I think here on/., we are all denying it like crazy and ludicrously thinking that SCO is suing for *no* reason
No, not no reason, but it sure seems like SCO is going off 1/2 cocked. I mean, they said they owned the IP, but the patents were clearly in Novel's name. Novel claimed they never sold the Copyrights, now they just found an ammendment *just found*, dispite asking novel for years for it? This really isn't professional... they really should have established ownership first before making these claims of theft of IP. It leaves you with the feeling if Novel said nothing until the trial, then things would have been better. SCO might loose credibility, but they still unfortunatly might have a case.
I'm very interested in this case not only for the OSS community, but for the shape of the world as we know it. Programing is a profession, a legit an popular one. The is a fuck of alot of programers in this world who have done a great many things. They talk to each other, compair notes, sign NDA, and teach. Even if this wasn't a Linux vs Unix issue, there has to be a hell of alot of programs out there that have some code in common. No matter what you're going to have some leakage at some point, dispite the NDA. Most of it is probally not willful.
How many lines of code does it need to be for it to be considered legaly willful copyright infringement?
Be warned! SCO could have a case.... and it's going to take much time to track down the people who actually wrote the code in the first place and actually establish the time from where it came from. Sco isn't going to have a fucking clue, it's just something they license from Novel, they just have a little rubber stamp on it with a contract that says *this is all mine*.
It might be something they have the rights to, it might be something out of a basic learn how to program book. It might be someones shopping list. The thing is we don't know yet.
But strangly enough, they are not going after BSD, and this is most curious.
I'm talking about modern TVs here... They have the A/V inputs that are 100% compatible with the old style computers (esp. Apple IIs). Older TVs need an RF modulator. The old version is the Sup-r-Mod.
Hmmmm, this was the norm, not the exception. The TI/99-4a monitor had A/V inputs, Atari used A/v inputs Tandy monochrome monitors I also remember as having a V input as well. There is not an early 8-bit or 16bit system i'm aware, with the notable exception of the Mac and the typical PC that didn't use A/V inputs, oh and AtariST no clue what the hell it used. The only exception I can think of in the PC world were come CGA cards had a composite video output, though it was pretty piss poor for color, not so bad for monochrome monitors.
But yea, you can hook up an apple to a modern TV or VCR no worries. Same with the TI 99/4a if you had the right cable. Atari and Commodores "might" actually hook up to the svideo port with the right cable, though i'm unsure which models supported that. CGA card no problem if you still have one laying about in case you want to use a dos based mp3 player and have it display track info in your TV.
But they were not TVs, they were monitors. Monitors don't have RF turning ability, TVs do.
How much money does a typical large company pay for software?
500 clients at $80 a pop for the os = $40,000 500 clients at $300 for some applications $150,000
Every 3 years per major release of windows.
Or?
Pay one human who's part of a open source project who fixes bugs and submits fixes @ $63,333 yearly, only diffrence is, you get them first.
Any company with 500 machines or more is going to have some form of help desk or software support contact. You could spend your money and actually buy a comercial product, or you could employ the people support open source.
The "pay for people not for software attidude"
Not to speak of the fact that having a viable project under your belt, rather then basic programing skill and bug fixing, would likely make you more desirable by employers.
I don't know about the Cxxx series, but the Apple II can display 80-cols on a TV (the monitors for the IIs ARE TVs).
I don't know enough about the apple to know if they used an RF modulator or not, but according to the artical, Woz wasn't a fan of using them because of his prior ham experence, it was just not something you did, protecting the air waves and all that. It makes a fair amount of sence. Besides, RF modulators are subject to external interfearance.
Now... I did own and give away one green screen apple monitor that took composite video input, same as a television would use. This *could* be what you are talking about, but that was the norm actually. In fact, I gave it to someone in the 1990's, basicly saying it was the perfect thing to put on your VCR to watch Erasure videos.
Commodore, among one of the more popular systems, released a monitor for their computers. It took composite video input on the front, and chroma / luma video on the back. These monitors were very popular because of their crisp clear quality, and a number of people continued to use them on their TVrs, nintendos, whatever what have you. They also supported SVHS, as SVHS's cable standard is just seperate Chroma [color] and Luma [black/white].
A few RGB monitors like that used on the Amiga had a much better dotpitch, and quite a few supported the older standards in video as well. It made a fair amount of sence, make this product useful as many people as possible. Commodores, ataris were still popular, and hell they made kick ass video editing monitors at a fraction of the cost of studeo monitors.
You'll have to get in an apple geek in there to differ with me on the subject. While I think there were color monitors for the apple, I think they were monitors rather then TVs, lacking the under. I know atleast one monochrome monitor I saw took standard composite video, no need for seperate chroma luma lines with monochrome after all.
Now... this is something i've always thought about. why the hell did it become out of fasion for computer monitors to support the sync rates of telivision? Why do we have to put up with lame scan line converters when at one time it was the norm for computer monitors to support video. This is one feature that blew away people about ye old amiga though technicaly not an amiga specific feature, flipping the switch on the back can watching telivision.
It has always been my belief that copyrights on software should be signifigantly shorter then that on music or litature. Simply put, the comercial value of software is pretty damn short. Let's assume the Microsoft world, as microsoft has supported downward compatiability for longer then anyone else. It's 2003...
Windows 95 was released roughly in 1995... windows 3.1 was released roughly 1992 windows windows v1.00 was released in roughly 1985 [unsure about v2 aka 286 or windows 386.
For the most part, windows 3.1 is still implemented on some machines, not many though. Internet Explorer was released for it oddly enough, which isn't bad for a circa 1992 platform.
For some reason I was under the impression that copyrights were held in place till like 100 years after an authors death, which honestly I don't know if that's still true. But I can say it's kinda pointless for software copyrights to be that long cause, typicaly speaking software kinda looses it's comercial value after 10 - 20 years.
The copyright length should reflect that. Comercial enterprises can still make a buck with their IP for up to 20 years, and after that, let it go into the public domain.
While the downside is companies like microsoft might loose some of their early IP if it's still implemented, it would be hard to sell folks on that point.
Additionaly, I think there should be some form of manditory registration of copyrights on software, let's say every 5 years or so. This way, inovations that got purchaced by a bigger fish but got ignored cause they were interested in some other product they developed. Ignore it, loose it!
Why such a radical plan? Cause already we have experenced lots of dataloss due data stored on obscure platforms with little to no hope of recovery cause no one knows where to buy them anymore. No one knows who owns the rights to the software, and no one can get them.
DesqViewX was going to be one of my examples of something inovative but was bought by a bigger fish [Symantec}. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/01/27/1950244.shtm l. Technicaly it's still their IP if i'm not mistaken, and i've heard nothing about them releacing the source. DesqViewX in it self has NO comercial value, and clearly Symantic has no interest in releasing it as a product.
Don't use it, loose it.
But alas my attidude is alone, it seems big corps want to hold on to copyrights forever, even if it no longer holds profit for them to do so.
Ah ok, I stand corrected... my memory is kinda fuzzy. The atari-8 bit had one program that i'm aware that supported 80col mode, and that was a vt-100 terminal emulator. Actually it wasn't all that bad, but a touch hard to read.
Actually come to think about it, the commodore did have that spiffy color text support, something that atari didn't really have. While I prefered the graphics on the atari, the commodore did have a couple of spiffy features.
I just enjoyed 3rd party hardware support on the atari.
I'm not honestly sure if you needed an RGB monitor to display the commodore in 80 column mode. Chroma/luma video aka svhs should have been more then adquate. I don't remember the model numbers of the sparticular monitors off the top of my head, but something like an amiga monitor i'd imagine would do quite nicely.
Actually I rather thought that commodore's failure was an attempt to produce PC clones in a market already flooded with cheeper asian varities. I guess this is subject to some debate.
Also, I believe the Amiga corp produced the Amiga, that had some designers in common with Atari, and the Commodore. I'd have to pull out an amiga 1000 case, inside the cover are the signatures of all the people who worked on the project. a little history is on this site [http://commodore.ca/history/company/chronology_po rtcommodore.htm] I personly prefer to remember the Amgia as being a spliter project by rebels who wanted to defy the industry and actually come out with something inovative.
I *agree* though on the lack of marketing, with the exception of the guru meditation crashes my local cable provider sometimes shows. {newtek video toaster no doubt)
Commodore 64 I NEVER was personaly a fan of. I guess I was somewhat prejusticed tward the Atari. ICD's MIO board with SCSI, 15meg HD, and Sparta dos was where it was at. Ok fine, the commodore had better 80column support and everything supported 64k unlike, superior game library. You just had to put up with disk drives from hell. I've been recently doing a compair and contrast with emulation, and ya know I still hate the "load "$",8" followed by "list". Both atari and apples at the very least offered boot disk support.
The Apple though, another system i'm not very much a fan of, is worthy of note because of it's early entry in the market place. Freaky graphics, tape drive controler for the floppy, but this was one of the first systems you saw in schools, that and TI-99/4a but no one could afford the software fore. But it had a massive following in education applications that I really remember, that whole comes equiped with a floppy drive and authors who permited open license for education really helped out.
Permits the FCC to establish a functional requirement preventing unauthorized Internet retransmission of digital television signals to the public, but only if such a requirement preserves reasonable and customary consumer, educational institution and library access and use practices. *
Ugh! I guess that would give the FCC power to actually take down bit-torrent links. Realisticly speaking, I guess fair use doesn't include making a copy of Enterprise and letting random strangers download it before local air times. It doesn't mean I have to like it.
But on the other side of things... would this permit Libaries from doing the service instead?
It's actually something I thought about. One issue that concers the entertainment industry is file sharing of telivision programing. Like it or not, comercials pay for programing on comercial telivision. I know I have to tell my self that. And unfortunatly, this is the part I have to grumble at, getting a copy of enterprise online circumvents the comercials.
I've often thought if this really became an issue that I would actually support comercials in downloads in order maintain this service I enjoy. It looks like there are a couple other concepts in this Legislative Alert that I agree with, and that would be a small price to pay.
In other news... Hell freezes over, Bealzibub reports record lows. And monkies flying out of people's butts has reached epidemic proportions... film at 11.
Actually this is an interesting point. I was recently hunting around for "Agent USA", an educational game released by Scholastic if i'm not mistaken. Basicly it's a game designed to teach geography. You play a little white hat with feet that has these crystals to defeat the fuzz bomb, and must grow 100 crystals and travel by train to locate the fuzz bomb, but not get fuzzed your self. It's tacky but actually enjoyable.
From what I can tell, you can only get from amature software libraries. Storage isn't a big deal, it's like 45K minium depending on the version you get. But I've actually been trying to jump through the hurtles at Scholastic, and basicly while it is one of their registered trademarks, they don't sell it, and none of their references helped locate one, nor are they able to answer questions about the release license.
Again, this isn't shakespere, but it is something that otherwise would be lost.
But that's the way it is. They can't sell me a copy, according to them, they don't have any. It's not like I can convience them to make more, why should they. So it's either get a copy off a website or do without.
Same deal with a game called, "Mercenary". Dispite people trying to contact the copyright holder for either a copy of this game or the rights to distribute either the old versions or the right to freely distribute a clone, the guy is no where to be found. While I don't see a tremdious demand for the game, and this is a game after all, it's one of those cases that the only reason it's still in existance is it was preserved dispite it violating the letter of the copyright.
Imagine of Thomas Paine's "Common Sence" was written as an adobe e-book [http://www.ebookmall.com/alpha-titles/c-titles/Co mmon-Sense.htm] that didn't permit duplication, a simple 50 page pamphlet that has been noted as having a profound affect on a small newly formed nation, and words still used today. Imagine also if it was deemed to be *unacceptable* and with a flick of a switch no one could access it, and any attempt to circumvent copy protection resulted in 20 years in jail.
In the importal words of Danny Elfman, "Wake up! It's 1984".
We don't need a fucking war. DRM makes massive global thermal nuclear war unnessicary to loose our ability to access media.
Let's say Shakespere was released on a format with DRM dispite it being public domain, and the company who produces this media burnt all other copies of this work. Let's say in some new great depression this company goes out of business. How do you get granted the right to read your e-book with DRM encoding?
Hypothetical? Try realistic. You can't get the right to view if there is no one left to give you that right.
Oh yes it is. Crack that proection and face 20 years in jail. Doesn't matter how legit your purpose is. Murder in the 1st degree often results in similar jail time, though there is no assurance that they won't be released for good behavier in 5-10 years.
So... what is this telling our kids?
*****DON'T COPY THAT DISK***** -*-*-KILL SOMEONE, YOU'LL SERVE LESS TIME-*-*-
According this this... 7.9 years was the average time served 96/97-98/99 in flordia for all violent crimes.. murder was 21.6years for the same time frame according to this site.
[http://www.personaldefense.tv/] "Facts and figures on crime in America Average time served for murder in the US 5.5 years'
While I don't consider personaldefense.tv to be a reliable source, i've heard that figure be tossed around before.
Murder, as far as crimes go, can be plea bargened (sp) down to a lesser crime 2nd degree or manslauter. I'd say it's pretty realistic to see someone who commits murder to be elegable for paroll in 3-5 years. Temporary insanity is a common defence for this crime
The DMCA makes average citizans criminals. In the case of copyright violations via filesharing criminals. Unlike murder, you have a better chance of witnesses and solid evidence. No chance of the temporary insanity plea here.
Now I don't have actual figures of jailtime served for.mp3 trading but...
[http://www.gnutellanews.com/article/5261]
"...senior members of Congress are pressuring the Justice Department to invoke a little-known law: the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act. Under the NET Act, signed by President Clinton in 1997, it is a federal crime for a person to share copies of copyrighted products such as software, movies or music with friends and family members if the value of the work exceeds $1,000. Violations are punishable by one year in prison, or if the value tops $2,500, not more than five years in prison."
And according to [http://www.muc.muohio.edu/~habs19/bootleg_thesis. pdf]
"....Chapter 5 also defines criminal penalties (the preceding section described civil penalties). If the infringement involves âoecommercial advantage or private financial gain,â the infringer may be imprisoned up to 5 years in prison and pay a fine of up to $2500. If the value of the works are at least $2500, the prison sentence may increase to 10 years (Section 506)."
I think it's important to see this penalties in contrast. 1-5-10 years for piracy / bootleging vs 5-10-20+ ears for murder.
Hmmm... I think there is something majorly screwed up here.
Well, problem is this works! Microsoft NEVER had a superior product. They just had a cheep one and got where they are today by marketing.
I think of that one quote in Pirates of Silicon Valley.
Steve Jobs, "We've got better stuff" Bill Gates, "Don't you get it, that doesn't matter"
[side note, while i'm not an apple fan, they had this one comercial where joe computer user was reading his cd-rom manual basicly reading about hookups, jumpers, and basicly reading off what you needed to add to your autoexcec and config sys, and finally gets frustrated and calls his friend and asks, "hey bob can I use your mac"]
While I have never been an apple fan, there were better forms out there. But nothing cheeper, and that whole backwards compatability to stuff written circa 1982 was a major major bonus. People, the public, selected microsoft as the platform of choice.
The reason I bought a PC back in like 1989 wasn't because of any great idealistic motovation, it was cause I wanted an amiga, but only had $600 to spend. I blew my atari and teletype set and needed something new asap. Basicly the most bang for my buck was a 386 pc. Not so spiffy as a mac or amiga, but there atleast were applications for it, and asurance that it would continue to be supported unlike the atari by that point. And well, to save costs, I pirated a copy of ms-dos 4, to be honest I didn't realise my machine didn't come with any form of dos, and I wasn't aware it was any great crime.
Sorta ironic one of the reasons that Microsoft's success today is based on choices by people like me, who just got a copy of dos from a friend, who's prior home computer experence was like that of atari / commodore / apple. Apple gave away their disks on their FTP site as late as system 7, or you could download it from their BBS. Atari I know when I talked to them about their v3.0 of their dos they told me specificly, "You need to go to a computer store and ask them to copy dos 2.5, dos v3.0 doesn't work." But this piracy made systems cheep, roughly 1/2 the cost of other choices at the time, and even with a legit copy of MS-dos which we honest didn't know we needed, it still would be like 1/2 the cost of the other choices on the market.
Now what happens now that linux is pretty hip, and now an educated public typicaly knows that you got to buy microsoft windows. Windows is pretty much grandfathered into the market, ironicly I feel in part of it's massive piracy. Linux costs squat, but still has to contend with the fact that it is pretty much grandfathered into the market place. And people don't like change.
So would a marketing campain sharing this fact with the public help them compete agenst linux? Unfortunatly i'd say yes. It's a very strong piller to stand on. The older crowd remembers the issues with vaporware and microsoft has estabished them selfs as a company who plans to be around for a while.
Because that would be too practial, and would resolve issues about bold, italics, or underlining. Not to speak of the fact that illistrations can be imbeaded if nessicary, or ignored if the hardware doesn't support it.
But I'm with you, provided that html tags are standardized for e-books. Keep them at a bear minium so lamer display devices and less of a chance of a really garish e-book comming out. Basic HTML makes alot of sence.
Problem being is I think people want who want to sell e-books don't want their content to be pirated. Fair enough concern, and any universal standard in e-books would make it easier to pirate an e-book.
Ok, i understand the basic idea behind GPS. Satalites in orbit where basic geometry is used based on the subtle diffrence in the time it takes a signal to get to a device, well i'm assuming this.
Could be useful for tracking moving things like land masses and ocean levels.
Question: If our land masses are moving, and water moves, what ever do we actually calibrate the satalights with in the first place?
The only thing that comes to mind is the axis of the earth. Would someone wiser then I in this area elaberate, i'm somewhat curious.
I have to admit, I found kermit to be useful back on my sun back before I got a network connection. Most of the systems I need to communicate with were either dialup shell or BBS anyway. I will admit kermit helped as it was the only thing I had easy access too that would let me talk to a modem on a serial port.
However the speed of it, well, it was possible I was doing something wrong, I'm sure I had atleast a 14.4k modem atleast, if not a 28.8k. Basicly the throughput on it was roughly 1/2 what I would expect on zmodem. to be honest, I forget what version it was, though I doubt it was super kermit, didn't seem to be a heck of alot of options in it. But hey it was good enough to get something diffrent.
But yes, zmodem works pretty well though ssh / telnet connections from what i've seen.
There have been times even in this day and age that I have resorted to the use of z-modem because ftp resume just didn't work right. But it's not like you can't use Zmodem over TCP/IP, it's just not very practical. Just for laughs I should try zmodem vs ftp transfers from my linux box just for laughs, i'd be somewhat curious how well they work over a 100mbit connection. Z-modem's error correction would likely to be most redundent, but hey it's worth a shot just for nostalga sake.
I never understood this.... I had x-modem (sometimes known as Ward Christian protocal) as early as 1983. The only time I resorted to an ascii transfer was when the stuff was text in the first place.
Back in the day when I had a dialup modem as well as the option of connecting to the net via PPP or via dialup shell, I observed that for me using zmodem was MUCH faster then FTP over TCP/IP. Very useful for that super big demo, or linux distrobution.
As a result I cached stuff on my provider, and set to download overnight. Also Zmodem has a very spiffy resume feature my FTP at the time didn't support. My provider supported this "suck up our lines at night" as it left the lines open for their business customers.
I'd have to experiment with this in my own enviroment some more to see if this holds true, but i'm willing to believe that there is some room for improvement there.
Note, there still is, to my knowledge, nothing slower then kermit.
Why can no one understand simple attempts at humor.
Scene 1: Man walks up to you, says you are a stupid motherfucker, and you punch him in the nose. This can be defended by the person commiting the assult because of the use of fighting words. In this context motherfucker is percieved as a derogority insult designed to harass someone.
Scene 2: Man walks up to Edipus and says he's a stupid motherfucker. Edipus realizes that he can't punch the guy in the nose cause it's a true statement, so scratches his own eyes out. The context is very diffrent.
This was ment as humor and to illistrate a point. Free speech doesn't great me the right to go off at random and call people motherfuckers. People get offended by this for good reason, it's a derogority slur.
All of this was wraped in the context of SCO's letters communicated to 3rd parties, on a web site viewed by none other by 3rd parties from my perspective.
Free speech never has included the blatant harassment of people or corporations, nor does it give person a license to slander or commit liable.
I could say, "Linux sucks". This is free speech. While I don't believe it does suck, it's far too subjective to be considered correct or incorrect. A statement like that does no harm in it self, and doesn't require quantifiable evidence.
I can also say, "Bill Gates is a foofoo head". This is protected under free speech. The statement does no harm in it self, there is no need to defend it by actually defining what a foofoo head is. foofoo - noun. see bill gates the foofoo head.
I can say, "SCO sucks because I have to license every trivial aspect of the OS including TCP/IP". This would be a true statement, while SCO might be offended at the fact I stated that it sucks, this is not the norm. With Solaris, BSD, and Linux out there, it does indeed suck the fact that you have to pay license fees for the SCO product in anyway.
But SCO can not order companies to stop using Linux based under the assumption they own some piece of IP in it without establishing first their ownership. If they owned the property, then they could. But as it was shown in a German court they can't prove that, then they can not. This amounts to no less then extortion and deformation of character, both of which free speech does not protect. No more then I can say, "You stupid motherfucker" unless I happened to be speaking to Edipus.
There is a big difference between opinion and fact. SCO presented information as a fact, and demanded something in return.
It's not like the website was shut down without cause, but the issue was brought to court because of the issues of criminal extortion and deformation of Linux as a legitimate product. If they left it as an opinion, it might be protected under free speech. And you just can't do that. You can't make statements that damage people that simply are not true.
Ya know, I actually used needle point paterns way back when I was learning basic.
There reached a point that I needed to stop copying programs out of a mag and I needed to design a program my self. I turned tward needle point mags in order to gain access to pre-existing graphical works. I spent alot of time converting this grid data into monochrome hex data, by hand mine you, and incorperated countless of these needle point paterns into computer software. Ok I never created anything worth publishing on any sorta large scale, but never the less. I was young but I made sure to REM statements that refered to my source.
At the time, I wouldn't have considered this to be piracy at all. I bought a patern from a mag under the dillusion that these were desgined to be copied. Hell, my grandmother has been copying these images by hand for years and putting them on display. It never occored to me that these were copyrighted works where the designers in question actually wanted royalities for each time their images are displayed. I guess I was just too young to understand the implications of learning basic.
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To the same end, it sounds like these rougue needle pointers should empoy their scanners in a reverse technique I just described. Take an image / scetch and put it on the scanner. Convert to monochrome and lower resolution. Plop on tech little grid square approperate stitch. Become the designer, and license these paturns open source. Hell, I think i'll contact these people my self.
I'd like to cache away my Mac Peforma 6116cd. Would this be bad? I'd wrap it in plastic and even enclude a UPS so you can test it in the field.
What we neglect to remember
on
SCO SCO SCO!
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· Score: 2, Interesting
What we neglect in our history of the computer revolution is the fact that the sco business model was the norm rather then the exception to the rule. Basicly there were a vast number of professional platforms where they nickled and timed their customers to death. Useful for sales folk, "oh let me evaluate what you need, you only pay for what you need", where in reality you pay mostly for the trivial accounting that goes with this sorta system, and employ a shit load of book keepers rather then developers.
When people get on the Microsoft is evil bandwagon, what they neglect to take into account is that microsoft just isn't SCO, and part of it's success in the market place was the fact that it was so cheep to implement. The fact of the matter is there are even more evil people out there then Bill Gates empire.
SCO is a throwback to the 1980's attitude of computing, back when we were willing to pay for high technology because we knew that there were a few dozen or so high paid developers who were working on project as we speak, with the SCO diffrence being you didn't actually need the developers after the product lost it's comercial value. I had to work it a little some years ago, and I thought it was all a joke. What the hell is this license I have to enter after I restore the backup, shouldn't it be here? What are you going to go cry to your mommie? Oh hello sco support, what, you noticed that I just restored from a back, well yea, whole system crashed, oh you are billing me for this phone time, you phoned me, I don't need your help.
Microsoft is pretty bad at times... SCO is the devil... and hopefully their business will be crushed, novel will finally freely distrubute a public license for their product so we don't have to put up with this crap again. That's speaking idealy ofcorse.
Slashdot Mirror
I think here on /., we are all denying it like crazy and ludicrously thinking that SCO is suing for *no* reason
No, not no reason, but it sure seems like SCO is going off 1/2 cocked. I mean, they said they owned the IP, but the patents were clearly in Novel's name. Novel claimed they never sold the Copyrights, now they just found an ammendment *just found*, dispite asking novel for years for it? This really isn't professional... they really should have established ownership first before making these claims of theft of IP. It leaves you with the feeling if Novel said nothing until the trial, then things would have been better. SCO might loose credibility, but they still unfortunatly might have a case.
I'm very interested in this case not only for the OSS community, but for the shape of the world as we know it. Programing is a profession, a legit an popular one. The is a fuck of alot of programers in this world who have done a great many things. They talk to each other, compair notes, sign NDA, and teach. Even if this wasn't a Linux vs Unix issue, there has to be a hell of alot of programs out there that have some code in common. No matter what you're going to have some leakage at some point, dispite the NDA. Most of it is probally not willful.
How many lines of code does it need to be for it to be considered legaly willful copyright infringement?
Be warned! SCO could have a case.... and it's going to take much time to track down the people who actually wrote the code in the first place and actually establish the time from where it came from. Sco isn't going to have a fucking clue, it's just something they license from Novel, they just have a little rubber stamp on it with a contract that says *this is all mine*.
It might be something they have the rights to, it might be something out of a basic learn how to program book. It might be someones shopping list. The thing is we don't know yet.
But strangly enough, they are not going after BSD, and this is most curious.
I'm talking about modern TVs here... They have the A/V inputs that are 100% compatible with the old style computers (esp. Apple IIs). Older TVs need an RF modulator. The old version is the Sup-r-Mod.
Hmmmm, this was the norm, not the exception. The TI/99-4a monitor had A/V inputs, Atari used A/v inputs Tandy monochrome monitors I also remember as having a V input as well. There is not an early 8-bit or 16bit system i'm aware, with the notable exception of the Mac and the typical PC that didn't use A/V inputs, oh and AtariST no clue what the hell it used. The only exception I can think of in the PC world were come CGA cards had a composite video output, though it was pretty piss poor for color, not so bad for monochrome monitors.
But yea, you can hook up an apple to a modern TV or VCR no worries. Same with the TI 99/4a if you had the right cable. Atari and Commodores "might" actually hook up to the svideo port with the right cable, though i'm unsure which models supported that. CGA card no problem if you still have one laying about in case you want to use a dos based mp3 player and have it display track info in your TV.
But they were not TVs, they were monitors. Monitors don't have RF turning ability, TVs do.
How much money does a typical large company pay for software?
500 clients at $80 a pop for the os = $40,000
500 clients at $300 for some applications $150,000
Every 3 years per major release of windows.
Or?
Pay one human who's part of a open source project who fixes bugs and submits fixes @ $63,333 yearly, only diffrence is, you get them first.
Any company with 500 machines or more is going to have some form of help desk or software support contact. You could spend your money and actually buy a comercial product, or you could employ the people support open source.
The "pay for people not for software attidude"
Not to speak of the fact that having a viable project under your belt, rather then basic programing skill and bug fixing, would likely make you more desirable by employers.
I don't know about the Cxxx series, but the Apple II can display 80-cols on a TV (the monitors for the IIs ARE TVs).
/white].
I don't know enough about the apple to know if they used an RF modulator or not, but according to the artical, Woz wasn't a fan of using them because of his prior ham experence, it was just not something you did, protecting the air waves and all that. It makes a fair amount of sence. Besides, RF modulators are subject to external interfearance.
Now... I did own and give away one green screen apple monitor that took composite video input, same as a television would use. This *could* be what you are talking about, but that was the norm actually. In fact, I gave it to someone in the 1990's, basicly saying it was the perfect thing to put on your VCR to watch Erasure videos.
Commodore, among one of the more popular systems, released a monitor for their computers. It took composite video input on the front, and chroma / luma video on the back. These monitors were very popular because of their crisp clear quality, and a number of people continued to use them on their TVrs, nintendos, whatever what have you. They also supported SVHS, as SVHS's cable standard is just seperate Chroma [color] and Luma [black
A few RGB monitors like that used on the Amiga had a much better dotpitch, and quite a few supported the older standards in video as well. It made a fair amount of sence, make this product useful as many people as possible. Commodores, ataris were still popular, and hell they made kick ass video editing monitors at a fraction of the cost of studeo monitors.
You'll have to get in an apple geek in there to differ with me on the subject. While I think there were color monitors for the apple, I think they were monitors rather then TVs, lacking the under. I know atleast one monochrome monitor I saw took standard composite video, no need for seperate chroma luma lines with monochrome after all.
Now... this is something i've always thought about. why the hell did it become out of fasion for computer monitors to support the sync rates of telivision? Why do we have to put up with lame scan line converters when at one time it was the norm for computer monitors to support video. This is one feature that blew away people about ye old amiga though technicaly not an amiga specific feature, flipping the switch on the back can watching telivision.
It has always been my belief that copyrights on software should be signifigantly shorter then that on music or litature. Simply put, the comercial value of software is pretty damn short. Let's assume the Microsoft world, as microsoft has supported downward compatiability for longer then anyone else. It's 2003...
m l. Technicaly it's still their IP if i'm not mistaken, and i've heard nothing about them releacing the source. DesqViewX in it self has NO comercial value, and clearly Symantic has no interest in releasing it as a product.
Windows 95 was released roughly in 1995...
windows 3.1 was released roughly 1992
windows windows v1.00 was released in roughly 1985
[unsure about v2 aka 286 or windows 386.
For the most part, windows 3.1 is still implemented on some machines, not many though. Internet Explorer was released for it oddly enough, which isn't bad for a circa 1992 platform.
For some reason I was under the impression that copyrights were held in place till like 100 years after an authors death, which honestly I don't know if that's still true. But I can say it's kinda pointless for software copyrights to be that long cause, typicaly speaking software kinda looses it's comercial value after 10 - 20 years.
The copyright length should reflect that. Comercial enterprises can still make a buck with their IP for up to 20 years, and after that, let it go into the public domain.
While the downside is companies like microsoft might loose some of their early IP if it's still implemented, it would be hard to sell folks on that point.
Additionaly, I think there should be some form of manditory registration of copyrights on software, let's say every 5 years or so. This way, inovations that got purchaced by a bigger fish but got ignored cause they were interested in some other product they developed. Ignore it, loose it!
Why such a radical plan? Cause already we have experenced lots of dataloss due data stored on obscure platforms with little to no hope of recovery cause no one knows where to buy them anymore. No one knows who owns the rights to the software, and no one can get them.
DesqViewX was going to be one of my examples of something inovative but was bought by a bigger fish [Symantec}. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/01/27/1950244.sht
Don't use it, loose it.
But alas my attidude is alone, it seems big corps want to hold on to copyrights forever, even if it no longer holds profit for them to do so.
Ah ok, I stand corrected... my memory is kinda fuzzy. The atari-8 bit had one program that i'm aware that supported 80col mode, and that was a vt-100 terminal emulator. Actually it wasn't all that bad, but a touch hard to read.
Actually come to think about it, the commodore did have that spiffy color text support, something that atari didn't really have. While I prefered the graphics on the atari, the commodore did have a couple of spiffy features.
I just enjoyed 3rd party hardware support on the atari.
I'm not honestly sure if you needed an RGB monitor to display the commodore in 80 column mode. Chroma/luma video aka svhs should have been more then adquate. I don't remember the model numbers of the sparticular monitors off the top of my head, but something like an amiga monitor i'd imagine would do quite nicely.
Actually I rather thought that commodore's failure was an attempt to produce PC clones in a market already flooded with cheeper asian varities. I guess this is subject to some debate.
o rtcommodore.htm] I personly prefer to remember the Amgia as being a spliter project by rebels who wanted to defy the industry and actually come out with something inovative.
Also, I believe the Amiga corp produced the Amiga, that had some designers in common with Atari, and the Commodore. I'd have to pull out an amiga 1000 case, inside the cover are the signatures of all the people who worked on the project. a little history is on this site [http://commodore.ca/history/company/chronology_p
I *agree* though on the lack of marketing, with the exception of the guru meditation crashes my local cable provider sometimes shows. {newtek video toaster no doubt)
Commodore 64 I NEVER was personaly a fan of. I guess I was somewhat prejusticed tward the Atari. ICD's MIO board with SCSI, 15meg HD, and Sparta dos was where it was at. Ok fine, the commodore had better 80column support and everything supported 64k unlike, superior game library. You just had to put up with disk drives from hell. I've been recently doing a compair and contrast with emulation, and ya know I still hate the "load "$",8" followed by "list". Both atari and apples at the very least offered boot disk support.
The Apple though, another system i'm not very much a fan of, is worthy of note because of it's early entry in the market place. Freaky graphics, tape drive controler for the floppy, but this was one of the first systems you saw in schools, that and TI-99/4a but no one could afford the software fore. But it had a massive following in education applications that I really remember, that whole comes equiped with a floppy drive and authors who permited open license for education really helped out.
Read this...
o ciation/Offices/ALA_Washington/Events10/National_L ibrary_Legislative_Day/brownback.pdf
Permits the FCC to establish a functional requirement preventing unauthorized Internet
retransmission of digital television signals to the public, but only if such a requirement preserves
reasonable and customary consumer, educational institution and library access and use practices. *
Ugh! I guess that would give the FCC power to actually take down bit-torrent links. Realisticly speaking, I guess fair use doesn't include making a copy of Enterprise and letting random strangers download it before local air times. It doesn't mean I have to like it.
But on the other side of things... would this permit Libaries from doing the service instead?
It's actually something I thought about. One issue that concers the entertainment industry is file sharing of telivision programing. Like it or not, comercials pay for programing on comercial telivision. I know I have to tell my self that. And unfortunatly, this is the part I have to grumble at, getting a copy of enterprise online circumvents the comercials.
I've often thought if this really became an issue that I would actually support comercials in downloads in order maintain this service I enjoy. It looks like there are a couple other concepts in this Legislative Alert that I agree with, and that would be a small price to pay.
* http://www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Our_Ass
Republican gets support from geek community.
In other news... Hell freezes over, Bealzibub reports record lows. And monkies flying out of people's butts has reached epidemic proportions... film at 11.
Actually this is an interesting point. I was recently hunting around for "Agent USA", an educational game released by Scholastic if i'm not mistaken. Basicly it's a game designed to teach geography. You play a little white hat with feet that has these crystals to defeat the fuzz bomb, and must grow 100 crystals and travel by train to locate the fuzz bomb, but not get fuzzed your self. It's tacky but actually enjoyable.
o mmon-Sense.htm] that didn't permit duplication, a simple 50 page pamphlet that has been noted as having a profound affect on a small newly formed nation, and words still used today. Imagine also if it was deemed to be *unacceptable* and with a flick of a switch no one could access it, and any attempt to circumvent copy protection resulted in 20 years in jail.
From what I can tell, you can only get from amature software libraries. Storage isn't a big deal, it's like 45K minium depending on the version you get. But I've actually been trying to jump through the hurtles at Scholastic, and basicly while it is one of their registered trademarks, they don't sell it, and none of their references helped locate one, nor are they able to answer questions about the release license.
Again, this isn't shakespere, but it is something that otherwise would be lost.
But that's the way it is. They can't sell me a copy, according to them, they don't have any. It's not like I can convience them to make more, why should they. So it's either get a copy off a website or do without.
Same deal with a game called, "Mercenary". Dispite people trying to contact the copyright holder for either a copy of this game or the rights to distribute either the old versions or the right to freely distribute a clone, the guy is no where to be found. While I don't see a tremdious demand for the game, and this is a game after all, it's one of those cases that the only reason it's still in existance is it was preserved dispite it violating the letter of the copyright.
Imagine of Thomas Paine's "Common Sence" was written as an adobe e-book [http://www.ebookmall.com/alpha-titles/c-titles/C
In the importal words of Danny Elfman, "Wake up! It's 1984".
We don't need a fucking war. DRM makes massive global thermal nuclear war unnessicary to loose our ability to access media.
Let's say Shakespere was released on a format with DRM dispite it being public domain, and the company who produces this media burnt all other copies of this work. Let's say in some new great depression this company goes out of business. How do you get granted the right to read your e-book with DRM encoding?
Hypothetical? Try realistic. You can't get the right to view if there is no one left to give you that right.
Oh yes it is. Crack that proection and face 20 years in jail. Doesn't matter how legit your purpose is. Murder in the 1st degree often results in similar jail time, though there is no assurance that they won't be released for good behavier in 5-10 years.
So... what is this telling our kids?
*****DON'T COPY THAT DISK*****
-*-*-KILL SOMEONE, YOU'LL SERVE LESS TIME-*-*-
---Murder, the choice for a new generation
No it isn't. Murder is a violent crime, usually punishable by death or life in prison, and involves taking the life of a human being
s ec tion2.html]
.mp3 trading but...
. pdf]
[http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/timeserv/annual/
According this this... 7.9 years was the average time served 96/97-98/99 in flordia for all violent crimes.. murder was 21.6years for the same time frame according to this site.
[http://www.personaldefense.tv/]
"Facts and figures on crime in America Average time served for murder in the US 5.5 years'
While I don't consider personaldefense.tv to be a reliable source, i've heard that figure be tossed around before.
Murder, as far as crimes go, can be plea bargened (sp) down to a lesser crime 2nd degree or manslauter. I'd say it's pretty realistic to see someone who commits murder to be elegable for paroll in 3-5 years. Temporary insanity is a common defence for this crime
The DMCA makes average citizans criminals. In the case of copyright violations via filesharing criminals. Unlike murder, you have a better chance of witnesses and solid evidence. No chance of the temporary insanity plea here.
Now I don't have actual figures of jailtime served for
[http://www.gnutellanews.com/article/5261]
"...senior members of Congress are pressuring the Justice Department to invoke a little-known law: the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act. Under the NET Act, signed by President Clinton in 1997, it is a federal crime for a person to share copies of copyrighted products such as software, movies or music with friends and family members if the value of the work exceeds $1,000. Violations are punishable by one year in prison, or if the value tops $2,500, not more than five years in prison."
And according to [http://www.muc.muohio.edu/~habs19/bootleg_thesis
"....Chapter 5 also defines criminal penalties (the preceding section described civil penalties).
If the infringement involves âoecommercial advantage or private financial gain,â the infringer may be imprisoned up to 5 years in prison and pay a fine of up to $2500. If the value of the works are
at least $2500, the prison sentence may increase to 10 years (Section 506)."
I think it's important to see this penalties in contrast. 1-5-10 years for piracy / bootleging vs 5-10-20+ ears for murder.
Hmmm... I think there is something majorly screwed up here.
Well, problem is this works! Microsoft NEVER had a superior product. They just had a cheep one and got where they are today by marketing.
I think of that one quote in Pirates of Silicon Valley.
Steve Jobs, "We've got better stuff"
Bill Gates, "Don't you get it, that doesn't matter"
[side note, while i'm not an apple fan, they had this one comercial where joe computer user was reading his cd-rom manual basicly reading about hookups, jumpers, and basicly reading off what you needed to add to your autoexcec and config sys, and finally gets frustrated and calls his friend and asks, "hey bob can I use your mac"]
While I have never been an apple fan, there were better forms out there. But nothing cheeper, and that whole backwards compatability to stuff written circa 1982 was a major major bonus. People, the public, selected microsoft as the platform of choice.
The reason I bought a PC back in like 1989 wasn't because of any great idealistic motovation, it was cause I wanted an amiga, but only had $600 to spend. I blew my atari and teletype set and needed something new asap. Basicly the most bang for my buck was a 386 pc. Not so spiffy as a mac or amiga, but there atleast were applications for it, and asurance that it would continue to be supported unlike the atari by that point. And well, to save costs, I pirated a copy of ms-dos 4, to be honest I didn't realise my machine didn't come with any form of dos, and I wasn't aware it was any great crime.
Sorta ironic one of the reasons that Microsoft's success today is based on choices by people like me, who just got a copy of dos from a friend, who's prior home computer experence was like that of atari / commodore / apple. Apple gave away their disks on their FTP site as late as system 7, or you could download it from their BBS. Atari I know when I talked to them about their v3.0 of their dos they told me specificly, "You need to go to a computer store and ask them to copy dos 2.5, dos v3.0 doesn't work." But this piracy made systems cheep, roughly 1/2 the cost of other choices at the time, and even with a legit copy of MS-dos which we honest didn't know we needed, it still would be like 1/2 the cost of the other choices on the market.
Now what happens now that linux is pretty hip, and now an educated public typicaly knows that you got to buy microsoft windows. Windows is pretty much grandfathered into the market, ironicly I feel in part of it's massive piracy. Linux costs squat, but still has to contend with the fact that it is pretty much grandfathered into the market place. And people don't like change.
So would a marketing campain sharing this fact with the public help them compete agenst linux? Unfortunatly i'd say yes. It's a very strong piller to stand on. The older crowd remembers the issues with vaporware and microsoft has estabished them selfs as a company who plans to be around for a while.
Because that would be too practial, and would resolve issues about bold, italics, or underlining. Not to speak of the fact that illistrations can be imbeaded if nessicary, or ignored if the hardware doesn't support it.
But I'm with you, provided that html tags are standardized for e-books. Keep them at a bear minium so lamer display devices and less of a chance of a really garish e-book comming out. Basic HTML makes alot of sence.
Problem being is I think people want who want to sell e-books don't want their content to be pirated. Fair enough concern, and any universal standard in e-books would make it easier to pirate an e-book.
Ok, i understand the basic idea behind GPS. Satalites in orbit where basic geometry is used based on the subtle diffrence in the time it takes a signal to get to a device, well i'm assuming this.
Could be useful for tracking moving things like land masses and ocean levels.
Question: If our land masses are moving, and water moves, what ever do we actually calibrate the satalights with in the first place?
The only thing that comes to mind is the axis of the earth. Would someone wiser then I in this area elaberate, i'm somewhat curious.
I have to admit, I found kermit to be useful back on my sun back before I got a network connection. Most of the systems I need to communicate with were either dialup shell or BBS anyway. I will admit kermit helped as it was the only thing I had easy access too that would let me talk to a modem on a serial port.
However the speed of it, well, it was possible I was doing something wrong, I'm sure I had atleast a 14.4k modem atleast, if not a 28.8k. Basicly the throughput on it was roughly 1/2 what I would expect on zmodem. to be honest, I forget what version it was, though I doubt it was super kermit, didn't seem to be a heck of alot of options in it. But hey it was good enough to get something diffrent.
But yes, zmodem works pretty well though ssh / telnet connections from what i've seen.
There have been times even in this day and age that I have resorted to the use of z-modem because ftp resume just didn't work right. But it's not like you can't use Zmodem over TCP/IP, it's just not very practical. Just for laughs I should try zmodem vs ftp transfers from my linux box just for laughs, i'd be somewhat curious how well they work over a 100mbit connection. Z-modem's error correction would likely to be most redundent, but hey it's worth a shot just for nostalga sake.
I never understood this.... I had x-modem (sometimes known as Ward Christian protocal) as early as 1983. The only time I resorted to an ascii transfer was when the stuff was text in the first place.
Back in the day when I had a dialup modem as well as the option of connecting to the net via PPP or via dialup shell, I observed that for me using zmodem was MUCH faster then FTP over TCP/IP. Very useful for that super big demo, or linux distrobution.
As a result I cached stuff on my provider, and set to download overnight. Also Zmodem has a very spiffy resume feature my FTP at the time didn't support. My provider supported this "suck up our lines at night" as it left the lines open for their business customers.
I'd have to experiment with this in my own enviroment some more to see if this holds true, but i'm willing to believe that there is some room for improvement there.
Note, there still is, to my knowledge, nothing slower then kermit.
Why can no one understand simple attempts at humor.
Scene 1: Man walks up to you, says you are a stupid motherfucker, and you punch him in the nose. This can be defended by the person commiting the assult because of the use of fighting words. In this context motherfucker is percieved as a derogority insult designed to harass someone.
Scene 2: Man walks up to Edipus and says he's a stupid motherfucker. Edipus realizes that he can't punch the guy in the nose cause it's a true statement, so scratches his own eyes out. The context is very diffrent.
This was ment as humor and to illistrate a point. Free speech doesn't great me the right to go off at random and call people motherfuckers. People get offended by this for good reason, it's a derogority slur.
All of this was wraped in the context of SCO's letters communicated to 3rd parties, on a web site viewed by none other by 3rd parties from my perspective.
I don't see it as hypocrisy at all.
Free speech never has included the blatant harassment of people or corporations, nor does it give person a license to slander or commit liable.
I could say, "Linux sucks". This is free speech. While I don't believe it does suck, it's far too subjective to be considered correct or incorrect. A statement like that does no harm in it self, and doesn't require quantifiable evidence.
I can also say, "Bill Gates is a foofoo head". This is protected under free speech. The statement does no harm in it self, there is no need to defend it by actually defining what a foofoo head is. foofoo - noun. see bill gates the foofoo head.
I can say, "SCO sucks because I have to license every trivial aspect of the OS including TCP/IP". This would be a true statement, while SCO might be offended at the fact I stated that it sucks, this is not the norm. With Solaris, BSD, and Linux out there, it does indeed suck the fact that you have to pay license fees for the SCO product in anyway.
But SCO can not order companies to stop using Linux based under the assumption they own some piece of IP in it without establishing first their ownership. If they owned the property, then they could. But as it was shown in a German court they can't prove that, then they can not. This amounts to no less then extortion and deformation of character, both of which free speech does not protect. No more then I can say, "You stupid motherfucker" unless I happened to be speaking to Edipus.
There is a big difference between opinion and fact. SCO presented information as a fact, and demanded something in return.
It's not like the website was shut down without cause, but the issue was brought to court because of the issues of criminal extortion and deformation of Linux as a legitimate product. If they left it as an opinion, it might be protected under free speech. And you just can't do that. You can't make statements that damage people that simply are not true.
Ya know, I actually used needle point paterns way back when I was learning basic.
There reached a point that I needed to stop copying programs out of a mag and I needed to design a program my self. I turned tward needle point mags in order to gain access to pre-existing graphical works. I spent alot of time converting this grid data into monochrome hex data, by hand mine you, and incorperated countless of these needle point paterns into computer software. Ok I never created anything worth publishing on any sorta large scale, but never the less. I was young but I made sure to REM statements that refered to my source.
At the time, I wouldn't have considered this to be piracy at all. I bought a patern from a mag under the dillusion that these were desgined to be copied. Hell, my grandmother has been copying these images by hand for years and putting them on display. It never occored to me that these were copyrighted works where the designers in question actually wanted royalities for each time their images are displayed. I guess I was just too young to understand the implications of learning basic.
-------------
To the same end, it sounds like these rougue needle pointers should empoy their scanners in a reverse technique I just described. Take an image / scetch and put it on the scanner. Convert to monochrome and lower resolution. Plop on tech little grid square approperate stitch. Become the designer, and license these paturns open source. Hell, I think i'll contact these people my self.
I'd like to cache away my Mac Peforma 6116cd. Would this be bad? I'd wrap it in plastic and even enclude a UPS so you can test it in the field.
What we neglect in our history of the computer revolution is the fact that the sco business model was the norm rather then the exception to the rule. Basicly there were a vast number of professional platforms where they nickled and timed their customers to death. Useful for sales folk, "oh let me evaluate what you need, you only pay for what you need", where in reality you pay mostly for the trivial accounting that goes with this sorta system, and employ a shit load of book keepers rather then developers.
When people get on the Microsoft is evil bandwagon, what they neglect to take into account is that microsoft just isn't SCO, and part of it's success in the market place was the fact that it was so cheep to implement. The fact of the matter is there are even more evil people out there then Bill Gates empire.
SCO is a throwback to the 1980's attitude of computing, back when we were willing to pay for high technology because we knew that there were a few dozen or so high paid developers who were working on project as we speak, with the SCO diffrence being you didn't actually need the developers after the product lost it's comercial value. I had to work it a little some years ago, and I thought it was all a joke. What the hell is this license I have to enter after I restore the backup, shouldn't it be here? What are you going to go cry to your mommie? Oh hello sco support, what, you noticed that I just restored from a back, well yea, whole system crashed, oh you are billing me for this phone time, you phoned me, I don't need your help.
Microsoft is pretty bad at times... SCO is the devil... and hopefully their business will be crushed, novel will finally freely distrubute a public license for their product so we don't have to put up with this crap again. That's speaking idealy ofcorse.