Well the problem is, someone will have to pay for that patent infringement if a suit is lost in court. In a NORMAL company the engineers are protected from personal prosecution by the companies board members who are sole, legally responsible parties for all actions of the company.
On the other hand, Linus is himself personally reposnsible for what is in the Linux kernel. If there is (C) code in it, it's his fault and he will have to pay for it. (And potentially anyone that uses the kernel as they all now need to scramble to make it compliant or switch to something else) Linus should be much more keenly aware of what is going into the code than any typical closed source programmer.
This also goes for the legeons of Open Source programmers working without corporate protection out there. YOU become personally responsible for everything you code outside the legal protection of a companies board.
So Linus really was doing himself and other coders a disservice by giving that advice, it only applies if you are writing code for a company. This leaves out the Linux kernel and a lot of the other parts of the distros. Programmers there ARE the ones responsible. Ignorance of a patent might reduce the judgement, but it will not prevent it.
Now in the end this is extremely hard to do and may not be in the best interests of Joe Blows Super-Wiggey Chat client, but THE LINUX KENRNEL?!?!? Do we not deserve a little more protection from possible (C) violations than nothing at all? Of all things to have in the crosshairs...
But that was not true at first. That only happened after Netscape and IE hit version 4.0 And at that point, it wasn't just the mindless too lazy to DL anything users that felt that way. All technical critique of IE and Netscape sided with IE as now the superior browser.
I mean look at the MSN messager, AOL's AIM still kicks it's ass in usage and you have to install it.
Ok, now THIS is going to sound like flamebait. But it is truly how I feel, I am not flaming!
Frankly I prefer TRULY FREE software. GNU is a ball and chain compared to BSD and other/truly/ free licences. Free as in speech AND as in beer!
That site lists a bunch of freedoms and glosses over the severe restrictions that go along with it. (The restrictions being the lage gap between what GNU allows and what absolute freedom really is) It's like reading the marketing literature to a pyramid scam. SOunds great in their own documentation, till you find out for yourself how hosed you are by attempting to actually use it yourself.
Yes, isn't it rediculous? There was nothing wrong with the old wording. People freaked out over nothing, forcing MS to put new wording it that is completely stupid. Well I guess it now matches the brain power of the people that complained... It's why every car ad has to have "Professional driver on closed course, do not try this yourself" on it. Apparently no one is smart enough to think for themselves any more (That or have completely given up responsibility for their own actions. "I saw it on TV so I thought it was legal!")
Sorry, it was the guy arguing with her because he only read one line of her post and missed (or ignored) the entire bottom part of it that was the pretentious jerk.
She was right to call him on it. He used her post to spring-board off somewhere in bizarro land where a debate goes like this: Person A says X, then person B says No, it's X! WTF? If you are going to post stupidly, be prepared to be called on it.
Re:Um... how about solar?
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 1
And would cost more money to build and maintain that the US produces in GNP in 10 years...
It's all about practicality. Currently oil is the most practical. When that runs out the next most practical thing will be used, whatever that is. This very article shows that by and large, people don;t give a crap about the environment as long as it does not immediately impact them (sad, but true).
A 100% coverage solar system for your house costs the same as 30 years of current electrical payments. And at the end of 30 years you need to expand or replace the system because you are now down to 80% or lower efficiency (over the starting efficincey) plus any other mid term maintenence you need to make to the system. If you want completely off the grid, you need a battery of power cells that add another 10 grand to the bill and need to be changed every 5 years or so.
If solar were that cheap and easy, everyone in the southwest would be using right now.
It's all right there in your cache, cookie and history folders! You can even delete it if you are concerned using the command line, built in tools or third party tools.
It's all visible and controlable and none of it has been used to harvest user info by Microsoft.
As ususal someone else does something truly evil and they get a "eh" from/. while working in an unwarrented MS conspiracy theory at the same time.:(
Considering that they typical person that buys this thing would be operating at the boundaries of their experience, the review's meta-data might be of some use.
I don't know about "damage" over all. The Consumers Report on the Lindows PC is what is really damaging. Millions of people actually rely on them for reviews and they were "Not Impressed".
Yes, but things DO out-live their usefulness eventually. Unions did great things in the past, now they don't. Most places, unions are currently useless artifacts (but not all, SAG being at least one that unfortunately needs to exist). Unions should come and go as needed, not exist for their own sake as a lot of them do today.
Sigh, it's really sad that you have to look a gift horse in the mouth. Free music to listen too is not not even good enough for you? You have to demand the right to rip it off too?
It's no wonder the RIAA is so rabid, look at the kind of thinking they are up against...
You go too far. You ask too much of the very people that are giving you the pleasure. Well thanks for proving the addage that no good deed ever goes unpunished!
I am preventing others from profiting from my art.
Can you not see the difference? Copyrights are not JUST for corporations, they are for individuals too, to prevent corporations from stealing from individuals as well as preventing individuals from stealing corperations.
A majority of posters here seem to think it's a one way street, it's not. Everyone steals everything from everybody for their own personal gain. (C) provides a tiny bit of protection from that.
So it's not good enough for you to be able to enjoy my work without profiting from it?
I allow people to listen all they want for free. That doesn't mean I want to give them ownership. There is a HUGE GAP between P.D. and Trade Secret that you apparently don't see...
Why the hell shouldn't something that *I* created, exist for my lifetime as *MY* personal property and then pass on to my heirs or go to my grave with me if I want? What innate *RIGHT* does society at large have over *PERSONAL* property, I.P. or real? What next, when a person dies (relatives or no) everyone in the area just loots their house and squats on the property?
Now I see the benefit to society in this (of course!) but I draw the line at the point where society starts thinking that it is their imperitive to set the rules for the government of personal creations. Society should encourage philanthropy, but by demanding it or by pick pocketing it by putting up legal obsticles like this just bad karma.
I'm an indie artist who distributes my COPYRIGHTED work for free, but things like this make me think that that society doesn't deserve any of my work any more, everyone is just out for the grab grab grab all the time. It's sickening to those 1% of us that actually produce things in this world, even when we choose to give it away free, this is still a stab in the back... Personally I'd be all for opening up all my work upon my death for P.D. BUT NOT IF I HAVE BEEN FORCED TO BY AN UNGRATEFUL SOCIETY!
When any tiny little perceived "freedom" or "privacy" infraction comes up,/. turns into a 5000 lb chicken little. EXCEPT when it comes to the TIVO. It's like everyone is all against [whatever] as long as it's not something that/. actually likes and uses from a product standpoint. Then it's all "I'm perfectly fine with this", and "Maybe this is a good thing".
The philosophical whiplash is threatening to tear my head off.
I actually agree with you, it's the other 99% of the time where XXX is spying on you they are evil, evil, evil that gets to be tiring, then this...
Quote: " in fact I kind of like the fact that I wont have to sit through as many ads for crap I really am not interested in... I can finally watch the beer and sports car commercials I love so much."
Only if that's what all your neighbors watch also! GOd help you if you are the only person that hates that stuff in a community. Now EVERY ad will be offensive and NO ad will be anything you "want" to see. This is the dark side of generic location based advertising (Not that they don do that now to some degree)
Actualy PERSONAL ad placement might actually be ok, but then that would definately be more of a privacy issue. As it stands I'd still ahve to side with the "Just show it all to me and let me decide if I like it or not" philosophy.
Re:Save yourself the time and effort...
on
PeltierBeer
·
· Score: 1
The actual rule is, a pint is supposed to be drunk in 6 trips to the lips. You should have 6 rings in a finished glass. Don't know if there is an official time from serving that is recommended though, but frankly even on a hot day, if you've let it sit long enough to get too warm, that's way too long!
Most ales are also supposed to be drunk at almost room temp (cool, not cold), so considering how cold most people keep their beer, you can wait a long time before it's "too warm", even on a hot day.
Not to mention that the actual spent fuel is maybe 1/1000th (10,000th?) of the total amount of "Nuclear Waste". Unfortunately anything that comes into any kind of proximity with the fuel or the reaction also becomes radioactive and must also be disposed of eventually. So it really is hundreds, maybe thousands of tons of radioactive waste that will need displosing over the next 30 years just from the plants that are on line right now.
Although it may be in dispute as to wheather they "own" the IP or not, what is NOT in dispute is their right to license it! That transaction was entirly appropriate and legal.
Novell is certinly doing a lot better than SCO as a company, but they are still pretty despondant. Now why does anyone think that they are immune from Novell pulling the same stunt to make more money? Safe from SCO does not mean safe from Novell. It's the same problem.
Linux should still self-audit and remove all possible offending code and archetecture to prevent this from being a problem 5 years from now when Novell hits the skids. In fact we should hope this still goes to court so we can see exactly what they think does infringe!
Unfortunately the chances of a self-audit happening are "fat" to "none". This land-mine will persist for years to come.:(
* Don't bash Microsoft unfairly in any post made about Microsoft or in any article submission Microsoft related or not.
* Saying ANYTHING unfavorable about Linux or Open Source or "The Community" (however honest and true) and making the comment in the third person instead of the first person. (First person comments are likely to get bombed as well, no matter how true, but third guarantees it)
* Saying anything bad about Apple (now) in the same way.
* Saying anything bad about TIVO even though it tears you up inside realizing that your favorite OS is being used as the biggest media spy tool in history.
* Saying anything good about BSD or any other truly free license. Or suggesting that the GPL is anything but the Holy Grail of licenses.
* Making 5 pages of the most rational and logical comments on a topic that can possibly be made but mispell a single word.
It wasn't boring before, why would it be in the future? Unless by "boring" you mean no spam, no viruses and no flaming idiots. Then yes it was extremely boring 10 years ago!
Well that's one program down. Now how about all those portable CD/mp3 players out there (Millions of them). Car CD/MP3 players, and home equipment that play mp3 but not Ogg. Are the Ogg people going to buy new equipment for everyone? There are versions of some of that stuff that play Ogg here and there. But until it's EVERYWHERE, it's not preferrable to mp3 to consumers. The last thing consumers want is constantly having to pick and choose formats. MP3 is ingrained for the long haul. Fortunately or unfortunately.
Slashdot Mirror
Well the problem is, someone will have to pay for that patent infringement if a suit is lost in court. In a NORMAL company the engineers are protected from personal prosecution by the companies board members who are sole, legally responsible parties for all actions of the company.
On the other hand, Linus is himself personally reposnsible for what is in the Linux kernel. If there is (C) code in it, it's his fault and he will have to pay for it. (And potentially anyone that uses the kernel as they all now need to scramble to make it compliant or switch to something else) Linus should be much more keenly aware of what is going into the code than any typical closed source programmer.
This also goes for the legeons of Open Source programmers working without corporate protection out there. YOU become personally responsible for everything you code outside the legal protection of a companies board.
So Linus really was doing himself and other coders a disservice by giving that advice, it only applies if you are writing code for a company. This leaves out the Linux kernel and a lot of the other parts of the distros. Programmers there ARE the ones responsible. Ignorance of a patent might reduce the judgement, but it will not prevent it.
Now in the end this is extremely hard to do and may not be in the best interests of Joe Blows Super-Wiggey Chat client, but THE LINUX KENRNEL?!?!? Do we not deserve a little more protection from possible (C) violations than nothing at all? Of all things to have in the crosshairs...
But that was not true at first. That only happened after Netscape and IE hit version 4.0 And at that point, it wasn't just the mindless too lazy to DL anything users that felt that way. All technical critique of IE and Netscape sided with IE as now the superior browser.
I mean look at the MSN messager, AOL's AIM still kicks it's ass in usage and you have to install it.
Ok, now THIS is going to sound like flamebait. But it is truly how I feel, I am not flaming!
/truly/ free licences. Free as in speech AND as in beer!
Frankly I prefer TRULY FREE software. GNU is a ball and chain compared to BSD and other
That site lists a bunch of freedoms and glosses over the severe restrictions that go along with it. (The restrictions being the lage gap between what GNU allows and what absolute freedom really is) It's like reading the marketing literature to a pyramid scam. SOunds great in their own documentation, till you find out for yourself how hosed you are by attempting to actually use it yourself.
Yes, isn't it rediculous? There was nothing wrong with the old wording. People freaked out over nothing, forcing MS to put new wording it that is completely stupid. Well I guess it now matches the brain power of the people that complained... It's why every car ad has to have "Professional driver on closed course, do not try this yourself" on it. Apparently no one is smart enough to think for themselves any more (That or have completely given up responsibility for their own actions. "I saw it on TV so I thought it was legal!")
Makes me sad.
Sorry, it was the guy arguing with her because he only read one line of her post and missed (or ignored) the entire bottom part of it that was the pretentious jerk.
She was right to call him on it. He used her post to spring-board off somewhere in bizarro land where a debate goes like this: Person A says X, then person B says No, it's X! WTF? If you are going to post stupidly, be prepared to be called on it.
And would cost more money to build and maintain that the US produces in GNP in 10 years...
It's all about practicality. Currently oil is the most practical. When that runs out the next most practical thing will be used, whatever that is. This very article shows that by and large, people don;t give a crap about the environment as long as it does not immediately impact them (sad, but true).
A 100% coverage solar system for your house costs the same as 30 years of current electrical payments. And at the end of 30 years you need to expand or replace the system because you are now down to 80% or lower efficiency (over the starting efficincey) plus any other mid term maintenence you need to make to the system. If you want completely off the grid, you need a battery of power cells that add another 10 grand to the bill and need to be changed every 5 years or so.
If solar were that cheap and easy, everyone in the southwest would be using right now.
It's all right there in your cache, cookie and history folders! You can even delete it if you are concerned using the command line, built in tools or third party tools.
/. while working in an unwarrented MS conspiracy theory at the same time. :(
It's all visible and controlable and none of it has been used to harvest user info by Microsoft.
As ususal someone else does something truly evil and they get a "eh" from
Sadly par for the course.
Considering that they typical person that buys this thing would be operating at the boundaries of their experience, the review's meta-data might be of some use.
I don't know about "damage" over all. The Consumers Report on the Lindows PC is what is really damaging. Millions of people actually rely on them for reviews and they were "Not Impressed".
Yes, but things DO out-live their usefulness eventually. Unions did great things in the past, now they don't. Most places, unions are currently useless artifacts (but not all, SAG being at least one that unfortunately needs to exist). Unions should come and go as needed, not exist for their own sake as a lot of them do today.
Sigh, it's really sad that you have to look a gift horse in the mouth. Free music to listen too is not not even good enough for you? You have to demand the right to rip it off too?
It's no wonder the RIAA is so rabid, look at the kind of thinking they are up against...
You go too far. You ask too much of the very people that are giving you the pleasure. Well thanks for proving the addage that no good deed ever goes unpunished!
I am not keeping my art from the public.
I am preventing others from profiting from my art.
Can you not see the difference? Copyrights are not JUST for corporations, they are for individuals too, to prevent corporations from stealing from individuals as well as preventing individuals from stealing corperations.
A majority of posters here seem to think it's a one way street, it's not. Everyone steals everything from everybody for their own personal gain. (C) provides a tiny bit of protection from that.
So it's not good enough for you to be able to enjoy my work without profiting from it?
I allow people to listen all they want for free. That doesn't mean I want to give them ownership. There is a HUGE GAP between P.D. and Trade Secret that you apparently don't see...
Why the hell shouldn't something that *I* created, exist for my lifetime as *MY* personal property and then pass on to my heirs or go to my grave with me if I want? What innate *RIGHT* does society at large have over *PERSONAL* property, I.P. or real? What next, when a person dies (relatives or no) everyone in the area just loots their house and squats on the property?
Now I see the benefit to society in this (of course!) but I draw the line at the point where society starts thinking that it is their imperitive to set the rules for the government of personal creations. Society should encourage philanthropy, but by demanding it or by pick pocketing it by putting up legal obsticles like this just bad karma.
I'm an indie artist who distributes my COPYRIGHTED work for free, but things like this make me think that that society doesn't deserve any of my work any more, everyone is just out for the grab grab grab all the time. It's sickening to those 1% of us that actually produce things in this world, even when we choose to give it away free, this is still a stab in the back... Personally I'd be all for opening up all my work upon my death for P.D. BUT NOT IF I HAVE BEEN FORCED TO BY AN UNGRATEFUL SOCIETY!
When any tiny little perceived "freedom" or "privacy" infraction comes up, /. turns into a 5000 lb chicken little. EXCEPT when it comes to the TIVO. It's like everyone is all against [whatever] as long as it's not something that /. actually likes and uses from a product standpoint. Then it's all "I'm perfectly fine with this", and "Maybe this is a good thing".
The philosophical whiplash is threatening to tear my head off.
I actually agree with you, it's the other 99% of the time where XXX is spying on you they are evil, evil, evil that gets to be tiring, then this...
Quote: " in fact I kind of like the fact that I wont have to sit through as many ads for crap I really am not interested in... I can finally watch the beer and sports car commercials I love so much."
Only if that's what all your neighbors watch also! GOd help you if you are the only person that hates that stuff in a community. Now EVERY ad will be offensive and NO ad will be anything you "want" to see. This is the dark side of generic location based advertising (Not that they don do that now to some degree)
Actualy PERSONAL ad placement might actually be ok, but then that would definately be more of a privacy issue. As it stands I'd still ahve to side with the "Just show it all to me and let me decide if I like it or not" philosophy.
The actual rule is, a pint is supposed to be drunk in 6 trips to the lips. You should have 6 rings in a finished glass. Don't know if there is an official time from serving that is recommended though, but frankly even on a hot day, if you've let it sit long enough to get too warm, that's way too long!
Most ales are also supposed to be drunk at almost room temp (cool, not cold), so considering how cold most people keep their beer, you can wait a long time before it's "too warm", even on a hot day.
Not to mention that the actual spent fuel is maybe 1/1000th (10,000th?) of the total amount of "Nuclear Waste". Unfortunately anything that comes into any kind of proximity with the fuel or the reaction also becomes radioactive and must also be disposed of eventually. So it really is hundreds, maybe thousands of tons of radioactive waste that will need displosing over the next 30 years just from the plants that are on line right now.
Er, not at all?
Although it may be in dispute as to wheather they "own" the IP or not, what is NOT in dispute is their right to license it! That transaction was entirly appropriate and legal.
Novell is certinly doing a lot better than SCO as a company, but they are still pretty despondant. Now why does anyone think that they are immune from Novell pulling the same stunt to make more money? Safe from SCO does not mean safe from Novell. It's the same problem.
:(
Linux should still self-audit and remove all possible offending code and archetecture to prevent this from being a problem 5 years from now when Novell hits the skids. In fact we should hope this still goes to court so we can see exactly what they think does infringe!
Unfortunately the chances of a self-audit happening are "fat" to "none". This land-mine will persist for years to come.
And then the bill is considered "counterfeit" when it doesn't register properly on an RFID scanner. Great plan!
Hell yeah!
:)
Here are some other "mod to oblivian" policies:
* Don't bash Microsoft unfairly in any post made about Microsoft or in any article submission Microsoft related or not.
* Saying ANYTHING unfavorable about Linux or Open Source or "The Community" (however honest and true) and making the comment in the third person instead of the first person. (First person comments are likely to get bombed as well, no matter how true, but third guarantees it)
* Saying anything bad about Apple (now) in the same way.
* Saying anything bad about TIVO even though it tears you up inside realizing that your favorite OS is being used as the biggest media spy tool in history.
* Saying anything good about BSD or any other truly free license. Or suggesting that the GPL is anything but the Holy Grail of licenses.
* Making 5 pages of the most rational and logical comments on a topic that can possibly be made but mispell a single word.
And so on...
Hah! Not only that but some humans have tails as well. It's not that big a difference between tail and no tail.
It wasn't boring before, why would it be in the future? Unless by "boring" you mean no spam, no viruses and no flaming idiots. Then yes it was extremely boring 10 years ago!
Request For Acceptance? :)
Well that's one program down. Now how about all those portable CD/mp3 players out there (Millions of them). Car CD/MP3 players, and home equipment that play mp3 but not Ogg. Are the Ogg people going to buy new equipment for everyone? There are versions of some of that stuff that play Ogg here and there. But until it's EVERYWHERE, it's not preferrable to mp3 to consumers. The last thing consumers want is constantly having to pick and choose formats. MP3 is ingrained for the long haul. Fortunately or unfortunately.