Are you kidding me? I can't find a link to the article, but a year or so ago in Africa somewhere, a woman accidentally dropped her cell phone into a public outhouse. She offered a reward for its retrieval (which came out to something like US$14), and three people died down there from inhaling noxious fumes trying to get it out. Petty greed is part of the human character, dogg.
I've found some of the SysInternals tools absolutely vital to running (much less debugging or cleaning virus remnants) a Windows system, I literally couldn't live without ProcessXP.
The solution is either to boot the detector from its own media (inconvenient if you want to scan your system for rootkits on any regular basis).
That's not necessarily the case. Initially when I thought about it, I was thinking "Hm, a USB dongle would be a great device for that, just boot to the dongle periodically, and have it scan the drives." Of course, that would only really prevent rootkits in home computers [possibly], because you're absolutely right, no one in their right mind is going to hire some dude to go around to all the workstations after hours and clean out machines with a physical device. But what about a network device? Something that could sit on a local area network (and obviously never, ever touch the outside world), and remotely scan workstations. It wouldn't necessarily need to be read-only (though it could be), you'd just have to have lots of protections in place (i.e. using quarantined memory spaces or even devices, so that scanning a cleverly infected machine couldn't trick the scanner into infecting other machines on the localnet).
If the iPod had been *my* invention, it would have taken me significantly longer to bring to market than it id Apple, who already had a development department, as well as fabrication deals overseas. Thusly, your method doesn't really hold for startups; also, we're not talking years, we're talking months. Something like November 2001 (iPod release) to April/May 2002 (Microsoft filing). But I do agree, the USPTO should show some discretion, for instance asking why on Earth Microsoft would hold off for months on filing a patent for inventions they'd supposedly been working on for at the very least months, if not years. Even if a competing product didn't exist, I'd make sure that as soon as I had some solid reasearch and design behind my "novel" invention, I'd be working out patent drafts with my IP lawyer.
Agreed that would make a little too much sense. I realize that it's "first to invent", but with a IP/Legal team like Microsoft's, I'd imagine that when they want a patent, they have a filing in the USPTO's mailbox by 3:45pm the same day. Thus, I can't imagine any court believing that TWO companies, both very much aware of patent law, sat on the same invention/patent filing, one of them already having a product using said covered invention already invented and shipping.
I mean really, with this logic, I could send dated, notarized legal correspondence with some plans on how the UI for a teleportation device would work, then not only wait until someone puts a product to market, but until it actually becomes widespread and profitable, before filing a patent for the technology, so long as the company that makes said teleporter forgets to file a patent.
1.) I'm confused at how this works. Apple introduced the iPod in 2001, filed for a patent in July of 2002, and was beat by Microsoft for the patent by two months, according to this article. But if the technology utilized in the iPod is infringing on the patent filed for in April/May of 2002, how can the iPod itself constitute prior art, seeing as it was already shipping. How does that work?
2.) The last sentence of the article states, So far, 21 million iPods have been sold worldwide, 18 million in the last year alone. Is THAT true? were there only 3 million iPods in the hands of consumers prior to January, 2004?
For the record, yes, you're right. But seeing as we're talking about SEC filings needing to cover worst-case scenarios which are highly improbable, and in many ways out of their hands (though not necessarily with regard to this particular case, yes Real could stop selling DRM circumvention), I think a more appropriate warning label might be, "Warning! Note that while statistically improbable, this 9V battery may at any time quantum-tunnel through your body!"
No, not really. Given the size of Microsoft's legal team, I wouldn't have been suprised if they would have put the $7 Million right back into the company, nor would I have moaned on Slashdot about it. In fact, in this case I'd _rather_ see it going back in Microsoft's pockets--especially into their security division--because they could put it to good use developing quality software. But no, as someone pointed out, this 'charity' is a drop in the bucket, both for what Microsoft can afford to give, and for what would actually be needed to create an effective body for fighting computer-related crimes. On top of that, yeah, this is basically a well thought-out PR move meant to bolster Microsoft's philanthropy ratings, making them look like the good guy for much less than a cheap ad campaign.
Oh, and for the record, 'charity' when coerced is called modern government, where the governing body efficiently and effectively takes care of their own (that is to say, the constituents, not the politicians), while being an upstanding member of the global community. Oh, to live in such a place.
Uh, no. Not at all. Not only is the Princeton book store affilliated with, but not owned by the university, but a large number of small-to-medium-sized colleges and universities don't or can't afford to own a dedicated book store; subsequently, there are branches of Barnes & Noble (and probably Borders) that own and operate _the_ campus bookstore. They may be affilliated with the school, but it's not another stream of revenue.
Uh, no. Wrong. This is "open source", actually..sort of. It's open source in the sense that, if you are a partner of VMWare, you're given royalty-free access to the source code, with the ability to share your modified code with the original codebase pool, and/or redistribute your modified code to your buyers, albeit only in binary form. So it *is* open source, at a certain level. It's just not 'viral', in fact, explicitly not so, I'd imagine (i.e. you're prohibited from distributing your modified source).
So again, it's open source, just not to the end-user. Nothing's stopping you from being granted access to the VMWare source code, except for your [probable] inability to move a large number of VMWare units. It's still in the open source spirit (just not GPL) if I sell you some software, give you the source, then contractually prohibit you from redistributing the source or binary forms of the code. Similarly, they're just rearranging the definition of 'buy' to 'resell', and limiting your ability to release source as a reseller. Sounds like a "mix of open-source and proprietary" to me.
This article (the expansion, especially) actually strikes a familiar chord, a day or so ago, I was checking my apache logs, and noted that over the past few weeks (maybe months), there have been a metric crapload of requests from Yahoo bots for pretty much everything public on the server. I've got a bunch of random crap on there, and I can guarantee that very little of it is relevant to anyone but me (and even that's iffy).
..except no one said anything about Open Source Software. The Hilfiger CIO called Linux out by name, and as others have pointed out, talking about the 'final tier' of an enterprise system and an operating system kernel in the same sentence is just downright silly. Non-FOSS Linux solutions do, in fact, exist. Again as others point out, has he checked out what RedHat, Novell, or IBM offer? I mean, that's the great thing about [most] copyleft-style licenses: you only need to release source for what you've modified to open source code.
While we're on the subject of Linux as a kernel, I remember a few years back when RMS was grumbling that everyone should say "GNU/Linux" instead of "Linux", and/. erupted in protest. Now everytime that someone badmouths "Linux" on the desktop or in the server room, everybody yells "BUT LINUX IS JUST THE KERNEL, STUPID!" That kind of irks me, I've always sort of agreed with Stallman on that point, to some degree.
Ummmm...the report said that 1/3 of illegal file-sharers spent more, and 2/3s spent less on overall music purchases. Of course, they coincidentally do not mention the margin by which illegal file-sharers' music spending is down. It's entirely possible, albeit unlikely, that the majority of that 2/3s buy one less record per year than they used to.
Also, factor this in: who's doing the counting? Are these just RIAA-affiliated labels? If I'm not mistaken, RIAA is the group that hands out gold and platinum records, if you sell 100,000 copies of a cd through independent distribution channels, you'll have to pat yourself on the back and buy some cheap vinyl and gold spraypaint. That being said, has the RIAA taken into account that *gasp* maybe some of their sales have gone to independent competitors? I was a college freshman the year during the days of Napster, Scour, etc. and almost all of what I downloaded eventually was from independent labels, it opened up a world of new music for me. Since then, the majority of what I buy is not affiliated with the RIAA..are they calling up independent labels and counting my cd purchases, or am I lost in the seething masses of evildoers who apparently buy less music than they used to (in this case, patently false).
The corporate world uses the crap out of Win2k. It's still supported, it runs just about everything current, save IE 7, and it runs one just about any commodity pc made in the past 7-8 years. That's really where the money is.
(obviously) if 10.000 plus people are using the same license key something is obviously wrong...except in the case that the license key is from a site license, in which there are expected to be lots of people with the same license key; and in the case of XP, these are copies which do not need to be activated. As you and someone else have mentioned, they will probably be attempting to look for machines which contain cracks, in most cases to subvert activation. Again though, in the case of a commercial copy, the activation code was never there (or, more accurately, wasn't 'activated', hee hee), so there won't be any code to be found that cracks this. Also, the majority of these licenses probably are legitimate, so unless Microsoft has a table of "Hey, this company passed around their site licensed copies of XP, and now it's all over the internet" entries, and checks through them, it's doubtful that these copies would have a problem.
I agree with you, but you present only edge cases that are, as you state, superceded by other laws. As someone else noted with the Little Richard anecdote (and there are other cases), you can't videotape someone in the bathroom, as it may contain images of them which they would need to authorize you to have taken, as dictated by more pertinent statutes. Also, the murder thing you mentioned isright-out, he stated that you have no right to privacy when entering someone's private property, last time I checked, your right to life was not a matter of privacy.
You _are_ right about not being able to sign away your rights in some circumstances, illegal contracts are illegal contracts, after all. Unfortunately, I would venture a guess that almost none of those clauses pertain to rights of privacy. You _can_, in fact, sign a contract by which someone videotapes you naked in their bathroom, vis-a-vis pornography. Similarly, someone can very legally sign away the right to not have a phone conversation taped while at your house (or anywhere, for that matter); in fact, I'm not even sure you have to enter an explicit agreement for that _not_ to be the case, using someone's private phone may imply that you agree to the terms of use (e.g. being tapped).
Back to the main point though, this is all a non-issue. What on EARTH do you expect to be going on on a game server that you would not want the company to know about? The only thing I can imagine that's private is your password, and hey, they need that to authenticate you. Furtheor, if you come into my convenience store I can monitor every blessed thing you do, save go to the bathroom (and in some states, I don't even have to provide you with a bathroom), as we've already established. Since not very many videogames offer the ability to use a toilet, what the heck do you expect privacy for?
I really hope this is a troll
on
Why FreeBSD
·
· Score: 1
Anyone who has ever been stuck in the perl dependancy hell will absolutely love the ports tree - I really don't understand why there hasn't been more adoption of that concept in Linux.
Huh? Perl what? Never had a problem with dpkg/apt myself...
Case of miscapitalization here, he [presumably] never had a problem with dependencies for perl (the interpreter, and for all intents and purposes, the associated libraries), rather for Perl, meaning that even using the CPAN module, getting new modules to work on an existing installation is a nightmare.
Also, I am suprised that Linux is the platform of choice for all of these appliances that companies are pumping out, like wireless routers, security devices, etc, when the BSD license is so much more attractive to business.
As usual the problem is drivers. Linux just has more.
Hmm...you've made a believer out of me, I'm switching to Linux, where apparently developers write drivers for the device that you yourself are developing before it's released.
From the "What Is AimFight?" section: What can fighting really prove? Using a complicated algorithm, AIM® Fight crawls through the depths of the Internet to answer the all-important question that plagues us all blah blah
Yee-ikes, traversing a tree is wicked hard. I'm glad I never had to learn to do anything like that in...oh, say..Comp Sci 1.
Why...on earth would anyone shorten Windows Vista to Windows VI? Your logic is blowing my mind...but besides that, everyone knows that the REAL power is in Windows EMACS; heck, it's so bloated, it's almost a full operating system!
..one guy makes this comment at 12:39 and gets a "Score: 5, Funny", and another guy posts the same comment at 12:40 (with only 1 comment posted between them, if you look at the cid) and gets a "Score: 0, Redundant".
Mrs. Krabappel: Now, on with the Science lesson: who can tell me the atomic weight of Bolonium? Martin: Ooh ooh ooh! Delicious? Mrs. Krabappel: Correct. I would also have accepted "snacktacular."
Slashdot Mirror
Are you kidding me? I can't find a link to the article, but a year or so ago in Africa somewhere, a woman accidentally dropped her cell phone into a public outhouse. She offered a reward for its retrieval (which came out to something like US$14), and three people died down there from inhaling noxious fumes trying to get it out. Petty greed is part of the human character, dogg.
I've found some of the SysInternals tools absolutely vital to running (much less debugging or cleaning virus remnants) a Windows system, I literally couldn't live without ProcessXP.
The solution is either to boot the detector from its own media (inconvenient if you want to scan your system for rootkits on any regular basis).
That's not necessarily the case. Initially when I thought about it, I was thinking "Hm, a USB dongle would be a great device for that, just boot to the dongle periodically, and have it scan the drives." Of course, that would only really prevent rootkits in home computers [possibly], because you're absolutely right, no one in their right mind is going to hire some dude to go around to all the workstations after hours and clean out machines with a physical device. But what about a network device? Something that could sit on a local area network (and obviously never, ever touch the outside world), and remotely scan workstations. It wouldn't necessarily need to be read-only (though it could be), you'd just have to have lots of protections in place (i.e. using quarantined memory spaces or even devices, so that scanning a cleverly infected machine couldn't trick the scanner into infecting other machines on the localnet).
Stop ripping me off, or I'll be forced to collect royalties.
If the iPod had been *my* invention, it would have taken me significantly longer to bring to market than it id Apple, who already had a development department, as well as fabrication deals overseas. Thusly, your method doesn't really hold for startups; also, we're not talking years, we're talking months. Something like November 2001 (iPod release) to April/May 2002 (Microsoft filing).
But I do agree, the USPTO should show some discretion, for instance asking why on Earth Microsoft would hold off for months on filing a patent for inventions they'd supposedly been working on for at the very least months, if not years. Even if a competing product didn't exist, I'd make sure that as soon as I had some solid reasearch and design behind my "novel" invention, I'd be working out patent drafts with my IP lawyer.
Agreed that would make a little too much sense. I realize that it's "first to invent", but with a IP/Legal team like Microsoft's, I'd imagine that when they want a patent, they have a filing in the USPTO's mailbox by 3:45pm the same day. Thus, I can't imagine any court believing that TWO companies, both very much aware of patent law, sat on the same invention/patent filing, one of them already having a product using said covered invention already invented and shipping.
I mean really, with this logic, I could send dated, notarized legal correspondence with some plans on how the UI for a teleportation device would work, then not only wait until someone puts a product to market, but until it actually becomes widespread and profitable, before filing a patent for the technology, so long as the company that makes said teleporter forgets to file a patent.
1.) I'm confused at how this works. Apple introduced the iPod in 2001, filed for a patent in July of 2002, and was beat by Microsoft for the patent by two months, according to this article. But if the technology utilized in the iPod is infringing on the patent filed for in April/May of 2002, how can the iPod itself constitute prior art, seeing as it was already shipping. How does that work?
2.) The last sentence of the article states, So far, 21 million iPods have been sold worldwide, 18 million in the last year alone. Is THAT true? were there only 3 million iPods in the hands of consumers prior to January, 2004?
You just can't publish and make a profit from information available regarding their CEO.
"warning! eating this battery may cause injury!"
For the record, yes, you're right. But seeing as we're talking about SEC filings needing to cover worst-case scenarios which are highly improbable, and in many ways out of their hands (though not necessarily with regard to this particular case, yes Real could stop selling DRM circumvention), I think a more appropriate warning label might be,
"Warning! Note that while statistically improbable, this 9V battery may at any time quantum-tunnel through your body!"
No, not really. Given the size of Microsoft's legal team, I wouldn't have been suprised if they would have put the $7 Million right back into the company, nor would I have moaned on Slashdot about it. In fact, in this case I'd _rather_ see it going back in Microsoft's pockets--especially into their security division--because they could put it to good use developing quality software. But no, as someone pointed out, this 'charity' is a drop in the bucket, both for what Microsoft can afford to give, and for what would actually be needed to create an effective body for fighting computer-related crimes. On top of that, yeah, this is basically a well thought-out PR move meant to bolster Microsoft's philanthropy ratings, making them look like the good guy for much less than a cheap ad campaign.
Oh, and for the record, 'charity' when coerced is called modern government, where the governing body efficiently and effectively takes care of their own (that is to say, the constituents, not the politicians), while being an upstanding member of the global community. Oh, to live in such a place.
Uh, no. Not at all. Not only is the Princeton book store affilliated with, but not owned by the university, but a large number of small-to-medium-sized colleges and universities don't or can't afford to own a dedicated book store; subsequently, there are branches of Barnes & Noble (and probably Borders) that own and operate _the_ campus bookstore. They may be affilliated with the school, but it's not another stream of revenue.
Uh, no. Wrong. This is "open source", actually..sort of. It's open source in the sense that, if you are a partner of VMWare, you're given royalty-free access to the source code, with the ability to share your modified code with the original codebase pool, and/or redistribute your modified code to your buyers, albeit only in binary form. So it *is* open source, at a certain level. It's just not 'viral', in fact, explicitly not so, I'd imagine (i.e. you're prohibited from distributing your modified source).
So again, it's open source, just not to the end-user. Nothing's stopping you from being granted access to the VMWare source code, except for your [probable] inability to move a large number of VMWare units. It's still in the open source spirit (just not GPL) if I sell you some software, give you the source, then contractually prohibit you from redistributing the source or binary forms of the code. Similarly, they're just rearranging the definition of 'buy' to 'resell', and limiting your ability to release source as a reseller. Sounds like a "mix of open-source and proprietary" to me.
Of course, 'best' is a subjective term here..
This article (the expansion, especially) actually strikes a familiar chord, a day or so ago, I was checking my apache logs, and noted that over the past few weeks (maybe months), there have been a metric crapload of requests from Yahoo bots for pretty much everything public on the server. I've got a bunch of random crap on there, and I can guarantee that very little of it is relevant to anyone but me (and even that's iffy).
..except no one said anything about Open Source Software. The Hilfiger CIO called Linux out by name, and as others have pointed out, talking about the 'final tier' of an enterprise system and an operating system kernel in the same sentence is just downright silly. Non-FOSS Linux solutions do, in fact, exist. Again as others point out, has he checked out what RedHat, Novell, or IBM offer? I mean, that's the great thing about [most] copyleft-style licenses: you only need to release source for what you've modified to open source code.
/. erupted in protest. Now everytime that someone badmouths "Linux" on the desktop or in the server room, everybody yells "BUT LINUX IS JUST THE KERNEL, STUPID!" That kind of irks me, I've always sort of agreed with Stallman on that point, to some degree.
While we're on the subject of Linux as a kernel, I remember a few years back when RMS was grumbling that everyone should say "GNU/Linux" instead of "Linux", and
Ummmm...the report said that 1/3 of illegal file-sharers spent more, and 2/3s spent less on overall music purchases. Of course, they coincidentally do not mention the margin by which illegal file-sharers' music spending is down. It's entirely possible, albeit unlikely, that the majority of that 2/3s buy one less record per year than they used to.
Also, factor this in: who's doing the counting? Are these just RIAA-affiliated labels? If I'm not mistaken, RIAA is the group that hands out gold and platinum records, if you sell 100,000 copies of a cd through independent distribution channels, you'll have to pat yourself on the back and buy some cheap vinyl and gold spraypaint. That being said, has the RIAA taken into account that *gasp* maybe some of their sales have gone to independent competitors? I was a college freshman the year during the days of Napster, Scour, etc. and almost all of what I downloaded eventually was from independent labels, it opened up a world of new music for me. Since then, the majority of what I buy is not affiliated with the RIAA..are they calling up independent labels and counting my cd purchases, or am I lost in the seething masses of evildoers who apparently buy less music than they used to (in this case, patently false).
having forced myself into a very uncomfortable place. ..like the back of a Volkswagen?
W r o n g
Oh, wait, did you mean Eminem? Oh, I'm sorry 'homey'. My bad, 'dogg'.
The corporate world uses the crap out of Win2k. It's still supported, it runs just about everything current, save IE 7, and it runs one just about any commodity pc made in the past 7-8 years. That's really where the money is.
(obviously) if 10.000 plus people are using the same license key something is obviously wrong. ..except in the case that the license key is from a site license, in which there are expected to be lots of people with the same license key; and in the case of XP, these are copies which do not need to be activated. As you and someone else have mentioned, they will probably be attempting to look for machines which contain cracks, in most cases to subvert activation. Again though, in the case of a commercial copy, the activation code was never there (or, more accurately, wasn't 'activated', hee hee), so there won't be any code to be found that cracks this. Also, the majority of these licenses probably are legitimate, so unless Microsoft has a table of "Hey, this company passed around their site licensed copies of XP, and now it's all over the internet" entries, and checks through them, it's doubtful that these copies would have a problem.
I agree with you, but you present only edge cases that are, as you state, superceded by other laws. As someone else noted with the Little Richard anecdote (and there are other cases), you can't videotape someone in the bathroom, as it may contain images of them which they would need to authorize you to have taken, as dictated by more pertinent statutes. Also, the murder thing you mentioned isright-out, he stated that you have no right to privacy when entering someone's private property, last time I checked, your right to life was not a matter of privacy.
You _are_ right about not being able to sign away your rights in some circumstances, illegal contracts are illegal contracts, after all. Unfortunately, I would venture a guess that almost none of those clauses pertain to rights of privacy. You _can_, in fact, sign a contract by which someone videotapes you naked in their bathroom, vis-a-vis pornography. Similarly, someone can very legally sign away the right to not have a phone conversation taped while at your house (or anywhere, for that matter); in fact, I'm not even sure you have to enter an explicit agreement for that _not_ to be the case, using someone's private phone may imply that you agree to the terms of use (e.g. being tapped).
Back to the main point though, this is all a non-issue. What on EARTH do you expect to be going on on a game server that you would not want the company to know about? The only thing I can imagine that's private is your password, and hey, they need that to authenticate you. Furtheor, if you come into my convenience store I can monitor every blessed thing you do, save go to the bathroom (and in some states, I don't even have to provide you with a bathroom), as we've already established. Since not very many videogames offer the ability to use a toilet, what the heck do you expect privacy for?
Anyone who has ever been stuck in the perl dependancy hell will absolutely love the ports tree - I really don't understand why there hasn't been more adoption of that concept in Linux.
Huh? Perl what? Never had a problem with dpkg/apt myself...
Case of miscapitalization here, he [presumably] never had a problem with dependencies for perl (the interpreter, and for all intents and purposes, the associated libraries), rather for Perl, meaning that even using the CPAN module, getting new modules to work on an existing installation is a nightmare.
Also, I am suprised that Linux is the platform of choice for all of these appliances that companies are pumping out, like wireless routers, security devices, etc, when the BSD license is so much more attractive to business.
As usual the problem is drivers. Linux just has more.
Hmm...you've made a believer out of me, I'm switching to Linux, where apparently developers write drivers for the device that you yourself are developing before it's released.
From the "What Is AimFight?" section:
What can fighting really prove? Using a complicated algorithm, AIM® Fight crawls through the depths of the Internet to answer the all-important question that plagues us all blah blah
Yee-ikes, traversing a tree is wicked hard. I'm glad I never had to learn to do anything like that in...oh, say..Comp Sci 1.
Windows Vista will likely be shortened to:
..but besides that, everyone knows that the REAL power is in Windows EMACS; heck, it's so bloated, it's almost a full operating system!
Windows VI
Why...on earth would anyone shorten Windows Vista to Windows VI? Your logic is blowing my mind.
..one guy makes this comment at 12:39 and gets a "Score: 5, Funny", and another guy posts the same comment at 12:40 (with only 1 comment posted between them, if you look at the cid) and gets a "Score: 0, Redundant".
Mrs. Krabappel: Now, on with the Science lesson: who can tell me the atomic weight of Bolonium?
Martin: Ooh ooh ooh! Delicious?
Mrs. Krabappel: Correct. I would also have accepted "snacktacular."