Your point is a good one. Perhaps the only reason to use SCO Unix:
If you're existing systems depend on SCO, I'd probably stay with it as long as it worked too. (I'm running some legacy Alpha systems with Digital Unix on them myself. They're more stable than our Linux boxes, but were also far more expensive in their day)
But still what I was expressing was that noone in their right mind would migrate to SCO Unix today. Which is what Darl was trying to imply, I believe.
IBM didn't 'get' Novell to buy SuSE. Novell bought SuSE because it was good business. And IBM has supported Novell.. because it was good business. (IBM backs RedHat too)
Now sure, both companies are probably real happy about the added bonus of stickin' it to SCO with regards to their Linux 'licensing' program, but if you think that that was the main reason behind those deals, then you're seriously over-estimating the importance of SCO.
The problem here is that if a concept is a "safety pin" - which is to say, after it has been described for the first time it is blindingly obvious to everyone in the field - then it may never be cited regardless of how seminal it actually was.
Funny you say that in connection with Kohn. Because the Hohenberg-Kohn proofs (In second-most cited paper on that list, from 1964), form the basic premise of DFT. (Basically, it proves the Schrödinger equation can be restated in terms of the electron density [for some potentials])
The funny thing about the Hohenberg-Kohn proofs is that they're actually very simple, almost trivial.
[I actually suspect that Feynman must have known about it, at least intuitively. He published a paper in 1939 (The Feynman-Hellmann theorem) showing that the intermolecular force can be stated in terms of the electron density. Which is very close, since the force is just the derivative of the energy with respect to the nuclear coordinates. Note Feynman was still only a grad student then!]
I'm not critisizing Kohn; His work is amazing and has had enormous importance. I'm just saying that that particular part actually was surprizingly obvious. So given that, the fact that he's so well-cited might disprove your point.:-)
For example, while I am quite familiar with DFT and have read most (if not all) of the Kohn papers mentioned in the article, I would not have guessed he would have placed so high.
I'm a quantum chemist myself. I have to say I wasn't that surprized at all.
If you look at the list of Most cited chemists John Pople is #2. Basically everyone who's contributed to Gaussian is up there. (Note to non-chemists: Gaussian is the most used quantum chemistry software)
All these lists are strongly biased towards method-developers, since they get a citation from every paper which uses their method. However, it doesn't necessarily mean much though.
I personally wrote a program which a lot of people use, yet it doesn't really do anything that remarkable. It was just more user-friendly than the competition. So I did put in for a (crap, of course) publication out of it. Unsurprizingly, it's the most cited paper I've written. And the one with the least scientific value!:-)
That is just silly. Or to be more precise: That is just pure speculation.
It's not known for certain when the book of relevation was written, although most agree after A.D. 70, the destruction of the temple, and thus likely not during the reign of Nero. Guesses have placed its writing everywhere between there and the fourth century. (if not more)
Besides that, it is not known who wrote it. John (the Gospel) is generally thought of as the writer. But there's not much real evidence of that either. Besides which, nobody really knows who John was either.
And besides all that, Relevation is the historically most desputed book in the Bible. Quite a number of saints and fathers of the church were critical canonizing it.
Now I'm not saying that these ideas are wrong. I'm just saying that it seems pretty speculative, given how little is known about the origins of that particular book.
Now obviously nobody can work 100% of every second, but if somebody is playing solitaire 50% of the time and still getting work done, he's still WASTING 50% of the time.
Sure. That's quite possible. But in my viewpoint it's not his fault. Shoult it really be the duty of every employee to maximize his or her efficiency? I mean, I thought that's what bosses are for: Delegating work. If someone is over- or underworked, then it's their boss who hasn't been doing a good job. Not them.
If you ask me, the more interesting question is: To what extent should an employer have a right to decide what their employees do on company time.
Should it matter if you're spending half your time playing Solitare if you still manage to do the job you're supposed to do?
This boss's managers don't seem to want to get rid of him. One conclusion you could draw from that is that perhaps the boss actually is getting what he's supposed to be doing done. (Maybe most of his work isn't even done on the computer?) In that case, who cares if he's playing solitare? Perhaps he's thinking things through and making decisions while doing it?
Personally, I've got a job where nobody tells me what to do with my time, as long as I get the job done. And that's the way it should be, if you ask me. By my definition, a job is performing a task for money.
No, it had not. However the court did actually adress the issue.
There already is/was a provision in Norwegian copyright law specifying that reverse-engineering for interoperability purposes is legal and the right may not be voided by contracts.
Paragraph 39i of norwegian copyright law to be precise.
If your norwegian isn't so hot, it's just an implementation of EEC directive 91-250-EEC, article 6.
Does that mean that as long a I write a test harness application for the protection device then I can legally crack it under the DMCA to ensure 'interoperability' with my test harness? What if I do not intend to distribute my test harness and wrote it soley to acheive safe harbour under the interoperability clause?
Nope. Wouldn't work. Circumvention is circumvention. The difference between legal circumvention for interoperability and illegal circumvention for infringement is the intent. If you can't prove your intent was truely to enable interoperability, you're in violation.
And I don't think any court would buy into something like that.
If this is indeed the case, then how was PlayFair not doing anything other than allowing interoperability with the music player I choose to use on Linux?
Well, the first obvious point is that PlayFair was not found to be illegal in a court of law, it was just pulled off Sourceforge. (And although the DMCA sucks, I can understand sf.net for taking a better-safe-than-sorry approach. It is a business venture after all.)
Now, if PlayFair was on trial for a DMCA violation.. It's an interesting thought. Now the criteria for interoperability is rather strict.
It cannot be denied that DRM circumvention is required to play the thing on Linux. But on the other hand, you can use it for just plain DRM-circumvention.
My guess is this: A) Creating and using PlayFair with the sole intent of enabling the playing of legally purchased files on Linux was legal.
B) Creating and using PlayFair for DRM-circumvention only is illegal.
It's a grey zone, where the court would probably have to take intent into consideration to decide if you're (A) or (B).
The most similar case I can think of is the trial against the DeCSS guy DVD-Jon in Norway. The provisions of interoperability are similar in European law (as I said), and in that case the court found that the reverse-engineering of CSS fell under the interoperability provision, since the defendant proved to the court that he had not created it with the intent to pirate movies, but rather just to be able to play his legally-bought movies on Linux.
Hell, you checked out shockwave.com lately? Lots of games from small time developers, actually selling!
Sure. And there are lots of indie-film producers making small films and actually selling them too. But they do not compete with the big Hollywood blockbusters.
Actually, I can't think of a single game genre that DOES demand a huge well funded team. A team sure, but five or six people really is sufficent, given that those five or six people are all very talented.
True. It's not like a film in that respect. However, then you have the marketing, distribution, etc. It's still expensive in relation to the profits.
The way the market looks, 10% of games rake in 90% of profits. (or something to that extent) So you have to finance on average 10 games to get that big hit which pays for the other 9.
So while creating a big 'blockbuster' game may not take that much money from the viewpoint of the developers, it does take a big investment from the viewpoint of the producers.
My point is that we need a return to the good old days of the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum & Amiga when it was possible for "bedroom programmers" to create good quality games.
It's not gonna happen. (Not that you seem to believe it yourself)
The first movies were made by the Lumiere brothers, who invented the projector.
The first photograph was unincidentally taken by Niepce who unsurprizingly was the inventor of the first camera.
It follows naturally that the first computer games were written by computer hobbyists and programmers.
I believe however, that the day of programmers as the major creative force in computer games is over. Like the cinematograph and the camera, the computer has been accepted as an artists' tool and computer games as a medium. It's part of the entertainment industry now. And with that comes the high-budget, polished productions that cost money and bars the entry of amateurs.
Sure, now and then a small independent film made on grainy 16mm film unexpectedly breaks through and receives a cult following, and I expect something similar for amateur computer games in the future.
But the days when a guy sitting in his basement could produce a major computer game hit is simply over.
The DMCA may have a loophole that makes this legal
It's not a "loophole", it's an explicit exception. European law has a similar provision.
It's there for good reason: To promote competition and not allow DRM to be used for vendor lock-in. (Current attempts notwithstanding)
What the DMCA does is prohibit circumvention of copyright-protection devices (e.g. "cracking"), unless it's done for interoperability purposes.
However, the EULA might prohibit reverse engineering no matter what. The enforcability of them are questionable, though. The UCITA act passed by some states is thought to make such clauses enforceable.
But I'm a bit sceptical, since a federal court found such a clause to be unenforcable in 1988 despite a Louisiana state law which allowed such clauses. I can't see why Federal law would not pre-empt the UCITA as well.
Most of us understand the difference between acknowledging an idea as original and acknowledging that an idea as patentable.
I think it sounds interesting too. But I certainly don't think it warrants MS having a monopoly on the idea and its implementations for the next 20 years.
All their ancient Unices are already public domain.
In practice, yes. In legal theory, no. USL claimed copyright on the files, although the court indicated they'd be found invalid before the settlement was made. But without an actual ruling to that extent, one shouldn't assume so, given the nature of copyright law.
Caldera open-sourced them later. Which is a decision made on the premise of them actually owning copyright. (it's always worth repeating public domain = without any copyright, open source=copyrighted with a liberal license. Not the same thing at all.)
But there is no reason to sue for infringement, because that'd likely mean the copyrights would be found invalid. And even if not, given that the ancient unices have been released as open-source and have no commercial value, the damages would probably be lower than the attorneys' fees.
So for every practical purpose, it's public domain. But not on paper.
It's a blatant attempt to prepare for reopening the BSD settlement. Just before their IBM/Novel souts fold, they will announce ownership of BSD and all BSD-related code (TCP/IP stack, anyone?).
Quite possible. Rather interesting thought, given that MS has used BSD code (finger, telnet, ftp utilities). I wonder if they'd want to support that kind of litigation.
Personally, I think it'd be interesting to see that case re-opened. Bad for BSD, but likely SCO will have lost all credibility by then, so perhaps it wouldn't be so bad. After all, the judge in the previous suit not only found that AT&T was likely guilty of copyright infringement themselves, but also that Unix copyrights were unenforceable.
By re-opening the case, they face a very serious risk of having that finding put into a ruling. And *poof* all the ancient Unices are suddenly in the public domain.
Obviously that'd be bad for SCO, but who knows? After all, it's obvious they're not starting lawsuits to win, but to generate FUD.
I didn't compare Lindbergh to travelling to another galaxy. Scale certainly does matter.
But you are making the same mistake of scale if you want to turn critique against intergalactic travel into critique against manned space flight in general.
That is what Van Allen was talking about, and that is what I was adressing.
If you interpreted that as advocating intergalactic travel, then who's being ignorant?
He's forgetting the huge symbolic value. We're humans. It's a human thing to like great symbols, monuments, achivements.
What if a Pharao of Egypt had said: "Screw this pyramid stuff, I'm spending the money on defense instead. And you can bury me in a wooden casket".
What if Charles Lindbergh had said: "What's the point? I can take the boat."
What if Columbus had said: "You can't sail to India. Everyone knows that."
It'd have been a much less interesting world to live in, I'll tell you that. I don't believe every single thing we chose to do should follow from the utilitarian principle of the "greatest good" in strict scientific or material terms.
Or to paraphrase Kennedy: We choose not to do these things because they are useful. We choose to do them becase they are a human thing to do.
Who's Warren Batty? You're not referring to Warren Beatty? That would be weird, since he's famous for acting, not investing.
There are a number of good reasons for wanting to sell a stock short. For one, arguing along the same simplistic lines as you did: There are far more ways of running a business into the ground than running it sucessfully. Failure is also easier to predict than success. I could've told you two years ago that SCO was going to go out of business. And they will, just watch.
The more serious reason for wanting to short a stock is to hedge your position. If you are holding a long position in 100 shares of a company when things start looking bad, you can short 50 shares, hence halving your losses, but also your eventual profits in the short term. Investors like stability.
As for a more serious reasons NOT to short stocks, especially SCOX, is the large risk of cornering the stock. A short only works when someone is prepared to buy it back at lower price. In the case of SCOX, a significant percentage of the outstanding stock is shorted. When these guys want to cash in, there may be so few sellers left the price will go up.
The nature of software licensing is such that there's frequent cases of derrived works from different sources, which is rarely the case in books.
Not true. People use other people's code under license, and people use other people's written texts under license. There is no inherent problem here: A programmer knows when he is and is not writing original code just as well as a writer knows when he is producing original work as opposed to quoting.
SCO claims that the committee that opened up that standard didn't have the authority to do so. Well, it's now years later, and there are countless works derived off of that original standard, and now SCO wants to undo it.
Yes, and they can't.
Basically this has the effect of destroying copyright in software.
No it doesn't. SCO can claim whatever they want. It doesn't mean it'll stand up in court.
How can anybody feel legally safe using any software product at any time when the history of every piece of code isn't out there for our perusal?
Not difficult. As a programmer, don't use other people's code without knowing what copyright restrictions apply.
No, you can't change those restrictions retroactively, except if a court finds it was an obvious mistake, and even then only within a reasonable timeframe. SCO has no case, yet you seem to assume they are right. One should never assume that about SCO.
As a end-user you are not liable. You are only guilty of contributory copyright infringment if it can be proven that you knew or should have known that the software you were using contained someone else's code. How are you supposed to know that as an end-user? Especially if you're running a binary? That is just silly.
As a software developer, for patents: Don't look at patents. If you can't afford to have a team of lawyers continously scrutinize your work for patent violations, the best option is not to look at anything you know is patented. In that way, you can always claim any infringment was unintentional, in which case you are unlikely to be forced to pay damages. (Given you take appropriate action when a patent owner does accuse you of infringement)
As an end user: The same logic on contributory infringment applys.
I agree though, patents are dangerous and will end up increasing the legal complexity and costs of developing software.
This directed at SCO: RTFA! (TIS specification doc for ELF)
Remember the TIS comittee? Probably not, as SCO never was part of it. Santa Cruz Operation (oldSCO) was, however, as well was Novell.
Page 2, paragraph 1: The TIS Committee grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to use the information disclosed in this Specification to make your software TIS-compliant; no other license, express or implied, is granted or intended hereby.
Slashdot Mirror
Your point is a good one. Perhaps the only reason to use SCO Unix:
If you're existing systems depend on SCO, I'd probably stay with it as long as it worked too.
(I'm running some legacy Alpha systems with Digital Unix on them myself. They're more stable than our Linux boxes, but were also far more expensive in their day)
But still what I was expressing was that noone in their right mind would migrate to SCO Unix today. Which is what Darl was trying to imply, I believe.
With features like:
Risking having to migrate again in a year or two when they're bankrupt?
No 2Gb+ file support
No 64-bit support
Ever-diminishing support from the OSS community, which ironically provides the most useful server apps for the platform?
Risk future lawsuits from SCO if you do migrate?
I mean.. SCO Unix has been uncompetitive for years now, while their management has been throwing all their effort into last-ditch lawsuits.
Naturally.. it's all bullshitness as usual from SCO. But it's always worth the debunking, in case someone actually thought SCO had something of value.
IBM didn't 'get' Novell to buy SuSE. Novell bought SuSE because it was good business. And IBM has supported Novell.. because it was good business. (IBM backs RedHat too)
Now sure, both companies are probably real happy about the added bonus of stickin' it to SCO with regards to their Linux 'licensing' program, but if you think that that was the main reason behind those deals, then you're seriously over-estimating the importance of SCO.
The problem here is that if a concept is a "safety pin" - which is to say, after it has been described for the first time it is blindingly obvious to everyone in the field - then it may never be cited regardless of how seminal it actually was.
:-)
Funny you say that in connection with Kohn. Because the Hohenberg-Kohn proofs (In second-most cited paper on that list, from 1964), form the basic premise of DFT. (Basically, it proves the Schrödinger equation can be restated in terms of the electron density [for some potentials])
The funny thing about the Hohenberg-Kohn proofs is that they're actually very simple, almost trivial.
[I actually suspect that Feynman must have known about it, at least intuitively. He published a paper in 1939 (The Feynman-Hellmann theorem) showing that the intermolecular force can be stated in terms of the electron density. Which is very close, since the force is just the derivative of the energy with respect to the nuclear coordinates. Note Feynman was still only a grad student then!]
I'm not critisizing Kohn; His work is amazing and has had enormous importance. I'm just saying that that particular part actually was surprizingly obvious. So given that, the fact that he's so well-cited might disprove your point.
For example, while I am quite familiar with DFT and have read most (if not all) of the Kohn papers mentioned in the article, I would not have guessed he would have placed so high.
:-)
I'm a quantum chemist myself. I have to say I wasn't that surprized at all.
If you look at the list of Most cited chemists John Pople is #2. Basically everyone who's contributed to Gaussian is up there.
(Note to non-chemists: Gaussian is the most used quantum chemistry software)
All these lists are strongly biased towards method-developers, since they get a citation from every paper which uses their method. However, it doesn't necessarily mean much though.
I personally wrote a program which a lot of people use, yet it doesn't really do anything that remarkable. It was just more user-friendly than the competition. So I did put in for a (crap, of course) publication out of it. Unsurprizingly, it's the most cited paper I've written. And the one with the least scientific value!
That is just silly. Or to be more precise: That is just pure speculation.
It's not known for certain when the book of relevation was written, although most agree after A.D. 70, the destruction of the temple, and thus likely not during the reign of Nero. Guesses have placed its writing everywhere between there and the fourth century. (if not more)
Besides that, it is not known who wrote it. John (the Gospel) is generally thought of as the writer. But there's not much real evidence of that either. Besides which, nobody really knows who John was either.
And besides all that, Relevation is the historically most desputed book in the Bible. Quite a number of saints and fathers of the church were critical canonizing it.
Now I'm not saying that these ideas are wrong. I'm just saying that it seems pretty speculative, given how little is known about the origins of that particular book.
Now obviously nobody can work 100% of every second, but if somebody is playing solitaire 50% of the time and still getting work done, he's still WASTING 50% of the time.
Sure. That's quite possible.
But in my viewpoint it's not his fault. Shoult it really be the duty of every employee to maximize his or her efficiency?
I mean, I thought that's what bosses are for: Delegating work. If someone is over- or underworked, then it's their boss who hasn't been doing a good job. Not them.
If you ask me, the more interesting question is: To what extent should an employer have a right to decide what their employees do on company time.
Should it matter if you're spending half your time playing Solitare if you still manage to do the job you're supposed to do?
This boss's managers don't seem to want to get rid of him. One conclusion you could draw from that is that perhaps the boss actually is getting what he's supposed to be doing done. (Maybe most of his work isn't even done on the computer?)
In that case, who cares if he's playing solitare? Perhaps he's thinking things through and making decisions while doing it?
Personally, I've got a job where nobody tells me what to do with my time, as long as I get the job done.
And that's the way it should be, if you ask me.
By my definition, a job is performing a task for money.
No, it had not.
However the court did actually adress the issue.
There already is/was a provision in Norwegian copyright law specifying that reverse-engineering for interoperability purposes is legal and the right may not be voided by contracts.
Paragraph 39i of norwegian copyright law to be precise.
If your norwegian isn't so hot, it's just an implementation of EEC directive 91-250-EEC, article 6.
Does that mean that as long a I write a test harness application for the protection device then I can legally crack it under the DMCA to ensure 'interoperability' with my test harness? What if I do not intend to distribute my test harness and wrote it soley to acheive safe harbour under the interoperability clause?
Nope. Wouldn't work. Circumvention is circumvention.
The difference between legal circumvention for interoperability and illegal circumvention for infringement is the intent. If you can't prove your intent was truely to enable interoperability, you're in violation.
And I don't think any court would buy into something like that.
If this is indeed the case, then how was PlayFair not doing anything other than allowing interoperability with the music player I choose to use on Linux?
Well, the first obvious point is that PlayFair was not found to be illegal in a court of law, it was just pulled off Sourceforge.
(And although the DMCA sucks, I can understand sf.net for taking a better-safe-than-sorry approach. It is a business venture after all.)
Now, if PlayFair was on trial for a DMCA violation.. It's an interesting thought. Now the criteria for interoperability is rather strict.
It cannot be denied that DRM circumvention is required to play the thing on Linux. But on the other hand, you can use it for just plain DRM-circumvention.
My guess is this:
A) Creating and using PlayFair with the sole intent of enabling the playing of legally purchased files on Linux was legal.
B) Creating and using PlayFair for DRM-circumvention only is illegal.
It's a grey zone, where the court would probably have to take intent into consideration to decide if you're (A) or (B).
The most similar case I can think of is the trial against the DeCSS guy DVD-Jon in Norway. The provisions of interoperability are similar in European law (as I said), and in that case the court found that the reverse-engineering of CSS fell under the interoperability provision, since the defendant proved to the court that he had not created it with the intent to pirate movies, but rather just to be able to play his legally-bought movies on Linux.
Hell, you checked out shockwave.com lately? Lots of games from small time developers, actually selling!
Sure. And there are lots of indie-film producers making small films and actually selling them too. But they do not compete with the big Hollywood blockbusters.
Actually, I can't think of a single game genre that DOES demand a huge well funded team. A team sure, but five or six people really is sufficent, given that those five or six people are all very talented.
True. It's not like a film in that respect. However, then you have the marketing, distribution, etc. It's still expensive in relation to the profits.
The way the market looks, 10% of games rake in 90% of profits. (or something to that extent)
So you have to finance on average 10 games to get that big hit which pays for the other 9.
So while creating a big 'blockbuster' game may not take that much money from the viewpoint of the developers, it does take a big investment from the viewpoint of the producers.
My point is that we need a return to the good old days of the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum & Amiga when it was possible for "bedroom programmers" to create good quality games.
It's not gonna happen. (Not that you seem to believe it yourself)
The first movies were made by the Lumiere brothers, who invented the projector.
The first photograph was unincidentally taken by Niepce who unsurprizingly was the inventor of the first camera.
It follows naturally that the first computer games were written by computer hobbyists and programmers.
I believe however, that the day of programmers as the major creative force in computer games is over. Like the cinematograph and the camera, the computer has been accepted as an artists' tool and computer games as a medium. It's part of the entertainment industry now. And with that comes the high-budget, polished productions that cost money and bars the entry of amateurs.
Sure, now and then a small independent film made on grainy 16mm film unexpectedly breaks through and receives a cult following, and I expect something similar for amateur computer games in the future.
But the days when a guy sitting in his basement could produce a major computer game hit is simply over.
The DMCA may have a loophole that makes this legal
It's not a "loophole", it's an explicit exception.
European law has a similar provision.
It's there for good reason: To promote competition and not allow DRM to be used for vendor lock-in.
(Current attempts notwithstanding)
What the DMCA does is prohibit circumvention of copyright-protection devices (e.g. "cracking"), unless it's done for interoperability purposes.
However, the EULA might prohibit reverse engineering no matter what. The enforcability of them are questionable, though. The UCITA act passed by some states is thought to make such clauses enforceable.
But I'm a bit sceptical, since a federal court found such a clause to be unenforcable in 1988 despite a Louisiana state law which allowed such clauses. I can't see why Federal law would not pre-empt the UCITA as well.
Sure. Reverse-engineering is a hacker tactic.
So?
That doesn't make it illegal. Rather it is specifically allowed by law.
(Yes that even means the DMCA, for interoperability purposes.)
What a stupid attempt at guilt-by-association.
Damnit, I also sounded pro-MS there.
Only to Slashbots..
Most of us understand the difference between acknowledging an idea as original and acknowledging that an idea as patentable.
I think it sounds interesting too. But I certainly don't think it warrants MS having a monopoly on the idea and its implementations for the next 20 years.
All their ancient Unices are already public domain.
In practice, yes. In legal theory, no.
USL claimed copyright on the files, although the court indicated they'd be found invalid before the settlement was made. But without an actual ruling to that extent, one shouldn't assume so, given the nature of copyright law.
Caldera open-sourced them later. Which is a decision made on the premise of them actually owning copyright. (it's always worth repeating public domain = without any copyright, open source=copyrighted with a liberal license. Not the same thing at all.)
But there is no reason to sue for infringement, because that'd likely mean the copyrights would be found invalid. And even if not, given that the ancient unices have been released as open-source and have no commercial value, the damages would probably be lower than the attorneys' fees.
So for every practical purpose, it's public domain. But not on paper.
It's a blatant attempt to prepare for reopening the BSD settlement. Just before their IBM/Novel souts fold, they will announce ownership of BSD and all BSD-related code (TCP/IP stack, anyone?).
Quite possible. Rather interesting thought, given that MS has used BSD code (finger, telnet, ftp utilities). I wonder if they'd want to support that kind of litigation.
Personally, I think it'd be interesting to see that case re-opened. Bad for BSD, but likely SCO will have lost all credibility by then, so perhaps it wouldn't be so bad. After all, the judge in the previous suit not only found that AT&T was likely guilty of copyright infringement themselves, but also that Unix copyrights were unenforceable.
By re-opening the case, they face a very serious risk of having that finding put into a ruling. And *poof* all the ancient Unices are suddenly in the public domain.
Obviously that'd be bad for SCO, but who knows? After all, it's obvious they're not starting lawsuits to win, but to generate FUD.
Once again? When did I do so before?
I didn't compare Lindbergh to travelling to another galaxy. Scale certainly does matter.
But you are making the same mistake of scale if you want to turn critique against intergalactic travel into critique against manned space flight in general.
That is what Van Allen was talking about, and that is what I was adressing.
If you interpreted that as advocating intergalactic travel, then who's being ignorant?
He's forgetting the huge symbolic value. We're humans. It's a human thing to like great symbols, monuments, achivements.
What if a Pharao of Egypt had said: "Screw this pyramid stuff, I'm spending the money on defense instead. And you can bury me in a wooden casket".
What if Charles Lindbergh had said: "What's the point? I can take the boat."
What if Columbus had said: "You can't sail to India. Everyone knows that."
It'd have been a much less interesting world to live in, I'll tell you that. I don't believe every single thing we chose to do should follow from the utilitarian principle of the "greatest good" in strict scientific or material terms.
Or to paraphrase Kennedy: We choose not to do these things because they are useful. We choose to do them becase they are a human thing to do.
I mean really.... because there's never been a movie/tv show ever that tried to portray a car as having emotions....
Let's get this clear: Yes, car's have been portrayed as having emotions lots of times.
That is not original.
What is original is proposing this as a real technical solution to an actual problem, as opposed to simple anthropomorphy.
Since human faces have been drawn forever, I suppose the idea of Chernoff Faces would be obvious too. It is not.
The patent system may be broken, but I don't really see how this would be an indication of it.
At least to me, this is not an obvious idea.
Unless of course, you have a Japanese sense of imagination. I'd trust the people who invented Domo-kun , Vending machines for 'used' underwear and heated, self-deodorizing toilets to come up with just about anything.
Who's Warren Batty? You're not referring to Warren Beatty? That would be weird, since he's famous for acting, not investing.
There are a number of good reasons for wanting to sell a stock short.
For one, arguing along the same simplistic lines as you did: There are far more ways of running a business into the ground than running it sucessfully. Failure is also easier to predict than success.
I could've told you two years ago that SCO was going to go out of business. And they will, just watch.
The more serious reason for wanting to short a stock is to hedge your position. If you are holding a long position in 100 shares of a company when things start looking bad, you can short 50 shares, hence halving your losses, but also your eventual profits in the short term.
Investors like stability.
As for a more serious reasons NOT to short stocks, especially SCOX, is the large risk of cornering the stock. A short only works when someone is prepared to buy it back at lower price. In the case of SCOX, a significant percentage of the outstanding stock is shorted. When these guys want to cash in, there may be so few sellers left the price will go up.
The nature of software licensing is such that there's frequent cases of derrived works from different sources, which is rarely the case in books.
Not true. People use other people's code under license, and people use other people's written texts under license. There is no inherent problem here: A programmer knows when he is and is not writing original code just as well as a writer knows when he is producing original work as opposed to quoting.
SCO claims that the committee that opened up that standard didn't have the authority to do so. Well, it's now years later, and there are countless works derived off of that original standard, and now SCO wants to undo it.
Yes, and they can't.
Basically this has the effect of destroying copyright in software.
No it doesn't. SCO can claim whatever they want. It doesn't mean it'll stand up in court.
How can anybody feel legally safe using any software product at any time when the history of every piece of code isn't out there for our perusal?
Not difficult. As a programmer, don't use other people's code without knowing what copyright restrictions apply.
No, you can't change those restrictions retroactively, except if a court finds it was an obvious mistake, and even then only within a reasonable timeframe. SCO has no case, yet you seem to assume they are right. One should never assume that about SCO.
As a end-user you are not liable. You are only guilty of contributory copyright infringment if it can be proven that you knew or should have known that the software you were using contained someone else's code. How are you supposed to know that as an end-user? Especially if you're running a binary? That is just silly.
As a software developer, for patents: Don't look at patents. If you can't afford to have a team of lawyers continously scrutinize your work for patent violations, the best option is not to look at anything you know is patented. In that way, you can always claim any infringment was unintentional, in which case you are unlikely to be forced to pay damages.
(Given you take appropriate action when a patent owner does accuse you of infringement)
As an end user: The same logic on contributory infringment applys.
I agree though, patents are dangerous and will end up increasing the legal complexity and costs of developing software.
But copyrights are not a problem in this sense.
This directed at SCO: RTFA!
(TIS specification doc for ELF)
Remember the TIS comittee? Probably not, as SCO never was part of it. Santa Cruz Operation (oldSCO) was, however, as well was Novell.
Page 2, paragraph 1:
The TIS Committee grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to use the information disclosed in this Specification to make your software TIS-compliant; no other license, express or implied, is granted or intended hereby.