Sheesh...take something that's already well-known and established, slap "via Internet" on it, and voila, instant patent. Turning a previously manual process into essentially a backup shell script shouldn't be patentable.
The categorization is censoring not only content that should be censored, but content that should not be censored as well (e.g., safe gun storage, lobbying materials, etc.). I fall on neither side of the pro-gun/anti-gun fence, but it's clear to me that allowing censoring this extensive is a dangerous limitation of free speech.
If such software is mandated, then it needs to be produced under license, and that license should stipulate that the publisher must put filters only as required to fulfill the obligation to act in the public interest. Sites should not be censored simply on the basis of the organization that owns them.
Your underlying assumption is that Symantec is indeed only blocking what parents don't want their children to see. However, until I see proof that parents demanded pro-gun sites be blocked and that the NRA was named specifically, I'm not going to put any stock in that theory.
considering how much of their product line is based on software whose license they want to effectively void. Should the GPL be voided, it would seem that they would be distributing Samba, GCC, and other software without a valid license. I think a fair and appropriate response, should the court be dumb enough to agree with SCO on the GPL's validity, would be to sue SCO for distributing software without license to do so.
I think the implication is that there will be no *future* versions of the Netscape browser, but current versions will be supported for a time. The $750 mil settlement with Microsoft (ironic that only a little more than $10 mil is going to the browser when it was about the browser business) gives AOL every reason to stick with IE. It's doubtful that AOL will ditch IE for Mozilla, even if Mozilla becomes the best thing since sliced bread.
Netscape is no longer attached to Mozilla. AOL spun it off completely into its own entity, and now must sink or swim on its own (albeit with $10million of AOL seed money).
Actually, SCO's just trying to scare people. The actual language of the UNIX license is pretty clear (that IBM's customers' licenses are can't be declared null and void). The license says that if the agreement is terminated, then IBM must return or destroy all copies of source code in its possession. It does not provide the power to revoke end customer licenses, unless they were purchased after the license was terminated.
IBM filed attachments to their countersuit showing that SCO doesn't have carte blanche authority to revoke licenses. The sale agreement of the transfer rights gave Novell a veto card in case SCO wanted to terminate a UNIX source license. According to another attachment to the countersuit, Novell exercised that right with respect to IBM's license.
Fair enough. However, in this case, the market share numbers are fluid, with Microsoft still increasing (attacking, to use the parlance of the analogy, although they're not expending any effort to gain that share), so the war's not really over.
Makes it seem like all the pundits who called the browser wars OVER were a bit premature in their declaration. With non-U.S. governments going whole hog to non-proprietary products, Mozilla, Konqueror, and other open source products will finally see their share rise at the expense of IE (what else is there to rob from?). When the U.S. becomes a small subset of web users, IE's market share will be less like a monopoly and more like a realistic competitor.
The Windows vs Unix/Linux/BSD/MacOS and the IIS vs Apache battles are wholly separate. It is possible for Windows to gain share while IIS loses share.
Since the release of Apache 2.0 on Windows the various benchmarks I've seen show it performing in the same neighborhood as IIS. So, there's no longer a performance reason to run IIS instead of the de facto internet standard Apache server.
Apache has had some worms, but the Apache guys are blindingly fast at patching most of them. This is opposed to Microsoft which faces security problems and takes its own sweet time fixing most of them. So, there's a security reason to run Apache instead of IIS.
Microsoft helped Covalent Technologies add ASP support to Apache. This helps ASP and Apache get on more servers. This eliminates another reason for running IIS.
With all these things taken into consideration, it's easy to understand why Apache continues to eat into IIS's marketshare. This is good. My only worry is that Microsoft eventually decides to give up its distrust of technologies it didn't develop and can't purchase in light of the critical mass building around Apache, and rewrites IIS to work on top of Apache. Even with a product as fundamentally sound as Apache, technology monocultures are bad.
Actually, based on every interview I've seen on the subject of open source from IBM in the last 3-4 years, I think their open source strategy is coming down firmly on the side of the GPL, with little chance of backtracking. The amount of code they've contributed to Linux is significant.
Granted, it may be a decision they come to regret later, but they're not going to attack the GPL and undermine the license a lot of their code has been placed under.
Someone posted last week that they started getting spam after forgetting to hide their e-mail address.
I thought of another one, but it's only good for a trickle of korean-language spam, apparently:
- Post comments to any of the W3's mailing lists. After I commented on the proposed patent policy, I started to get 1 every other week, (including one which was apparently for a korean s&m site, judging by the enclosed picture) which lasted until I cancelled my account.
- Post a comment on Slashdot with the e-mail address visible - If on a popular e-mail provider such as AOL, Hotmail, or Yahoo, put up a profile and go to a chat room. - Allow your e-mail address to be listed on any of the directories. - Put your e-mail on a Geocities website.
Is it faster? Perhaps at the low end, but definitely not at the high end.
Is development faster? Same answer.
Is it cross platform? Until Mono, DotGNU, and or Rotor are considered official parts of the.net platform, they are not part of.net. They duplicate.net functionality, but that doesn't mean they are.net.
Does it do things that other languages cannot? N/A, it's a platform, not a language. However, one of the benefits of the platform is that it does provide managed code, but we've already seen that in Java.
Your post is just as much FUD as the first post, from the looks of it. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
Fair enough, but I wasn't referring to Microsoft bringing a separate action. Res judicata applies to the same parties, in the interests of allowing finality. However, say another party with the standing to do so (which would be any other browser or plugin developer, such as AOL, Compuserve, Netscape, Opera, Macromedia, IBM, the Mozilla Foundation, the Gnome Foundation, Apple, KDE, Sun, etc.) was part of a separate cause of action, and as a result the patent got struck down. Would Microsoft have any remedy, since the foundation of the legal case against them was invalidated?
I could really care less. Microsoft's wallet is fat enough that this won't cause a real problem for them. The only thing I'm really interested in is seeing the patent invalidated by Microsoft or someone else, as difficult as that is to do.
I don't think this is the right thing to be attacking Microsoft for.
Ray Ozzie's a bright man. He might be a bit too much into bed with Microsoft for my tastes, but he can see how Eolas getting its way here is a B-A-D thing. It'd be like someone holding a patent on HTML.
And this should be one of those circumstances. If newly discovered evidence clearly undermines the core of the plaintiff's case, then it must be reconsidered.
A thought I've always had is that when the manual labor is performed by machines, then corporations will control all the wealth. It should come to pass, then, that all citizens *MUST* have the opportunity to buy into the corporate-centric economy. Otherwise, the economy will become very dystopian. Whether it's intentional or not, the corporations will assume the role of lords and the general population (i.e., those without a significant ownership stake in the corporations) will become serfs.
The first thing I'd like to see is a mailserver plugin that uses a peer-to-peer blocklist sharing client to mitigate the damage done by DDoS attacks against one server. If not this, then an Akamai-type setup needs to be done.
The second thing I'd like to see is for ISP terms of service to change such that if the computer takes place in a DDoS attack due to a patchable bug in the operating system (coughWindowscough), they lose their access until they can prove the patch has been applied and the virus/trojan/worm removed.
The only reason MS would be pulling a stunt like this is that there is a fundamental problem in the MSN Messenger protocol, and the only way to fix it is to ditch the protocol and start from scratch. I'm guessing what they're doing is closing the new protocol unless you license it from them.
They fully and clearly proved the basis for their claim of hypocrisy: attacking the GPL on one hand and benefitting from it on the other. If that's not hypocrisy, nothing is.
Slashdot Mirror
Sheesh...take something that's already well-known and established, slap "via Internet" on it, and voila, instant patent. Turning a previously manual process into essentially a backup shell script shouldn't be patentable.
Sarcasm aside, the point is not conceded.
The categorization is censoring not only content that should be censored, but content that should not be censored as well (e.g., safe gun storage, lobbying materials, etc.). I fall on neither side of the pro-gun/anti-gun fence, but it's clear to me that allowing censoring this extensive is a dangerous limitation of free speech.
If such software is mandated, then it needs to be produced under license, and that license should stipulate that the publisher must put filters only as required to fulfill the obligation to act in the public interest. Sites should not be censored simply on the basis of the organization that owns them.
Your underlying assumption is that Symantec is indeed only blocking what parents don't want their children to see. However, until I see proof that parents demanded pro-gun sites be blocked and that the NRA was named specifically, I'm not going to put any stock in that theory.
Doesn't much of what is embodied in this patent application already exist in half.com, now part of eBay?
considering how much of their product line is based on software whose license they want to effectively void. Should the GPL be voided, it would seem that they would be distributing Samba, GCC, and other software without a valid license. I think a fair and appropriate response, should the court be dumb enough to agree with SCO on the GPL's validity, would be to sue SCO for distributing software without license to do so.
I think the implication is that there will be no *future* versions of the Netscape browser, but current versions will be supported for a time. The $750 mil settlement with Microsoft (ironic that only a little more than $10 mil is going to the browser when it was about the browser business) gives AOL every reason to stick with IE. It's doubtful that AOL will ditch IE for Mozilla, even if Mozilla becomes the best thing since sliced bread.
Netscape is no longer attached to Mozilla. AOL spun it off completely into its own entity, and now must sink or swim on its own (albeit with $10million of AOL seed money).
Actually, SCO's just trying to scare people. The actual language of the UNIX license is pretty clear (that IBM's customers' licenses are can't be declared null and void). The license says that if the agreement is terminated, then IBM must return or destroy all copies of source code in its possession. It does not provide the power to revoke end customer licenses, unless they were purchased after the license was terminated.
IBM filed attachments to their countersuit showing that SCO doesn't have carte blanche authority to revoke licenses. The sale agreement of the transfer rights gave Novell a veto card in case SCO wanted to terminate a UNIX source license. According to another attachment to the countersuit, Novell exercised that right with respect to IBM's license.
The previous administration, under which the H-1B and other programs started their upward curve, wasn't any better.
Don't be political about this. The only things the politicians (Democrat, Republican, or otherwise) are in it for is the money and power.
Fair enough. However, in this case, the market share numbers are fluid, with Microsoft still increasing (attacking, to use the parlance of the analogy, although they're not expending any effort to gain that share), so the war's not really over.
Makes it seem like all the pundits who called the browser wars OVER were a bit premature in their declaration. With non-U.S. governments going whole hog to non-proprietary products, Mozilla, Konqueror, and other open source products will finally see their share rise at the expense of IE (what else is there to rob from?). When the U.S. becomes a small subset of web users, IE's market share will be less like a monopoly and more like a realistic competitor.
The Windows vs Unix/Linux/BSD/MacOS and the IIS vs Apache battles are wholly separate. It is possible for Windows to gain share while IIS loses share.
Since the release of Apache 2.0 on Windows the various benchmarks I've seen show it performing in the same neighborhood as IIS. So, there's no longer a performance reason to run IIS instead of the de facto internet standard Apache server.
Apache has had some worms, but the Apache guys are blindingly fast at patching most of them. This is opposed to Microsoft which faces security problems and takes its own sweet time fixing most of them. So, there's a security reason to run Apache instead of IIS.
Microsoft helped Covalent Technologies add ASP support to Apache. This helps ASP and Apache get on more servers. This eliminates another reason for running IIS.
With all these things taken into consideration, it's easy to understand why Apache continues to eat into IIS's marketshare. This is good. My only worry is that Microsoft eventually decides to give up its distrust of technologies it didn't develop and can't purchase in light of the critical mass building around Apache, and rewrites IIS to work on top of Apache. Even with a product as fundamentally sound as Apache, technology monocultures are bad.
Actually, based on every interview I've seen on the subject of open source from IBM in the last 3-4 years, I think their open source strategy is coming down firmly on the side of the GPL, with little chance of backtracking. The amount of code they've contributed to Linux is significant.
Granted, it may be a decision they come to regret later, but they're not going to attack the GPL and undermine the license a lot of their code has been placed under.
Someone posted last week that they started getting spam after forgetting to hide their e-mail address.
I thought of another one, but it's only good for a trickle of korean-language spam, apparently:
- Post comments to any of the W3's mailing lists. After I commented on the proposed patent policy, I started to get 1 every other week, (including one which was apparently for a korean s&m site, judging by the enclosed picture) which lasted until I cancelled my account.
- Post a comment on Slashdot with the e-mail address visible
- If on a popular e-mail provider such as AOL, Hotmail, or Yahoo, put up a profile and go to a chat room.
- Allow your e-mail address to be listed on any of the directories.
- Put your e-mail on a Geocities website.
Is it faster? Perhaps at the low end, but definitely not at the high end.
.net platform, they are not part of .net. They duplicate .net functionality, but that doesn't mean they are .net.
Is development faster? Same answer.
Is it cross platform? Until Mono, DotGNU, and or Rotor are considered official parts of the
Does it do things that other languages cannot? N/A, it's a platform, not a language. However, one of the benefits of the platform is that it does provide managed code, but we've already seen that in Java.
Your post is just as much FUD as the first post, from the looks of it. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
Fair enough, but I wasn't referring to Microsoft bringing a separate action. Res judicata applies to the same parties, in the interests of allowing finality. However, say another party with the standing to do so (which would be any other browser or plugin developer, such as AOL, Compuserve, Netscape, Opera, Macromedia, IBM, the Mozilla Foundation, the Gnome Foundation, Apple, KDE, Sun, etc.) was part of a separate cause of action, and as a result the patent got struck down. Would Microsoft have any remedy, since the foundation of the legal case against them was invalidated?
I could really care less. Microsoft's wallet is fat enough that this won't cause a real problem for them. The only thing I'm really interested in is seeing the patent invalidated by Microsoft or someone else, as difficult as that is to do.
Here's a hypothetical: what if the patent is invalidated in a separate cause of action? Would that not get the defendent cause and right to appeal?
I don't think this is the right thing to be attacking Microsoft for.
Ray Ozzie's a bright man. He might be a bit too much into bed with Microsoft for my tastes, but he can see how Eolas getting its way here is a B-A-D thing. It'd be like someone holding a patent on HTML.
And this should be one of those circumstances. If newly discovered evidence clearly undermines the core of the plaintiff's case, then it must be reconsidered.
A thought I've always had is that when the manual labor is performed by machines, then corporations will control all the wealth. It should come to pass, then, that all citizens *MUST* have the opportunity to buy into the corporate-centric economy. Otherwise, the economy will become very dystopian. Whether it's intentional or not, the corporations will assume the role of lords and the general population (i.e., those without a significant ownership stake in the corporations) will become serfs.
The first thing I'd like to see is a mailserver plugin that uses a peer-to-peer blocklist sharing client to mitigate the damage done by DDoS attacks against one server. If not this, then an Akamai-type setup needs to be done.
The second thing I'd like to see is for ISP terms of service to change such that if the computer takes place in a DDoS attack due to a patchable bug in the operating system (coughWindowscough), they lose their access until they can prove the patch has been applied and the virus/trojan/worm removed.
The only reason MS would be pulling a stunt like this is that there is a fundamental problem in the MSN Messenger protocol, and the only way to fix it is to ditch the protocol and start from scratch. I'm guessing what they're doing is closing the new protocol unless you license it from them.
Slander nothing.
They fully and clearly proved the basis for their claim of hypocrisy: attacking the GPL on one hand and benefitting from it on the other. If that's not hypocrisy, nothing is.