There are plenty of lawyers out there who have technical backgrounds. I am not a lawyer (yet -- I am in Law School) but I have met a bunch of lawyers with Ph.D.'s etc.
I hate to hold myself out for criticism, but I think that the majority of slashdot posters have no understanding of the legal profession.
Lawyers are professionals who provide a service. They have to represent their clients in their clients best interests. They might not be the best for society, but so be it. Lawyers generally are not in a position to take the higher ground. Most of the remarks hurled at lawyers should truly be redirected at the companies that they represent, because in reality they are calling the shots.
As for my thoughts on slashdotters knowledge of the laws, it is spotty at best. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Since I have been in law school I have been reading the law type articles, and it is plainly obvious to me when the author of a post is a lawyer of just some geek.
And believe me, I'm not antigeek. I was an EECS major at Berkeley, so I spent four years living with a major that rhymes with GEEKS.
This isn't really that accurate. Right now most net stocks are 50% off their 52 week highs. If it was last April when all the stocks were high flying, I would agree with you. Amazon, funny enoug, is only about 20% off its 52 week high.
Really, this is the year (smart) people realized net stocks were not a sound investment because the price of competition is low and will drive profit margins down.
This is more likely the year of hardware providers, the only people actually making money on the internet.
I am not a lawyer, but I am a law student, and I am taking a class on Trademarks. Basically what you have said is correct. Any fair use of the trademark is allowed. The courts have interpreted fair use to mean the use does not seem to take away from the trademark owner what is rightfully his.
In other words, what Printman has said. If the company using CUPS attributes the mark to EasySW than it's all good. Trademark's are designed to allow companies to leverage their reputation.
One question for printman, It seems to me that the CUPS is not registered with the PTO, are you guys seeking registration? Have you consulted with lawyers? This isn't a flame, I was just wondering. Based on what I have learned in school, and over the summer doing trademark work for a law firm, it seems like there might be some problems establishing CUPS as a trademark.
I took a graduate operating systems court when I was at Berkeley, and Matt was one of my classmates.
I had read his book and used linux for a while, but I never knew it was the same guy. We read a few papers about U-Net from Cornell, and I wondered who this pompous guy was that seemed to think he knew everything about U-net and the Cambridge toy OS (Nemesis). By the end of the semester I realized he was the Matt Welch who co-authored the papers. I didn't figure out until a year or so later that he was the same Linux guy.
It's funny when you see the people who have made a difference in a normal setting. They really do stand out, and you are not always sure why. He is definitely a cool guy, and never once mentioned how cool he was. I don't think he ever alluded to what he had done unless the prof. asked him outright.
As an aside, the prof. was Eric Brewer who started Inktomi. Another standout individual.
I think he just means that apps shouldn't handle root window clicks.
For example, look at WindowMaker, it takes all of the root window clicks. I don't see why Enlightenment can't do this as well. The right click menu for GMC is pretty weak any way.
This is wishful thinking. If someone sued MS for using GPL'd code without releasing their source the court would not (could not) force MS to release their source code.
The remedy would most likely be a injunction from selling software in violation of the license and money award for damages already done. Just because the license says the code must be released doesn't mean the ct will do so.
For instance, if the GPL said that violators will be shot and killed, do you think the court would enforce it? Probably not.
I did the exact same thing a few weeks ago. I just used "cp -ax //newdisk" It worked fine. For more info check out the HOWTO: http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Hard-Disk-Up grade.html
I used it daily during the year to create papers and outlines for my classes. I run a PII-300 with 256 MB or RAM so my opinion may be gilded, but I thought it ran pretty well.
It opens in under 5 seconds and since I upgraded to 5.1 I don't think it's crashed.
I have a few beefs. First the input filters for MS Word just aren't that good, although the output filters seem to work well. My biggest complaint is that you can't open multiple windows. SO uses one big desktop with multiple windows inside. It wants to run maximized and I hate that in a program because it seems selfish. I prefer it to Wordperfect because wordperfect is not better on the filters, and doesn't feel as snappy. Although it does allow multiple windows. I find the type really hard to read at any size.
I think there is promise in Abiword which feels like a nice little word processor, although it's not up to speed yet.
The stock really opened at around 92 and went to 105 within minutes of opening. Check out yahoo to see down to the minute numbers. The reality is unless you were preallocated shares before the market opened you took a beating on the stock. It basically declined from 10 minutes after it opened until the market closed. I would venture to say that almost everyone who bought it on the market lost money on it yesterday.
I think email has replaces short phone calls or calls to people who are hard to get in touch with. Mostly I only used the post office for sending (and receiving) bills. Also magazines. That may change over time, but it might not.
I bet long distance phone service will suffer more than mail.
Fear not. Patents that prove too much usually won't hold up in court. This patent probably won't be that useful to its creators because it's covering such a broad range. It will be challenged in court, and my guess (I am currently working in a patent law firm as a summer associate) is that it won't fly.
I hate MS just as much as the next guy, but I still think it is messed up to release a program like this. The end result is that script kiddies will do the only thing they know how to do.
While sir dystic might say he wants MS to boast its security, I think it is clear that this is a thinly disguised one. How is this different from releasing the source code to a virus and then letting the script kiddies actually send it out?
I think there is still a gap between linux and the big boys. When people buy million dollar multi proc machines, they want an OS that can handle them. Please don't anybody say Beowulf because it doesn't run on the same computers. I think OS's like Irix and Aix will be around for a while.
As for #1, last time I checked you can set an option somewhere (I am not at a windows computer now, so I can't say for sure. I believe you right click on the taskbar, click properties and then go into start menu options.) that allows you to have right click start menu from anywhere on the desktop. i.e. the same functionality present in windowmaker.
I would like to see a benchmark between systems that people might actually buy for $40k. I know Intel is happy when people buy their $3000+ cpu's, but I think if a company is going to spend $40k on webservers they are more likely to get 5 $8000 computers. $8k still buys a lot of computer. You can get machines with 512MB and dual PIII's. It seems like a waste to throw 4 NIC's on a single machine when four smaller much cheaper machines can still do better.
I am no expert, never having run a huge (slashdot or linux.com sized) web site, but I was a sysadmin at a small ISP and we never considered dropping that kind of cash on one machine. If anyone has economic justifications for buying one big machine instead of several smaller ones, I would love to hear it.
I agree with you, except that I can imagine a crowded site that doesn't get 155 million hits per day still having peak times where the server is really being taxed for static pages. Although any site that big is probably not going to be serving static pages, at least not exclusively.
Am I the only one tired of people complaining about the price of Linux Distributions?
If you don't want to pay $80 to use RedHat then don't complain about it. You can still buy the $35 version of RedHat, or if you don't want to spend that much you can pay $2 and get it from CheapBytes.
I really don't think price should be a determinative factor in your decision to buy, unless you are interested in where your money is going. Then I think it actually pays to look at whether you want to support the good people at debian or redhat.
As for suse, I have to argue with the guy who said that they give back to the community because they give a copy of their cd to all developers whose work they publish. That's not giving back to the community. RH paying Alan Cox to code is giving back. Debian doing what they do (I am stumped right now) is giving back. Suse bragging about their profits is not giving back as much as they could be.
Thanks for the congrats. Its nice to know there are other survivors out there.
As for the law thing. Federal district courts can only hear cases that the state courts can hear, for the state they sit in. In this case VA.
VA's long arm statute (in the relevant part) has limited the cases that can appear in its courts to those where the harm was caused by an act or omission in VA. This is an independent requirement not imposed by most states. Most states have a long arm statute which says they can hear any cases that the constitution allows.
The whole AOL server tidbit is just required to get around VA's long arm statute. This run around wouldn't be necessary in most states. In this sense VA is even stricter regarding what it requires for suits to be brought in its (her?) courts.
Also people should realize (as a check against their outrage) that just because the case is brought in VA doesn't mean the trial will be held there. The defendant can have the case transferred to a more convenient forum, and if it is an inconvenience for him to appear there, there is a good change it will be granted. The law of the court where the suit was brought will still apply, but the inconvenience factor isn't there.
This case is not about AOL. This case is not about the internet. I am a law student and I just studied this crap in school.
There are two separate issues, one is a constitutional due process issue of personal jurisdiction, and the other is a state long arm statute.
The state long arm statute requires that the "act or omission" that causes harm take place in Virginia in order for suit in Virginia to be proper. That is what the whole deal with the AOL server being in Virginia pertains to.
As for Personal Jurisdiction, this is a constitutional requirement imposed by the 5th AMD. The article mentions three reasons that this satisfies the Due Process Clause. First, the plaintiff lived in VA, second the harm would occur there, and third the defendant knew the plaintiff lived in VA. Had these things not been satisfied the judge would have gone the other way.
Most of the post-apocalyptic hysteria regarding this is jumping the gun. This isn't really that big a deal. Wait until the circuit courts get their hands on it. District courts don't make the law, the appellate cts do. And in this field nothing changes until the Supreme Court says so.
I think the most important part of having an open source OS is not that the users can change stuff, but that anyone can become a developer. Once someone sees a problem that need be addressed they have the power to fix it, or to find someone who will.
I think that this is why the Linux community has the ability to be responsive to the needs of the community, user and developer alike.
Just look at the whole Blender on Be fiasco of a couple of months ago, where the new version of Blender wouldn't run without a modified GL library, which Be would not let the blender vendor ship.
Slashdot Mirror
There are plenty of lawyers out there who have technical backgrounds. I am not a lawyer (yet -- I am in Law School) but I have met a bunch of lawyers with Ph.D.'s etc.
I hate to hold myself out for criticism, but I think that the majority of slashdot posters have no understanding of the legal profession.
Lawyers are professionals who provide a service. They have to represent their clients in their clients best interests. They might not be the best for society, but so be it. Lawyers generally are not in a position to take the higher ground. Most of the remarks hurled at lawyers should truly be redirected at the companies that they represent, because in reality they are calling the shots.
As for my thoughts on slashdotters knowledge of the laws, it is spotty at best. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Since I have been in law school I have been reading the law type articles, and it is plainly obvious to me when the author of a post is a lawyer of just some geek.
And believe me, I'm not antigeek. I was an EECS major at Berkeley, so I spent four years living with a major that rhymes with GEEKS.
This isn't really that accurate. Right now most net stocks are 50% off their 52 week highs. If it was last April when all the stocks were high flying, I would agree with you. Amazon, funny enoug, is only about 20% off its 52 week high.
Really, this is the year (smart) people realized net stocks were not a sound investment because the price of competition is low and will drive profit margins down.
This is more likely the year of hardware providers, the only people actually making money on the internet.
I am not a lawyer, but I am a law student, and I am taking a class on Trademarks. Basically
what you have said is correct. Any fair use of the trademark is allowed. The courts have interpreted fair use to mean the use does not seem to take away from the trademark owner what is rightfully his.
In other words, what Printman has said. If the company using CUPS attributes the mark to EasySW than it's all good. Trademark's are designed to allow companies to leverage their reputation.
One question for printman, It seems to me that the CUPS is not registered with the PTO, are you guys seeking registration? Have you consulted with lawyers? This isn't a flame, I was just wondering. Based on what I have learned in school, and over the summer doing trademark work for a law firm, it seems like there might be some problems establishing CUPS as a trademark.
I know a fair amount about Nemesis, and my choice of words was poor. I meant toy in the "pet" sense of the word not in the pejorative. my bad.
I took a graduate operating systems court when I was at Berkeley, and Matt was one of my classmates.
I had read his book and used linux for a while, but I never knew it was the same guy. We read a few papers about U-Net from Cornell, and I wondered who this pompous guy was that seemed to think he knew everything about U-net and the Cambridge toy OS (Nemesis). By the end of the semester I realized he was the Matt Welch who co-authored the papers. I didn't figure out until a year or so later that he was the same Linux guy.
It's funny when you see the people who have made a difference in a normal setting. They really do stand out, and you are not always sure why. He is definitely a cool guy, and never once mentioned how cool he was. I don't think he ever alluded to what he had done unless the prof. asked him outright.
As an aside, the prof. was Eric Brewer who started Inktomi. Another standout individual.
I think he just means that apps shouldn't handle root window clicks.
For example, look at WindowMaker, it takes all of the root window clicks. I don't see why Enlightenment can't do this as well. The right click menu for GMC is pretty weak any way.
This is wishful thinking. If someone sued MS for using GPL'd code without releasing their source the court would not (could not) force MS to release their source code.
The remedy would most likely be a injunction from selling software in violation of the license and money award for damages already done. Just because the license says the code must be released doesn't mean the ct will do so.
For instance, if the GPL said that violators will be shot and killed, do you think the court would enforce it? Probably not.
I did the exact same thing a few weeks ago. /newdisk" p grade.html
I just used "cp -ax /
It worked fine. For more info check out the
HOWTO: http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Hard-Disk-U
I used it daily during the year to create papers and outlines for my classes. I run a PII-300 with 256 MB or RAM so my opinion may be gilded, but I thought it ran pretty well.
It opens in under 5 seconds and since I upgraded to 5.1 I don't think it's crashed.
I have a few beefs. First the input filters for MS Word just aren't that good, although the output filters seem to work well. My biggest complaint is that you can't open multiple windows. SO uses one big desktop with multiple windows inside. It wants to run maximized and I hate that in a program because it seems selfish.
I prefer it to Wordperfect because wordperfect is not better on the filters, and doesn't feel as snappy. Although it does allow multiple windows.
I find the type really hard to read at any size.
I think there is promise in Abiword which feels like a nice little word processor, although it's not up to speed yet.
The stock really opened at around 92 and went to
105 within minutes of opening. Check out yahoo to see down to the minute numbers. The reality is unless you were preallocated shares before the market opened you took a beating on the stock. It basically declined from 10 minutes after it opened until the market closed. I would venture to say that almost everyone who bought it on the market lost money on it yesterday.
I think email has replaces short phone calls or calls to people who are hard to get in touch with.
Mostly I only used the post office for sending (and receiving) bills. Also magazines. That may change over time, but it might not.
I bet long distance phone service will suffer more than mail.
I think Be only gave up 20% of their stock in
IPO. see edgar-online. That would put their market cap at around $250 million.
Fear not. Patents that prove too much usually won't hold up in court. This patent probably won't be that useful to its creators because it's covering such a broad range. It will be challenged in court, and my guess (I am currently working in a patent law firm as a summer associate) is that it won't fly.
Is Havoc his real name? I wish my parents would have given me such a cool name. Maybe I will change my name to mayhem.
I hate MS just as much as the next guy, but I still think it is messed up to release a program like this. The end result is that script kiddies will do the only thing they know how to do.
While sir dystic might say he wants MS to boast its security, I think it is clear that this is a thinly disguised one. How is this different from releasing the source code to a virus and then letting the script kiddies actually send it out?
I think there is still a gap between linux and the big boys. When people buy million dollar multi proc machines, they want an OS that can handle them. Please don't anybody say Beowulf because it doesn't run on the same computers. I think OS's like Irix and Aix will be around for a while.
As for #1, last time I checked you can set an option somewhere (I am not at a windows computer now, so I can't say for sure. I believe you right click on the taskbar, click properties and then go into start menu options.) that allows you to have right click start menu from anywhere on the desktop. i.e. the same functionality present in windowmaker.
I would like to see a benchmark between systems that people might actually buy for $40k. I know Intel is happy when people buy their $3000+ cpu's, but I think if a company is going to spend $40k on webservers they are more likely to get 5 $8000 computers. $8k still buys a lot of computer. You can get machines with 512MB and dual PIII's. It seems like a waste to throw 4 NIC's on a single machine when four smaller much cheaper machines can still do better.
I am no expert, never having run a huge (slashdot or linux.com sized) web site, but I was a sysadmin at a small ISP and we never considered dropping that kind of cash on one machine. If anyone has economic justifications for buying one big machine instead of several smaller ones, I would love to hear it.
I agree with you, except that I can imagine a crowded site that doesn't get 155 million hits per day still having peak times where the server is really being taxed for static pages. Although any site that big is probably not going to be serving static pages, at least not exclusively.
BeOS isn't unix based, it's just posix compliant.
There's a big difference.
Am I the only one tired of people complaining about the price of Linux Distributions?
If you don't want to pay $80 to use RedHat then
don't complain about it. You can still buy the $35 version of RedHat, or if you don't want to spend that much you can pay $2 and get it from CheapBytes.
I really don't think price should be a determinative factor in your decision to buy, unless you are interested in where your money is going. Then I think it actually pays to look at whether you want to support the good people at debian or redhat.
As for suse, I have to argue with the guy who said that they give back to the community because they give a copy of their cd to all developers whose work they publish. That's not giving back to the community. RH paying Alan Cox to code is giving back. Debian doing what they do (I am stumped right now) is giving back. Suse bragging about their profits is not giving back as much as they could be.
Bismarck :)
Thanks for the congrats. Its nice to know there are other survivors out there.
As for the law thing. Federal district courts can only hear cases that the state courts can hear, for the state they sit in. In this case VA.
VA's long arm statute (in the relevant part) has limited the cases that can appear in its courts to those where the harm was caused by an act or omission in VA. This is an independent requirement not imposed by most states. Most states have a long arm statute which says they can hear any cases that the constitution allows.
The whole AOL server tidbit is just required to get around VA's long arm statute. This run around wouldn't be necessary in most states. In this sense VA is even stricter regarding what it requires for suits to be brought in its (her?) courts.
Also people should realize (as a check against their outrage) that just because the case is brought in VA doesn't mean the trial will be held there. The defendant can have the case transferred to a more convenient forum, and if it is an inconvenience for him to appear there, there is a good change it will be granted. The law of the court where the suit was brought will still apply, but the inconvenience factor isn't there.
This case is not about AOL. This case is not about the internet. I am a law student and I just studied this crap in school.
There are two separate issues, one is a constitutional due process issue of personal jurisdiction, and the other is a state long arm statute.
The state long arm statute requires that the "act or omission" that causes harm take place in Virginia in order for suit in Virginia to be proper. That is what the whole deal with the AOL server being in Virginia pertains to.
As for Personal Jurisdiction, this is a constitutional requirement imposed by the 5th AMD.
The article mentions three reasons that this satisfies the Due Process Clause. First, the plaintiff lived in VA, second the harm would occur there, and third the defendant knew the plaintiff lived in VA. Had these things not been satisfied the judge would have gone the other way.
Most of the post-apocalyptic hysteria regarding this is jumping the gun. This isn't really that big a deal. Wait until the circuit courts get their hands on it. District courts don't make the law, the appellate cts do. And in this field nothing changes until the Supreme Court says so.
I think the most important part of having an open source OS is not that the users can change stuff, but that anyone can become a developer. Once someone sees a problem that need be addressed they have the power to fix it, or to find someone who will.
I think that this is why the Linux community has the ability to be responsive to the needs of the community, user and developer alike.
Just look at the whole Blender on Be fiasco of a couple of months ago, where the new version of Blender wouldn't run without a modified GL library, which Be would not let the blender vendor ship.