Anybody who claims that the EU as a whole does not play machiavellian economic power politics with rulings and regulations is a fool. the EU's economic policies are the equivalent of the stereotype of the US's current military ones.. unilateral, self-serving, and ultimately deadly to innocents.
You're oversimplifying things. The EU is protectionistic in trade issues. And I agree that is bad. But the US is equally protectionistic, as are most western nations outside of the EU, like Norway and Japan.
So, it's not fair to condemn the EU's trade regulations in their entiety just because they are protectionistic. Also, there is quite a bit of criticism and controversy over this within the EU.
Contrast that to the situation in the USA, where the Bush administration is no less protectionistic than the EU. (Imposing tariffs on pig-iron imports, for example) Unfortunately, there is little opposition to this in the USA, unlike Clinton, Kerry hasn't been particularily enthusiastic over free-trade either.
PDF (Portable Document Format) replaced PostScript as a page description language. Basically describing a printed page. PDF (and PS) both support vector graphics.
Whereas SVG is only a vector graphics format, it does not handle page layout and the other things required for printed page description.
If anything SVG replaces EPS (Encapsulated PostScript), which is the postscript language applied to an independent graphics object, as opposed to an actual printed page.
Well, I keep hearing talks about Microsoft being a monopoly and needing to be punished. But, what I want to know is what are they actually being punished for.
For being a monopoly. Or rather, using their monopoly position to leverage themselves against competitors.
Spending millions of dollars to develop IE which was then distributed free with Windows pushed Netscape out of the browser business fast.
Now they're trying to do the same with AIM, Real, iTunes, well, you name it!
Doing that kind of stuff is not legal in the USA, nor is it legal in any western country. And for good reason: Monopoly practices are bad for everybody except the monopolist. It's damaging to the economy. It's damaging for consumers.
Or to put it another way: Capitalism is it's own worst enemy. (and that was pretty much agreed upon until certain politicans realized that big businesses had bigger pockets for campaign spending)
Couldnt they just say 'okay, BYE' and not sell in Europe anymore?
Yes. And also give up what 30-40% of their bottom-line.. Which is a LOT more than that puny fee.
but who would be more injured by such a move, MS or the EU?
Microsoft would be killed by it. Several hundred million europeans would be forced to switch OS and application software. That'd get the Linux ball rolling, and how!
Am I the only person who can't seem to understand what that is meant to mean?
Basically.. a more widespread distrust of America will be reflected on american products. Do foreign governments want to put their strategical infrastructure software in the hands of a nation which they do not trust?
Let's not turn this into a flamewar on how or if these sentiments are valid and just agree on that they exist, like it or not.
You just say "NO", algorithms aren't math and somehow the fact that people pay for implementations of algorithms proves that? That's just silly.
Algorithms central to a branch of mathematics known as "discrete mathematics". Integral calculus is a part of "analysis". The entire world of mathematics is more than just what you learned in high-school, you know.
"Ask an engineer" -I have a masters degree in engineering, thank you. And I do scientific computing for a living.
There are good patents. Patents on compression are a good example of such patents. They involve some serious work by one or two geniuses who deserve some monetary reward on their work.
Others would disagree. What is a compression method? It's an algorithm for altering the representation of data from one form to another, smaller one.
You see, an algorithm is math. It's pure thought-- an idea of how to do something, not a method.
Math results aren't patentable even though a lot of work goes into them. They are ideas, or discoveries.
Patents were never intended to protect ideas or discoveries. They were created to protect methods and designs.
Combustion is a discovery. The combustion engine -- that's an idea. A design for a combustion engine - that's a method.
This is why patents work well. People are still free to use the original idea, but with a different method, or implementation. You can still build a combustion engine, it just can't work the exact same way. The distinction is simple.
With software, that distinction is not there. What's the difference between binary code, C++ code, pseudocode or just a plain description of the algorithm? The idea is not distinct from the implementation.
The other question is why patents are required? The software industry is hugely successful as it is. Why encumber it with patents? Competition disadvantages are a far greater problem than code theft in the software industry. Patents are state-given, time-limited monopolies.
I don't see any evidence that creating further disadvantages will work to eradicate those that already exist. I'm worried they will work to increase them.
You can see something I wrote about that topic on one of my project pages.
I did. It doesn't really tell me much more than "yeah, I'm a patent guy, and I wrote this software and made it free for these reasons."
What I (and presumably others) would be interested in knowing, is how you feel on the specific concerns raised by free-software authors on software patents. Since you (I assume) feel software patents are a good idea: How would you adress these concerns?
Most software-patent advocates out there have not given me the impression that they understand the concerns raised. As someone in a good position to do so, I'd be interested in hearing your side of it.
Is it just me, or does this sound like it is just throwing more money at a problem and hoping it will solve itself? If the legislation doesn't have provisions to specify new procedures to actually get around to solving the problems, it is unlikely to solve much of anything.
Well.. what would you do if you had the choice between
Hire more engineers or
Hike your own salary, get a nice new office building with a pool, sauna and indoor shuffleboard facility?
If you commit a crime in a foreign country which is also considered a crime in your home country you should be extradited. No question.
If you commit a criminal act in a foreign country which is legal in your home country, you probably shouldn't be extradited. At least not in this case, where the guy hasn't even set foot in the USA while perpetrating the alleged crime.
But: Software piracy is not legal in Australia.
So the question is: Does the US court have jurisdiction of these crimes, if they did occur in Australia? That's a question which the US court will no doubt adress in the trial.
But if they don't, then it means that he should be tried in Australia.. So what's the issue?
When it comes to 'free' things on the internet, the old phrase 'don't look a gift-horse in the mouth' just doesn't apply: You should be giving that horse a full dental exam!
People do have a right to complain if they feel a service is bad, even if it's free. Especially if it's a service such as e-mail, which is a pain to switch. It takes time and they know this and exploit it.
What happens when they buy back the shares to keep the price high a bit longer, but than it drops below $8.50 for 25 days anyway?
It doesn't.. How this works is that they put the bid out there "We buy SCO shares at $9.50".. as long as they're out there buying, noone is going to sell for less. The stock can't drop below that.
i'd be surprised if even sega games were so poorly programmed that they depended on the hardware clock speed.
Being an old (Atari) 68000 coder myself, I'd like to say that it's not really poor code. As others have pointed out, if you're programming a console or machine with a fixed set of hardware, you can rely on stuff like that.
Given that the 68000 was not that fast (but good in its day), you really didn't want to spend valuable processor time waiting. Instead, you could time your code (oh, and everyone used assembly language) and push the thing to the limit.
This is of course a major nuisance writing emulators, since everything has to be correctly timed and synced for some games to work. But I have the greatest respect for the people who wrote that stuff back in the day. It's not entirely easy to write well-timed code.
Of course, given the perspective of modern PCs and high-level languages, it is sloppy and I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone to do that stuff on a PC. But that doesn't mean it was a bad decision back then.
Not when they're a couple of quarters away from insolvency. Stock buyback usually occurs when a company with low stock price have too much money on hand and no viable avanue of investement available.
SCO has $50 million from the BayStar deal, with a redemption condition if the stock goes below ~$8.50 for 25 consecutive trading days.
In light of that, initiating a buyback-scheme when the stock started dipping close to this mark is completely expected. Losing the BayStar investment is a much bigger loss than what it'd cost SCO to keep the stock price inflated.
That is theoretically true in America, but IP and fair-use laws are different in Europe. It's a pretty bad situation to be in, but hopefully somebody here will know how to handle it.
Please explain, how are they significantly different? All countries have signed the Berne treaty. In my (humble) experience, most european have broader definitions of 'fair-use' than the US.
Can you name a European copyright legislation which is stricter? I certainly can't.
..is it even legal to do that when the court hasn't even made a decision yet?
Yes.. if you look at the SCO "IP license" it is so insanely unspecific, you could be paying for anything and nothing. (which of course you are..)
But the statement in the article that it "may provide key legal ammunition" is just pure bullocks. No court would view the fact that you've convinced third parties outside of the court room as evidence that you're right.
(BTW: This is a Reuters story, WTF are they linking to Forbes for? Given the amount of./-baiting crap they've published earlier, why should./ reward them with page hits for stories that they didn't even originate?)
Unfortunately, I'm not so sure if a single mention to the press will really give them anything.. SCO is quick on going to court, but I think we'll see that this is definitely something which will be held against them.
The general procedure is to first try and resolve the conflict without the court. Like writing some polite letters asking SCO to stop talking about the stuff, and to retract their earlier statements. Now if SCO doesn't comply with this, ask again.
Slashdot Mirror
Anybody who claims that the EU as a whole does not play machiavellian economic power politics with rulings and regulations is a fool. the EU's economic policies are the equivalent of the stereotype of the US's current military ones.. unilateral, self-serving, and ultimately deadly to innocents.
You're oversimplifying things. The EU is protectionistic in trade issues.
And I agree that is bad.
But the US is equally protectionistic, as are most western nations outside of the EU, like Norway and Japan.
So, it's not fair to condemn the EU's trade regulations in their entiety just because they are protectionistic. Also, there is quite a bit of criticism and controversy over this within the EU.
Contrast that to the situation in the USA, where the Bush administration is no less protectionistic than the EU. (Imposing tariffs on pig-iron imports, for example)
Unfortunately, there is little opposition to this in the USA, unlike Clinton, Kerry hasn't been particularily enthusiastic over free-trade either.
Your innocence amazes me.
SVG Print is not what is normally meant by 'SVG',
namely the SVG 1.1 spec.
SVG replaces PDF (Acrobat format)
No, it doesn't.
PDF (Portable Document Format) replaced PostScript as a page description language. Basically describing a printed page. PDF (and PS) both support vector graphics.
Whereas SVG is only a vector graphics format, it does not handle page layout and the other things required for printed page description.
If anything SVG replaces EPS (Encapsulated PostScript), which is the postscript language applied to an independent graphics object, as opposed to an actual printed page.
Well, I keep hearing talks about Microsoft being a monopoly and needing to be punished. But, what I want to know is what are they actually being punished for.
For being a monopoly. Or rather, using their monopoly position to leverage themselves against competitors.
Spending millions of dollars to develop IE which was then distributed free with Windows pushed Netscape out of the browser business fast.
Now they're trying to do the same with AIM, Real, iTunes, well, you name it!
Doing that kind of stuff is not legal in the USA, nor is it legal in any western country. And for good reason: Monopoly practices are bad for everybody except the monopolist.
It's damaging to the economy. It's damaging for consumers.
Or to put it another way: Capitalism is it's own worst enemy.
(and that was pretty much agreed upon until certain politicans realized that big businesses had bigger pockets for campaign spending)
Couldnt they just say 'okay, BYE' and not sell in Europe anymore?
Yes. And also give up what 30-40% of their bottom-line.. Which is a LOT more than that puny fee.
but who would be more injured by such a move, MS or the EU?
Microsoft would be killed by it. Several hundred million europeans would be forced to switch OS and application software.
That'd get the Linux ball rolling, and how!
What?
I thought RMS retired from the MIT AI lab 20 years ago?
That's what his bio says too.. can anyone clarify?
Well, you're forgetting about the strategic angle.
No nation likes to be a dependent of another nation.
If all your software is american, you're just one trade embargo away from having your entire IT infrastructure obsoleted.
Am I the only person who can't seem to understand what that is meant to mean?
Basically.. a more widespread distrust of America will be reflected on american products.
Do foreign governments want to put their strategical infrastructure software in the hands of a nation which they do not trust?
Let's not turn this into a flamewar on how or if these sentiments are valid and just agree on that they exist, like it or not.
If you bothered to read the article, or even the summary, you'd see that the RFC prepared by Mr. Eastlake is against a .sex top-level domain.
You just say "NO", algorithms aren't math and somehow the fact that people pay for implementations of algorithms proves that?
That's just silly.
Algorithms central to a branch of mathematics known as "discrete mathematics". Integral calculus is a part of "analysis".
The entire world of mathematics is more than just what you learned in high-school, you know.
"Ask an engineer" -I have a masters degree in engineering, thank you. And I do scientific computing for a living.
There are good patents. Patents on compression are a good example of such patents. They involve some serious work by one or two geniuses who deserve some monetary reward on their work.
Others would disagree. What is a compression method? It's an algorithm for altering the representation of data from one form to another, smaller one.
You see, an algorithm is math. It's pure thought-- an idea of how to do something, not a method.
Math results aren't patentable even though a lot of work goes into them. They are ideas, or discoveries.
Patents were never intended to protect ideas or discoveries. They were created to protect methods and designs.
Combustion is a discovery.
The combustion engine -- that's an idea.
A design for a combustion engine - that's a method.
This is why patents work well. People are still free to use the original idea, but with a different method, or implementation. You can still build a combustion engine, it just can't work the exact same way. The distinction is simple.
With software, that distinction is not there. What's the difference between binary code, C++ code, pseudocode or just a plain description of the algorithm?
The idea is not distinct from the implementation.
The other question is why patents are required? The software industry is hugely successful as it is.
Why encumber it with patents? Competition disadvantages are a far greater problem than code theft in the software industry. Patents are state-given, time-limited monopolies.
I don't see any evidence that creating further disadvantages will work to eradicate those that already exist.
I'm worried they will work to increase them.
You can see something I wrote about that topic on one of my project pages.
I did. It doesn't really tell me much more than "yeah, I'm a patent guy, and I wrote this software and made it free for these reasons."
What I (and presumably others) would be interested in knowing, is how you feel on the specific concerns raised by free-software authors on software patents. Since you (I assume) feel software patents are a good idea: How would you adress these concerns?
Most software-patent advocates out there have not given me the impression that they understand the concerns raised. As someone in a good position to do so, I'd be interested in hearing your side of it.
(That's of course, if you feel like giving it.)
Well.. what would you do if you had the choice between
Hire more engineers
or
Hike your own salary, get a nice new office building with a pool, sauna and indoor shuffleboard facility?
:-)
No obligations..
Yes it is. In Australia they have things called "trials" precisely for the purpose of debating such issues.
But how is that relevant? You can't seriously mean that he must be convicted to be extradited? -That would mean being tried for the same crime twice.
Now, if the act he had commited was legal in his country, then it would be debateable.
What is the question here?
If you commit a crime in a foreign country which is also considered a crime in your home country you should be extradited. No question.
If you commit a criminal act in a foreign country which is legal in your home country, you probably shouldn't be extradited. At least not in this case, where the guy hasn't even set foot in the USA while perpetrating the alleged crime.
But: Software piracy is not legal in Australia.
So the question is: Does the US court have jurisdiction of these crimes, if they did occur in Australia?
That's a question which the US court will no doubt adress in the trial.
But if they don't, then it means that he should be tried in Australia..
So what's the issue?
When it comes to 'free' things on the internet, the old phrase 'don't look a gift-horse in the mouth' just doesn't apply: You should be giving that horse a full dental exam!
People do have a right to complain if they feel a service is bad, even if it's free. Especially if it's a service such as e-mail, which is a pain to switch. It takes time and they know this and exploit it.
What happens when they buy back the shares to keep the price high a bit longer, but than it drops below $8.50 for 25 days anyway?
It doesn't.. How this works is that they put the bid out there "We buy SCO shares at $9.50".. as long as they're out there buying, noone is going to sell for less.
The stock can't drop below that.
i'd be surprised if even sega games were so poorly programmed that they depended on the hardware clock speed.
Being an old (Atari) 68000 coder myself, I'd like to say that it's not really poor code. As others have pointed out, if you're programming a console or machine with a fixed set of hardware, you can rely on stuff like that.
Given that the 68000 was not that fast (but good in its day), you really didn't want to spend valuable processor time waiting.
Instead, you could time your code (oh, and everyone used assembly language) and push the thing to the limit.
This is of course a major nuisance writing emulators, since everything has to be correctly timed and synced for some games to work. But I have the greatest respect for the people who wrote that stuff back in the day.
It's not entirely easy to write well-timed code.
Of course, given the perspective of modern PCs and high-level languages, it is sloppy and I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone to do that stuff on a PC. But that doesn't mean it was a bad decision back then.
So, you've not heard about the new European Union Copyright Directive, or the even newer IP Enforcement Directive then?
Yes I have. And although I think they stink, they're still not as bad as the DMCA.
Not when they're a couple of quarters away from insolvency. Stock buyback usually occurs when a company with low stock price have too much money on hand and no viable avanue of investement available.
SCO has $50 million from the BayStar deal, with a redemption condition if the stock goes below ~$8.50 for 25 consecutive trading days.
In light of that, initiating a buyback-scheme when the stock started dipping close to this mark is completely expected. Losing the BayStar investment is a much bigger loss than what it'd cost SCO to keep the stock price inflated.
That is theoretically true in America, but IP and fair-use laws are different in Europe. It's a pretty bad situation to be in, but hopefully somebody here will know how to handle it.
Please explain, how are they significantly different? All countries have signed the Berne treaty.
In my (humble) experience, most european have broader definitions of 'fair-use' than the US.
Can you name a European copyright legislation which is stricter? I certainly can't.
..is it even legal to do that when the court hasn't even made a decision yet?
./-baiting crap they've published earlier, why should ./ reward them with page hits for stories that they didn't even originate?)
Yes.. if you look at the SCO "IP license" it is so insanely unspecific, you could be paying for anything and nothing. (which of course you are..)
But the statement in the article that it "may provide key legal ammunition" is just pure bullocks.
No court would view the fact that you've convinced third parties outside of the court room as evidence that you're right.
(BTW: This is a Reuters story, WTF are they linking to Forbes for? Given the amount of
so now they can sue SCO and get their money back!
Unfortunately, I'm not so sure if a single mention to the press will really give them anything.. SCO is quick on going to court, but I think we'll see that this is definitely something which will be held against them.
The general procedure is to first try and resolve the conflict without the court. Like writing some polite letters asking SCO to stop talking about the stuff, and to retract their earlier statements. Now if SCO doesn't comply with this, ask again.
Still no compliance? That's when you go to court.
American soldier: "Can you provide support? We're in a bit of a jam here"
Polish soldier 1: "What is he writing?"
Polish soldier 2: "He asks if we can prop him up, they are covered with a piece of marmelade"