I've been curious about something for quite some time. If Israel is indeed a democracy, why is it that more Palestinians don't vote the government into a position more in line with Palestinian objectives?
And if you're accessing this structure with any frequency, it's likely the _primary bottleneck_ of your system. If your system doesn't require any performance, that's fine. There are, by the way, choices other than RDBMS. OODBMS, for example.
The company I work for files for patents (I'm in the process of 4), but largely only uses them as a marketing tool (look! we have a big ip database, we're cool) and secondly -- and this is not to be understated -- as self-protection. If we patent our thing, no one is going to fuck with us by patenting our thing and then coming at us with an injunction order. If our patent says we can do that, there's just no way outside of spending $1-2 million minimum, they are going to stop us from doing what we're doing (i.e, writing and using software based on our patent).
In considering all of these software patent issues out there, please think this over. There are numerous perfectly ethical companies filing for software patents (acknowledge: perhaps otherwise unethical, IMO) that are doing so for a perfectly ethical reason: to protect themselves from sharks. We can all collectively hope these motivations don't later turn sour.
Simply allow the fact that an inventor discovered/invented a thing independantly of the patent as a defense against patent violation.
For this to work, it would have to be provably invented before the patented invention. If it weren't, such a rule would be 100% exploitable. You could trove the patent database, gen up some program which did basically what the patent describes, and then claim to have "independently discovered the phenomenon".
But it's worse than this. It costs $1-2 million to prosecute any serious patent case. So, supposing you could make a claim to independent discovery, your still completely SOL... unless you have that $1-2 million just lying around, you rich guy, you.
Mhz ratings are not only confusing, they are misleading.
Not only are you correct, but I should like to point out that there are large numbers of average joes who don't even know what a megahurtz rating means. To them, it really isn't anything concreate or objective, it's just a number. If it were implicitly communicated to them that this rating was a measurment of speed, and then they bought a computer which had a higher mhz than another computer only to later see this computer perform more slowly than the other, they would feel deceived. Or at least stupid.
Contract software folks write code for money, but don't get the intellectual property rights a great deal of the time. Some contract folks write code, but get to keep the intellectual property rights. These last are interesting. Consider this:
Suppose that I develop some software for a client. It's a one-off, not a product. It couldn't really be sold. However, inside it is an approach to solving this problem in a more general way. I have the beginnings of some sort of product here: an API, some sample code, maybe a few docs here and there.
Then I'm looking at it, and realize that bringing it to market would cost quite a lot of money, and there'd be risk. And then I realize that I get paid quite a lot doing contracting, and that's not as risky. So I don't expend the money productizing this API.
But I'm sitting here on top of this intellectual capital, and it's going to waste. That's a shame.
So I plop a GPL license on it and put it on top of a website which happens to be closely associated with our services. A few people download the API, and it gets its share of use in its niche.
Later, I'm doing a presentation for a possible client. In the presentation, I mention that I (or even not me, maybe a coworker right, therefore "my company") authored this piece of open source software that's quite germane to the contracting job the client is considering. This increases contract closure probabilities. In the case where the author himself makes this claim, probabilities go way up. In the case where you make the claim on the behalf of your company (i.e., "we did this"), you still get a good nod. People walk away impressed.
What's happening in contract software service land is these companies are trading unrealized intellectual property into goodwill and market leverage. We do this on a case by case basis.
Where I work, we don't really _ever_ sell software. We simply don't do that. We're professional contractors. Open sourcing something is a big win, and almost never a loss.
Unbeknownst to us, we once had a competitor brief to a client that they intended to use this well known open source tool to solve the client's problem. We then came in and offered to do the same job. Only one thing. We were the author's of the "well-known tool."
Well, we're likely talking about the same things and simply not being verbose enough to make them clear. You can acquire 100% of a market place. By happenstance or opportunity. What you can't do is deliberately attempt to exclude others from that much of the marketspace by specific intent to do so. I.o.w, "we have 85% of the desktop market share and Apple has 6%. Let's exclude Apple from the desktop market place altogether." Any player with that much market share needs to be thinking about market size and market development, not exclusion. Exclusion is the kiss of death.
A real-world example of a _legal_ acquisition of a monopoly would be the purchasing of the one known major mine/source of a rare earth element.
So, people already do make lots of money from services, but that's entirely unrelated to the business of producing free software.
No. You're example shows how that it's not always related it doesn't show that it's "entirely unrelated". These are two different things!
Open source is well-synchronized with the service economy because, if the author's wish it they can use their creation of open source as a market discriminator for their services, a source of goodwill for their company name, and as a form of leverage in securing new business. They don't have to do this, they simply can if they wish. It is an instrument to achieve a possible ends, not the only instrument to achieve that ends, or the one and only way to achieve that ends.
One last thing. You just responding to me by Affirming the Consequent. It's a logical fallacy. If A->B, B, then A. No. Doesn't work like that. Look it up.
It's only becoming a service economy because it's the latest buzzword compliant business plan.
Well. Far be it from me to believe all of those economists who are all largely in a agreement and have things like PhDs from well respected instutitions. I guess I should just believe some yahoo on./ instead. LOL.
The service economy is a reality. It's a nation-wide economic trend that transcends software. Professional services are growing at an incredible rate. Look it up.
>Linux companies are trying to go service orientated, doesn't mean it's a great idea.
This isn't about goodness of ideas, but higher level economic forces. Your reference to "all these Linux companies" misses the picture. There are huge numbers of knowledge-worker service businesses in existence now, as we speak; they've been there for a long time, and have established and proven business models.
Think "contract software development".
Now, consider this. Should my company sell my last years project, or bill me out to a client for $160 an hour? My company can pull $320K annually on my service work. Getting $320K after expenses on my software may be a stretch, considering amortized business costs, and so forth.
Or they can "open source" my software. What's this do for them? 1. They don't spend a $1 Million in product/market development fees. 2. This creates goodwill for the company. 3. Next time we're proposing work to a client, the whole *company* gets to say "Yeah, buy our services, we did XXX product on open source."
In case your curious, I'm not speculating. This is really what's happening. I'm there, in the thick of it, and know what's going on.
Not to flame you, but until someone cracks the problem of making actual cash money, you know, the stuff that buys groceries and houses and cars (spending venture capital is not making money) then there will be no open source industry.
It's already been cracked. What's happening is that software service companies... companies that make money off selling their workers for hire on a contract basis... are using the product of open source code as a market descriminator for their services. This is in tune with the larger-scale socioeconomic realities: we are becoming a service economy. Open source is actually well-synchronized with the changing economic landscape by that standard.
Not by intent. Only by circumstance. But then again, I suspect that you knew this. I suspect that what you meant to say is "it's legal to become a monopoly". A deliberate attempt to acquire 100% of a market share is for all intents and purposes illegal.
In general, you are incorrect. While I happen to have known about this for a while, I just talked to an intellectual property attorney about this very subject today.
Current copyright law is extremely clear on this subject matter. The law assigns "exclusive rights" for all derivative works to the owner of the original work. Lacking a binding legal agreement to the contrary, if you prepare a derivative work of someone else's work, the one and only person who has copyright over this work is the owner of what it is you are deriving from.
Enter "copyright derivative" into Google for more information.
As to whether or not your "patch" is actually a "derivative work" of the Linux kernel, I'll leave that for you to decide. What's clear is that if someone executes a cvs update or some other change to a GPL'd work at a central repository, they've made clear that their work _is_ a derivative. The matter of ownership is decided, and would require an act of god to reverse unless the so-called "derivative" were really a whole copyrighted work in and of its own right and not a "derivative" at all. Submitting a kernel patch that prints the text of the Lord of the Rings comes to mind.
A GPL product can always get away with it, because any addition to the product is a derived work, and all derived works belong to the author of the original work, without regard to whether or not the contributor has the legal capacity to agree to a license or not. For example, if I wrote a few hundred lines extended the Linux kernel on my company time, my company would nevertheless have no ability to retract that code, as my code is a derived work of someone else, and that someone else owns all derived works as a matter of explicit statute. This would likewise apply if I were a child, operating on my own. Child or not, employee or not, the derivation belongs to someone else.
Unlike the majority of other commentors in this theread, I'm unconcerned with the validity of the research. I find something else interesting. Suppose that a gravity _shield_ of some form really could be made. Suppose, for example, that whatever field or particle effect that exists between two entities could be fully or partly interrupted. If that could be made to happen, what would the effects be on the two intervening masses assuming that all of the rest of our assumptions about the laws of physics would hold? In other words, what would be the _projected effect_ of a real gravitational shield?
There are, in my mind, many different questions:
1. Over what range would the shield have an effect?
2. Could the shield shield itself?
3. Is it bidirectional?
4. If particles in the umbra of the shield are no longer fully subject to gravitation, how would the effect of other forces be expected to perturb the particles?
4a. For example, how would ordinary air in the umbra of the shadow be expected to behave?
5. If an object in the umbra of the field was subject to reduced or near zero gravitational force, how would such an object be expected to behave in regards to angular momentum forces in effect on a rotating planetary body?
And so on.
It seems to me on superficial consideration that a "gravitational shield" would likely cause extraordinary and obvious side effects in even the most simple of circumstances. Living as we do in a heavy gravity zone, we take all of the effects of gravity for granted. An area of even limited exemption to gravity would likely have highly perturbing results in its domain of influence.
Speaking of this, wasn't there some funny result years ago that lead some folks to state (and later retract?) that antiprotons fall up?
C//
Re:this reminds me of a trick for telemarketers
on
He Writes Back
·
· Score: 2
"You're only hurting the poor sob making minimum wage dialing all those numbers..."
If one believes that telemarketing is per se inappropriate or unethical, then it would be the poor sob making minimum wage who took decided to inappropriately contact someone that is to blame.
I'm not quite sure what you're saying. If someone working for a corporation under a work-for-hire agreement submits changes to an LGPL library produced by a third party, and those changes are done without approval or implied approval by the company they work for, the owners of the LGPL library are entirely in the clear. They own any derivation of their work, regardless of how produced, as a matter of standard copyright law.
Now if the employee issues an _original_ release of a GPL or LGPL library without permission, that's a different matter. The release is entirely without legal basis, and all current users of the libraries who thought they were previously licenses in effect lose that license.
Of course, this isn't to say that there won't be a whole mess of litigation (as well as negative publicity!) as a result.
Slashdot Mirror
Why aren't they full fledged voting citizens?
Weren't there originally large numbers of Palestinians on the land?
Why aren't they citizens?
Honestly, I don't get it.
C//
The Palestinians are not in Israel, nor are they citizens.
Why not?
C//
I've been curious about something for quite some time. If Israel is indeed a democracy, why is it that more Palestinians don't vote the government into a position more in line with Palestinian objectives?
C//
And if you're accessing this structure with any frequency, it's likely the _primary bottleneck_ of your system. If your system doesn't require any performance, that's fine. There are, by the way, choices other than RDBMS. OODBMS, for example.
C//
As IF. As it happens, I've _seen_ databases written with objects across file systems. You... you, are just speculating. It's a bad guess.
C//
The police would not accept as a defense that you allow people who you don't know access to your network.
What do you mean they wouldn't accept it? Hysterical bogosity. AS IF.
C//
Surely thou jesteth! open() has to be one of the most expensive unix system calls! What you're proposing would move slower than cold molasses.
C//
The company I work for files for patents (I'm in the process of 4), but largely only uses them as a marketing tool (look! we have a big ip database, we're cool) and secondly -- and this is not to be understated -- as self-protection. If we patent our thing, no one is going to fuck with us by patenting our thing and then coming at us with an injunction order. If our patent says we can do that, there's just no way outside of spending $1-2 million minimum, they are going to stop us from doing what we're doing (i.e, writing and using software based on our patent).
In considering all of these software patent issues out there, please think this over. There are numerous perfectly ethical companies filing for software patents (acknowledge: perhaps otherwise unethical, IMO) that are doing so for a perfectly ethical reason: to protect themselves from sharks. We can all collectively hope these motivations don't later turn sour.
Just some perspective,
C//
Simply allow the fact that an inventor discovered/invented a thing independantly of the patent as a defense against patent violation.
For this to work, it would have to be provably invented before the patented invention. If it weren't, such a rule would be 100% exploitable. You could trove the patent database, gen up some program which did basically what the patent describes, and then claim to have "independently discovered the phenomenon".
But it's worse than this. It costs $1-2 million to prosecute any serious patent case. So, supposing you could make a claim to independent discovery, your still completely SOL... unless you have that $1-2 million just lying around, you rich guy, you.
C//
Tsk, tsk. Consider this well: "those in glass houses, should not throw stones".
C//
Well, if you're going to insult all the folks with AMD processors, you could at least spell "Athlon" right.
C//
Mhz ratings are not only confusing, they are misleading.
Not only are you correct, but I should like to point out that there are large numbers of average joes who don't even know what a megahurtz rating means. To them, it really isn't anything concreate or objective, it's just a number. If it were implicitly communicated to them that this rating was a measurment of speed, and then they bought a computer which had a higher mhz than another computer only to later see this computer perform more slowly than the other, they would feel deceived. Or at least stupid.
C//
I can't be arsed to type out the reasons but
Lights are out, nobody home, eh?
LOL.
C//
Contract software folks write code for money, but don't get the intellectual property rights a great deal of the time. Some contract folks write code, but get to keep the intellectual property rights. These last are interesting. Consider this:
Suppose that I develop some software for a client. It's a one-off, not a product. It couldn't really be sold. However, inside it is an approach to solving this problem in a more general way. I have the beginnings of some sort of product here: an API, some sample code, maybe a few docs here and there.
Then I'm looking at it, and realize that bringing it to market would cost quite a lot of money, and there'd be risk. And then I realize that I get paid quite a lot doing contracting, and that's not as risky. So I don't expend the money productizing this API.
But I'm sitting here on top of this intellectual capital, and it's going to waste. That's a shame.
So I plop a GPL license on it and put it on top of a website which happens to be closely associated with our services. A few people download the API, and it gets its share of use in its niche.
Later, I'm doing a presentation for a possible client. In the presentation, I mention that I (or even not me, maybe a coworker right, therefore "my company") authored this piece of open source software that's quite germane to the contracting job the client is considering. This increases contract closure probabilities. In the case where the author himself makes this claim, probabilities go way up. In the case where you make the claim on the behalf of your company (i.e., "we did this"), you still get a good nod. People walk away impressed.
What's happening in contract software service land is these companies are trading unrealized intellectual property into goodwill and market leverage. We do this on a case by case basis.
Where I work, we don't really _ever_ sell software. We simply don't do that. We're professional contractors. Open sourcing something is a big win, and almost never a loss.
Unbeknownst to us, we once had a competitor brief to a client that they intended to use this well known open source tool to solve the client's problem. We then came in and offered to do the same job. Only one thing. We were the author's of the "well-known tool."
Who do you think won?
C//
Well, we're likely talking about the same things and simply not being verbose enough to make them clear. You can acquire 100% of a market place. By happenstance or opportunity. What you can't do is deliberately attempt to exclude others from that much of the marketspace by specific intent to do so. I.o.w, "we have 85% of the desktop market share and Apple has 6%. Let's exclude Apple from the desktop market place altogether." Any player with that much market share needs to be thinking about market size and market development, not exclusion. Exclusion is the kiss of death.
A real-world example of a _legal_ acquisition of a monopoly would be the purchasing of the one known major mine/source of a rare earth element.
C//
So, people already do make lots of money from services, but that's entirely unrelated to the business of producing free software.
No. You're example shows how that it's not always related it doesn't show that it's "entirely unrelated". These are two different things!
Open source is well-synchronized with the service economy because, if the author's wish it they can use their creation of open source as a market discriminator for their services, a source of goodwill for their company name, and as a form of leverage in securing new business. They don't have to do this, they simply can if they wish. It is an instrument to achieve a possible ends, not the only instrument to achieve that ends, or the one and only way to achieve that ends.
One last thing. You just responding to me by Affirming the Consequent. It's a logical fallacy. If A->B, B, then A. No. Doesn't work like that. Look it up.
C//
It's only becoming a service economy because it's the latest buzzword compliant business plan.
./ instead. LOL.
Well. Far be it from me to believe all of those economists who are all largely in a agreement and have things like PhDs from well respected instutitions. I guess I should just believe some yahoo on
The service economy is a reality. It's a nation-wide economic trend that transcends software. Professional services are growing at an incredible rate. Look it up.
>Linux companies are trying to go service orientated, doesn't mean it's a great idea.
This isn't about goodness of ideas, but higher level economic forces. Your reference to "all these Linux companies" misses the picture. There are huge numbers of knowledge-worker service businesses in existence now, as we speak; they've been there for a long time, and have established and proven business models.
Think "contract software development".
Now, consider this. Should my company sell my last years project, or bill me out to a client for $160 an hour? My company can pull $320K annually on my service work. Getting $320K after expenses on my software may be a stretch, considering amortized business costs, and so forth.
Or they can "open source" my software. What's this do for them? 1. They don't spend a $1 Million in product/market development fees. 2. This creates goodwill for the company. 3. Next time we're proposing work to a client, the whole *company* gets to say "Yeah, buy our services, we did XXX product on open source."
In case your curious, I'm not speculating. This is really what's happening. I'm there, in the thick of it, and know what's going on.
Contract software guys love this sort of stuff.
C//
Not to flame you, but until someone cracks the problem of making actual cash money, you know, the stuff that buys groceries and houses and cars (spending venture capital is not making money) then there will be no open source industry.
It's already been cracked. What's happening is that software service companies... companies that make money off selling their workers for hire on a contract basis... are using the product of open source code as a market descriminator for their services. This is in tune with the larger-scale socioeconomic realities: we are becoming a service economy. Open source is actually well-synchronized with the changing economic landscape by that standard.
C//
It's legal to establish a monopoly.
Not by intent. Only by circumstance. But then again, I suspect that you knew this. I suspect that what you meant to say is "it's legal to become a monopoly". A deliberate attempt to acquire 100% of a market share is for all intents and purposes illegal.
C//
In general, you are incorrect. While I happen to have known about this for a while, I just talked to an intellectual property attorney about this very subject today.
Current copyright law is extremely clear on this subject matter. The law assigns "exclusive rights" for all derivative works to the owner of the original work. Lacking a binding legal agreement to the contrary, if you prepare a derivative work of someone else's work, the one and only person who has copyright over this work is the owner of what it is you are deriving from.
Enter "copyright derivative" into Google for more information.
As to whether or not your "patch" is actually a "derivative work" of the Linux kernel, I'll leave that for you to decide. What's clear is that if someone executes a cvs update or some other change to a GPL'd work at a central repository, they've made clear that their work _is_ a derivative. The matter of ownership is decided, and would require an act of god to reverse unless the so-called "derivative" were really a whole copyrighted work in and of its own right and not a "derivative" at all. Submitting a kernel patch that prints the text of the Lord of the Rings comes to mind.
Hope this helps.
C//
A GPL product can always get away with it, because any addition to the product is a derived work, and all derived works belong to the author of the original work, without regard to whether or not the contributor has the legal capacity to agree to a license or not. For example, if I wrote a few hundred lines extended the Linux kernel on my company time, my company would nevertheless have no ability to retract that code, as my code is a derived work of someone else, and that someone else owns all derived works as a matter of explicit statute. This would likewise apply if I were a child, operating on my own. Child or not, employee or not, the derivation belongs to someone else.
C//
Unlike the majority of other commentors in this theread, I'm unconcerned with the validity of the research. I find something else interesting. Suppose that a gravity _shield_ of some form really could be made. Suppose, for example, that whatever field or particle effect that exists between two entities could be fully or partly interrupted. If that could be made to happen, what would the effects be on the two intervening masses assuming that all of the rest of our assumptions about the laws of physics would hold? In other words, what would be the _projected effect_ of a real gravitational shield?
There are, in my mind, many different questions:
1. Over what range would the shield have an effect?
2. Could the shield shield itself?
3. Is it bidirectional?
4. If particles in the umbra of the shield are no longer fully subject to gravitation, how would the effect of other forces be expected to perturb the particles?
4a. For example, how would ordinary air in the umbra of the shadow be expected to behave?
5. If an object in the umbra of the field was subject to reduced or near zero gravitational force, how would such an object be expected to behave in regards to angular momentum forces in effect on a rotating planetary body?
And so on.
It seems to me on superficial consideration that a "gravitational shield" would likely cause extraordinary and obvious side effects in even the most simple of circumstances. Living as we do in a heavy gravity zone, we take all of the effects of gravity for granted. An area of even limited exemption to gravity would likely have highly perturbing results in its domain of influence.
Anyone want to play this game?
C//
Speaking of this, wasn't there some funny result years ago that lead some folks to state (and later retract?) that antiprotons fall up?
C//
"You're only hurting the poor sob making minimum wage dialing all those numbers..."
If one believes that telemarketing is per se inappropriate or unethical, then it would be the poor sob making minimum wage who took decided to inappropriately contact someone that is to blame.
C//
I'm not quite sure what you're saying. If someone working for a corporation under a work-for-hire agreement submits changes to an LGPL library produced by a third party, and those changes are done without approval or implied approval by the company they work for, the owners of the LGPL library are entirely in the clear. They own any derivation of their work, regardless of how produced, as a matter of standard copyright law.
Now if the employee issues an _original_ release of a GPL or LGPL library without permission, that's a different matter. The release is entirely without legal basis, and all current users of the libraries who thought they were previously licenses in effect lose that license.
Of course, this isn't to say that there won't be a whole mess of litigation (as well as negative publicity!) as a result.
C//