I think you mean `unedited', `unrevised', `indiscriminate' or, to use the court's word, `uncreative'. If I were to compile a list of names and phone numbers from Morton Downey Jr.'s little black book it would be no more complex than a list of names of all listed telephone subscribers in the greater Denver, Colorado metropolitan area. But one could argue that the former is a creative indexing while the latter is not. Further, a creative format is not necessarily any more complicated than a default font, tab separated listing on standard sized paper.
Also of interest is that the supreme court case that decided this in the US is relatively recent (early ninties). Prior to this ruling, most US courts accepted prima facie that such lists could be copyrighted and were protected.
.... the format of the presenation and the selection of the data requires creativity. Note that this criteria has nothing to do with simplicity. A simple alphabetical list of names could very well be copyrighted if the presentation is unique and creativity was exercised in the selection of names that appear on the list. What can't be copyrighted are the facts, the names and phone numbers themselves.
SCOG could have very easily put up loads of evidence for that argument. All they had to do was list for data structure N where Unix code defines that structure, then where AIX and Dynix define that structure and then where Linux defines that structure. Repeat for data structure N + 1 until all protected data structures are listed. Then repeat the process for methods. Then repeat the process for concepts. Done deal.
But SCO did not do this. I suspect that they did not do this because either they don't actually have any data structures, concepts or methods that can be argued to be protected. But it could also be the case that when they do that they show that the structures as defined in AIX (or Dynix) and Linux are so different from what is in Unix that they aren't really the same thing.
The bottom line is that this argument does not removed the need for specificity when making a claim for copyright infringement. Regardless of whether it is the structure that is copyrighted or the contents of that structure, the person making the claim still has to identify exactly what it was that was infringed. That is the core of SCOG's problem. They've never identified to the court excactly what their claims are about.
Likely that the intelligentsia migrated west? I dunno. Such would be well outside the norm. Maybe some of the practictioners migrated west, but a whole school? Very unlikely.
For most of the Byzantine era, Byzantium was a superpower. Outside of brief but notable incursions by the Muslims (who by that time were rather heavily Hellenized) and the Bulgarians, most of Greece was under Greek control from the beginning of the Byzantine era (whether you measure the beginning from the third or from the fifth century) up through nearly the eleventh century. Additionally large swaths of southern Italy were controlled by Constantinople during this period as well as large chunks of Asia Minor. Modern scholars largely agree (contra Gibbon) that education and learning were widespread through most of the Byzantine era. And bear in mind that `barbarian' simply meant non-Greek to the Hellenes. Romans, despite being fellow citizens of the empire would would have been barbarous to them if they couldn't speak Greek.
By the first century BC (to which this mechanism most probably dates) the Romans had conquered the Greeks and Greek culture overtook a good deal of the Roman Empire. The Romans, with provinces along the Atlantic coast of Europe, would have certainly been interested in tides. In fact, the vessel that was carrying the Antikythera mechanism was Roman.
You lost me there. Greece, under the aegis of the Byzantines, didn't see ``the dark ages'' in the same way that the Roman Empire in western Europe did. You have to go back to well before the invention of the Antikythera mechanism to find Greece's dark ages. So attributing the loss of the technology of late antiquity in Greece to the general decline of the Dark Ages is misguided at best.
In the early middle ages, you had the reign of Justinian and continual development up through what is considered the ``golden age'' of the Byzantine Empire in the ninth to eleventh centuries. Certain aspects of technology may have been in decline, but they held on to Greek Fire and quite a few other wonders of science.
I also think you overstate the case of the Greek love of theory. One of the popular criticisms of Thales was that, as a philosopher, he was too unconcerned with practical matters. The legend goes that in response to this when he calculated that conditions were correct for a bumper olive crop, he cornered the market on olive presses and by the time the harvest came in he made a fortune.
The decline of Greek culture started with the Roman conquest of the Greek empire. (Some would argue that it started with the emergence of a Greek empire itself.) Items like the Antikythera mechanism that took a highly skilled, well educated artisan with access to exceptionally good tools and high quality raw materials quite some time to make became more and more rare. Add this to the fact that such accuracy isn't really needed and a sufficiently well educated person could do the calculations for twenty years out in an evening and compose a list and you've got a really ingenuous solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. Then combine this with the emergence of Christianity where the majority of feast days are calcuated on the solar calendar rather than the lunar calendar (with the sole exception of Easter and the feast days that are contingent on the date of Easter) and you don't really have any need for something like this.
If Nintendo is selling all the consoles it makes and it is making a profit on each sale then from an economic perspective, there is a sufficient supply. Given that the price isn't even doubling for consoles being resold on eBay, it would appear that the supply is very close to the demand. Consoles will only start to sit around on the shelves if there is an surplus, an over-supply. In a surplus condition it becomes clear that the supply has outstripped demand.
The real question is Nintendo making a profit? So long as it is recouping marginal costs plus the the fix costs spread out over the entire number of consoles made plus a profit margin, then they are making a sufficient amount.
Once you divide the cost of a ramp by the number of customer visits, it comes pretty damned close to being free to the consumer. Outside of egregriously high fixed costs, vendors only need to worry about marginal costs. Tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of dollars spread out over tens or hundreds of thousands of customer visits is a negligible cost.
But if Sigma Six measures defects per million opportunities does that not mean that each successfully produced Lego brick counts as more than one opportunity? Since there are multiple points of possible failure during the production of each brick, a defect rate of 4 per multiple millions of parts produced would be well beyond sigma six.
That they'd been making 18 billion parts per year since 1958. While the installed base of Lego bricks is enormously vast, I highly doubt that they reached a production level billions of parts per year before the eighties or even the nineties.
Tire production accounts for some of that number; the factory also produces 306 million tiny rubber tires a year. In fact, going by that number, LEGO is the world's No. 1 tire manufacturer.
Because those bitty tires that come in Lego kits are directly comparable to the fifteen inch Yokohamas I just bought.
While modifications for accessibility are certainly not free to a business owner, neither are modifications for the non-disabled such as doors, windows, lights, etc. And most of these amenities are free to the clients.
Not to mention that in some jurisdictions, the government will give grants to business owners making adaptations for the disabled.
Given that the US Treasury redesigns existing paper money on a regular basis and given that this change would be relatively trivial compared to the anti-counterfeiting mechanisms being placed into current redesigns, I'd say that this is certainly no undue hardship. Something as simple as raised print on the numbers to make different denominations of bills feel different would suffice.
Now if the judge had ordered that all existing stocks of money be recalled, you might have a point. But taking blind people into account during redesigns that are going to happen anyway is hardly an undue hardship.
... provided that we make it more like the MS/Novell deal.
You pay me 20 Millions Dollars (US) up front and not only will I promise not to sue any of your customers, I will pay you 5 Million Dollars (US) over the course of the next five years for your promise not to sue any of my customers.
To be consistant, if money ending up in the pockets of Microsoft is your overriding concern you can't buy anything from IBM, Apple, Dell, HP, Adobe, or most other top tier hardware or software vendors. You also have to make a career that doesn't use Microsoft products in any way.
Of course you could also analyze the deal as a a net loss for Microsoft. While Novell may be paying money to Microsoft over a course of five years, Microsoft is paying so money to Novell up front that Novell could probably make its payments to MiS with the interest.
I can fully understand why some people don't like this deal. While I disagree with the reasoning put forth by Bruce Perens, I'll gladly concede that what he's doing makes sense given his reasoning. But the simple desire to boycott Novell to keep Microsoft from making more money seems confused at best and contradictory to the stated goals at worst.
The telecommunications industry hasn't used the term ``cell phone'' except to refert to the old analog-only cell style phones in quite some time. 2G and 3G phones have been called ``mobile'' phones rather than ``cell'' phones from the get go. If you talk to a solutions provider about a ``cell'' phone they'll look at you funny in the same way that an automotive technician would if you commented on a horseless carriage.
pAlso, with the possible exception of high school students, voice is still the number one application of anyone that has a mobile phone.
I doubt IBM would be all that dissapointed if all software patents were invalidated. While IBM does hold a tremendous number of software patents, its real bread and butter IP comes from hardware inventions.
Which is part of why I don't think anyone has much to worry about Microsoft's patent threats against Linux. IBM has decided that Linux is part of its strategic future and will take a scorched earch approach if Microsoft threatens what IBM sees as its eventual cash cow.
If everyone started using only free software and not purchasing said software you can better believe that the vendors that used to sell in that market would unequivocally agree that that market segment died. No sales means that there is no market. There may be an ecosystem. There may be users. But without a marketplace where money change hands for goods and services, there is no market.
There is no real distinction between developers and end-users in the GPL software ecosystem. Both are users of code; they just use it in different ways.
IBM Hardware and IBM Semi-Conductor probably couldn't really give a rat's ass about Microsoft one way or the other. The PSP division, however, has been waiting for a chance to crucify Microsoft for quite some time. The thing that sets IBM apart from most companies that are fueled by a vendetta is that IBM has been around the block enough times to patiently wait to pounce until they can find a way to destroy MS that increases IBM's shareholder value. Unlike Novell's ill conceived take Microsoft on on all fronts war, IBM wil wait until the perfect opportunity presents itself. A Microsoft patent offensive on Linux would be precisely such an event.
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Also of interest is that the supreme court case that decided this in the US is relatively recent (early ninties). Prior to this ruling, most US courts accepted prima facie that such lists could be copyrighted and were protected.
For a very nice overview see Pamela Samuelson's Copyright law and electronic compilations of data
But SCO did not do this. I suspect that they did not do this because either they don't actually have any data structures, concepts or methods that can be argued to be protected. But it could also be the case that when they do that they show that the structures as defined in AIX (or Dynix) and Linux are so different from what is in Unix that they aren't really the same thing.
The bottom line is that this argument does not removed the need for specificity when making a claim for copyright infringement. Regardless of whether it is the structure that is copyrighted or the contents of that structure, the person making the claim still has to identify exactly what it was that was infringed. That is the core of SCOG's problem. They've never identified to the court excactly what their claims are about.
For most of the Byzantine era, Byzantium was a superpower. Outside of brief but notable incursions by the Muslims (who by that time were rather heavily Hellenized) and the Bulgarians, most of Greece was under Greek control from the beginning of the Byzantine era (whether you measure the beginning from the third or from the fifth century) up through nearly the eleventh century. Additionally large swaths of southern Italy were controlled by Constantinople during this period as well as large chunks of Asia Minor. Modern scholars largely agree (contra Gibbon) that education and learning were widespread through most of the Byzantine era. And bear in mind that `barbarian' simply meant non-Greek to the Hellenes. Romans, despite being fellow citizens of the empire would would have been barbarous to them if they couldn't speak Greek.
By the first century BC (to which this mechanism most probably dates) the Romans had conquered the Greeks and Greek culture overtook a good deal of the Roman Empire. The Romans, with provinces along the Atlantic coast of Europe, would have certainly been interested in tides. In fact, the vessel that was carrying the Antikythera mechanism was Roman.
In the early middle ages, you had the reign of Justinian and continual development up through what is considered the ``golden age'' of the Byzantine Empire in the ninth to eleventh centuries. Certain aspects of technology may have been in decline, but they held on to Greek Fire and quite a few other wonders of science.
I also think you overstate the case of the Greek love of theory. One of the popular criticisms of Thales was that, as a philosopher, he was too unconcerned with practical matters. The legend goes that in response to this when he calculated that conditions were correct for a bumper olive crop, he cornered the market on olive presses and by the time the harvest came in he made a fortune.
The decline of Greek culture started with the Roman conquest of the Greek empire. (Some would argue that it started with the emergence of a Greek empire itself.) Items like the Antikythera mechanism that took a highly skilled, well educated artisan with access to exceptionally good tools and high quality raw materials quite some time to make became more and more rare. Add this to the fact that such accuracy isn't really needed and a sufficiently well educated person could do the calculations for twenty years out in an evening and compose a list and you've got a really ingenuous solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. Then combine this with the emergence of Christianity where the majority of feast days are calcuated on the solar calendar rather than the lunar calendar (with the sole exception of Easter and the feast days that are contingent on the date of Easter) and you don't really have any need for something like this.
Most people think that the Wii supply is sufficient to meet demand.
The real question is Nintendo making a profit? So long as it is recouping marginal costs plus the the fix costs spread out over the entire number of consoles made plus a profit margin, then they are making a sufficient amount.
Once you divide the cost of a ramp by the number of customer visits, it comes pretty damned close to being free to the consumer. Outside of egregriously high fixed costs, vendors only need to worry about marginal costs. Tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of dollars spread out over tens or hundreds of thousands of customer visits is a negligible cost.
... I don't think I've racked up sixty thousand miles on any of my lego tires.
Well, I should say that the difference is probably at least one order of magnitude. I think that is a large enough difference to be significant.
But if Sigma Six measures defects per million opportunities does that not mean that each successfully produced Lego brick counts as more than one opportunity? Since there are multiple points of possible failure during the production of each brick, a defect rate of 4 per multiple millions of parts produced would be well beyond sigma six.
That they'd been making 18 billion parts per year since 1958. While the installed base of Lego bricks is enormously vast, I highly doubt that they reached a production level billions of parts per year before the eighties or even the nineties.
Because those bitty tires that come in Lego kits are directly comparable to the fifteen inch Yokohamas I just bought.
While modifications for accessibility are certainly not free to a business owner, neither are modifications for the non-disabled such as doors, windows, lights, etc. And most of these amenities are free to the clients.
Not to mention that in some jurisdictions, the government will give grants to business owners making adaptations for the disabled.
Now if the judge had ordered that all existing stocks of money be recalled, you might have a point. But taking blind people into account during redesigns that are going to happen anyway is hardly an undue hardship.
You pay me 20 Millions Dollars (US) up front and not only will I promise not to sue any of your customers, I will pay you 5 Million Dollars (US) over the course of the next five years for your promise not to sue any of my customers.
Of course you could also analyze the deal as a a net loss for Microsoft. While Novell may be paying money to Microsoft over a course of five years, Microsoft is paying so money to Novell up front that Novell could probably make its payments to MiS with the interest.
I can fully understand why some people don't like this deal. While I disagree with the reasoning put forth by Bruce Perens, I'll gladly concede that what he's doing makes sense given his reasoning. But the simple desire to boycott Novell to keep Microsoft from making more money seems confused at best and contradictory to the stated goals at worst.
pAlso, with the possible exception of high school students, voice is still the number one application of anyone that has a mobile phone.
Which is part of why I don't think anyone has much to worry about Microsoft's patent threats against Linux. IBM has decided that Linux is part of its strategic future and will take a scorched earch approach if Microsoft threatens what IBM sees as its eventual cash cow.
Most PHBs think that (a) Novell pulled a fast one on MS, (b) Microsoft is overstepping, or both.
If everyone started using only free software and not purchasing said software you can better believe that the vendors that used to sell in that market would unequivocally agree that that market segment died. No sales means that there is no market. There may be an ecosystem. There may be users. But without a marketplace where money change hands for goods and services, there is no market.
There is no real distinction between developers and end-users in the GPL software ecosystem. Both are users of code; they just use it in different ways.
IBM Hardware and IBM Semi-Conductor probably couldn't really give a rat's ass about Microsoft one way or the other. The PSP division, however, has been waiting for a chance to crucify Microsoft for quite some time. The thing that sets IBM apart from most companies that are fueled by a vendetta is that IBM has been around the block enough times to patiently wait to pounce until they can find a way to destroy MS that increases IBM's shareholder value. Unlike Novell's ill conceived take Microsoft on on all fronts war, IBM wil wait until the perfect opportunity presents itself. A Microsoft patent offensive on Linux would be precisely such an event.