Read the commentary that goes wiht the article on Groklaw. The article is good, legal-sounding political speach.
That is not the same thing as a good idea.
If software patents were, by ANY stretch of the imagination, good for the business of innovating software then the ninties-through-today (the domain of time when software patents have existed) shoudl have produced several more Software Company Levithians than the eighties.
Where are they?
How did the eighties-and-before produce Microsoft, Lotus, SAIC, Computer Associates (etc, etc, etc) in the absence of this boon-to-innovation?
ALL evidence suggests, and NO evidence opposes, a simple truth, that patenting software is *only* efective in keeping innovative new entities from competing against larger, established business entities.
This is *not* a reasonable definition of "promoting innovation."
Statement: Software Patents are Bad. Repeat statement as necessary.
Are the Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorizing your belief in the Children?/sigh. Skip the hyperbole and hot-word button pushing and get back on topic.
You aparently cannot parse english, or at least don't chose to credit people in an argument. Paul Tibbets was not singularly armed with the atomic bomb, that was more of an organizational thing. Mr. Tibbets was armed with the atom bomb the same way a captian is armed with with his aircraft carrier, which is "not armed at all". Mr. Tibbets was a delivery device. He didn't keep it in his basement and maintain it about his person. He was told to put it where it went and thats what he did. Saying he was armed with it is like calling a bank courier "rich" because he has a satchel full of bonds.
The military structure is "supposed to" vet people psychologically (but you would *not* beleive what doesn't make it into the newspapers when military people snap) and so there are a lot of group weapons.
I actually don't suggest that private citizens all be issued tanks or atom bombs. But then again, since the military vends these things to individuals why should it only vend them to *anybody*... of course down that road lies all sorts of mis-aplicable arguments that bear no relationship to reasoned discourse.
What I am saying is that if *you* want to own a Squad Assault Weapon (real big machine gun) you should be able to submit to examination for same, and if you qualify for it you should be issued a license to own and operate.
Non of this "hunt deer with it" melarky. Guns are used to influence people and governments. THAT is the only purpose for their mention in the constitution.
You will, probably, then fly off the handle about "the children" or something at this point. Skip it.
I *don't* beleive that guns should be handed out like candy to anybody with a ten-spot and an honest face.
To own a gun you should need a license. Maintaining that license should be non-trivial. You should have to pass a written and "regularly" qualify with the type(s) of guns you have on your license. No qualification no carry.
Think "pilots license" instead of "drivers license". A pilot must maintain a log of his piloting activities' must have flown a certian amount in the last certian period before he can have other people in his plane. Must have taken a certian amount of supervised instruction with each type of plane before he can fly that type of plane. Has to work hsi way up to larger planes. That sort of thing.
I will now put an "odd sounding" proposition to you:
In the time frame of the drafting of the second amendment there was *defacto* gun control. The quality of the materials and the tolerances of the manufacturing of guns was such that to own a gun you *had* to invest a disciplined effort in maintaining it. It had to be regularly cleaned and oiled iven if you didn't shoot it (and so on.)
Gun ownership and crime spiraled out of control in the later half of the last century because we started making guns that could be hideously abused (used to hammer in tent pegs in the rain, ignored in a damp basement for years, dropped into a mud puddle and then shaken dry) without so much as a misfire. Let alone a "blow up in your face".
Consequently any creeten can have a gun and be sure it will work when he finally screws up his little mind to use it. Your crack-head street merchant "gun owner" couldn't have gone armed with eighteenth century technology.
*That* is the only thing that has really changed between then and now.
The fact remains that if more normal people went about armed, there would be *far* *less* gun crime. The shootings we see today are uniform acts of cowardess. Drive-bys and human-hunting on the subway are instances of people looking for a qucik in and a docile crowd onto which to vent their fear and aggression. Btu it doesn't happen much in West Virginia or Texas or any of the other concealed-carry states where anybody in the t
Then again, I almost joined the National Riffle Assn, but *they* only had one thing I *agreed* with in amongst the Wacko Retoric.
So, I give the ACLU a 9.5 out of 10. They get the.5 for never acting against the second amendment. (Though, oddly, they would drop to an 8 or less if they did act against it... I must be getting too used to slashdot karma math... 8-)
The fact of the mater is that the ACLU can stand back from the second amendment, and it is in their best interest to do so. By standing back they leave the NRA to champion that one thing all without disenfranchising their core membership, many of whom are weenees(*)...
(*)It doesn't, IMHO, take a rocket scientest to understand that all of the provisions of the bill of rights relate directly to the rubber/road interface between the American Colinists and the British Occupation. Said analysis leads to a simple required parity: any one citizen has the right to be *at* *least* as well armed as any one member of the government. The "but terrible things happen to 'innocent' people" people are all weenees. I have met thises people, I have sat on a _JURY_ with these people and barely avoided a HUGE miscarrage of justice because of that ""someone has to be to blame, bad things don't 'just happen'" denyal crap.
There, I said it, weenees...
[Warning Signs of weeneeness]
"I could/would never eat anything with a face..."
"But what about the children!?!"
Will say "I have the right" at the drop of a hat, but would die before saying "I have the responsibility".
Anybody who says "oh, that's just awful." more than once a year.
Anybody who is too self-absorbed to take a deathly-ill animal to the vet to have it put down, and so would make the animal suffer so they don't have to do the hard-but-right thing.
Anybody who uses the phrase "literal word of God" with a straight face. (ok, now Im jsut getting devicive... 8-)
Senator, those friends "losses" are based on two peculiar propositions; the first is that nobody has ever bought music after hearing it for free; the second is that everybody who downloaded a song would have bought it if it weren't available on the net. I think you will agree that both of these propositions are laughable...
Just in case you didn't know, the SOLE mandate of the ACLU is to uphold and defend the bill of rights. That necessarily involves politics.
While it doesn't follow, as day follows night, that being against the ACLU is basically being against the U.S. Constitution, it comes awfully close.
Yep, you just *gotta* hate people who want american freedom for americans, let alone the rest of the world.
I am sure that every relative of yours (presuming you are an american) who has ever served this country would *much* prefer if everybody just shut the hell up and let the government do what they know is best for all of us.
Down with the ACLU!
Booo!!!
(ASIDE: The USAPATRIOT Act is was the last straw in my book, and is what finally got me to *join* the ACLU. Their explination of it is rather straight forward and complete. But I bet you haven't actuall read it [the act or the ACLU deconstruction] have you? Didn't think so... 8-)
The patent system the big companies built up pivots vitally uppon the presupposition that they will be fighting other big companies. The game requires that the big players hold out the little players completely while going into their own Deadlock ("Deadly Embrace" etc) to steal a computer term, with their acknowledged rivals. The Big X companies depend on being able to cross licence amidst themselves.
This falls apart completely in the face of an "IP Holding Company."
When you face a company that has patents on what you want to do, but has absolutely no need for the patents that you have to offer them back, then you are hoist by your own pitard.
In the many decades before the ninties, getting a patent meant something. You had to build something tangable and so you had to have paid up but good to get your patent. You had to be somebody before you could be a patented somebody.
But with software patents all you have to be is a bullshit artist with $400 bucks and a lawyer.
So there is springing up today a cotage industry of holding companies with "intellectual property" who will undermine the great companies in exactly the way that long-range high-powered cannon made the castle pointlessly expensive.
Actually a better analogy would be sappers. Little companies that burrow under the edges of a largs companies' development and product infrastructure and "go off". They either get crushed or they breach the wall and take a good bit of loot away with them.
And just like the lords of yore, the big companies will fight back for a while by trying to build bigger walls by strengthening the patent process. But it needs must fail, because the new rules of engagement say that walls don't work.
*Eventually* some company, some really big company (are you listeneing IBM? Sun? Microsoft?), is going to get smart and figure out that software patents have turned the basalt under their walls to sandstone. They will put together their lobying groups and try to remove the software patents.
They'll be dumb about it, of course, and try to preserve the patents they already have (those things were expensive after all) and they will make the second-tier mess.
Finally the whole thing will eventually go the way of the Perpetual Motion Machine, and all the patents will be vacated en-masse.
The most critical factor in the timing is whether our "organs of state" will be able to successfully "infect" Europe with the STD that is "business process (software) patents."
If errope falls it will add twenty years to the timeline and both the US and the EU will become the software and information systems third-world behind Asia and "the southern continents".
If the EU is smart enough as a political organisim, only the US will have to sink to third-world status on the internet to find the motivation to undo its mess. That should only take about fifteen to twenty years if things remain as they are today.
Between here and there we should expect the North American DRM Cabal will make our lives quite ugly here.
I for one don't welcome our new ??AA overlords, but I know them to be an enevitable "quaint feature" of the twenty-tens...
Also, as a matter of fact, the EULA is inflicted by a third party. I bought the software from BestBuy or CompUSA. Who is this Blizzard person? The manufacturer? I didn't buy this from them.
First Sale was exhausted before I ever even saw the box.
Small groups of people have agendas... but then again some agendas attract large groups of people who want to claim that agenda as their own.
Yes, in the "action list" (literal) sense agenda sounds ominous and tinfoil-hattist 8-).
But the fact of the mater is that all sorts of titular steriotypes (which class inclues simple things like "teacher" "cop" "pharmisist" etc) have agendas that come with them as part of the steriotype.
For instance "elected official" as a title come with a pre-installed agenda of getting elected and reelected, which in-turn has constituency clauses. It's not that they all get together in back rooms once a month and remanufacture that agenda as a conspiracy.
The agenda is just a broad set of pursuits and intents.
So I was thinking, once we get the massive inflatable technology under our belt, we could probably manage to make these really really really big balons that self-fill with energy-disapating foam once in orbit. (Think styrofoam, you know basically rigid once set-up.)
These things could be set on orbits "just slightly different" than those that were "known " to contain the the smaller space debris.
Since the mass of the balons would be relatively low, we would know when impacts took place.
So by deliberately intersecting the orbits of this stuff we would accumulate it in the rigid foam. The outer structure would be pierced, but by then it would only be strapping on the foam mass to keep *it* from disintegrating.
Over time, in a low orbit, the orbit would decay and the big foam ball would have a nice energetic reentry, bolts, wrenches, gasgets, and all.
In high orbits, the thing could be retrieved.
If the thing were in a retrograde (backwards from all the normal orbits) it wouldn't necessarily even have to capture the debris. A little momentum would be exchanged and both objects would fall to lower orbits.
And it would look good from the "big rubber hilton across the way" 8-)
So it occured to me that the fundimental failing of our political process is fairly simple. It became obvious some time back that you cannot successfully legislate morals, so the people in power pandered and began legislating what I call "moralisim".
The legislation of Moralisim is what happens when you cannot pass a ban on a book, so you establish a "community standards" test to allow each community to decide to ban the book because it would be bad to "force them to accept the book." In Moralisim, if you can not achieve the ban, you ban banning the ban...
It's a back-handed logical trick, like arguing to authority, where you open up patchwork of recursively nested micro-fifes. Consider "Dry" neighborhoods in "Wet" cities in "Dry" counties. You get to a place where you can't ban the book, so you ban yourself from controlling the ban on books and leave it up your political constituents to "decide for themselves".
It produces little political kingdoms where vocal extremests and idealogues can stake out parts of the landscape for various dogmatic purposes.
It also "levels the playing field" in a way that isnt right, but that "sounds fair" to those who are not paying proper heed. This ersatz seeming fairness can then be used as "authority" unilaterally. It rases a cloud of uncertainty where any stupid thing becomes possible as an "act of the people" because all "rights" become beasts of equal prescidence.
Consider: I have the right to keep and bare arms, you have the right not to be gunned down at the Circle-K. These two rights do *not* hold equal precidence, the right not to be gunned down is ever-so-more significant. This does *NOT* however mean that the right to keep and bare arms is somehow "punctured" and suddenly goes away. The fact is that these two rights are not really in conflict because the responsable exercise of one doesn't lead enexorably to the violation of the other.
Compare this then to "smoking", you have the right to smoke and I have the right not to. Here the right not to smoke trounces the right to smoke. You are asked to step out side. It didn't have to be that way, if the smokers had always "smoked responsibly" by observing other peoples right to smoke, they would have stepped out side all along and there woudn't have to be bans. (They probably wouldn't throw polyester butts on the gound either were responsibility the watchword in smokers... 8-) But the refrain of "why do I have to leave, I have the right to somke" with the hidden codicil "anywhere I damn well please no matter what the consequences."
See, the responsibility has gone, along with most of the burden of dilligence and accountability, and so "rights" rule supreme.
This is the inevetable result of Moralist policies. Moralisim is the proverbial washing-of-hands. "We didn't rule on this, it is the will of our populous and our populous has that right." Nudge nudge, wink wink...
The PATRIOT Act is a natural outgrowth of the Moralist agenda. It supports a vacation of responsibility and accountability in the name of preserving the "right to safety." The penetration and disapation of the "right to privacy and due process", it says, must be spent as the inferior right because in the moralist realm whenever two rights come into conflict one must be supreme, a "true right" and one must be defeated utterly as not having really been a right at all.
What's actually kind of funny is that Moralisim is a revival of the old Might makes Right paradigm. We set our ideals up against one another to see which one will beat the other to death in a court of public spectacle.
So there is a hierarchy of rights, but only in the presence of responsibilities and accountabilities.
But it really _isn't_ any kind of balancing act. You are not supposed to pay for one right, like safety, by betraying another, like due process.
You are supposed to pay for rights with the currency of responsibility.
Blast, foiled by english voul sounds again batman... 8-)
Mia Culpa....
There *still* isn't enough funding for Thermionics research, and what there is, is *way* too clasified.
Other than that... was I wrong? 8-)
"My Child Swallowed WHAT?" (a rant 8-)
on
Nuclear Batteries
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Yumm... in other news, liability law enters a whole new realm of stupid.
Most of the proles have been blisfully un-aware of the use of "nuclear bateries" (etc) in our space program. In those cases it was mostly a exercise in thermeonics, which is perhaps slightly different than this "documented" breakthrough, or maybe not, but there you go.
How out-of-the-public-mind is this? Google for thermeonics. Two entires. No wonder there isn't any funding.
Meanwhile, particle-in electron-out technologies are not all that radical. Things like the solar panels are based on this sort of thing.
So we have an announcement that what we can do big we may be able to do to nanotech scales. How new, how fresh...
But there will be hue, and there will be cry, and much gnashing of teeth will come across the land as those who cannot understand take umberage from the words of those who check facts. "That is radio active! We must not have it. Now give me some of that cadmium enriched tap water the government says is good for softening over-strong bones..."
So great technology, but we can't even get decent breeder reactors in this country. We arn't smart or "brave" enough, or perhaps we have had so many less-than-trustworthy "officilas" that we know we dare not let the usefully dangerous things near our lives. Leave the cutting edge nuclear research to the cowardly French...
So summon NIMBY and marvel as our lawyers stamp this technology, and any other technology that sounds even vaguly provocative, out in the persuit of the great god "what about our children?"
Apparently they don't deserve to survive because their PARENTS can't take the simple responsibility to to keep their kids from eating the computer... 8-)
So yea, great advance in science, all the benefits will be lost to the litigous masses. What is the point of a 1 millimeter chip if it has to wear a ten-inch warning label?
You just wait and see... 8-)
[For those who missed the subject line, this was a RANT... get a clue before you take me to task... 8-)]
(Foreward: I agree about MySQL being a tad hobbiest, lacking recursive SQL in all its forms. I must pooh-pooh Postgres for having unacceptable "tablespace" limits [one database == one directory, so adding storage for large tables is "problematic"]. These opinions may be slightly out of date, or not, but they were definately germane to the timeframes from the cases mentioned in the article. Meanwhile, M$ SQL Server has some serious tablespace issues itself. To a great extent, if you want to go large, Oracle is the only choice on *BOTH* platforms... IMHO of course 8-)
The position (which I do not support) was not centered around "Requiring Oracle", it was "Requiring Choices Other Than Oracle" that "required" Windows. That is, the position is basically "Linux only provides Oracle so it is inferior to Windows which allows other choices."
It is a specious argument once put to forward translation, because there were other choices for both platforms.
This speciousness is endemic to the reasoning presented in the article. The switchers in question weren't driven from Linux to Windows so much as they forced themselves to flee from Linux to Windows by way of poor project vision/planing/execution/expectation.
So the complaints of the posters in this thread are that the article was weak and stupid because the users failures can be traced directly to the failure of the users to plan ahead or research options.
These complaints themselves are, in turn, based on a lack of information, as we don't know how much white-wash has been applied, and how much has been rinsed away in a flood of hyperbole, to the various positions presented by the lay-reporter. We really don't know What Really Happened(tm).
The reporting leaves us needing to take inference and forensic deconstruction as our clues to What Really Happened(tm) which is the hallmark of the very top-shelf FUD. The educated see the errors in judgement and the PHBs see the fear and failure, so the article is a masterful tool for preventing action on any kind of Linux agenda. It is fodder for anyone who has made a carrier of gain-saying everybody else's actions. (You know, the prophet of doom who gets to say "look, I was right" whenever anything fails, but never puts forward a solution themselves.) The very fact that the article confused you and the other conferees here with its passive-speak indictments is testament to its artful composition as FUD.
This is a fluff piece with the Shakespearian dollops of Sound and Furry being provided by all maner of diverse parties.
The article is about people who failed to implement some Linux solutions, for whatever reasons, and then switched back to "good old safe Windows".
It is, in fact, advertainment and propagandimonium most foul. 8-)
So point at the monkey in his leiderhosen and laugh as you see fit. 8-)
Variant-Billable DRM-able restricted configuration set-top-box-like standard configurations to which licensing restrictions and access restrictions can be automatically applied.
For instance: This windows license is valid for levels 1 to 4, if you would like to run this level 6 computer please fill out the additional licensing form and return to you Microsoft Sales Representative.
This will be no different than the old CPU-Count and User-Count licensing metrics.
They just want the Manufacturers' boxes to say "Level 5!" so that the customers don't fully understand that they are being reamed for extra money when the bill that comes from the Microsoft(tm) Windows(tm) Subscription Service is larger for you than for your neighbor.
In 1982 I worked for a company called "Touch Technology" in Annapolis MD. Our main stock in trade was keosk touch screen devices. The owner, one E. Garry Barrett, had figured out that the current state of the art technology in capacitive touch screens could be rendered static-shock proof by simply routing a big (8 gage?) copper wire to the gap between the monitor and the touch-screen over-glass.
If you used the Nemian Marcus(sp?) bridal registry keosks in the eighties you used our product.
But his true passion was his invention of "the Touch Mouse". He had the idea, and was using the above keosk business to fund research, for a bus-mouse device that was a tiny touch screen with buttons and several modes of opration.
We had a prototype (the 8051 tended to hang after about 2 minutes so, according to a lawyer, we didn't have enough to get a patent) and manufacturing dies and such.
But then one day Gary decided we needed more funding. We did, in fact, need that funding. The Vulture Capitalists gave us that funding, and then within six months raided the company and disolved it.
If he is still alive, I am sure that E. Gary Barrett cannot walk into any store selling laptops without wanting to cut his own throat. Those touch-pads, in the absence of some foolishly short-sighted Vulture Capitalists, would each be paying him hommage in green folding applause.
Wouldn't it just be a pitty if the X-billion dollar online gambling industry just went away and left us to our porn? 8-)
Seriously, don't we want to get rid of online gambling? All it really does is separate stupid and/or poor people from their money and raise the noise floor on the internet.
Besides I bet these poker bots identify "the cards on the screen" by looking at the graphic names. It wouldn't be that hard to screw the bots by shuffling the names of the card images so that the names describe a good hand when the system has displayed a bad one. You know, create twenty of thirty permuted decks and shuffle the individual "cards" out of the deck between hands. So you could end with XXXXXace.jpg being a 2, while XXXYXace.jpg being a 5.
The bot goes "mmmmm, four aces" and bets the limit, the casino goes "mmmm, 3 5 7 8 K, king-high, thanks for the money."
I know it probably isn't *that* easy, but the whole thing is stupid. Besides who are you going to complain to? Hey Mr FTC! My cheat-bot ran up a $2000,000 USD debt because the file names of the graphics didn't match the cards in the hands. They cheated!/sigh
Tryihg to make something that is not valuable, valuable is a no-win scenerio.
For example, whatever buisness you are in, you are *NOT* in the business of writing accounting software. (Unless, of course you are... 8-).
The fact of the matter is that there is no need to "create a scarcity of accounting software" because businesses need accounting software, but more importantly they need *ACCOUNTANTS* who will be paid for their effort, but who do not "deserve" to "become rich" because they wrote some software.
Doed "Britney Spears" *really* *DESERVE* her current lifestyle because of her good looks an moderately engaging little tunes? No. She deserves a reasonable paycheck and whatever fame floats her way.
Odly enough she is *GETTING* this *EXCESSIVE* lifestyle right now, in the presence of this "unworkable" and "evil" "file-sharing epidemic."
The biggest argument against all this MUST crap, (and, IMHO it *IS* crap) is as follows:
Those who will steal and will not buy, um... WILL NOT BUY. That is the definition of their group. All of the "lost revenue" clap-trap is hinged on the tautologically false presumption that each having-for-free represents a lost sale. That is rediculous.
The software industries GREW RICH in the presence of rampant software piracy. Because just as it is true that the people who won't pay, won't pay; the people who *WILL* pay *WILL* pay.
I can download a book to my hearts content, but I can't (currently) read it on the toilet. The physical media of a book is value in itself. e-Books will not kill tree-Books any time soon.
It is _TRUE_ that in the future the economies of scale will tilt, and the "rampant financial stardom" which began in the 1930's, and that is peaking now, will flag back to a sustainable level.
It is absurd to claim that some pop star *deserves* and must be *maintained* atht he level where they can fritter away HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A YEAR because they have nice tits and a passable voice (once you process the hell out of it 8-).
Quite frankly, a "good performer" only deserves a "good wage" and so my urge to weep for Metalica is somewhat limited.
So all manufacturing all this scarcity is hardly a must, it isn't even a maybe-we-ought-to.
People like blockbusters, and will see big movies in big movie houses. And some will buy the DVDs the day they are released for a premimum price. And some will wait until the movies are on the bargan-shelf and Kreskgees. And some will borrow, and some will copy, and some wont touch the movie with a ten-foot pole while wearing a HazMat suit. It's just the nature of the beast.
And the numbers and the thresholds will jitter and flop about as the technologies change. That's nature of the beast too.
That will be hard for some people to take, and some industry fragmentation will follow. There may be a "Hip Hop Bubble Burst" just around the corner.
But you know what? The *ENTIRE* IP, Entertainment, and IT "industiries" are just bubbles anyway. They are new and hot and the will become passe, and pedestrian. And no amount of legislation or DRM or _thuggery_ can help them aboid their fate.
Markets will find their levels, and the gravy-train for "hit radio" is pulling into a station. And when it finally arrives, the prices and infamy levels will go back where they have always been. Motzarts will be famous, but they'll struggle to get that way, meanwhile Betty-the-madrigal will make about what anybody else makes and have a normally comfortable lifestyle while being a "total god" to her niche fan-base.
But there is no MUST about proping up the abherent prices and industires that exist. They were created to "find a way to distribute music" and guess what? (Go ahead and *read* the RIAA charter... 8-) For a time they were pretty necessary. But once the music distributes itself, their lifecycle is *OVER*, and *RIGHTLY* *SO*.
After all, what does the RIAA actually *DO* that they deserve to
Yes, they all stand outside the box, thinking how cool it would be to actually play with the merchandise, and lamenting the waste of money that going into the box represents.
That is the _apotheosis_ of thinking outside the box... 8-)
Microsoft doesn't just exempt Sun from lawsuit protections; Microsoft has been given the right to "controll the defense" of OOo at their option.
That's right, Microsoft has been given full legal controll of all of Sun's right to defend the product from any suit based on patents.
If naybody has ever been in a case where their insurance company decided to settle a case that should have been fought, they know where this is leading...
Plaintiff: "I'm Ben Grimes, representing Microsoft, your honor. We beleive that this product violates our patents and shoud be pulled completely and deeded over to us."
Judge: "oh, ok"
Defendent: "I'm Ben Grimes, representing Sun, your honor. We beleive Mr Grimes argument is thurough and compelling and our product is indefensable."
Judge: "wait a minute, you can't be representing the plaintiff and defendent."
Ben: "Oh really? Microsoft has controll over any defense Sun might offer. But I guess I can't sit on both sides of the isle... My I introduce my paralegal cum interning-law-student Betty? She'll be handling the filings for Sun..."
etc.
So when Microsoft gets around to suing over patents in OOo, they also get to chose how the product is defended....
Slashdot Mirror
I am, however, still having all sorts of problems with this article...
Must be windows fault... 8-)
Well, that's better...
When I first wrote the above, I was getting three copies of this story on the front page. Don't know why...
The comment is far less funy now that the error is gone...
8-)
I'm pretty sure I *JUST* read this....
Deja vu man...
Read the commentary that goes wiht the article on Groklaw. The article is good, legal-sounding political speach.
That is not the same thing as a good idea.
If software patents were, by ANY stretch of the imagination, good for the business of innovating software then the ninties-through-today (the domain of time when software patents have existed) shoudl have produced several more Software Company Levithians than the eighties.
Where are they?
How did the eighties-and-before produce Microsoft, Lotus, SAIC, Computer Associates (etc, etc, etc) in the absence of this boon-to-innovation?
ALL evidence suggests, and NO evidence opposes, a simple truth, that patenting software is *only* efective in keeping innovative new entities from competing against larger, established business entities.
This is *not* a reasonable definition of "promoting innovation."
Statement: Software Patents are Bad.
Repeat statement as necessary.
Are the Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorizing your belief in the Children? /sigh. Skip the hyperbole and hot-word button pushing and get back on topic.
You aparently cannot parse english, or at least don't chose to credit people in an argument. Paul Tibbets was not singularly armed with the atomic bomb, that was more of an organizational thing. Mr. Tibbets was armed with the atom bomb the same way a captian is armed with with his aircraft carrier, which is "not armed at all". Mr. Tibbets was a delivery device. He didn't keep it in his basement and maintain it about his person. He was told to put it where it went and thats what he did. Saying he was armed with it is like calling a bank courier "rich" because he has a satchel full of bonds.
The military structure is "supposed to" vet people psychologically (but you would *not* beleive what doesn't make it into the newspapers when military people snap) and so there are a lot of group weapons.
I actually don't suggest that private citizens all be issued tanks or atom bombs. But then again, since the military vends these things to individuals why should it only vend them to *anybody*... of course down that road lies all sorts of mis-aplicable arguments that bear no relationship to reasoned discourse.
What I am saying is that if *you* want to own a Squad Assault Weapon (real big machine gun) you should be able to submit to examination for same, and if you qualify for it you should be issued a license to own and operate.
Non of this "hunt deer with it" melarky. Guns are used to influence people and governments. THAT is the only purpose for their mention in the constitution.
You will, probably, then fly off the handle about "the children" or something at this point. Skip it.
I *don't* beleive that guns should be handed out like candy to anybody with a ten-spot and an honest face.
To own a gun you should need a license. Maintaining that license should be non-trivial. You should have to pass a written and "regularly" qualify with the type(s) of guns you have on your license. No qualification no carry.
Think "pilots license" instead of "drivers license". A pilot must maintain a log of his piloting activities' must have flown a certian amount in the last certian period before he can have other people in his plane. Must have taken a certian amount of supervised instruction with each type of plane before he can fly that type of plane. Has to work hsi way up to larger planes. That sort of thing.
I will now put an "odd sounding" proposition to you:
In the time frame of the drafting of the second amendment there was *defacto* gun control. The quality of the materials and the tolerances of the manufacturing of guns was such that to own a gun you *had* to invest a disciplined effort in maintaining it. It had to be regularly cleaned and oiled iven if you didn't shoot it (and so on.)
Gun ownership and crime spiraled out of control in the later half of the last century because we started making guns that could be hideously abused (used to hammer in tent pegs in the rain, ignored in a damp basement for years, dropped into a mud puddle and then shaken dry) without so much as a misfire. Let alone a "blow up in your face".
Consequently any creeten can have a gun and be sure it will work when he finally screws up his little mind to use it. Your crack-head street merchant "gun owner" couldn't have gone armed with eighteenth century technology.
*That* is the only thing that has really changed between then and now.
The fact remains that if more normal people went about armed, there would be *far* *less* gun crime. The shootings we see today are uniform acts of cowardess. Drive-bys and human-hunting on the subway are instances of people looking for a qucik in and a docile crowd onto which to vent their fear and aggression. Btu it doesn't happen much in West Virginia or Texas or any of the other concealed-carry states where anybody in the t
Then again, I almost joined the National Riffle Assn, but *they* only had one thing I *agreed* with in amongst the Wacko Retoric.
.5 for never acting against the second amendment. (Though, oddly, they would drop to an 8 or less if they did act against it... I must be getting too used to slashdot karma math... 8-)
So, I give the ACLU a 9.5 out of 10. They get the
The fact of the mater is that the ACLU can stand back from the second amendment, and it is in their best interest to do so. By standing back they leave the NRA to champion that one thing all without disenfranchising their core membership, many of whom are weenees(*)...
(*)It doesn't, IMHO, take a rocket scientest to understand that all of the provisions of the bill of rights relate directly to the rubber/road interface between the American Colinists and the British Occupation. Said analysis leads to a simple required parity: any one citizen has the right to be *at* *least* as well armed as any one member of the government. The "but terrible things happen to 'innocent' people" people are all weenees. I have met thises people, I have sat on a _JURY_ with these people and barely avoided a HUGE miscarrage of justice because of that ""someone has to be to blame, bad things don't 'just happen'" denyal crap.
There, I said it, weenees...
[Warning Signs of weeneeness]
"I could/would never eat anything with a face..."
"But what about the children!?!"
Will say "I have the right" at the drop of a hat, but would die before saying "I have the responsibility".
Anybody who says "oh, that's just awful." more than once a year.
Anybody who is too self-absorbed to take a deathly-ill animal to the vet to have it put down, and so would make the animal suffer so they don't have to do the hard-but-right thing.
Anybody who uses the phrase "literal word of God" with a straight face. (ok, now Im jsut getting devicive... 8-)
Senator, those friends "losses" are based on two peculiar propositions; the first is that nobody has ever bought music after hearing it for free; the second is that everybody who downloaded a song would have bought it if it weren't available on the net. I think you will agree that both of these propositions are laughable...
That's the whole debunking in 15 seconds.
Just in case you didn't know, the SOLE mandate of the ACLU is to uphold and defend the bill of rights. That necessarily involves politics.
While it doesn't follow, as day follows night, that being against the ACLU is basically being against the U.S. Constitution, it comes awfully close.
Yep, you just *gotta* hate people who want american freedom for americans, let alone the rest of the world.
I am sure that every relative of yours (presuming you are an american) who has ever served this country would *much* prefer if everybody just shut the hell up and let the government do what they know is best for all of us.
Down with the ACLU!
Booo!!!
(ASIDE: The USAPATRIOT Act is was the last straw in my book, and is what finally got me to *join* the ACLU. Their explination of it is rather straight forward and complete. But I bet you haven't actuall read it [the act or the ACLU deconstruction] have you? Didn't think so... 8-)
How can you patent "put it on my tab" (one click shopping) or the division of labor (anything "client server")?
How can you patent parts of the human genome?
Simple, someone with money makse a "persuasive green folding argument" that they should be allowed to...
The patent system the big companies built up pivots vitally uppon the presupposition that they will be fighting other big companies. The game requires that the big players hold out the little players completely while going into their own Deadlock ("Deadly Embrace" etc) to steal a computer term, with their acknowledged rivals. The Big X companies depend on being able to cross licence amidst themselves.
This falls apart completely in the face of an "IP Holding Company."
When you face a company that has patents on what you want to do, but has absolutely no need for the patents that you have to offer them back, then you are hoist by your own pitard.
In the many decades before the ninties, getting a patent meant something. You had to build something tangable and so you had to have paid up but good to get your patent. You had to be somebody before you could be a patented somebody.
But with software patents all you have to be is a bullshit artist with $400 bucks and a lawyer.
So there is springing up today a cotage industry of holding companies with "intellectual property" who will undermine the great companies in exactly the way that long-range high-powered cannon made the castle pointlessly expensive.
Actually a better analogy would be sappers. Little companies that burrow under the edges of a largs companies' development and product infrastructure and "go off". They either get crushed or they breach the wall and take a good bit of loot away with them.
And just like the lords of yore, the big companies will fight back for a while by trying to build bigger walls by strengthening the patent process. But it needs must fail, because the new rules of engagement say that walls don't work.
*Eventually* some company, some really big company (are you listeneing IBM? Sun? Microsoft?), is going to get smart and figure out that software patents have turned the basalt under their walls to sandstone. They will put together their lobying groups and try to remove the software patents.
They'll be dumb about it, of course, and try to preserve the patents they already have (those things were expensive after all) and they will make the second-tier mess.
Finally the whole thing will eventually go the way of the Perpetual Motion Machine, and all the patents will be vacated en-masse.
The most critical factor in the timing is whether our "organs of state" will be able to successfully "infect" Europe with the STD that is "business process (software) patents."
If errope falls it will add twenty years to the timeline and both the US and the EU will become the software and information systems third-world behind Asia and "the southern continents".
If the EU is smart enough as a political organisim, only the US will have to sink to third-world status on the internet to find the motivation to undo its mess. That should only take about fifteen to twenty years if things remain as they are today.
Between here and there we should expect the North American DRM Cabal will make our lives quite ugly here.
I for one don't welcome our new ??AA overlords, but I know them to be an enevitable "quaint feature" of the twenty-tens...
Heck, just cover the screen region with a post-it note. In trught that would have the same meaning.
How about getting really drunk before you do an install. I don't think you can make a binding contract when you are legally intoxicated.
How about runing a program that automatically finds buttons and links and check-boxes on your screen that say "agree" and activates them at random.
Or closing your eyes and clicking about the screen randomly for a while?
How about proving it was me who clicked the button in the first place?
This is a bad finding of fact, and a certain jurist needs to have his bench examined.
Also, as a matter of fact, the EULA is inflicted by a third party. I bought the software from BestBuy or CompUSA. Who is this Blizzard person? The manufacturer? I didn't buy this from them.
First Sale was exhausted before I ever even saw the box.
BestBuy probably bought it from a distributor...
The EULA, lacking a "allow me to use my first-sale rights" button cannot wave first sale rights, as there is no way to not wave them.
This is crap.
In my mind, I have never agreed to a EULA no matter what the buttons I press say.
There is the "install" buttion, and there is the "quit wihtout installing" button.
Period.
When they start having "I don't agree, now install what I bought" buttions then EULAs will be enforcable.
Not till then.
Small groups of people have agendas... but then again some agendas attract large groups of people who want to claim that agenda as their own.
Yes, in the "action list" (literal) sense agenda sounds ominous and tinfoil-hattist 8-).
But the fact of the mater is that all sorts of titular steriotypes (which class inclues simple things like "teacher" "cop" "pharmisist" etc) have agendas that come with them as part of the steriotype.
For instance "elected official" as a title come with a pre-installed agenda of getting elected and reelected, which in-turn has constituency clauses. It's not that they all get together in back rooms once a month and remanufacture that agenda as a conspiracy.
The agenda is just a broad set of pursuits and intents.
And there you go...
So I was thinking, once we get the massive inflatable technology under our belt, we could probably manage to make these really really really big balons that self-fill with energy-disapating foam once in orbit. (Think styrofoam, you know basically rigid once set-up.)
These things could be set on orbits "just slightly different" than those that were "known " to contain the the smaller space debris.
Since the mass of the balons would be relatively low, we would know when impacts took place.
So by deliberately intersecting the orbits of this stuff we would accumulate it in the rigid foam. The outer structure would be pierced, but by then it would only be strapping on the foam mass to keep *it* from disintegrating.
Over time, in a low orbit, the orbit would decay and the big foam ball would have a nice energetic reentry, bolts, wrenches, gasgets, and all.
In high orbits, the thing could be retrieved.
If the thing were in a retrograde (backwards from all the normal orbits) it wouldn't necessarily even have to capture the debris. A little momentum would be exchanged and both objects would fall to lower orbits.
And it would look good from the "big rubber hilton across the way" 8-)
So it occured to me that the fundimental failing of our political process is fairly simple. It became obvious some time back that you cannot successfully legislate morals, so the people in power pandered and began legislating what I call "moralisim".
The legislation of Moralisim is what happens when you cannot pass a ban on a book, so you establish a "community standards" test to allow each community to decide to ban the book because it would be bad to "force them to accept the book." In Moralisim, if you can not achieve the ban, you ban banning the ban...
It's a back-handed logical trick, like arguing to authority, where you open up patchwork of recursively nested micro-fifes. Consider "Dry" neighborhoods in "Wet" cities in "Dry" counties. You get to a place where you can't ban the book, so you ban yourself from controlling the ban on books and leave it up your political constituents to "decide for themselves".
It produces little political kingdoms where vocal extremests and idealogues can stake out parts of the landscape for various dogmatic purposes.
It also "levels the playing field" in a way that isnt right, but that "sounds fair" to those who are not paying proper heed. This ersatz seeming fairness can then be used as "authority" unilaterally. It rases a cloud of uncertainty where any stupid thing becomes possible as an "act of the people" because all "rights" become beasts of equal prescidence.
Consider: I have the right to keep and bare arms, you have the right not to be gunned down at the Circle-K. These two rights do *not* hold equal precidence, the right not to be gunned down is ever-so-more significant. This does *NOT* however mean that the right to keep and bare arms is somehow "punctured" and suddenly goes away. The fact is that these two rights are not really in conflict because the responsable exercise of one doesn't lead enexorably to the violation of the other.
Compare this then to "smoking", you have the right to smoke and I have the right not to. Here the right not to smoke trounces the right to smoke. You are asked to step out side. It didn't have to be that way, if the smokers had always "smoked responsibly" by observing other peoples right to smoke, they would have stepped out side all along and there woudn't have to be bans. (They probably wouldn't throw polyester butts on the gound either were responsibility the watchword in smokers... 8-) But the refrain of "why do I have to leave, I have the right to somke" with the hidden codicil "anywhere I damn well please no matter what the consequences."
See, the responsibility has gone, along with most of the burden of dilligence and accountability, and so "rights" rule supreme.
This is the inevetable result of Moralist policies. Moralisim is the proverbial washing-of-hands. "We didn't rule on this, it is the will of our populous and our populous has that right." Nudge nudge, wink wink...
The PATRIOT Act is a natural outgrowth of the Moralist agenda. It supports a vacation of responsibility and accountability in the name of preserving the "right to safety." The penetration and disapation of the "right to privacy and due process", it says, must be spent as the inferior right because in the moralist realm whenever two rights come into conflict one must be supreme, a "true right" and one must be defeated utterly as not having really been a right at all.
What's actually kind of funny is that Moralisim is a revival of the old Might makes Right paradigm. We set our ideals up against one another to see which one will beat the other to death in a court of public spectacle.
So there is a hierarchy of rights, but only in the presence of responsibilities and accountabilities.
But it really _isn't_ any kind of balancing act. You are not supposed to pay for one right, like safety, by betraying another, like due process.
You are supposed to pay for rights with the currency of responsibility.
We harvest today the fruits of terrorisim becau
Blast, foiled by english voul sounds again batman... 8-)
Mia Culpa....
There *still* isn't enough funding for Thermionics research, and what there is, is *way* too clasified.
Other than that... was I wrong? 8-)
Yumm... in other news, liability law enters a whole new realm of stupid.
Most of the proles have been blisfully un-aware of the use of "nuclear bateries" (etc) in our space program. In those cases it was mostly a exercise in thermeonics, which is perhaps slightly different than this "documented" breakthrough, or maybe not, but there you go.
How out-of-the-public-mind is this? Google for thermeonics. Two entires. No wonder there isn't any funding.
Meanwhile, particle-in electron-out technologies are not all that radical. Things like the solar panels are based on this sort of thing.
So we have an announcement that what we can do big we may be able to do to nanotech scales. How new, how fresh...
But there will be hue, and there will be cry, and much gnashing of teeth will come across the land as those who cannot understand take umberage from the words of those who check facts. "That is radio active! We must not have it. Now give me some of that cadmium enriched tap water the government says is good for softening over-strong bones..."
So great technology, but we can't even get decent breeder reactors in this country. We arn't smart or "brave" enough, or perhaps we have had so many less-than-trustworthy "officilas" that we know we dare not let the usefully dangerous things near our lives. Leave the cutting edge nuclear research to the cowardly French...
So summon NIMBY and marvel as our lawyers stamp this technology, and any other technology that sounds even vaguly provocative, out in the persuit of the great god "what about our children?"
Apparently they don't deserve to survive because their PARENTS can't take the simple responsibility to to keep their kids from eating the computer... 8-)
So yea, great advance in science, all the benefits will be lost to the litigous masses. What is the point of a 1 millimeter chip if it has to wear a ten-inch warning label?
You just wait and see... 8-)
[For those who missed the subject line, this was a RANT... get a clue before you take me to task... 8-)]
(Foreward: I agree about MySQL being a tad hobbiest, lacking recursive SQL in all its forms. I must pooh-pooh Postgres for having unacceptable "tablespace" limits [one database == one directory, so adding storage for large tables is "problematic"]. These opinions may be slightly out of date, or not, but they were definately germane to the timeframes from the cases mentioned in the article. Meanwhile, M$ SQL Server has some serious tablespace issues itself. To a great extent, if you want to go large, Oracle is the only choice on *BOTH* platforms... IMHO of course 8-)
The position (which I do not support) was not centered around "Requiring Oracle", it was "Requiring Choices Other Than Oracle" that "required" Windows. That is, the position is basically "Linux only provides Oracle so it is inferior to Windows which allows other choices."
It is a specious argument once put to forward translation, because there were other choices for both platforms.
This speciousness is endemic to the reasoning presented in the article. The switchers in question weren't driven from Linux to Windows so much as they forced themselves to flee from Linux to Windows by way of poor project vision/planing/execution/expectation.
So the complaints of the posters in this thread are that the article was weak and stupid because the users failures can be traced directly to the failure of the users to plan ahead or research options.
These complaints themselves are, in turn, based on a lack of information, as we don't know how much white-wash has been applied, and how much has been rinsed away in a flood of hyperbole, to the various positions presented by the lay-reporter. We really don't know What Really Happened(tm).
The reporting leaves us needing to take inference and forensic deconstruction as our clues to What Really Happened(tm) which is the hallmark of the very top-shelf FUD. The educated see the errors in judgement and the PHBs see the fear and failure, so the article is a masterful tool for preventing action on any kind of Linux agenda. It is fodder for anyone who has made a carrier of gain-saying everybody else's actions. (You know, the prophet of doom who gets to say "look, I was right" whenever anything fails, but never puts forward a solution themselves.) The very fact that the article confused you and the other conferees here with its passive-speak indictments is testament to its artful composition as FUD.
This is a fluff piece with the Shakespearian dollops of Sound and Furry being provided by all maner of diverse parties.
The article is about people who failed to implement some Linux solutions, for whatever reasons, and then switched back to "good old safe Windows".
It is, in fact, advertainment and propagandimonium most foul. 8-)
So point at the monkey in his leiderhosen and laugh as you see fit. 8-)
Variant-Billable DRM-able restricted configuration set-top-box-like standard configurations to which licensing restrictions and access restrictions can be automatically applied.
For instance: This windows license is valid for levels 1 to 4, if you would like to run this level 6 computer please fill out the additional licensing form and return to you Microsoft Sales Representative.
This will be no different than the old CPU-Count and User-Count licensing metrics.
They just want the Manufacturers' boxes to say "Level 5!" so that the customers don't fully understand that they are being reamed for extra money when the bill that comes from the Microsoft(tm) Windows(tm) Subscription Service is larger for you than for your neighbor.
I call bunk, and install Linux... 8-)
In 1982 I worked for a company called "Touch Technology" in Annapolis MD. Our main stock in trade was keosk touch screen devices. The owner, one E. Garry Barrett, had figured out that the current state of the art technology in capacitive touch screens could be rendered static-shock proof by simply routing a big (8 gage?) copper wire to the gap between the monitor and the touch-screen over-glass.
If you used the Nemian Marcus(sp?) bridal registry keosks in the eighties you used our product.
But his true passion was his invention of "the Touch Mouse". He had the idea, and was using the above keosk business to fund research, for a bus-mouse device that was a tiny touch screen with buttons and several modes of opration.
We had a prototype (the 8051 tended to hang after about 2 minutes so, according to a lawyer, we didn't have enough to get a patent) and manufacturing dies and such.
But then one day Gary decided we needed more funding. We did, in fact, need that funding. The Vulture Capitalists gave us that funding, and then within six months raided the company and disolved it.
If he is still alive, I am sure that E. Gary Barrett cannot walk into any store selling laptops without wanting to cut his own throat. Those touch-pads, in the absence of some foolishly short-sighted Vulture Capitalists, would each be paying him hommage in green folding applause.
The lessons:
1) Most technology exists long before you see it.
2) Never trust venture capal.
Wouldn't it just be a pitty if the X-billion dollar online gambling industry just went away and left us to our porn? 8-)
/sigh
Seriously, don't we want to get rid of online gambling? All it really does is separate stupid and/or poor people from their money and raise the noise floor on the internet.
Besides I bet these poker bots identify "the cards on the screen" by looking at the graphic names. It wouldn't be that hard to screw the bots by shuffling the names of the card images so that the names describe a good hand when the system has displayed a bad one. You know, create twenty of thirty permuted decks and shuffle the individual "cards" out of the deck between hands. So you could end with XXXXXace.jpg being a 2, while XXXYXace.jpg being a 5.
The bot goes "mmmmm, four aces" and bets the limit, the casino goes "mmmm, 3 5 7 8 K, king-high, thanks for the money."
I know it probably isn't *that* easy, but the whole thing is stupid. Besides who are you going to complain to? Hey Mr FTC! My cheat-bot ran up a $2000,000 USD debt because the file names of the graphics didn't match the cards in the hands. They cheated!
Tryihg to make something that is not valuable, valuable is a no-win scenerio.
For example, whatever buisness you are in, you are *NOT* in the business of writing accounting software. (Unless, of course you are... 8-).
The fact of the matter is that there is no need to "create a scarcity of accounting software" because businesses need accounting software, but more importantly they need *ACCOUNTANTS* who will be paid for their effort, but who do not "deserve" to "become rich" because they wrote some software.
Doed "Britney Spears" *really* *DESERVE* her current lifestyle because of her good looks an moderately engaging little tunes? No. She deserves a reasonable paycheck and whatever fame floats her way.
Odly enough she is *GETTING* this *EXCESSIVE* lifestyle right now, in the presence of this "unworkable" and "evil" "file-sharing epidemic."
The biggest argument against all this MUST crap, (and, IMHO it *IS* crap) is as follows:
Those who will steal and will not buy, um... WILL NOT BUY. That is the definition of their group. All of the "lost revenue" clap-trap is hinged on the tautologically false presumption that each having-for-free represents a lost sale. That is rediculous.
The software industries GREW RICH in the presence of rampant software piracy. Because just as it is true that the people who won't pay, won't pay; the people who *WILL* pay *WILL* pay.
I can download a book to my hearts content, but I can't (currently) read it on the toilet. The physical media of a book is value in itself. e-Books will not kill tree-Books any time soon.
It is _TRUE_ that in the future the economies of scale will tilt, and the "rampant financial stardom" which began in the 1930's, and that is peaking now, will flag back to a sustainable level.
It is absurd to claim that some pop star *deserves* and must be *maintained* atht he level where they can fritter away HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A YEAR because they have nice tits and a passable voice (once you process the hell out of it 8-).
Quite frankly, a "good performer" only deserves a "good wage" and so my urge to weep for Metalica is somewhat limited.
So all manufacturing all this scarcity is hardly a must, it isn't even a maybe-we-ought-to.
People like blockbusters, and will see big movies in big movie houses. And some will buy the DVDs the day they are released for a premimum price. And some will wait until the movies are on the bargan-shelf and Kreskgees. And some will borrow, and some will copy, and some wont touch the movie with a ten-foot pole while wearing a HazMat suit. It's just the nature of the beast.
And the numbers and the thresholds will jitter and flop about as the technologies change. That's nature of the beast too.
That will be hard for some people to take, and some industry fragmentation will follow. There may be a "Hip Hop Bubble Burst" just around the corner.
But you know what? The *ENTIRE* IP, Entertainment, and IT "industiries" are just bubbles anyway. They are new and hot and the will become passe, and pedestrian. And no amount of legislation or DRM or _thuggery_ can help them aboid their fate.
Markets will find their levels, and the gravy-train for "hit radio" is pulling into a station. And when it finally arrives, the prices and infamy levels will go back where they have always been. Motzarts will be famous, but they'll struggle to get that way, meanwhile Betty-the-madrigal will make about what anybody else makes and have a normally comfortable lifestyle while being a "total god" to her niche fan-base.
But there is no MUST about proping up the abherent prices and industires that exist. They were created to "find a way to distribute music" and guess what? (Go ahead and *read* the RIAA charter... 8-) For a time they were pretty necessary. But once the music distributes itself, their lifecycle is *OVER*, and *RIGHTLY* *SO*.
After all, what does the RIAA actually *DO* that they deserve to
Yes, they all stand outside the box, thinking how cool it would be to actually play with the merchandise, and lamenting the waste of money that going into the box represents.
That is the _apotheosis_ of thinking outside the box... 8-)
Microsoft doesn't just exempt Sun from lawsuit protections; Microsoft has been given the right to "controll the defense" of OOo at their option.
That's right, Microsoft has been given full legal controll of all of Sun's right to defend the product from any suit based on patents.
If naybody has ever been in a case where their insurance company decided to settle a case that should have been fought, they know where this is leading...
Plaintiff: "I'm Ben Grimes, representing Microsoft, your honor. We beleive that this product violates our patents and shoud be pulled completely and deeded over to us."
Judge: "oh, ok"
Defendent: "I'm Ben Grimes, representing Sun, your honor. We beleive Mr Grimes argument is thurough and compelling and our product is indefensable."
Judge: "wait a minute, you can't be representing the plaintiff and defendent."
Ben: "Oh really? Microsoft has controll over any defense Sun might offer. But I guess I can't sit on both sides of the isle... My I introduce my paralegal cum interning-law-student Betty? She'll be handling the filings for Sun..."
etc.
So when Microsoft gets around to suing over patents in OOo, they also get to chose how the product is defended....
I bet it will be vigerous... not...