threw billions down a hole, probably won't be the last.
Seriously, if the offer is that someone can data-mine everything on my PC and send me lots of pop-ups, spam, and flash banners, then no thanks.
On a positive note, it may break some people of their Internet Addiction.
omg noes!!1 every reload brings more suffering!
Didn't People PC and a few other companies try this already...and give up on it after it didn't work?
Yes, something like that at Fry's. PC's for about $200 back in the late 90's because you had to sit and look at all the avertising that came with it, since you had to connect with a internet provider as a condition of purchase. Later came eMachines which were inexpensive, but required a longterm contract with AOL or sommat.
Oh, what's the use anymore?
What? You no longer welcome our Tel-Tapper-Phoner Overlords anymore?
Say it ain't so!
Surely, in Soviet Russia VoIP monitors you, doesn't it?
i'm having a crisis of confidence ... i just can't imagine a beowulf cluster of tapped voip phones
Its tyranny.
On the other tentacle, it's the breeding ground for the next generation's spy thrillers, cloak and dagger, tales of heroics, etc. Just like the Cold War gave us James Bond, 'I was a communist for the FBI' and Get Smart.
How is it different from now?
That's just it, it isn't.
As technology advances or means change, the government changes its tactics in surveillance. As the wheel turns so the road beneath it moves*
*This means pizza with extra anchovies, comrade!
The stupid part of this is that we shouldn't have to do this ... but with the way the wind is blowing inside the beltway, you need to adapt and avoid the risk. The FCC & NSA can walk all over you until the climate changes, be patient and resist.
Right. Ever notice those things you had to affirm when downloading things with strong encryption, why you had to? Even though sourcecode for such could easily be downloaded from Sourceforge or numerous other development sites? This was to keep high technology from falling into the wrong hands (It really was a laughable exercise in futility), as it could just as easily be developed by those the government most feared laying their hands on it.
They'll simply do it again and ban you from using an encrypted phone because you might be talking to terrorists!
Haven't we learned any lessons from the hideous Bolsheviks?
Go on, pull the other one. It's got bells on.
Looking back over the past century, of all the horrors of war and repression, it's depressing to see how many of the means of those vile regimes, which brought such death and hardship to so many, have been adopted because they're so gosh darn effective.
Raise your hand if you thought VoIP was a really neat idea when it first came out.
Now raise your hand if you still think it is.
Granted it's not really too different from recording Voice, but now you could expect yourself to be extraordinarily rendered if you choose to encrypt your converstations because you have the gall to actually believe the government has no right to recording and storing your conversations, Dub's dirty tricks or not.
Hell, they'll probably outlaw encrypting your own phone calls, next, because (the flag waving) it's (an eagle poses rampant) in (strains of The Star Bangled Banner) the (In God We Trust) best(the blue angels fly overhead) interests (cascading images of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, etc.) of (Betsy Ross adds another star to her handicraft) America (fanfare of fife and drum) and everybody knows the real patriots don't question any of this.
"sir, you served potential enemies of uh-merika with strong encryption" and we can't be having that.
Ebay constantly in hot water would probably love to score some points with Washington, they're probably already serving tea and crumpets with the NSA right now, along with a side order of Skype backdoors.
dangerous times call for dangerous laws
You have no idea what you're talking about.
Clearly you have fallen hard from your turnip truck and struck your head quite forcefully. I see you as a complete apologist for those who are happy to legislate our freedoms into oblivion. Perhaps when they take away something you treasure you might at least grunt coherently before rolling over anyway. Not I.
The concept of fighting these sorts of violations of basic rights in court, rather then defeating in in committee or vote before house and/or senate is far more desireable as it eliminates the period of suppression prior to overturning, futher it eliminates any artifacts which may remain in place (as this will affect programmings, filtering and structure of information access) after subsequent overturn by a court. In these cases an ounce of prevention is truly worth more than a pound of cure.
There were a number of books that the school board had determined were too mature for young minds, but they didn't want to ban them outright.
Meanwhile, there are those who want to ban Harry Potter because it portrays witchcraft in a positive light. Never mind that there is the classic battle of Good vs. Evil taking place in Rowling's fantasy world and some of it implies violence on persons (Nearly-Headless Nick, not quite beheaded and the moaning ghost of the girl in the lav who commited suicide.) We have children 8 and 9 years old reading 900 page books, ffs!
Then there's the Holy Bible, all sorts of bad things in there, you can't read it without proper supervision, right? Might take away the wrong message and then where would the world be?
if I ask for any filter to be taken off something, they're legally obligated by federal law to comply.
No. They are not obligated by federal law to comply (under terms of this bill) they could decide they don't want to, or they could take all day about it. What rubbish, "as long as it's not illegal in that jurisdiction" -- this bill throws open the doors for each individual custodian of a public terminal to decide what is and is not objectionable to them. They could simply be pricks about it and you'd waste time and breath arguing it.
No, it takes away nothing. Ignoring the almost certain fact that it was passed merely as a promotional ploy with the full intent being that it be struck down with the first court challenge, anybody interpreting the educational clause that strictly would be easily overruled by even the most idiotically anti-freedom judge.
Here's a clue for you. For years there were laws on the books, Jim Crow laws, which were finally all struck down in the 1950's and 1960's. Nothing wrong immediately goes away just because it is wrong. Even this Gitmo anti-Geneva Convention fiasco has denied people Due Process for years. These things need to be fought before they are passed into law.
The time to fight is now, by writing to your senators and advising them to drop this like a bad habit before Dubya puts pen to it surrounded by a bunch of doe-eyed waifs on the White House lawn.
Yeah, and public libraries shouldn't stock fiction, such as trashy romance novels either.
I was a bit surprised, in retrospect, that Farley Mowat's book "Never Cry Wolf", a staple in middle schools glorifies an alcoholic beverage - Wolf Juice. Yet it wasn't pulled from shelves and classrooms (though with the whacks in charge these days, it may yet, despite the other lessons of the book) IIRC, another book I read, Enchanted Pilgrimage (Simak?) also had some passage about how good drink can be.
Carrie Nation would doubtless find a new lease on life with some of the ultra conservatives interfering with schools these days.
Of course, what your reactionary nonsense keenly disregards is the fact that, predominantly, MySpace is comprised of none of those things, and sites that are comprised predominantly of those things would fall into the "educational" clause that would merit their unblocking.
However, this is the thing: These sites can now simply all be thrown into the restricted bucket in one fell swoop. Everywhere you go you will have to request they review their policy on a particular site to allow you to access it from a public terminal. That's not a problem for you? You don't mind waiting while they deliberate, because your time has no other purpose or value?
Before you knee-jerk phrases like 'reactionary' you should see how you respond to bills and laws, which so easily take away that which would require time and effort to roll back at each individual turn.
By your argument, jails are just a haven for completely wonderful people who have never done anything wrong, since there's undoubtedly a tiny handful of inmates who were put in their wrongly.
What?
You know what the other boot looks like, don't you? After they have banned these sites and the move offshore, they'll pass another law, like Internet Gambling, to ban access to foreign internet social sites from public terminals.
All these years I wondered why the Librarian shushed people from talking in libraries. I didn't realise the plan was to prevent them from socially networking in a public place.