Of course everyone worth their salary in this industry knew for sure nothing would break. It's not rocket science to set the dates on computers to 1999-12-31. Any serious company had done this, tested every important system and seen that nothing at all would happen.
So, yes, it was impossible for the power to go out, everyone knew it, but due to some media jerks and fearmongers a lot of people were forced to work.
Yes it is funny. And anyone calling a helpdesk is free for all game to redicule. The breakdown in the analogy comes where the child has problems learning on their own, while the depicted morons in support related comics have the perfectly reasonable alternative of using the skills they (hopefully) picked up as a child and Reading The Fine Manual.
As far as temporary proprietary licenses there's been the Ghostscript license. The FSF has a stance on that issue, I believe.
In my opinion companies believe a bit too much in their own 'features' worth; if you look at the average proprietary UNIX, the age of free software merged into it is in the ballpark of 18 to 24 months _anyway_. The time from release to a software base (apart from a demo or two) actually using those features is _more_ than 18 to 24 months. Hell, the time from release of new software until we even have a few production systems with it on at the place I work is more than 12 months.
And the time from release until I will actually use, as a programmer, an extension not available on all platforms we use is about the age of the universe.
Its really too bad, but they are wasting their time; nobody cares. If its Different its bad. if its Different But Great! its still bad.
It is sometimes acceptable to use proprietary software in systems development, but guess why we still have systems that are completely unsupported and not y2k safe running? Well, we have this system that uses an application whose license server is still tied to an extremely outdated machine, but the company producing the software doesnt even know how to generate new license keys for that software. Of course, theyd be happy to let us pay for an upgrade, only the upgrade is different so we would have to rewrite a lot of the system, etc etc. A temporary proprietary license would actually have been good in this case though, since that would have allowed me to just remove the license check and shut those damn machines down.
His changes are still his work after he is done. He retains the copyright. If he wants to distribute his code together with the original GPL code he may, if he licenses his code under the GPL, or a more free license that will still fulfill the terms of the GPL (for example, BSD). The total combined work must remain within the terms of the GPL, but the parts can be under any license that allows those terms.
BUT. If he wants to distribute his work as proprietary, the rights of the _original_ GPL work does not allow distribution of _that_ work in a proprietary form. He can distribute his own code all he wants, but his changes doesnt make the original his, and if he cannot abide by those terms then he cannot distribute those parts.
All licences are infectious. The GPL is merely one of the few that actually allows it to happen in the open.
Other-free code doesnt become less 'infected' because its merged with Win 95 sources and subjected to Win 95 license agreements than Other-free code merged with GPL-free code.
The correct terminology would be to call licenses that allow 'infection' to happen 'immunologicaly deficient licenses', such as the BSD license.
The GPL isnt meant to prevent anyone from profiting. It accomplishes other things. The GPL has prevents Redhat, VA and Cobalt from turning things proprietary. It prevents Redhat from adding gratious incompatibilities that they dont tell anyone about for the purpose of making binaries that run on Redhat run on Redhat only. The code is still there to read.
An algorithm is not innovative. It is a discovery.
Just because you are the first to depict a naturally occuring horse in a painting does it mean you should have the right to collect license fees from any other painter because they also depict a horse in a paining.
Software is no different. It may be the _first_ time someone implements an algorithm, but algorithms exist outside of your implementing them even before you discover them.
There was widespread use of the concept of one click shopping before the patent was applied for. The patent office, which anyone applying for patents knows, does not research previous use, and would probably grant a patent four wheeled vehicle for use for transportation on roads, and hope the equally computer challanged courts would correct their mistake.
Since they are in the internet buisness it is unlikely that they did not know of the existing prior work, and it is equally unlikely they did not know that the patent office does not properly research their patents. Knowing that you do not fulfill the requirements for a patent you apply for is fraudulent, and applying for such is not part of the companys fiduciary duty.
Im sorry, but the concept of fiduciary duty does not extend to willfully creating fraudulent patents. Nor does it extend to illegal practices of other kinds, no matter how lucruative they may be.
In the case of government agencies, preferential treatment of certain vendors sounds very much like a waste of taxpayer money. Tax funded agencies should always consider all options, and buy that which suits their needs at the lowest cost. Preferably without any knowledge of which vendor is making the different offers.
Im sorry, but you are not allowed to gain from something you create. Someone else already has a patent on it. They will be pleased to make money off your product and idea tho.
Well, since our employees shouldnt be doing their private christmas shopping on the corporate network anyway, I think amazon will be added to the naughty filters. That would be more than 30000 customers.
A lot of slashdot people are system admins. In these cases, Id suggest changing the ole filters to simply block out the offending sites. This would hardly violate the usual corporate standards; employees should not be using the net for private stuff and if a sysadmin 'notices' heavy private use of, for example, etoys, just shut access to them down, and suddenly they have 40000 customers less.
Now, where did I put that filter ruleset... amazon and etoys.
Ah, but what if one of the TLA crew added a couple of lines of code to let them read anything on your disk and/or erase any documents they dont want around? With linux we have the source to discover that, but with Windows we dont.
So, tell me, do you find it reassuring that a cult that is interested in control and power through a company dedicated to economic espionage and disruption may have coded backdoors into government computers so they can do whatever they want to your personal information? I can certainly understand the german government. Scientology wouldnt be above a little creative messing around with government data. After all, they arent above doing it manually by having sect members doing it.
None of which has anything to do with wether an idea should be patentable or not. To obtain a patent an idea should be revolutionary, not evolutionary. Neither should there be previous implementations of the same idea. This is not innovation.
Yes, those companies have a real bad problem, because theyre just stock hype and so much hot air. They have virutally nothing except a brand. Yes, a lot of stockholders will get burned as they realize they will never make money to justify stock price because any teenager in a garage could do what they do and competition will be fierce. Too bad for them. It still isnt patentable.
Hey, I actually thought about something close to the web before it existed. I spend several hours on it. Think I should do an IPO and patent the web? After all, I deserve some profit from those hours.
Chemical companies inflict their pollution on a limited number of people, rainforest loggers ruin some ecology, but Microsofts products are inflicted upon, and causes daily loss of productivity and personal stress, stress related agression and the diseases associated with that such as ulcers, bloodpressure problems, heart problems, etc upon hundreds of millions of people. Every day. Name another company that gets away with that without having warning labels on their products? Add to that that you may be forced by companies to use those products in your job. I dont see how you can get more evil than that.
Actually, call me when Solaris gets Backspace correct when you've just installed it, when they fix the syslog bugs so you dont have to rotate logs every 5 minutes if they grow fast, and when they start shipping things like sendmail and bind from this decade (Ok, Solaris 7 is a tad more recent, but they are sloooow) at least, etc etc etc etc etc. Solaris is scalable but it stinks in a lot of ways.
Sun had better get their act together or I can name a number of low to mid range servers that are gonna buy it when the next replacement round comes.
Re:humans as patent infringments?!
on
New Patent Treaty
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· Score: 1
But are those modifications new? How can you be sure nature has not already been there done that? 'Discovering' a new plant does not grant you a patent on that plant, why should twiddling one gene do that?
And twiddling one gene is hardly original research, any more than changing a line of code in a C program. Anyone with sufficient knowledge in the field can do it. This is not patent material. Copyrightable, sure, but not patentable.
Patents do not allow someone to reap the monetary rewards from funding a project, they simply prevent others who have also funded research into similar things a chance to reap the fair monetary rewards of _their_ investment. Copyright is ok, but preventing others from doing the same research and reaping the rewards is not good.
Im sorry, but as a programmer, Im not going to let you get a free ride unless you fulfill my terms. The GPL license protects MY code, and I dont want you going off and using that in closed source marketed software. Just because the code is open doesnt mean you have any special right to it, unless you can fulfill the terms.
The only ones who get the short end of the stick are those who want to cash in on other peoples work. Thats perfect with me.
The GPL does not impose any restrictions at all. The GPL grants you certain rights above and _beyond_ copyright law, _if_ and only if you agree to the license. If you do not agree you have no rights to do anything with the code.
The GPL is not viral any more than any other license. The difference is that the GPL allows merging, which makes those properties of licenses apparent. All other licenses work the same way. If you combine works you must fulfill the terms of all the licenses in question.
These things seem to pop up fairly often by now. Companies like Microsoft even seem to put it into regular practice. Of course, it totally destroys the credibility of anyone arguing for them or their products, because you can with a fair certainty assume that anyone having any good experience with them is paid to say so.
I have not _once_ wanted to buy windows. Yet I have at least 4 copies that I have paid for. Plus Word and various other wastes of diskspace that company has managed to excrete. Simply because the alternative, to go to the trouble to get a computer without windows, would cost me more. This is due to corporate licenses, bulk contracts, etc. I have been forced, due to Microsofts illegal actions, to pay, and pay more than necessary, for something I do not want.
Just go away. Your argument has been voiced and disproved so many times its not even worth arguing anymore. You are simply wrong. If someone should take responsibility for their actions it is Microsoft, and if you want a fine example of how not to do that just read their licenses. Just imagine if they 'took responsibility for their actions' and paid back what their substandard dung has cost in lost work and buisness to those suffering from the bugs. The total value of Microsoft wouldnt even begin to cover that.
Hmmm, you may be right, in some configurations you may actually be faster writing to RAID 5. It would depend on wether the actual bottleneck in writing lies in the seek times or bus to platter transferrate. That would be heavily affected by the type of load. Oh, well, guess it eventually falls under the old have-to-test-to-be-sure category.
Um, I think you've missed some points. Microsoft will _NOT_, I repeat _NOT_, even support products they themselves have developed on their own platforms. I have asked them to supply bugfixes for several problems and gotten 'that is just the way it is' (and this is with the contracts a multi-billion dollar company has). Sometimes they may help you, sometimes they wont.
Second, you take a chance every time you do something cutting edge. Just because some people are not well educated enough or smart enough to learn with anything but Microsoft tools that does not apply to most of the industry. A common situation for any experienced IT professional is that you're faced with integrating cutting edge technology with several legacy systems, sometimes in-house developed stuff without any maintainers or documentation. Well, guess what, you just take a deep breath (,put a clip on your nose to avoid the stench) and _learn_. And you _make_ it work. With support or not (which is easier if you dont get bogged down in contract support anyway).
Those that cant handle that should stick with setting up Exchange servers or something they may acually be qualified for because they are already in over their heads.
I frankly dont care the least if splitting Microsoft up means that a number of less-than-qualified consultants get a tough time. So much the better; the 'systems' those people create usually stink even worse when they eventually have to be integrated with or replaced by something else, because the people making them didnt give the least thought to the future.
Not entirely true. RAID 0+1 is faster for writing, but RAID5 is usually, depending on configuration, faster to much faster for reading (you have more platters to simulatenously read from, and calculating checksums isnt necessary for reads).
Some array types (notably HP that I know of) will dynamically rearrange data storage between RAID 0+1 and RAID5 to optimize speed and space.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course everyone worth their salary in this industry knew for sure nothing would break. It's not rocket science to set the dates on computers to 1999-12-31. Any serious company had done this, tested every important system and seen that nothing at all would happen.
So, yes, it was impossible for the power to go out, everyone knew it, but due to some media jerks and fearmongers a lot of people were forced to work.
Yes it is funny. And anyone calling a helpdesk is free for all game to redicule. The breakdown in the analogy comes where the child has problems learning on their own, while the depicted morons in support related comics have the perfectly reasonable alternative of using the skills they (hopefully) picked up as a child and Reading The Fine Manual.
As far as temporary proprietary licenses there's been the Ghostscript license. The FSF has a stance on that issue, I believe.
:)
In my opinion companies believe a bit too much in their own 'features' worth; if you look at the average proprietary UNIX, the age of free software merged into it is in the ballpark of 18 to 24 months _anyway_. The time from release to a software base (apart from a demo or two) actually using those features is _more_ than 18 to 24 months. Hell, the time from release of new software until we even have a few production systems with it on at the place I work is more than 12 months.
And the time from release until I will actually use, as a programmer, an extension not available on all platforms we use is about the age of the universe.
Its really too bad, but they are wasting their time; nobody cares. If its Different its bad. if its Different But Great! its still bad.
It is sometimes acceptable to use proprietary software in systems development, but guess why we still have systems that are completely unsupported and not y2k safe running? Well, we have this system that uses an application whose license server is still tied to an extremely outdated machine, but the company producing the software doesnt even know how to generate new license keys for that software. Of course, theyd be happy to let us pay for an upgrade, only the upgrade is different so we would have to rewrite a lot of the system, etc etc. A temporary proprietary license would actually have been good in this case though, since that would have allowed me to just remove the license check and shut those damn machines down.
Oh, well, Im annoyance rambling.
His changes are still his work after he is done. He retains the copyright. If he wants to distribute his code together with the original GPL code he may, if he licenses his code under the GPL, or a more free license that will still fulfill the terms of the GPL (for example, BSD). The total combined work must remain within the terms of the GPL, but the parts can be under any license that allows those terms.
BUT. If he wants to distribute his work as proprietary, the rights of the _original_ GPL work does not allow distribution of _that_ work in a proprietary form. He can distribute his own code all he wants, but his changes doesnt make the original his, and if he cannot abide by those terms then he cannot distribute those parts.
All licences are infectious. The GPL is merely one of the few that actually allows it to happen in the open.
Other-free code doesnt become less 'infected' because its merged with Win 95 sources and subjected to Win 95 license agreements than Other-free code merged with GPL-free code.
The correct terminology would be to call licenses that allow 'infection' to happen 'immunologicaly deficient licenses', such as the BSD license.
The GPL isnt meant to prevent anyone from profiting. It accomplishes other things. The GPL has prevents Redhat, VA and Cobalt from turning things proprietary. It prevents Redhat from adding gratious incompatibilities that they dont tell anyone about for the purpose of making binaries that run on Redhat run on Redhat only. The code is still there to read.
An algorithm is not innovative. It is a discovery.
Just because you are the first to depict a naturally occuring horse in a painting does it mean you should have the right to collect license fees from any other painter because they also depict a horse in a paining.
Software is no different. It may be the _first_ time someone implements an algorithm, but algorithms exist outside of your implementing them even before you discover them.
There was widespread use of the concept of one click shopping before the patent was applied for. The patent office, which anyone applying for patents knows, does not research previous use, and would probably grant a patent four wheeled vehicle for use for transportation on roads, and hope the equally computer challanged courts would correct their mistake.
Since they are in the internet buisness it is unlikely that they did not know of the existing prior work, and it is equally unlikely they did not know that the patent office does not properly research their patents. Knowing that you do not fulfill the requirements for a patent you apply for is fraudulent, and applying for such is not part of the companys fiduciary duty.
Im sorry, but the concept of fiduciary duty does not extend to willfully creating fraudulent patents. Nor does it extend to illegal practices of other kinds, no matter how lucruative they may be.
In the case of government agencies, preferential treatment of certain vendors sounds very much like a waste of taxpayer money. Tax funded agencies should always consider all options, and buy that which suits their needs at the lowest cost. Preferably without any knowledge of which vendor is making the different offers.
Im sorry, but you are not allowed to gain from something you create. Someone else already has a patent on it. They will be pleased to make money off your product and idea tho.
Well, since our employees shouldnt be doing their private christmas shopping on the corporate network anyway, I think amazon will be added to the naughty filters. That would be more than 30000 customers.
A lot of slashdot people are system admins. In these cases, Id suggest changing the ole filters to simply block out the offending sites. This would hardly violate the usual corporate standards; employees should not be using the net for private stuff and if a sysadmin 'notices' heavy private use of, for example, etoys, just shut access to them down, and suddenly they have 40000 customers less.
Now, where did I put that filter ruleset... amazon and etoys.
Ah, but what if one of the TLA crew added a couple of lines of code to let them read anything on your disk and/or erase any documents they dont want around? With linux we have the source to discover that, but with Windows we dont.
So, tell me, do you find it reassuring that a cult that is interested in control and power through a company dedicated to economic espionage and disruption may have coded backdoors into government computers so they can do whatever they want to your personal information? I can certainly understand the german government. Scientology wouldnt be above a little creative messing around with government data. After all, they arent above doing it manually by having sect members doing it.
None of which has anything to do with wether an idea should be patentable or not. To obtain a patent an idea should be revolutionary, not evolutionary. Neither should there be previous implementations of the same idea. This is not innovation.
Yes, those companies have a real bad problem, because theyre just stock hype and so much hot air. They have virutally nothing except a brand. Yes, a lot of stockholders will get burned as they realize they will never make money to justify stock price because any teenager in a garage could do what they do and competition will be fierce. Too bad for them. It still isnt patentable.
Hey, I actually thought about something close to the web before it existed. I spend several hours on it. Think I should do an IPO and patent the web? After all, I deserve some profit from those hours.
Chemical companies inflict their pollution on a limited number of people, rainforest loggers ruin some ecology, but Microsofts products are inflicted upon, and causes daily loss of productivity and personal stress, stress related agression and the diseases associated with that such as ulcers, bloodpressure problems, heart problems, etc upon hundreds of millions of people. Every day. Name another company that gets away with that without having warning labels on their products? Add to that that you may be forced by companies to use those products in your job. I dont see how you can get more evil than that.
Actually, call me when Solaris gets Backspace correct when you've just installed it, when they fix the syslog bugs so you dont have to rotate logs every 5 minutes if they grow fast, and when they start shipping things like sendmail and bind from this decade (Ok, Solaris 7 is a tad more recent, but they are sloooow) at least, etc etc etc etc etc. Solaris is scalable but it stinks in a lot of ways.
Sun had better get their act together or I can name a number of low to mid range servers that are gonna buy it when the next replacement round comes.
But are those modifications new? How can you be sure nature has not already been there done that? 'Discovering' a new plant does not grant you a patent on that plant, why should twiddling one gene do that?
And twiddling one gene is hardly original research, any more than changing a line of code in a C program. Anyone with sufficient knowledge in the field can do it. This is not patent material. Copyrightable, sure, but not patentable.
Patents do not allow someone to reap the monetary rewards from funding a project, they simply prevent others who have also funded research into similar things a chance to reap the fair monetary rewards of _their_ investment. Copyright is ok, but preventing others from doing the same research and reaping the rewards is not good.
Im sorry, but as a programmer, Im not going to let you get a free ride unless you fulfill my terms. The GPL license protects MY code, and I dont want you going off and using that in closed source marketed software. Just because the code is open doesnt mean you have any special right to it, unless you can fulfill the terms.
The only ones who get the short end of the stick are those who want to cash in on other peoples work. Thats perfect with me.
The GPL does not impose any restrictions at all. The GPL grants you certain rights above and _beyond_ copyright law, _if_ and only if you agree to the license. If you do not agree you have no rights to do anything with the code.
The GPL is not viral any more than any other license. The difference is that the GPL allows merging, which makes those properties of licenses apparent. All other licenses work the same way. If you combine works you must fulfill the terms of all the licenses in question.
Try again.
These things seem to pop up fairly often by now. Companies like Microsoft even seem to put it into regular practice. Of course, it totally destroys the credibility of anyone arguing for them or their products, because you can with a fair certainty assume that anyone having any good experience with them is paid to say so.
I have not _once_ wanted to buy windows. Yet I have at least 4 copies that I have paid for. Plus Word and various other wastes of diskspace that company has managed to excrete. Simply because the alternative, to go to the trouble to get a computer without windows, would cost me more. This is due to corporate licenses, bulk contracts, etc. I have been forced, due to Microsofts illegal actions, to pay, and pay more than necessary, for something I do not want.
Just go away. Your argument has been voiced and disproved so many times its not even worth arguing anymore. You are simply wrong. If someone should take responsibility for their actions it is Microsoft, and if you want a fine example of how not to do that just read their licenses. Just imagine if they 'took responsibility for their actions' and paid back what their substandard dung has cost in lost work and buisness to those suffering from the bugs. The total value of Microsoft wouldnt even begin to cover that.
Hmmm, you may be right, in some configurations you may actually be faster writing to RAID 5. It would depend on wether the actual bottleneck in writing lies in the seek times or bus to platter transferrate. That would be heavily affected by the type of load. Oh, well, guess it eventually falls under the old have-to-test-to-be-sure category.
Um, I think you've missed some points. Microsoft will _NOT_, I repeat _NOT_, even support products they themselves have developed on their own platforms. I have asked them to supply bugfixes for several problems and gotten 'that is just the way it is' (and this is with the contracts a multi-billion dollar company has). Sometimes they may help you, sometimes they wont.
Second, you take a chance every time you do something cutting edge. Just because some people are not well educated enough or smart enough to learn with anything but Microsoft tools that does not apply to most of the industry. A common situation for any experienced IT professional is that you're faced with integrating cutting edge technology with several legacy systems, sometimes in-house developed stuff without any maintainers or documentation. Well, guess what, you just take a deep breath (,put a clip on your nose to avoid the stench) and _learn_. And you _make_ it work. With support or not (which is easier if you dont get bogged down in contract support anyway).
Those that cant handle that should stick with setting up Exchange servers or something they may acually be qualified for because they are already in over their heads.
I frankly dont care the least if splitting Microsoft up means that a number of less-than-qualified consultants get a tough time. So much the better; the 'systems' those people create usually stink even worse when they eventually have to be integrated with or replaced by something else, because the people making them didnt give the least thought to the future.
Not entirely true. RAID 0+1 is faster for writing, but RAID5 is usually, depending on configuration, faster to much faster for reading (you have more platters to simulatenously read from, and calculating checksums isnt necessary for reads).
Some array types (notably HP that I know of) will dynamically rearrange data storage between RAID 0+1 and RAID5 to optimize speed and space.