A man has his house robbed. He and the police track down the robber and move to arrest him. As the police are about to break down his door, the robber comes out and says "Look, if you will just point out to me what in my apartment I took from you, I'll give it back and replace it with property I own."
Except in this case, the man had previously given the robber identical copies of many of the items in his house (Caldera Linux, licensed under the GPL). So the robber can claim that the items weren't stolen, that they were all gifts.
The only IP that could still be attacked in this scenario is anything *not* shipped as a part of the Caldera distro. They can hardly claim ignorance when they themselves were selling Linux; or if they can, then Linux developers should be able to claim to have been ignorant of any "theft" as well.
PDF rendering engine is nice. Though I don't know why they didn't just stick with the original NeXT PostScript engine.
Reportedly because doing so would have required them to pay per-copy licensing fees to Adobe, while writing DisplayPDF using their own implementation of the PDF standards didn't.
Fabrication companies would never let people fabricate a prototype unless the inventors gave up some rights to it.
As opposed to the current system, where individual inventors seem to be forced to sell rather than license because large companies won't build their inventions without owning the idea? That's a generalisation, but I hope you understand what I'm getting at.
I hope the patent expires before he gets any use from it.:) I guess that's the danger you're running with speculative patenting.
No, I'm serious! I should have taken a screenshot... although that could have been faked, too.:) Main yahoo address was working fine, and yahoo.com.au seems to just redirect to au.yahoo.com in the normal course of things.
Red Hat 7.2, I think, although all the links to Apache documentation from the page brought up Yahoo's customized 404 page.
(I use Debian, BTW, so this isn't some sort of twisted advocacy thing.)
You must have had a different reaction to The Two Towers than I did... definitely a weaker plot than the first film. Characters were moved around like pieces on a chessboard, without any attempt to justify their actions either within the context of the film or the trilogy as a whole. Also, that weird flashback/forward/whatever thing with Galadriel in it killed the pace of the film at a time when it was otherwise moving along quite well in terms of the action, and it fairly screamed "contractually obliged appearance".
(Maybe people who haven't read the books would feel differently... I was prepared for changes, I just expected the result to be internally consistent to some degree.)
It's too bad that Web programmers will write code that only works on IE. (I understand why they do).
However, those people who only test in IE will likely only test in Windows IE. Although I'm using Linux here, people in the office use Mac IE and come across quite a few sites where the authors have been pretty slack with their JavaScript... Mac IE and Windows IE are compiled from different codebases by different teams, so it's not surprising that they behave slightly differently (and more than slightly when it comes to CSS for, say IE 5 Mac vs IE 5 PC).
Maybe they could actually *find* some of these weapons they had "proof" of the existence of? Maybe they could show us some of the "proof", now that the Baath Party is no more?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, especially if you're going to be spending billions of dollars and contravening expected standards of international behaviour.
Well, of course! If you could export to another format and load it back into office thereby bypassing the security provisions, it wouldn't be very secure, would it?
So your secure platform gives you the EXTRA ability to read documents other people have secured. It gives you the EXTRA ability to seure your documents. MORE rights, not less.
My machine, my data, my processor. Not Intel's, not Microsoft's, not Adobe's, and definitely not J. Random Bozo's who wants to send me a document.
What if I receive 'important announcements' from Microsoft with no delete permission?
If all data gets locked up in these formats, "fair use" becomes a joke -- no way to show context, criticise, satirise et. al. We're already seeing this happen with DRM.
Besides, like most copy protection, it will be breakable at some point -- thus meaning it's an inconvenience for everyone but doesn't achieve what it sets out to do.
There will be applications that will only run if the DRM is enabled. Office 2007, for example. What are you going to do when someone sends you a file in the latest Office format that you have to read? You won't be able to export it to another program and load it back into Office, according to some reports.
(The X protocol isn't so heavyweight that it couldn't be implemented above a lightweight OS on a machine with those sort of specs, though, is it? XFree, Linux, et. al. are pretty chunky in terms of resources required (you'll have to excuse me, my standards of machine were set back in the 8-bit days:), but that doesn't invalidate the X system itself.)
Hey, I ran X with Gnome 1.x and Enlightenment on an AMD K5-133 (~100MHz), with 128MB RAM and an S3 Virge, for about a year. A little slow at times, but fine for everyday use.
"Centuries ago, on our cathedrals, grotesques were intended to symbolize the evil that existed outside the church. Today, Darth Vader is an excellent example of evil in our times."
Unlike, say, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden or George W. Bush.
Here in Australia it's 10 jobs pursued a fortnight, plus compulsory low-paid work for the Government or a charity after 6-9 months. On the upside, it isn't time-limited if you have genuine problems finding work, as far as I know... one of those artefacts of the time when government wasn't all about corporate welfare. I expect to see that change within the next 10 years, and with no changes downward to the amount of taxes we pay either:/
Well, practically anything that isn't specifically mandated by governments/corporations these days seems to be illegal, so we might as well go the whole hog.:/
As to where the world is going... I think I'd like to move to a part of it that isn't going along for the ride. As an Australian, I'd rather move somewhere like New Zealand, which is even more marginalised in world affairs than Australia is and has the sense not to take sides, and also has the compassion to welcome refugees. The last 7 years have revealed a side to my country that I thought was long dead -- selfish, racist and militaristic -- and I don't want any part of it.
Slashdot Mirror
A man has his house robbed. He and the police track down the robber and move to arrest him. As the police are about to break down his door, the robber comes out and says "Look, if you will just point out to me what in my apartment I took from you, I'll give it back and replace it with property I own."
Except in this case, the man had previously given the robber identical copies of many of the items in his house (Caldera Linux, licensed under the GPL). So the robber can claim that the items weren't stolen, that they were all gifts.
The only IP that could still be attacked in this scenario is anything *not* shipped as a part of the Caldera distro. They can hardly claim ignorance when they themselves were selling Linux; or if they can, then Linux developers should be able to claim to have been ignorant of any "theft" as well.
PDF rendering engine is nice. Though I don't know why they didn't just stick with the original NeXT PostScript engine.
Reportedly because doing so would have required them to pay per-copy licensing fees to Adobe, while writing DisplayPDF using their own implementation of the PDF standards didn't.
Some (old) speculation from MacKido
and Michael gets to keep his job. See? Everybody's happy!
:)
Well, everybody except Seth Finkelstein.
Fabrication companies would never let people fabricate a prototype unless the inventors gave up some rights to it.
:) I guess that's the danger you're running with speculative patenting.
As opposed to the current system, where individual inventors seem to be forced to sell rather than license because large companies won't build their inventions without owning the idea? That's a generalisation, but I hope you understand what I'm getting at.
I hope the patent expires before he gets any use from it.
He came up with this thing. He knows, apparently, how to produce it.
Let him patent it when he can produce a working example, then, and maybe he should keep quiet up until that point.
That sense of entitlement could well be because every year taxes go up and services go down...
No, I'm serious! I should have taken a screenshot... although that could have been faked, too. :) Main yahoo address was working fine, and yahoo.com.au seems to just redirect to au.yahoo.com in the normal course of things.
Red Hat 7.2, I think, although all the links to Apache documentation from the page brought up Yahoo's customized 404 page.
(I use Debian, BTW, so this isn't some sort of twisted advocacy thing.)
That's been modded funny, but yahoo.com.au was showing a Red Hat Apache default install page at its base URL today... :)
You must have had a different reaction to The Two Towers than I did... definitely a weaker plot than the first film. Characters were moved around like pieces on a chessboard, without any attempt to justify their actions either within the context of the film or the trilogy as a whole. Also, that weird flashback/forward/whatever thing with Galadriel in it killed the pace of the film at a time when it was otherwise moving along quite well in terms of the action, and it fairly screamed "contractually obliged appearance".
(Maybe people who haven't read the books would feel differently... I was prepared for changes, I just expected the result to be internally consistent to some degree.)
It's too bad that Web programmers will write code that only works on IE. (I understand why they do).
However, those people who only test in IE will likely only test in Windows IE. Although I'm using Linux here, people in the office use Mac IE and come across quite a few sites where the authors have been pretty slack with their JavaScript... Mac IE and Windows IE are compiled from different codebases by different teams, so it's not surprising that they behave slightly differently (and more than slightly when it comes to CSS for, say IE 5 Mac vs IE 5 PC).
Maybe they could actually *find* some of these weapons they had "proof" of the existence of? Maybe they could show us some of the "proof", now that the Baath Party is no more?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, especially if you're going to be spending billions of dollars and contravening expected standards of international behaviour.
standards defined by DirectX
:/
Sure, but some of us remember the days when "standard" didn't mean "established by Microsoft fiat".
Sure, we just have to be careful the Federation doesn't pull a Star Trek IV on us... time-travelling to "Save the Whale!" :)
William Shatner is...... already guilty of... acts of... terrorism...... against. TheEnglishLangauge.
go ahead and take those two or three big points of karma
I don't know, I was thinking it was more +1, Cathartic.
business ethics are non-existant
Because open source is a proven bastion of ethical behavior.
"We're just as unprincipled as you, but we have lots more power! Wahey!"
Hardly the best defense Microsoft could offer, in my opinion.
However, circumvention devices exist, possibly violating the DMCA. I think they may be known as the "close" and "minimize" buttons.
Well, of course! If you could export to another format and load it back into office thereby bypassing the security provisions, it wouldn't be very secure, would it?
So your secure platform gives you the EXTRA ability to read documents other people have secured. It gives you the EXTRA ability to seure your documents. MORE rights, not less.
My machine, my data, my processor. Not Intel's, not Microsoft's, not Adobe's, and definitely not J. Random Bozo's who wants to send me a document.
What if I receive 'important announcements' from Microsoft with no delete permission?
If all data gets locked up in these formats, "fair use" becomes a joke -- no way to show context, criticise, satirise et. al. We're already seeing this happen with DRM.
Besides, like most copy protection, it will be breakable at some point -- thus meaning it's an inconvenience for everyone but doesn't achieve what it sets out to do.
There will be applications that will only run if the DRM is enabled. Office 2007, for example. What are you going to do when someone sends you a file in the latest Office format that you have to read? You won't be able to export it to another program and load it back into Office, according to some reports.
I spotted "reasoanble" as well, in the second paragraph. I should probably stop programming and take up life as a subeditor somewhere.
Ow. Why, exactly -- "because it was there"? :)
:), but that doesn't invalidate the X system itself.)
(The X protocol isn't so heavyweight that it couldn't be implemented above a lightweight OS on a machine with those sort of specs, though, is it? XFree, Linux, et. al. are pretty chunky in terms of resources required (you'll have to excuse me, my standards of machine were set back in the 8-bit days
Hey, I ran X with Gnome 1.x and Enlightenment on an AMD K5-133 (~100MHz), with 128MB RAM and an S3 Virge, for about a year. A little slow at times, but fine for everyday use.
"Centuries ago, on our cathedrals, grotesques were intended to symbolize the evil that existed outside the church. Today, Darth Vader is an excellent example of evil in our times."
Unlike, say, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden or George W. Bush.
Here in Australia it's 10 jobs pursued a fortnight, plus compulsory low-paid work for the Government or a charity after 6-9 months. On the upside, it isn't time-limited if you have genuine problems finding work, as far as I know... one of those artefacts of the time when government wasn't all about corporate welfare. I expect to see that change within the next 10 years, and with no changes downward to the amount of taxes we pay either :/
Well, practically anything that isn't specifically mandated by governments/corporations these days seems to be illegal, so we might as well go the whole hog. :/
As to where the world is going... I think I'd like to move to a part of it that isn't going along for the ride. As an Australian, I'd rather move somewhere like New Zealand, which is even more marginalised in world affairs than Australia is and has the sense not to take sides, and also has the compassion to welcome refugees. The last 7 years have revealed a side to my country that I thought was long dead -- selfish, racist and militaristic -- and I don't want any part of it.