In actuality, he's not redefined anything- you have.
Please NOTE the word "freedom" is present in many of the definitions. Your definition doesn't really map to the actual meaning of the word in question in the context for which you two are arguing over.
YOU yourself can do this sort of thing, legally, even in Texas.
What isn't legit is hiring someone without a proper license to do this professionally on your behalf. The same thing goes for providing security services of any kind (incl. cybersecurity...)- YOU can do it for yourself, but if you hire someone, you need to hire someone with a license or operating the umbrella of one to make it legit if something goes wrong.
Where your analogy falls apart is that you make the assumption that a consultant doing the work is analogous to your doing the same work. It's not as far as the civil and criminal laws are concerned. Since the RIAA or the Labels themselves did not have direct hire employees doing this work, it's not the same thing as what you present- they hired a an outside professional (or group thereof) that didn't have a Federal license for the work being done or a Texas state PI's license. This makes it all subject to litigation like what's now happening to them.
Could very well implies that it might not happen- it's just that it's VERY much open to doing that as it's the prescribed penalty for misuse of Copyrights.
Oh oh I SEE WHAT YOU MEAN - you mean they will lose potential "damages" from a "lawsuit"? Right I forgot for a second, it's about MONEY - no one CARES about the patent really - it's just a means to an end, right? In reality, with them NOT revealing what the infringements are in a timely matter they lose the right to damages, and possibly even the right to enforce their patent rights against the code that currently infringes. MS is counting on the FUD factor of possible "illegal" software and ignorance of the fact that they've very likely already took too long in handling the matter with this play they're doing.
In short, they're blowing smoke at this point, even if they have real infringements with real, instead of rubber-stamped, patents.
I'm cautiously smirking and waiting for that 16 Ton Weight (TM/Copyright, Monty Python) to drop on their collective heads- I just won't state outright that they are going to lose the things. And, lose 'em they will do if this gets going where it looks like it's going. They sued someone that was a DOJ case manager- someone that understands precisely where she's going with this and is making no bones about it either.
The Court could very well hand down an abrogation of the protections afforded to the works because they misused their position in this way. If the Court hands that down as the punishment/remedy, the decision and the penalty would have stand upon appeal- which you KNOW they would immediately do if they got handed a decision like that. If it stands upon appeal, they may still be stupid enough to try to get the Supreme Court of the US to listen to an appeal of the whole thing- IF the SCOTUS decides to listen to the whole thing, they still have to convince the Justices that it's a bad decision, RICO's Unconstitutional, etc. or they lose hard.
Even if it does happen, it'll take years for 'em to lose the rights protections.
Not providing a hardware warranty that's purchasable otherwise, just because a specific OS is installed is most decidedly **NOT** working with us, thank you, very much.
I could have bought the same laptop he was buying but with Vista instead and burned the install down and been offered the option to buy the hardware warranty- and it wouldn't have voided it upon my act. It's someone's bright idea over there at Dell because they probably don't have the same testing/burn-in line for the Ubuntu laptops so they're not standing behind them as well as the Vista ones. It's rubbish and they know it- and so should you.
The guy was buying a laptop. From experience trying to repair units in the past, there's little in the way of things to swap out on one of these things. Some of the higher-end laptops might have interchangeable GPU cards but typically, only the CPU (which is NOT recommended for the average user on a laptop- lots of screws and you have to tear the silly thing totally apart in most cases...), the RAM (which is user serviceable anyhow...), the HD (ditto...), and the CD or DVD drive (which is often user serviceable too...).
There's really nothing in there to futz with. Everything "upgradeable" is either USB, PCMCIA, or ExpressCard.
But it is only estoppel in the sense of the people they delayed defense of their rights on. Future infringers may not get a free ride on that one.
Now, having said this, it's verging on trade libel- potentially false statements made to deliberately damage a competitor in business.
SCOX is facing multiple Lanham Act suits over this garbage.
Microsoft really, really needs to put up or shut up. You can't allege an infringement like this without detailing it- at least if you expect to collect royalties or stop the infringements. And if they don't have 'em, they don't need to be saying what they're saying. Steve, Bill, you need to own up or shut up.
In reality, there is still a duty to mitigate, it just differs as to what that duty really is and what do you lose when you fail to uphold your end of things. I'm not a lawyer, mind, but what follows is my understanding of things as I recall them at the time my Patent Attorney related them to us when I was filing my first patent.
In patents for example, if you delay in enforcing, you might be barred from collecting damages or in some cases collecting royalties. The patent doesn't go away, mind, like in a Trademark failure- future items can have enforcement against them accordingly. There is a similar thing for Copyright as well.
You don't lose it all except in the case of Trademark- but over time you lose your ability to enforce your rights against someone when they infringe on your rights and you don't act upon it when you discover the said infringement. MS has been running this up the flagpole for a while now (nearly a year, I believe...) so they're rapidly losing things in that space if they've not already- IF they even really have anything that is honestly enforceable. It's pure FUD and they know it.
...they have to indicate with specificity what patent that is alleged to infringe. Otherwise it's nothing more than hot air, treading pretty much into Lanham Act violation territory.
MS violates a goodly portion of the Open Innovation Network patent pool. Sue Linux or a batch of participating FOSS projects and get a goodly portion of their server and other products shut down but good. They flatly don't want to do this. In all honesty they really don't want to be doing this sabre rattling either, but they're being stupid because Vista's NOT doing well for them and costing them dearly.
In reality, they're not. The API driving them IS. They're just multiprocessor stream engines these days. Pretty much little more than a 4, 8, 16, etc. way SMP machine for all intents and purposes. I should know, I worked on driver work for one of those "complex" beasties- the driver's feature set is what is really complicated and much of that has been done by the DRI crowd and just needing refining.
They're a small team working on the drivers, the OpenGL group as a whole. And they're laying off 5% of their workforce to placate the stock market on dismal earnings- do YOU think they're going to carry through on that commitment in the next 6-24 months? I don't. I'm not commending anyone for anything until I see results- while Matthew Tippet's team (small one- very small) has done amazing things for us (I wish the man's team was PROPERLY staffed up!!) he's hamstrung by the upper management's insistence on DirectX over everything else (If you talk with the DevRel people, unless you're on Linux or MacOS they will try to talk you into DirectX over OpenGL, even if you state plainly that you're gunning for cross-platform on a title or other application.), they do NOT get applause yet from at least myself. They're only slightly better than Broadcom.
Oh, never question that the developers know that there's a serious problem. Trust me on that one. It's just I seriously doubt that middle and upper management have a single clue as to how to honestly fix it.
...that they have an alternative to the service provider that he currently has. In many situations the glib "why don't you go elsewhere" doesn't even apply.
Yeah, I got a big grin and chuckled a bit when I read THAT particular simile- and, while it's a good one, I can see where a Judge using that in a courtroom would get him in a bit of trouble.:-)
Unless the motion is defective, for something not covered by the law, or by a Vexatious Litigant, they can't really do that.
If it were really something that a Judge could really do, SCO v. IBM wouldn't have been QUITE so long in light of some of the rubbish SCO's been known to run up the flagpole... >:-)
The problem with that "nope, case closed," is that legally speaking, with only a few notable exceptions (Which the article author is not in any thereof...) the Judge doesn't HAVE that option. They're not supposed to ignore filings like that in the lower courts. It's a valid motion- in order to even say "no, I'm not giving in on this," the Judge in question HAS to read the motion to come to that same conclusion unless they're declared a vexatious litigant, which I suspect is not the case here.
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In actuality, he's not redefined anything- you have.
Please NOTE the word "freedom" is present in many of the definitions. Your definition doesn't really map to the actual meaning of the word in question in the context for which you two are arguing over.
I was under the understanding that there was one. Heh... I'm not perfect and I don't know it all- nobody really does, save whatever you call God.
YOU yourself can do this sort of thing, legally, even in Texas.
What isn't legit is hiring someone without a proper license to do this professionally
on your behalf. The same thing goes for providing security services of any kind (incl.
cybersecurity...)- YOU can do it for yourself, but if you hire someone, you need to hire
someone with a license or operating the umbrella of one to make it legit if something
goes wrong.
Where your analogy falls apart is that you make the assumption that a consultant doing
the work is analogous to your doing the same work. It's not as far as the civil and
criminal laws are concerned. Since the RIAA or the Labels themselves did not have direct
hire employees doing this work, it's not the same thing as what you present- they hired
a an outside professional (or group thereof) that didn't have a Federal
license for the work being done or a Texas state PI's license. This makes it all subject
to litigation like what's now happening to them.
Could very well implies that it might not happen- it's just that it's VERY much open to doing that as
it's the prescribed penalty for misuse of Copyrights.
ARRGH... Blown closing tag... Must have more caffeine in the morning before my first posts of the day...
Which was a good call on your part, if you think about it.
I'm cautiously smirking and waiting for that 16 Ton Weight (TM/Copyright, Monty Python) to drop on their
collective heads- I just won't state outright that they are going to lose the things. And, lose 'em they
will do if this gets going where it looks like it's going. They sued someone that was a DOJ case manager-
someone that understands precisely where she's going with this and is making no bones about it either.
In simple terms, maybe.
The Court could very well hand down an abrogation of the protections afforded to the works because
they misused their position in this way. If the Court hands that down as the punishment/remedy,
the decision and the penalty would have stand upon appeal- which you KNOW they would immediately
do if they got handed a decision like that. If it stands upon appeal, they may still be stupid
enough to try to get the Supreme Court of the US to listen to an appeal of the whole thing- IF
the SCOTUS decides to listen to the whole thing, they still have to convince the Justices that
it's a bad decision, RICO's Unconstitutional, etc. or they lose hard.
Even if it does happen, it'll take years for 'em to lose the rights protections.
The only complaint I have about your solution is that I needed the extra screen real-estate of a 17" display. They don't seem to offer
those.
Not providing a hardware warranty that's purchasable otherwise, just because a specific OS is installed
is most decidedly **NOT** working with us, thank you, very much.
I could have bought the same laptop he was buying but with Vista instead and burned the install down and been offered the option to buy
the hardware warranty- and it wouldn't have voided it upon my act. It's someone's bright idea over there at Dell because they probably
don't have the same testing/burn-in line for the Ubuntu laptops so they're not standing behind them as well as the Vista ones. It's
rubbish and they know it- and so should you.
The guy was buying a laptop. From experience trying to repair units in the past, there's little in the way of
things to swap out on one of these things. Some of the higher-end laptops might have interchangeable GPU cards
but typically, only the CPU (which is NOT recommended for the average user on a laptop- lots of screws and you
have to tear the silly thing totally apart in most cases...), the RAM (which is user serviceable anyhow...), the
HD (ditto...), and the CD or DVD drive (which is often user serviceable too...).
There's really nothing in there to futz with. Everything "upgradeable" is either USB, PCMCIA, or ExpressCard.
But it is only estoppel in the sense of the people they delayed defense of their rights on. Future infringers may not get a free ride on that one.
Now, having said this, it's verging on trade libel- potentially false statements made to deliberately damage a competitor in business.
SCOX is facing multiple Lanham Act suits over this garbage.
Microsoft really, really needs to put up or shut up. You can't allege an infringement like this without detailing it- at least if you expect
to collect royalties or stop the infringements. And if they don't have 'em, they don't need to be saying what they're saying. Steve, Bill,
you need to own up or shut up.
In reality, there is still a duty to mitigate, it just differs as to what that duty really is and what do you lose when you fail to uphold your end of things. I'm not a lawyer, mind, but what follows is my understanding of things as I recall them at the time my Patent Attorney related them to us when I was filing my first patent.
In patents for example, if you delay in enforcing, you might be barred from collecting damages or in some cases collecting royalties. The patent doesn't
go away, mind, like in a Trademark failure- future items can have enforcement against them accordingly. There is a similar thing for Copyright as well.
You don't lose it all except in the case of Trademark- but over time you lose your ability to enforce your rights against someone when they infringe on your rights and you don't act upon it when you discover the said infringement. MS has been running this up the flagpole for a while now (nearly a year, I believe...) so they're rapidly losing things in that space if they've not already- IF they even really have anything that is honestly enforceable. It's pure FUD and they know it.
...they have to indicate with specificity what patent that is alleged to infringe. Otherwise it's nothing more than hot air, treading pretty much into Lanham Act violation territory.
MS violates a goodly portion of the Open Innovation Network patent pool. Sue Linux or a batch of participating FOSS projects and get a goodly portion of their server and other products shut down but good. They flatly don't want to do this. In all honesty they really don't want to be doing this sabre rattling either, but they're being stupid because Vista's NOT doing well for them and costing them dearly.
...why in the hell have they been prattling on and on about the infringements and NOT telling us with specificity what's infringing?
For that matter, what specific patents are these applications you're alluding to being infringed in what applications?
You HAVE TO do that, or if you don't pony up an infringement, you're guilty of trade libel.
In reality, they're not. The API driving them IS. They're just multiprocessor stream engines these days. Pretty much little more than a 4, 8, 16, etc. way SMP machine for all intents and purposes. I should know, I worked on driver work for one of those "complex" beasties- the driver's feature set is what is really complicated and much of that has been done by the DRI crowd and just needing refining.
They're a small team working on the drivers, the OpenGL group as a whole. And they're laying off 5% of their workforce to placate the stock market on dismal earnings- do YOU think they're going to carry through on that commitment in the next 6-24 months? I don't. I'm not commending anyone for anything until I see results- while Matthew Tippet's team (small one- very small) has done amazing things for us (I wish the man's team was PROPERLY staffed up!!) he's hamstrung by the upper management's insistence on DirectX over everything else (If you talk with the DevRel people, unless you're on Linux or MacOS they will try to talk you into DirectX over OpenGL, even if you state plainly that you're gunning for cross-platform on a title or other application.), they do NOT get applause yet from at least myself. They're only slightly better than Broadcom.
Oh, never question that the developers know that there's a serious problem. Trust me on that one. It's just I seriously doubt that middle and upper management have a single clue as to how to honestly fix it.
...that they have an alternative to the service provider that he currently has. In many situations the glib "why don't you go elsewhere" doesn't even apply.
Heh... It can solve a few of them. MassPike also appears to solve a few problems.
However, I don't know what can be done to I-495, I-290, Rte. 9, or Rte. 2...
I now know what people mean by "Boston Drivers" after being 6 months in the MetroWest area... >:-)
Yeah, I got a big grin and chuckled a bit when I read THAT particular simile- and, while it's a good one, I can see where a Judge using that in a courtroom would get him in a bit of trouble. :-)
Unless the motion is defective, for something not covered by the law, or by a Vexatious Litigant, they can't really do that.
If it were really something that a Judge could really do, SCO v. IBM wouldn't have been QUITE so long in light of
some of the rubbish SCO's been known to run up the flagpole... >:-)
The problem with that "nope, case closed," is that legally speaking, with only a few notable exceptions
(Which the article author is not in any thereof...) the Judge doesn't HAVE that option. They're not
supposed to ignore filings like that in the lower courts. It's a valid motion- in order to even say
"no, I'm not giving in on this," the Judge in question HAS to read the motion to come to that same
conclusion unless they're declared a vexatious litigant, which I suspect is not the case here.