Isn't there a requirement that lawsuits be genuine controversies and that the litigants are really adversaries? Seems to me that since 1) they don't really want the patent and 2) the patent office doesn't want to give the patent that 3) they shouldn't have the standing to sue since they're not really injured by the actions of the USPTO.
That sounds like taking a 2 million dollar loss to me to prevent a few customers from hating them. Maybe the right thing to do for the customer, but sounds like the wrong thing to do for the shareholder. Wonder which one gets priority?
I wonder if some sort of copyright notice could be appended to ones posts allowing their reproduction, but explicitly prohibiting the alteration of headers.
I doubt it would stand up to any sort of court challange, but people screaming about copyright infringement always seem to get lots of attention, possably drawing enough attention to this to embarass RR.
I think that one of the largest problems with "giving away" IE for free is that while effectively free, it was not actually free. The cost was incorporated into the cost of the Windows OS itself, and was therefore paid for by everyone buying a Windows computer whether they used it or not.
Kinda like if the phone company jacked up their rates by $10/month but gave you a free phone to use with their service, (which suddenly started not working with other brand phones.) That would be them effectively using their natural monopoly status to force the phone-using public to rent their telephones from them.
The problem I see with not buying CDs for a day is that similar to not buying gasoline for a day, the vast majority of people are merely delaying their purchaces, so at the end of the month, the sales figures will be the same as they would have been otherwise. (though the companies would have the use of customer money for one less day than they would have had otherwise, and though nationwide this could be a noticable amount, the effects are also spread out over the entire nation/world/whatever so.....)
I wonder if it's possible to run an internet radio station on top of freenet, and if this could infuse some more interest into Freenet's development. Untracable pirate radio, and rather than the music industry getting their traditional ASCAP and BMI fees, they could be looking at getting nothing for being greedy and unreasonable.
I stand corrected on the book issue. I heard the initial report about the injunction on it in an NPR report, and I see that as of May of last year the injunction against publication has been lifted by the courts, and the pervious rulings vacated as of October. It's such a shame that the media doesn't subsidize my laziness in not putting forth the effort to read up on things myself by publishing the good news follow up articles to bad news (grin)
And I have never met RMS, though I have read many of his writings and have heard him speak on several occasions. I don't agree with all of his principles, but from what I've seen he does seems to be fairly consistent in living by his stated principles. I have seen nothing to support your suspicion that he is opposed to the concept [of] money (which would be a ridiculous thing to be opposed to as it is merely an abstract of goods and services used to facilitate trade above a primitive barter system.) On what do you base this suspicion of yours?
As for his not understanding the working of an economy... he obviously does understand at least certain types of economies given the success that free software has had thus far. I think he may prefer other economies to the capitalist economy that is prevalent in the US, but that does not necessarily indicate a lack of understanding, but rather a preference. Unless you can back up your assertion of his ignorance....
I understand the concern on MS's part about the risk of some sub-contractor incorporating GPL'ed code into their products, but this appears to me to be a separate issue from GPL'ed software implementing MS protocols. Like the difference between putting a peg in a hole versus putting a hole in a peg.
Well, first off Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and, in my uneducated opinion, is not savable in the long run anyway, even with an amateur lawyer slashtax.
I think that copyright can presently covers more than simply the representation of an idea as illustrated by the (fairly) recent court decision to supress a retelling of Gone With the Wind from the point of view of one of the servents in a book titled The Wind Done Gone due to the decendents of the original author's copyright claims over the characters and storyline.
As I am intimately familiar with neither the phone book case nor the Wind Done Gone case, I may misunderstand their implications, in which case I would love to have someone more familiar with them to explain why the courts have held the way they have.
And the GPL couldn't assign away MS's patent or copyright rights anyway, it can't give away what it doesn't own, so I don't see how that could be a real concern for them, unless this is just part of their PR war against a competing software development model.
(sigh) and as for your claim that RMS is against selling software, he has sold software in the past, and most likely would be doing so now if he needed to. I see nothing anti-commercial in refusing to join a company to whose purpose you are opposed.
The phone book analogy is not quite relevant because the information in a phone book is public information, and the information in MS documentation is not, and as I recall, it is the public nature of the data in a phone book that was the reason it could not be copyrighted.
It's about controling the language so that you can control the scope of any discussions about the topic. The term piracy has such a long history of violence, theft of physical property, that it "loads" any debate over intelectual "property" rights.
I wonder if this is really a case of someone being arrested for trying to redeem his receipt, or if this is a case of someone printing out the sample receipts posted on Hypothermia and trying to use those to commit fraud.
Your position that the need for "computer people" is flawed in the assumption (if I properly understand you) that computers will only accomplish what they do now and that once those tasks are automated, that they will not need to be automated or worked on again. Increased automation does not reduce the workforce so much as it increases productivity. Businesses would (in general) rather increase their output than decrease their workforce. Unless we manage to someday solve all problems without discovering more complicated problems at some point in the future we will always have pleanty of work to do.
There is also the point that automation will always need to be continuously changed to reflect the changing needs of whatever your customer base is.
and since you automatically hold the copyright to everything you write (unless your employer does, whatever, someone holds the copyright to everything written as it is written, at least as I understand things.) Saving copyrighted material to a file in your home directory prevents others from accessing it, except that this software circumvents the access controls you have placed on your material, and since even providing (err trafficing in) the tool is illegal under the DMCA...
I think that part of the argument against this bill should be the experience of software companies 20 years ago. They tried various copy protection schemes, some were even hardware based, and they came to the conclusion that copy protection schemes do not work. They interfere with the daily use of legitimate users, and do not prevent "pirates" from copying the workd anyway.
If it worked the tech industry would be using it for its own products.
A friend of mine without a compouter has a PS/2, and while she certainly doesn't have the additional $800 to shell out for a new PC or the additional space another electronic device would take up, she would be able to afford $200 for this kit.
Of course she wants to use AOL, and that can't under Linux, but if it were ported (or could run under WINE.)
I first saw grub on Caldera's preview install (I forget which version), and it had a really neat graphic image for its background. I tried to get at the image file, but I couldn't find anything that would allow me to edit it, and it didn't seem to work with other versions of grub. Does anyone know how to create your own boot screen for grub?
I've been having this same thing happen on my K6-2 machine. And curiously enough, lately when I've tried to use SUSE's online-update, as soon as the downloaded updates start to install, the screen gets garbage all over it, and on one monitor I get logged out with a dirty login screen, and on the other I've still got a dirty version of my desktop there.
Reminds me about a public school janitor here in New Orleans who's earning over $70K/year with overtime and all. Of cource his son being superintendant is just a coincidence
On your first point, I do believe that x windows predates both Macintosh and MS Windows by a number of years, and I find it incredible that MS would lay exclusive claim to the word windows as it refers to a windowing environment since they did not come up with the term themselves.
On your second point, (IANAL, but) I do believe that discovery requests are generally pretty specific and I doubt that "all your servers are belong to us" would be an acceptable discovery demand.
It does occur to me, however, that the 'dows' in Lindows does refer to MS Windows (this is demonstrated by the MS Windows interoperability that is the central selling point of Lindows) so I can see some point to their claim. I just don't agree with it.
Just a minor point: That Dmitry was a former employee is accurate. He is also a current employee. I do not recall them specifically saying that he was no longer employed by Elcomsoft, though they certainly implied it.
Ok, first off they're selling me the bandwidth, and as far as I can see I'm completely within my rights to use as much of it as I like - that's what I'm paying for after all. It's none of my business if their business model depends on the majority of their customers not using all the bandwidth they're paying for.
Second, the network isn't going to give me any more bandwidth than I'm paying for, so it shouldn't matter what I'm doing with the bandwidth that I have.
Now, as far as the extras that a business account provides:
Tech support - don't need it, and they don't support Linux anyway.
Static IP address - the residential service gives me that anyway - and even if it didn't, I would be somewhat inconvenienced, but it's not something I care about.
Web hosting, email hosting, etc... - don't need it, don't want it.
other value added services - don't need them, don't want them, wouldn't use them.
So I have absolutely no use for the business service and I physically cannot use more bandwidth than their network will give me (which is what I'm paying for) so I don't see any reason for them to get all pissy about what kind of packets I'm sending over the bandwidth that I pay for.
Besides, I use Cox and I seriously doubt that they have the technical knowhow to navigate themselves out of a wet paper bag, much less figure out what applications I'm running on my computer at home.
I think it's well worth it. Look at the difference in the quality of programming between pay TV services like HBO verses the crap they put on NBC, CBS, etc... The reason (I believe) is that the programs are geared towards the people who pay for them. For "free" tv and radio the "product" is not the content - it is the listeners who are being sold to the advertisers which is why the shows/ music/ etc.... is all so bland to appeal to the widest audiance possible - and everyone's going after the same audiance (which happens to not include me - perhaps this is the true root of my bitterness towards the media) For pay television, radio, etc... the customer is the listener. Sounds like a much better deal to me.
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Isn't there a requirement that lawsuits be genuine controversies and that the litigants are really adversaries? Seems to me that since 1) they don't really want the patent and 2) the patent office doesn't want to give the patent that 3) they shouldn't have the standing to sue since they're not really injured by the actions of the USPTO.
That sounds like taking a 2 million dollar loss to me to prevent a few customers from hating them. Maybe the right thing to do for the customer, but sounds like the wrong thing to do for the shareholder. Wonder which one gets priority?
I wonder if some sort of copyright notice could be appended to ones posts allowing their reproduction, but explicitly prohibiting the alteration of headers.
I doubt it would stand up to any sort of court challange, but people screaming about copyright infringement always seem to get lots of attention, possably drawing enough attention to this to embarass RR.
I think that one of the largest problems with "giving away" IE for free is that while effectively free, it was not actually free. The cost was incorporated into the cost of the Windows OS itself, and was therefore paid for by everyone buying a Windows computer whether they used it or not.
Kinda like if the phone company jacked up their rates by $10/month but gave you a free phone to use with their service, (which suddenly started not working with other brand phones.) That would be them effectively using their natural monopoly status to force the phone-using public to rent their telephones from them.
The problem I see with not buying CDs for a day is that similar to not buying gasoline for a day, the vast majority of people are merely delaying their purchaces, so at the end of the month, the sales figures will be the same as they would have been otherwise. (though the companies would have the use of customer money for one less day than they would have had otherwise, and though nationwide this could be a noticable amount, the effects are also spread out over the entire nation/world/whatever so.....)
I wonder if it's possible to run an internet radio station on top of freenet, and if this could infuse some more interest into Freenet's development. Untracable pirate radio, and rather than the music industry getting their traditional ASCAP and BMI fees, they could be looking at getting nothing for being greedy and unreasonable.
I stand corrected on the book issue. I heard the initial report about the injunction on it in an NPR report, and I see that as of May of last year the injunction against publication has been lifted by the courts, and the pervious rulings vacated as of October. It's such a shame that the media doesn't subsidize my laziness in not putting forth the effort to read up on things myself by publishing the good news follow up articles to bad news (grin)
And I have never met RMS, though I have read many of his writings and have heard him speak on several occasions. I don't agree with all of his principles, but from what I've seen he does seems to be fairly consistent in living by his stated principles. I have seen nothing to support your suspicion that he is opposed to the concept [of] money (which would be a ridiculous thing to be opposed to as it is merely an abstract of goods and services used to facilitate trade above a primitive barter system.) On what do you base this suspicion of yours?
As for his not understanding the working of an economy... he obviously does understand at least certain types of economies given the success that free software has had thus far. I think he may prefer other economies to the capitalist economy that is prevalent in the US, but that does not necessarily indicate a lack of understanding, but rather a preference. Unless you can back up your assertion of his ignorance....
I understand the concern on MS's part about the risk of some sub-contractor incorporating GPL'ed code into their products, but this appears to me to be a separate issue from GPL'ed software implementing MS protocols. Like the difference between putting a peg in a hole versus putting a hole in a peg.
Well, first off Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and, in my uneducated opinion, is not savable in the long run anyway, even with an amateur lawyer slashtax.
I think that copyright can presently covers more than simply the representation of an idea as illustrated by the (fairly) recent court decision to supress a retelling of Gone With the Wind from the point of view of one of the servents in a book titled The Wind Done Gone due to the decendents of the original author's copyright claims over the characters and storyline.
As I am intimately familiar with neither the phone book case nor the Wind Done Gone case, I may misunderstand their implications, in which case I would love to have someone more familiar with them to explain why the courts have held the way they have.
And the GPL couldn't assign away MS's patent or copyright rights anyway, it can't give away what it doesn't own, so I don't see how that could be a real concern for them, unless this is just part of their PR war against a competing software development model.
(sigh) and as for your claim that RMS is against selling software, he has sold software in the past, and most likely would be doing so now if he needed to. I see nothing anti-commercial in refusing to join a company to whose purpose you are opposed.
The phone book analogy is not quite relevant because the information in a phone book is public information, and the information in MS documentation is not, and as I recall, it is the public nature of the data in a phone book that was the reason it could not be copyrighted.
It's about controling the language so that you can control the scope of any discussions about the topic. The term piracy has such a long history of violence, theft of physical property, that it "loads" any debate over intelectual "property" rights.
I wonder if this is really a case of someone being arrested for trying to redeem his receipt, or if this is a case of someone printing out the sample receipts posted on Hypothermia and trying to use those to commit fraud.
Your position that the need for "computer people" is flawed in the assumption (if I properly understand you) that computers will only accomplish what they do now and that once those tasks are automated, that they will not need to be automated or worked on again. Increased automation does not reduce the workforce so much as it increases productivity. Businesses would (in general) rather increase their output than decrease their workforce. Unless we manage to someday solve all problems without discovering more complicated problems at some point in the future we will always have pleanty of work to do.
There is also the point that automation will always need to be continuously changed to reflect the changing needs of whatever your customer base is.
"...Republicans attempting to carve away at our first amendment rights to fit their own morality.
"
I'm sorry, this bill was signed by who????
Yea, and 64% of all statistics are made up.
Yea, I read an article somewhere where Bill claimed to have not said that, and also claimed to have invented Open Source.
Who does he think he's fooling - everyone knows Al Gore invented Open Source.
and since you automatically hold the copyright to everything you write (unless your employer does, whatever, someone holds the copyright to everything written as it is written, at least as I understand things.) Saving copyrighted material to a file in your home directory prevents others from accessing it, except that this software circumvents the access controls you have placed on your material, and since even providing (err trafficing in) the tool is illegal under the DMCA...
I think that part of the argument against this bill should be the experience of software companies 20 years ago. They tried various copy protection schemes, some were even hardware based, and they came to the conclusion that copy protection schemes do not work. They interfere with the daily use of legitimate users, and do not prevent "pirates" from copying the workd anyway.
If it worked the tech industry would be using it for its own products.
Keep your filthy laws off my computer.
A friend of mine without a compouter has a PS/2, and while she certainly doesn't have the additional $800 to shell out for a new PC or the additional space another electronic device would take up, she would be able to afford $200 for this kit.
Of course she wants to use AOL, and that can't under Linux, but if it were ported (or could run under WINE.)
Every time I see Ballmer all I can do is picture he and Gene Wilder, in B&W, singing 'puttin on the ritz'.
I first saw grub on Caldera's preview install (I forget which version), and it had a really neat graphic image for its background. I tried to get at the image file, but I couldn't find anything that would allow me to edit it, and it didn't seem to work with other versions of grub. Does anyone know how to create your own boot screen for grub?
I've been having this same thing happen on my K6-2 machine. And curiously enough, lately when I've tried to use SUSE's online-update, as soon as the downloaded updates start to install, the screen gets garbage all over it, and on one monitor I get logged out with a dirty login screen, and on the other I've still got a dirty version of my desktop there.
Reminds me about a public school janitor here in New Orleans who's earning over $70K/year with overtime and all. Of cource his son being superintendant is just a coincidence
On your first point, I do believe that x windows predates both Macintosh and MS Windows by a number of years, and I find it incredible that MS would lay exclusive claim to the word windows as it refers to a windowing environment since they did not come up with the term themselves.
On your second point, (IANAL, but) I do believe that discovery requests are generally pretty specific and I doubt that "all your servers are belong to us" would be an acceptable discovery demand.
It does occur to me, however, that the 'dows' in Lindows does refer to MS Windows (this is demonstrated by the MS Windows interoperability that is the central selling point of Lindows) so I can see some point to their claim. I just don't agree with it.
Just a minor point: That Dmitry was a former employee is accurate. He is also a current employee. I do not recall them specifically saying that he was no longer employed by Elcomsoft, though they certainly implied it.
Second, the network isn't going to give me any more bandwidth than I'm paying for, so it shouldn't matter what I'm doing with the bandwidth that I have.
Now, as far as the extras that a business account provides:
Tech support - don't need it, and they don't support Linux anyway.
Static IP address - the residential service gives me that anyway - and even if it didn't, I would be somewhat inconvenienced, but it's not something I care about.
Web hosting, email hosting, etc... - don't need it, don't want it.
other value added services - don't need them, don't want them, wouldn't use them.
So I have absolutely no use for the business service and I physically cannot use more bandwidth than their network will give me (which is what I'm paying for) so I don't see any reason for them to get all pissy about what kind of packets I'm sending over the bandwidth that I pay for.
Besides, I use Cox and I seriously doubt that they have the technical knowhow to navigate themselves out of a wet paper bag, much less figure out what applications I'm running on my computer at home.
I think it's well worth it. Look at the difference in the quality of programming between pay TV services like HBO verses the crap they put on NBC, CBS, etc... The reason (I believe) is that the programs are geared towards the people who pay for them.
For "free" tv and radio the "product" is not the content - it is the listeners who are being sold to the advertisers which is why the shows/ music/ etc.... is all so bland to appeal to the widest audiance possible - and everyone's going after the same audiance (which happens to not include me - perhaps this is the true root of my bitterness towards the media)
For pay television, radio, etc... the customer is the listener. Sounds like a much better deal to me.