I'd assume the company got black listed due to other reasons (read products) and not the product. The product would seem to be legitimate enough (there's an identical product which suits the same purpose, but only more expensive), but I have a feeling that this company sells other products, and customs just saw the name, and said "Nope, DMCA."
Let us not forget that Linux's place (or Unix for that matter), at least in it's use in corporate environments is in the server room. Many everyday Linux users at home admin servers at work, and are we not by "dumbing down" aspects of the installation, setting us up for the same things I often hear people complain about "MCSE admins."
The general consensus is that your average *ix admin is a little more "clued" about the inner workings of the operating system, and protocols on which it uses, when compared to your average NT admin. I've seen some mysterious things in my time: "MCSE admins" who can install Exchange fine, but don't understand the actual SMTP on which is uses. etc, etc.
Let's face it, forthemostpart GUIs make our lives easier, but are we losing part of the experience from not having them? How can we make the GUIs in Linux simple and useful, but at the same time educational and powerful. If we can have it both ways, then we have something.
I think you have to include some provisions regarding negligence. If windows crashes while you're playing Quake, and made you lose, that's not sufficient to sue.
If you can prove negligence (Company XSFT has been shown to ignore to "security concerns" of developers in the development of software Y, at the expense the developement of future features). This would have to be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. Alot of the/.ers claims I hear regarding Microsoft are speculation at best, and they aren't sufficient. But if you can find a ex-MSFT developer who doesn't have any "resentment", etc against MSFT, who can claim that pressure was put on them to ignore security concerns at the expense of features, then you might have something. It'd be analogous to a Auto-Exec telling an engineer not to worry about how the car performs safety wise, and to just get the damn thing running.
Without a negligence provision, Open Source liability could be a big concern. In reality, if there's a kernel hole (or even look at something like the umount 2.4.15 corruption of data), and someone losses money because of it, who are they going to sue?
Or look at it another way, an vuln developer produces software that causes B in Software C, should he be held liable as well?
I agree with you that software companies shouldn't be liability free, but you have to be careful of what you want the liable for. Things like ignoring warnings from individuals or companies about a potential vuln, or not dedicating enough resources towards fixing security vuln, should have liablility attached, but "innocent" software bugs probably shouldn't.
I often wonder why such a diverse group of people immediately think of the potential "horrors" dictated by popular media instead of the potential benefits. Whether you like it or not, people are going to find some country to clone humans in. People seem to want to "fix" this with laws, but as you probably realize, laws, regardless of the detterent still don't completely inhibit people from committing crimes.
People seem to be worried about several thing:
1) A race of slave clones.
2) The "frankensteins".
3) Body farms.
Cloning as COULD be defined in statutes could be so broad as to harm legitimate, "ethical", and benefical research into everything from stem cell research to other genetic research. Basically, laws may be too restrictive, and likely to be ignored by "rogue" or motivated scientists. What I've always said governments should do instead is to grant the same rights to clones as they do to regular humans. This would solve the people's three "horrors" from above, since their would be firm rights, and standards in which the scientific community would have to follow.
Just a correction on your statement. Universities usually have a "Right of First Refusal" on any IP coming out of their labs. It does happen ocassionally where the Uni decides that it does not want to pursue with patent coverage, and the inventor has the right to seek alternative ways to finance this coverage/future development.
I none the less agree though with your analysis. Anyone who has been in a grad-school arrangement, knows that your supervisor is actively involved in your research. Even little contributions count for inventorship, and with tenured pride at stake the faculty member may deserve to be first on the list. (There is no designation in US Patents for "Main inventor"). It should be noted though, that failing to include all inventors on your Patent application can be grounds rejecting the patent.
From the website:
WHY.BIZ IS BETTER: THE BENEFITS OF.BIZ
Security
- Changing the details of your.BIZ address requires enhanced validation before modifications take effect.
- Secure your peace of mind; your.BIZ name won't be hijacked and changes can't be made to your website without your approval.
Not exactly novel.
I've heard the same argument made against e-books. Formats change so rapidly, media changes, etc, but paper stays the same over time.
Her argument that it disrupts the historical record process are flawed though however. History of civilization is well known well before the first cameras were invented. The extent of what we know about the history of a civilization depends largely on how well they kept records of events. Pictures are only a minor of historical record and will continue to be.
I believe it's the test and not the gene. Genes themselves lack utility (a requirement for patentability, and why many of the NIH's early EST patents got rejected), but if you can find some kind of usefullness you can patent the test, procedure, etc for that particular gene.
http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US06124104__
here's one of their patents
At least regarding the research part. Patents don't inhibit academics to use these inventions for subsequent research. And it certainly doesn't not inhibit subsequent inventors from improving on someone else's invention.
R&D has deep roots in patents. Very few corporate R&D initiative would exist w/o the patent system.
And I agree w/ the previous poster regaring Euro Big Pharma having large centers in the US as well.
weren't the crimes done by foreigners who wouldn't be under US juristiction? Seems like capitializing on the public's outrage to do something they've wanted to do for a long time.
How is American colonialism different from the colonialism that was so dispised by the UK et. al in the early part of this century. The U.S. has a nasty record of switching foreign policy positions to which suits them best.
Case in point: Cambodia. The U.S. were anti-Pol Pot then Pro once North Vietnamese started invading northern cambodia. The U.S. is no better "morally" than China is. They install puppet "democracies" which are claimed as victories.
Actually read some good literature by people who lived in Cambodia, Gutaemala, Grenada, El Salvador at the time. I don't condone people like Pol Pot of the Red Regime in China, but you have to realize that it's unrealistic to believe that the U.S. actually has the "moral high ground" here.
That cvsup is one of this coolest things about *BSD. It's more or less the reason why I choose FreeBSD over Linux when admining servers. It's make the administrative job of updating and securing your machines so easy.
I think he makes a good point. I don't mean to pump *BSD, but I think they got the "Stable" thing down much more than Linux. If you're going to claim that kernel series like 2.4 is stable, it shouldn't have any experimental things in it. Start a new kernel series version for it.
yeah, and somehow you just know they're going to try to point the blame for this on the few FreeBSD servers they still have running there. Just like when they claimed the FreeBSD was to blame when their users get viruses.
hrmm, no offense but have you ever worked in an R&D environment. By working in such an environment you agree to offer the company a Right of First Refusal for any idea/etc you come up with. All patents must have a real person stated as the inventor, but this really means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I agree that the term should be limited, and that copyright has been slowly increasing over the yrs. Patents on the other have not increased to the degree copyright has, and it'd be difficult to convince me why to change it. I work for a drug company, and from the time you get a priority date to the time the patent expires, you have to:
do preclinical work (6months-1yr)
PhaseI (1 yr)
Phase II (1 yr)
Phase III (1-5yrs)
then get approval from the FDA.
Your time is already dwindling down, and even w/ a court granted extension, you may only get 8 yrs of commericial practice which cost you 100s of millions of dollars to produce, of which a large percentage of drugs fail. You can't reasonably tell me that there shouldn't be some commerical benefit for this?
You are right though regarding copyright. The term doesn't seem very limiting anymore. I highly doubt that a movie I watch in the theatre today will be royalty free by the time I die.
Just before (or rather after) everyone goes nuts on this thing. If you look at what is claimed, the scope of the patent is limited to basically updates. As many of you stated, this is obviously not novel as I could cite many instances of prior art.
what about liability for bad programming period then. sooner or later some poor sap is going to be hooked up to some heart monitor keeping him alive only to find it's running WinCE, and core on him.
If engineers design bad brakes, they'll get sued when someone receives "damages" from their product. When software manufacturers design bad software, their licensing agreement saves their ass.....
Slashdot Mirror
yeh, but these are biologist using math equations. Something they don't normally do :)
I'd assume the company got black listed due to other reasons (read products) and not the product. The product would seem to be legitimate enough (there's an identical product which suits the same purpose, but only more expensive), but I have a feeling that this company sells other products, and customs just saw the name, and said "Nope, DMCA."
Let us not forget that Linux's place (or Unix for that matter), at least in it's use in corporate environments is in the server room. Many everyday Linux users at home admin servers at work, and are we not by "dumbing down" aspects of the installation, setting us up for the same things I often hear people complain about "MCSE admins."
The general consensus is that your average *ix admin is a little more "clued" about the inner workings of the operating system, and protocols on which it uses, when compared to your average NT admin. I've seen some mysterious things in my time: "MCSE admins" who can install Exchange fine, but don't understand the actual SMTP on which is uses. etc, etc.
Let's face it, forthemostpart GUIs make our lives easier, but are we losing part of the experience from not having them? How can we make the GUIs in Linux simple and useful, but at the same time educational and powerful. If we can have it both ways, then we have something.
I think you have to include some provisions regarding negligence. If windows crashes while you're playing Quake, and made you lose, that's not sufficient to sue.
/.ers claims I hear regarding Microsoft are speculation at best, and they aren't sufficient. But if you can find a ex-MSFT developer who doesn't have any "resentment", etc against MSFT, who can claim that pressure was put on them to ignore security concerns at the expense of features, then you might have something. It'd be analogous to a Auto-Exec telling an engineer not to worry about how the car performs safety wise, and to just get the damn thing running.
If you can prove negligence (Company XSFT has been shown to ignore to "security concerns" of developers in the development of software Y, at the expense the developement of future features). This would have to be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. Alot of the
Without a negligence provision, Open Source liability could be a big concern. In reality, if there's a kernel hole (or even look at something like the umount 2.4.15 corruption of data), and someone losses money because of it, who are they going to sue?
Or look at it another way, an vuln developer produces software that causes B in Software C, should he be held liable as well?
I agree with you that software companies shouldn't be liability free, but you have to be careful of what you want the liable for. Things like ignoring warnings from individuals or companies about a potential vuln, or not dedicating enough resources towards fixing security vuln, should have liablility attached, but "innocent" software bugs probably shouldn't.
Who exactly has to die for a clone to exist?
I often wonder why such a diverse group of people immediately think of the potential "horrors" dictated by popular media instead of the potential benefits. Whether you like it or not, people are going to find some country to clone humans in. People seem to want to "fix" this with laws, but as you probably realize, laws, regardless of the detterent still don't completely inhibit people from committing crimes.
People seem to be worried about several thing:
1) A race of slave clones.
2) The "frankensteins".
3) Body farms.
Cloning as COULD be defined in statutes could be so broad as to harm legitimate, "ethical", and benefical research into everything from stem cell research to other genetic research. Basically, laws may be too restrictive, and likely to be ignored by "rogue" or motivated scientists. What I've always said governments should do instead is to grant the same rights to clones as they do to regular humans. This would solve the people's three "horrors" from above, since their would be firm rights, and standards in which the scientific community would have to follow.
Just a correction on your statement. Universities usually have a "Right of First Refusal" on any IP coming out of their labs. It does happen ocassionally where the Uni decides that it does not want to pursue with patent coverage, and the inventor has the right to seek alternative ways to finance this coverage/future development.
I none the less agree though with your analysis. Anyone who has been in a grad-school arrangement, knows that your supervisor is actively involved in your research. Even little contributions count for inventorship, and with tenured pride at stake the faculty member may deserve to be first on the list. (There is no designation in US Patents for "Main inventor"). It should be noted though, that failing to include all inventors on your Patent application can be grounds rejecting the patent.
From the website: WHY .BIZ IS BETTER: THE BENEFITS OF .BIZ
Security
- Changing the details of your .BIZ address requires enhanced validation before modifications take effect.
- Secure your peace of mind; your .BIZ name won't be hijacked and changes can't be made to your website without your approval.
Not exactly novel.
I needed to read the title twice. I thought it said "Using RADIATION to Cool CPUs."
I was thinking, what are these guys crazy. All in the name of CPU cycles I guess eh?
I've heard the same argument made against e-books. Formats change so rapidly, media changes, etc, but paper stays the same over time.
Her argument that it disrupts the historical record process are flawed though however. History of civilization is well known well before the first cameras were invented. The extent of what we know about the history of a civilization depends largely on how well they kept records of events. Pictures are only a minor of historical record and will continue to be.
I believe it's the test and not the gene. Genes themselves lack utility (a requirement for patentability, and why many of the NIH's early EST patents got rejected), but if you can find some kind of usefullness you can patent the test, procedure, etc for that particular gene.
http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US06124104__
here's one of their patents
You got it backwards my friend.
At least regarding the research part. Patents don't inhibit academics to use these inventions for subsequent research. And it certainly doesn't not inhibit subsequent inventors from improving on someone else's invention.
R&D has deep roots in patents. Very few corporate R&D initiative would exist w/o the patent system.
And I agree w/ the previous poster regaring Euro Big Pharma having large centers in the US as well.
weren't the crimes done by foreigners who wouldn't be under US juristiction? Seems like capitializing on the public's outrage to do something they've wanted to do for a long time.
It's good to see terrorist use opensource software too. Imagine the MS FUD now.....
How is American colonialism different from the colonialism that was so dispised by the UK et. al in the early part of this century. The U.S. has a nasty record of switching foreign policy positions to which suits them best.
Case in point: Cambodia. The U.S. were anti-Pol Pot then Pro once North Vietnamese started invading northern cambodia. The U.S. is no better "morally" than China is. They install puppet "democracies" which are claimed as victories.
Actually read some good literature by people who lived in Cambodia, Gutaemala, Grenada, El Salvador at the time. I don't condone people like Pol Pot of the Red Regime in China, but you have to realize that it's unrealistic to believe that the U.S. actually has the "moral high ground" here.
That cvsup is one of this coolest things about *BSD. It's more or less the reason why I choose FreeBSD over Linux when admining servers. It's make the administrative job of updating and securing your machines so easy.
I think he makes a good point. I don't mean to pump *BSD, but I think they got the "Stable" thing down much more than Linux. If you're going to claim that kernel series like 2.4 is stable, it shouldn't have any experimental things in it. Start a new kernel series version for it.
Just my 2 cents though.
yeah, and somehow you just know they're going to try to point the blame for this on the few FreeBSD servers they still have running there. Just like when they claimed the FreeBSD was to blame when their users get viruses.
hrmm, no offense but have you ever worked in an R&D environment. By working in such an environment you agree to offer the company a Right of First Refusal for any idea/etc you come up with. All patents must have a real person stated as the inventor, but this really means nothing in the grand scheme of things. I agree that the term should be limited, and that copyright has been slowly increasing over the yrs. Patents on the other have not increased to the degree copyright has, and it'd be difficult to convince me why to change it. I work for a drug company, and from the time you get a priority date to the time the patent expires, you have to:
do preclinical work (6months-1yr)
PhaseI (1 yr)
Phase II (1 yr)
Phase III (1-5yrs)
then get approval from the FDA.
Your time is already dwindling down, and even w/ a court granted extension, you may only get 8 yrs of commericial practice which cost you 100s of millions of dollars to produce, of which a large percentage of drugs fail. You can't reasonably tell me that there shouldn't be some commerical benefit for this?
You are right though regarding copyright. The term doesn't seem very limiting anymore. I highly doubt that a movie I watch in the theatre today will be royalty free by the time I die.
Just before (or rather after) everyone goes nuts on this thing. If you look at what is claimed, the scope of the patent is limited to basically updates. As many of you stated, this is obviously not novel as I could cite many instances of prior art.
If they're expending all their energies on fighting eachother, maybe they'll forget about little old me for a while.
Let the fighting begin.
DING DING!
Now scotch isn't the only thing peat moss is great for. =)
what about liability for bad programming period then. sooner or later some poor sap is going to be hooked up to some heart monitor keeping him alive only to find it's running WinCE, and core on him.
If engineers design bad brakes, they'll get sued when someone receives "damages" from their product. When software manufacturers design bad software, their licensing agreement saves their ass.....
Some opers piss people off too. K-line their bots, etc, and that doesn't help the situation.