Since the only point of contact is the lawyer himself, you raise an interesting question: Does attorney/client privilege extend all the way to protecting the identity of the client?
I would assume no. To say otherwise would mean that anyone could file an anonymous suit, and be protected from punishment if the suit turns out to be frivolous. But I'm totally speculating.
Sure, theoretically you could set up a whole trading network that way. The difference is, the P2P clients vastly lower the barrier to participation by requiring far less time and technological sophistication.
To say that they don't make any difference at all makes about as much sense as saying that a CD burner shouldn't be scrutinized for possible infringing uses because you could have just gone and made friends with all the artists, and had them each give you a copy of the CD.
I honestly don't see how your argument says anything about the RIAA in particular. Everybody and their dog borrow names in such a way as to confuse search engines. How easy is it to find a website about the island of Java? Or information about red, juicy apples?
As an argument against the behavior of the music industry, this one isn't even coherent.
"If everyone uses free software, and nothing but free software...where do all the programmers go?"
You've completely missed the whole point of "free software." It's not about "giving away your hard work without compensation." It's about not placing encumbrances on those who receive the software from you.
"I like getting paid to write software. If nobody bought software, I guess that programming would be a 'hobby' and not a 'profession'."
I'm still a bit confused by your position. As long as there are things software doesn't yet do, somebody is going to have financial incentive to pay you to write it. And if there is something that software can already do, why in God's name should anyone have to pay you to re-implement it?
Or, in the instance of buggy code, people are still going to be paying people money to fix them. The only difference is, in the brave new world of free software, the person with the problem can go to any of a thousand programmers to get the fix, rather than having to go to the owner of the source code.
"I think the free software people are idiots. Kinda the same if 1/2 the plumbers in the world went around doing the job for nothing- because 'everyone should have water'."
Well, I think the proprietary people are, erm...well, not really idiots. Let's just say we don't share the same values. To play with your analogy, it's the same as a plumber installing the pipes in your house, then forcing you to sign a contract stating that you cannot modify the plumbing system yourself or go to any competing plumber to fix a problem.
But the analogy you're using doesn't map very well. With plumbers and plumbing, if a person goes to one house and fixes all the leaks and adds stubs for the new bathroom the house owner is planning, that benefits only the owner of that specific house. Because code can be copied with almost zero marginal cost, making improvements to the code benefits everyone.
Unlike the plumbing scenario, this one raises the question, "How many times should a person be paid for the same work?"
"I like getting paid to write code. I'm pretty sure that a lot of other people do. If the companies don't sell the products, and make a lot of money, then the whole idea of a paid programmer will go away. That would be a bummer."
I believe that the vast majority of software (something on the order of 80%) is written entirely for in-house needs. People are being paid to write that software, and being paid well. There will always be situations where free software widget X doesn't do quite what is needed. Unpaid developers are going to work on whatever they happen to find interesting, and his interests are seldom going to coincide with those of the company wanting the new feature. If the company wants the feature, they have to fork over some cash to get to the front of the line.
So why the hell do you want to give your work away for free? That's some crack that I ain't smokin'.
There have been a lot of surveys on precisely this question (minus the crack pipe). The important reasons, in no particular order, are:
1) To show off, and get some fame among software enthusiasts. 2) To work on something interesting and useful to them, rather than "yet another e-business solution." 3) To make the world a hippy utopia. 4) To hone skills. 5) Intellectual challenge.
Now, as a self-professed desirer of paychecks, you might be most interested in #1. A sense of community often develops around projects. People are recognized for their work. People make a name for themselves by producing code. When said highly credible people find themselves between jobs, they have a community of friends in the software industry.
Oh, and being able to say "I built feature X into project Y" sounds
"The first thing they did was to bring a large stone and try to smash up the computer," said Mike Phillips, director of the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technology. "But I think that can be seen as a very definite act of creativity."
[...]
And even if there was little an editor could do with the results, the monkeys have found a publisher. Their collected works will be printed as Notes Towards the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
Good point. "Free software" is so easy to misinterpret because most listeners automatically think $0. "Open source" requires further explanation as well.
Perhaps we could all start calling it "Freedom software." Unfortunately, it sounds a bit corny, and in a few months people would be asking why we haven't switched it back to "French software."
I thought XP had CD-burning software, graphics editing software (if you bother to count MS Paint), a command line FTP client, Outlook (an Evolution clone:P ), and a bare bones telnet client. There's also Windows Media Player (which I despise, but is probably more user friendly than the Linux equivalents) and the server version comes with IIS (okay, it's no Apache).
Still, having an office suite and a trainload of development tools installed right out of the gate doesn't suck. Overall, your point is well taken. But there's a bit of exaggeration in there.
The ideal would be for the driver to pop up a scary warning that says, "This cartridge is past its expiration date, and the quality of your printing may suffer as a result. The cartridge is 43% full. Continue?" Have it pop up about once a week. That way, consumers will have to blame bad printing on their own cheapskatiness.
Okay, let's analyze the economics here. HP stole a bunch of the printer market from other companies, not because they showed that the consumers would rather pay for ink, but because their business plan made it easy for them to hide the total costs of owning their printers from the consumer.
As a "consumer," I would much rather pay $500 for a quality piece of printing hardware than pay $50 for an ounce-and-a-half of "dirty water."
HP is *not* entitled to protect its ink sales. If it wants to make money on ink rather than hardware, then let them try. But they should have to compete on the quality and value of their ink cartridges. Giving them a legal monopoly on HP-compatable cartridges isn't just immoral, it's illegal.
I would definitely buy one of your printers. Unfortunately, most consumers are going to look at your pricetag (which happens to be $200 higher than the competition) and assume that you're a scammer out to make a quick buck, even though yours is the more ethical business model.
Of course, advertising properly would be helpful. Just print up a big, friendly chart showing the total costs over 1 year, two years, and four years.
Also, you would want to have some sort of cartridge certification program. Otherwise, 3rd party vendors would be selling crappy ink, half-full cartridges, and driving the quality manufacturers into the ground.
I just got done reading Lawrence Lessig's "The Future of Ideas." It explains pretty well what's going on right here.
Back when AT&T had a monopoly on both the phone lines and the devices that could and could not connect to them, there was nothing in the way of innovation. The network grew and evolved precisely the way AT&T desired, and everyone just assumed that they knew how best to evolve the network because they were the phone company for god's sake.
Then a few people on the inside came up with the idea that stupid, packet-switched networks would be much more efficient than "intelligent," connection-based networks. The intelligence built into each point of the system actually turned the whole into a rigid, inflexible system where a change in the operation at one point could cause unwanted effects throughout. The packet-switched network, on the other hand, would be robust and flexible because it was simple. Like today's (ideal) Internet, all the intelligence would be built into the systems at the "edge" of the network.
The Powers That Were recognized that this would be a better system. They also recognized that the system was more difficult to control. By building a packet-switched network, they would be creating their own biggest competitor.
Eventually, people started recognizing that AT&T was making decisions based on what was best for AT&T, not for the customers or the network. One of the critical points Lessig made was that, because nobody could install a new device onto the phone network without AT&T's express permission, nobody but AT&T bothered to research such devices. One of the saddest examples in the book was the lawsuit AT&T brought against a small company. It's only product was a small plastic clip that you could hook onto the handset to muffle ambient noise. However, it was being attached to AT&T's phone, and therefore was an illegal device that could not be installed on its network.
So when the monopoly was broken up, the scope of the phone company was limited. Customers were allowed to add whatever devices wouldn't disrupt the network for other users (think modems), and strict limits were placed on what the company could do. For example, they couldn't charge more for a call to an ISP than to a regular customer. So in a sense, the AT&T breakup is what allowed the Internet to overlay itself on top of the phone system.
The advantages of an open, equal-access Internet are obvious to everyone who doesn't own telecommunications infrastructure. Those companies are committing themselves to passing legislation like the new "Super DMCA" so that they can have absolute control over the networks they build out.
There are advantages to this, of course. Such regulations make it more likely that the money they invest in new infrastructure will return a good profit. Without that incentive, there is a lot of cable that would never be laid. On the other hand, when a programmer comes up with a really powerful new use for the Internet, companies which own the wires want to have veto power over that new innovation. If it doesn't serve their interests, they don't want to have to carry it. This ends up stifling overall innovation.
There are huge disadvantages to a truly stupid network, where no packet is ever analyzed and every spam has a clear path to your inbox. But even greater problems are inherent in a tightly controlled network where all things not forbidden are compulsory. But most of the problems of a free network can be limited by reworking the protocols used on the edge of the network. But if a cable Internet provider decides to limit you to ten minutes a month of streaming video so that you'll have an incentive to buy their TV package, there's nothing you can do short of switching providers.
As the AT&T breakup shows, regulation doesn't necessarily stifle innovation, and can actually help it to flourish. I'm fully in favor of limiting the sort of restric
Of course, most car crashes are caused by user inattention/incompetence. A smaller number are caused by people driving badly maintained cares. Manufacturer defects are way down the list.
If 50,000 people died every year from manufacturer defects in cars, my hunch is it would be front page news every day until it stopped.
My belief is, when they start letting computers do the driving, the accident rate is going to go way down, but every car crash is going to make the front page.
Though I don't believe that the GPL says anything about "branding," trademark law would make it possible for someone running an open source project to refuse to let any "derivative works" use the original, trademarked name. For example, Linus Torvalds owns the trademark to the name "Linux," and he could force anyone writing a derivative kernel to choose another name.
"Luxuriosity OS," anyone?
I cracked up when I saw the ad for LuxuriosityOffice. It's not clear that he's adding anything of value other than "full support and refund services." The latter, at least, is totally useless since it can be had for free. Nor can I imagine him setting up any sort of support.
It looks like he's given the same treatment to GIMP and Audacity [current auctions] I must say, the girl on the CD case is pretty hot.
Finally, check out one of his other entrepreneurial pasttimes: I turn you into a supermodel! Conclusion: Strange guy.
How does a kernel recompile work under this scenario? You're not going to be able to sign it "Signed by Linus" yourself. That would be stupid. You're not going to be able to download a perfectly customized and signed kernel from another source, so long as CPUs and bandwidth are factors.
So it sounds to me like the choice is between having the freedom to tweak your own software, and being able to run all these "signed apps."
The difference between racism and geneticism is that whatever differences there are between different races, they are so miniscule that you cannot justify using them to discern a person's fitness for a job.
But if genetic engineering is successful, and we were able to jack the IQ of GMPs (Genetically Modified People) up to 180, it would be very difficult to argue that discrimination wasn't rational. If it's good to have the smartest people possible in important positions, then it would be a waste of effort to look at a resume that doesn't have "100% Grade A Genes" stamped on the top.
Or, if they were to engineer a substantial number of seven foot tall people with lightning reflexes, a basketball team wouldn't lose much talent by instituting a "no norms" policy.
Right now, it's hardly an issue. We're just not good enough at genetic engineering to fix even blatant genetic defects, much less producing people to specification. But I think it will happen in our lifetimes, and it's good to start asking tough questions.
On an unrelated note, it's also good to start killing off some of the nasty memes I've seen about GMPs. Like the guy in a recent newspaper editorial I read who claimed that clones could never have souls. But I'll save that rant for another day.
Ignore all those people who swear you can get away with not going to your municipality's zoning commission. The first thing you need to do is go in and get permission to build a twelve story glass cubicle farm in your back yard.
You'll still be working out of your basement, of course. The new building's sole function is to hold patent lawyers. These days, you'll need every one of them just to stay alive.
The fact is, there is nothing in the System V codebase worth adding to Linux. I don't know if System V has even been actively worked on in the last couple of decades.
If you read the last bit of the article, the dude is claiming that SCO has the right to demand royalties on all distributions of Linux, and implies that they would be demanding licensing fees if any of the distros were making money.
Finally, he claims that System V is the basis of all the OS'es not developed by Microsoft. This is patently false. BSD was already sued for IP infringements on System V code, and when all was said and done, BSD had to re-implement three or four source files. That was back in 1992. More
It's not so simple as "copyright infringement." According to SCO, IBM has a license with them to distribute a version of UNIX, because they have a license to use SCO's (basically irrelevant) code base. Not the code base that SCO is selling. They're talking about the original code from Bell Labs, that every derivative of UNIX is based on. (excluding BSD, which was already sued, and already removed every trace of the original Bell Labs code).
Now, IBM has their AIX team. Whatever relationship their code has to the original Bell Labs code, AIX is now light years ahead. None--I repeat, NONE--of the "improvements" to Linux that SCO is suing over were present in that original code base. So basically they're claiming that IBM's license to the original Bell Labs code gives SCO ownership of all the improvements IBM made.
That is effectively the entire claim of the case: SCO owns AIX, even though IBM developed it all by themselves. I'm guessing if the license actually came close to saying what SCO is now claiming, IBM would have ripped out what (very little) Bell Labs code was in AIX a decade ago.
The problem is, they're not claiming specific problems with specific code. They're claiming ownership of "Unix." According to the lawsuit, IBM has a license with SCO to distribute IBM's own version of Unix (AIX). This stems from the fact that every version of Unix is a descendant of Bell Labs' original code. That's the code that SCO now owns.
Now, the simple fact is that SCO's code base is irrelevant. Many of the "high performance" features (SMP, NUMA, journalled file systems, etc.) that they claim IBM put into Linux aren't present in the original Bell Labs code, or even in SCO's latest-and-greatest OS offering.
So my impression is that SCO is actually claiming ownership of all of IBM's improvements, and charging that those improvements were illegally added to Linux.
Sounds stupid? It is.
[Note: any errors of fact are directly attributable to me not knowing of what I speak.]
None of this would have happened if they'd just named it "The Flaming Ostrich" like I suggested. Now they've gone and set up this whole dramatic showdown, and the only resolution is to combine the two projects into one.
Hmm... What sort of functionality would you get if you took a browser and slapped in a database backend? If it was handled wrong, you'd end up having to type:
SELECT * FROM websites WHERE domainname = "slashdot.org"
Why should it matter how many patents a company has? This company Northrup has set up, it doesn't manufacture anything but lawsuits. So IBM's patents aren't going to be much of an impediment.
The governor doesn't need to be corrupt for a bit of "access and influence" to have a grossly disproportionate influence on the governor's decision. When it comes to complex matters of public policy, no politician has the time or energy to become an expert on even one or two fields, especially after you subtract all the time spent grubbing for contributions.
Instead, politicians generally have to defer to "experts" on unfamiliar matters like technology policy. So a "suggestion" from an informed-sounding lobbyist, backed by a few thousand dollars of "access," can be quite persuasive.
It's really time to yank the money out of politics. McCain-Feingold didn't go nearly far enough. If, as proponents of the current system claim, "money is a form of speech," corporate interests are carrying huge friggin' megaphones and shoving the rest of us out of the conversation. And it's depressing to see our elected representative spending several hours a day dialing for dollars rather than studying the legislation they're going to vote on.
Just a thought: Maybe publically financed elections are the way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
Since the only point of contact is the lawyer himself, you raise an interesting question: Does attorney/client privilege extend all the way to protecting the identity of the client?
I would assume no. To say otherwise would mean that anyone could file an anonymous suit, and be protected from punishment if the suit turns out to be frivolous. But I'm totally speculating.
Sure, theoretically you could set up a whole trading network that way. The difference is, the P2P clients vastly lower the barrier to participation by requiring far less time and technological sophistication.
To say that they don't make any difference at all makes about as much sense as saying that a CD burner shouldn't be scrutinized for possible infringing uses because you could have just gone and made friends with all the artists, and had them each give you a copy of the CD.
Hmm. Ugly baby.
I honestly don't see how your argument says anything about the RIAA in particular. Everybody and their dog borrow names in such a way as to confuse search engines. How easy is it to find a website about the island of Java? Or information about red, juicy apples?
As an argument against the behavior of the music industry, this one isn't even coherent.
You've completely missed the whole point of "free software." It's not about "giving away your hard work without compensation." It's about not placing encumbrances on those who receive the software from you.
I'm still a bit confused by your position. As long as there are things software doesn't yet do, somebody is going to have financial incentive to pay you to write it. And if there is something that software can already do, why in God's name should anyone have to pay you to re-implement it?
Or, in the instance of buggy code, people are still going to be paying people money to fix them. The only difference is, in the brave new world of free software, the person with the problem can go to any of a thousand programmers to get the fix, rather than having to go to the owner of the source code.
Well, I think the proprietary people are, erm...well, not really idiots. Let's just say we don't share the same values. To play with your analogy, it's the same as a plumber installing the pipes in your house, then forcing you to sign a contract stating that you cannot modify the plumbing system yourself or go to any competing plumber to fix a problem.
But the analogy you're using doesn't map very well. With plumbers and plumbing, if a person goes to one house and fixes all the leaks and adds stubs for the new bathroom the house owner is planning, that benefits only the owner of that specific house. Because code can be copied with almost zero marginal cost, making improvements to the code benefits everyone.
Unlike the plumbing scenario, this one raises the question, "How many times should a person be paid for the same work?"
I believe that the vast majority of software (something on the order of 80%) is written entirely for in-house needs. People are being paid to write that software, and being paid well. There will always be situations where free software widget X doesn't do quite what is needed. Unpaid developers are going to work on whatever they happen to find interesting, and his interests are seldom going to coincide with those of the company wanting the new feature. If the company wants the feature, they have to fork over some cash to get to the front of the line.
There have been a lot of surveys on precisely this question (minus the crack pipe). The important reasons, in no particular order, are:
1) To show off, and get some fame among software enthusiasts.
2) To work on something interesting and useful to them, rather than "yet another e-business solution."
3) To make the world a hippy utopia.
4) To hone skills.
5) Intellectual challenge.
Now, as a self-professed desirer of paychecks, you might be most interested in #1. A sense of community often develops around projects. People are recognized for their work. People make a name for themselves by producing code. When said highly credible people find themselves between jobs, they have a community of friends in the software industry.
Oh, and being able to say "I built feature X into project Y" sounds
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/05/09/monkey_typis
My favorite lines:
Good point. "Free software" is so easy to misinterpret because most listeners automatically think $0. "Open source" requires further explanation as well.
Perhaps we could all start calling it "Freedom software." Unfortunately, it sounds a bit corny, and in a few months people would be asking why we haven't switched it back to "French software."
Sigh. You just can't win.
I thought XP had CD-burning software, graphics editing software (if you bother to count MS Paint), a command line FTP client, Outlook (an Evolution clone :P ), and a bare bones telnet client. There's also Windows Media Player (which I despise, but is probably more user friendly than the Linux equivalents) and the server version comes with IIS (okay, it's no Apache).
Still, having an office suite and a trainload of development tools installed right out of the gate doesn't suck. Overall, your point is well taken. But there's a bit of exaggeration in there.
Actually, for quite a while now.
The ideal would be for the driver to pop up a scary warning that says, "This cartridge is past its expiration date, and the quality of your printing may suffer as a result. The cartridge is 43% full. Continue?" Have it pop up about once a week. That way, consumers will have to blame bad printing on their own cheapskatiness.
Okay, let's analyze the economics here. HP stole a bunch of the printer market from other companies, not because they showed that the consumers would rather pay for ink, but because their business plan made it easy for them to hide the total costs of owning their printers from the consumer.
As a "consumer," I would much rather pay $500 for a quality piece of printing hardware than pay $50 for an ounce-and-a-half of "dirty water."
HP is *not* entitled to protect its ink sales. If it wants to make money on ink rather than hardware, then let them try. But they should have to compete on the quality and value of their ink cartridges. Giving them a legal monopoly on HP-compatable cartridges isn't just immoral, it's illegal.
I would definitely buy one of your printers. Unfortunately, most consumers are going to look at your pricetag (which happens to be $200 higher than the competition) and assume that you're a scammer out to make a quick buck, even though yours is the more ethical business model.
Of course, advertising properly would be helpful. Just print up a big, friendly chart showing the total costs over 1 year, two years, and four years.
Also, you would want to have some sort of cartridge certification program. Otherwise, 3rd party vendors would be selling crappy ink, half-full cartridges, and driving the quality manufacturers into the ground.
As soon as you savages get yourselves a second button on your mice, I will consider your proposal.
I just got done reading Lawrence Lessig's "The Future of Ideas." It explains pretty well what's going on right here.
Back when AT&T had a monopoly on both the phone lines and the devices that could and could not connect to them, there was nothing in the way of innovation. The network grew and evolved precisely the way AT&T desired, and everyone just assumed that they knew how best to evolve the network because they were the phone company for god's sake.
Then a few people on the inside came up with the idea that stupid, packet-switched networks would be much more efficient than "intelligent," connection-based networks. The intelligence built into each point of the system actually turned the whole into a rigid, inflexible system where a change in the operation at one point could cause unwanted effects throughout. The packet-switched network, on the other hand, would be robust and flexible because it was simple. Like today's (ideal) Internet, all the intelligence would be built into the systems at the "edge" of the network.
The Powers That Were recognized that this would be a better system. They also recognized that the system was more difficult to control. By building a packet-switched network, they would be creating their own biggest competitor.
Eventually, people started recognizing that AT&T was making decisions based on what was best for AT&T, not for the customers or the network. One of the critical points Lessig made was that, because nobody could install a new device onto the phone network without AT&T's express permission, nobody but AT&T bothered to research such devices. One of the saddest examples in the book was the lawsuit AT&T brought against a small company. It's only product was a small plastic clip that you could hook onto the handset to muffle ambient noise. However, it was being attached to AT&T's phone, and therefore was an illegal device that could not be installed on its network.
So when the monopoly was broken up, the scope of the phone company was limited. Customers were allowed to add whatever devices wouldn't disrupt the network for other users (think modems), and strict limits were placed on what the company could do. For example, they couldn't charge more for a call to an ISP than to a regular customer. So in a sense, the AT&T breakup is what allowed the Internet to overlay itself on top of the phone system.
The advantages of an open, equal-access Internet are obvious to everyone who doesn't own telecommunications infrastructure. Those companies are committing themselves to passing legislation like the new "Super DMCA" so that they can have absolute control over the networks they build out.
There are advantages to this, of course. Such regulations make it more likely that the money they invest in new infrastructure will return a good profit. Without that incentive, there is a lot of cable that would never be laid. On the other hand, when a programmer comes up with a really powerful new use for the Internet, companies which own the wires want to have veto power over that new innovation. If it doesn't serve their interests, they don't want to have to carry it. This ends up stifling overall innovation.
There are huge disadvantages to a truly stupid network, where no packet is ever analyzed and every spam has a clear path to your inbox. But even greater problems are inherent in a tightly controlled network where all things not forbidden are compulsory. But most of the problems of a free network can be limited by reworking the protocols used on the edge of the network. But if a cable Internet provider decides to limit you to ten minutes a month of streaming video so that you'll have an incentive to buy their TV package, there's nothing you can do short of switching providers.
As the AT&T breakup shows, regulation doesn't necessarily stifle innovation, and can actually help it to flourish. I'm fully in favor of limiting the sort of restric
Of course, most car crashes are caused by user inattention/incompetence. A smaller number are caused by people driving badly maintained cares. Manufacturer defects are way down the list.
If 50,000 people died every year from manufacturer defects in cars, my hunch is it would be front page news every day until it stopped.
My belief is, when they start letting computers do the driving, the accident rate is going to go way down, but every car crash is going to make the front page.
Though I don't believe that the GPL says anything about "branding," trademark law would make it possible for someone running an open source project to refuse to let any "derivative works" use the original, trademarked name. For example, Linus Torvalds owns the trademark to the name "Linux," and he could force anyone writing a derivative kernel to choose another name.
"Luxuriosity OS," anyone?
I cracked up when I saw the ad for LuxuriosityOffice. It's not clear that he's adding anything of value other than "full support and refund services." The latter, at least, is totally useless since it can be had for free. Nor can I imagine him setting up any sort of support.
It looks like he's given the same treatment to GIMP and Audacity [current auctions] I must say, the girl on the CD case is pretty hot.
Finally, check out one of his other entrepreneurial pasttimes: I turn you into a supermodel! Conclusion: Strange guy.
Okay, I have to demand a reference for this: What critic "acclaimed" Street Fighter? C'mon, name one. I dare you.
Come to think of it, I'm hard pressed to think of any critically acclaimed Van Damme movies.
The video game I'd most like to see brought to the big screen? Easy. Bubble Bobble.
How does a kernel recompile work under this scenario? You're not going to be able to sign it "Signed by Linus" yourself. That would be stupid. You're not going to be able to download a perfectly customized and signed kernel from another source, so long as CPUs and bandwidth are factors.
So it sounds to me like the choice is between having the freedom to tweak your own software, and being able to run all these "signed apps."
If only it was that simple.
The difference between racism and geneticism is that whatever differences there are between different races, they are so miniscule that you cannot justify using them to discern a person's fitness for a job.
But if genetic engineering is successful, and we were able to jack the IQ of GMPs (Genetically Modified People) up to 180, it would be very difficult to argue that discrimination wasn't rational. If it's good to have the smartest people possible in important positions, then it would be a waste of effort to look at a resume that doesn't have "100% Grade A Genes" stamped on the top.
Or, if they were to engineer a substantial number of seven foot tall people with lightning reflexes, a basketball team wouldn't lose much talent by instituting a "no norms" policy.
Right now, it's hardly an issue. We're just not good enough at genetic engineering to fix even blatant genetic defects, much less producing people to specification. But I think it will happen in our lifetimes, and it's good to start asking tough questions.
On an unrelated note, it's also good to start killing off some of the nasty memes I've seen about GMPs. Like the guy in a recent newspaper editorial I read who claimed that clones could never have souls. But I'll save that rant for another day.
Ignore all those people who swear you can get away with not going to your municipality's zoning commission. The first thing you need to do is go in and get permission to build a twelve story glass cubicle farm in your back yard.
You'll still be working out of your basement, of course. The new building's sole function is to hold patent lawyers. These days, you'll need every one of them just to stay alive.
The fact is, there is nothing in the System V codebase worth adding to Linux. I don't know if System V has even been actively worked on in the last couple of decades.
If you read the last bit of the article, the dude is claiming that SCO has the right to demand royalties on all distributions of Linux, and implies that they would be demanding licensing fees if any of the distros were making money.
Finally, he claims that System V is the basis of all the OS'es not developed by Microsoft. This is patently false. BSD was already sued for IP infringements on System V code, and when all was said and done, BSD had to re-implement three or four source files. That was back in 1992. More
It's not so simple as "copyright infringement." According to SCO, IBM has a license with them to distribute a version of UNIX, because they have a license to use SCO's (basically irrelevant) code base. Not the code base that SCO is selling. They're talking about the original code from Bell Labs, that every derivative of UNIX is based on. (excluding BSD, which was already sued, and already removed every trace of the original Bell Labs code).
Now, IBM has their AIX team. Whatever relationship their code has to the original Bell Labs code, AIX is now light years ahead. None--I repeat, NONE--of the "improvements" to Linux that SCO is suing over were present in that original code base. So basically they're claiming that IBM's license to the original Bell Labs code gives SCO ownership of all the improvements IBM made.
That is effectively the entire claim of the case: SCO owns AIX, even though IBM developed it all by themselves. I'm guessing if the license actually came close to saying what SCO is now claiming, IBM would have ripped out what (very little) Bell Labs code was in AIX a decade ago.
The problem is, they're not claiming specific problems with specific code. They're claiming ownership of "Unix." According to the lawsuit, IBM has a license with SCO to distribute IBM's own version of Unix (AIX). This stems from the fact that every version of Unix is a descendant of Bell Labs' original code. That's the code that SCO now owns.
Now, the simple fact is that SCO's code base is irrelevant. Many of the "high performance" features (SMP, NUMA, journalled file systems, etc.) that they claim IBM put into Linux aren't present in the original Bell Labs code, or even in SCO's latest-and-greatest OS offering.
So my impression is that SCO is actually claiming ownership of all of IBM's improvements, and charging that those improvements were illegally added to Linux.
Sounds stupid? It is.
[Note: any errors of fact are directly attributable to me not knowing of what I speak.]
None of this would have happened if they'd just named it "The Flaming Ostrich" like I suggested. Now they've gone and set up this whole dramatic showdown, and the only resolution is to combine the two projects into one.
Hmm... What sort of functionality would you get if you took a browser and slapped in a database backend? If it was handled wrong, you'd end up having to type:
SELECT * FROM websites WHERE domainname = "slashdot.org"
to get anywhere.
Flaming Ostrich really was the way to go.
Why should it matter how many patents a company has? This company Northrup has set up, it doesn't manufacture anything but lawsuits. So IBM's patents aren't going to be much of an impediment.
The governor doesn't need to be corrupt for a bit of "access and influence" to have a grossly disproportionate influence on the governor's decision. When it comes to complex matters of public policy, no politician has the time or energy to become an expert on even one or two fields, especially after you subtract all the time spent grubbing for contributions.
Instead, politicians generally have to defer to "experts" on unfamiliar matters like technology policy. So a "suggestion" from an informed-sounding lobbyist, backed by a few thousand dollars of "access," can be quite persuasive.
It's really time to yank the money out of politics. McCain-Feingold didn't go nearly far enough. If, as proponents of the current system claim, "money is a form of speech," corporate interests are carrying huge friggin' megaphones and shoving the rest of us out of the conversation. And it's depressing to see our elected representative spending several hours a day dialing for dollars rather than studying the legislation they're going to vote on.
Just a thought: Maybe publically financed elections are the way to go.