Until the early 1990s big busines pretty much got its way concerning intellectual law. To some degree they still do. By shoveling money into the pockets of relatively anonymous politicians (do you know the name of you mayor, city council members, representative, Governor, or Senator? A great many people don't. We're too busy working and raising kids. We elect them to office and go on autopilot. Most politicians are free to vote however they want to since the voters seldom hear about individual votes and decisions. This also lets them take that money from big business with little chance of getting caught.
The internet is changing things. Those of us who spend time on the internet are becoming more and more aware of what is happening within our government. But still, since we are still relatively few without the monetary resources to compete with big business, our voices are seldom heard.
The issue of intellectual property rights and the disposition or the fruits of publicly funded research is related to this same issue. Teaching institutions have become businesses exibiting the same behaviours as big business. Why release research to the public when you can sell it to big business. Or even worse, let the research sit on the shelf waiting for a buyer.
I say we form our own nation. A nation of internet users. Within our nation all information is freely exchanged. No copyrights, no patents, just free knowledge.
What does it take to declare a new nation? I did research on this while writing a paper for college. The legal concept of a nation focuses on two areas: geographic locality and shared beliefs.
The beliefs seem to hold more importance. Countries like Taiwan (technically a Republic of China) Palestine, and Israel have gained defacto acceptance as nations despite (until very recently for Palestine) their apparent lack of internationally recognized borders. But still, a nation of the internet would be able to gain credibility if there was tangible real estate. We would have to have some strong financial backing to acquire a sizable body of land. I have 75 acres in Surry County Virginia but I think the Commonwealth of Virginia would call out the gaurd against people declaring a nation within their territory. Even so, I'd give it a shot with help.
Seriously, think about it. ..
We the People of the Internet Nation, in Order to form an intellectually Free Nation, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Internet Nation. ..
The likely reason(s0 that AMD has not upped the MGZ war to the extreme is: 1) They are struggling to meet increased demand. They currently have only a fraction of the market and if their demand increased they would have a hard time meeting it. This would cause several problems. if supply decreases and demand increases then prices must rise. By previously stating they will remain under Intel's prices by 15% they would be exposing ther necks to Intel (can we say pricewar?). 2) Initial silicon die molds generally have low yields. If you end up throwing out half your ouput because yield is too low the cost of manufactuing rises and the rate of defects also increases. The reason Intel is showing the 1.5GHZ is for bragging rights. Their yield rate is likely very low. At best what we are seeing is AMD's short term advantage at being able to output better performing chips (at comparable clock rates) with a relatively high yield. The real war begins if Intel abandons x86. intel will have a hard sell and AMD will be selling to the legacy market. This is the same folly that gave AMD room to grow in the past. Personally I don't see Intel making the same mistake again. But indications are that they may be too far down the wrong path to turn back. If so Intel may be forced to backpetal and rethink its core strategy.
This bill would turn the State of Virginia into a pariah for a great many consumers considering buying a software product from a Virginia company.
UCITA will stop companies and consumers from telling the truth about poor products, lock companies into business software- they will be unable to switch to another product because a competitors attempt at building a solution to port data to their application will be considered reverse engineering and thus illegal, and allow the software vendor to reach into your computer system and turn off your software. Scary!
The only reason that the big software companies are pushing UCITA is that for the first time since the computer revolution started the tools for developing applications are inexpensive and accessible. They are being forced to compete with the little guys. The only way they can ensure their stranglehold on the software market is by locking the customer into their product. UCITA is completely unnecessary since existing commercial code and contract law already protects both the consumer and vendor.
Here is good general overview of what will happen if this legislation is not stopped (from WWW.Slashdot.org):
Step 1: Advertise a brand-new program for handling taxes, personal finance, e-banking, secure e-commerce, speech recognition/synthesis and private e-mail.
Step 2: Write a EULA, which indemnifies you if the program fails to do anything at all, and which absolutely prohibits any reviews of the product without prior permission.
Step 3: Write a cruddy application which gives a basic spreadsheet and an e-mail form.
Step 4: SHRINK-WRAP the box, and make it clear on the outside that opening the box is accepting the terms of the EULA.
Step 5: Charge $150 a throw for the box. Under the UCITA, nobody is permitted to review the product, without permission, and this is doubly ensured by the EULA, preventing anyone online or in the press from commenting on the scam.
Step 6: Wait until the fur starts to fly. And it will! Something like this'll end up in court before the week is out.
Sorry about that. The lesiglative search tools online suck. The newer bills don't even come up at the main virginia site when I searched for UCITA but I stumbled across the Secretary of Technology site and got overexcited. Add to that that there seems to be some sort of bug in slashdot that automatically "extrans" all my posts. What idiot chose that as the default for all new users? I set my prefs to HTML but the problem still persists. Annoying ass hell when all your posts look like garbledegook. Thanks.
Senate: href="http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe? 001+sum+SB372">SB 372 Computer Information Transactions Act.
Bill Patron: Senator Edward L. Schrock (R) - Senate District 7 In-session address:,br> General Assembly Building, Room 307 Capitol Square Richmond, Virginia 23219 (804) 698-7507 Mailing address: P. O. Box 62996 Virginia Beach, Virginia 23466-2996 (757) 460-3777
House: href="http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe? 001+sum+HB561">SB 372 Computer Information Transactions Act.
Bill Patron: Delegate Joe T. May (R) - House District 33 In-session address: General Assembly Building, Room 514 Capitol Square Richmond, Virginia 23219 (804) 698-1033
1). Transmeta like any other good startup needs capital for development and research. Investors aren't likely to be receptive to a company that spends the investors development money then gives away the results (at least until a good foundation of welth open-source billionaires comes about)
2) The GPL and other similar licences have not been well tested in litigation.
3) I've emailed OpenSource.org before with the idea that some areas of software aren't well suited to OpenSourcing. In particular Drivers. Look at the recent damage to the video card industry. Used to be that the only real difference between video card manufacturers was the quality of their drivers. Sure, some companies went the extra mile and went beyond the video chip manufacturer's reference board design, but the big difference was in driver quality (and memory speed). The entire industry was pretty much decimated when NVidia started cranking out the TNT chips. When it was discovered tyhat NVidia's reference drivers were better than anything the card vendors could put together the industry turned into a commodity market. Companies like Canopus left the gaming desktop market all-together. Some companies fought to differentiate themselves by adding features like onboard DVD hardware and Video capture, but these niche market can't support all the companies.
At its essence, Transmeta's programmable cpu technology is a driver. Call it an Operating System driver. If they give away their driver then all they become is another chip design company in an overcrowded market dominated by companies like Intel.
Add to this the trend in the PC industry where hardware manufacturers are integrating components, hardware distributors are moving to system integration and the bottom end is getting squeezed. Niche players like Transmeta have to fight even harder to keep any advantage.
This isn't a knock on Open Source. In some areas it clearly has advantages.
About your comment "Freedom of speech is a right, but computing in the library is a priviledge." I couldn't disagree more. The computer is just a new medium of communicating information. What you are talking about is censorship and it is no different than turn of the century creationists burning evolutionary texts. Aside from the computer your child may just as likely find an erotic novel or instructions for making a bomb among the book stacks. If you can't trust your child to obey your wishes at the public library then you probably have bigger problems anyhow. From my personal experience kids prefer Pokemon and Disney.com anyhow.
I could throw out the usual diatribe about one person's porn being another person's art. Or, I could spout off about the First Amendment. On the other hand I could mention any citizens right to live in a community they feel comfortable with.
Each of these dicussions assume some level of reasonableness. You have to have the capability to reason. Most people don't.
Morality is another issue. I rember one of the few things I learned in psychology class that seemed useful to know: All people fall into three moral categories. (1)The moral retards who only do the right thing is there is an immediate negative for doing the wrong thing. (1)The moral sheep who only do the right thing if some unseen force like God wil punish them for doing the wrong thing. (3) The self-moralizers, who do the right thing for their own personal reasons. Somthing like 70% of people fall into the first category (moral retards), 20-25% moral sheep and less than 5% self moralizing.
The moral of the story is that when you stand in a meeting talking about censoring the internet, three-fourths of the listners are thinking about the likelyhood of getting caught masturbating behind one of the terminals. Almost a quarter are torn between thinking about how often they masturbate at home behind the computer and how rightous they will look next Sunday in church for censoring porn at the library. The remaining few people are either masturbating during the speech or dying to get the other idiots into court so they can really bend them over the constitutional table.
I could throw out the usual diatribe about one person's porn being another person's art. Or, I could spout off about the First Amendment. On the other hand I could mention any citizens right to live in a community they feel comfortable with.
Each of these dicussions assume some level of reasonableness. You have to have the capability to reason. Most people don't.
Morality is another issue. I rember one of the few things I learned in psychology class that seemed useful to know: All people fall into three moral categories. (1)The moral retards who only do the right thing is there is an immediate negative for doing the wrong thing. (1)The moral sheep who only do the right thing if some unseen force like God wil punish them for doing the wrong thing. (3) The self-moralizers, who do the right thing for their own personal reasons. Somthing like 70% of people fall into the first category (moral retards), 20-25% moral sheep and less than 5% self moralizing.
The moral of the story is that when you stand in a meeting talking about censoring the internet, three-fourths of the listners are thinking about the likelyhood of getting caught masturbating behind one of the terminals. Almost a quarter are torn between thinking about how often they masturbate at home behind the computer and how rightous they will look next Sunday in church for censoring porn at the library. The remaining few people are either masturbating during the speech or dying to get the other idiots into court so they can really bend them over the constitutional table.
1)Decent size keyboard. Keys must give visual, audible and tactile cues when engaged. (surface area -7" x 18")
2)Min 17" viewing area monitor to allow viewing a full A2 or 8.5" X 11" document. Must produce usable image from 30 degrees center all directions. (surface area- 13" X 10")
3) Mouse or other suitable pointing device. Buttons must give visual, audible and tactile cues when engaged. (surface area 4.5" X 2.5")
4) Be durable enough so that is can take some abuse. Laptops are too fragile and pretty much not upgradable. When you replace it the capital investment in the monitor is wasted.
Solutions that come to mind:
Integrate the computer into the keyboard. Gas plasma screen. Wireless RF mouse.
Integrate the computer into the monitor. Basic I/O devices and physical ports are hardwired. Removable fully integrated mainboard (CPU/Video/Sound/LAN/Modem). To upgrade just pop out the mainboard and pop in a new one. Wireless RF keyboard and mouse.
I remember before the big security crackdown on government websites how easily accessable research information was. I used to have a link to a government storehouse for sourcecode and programs. About the same time that the government ordered the different agencies to increase security most of the source code was removed from goverment websites and much of it offerd on a pay to use basis. A lot of my tax money goes into funding reasearch in pubic learning institutions, yet the results of the reasearch is more often closed to the public and sold to the highest bidder (often big business). We, as the supporters of public institutions, deserve equal access to the fruits of our investment. Selling off the patents and copyrights only serves to benefit a few, while keeping it open would be a boon to all. Adding to the waste is the real possibility that selling intellectual rights to a corporation with limited resources and narrow-sighted goals actually hinders future developments by closing off pathways for other researchers and private entrepreneurs. I'd change the system if I could but unfortunately I can't afford to pay for big money, bribing, lobbyists to get my voice heard.
I'm at work, so in a real sense I'm not wasting my time. I'm getting paid about $20/hr to respond to some prepubescent, bunghole licking, needle dick moron. On the other hand, when I start my business next month I won't be at liberty to expend this sort of effort.
I remember before the big secirity crackdown on government websites how easily accessalbe research information was. I used to have a link to a government storehouse for sourcecode and programs. About the same time that the government ordered the different agencies to increase security most of the source code was removed from goverment websites. A lot of my tax money goes into funding reasearch in pubic learning institutions, yet the results of the reasearch is more often closed to the public and sold to the highest bidder (often big business). We, as the supporters of public institutions, deserve equal access to the fruits of our investment. Selling off the patents and copyrights only serves to benefit a few, while keeping it open would be a boon to all. Adding to the waste is the real possibility that selling intellectual rights to a corporation with limited resources and narrow-sighted goals actually hinders future developments by closing off pathways for other researchers. I'd change the system if I could but unfortunately I can't afford to pay for big money, bribing, lobbyists to get my voice heard.
But even the most rigorous dosumentation won't protect yo from litigation. What you need is a "big daddy", someone to front you on any legal expenses. Talk to the Free Software Foundation. I know that is you assign rights to the FSF under specifically and release it under the GPL they have lawyers to help protect your copyrights. Talk to them, if you think the software you have developed is that important they are lieky to listen and maybe even help.
Please send inquiries about GNU and the FSF to Free Software Foundation 59 Temple Place - Suite 330 Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA
If you really wanted to do a story about trends in the PC market a more likely title would be"PCs get smaller" or "PCs becoming more integrated". The PC industry realized the potential in the sub $500 PC market so there has been an ongoing trend toward lower cost, more tightly integrated PCs. Call them Internet appliances or whatever you like, they aren't the mainstay of the PC industry.
Some of the more recent advances in making PCs more affordable include the integration of modems and video cards into the motherboard; integration of sound cards (sound Codec) and video into the CPU chipset; and the new MicroATX and FlexATX motherboard form factors.
Clearly these new innovations are not a threat to the PC integrator. If anything they are a new market. The costs of assembing a PC solution from these more integrated components is much less and if they choose to compete in the sub $500 market. Though there is some threat from todays manufacturers and distributors becoming stronger competitors.
Concerning the mythic Microsoft X-Box and Sony Playstation 2, the specs on these are out and while they will be competitors in the sub $500 market they will pose little threat to the higher-end markets. Business software is becoming more and more demanding of the PC platform. For the most part high-end video cards and CPUs require more power and generate more heat so small integrated units are poorly suited to this. These net appliances are also designed with economy of scale in mind.
The many, cheap approach is not suited to a rapidly evolving product cycle. If MS or Sony came out with new models of their little boxes ever month (as is often the case in today's PC market) the increased cost of support and risk of defects would make the low-end market cost prohibitive. If anything the PC market is swallowing the WebTV/console gaming market, not the other way arround.
Grab a six pack. Drive to the local airport. Park at the end of the runway. Get out, slam three, and lay upside down on the hood. When that baby lands you'll get a heck of a rush.
I'll bet dollars to donuts that if someone is crazy enough to market it they'll be sued out of business within a month. The inner ear is extremely sensitive and overstimulation can cause permanent damage.
Word Mark LINUX Owner Name (REGISTRANT) Croce, William R. Della, Jr. Owner Address 33 Snow Hill St. Boston MASSACHUSETTS 02113 INDIVIDUAL UNITED STATES Owner Name (LAST LISTED OWNER) TORVALDS, LINUS
Looks like VALinux owns it.
I called Linus and you can get an overview of what he said by reading the comment I posted "Conversation with Linus"
Word Mark LINUX Owner Name (REGISTRANT) Croce, William R. Della, Jr. Owner Address 33 Snow Hill St. Boston MASSACHUSETTS 02113 INDIVIDUAL UNITED STATES Owner Name (LAST LISTED OWNER) TORVALDS, LINUS
Looks to me like VALinux owns the trademark. That is probably why you contact John Hall with any immediate questions.
As far as being impotent against non-OS uses of the Linux word, that is a really fine line as any lawyer will tell you. Most people could'nt afford the litigation anyway. You may be able to get away with a parody website bit ince you try to use another company's reputation to sell your product its another matter entirely. If they registered it as a certification mark it would make litigation much easier. But it is also true to say that a trademark doesn't have to be registered to be considered litigable. Actual first use of the mark is most important. Linus has the defacto rights to Linux as a certification mark. Heck, for years he has been the sentry on what goes into the kernel. I tried not to take too much of his time since it was dinner time.
I called Mr. Linus Torvalds and asked him about this domain auction problem. He assured me that any legitimate projects have nothing to worry about. His lawyer informed him that he needed to take action. Refusal to enforce a trademark makes future enforcement impossible. As long as the registered domain is a legitimate project and all references to Linux indicate the trademark there shouldn't be any problems.
As the registered owner of NLinux.com/.net/.org I was a little concerned. My project is just getting off the ground and it's mostly just a hobby. The last thing I need to deal with is a letter from some lawyer.
Linus said he is terribly busy with the Transmeta rollout on Jan 19th, but as soon as he gets a moment he'll address this issue. If you are extremely concerned about your domain then contact John T. Hall-VALinux Vice President, Support and Professional Services.
I've has an account with them for over a year now. I can't say I've really had any problems getting through to CIHost. What they do to fix problems is a little different. About six months ago I decided to change my domain name. In the same process I parked the.Net and.org domains with them. How do you change a domain name at CIHost? Why blow away the old domain and recreate a blank one. Wipo, everything! I spent the next four months talking back and forth with supoort trying to set up the new domain. The first problem was that I could FTP to my.com but the only way I could see it was to http to my.org, and then you still couldn't see any graphics, just the html. So they belw away my domain and gave me a blank one again. Then I requested PHP setup. After a day I'd get an email saying that it had been done. I'd log in and go the my CGI-Bin. No PHP. After four or five times requesting PHP I finally got someone to hook me up by blowing away my domain and setting it up on another server. Anyhow, can anyone suggest a decent cheap or free hosting agent that supports full domain hosting, PHP, CGI, MySQL or PostgreSQL, unlimited bandwith and enough elbow room to grow..
Oh, here we go again. How many useful and productive projects has RedHat contributed to? Gnome? You have to be kidding. Gnome is like my crappy '79 FireBird rusting away in the garage. Every now and again I grab ye' ol' can o' Bondo and patch the rustholes but we know that baby ain't ever gonna run.
Branding is not value added. If I take a picture of the Mona Lisa and fudge my signature on the bottom I don't deserve credit for the origional.
RedHat and any other "Distributor" will fall face in the dust unless they can find a way to provide some product or service that is demanaded by consumers and not easily replaced by competitors. They know that. Look at the acquisitions they have already made.
As to them not explicitly saying "I take credit for it all". My retort is to say,"How are they crediting the true authors anyway". RedHat.com certainly doesn't mention the selfless contributors. If I propped a crate up in front of the Statue of Liberty and started charging admission I'd bet ya' that most people would think I owned the thing- or made it. Most people just being introduced to Linux probably think that Debian is a knockoff of RedHat.
Slashdot Mirror
Until the early 1990s big busines pretty much got its way concerning intellectual law. To some degree they still do. By shoveling money into the pockets of relatively anonymous politicians (do you know the name of you mayor, city council members, representative, Governor, or Senator? A great many people don't. We're too busy working and raising kids. We elect them to office and go on autopilot. Most politicians are free to vote however they want to since the voters seldom hear about individual votes and decisions. This also lets them take that money from big business with little chance of getting caught.
The internet is changing things. Those of us who spend time on the internet are becoming more and more aware of what is happening within our government. But still, since we are still relatively few without the monetary resources to compete with big business, our voices are seldom heard.
The issue of intellectual property rights and the disposition or the fruits of publicly funded research is related to this same issue. Teaching institutions have become businesses exibiting the same behaviours as big business. Why release research to the public when you can sell it to big business. Or even worse, let the research sit on the shelf waiting for a buyer.
I say we form our own nation. A nation of internet users. Within our nation all information is freely exchanged. No copyrights, no patents, just free knowledge.
What does it take to declare a new nation? I did research on this while writing a paper for college. The legal concept of a nation focuses on two areas: geographic locality and shared beliefs.
The beliefs seem to hold more importance. Countries like Taiwan (technically a Republic of China) Palestine, and Israel have gained defacto acceptance as nations despite (until very recently for Palestine) their apparent lack of internationally recognized borders. But still, a nation of the internet would be able to gain credibility if there was tangible real estate. We would have to have some strong financial backing to acquire a sizable body of land. I have 75 acres in Surry County Virginia but I think the Commonwealth of Virginia would call out the gaurd against people declaring a nation within their territory. Even so, I'd give it a shot with help.
Seriously, think about it. . .
We the People of the Internet Nation, in Order to form an intellectually Free Nation, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Internet Nation. . .
The likely reason(s0 that AMD has not upped the MGZ war to the extreme is: 1) They are struggling to meet increased demand. They currently have only a fraction of the market and if their demand increased they would have a hard time meeting it. This would cause several problems. if supply decreases and demand increases then prices must rise. By previously stating they will remain under Intel's prices by 15% they would be exposing ther necks to Intel (can we say pricewar?). 2) Initial silicon die molds generally have low yields. If you end up throwing out half your ouput because yield is too low the cost of manufactuing rises and the rate of defects also increases. The reason Intel is showing the 1.5GHZ is for bragging rights. Their yield rate is likely very low. At best what we are seeing is AMD's short term advantage at being able to output better performing chips (at comparable clock rates) with a relatively high yield. The real war begins if Intel abandons x86. intel will have a hard sell and AMD will be selling to the legacy market. This is the same folly that gave AMD room to grow in the past. Personally I don't see Intel making the same mistake again. But indications are that they may be too far down the wrong path to turn back. If so Intel may be forced to backpetal and rethink its core strategy.
Before even considering the passage of UCITA please read the following discussion that is happening online (or just go to WWW.Slashdot.org):
1 203&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/02/14/222
This bill would turn the State of Virginia into a pariah for a great many consumers considering buying a software product from a Virginia company.
UCITA will stop companies and consumers from telling the truth about poor products, lock companies into business software- they will be unable to switch to another product because a competitors attempt at building a solution to port data to their application will be considered reverse engineering and thus illegal, and allow the software vendor to reach into your computer system and turn off your software. Scary!
The only reason that the big software companies are pushing UCITA is that for the first time since the computer revolution started the tools for developing applications are inexpensive and accessible. They are being forced to compete with the little guys. The only way they can ensure their stranglehold on the software market is by locking the customer into their product. UCITA is completely unnecessary since existing commercial code and contract law already protects both the consumer and vendor.
Here is good general overview of what will happen if this legislation is not stopped (from WWW.Slashdot.org):
Step 1: Advertise a brand-new program for handling taxes, personal finance, e-banking, secure e-commerce, speech recognition/synthesis and private e-mail.
Step 2: Write a EULA, which indemnifies you if the program fails to do anything at all, and which absolutely prohibits any reviews of the product without prior permission.
Step 3: Write a cruddy application which gives a basic spreadsheet and an e-mail form.
Step 4: SHRINK-WRAP the box, and make it clear on the outside that opening the box is accepting the terms of the EULA.
Step 5: Charge $150 a throw for the box. Under the UCITA, nobody is permitted to review the product, without permission, and this is doubly ensured by the EULA, preventing anyone online or in the press from commenting on the scam.
Step 6: Wait until the fur starts to fly. And it will! Something like this'll end up in court before the week is out.
Sorry about that. The lesiglative search tools online suck. The newer bills don't even come up at the main virginia site when I searched for UCITA but I stumbled across the Secretary of Technology site and got overexcited. Add to that that there seems to be some sort of bug in slashdot that automatically "extrans" all my posts. What idiot chose that as the default for all new users? I set my prefs to HTML but the problem still persists. Annoying ass hell when all your posts look like garbledegook. Thanks.
Senate:? 001+sum+SB372">SB 372 Computer Information Transactions Act.
href="http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe
Bill Patron: ,br> General Assembly Building, Room 307
Senator Edward L. Schrock (R) - Senate District 7
In-session address:
Capitol Square
Richmond, Virginia 23219
(804) 698-7507
Mailing address:
P. O. Box 62996
Virginia Beach, Virginia 23466-2996
(757) 460-3777
House:? 001+sum+HB561">SB 372 Computer Information Transactions Act.
href="http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe
Bill Patron:
Delegate Joe T. May (R) - House District 33 In-session address:
General Assembly Building, Room 514
Capitol Square
Richmond, Virginia 23219
(804) 698-1033
email: del_May@House.state.va.us
Mailing address:
P.O. Box 4104
Leesburg, Virginia 20177
(703) 777-1191
Here is the link to the actual Bill:
Summary: HB 499 Uniform Electronic Transactions Act
Full Text: HB 499
Link to updates to Technology legislation in Virginia:
Virginia Secretary of Technology
This is extremely important. Today is the big day:
Dates to Remember:
January 12 -- General Assembly convenes at noon
January 24 -- All bills and joint resolutions filed by 5 p.m.
February 15 -- Cross-over, each house to consider legislation of the other house (except budget, appropriation debt, revenue and VRS bills)
February 22 -- Amendments on the Budget Bill(s) available by noon
March 11 -- Adjourn Sine die
April 10 -- Last Day for Governor to Act on Legislation.
Here is the contact info for the sponsoring senator:
Senator Stephen D. Newman (R) - Senate District 23
In-session address:
General Assembly Building, Room 305
Capitol Square
Richmond, Virginia 23219
(804) 698-7523
email:snewman@inmind.com
Mailing address: General Assembly Building, Room 305 Capitol Square Richmond, Virginia 23219
(804) 698-7523
Here are links to the bills :
HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 277
SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 239
SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 239
Member in charge of the study:
Delegate Viola O. Baskerville (D) - House District 71
In-session address: General Assembly Building, Room 525
Capitol Square
Richmond, Virginia 23219
(804) 698-1071
email: del_Baskerville@House.state.va.us
Mailing address:
P. O. Box 406
Richmond, Virginia 23218
(804) 698-1171
I can think of at least three good reasons
1). Transmeta like any other good startup needs capital for development and research. Investors aren't likely to be receptive to a company that spends the investors development money then gives away the results (at least until a good foundation of welth open-source billionaires comes about)
2) The GPL and other similar licences have not been well tested in litigation.
3) I've emailed OpenSource.org before with the idea that some areas of software aren't well suited to OpenSourcing. In particular Drivers. Look at the recent damage to the video card industry. Used to be that the only real difference between video card manufacturers was the quality of their drivers. Sure, some companies went the extra mile and went beyond the video chip manufacturer's reference board design, but the big difference was in driver quality (and memory speed). The entire industry was pretty much decimated when NVidia started cranking out the TNT chips. When it was discovered tyhat NVidia's reference drivers were better than anything the card vendors could put together the industry turned into a commodity market. Companies like Canopus left the gaming desktop market all-together. Some companies fought to differentiate themselves by adding features like onboard DVD hardware and Video capture, but these niche market can't support all the companies.
At its essence, Transmeta's programmable cpu technology is a driver. Call it an Operating System driver. If they give away their driver then all they become is another chip design company in an overcrowded market dominated by companies like Intel.
Add to this the trend in the PC industry where hardware manufacturers are integrating components, hardware distributors are moving to system integration and the bottom end is getting squeezed. Niche players like Transmeta have to fight even harder to keep any advantage.
This isn't a knock on Open Source. In some areas it clearly has advantages.
About your comment "Freedom of speech is a right, but computing in the library is a priviledge." I couldn't disagree more. The computer is just a new medium of communicating information. What you are talking about is censorship and it is no different than turn of the century creationists burning evolutionary texts. Aside from the computer your child may just as likely find an erotic novel or instructions for making a bomb among the book stacks.
If you can't trust your child to obey your wishes at the public library then you probably have bigger problems anyhow. From my personal experience kids prefer Pokemon and Disney.com anyhow.
I could throw out the usual diatribe about one person's porn being another person's art. Or, I could spout off about the First Amendment. On the other hand I could mention any citizens right to live in a community they feel comfortable with.
Each of these dicussions assume some level of reasonableness. You have to have the capability to reason. Most people don't.
Morality is another issue. I rember one of the few things I learned in psychology class that seemed useful to know: All people fall into three moral categories. (1)The moral retards who only do the right thing is there is an immediate negative for doing the wrong thing. (1)The moral sheep who only do the right thing if some unseen force like God wil punish them for doing the wrong thing. (3) The self-moralizers, who do the right thing for their own personal reasons. Somthing like 70% of people fall into the first category (moral retards), 20-25% moral sheep and less than 5% self moralizing.
The moral of the story is that when you stand in a meeting talking about censoring the internet, three-fourths of the listners are thinking about the likelyhood of getting caught masturbating behind one of the terminals. Almost a quarter are torn between thinking about how often they masturbate at home behind the computer and how rightous they will look next Sunday in church for censoring porn at the library. The remaining few people are either masturbating during the speech or dying to get the other idiots into court so they can really bend them over the constitutional table.
Porn to the people!
I could throw out the usual diatribe about one person's porn being another person's art. Or, I could spout off about the First Amendment. On the other hand I could mention any citizens right to live in a community they feel comfortable with.
Each of these dicussions assume some level of reasonableness. You have to have the capability to reason. Most people don't.
Morality is another issue. I rember one of the few things I learned in psychology class that seemed useful to know: All people fall into three moral categories. (1)The moral retards who only do the right thing is there is an immediate negative for doing the wrong thing. (1)The moral sheep who only do the right thing if some unseen force like God wil punish them for doing the wrong thing. (3) The self-moralizers, who do the right thing for their own personal reasons. Somthing like 70% of people fall into the first category (moral retards), 20-25% moral sheep and less than 5% self moralizing.
The moral of the story is that when you stand in a meeting talking about censoring the internet, three-fourths of the listners are thinking about the likelyhood of getting caught masturbating behind one of the terminals. Almost a quarter are torn between thinking about how often they masturbate at home behind the computer and how rightous they will look next Sunday in church for censoring porn at the library. The remaining few people are either masturbating during the speech or dying to get the other idiots into court so they can really bend them over the constitutional table.
What does a PC/worstation computer need to have:
1)Decent size keyboard. Keys must give visual, audible and tactile cues when engaged. (surface area -7" x 18")
2)Min 17" viewing area monitor to allow viewing a full A2 or 8.5" X 11" document. Must produce usable image from 30 degrees center all directions. (surface area- 13" X 10")
3) Mouse or other suitable pointing device. Buttons must give visual, audible and tactile cues when engaged. (surface area 4.5" X 2.5")
4) Be durable enough so that is can take some abuse. Laptops are too fragile and pretty much not upgradable. When you replace it the capital investment in the monitor is wasted.
Solutions that come to mind:
Integrate the computer into the keyboard. Gas plasma screen. Wireless RF mouse.
Integrate the computer into the monitor. Basic I/O devices and physical ports are hardwired. Removable fully integrated mainboard (CPU/Video/Sound/LAN/Modem). To upgrade just pop out the mainboard and pop in a new one. Wireless RF keyboard and mouse.
I remember before the big security crackdown on government websites how easily accessable research information was. I used to have a link to a government storehouse for sourcecode and programs. About the same time that the government ordered the different agencies to increase security most of the source code was removed from goverment websites and much of it offerd on a pay to use basis. A lot of my tax money goes into funding reasearch in pubic learning institutions, yet the results of the reasearch is more often closed to the public and sold to the highest bidder (often big business). We, as the supporters of public institutions, deserve equal access to the fruits of our investment. Selling off the patents and copyrights only serves to benefit a few, while keeping it open would be a boon to all. Adding to the waste is the real possibility that selling intellectual rights to a corporation with limited resources and narrow-sighted goals actually hinders future developments by closing off pathways for other researchers and private entrepreneurs. I'd change the system if I could but unfortunately I can't afford to pay for big money, bribing, lobbyists to get my voice heard.
I'm at work, so in a real sense I'm not wasting my time. I'm getting paid about $20/hr to respond to some prepubescent, bunghole licking, needle dick moron. On the other hand, when I start my business next month I won't be at liberty to expend this sort of effort.
BTW, ever read Freud?
I remember before the big secirity crackdown on government websites how easily accessalbe research information was. I used to have a link to a government storehouse for sourcecode and programs. About the same time that the government ordered the different agencies to increase security most of the source code was removed from goverment websites. A lot of my tax money goes into funding reasearch in pubic learning institutions, yet the results of the reasearch is more often closed to the public and sold to the highest bidder (often big business). We, as the supporters of public institutions, deserve equal access to the fruits of our investment. Selling off the patents and copyrights only serves to benefit a few, while keeping it open would be a boon to all. Adding to the waste is the real possibility that selling intellectual rights to a corporation with limited resources and narrow-sighted goals actually hinders future developments by closing off pathways for other researchers. I'd change the system if I could but unfortunately I can't afford to pay for big money, bribing, lobbyists to get my voice heard.
By the way, when you post on Slashdot it trapps tour IP, which is then cross-referenced to your domain.
Here is a good place to do a little research:
i ng_links.shtml
http://www.softpanorama.org/SE/reverse_engineer
But even the most rigorous dosumentation won't protect yo from litigation. What you need is a "big daddy", someone to front you on any legal expenses. Talk to the Free Software Foundation. I know that is you assign rights to the FSF under specifically and release it under the GPL they have lawyers to help protect your copyrights. Talk to them, if you think the software you have developed is that important they are lieky to listen and maybe even help.
Please send inquiries about GNU and the FSF to
Free Software Foundation
59 Temple Place - Suite 330
Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA
Voice: +1-617-542-5942
Fax: +1-617-542-2652
gnu@gnu.org
or WWW.FSF.org
If you really wanted to do a story about trends in the PC market a more likely title would be"PCs get smaller" or "PCs becoming more integrated". The PC industry realized the potential in the sub $500 PC market so there has been an ongoing trend toward lower cost, more tightly integrated PCs. Call them Internet appliances or whatever you like, they aren't the mainstay of the PC industry.
Some of the more recent advances in making PCs more affordable include the integration of modems and video cards into the motherboard; integration of sound cards (sound Codec) and video into the CPU chipset; and the new MicroATX and FlexATX motherboard form factors.
Clearly these new innovations are not a threat to the PC integrator. If anything they are a new market. The costs of assembing a PC solution from these more integrated components is much less and if they choose to compete in the sub $500 market. Though there is some threat from todays manufacturers and distributors becoming stronger competitors.
Concerning the mythic Microsoft X-Box and Sony Playstation 2, the specs on these are out and while they will be competitors in the sub $500 market they will pose little threat to the higher-end markets. Business software is becoming more and more demanding of the PC platform. For the most part high-end video cards and CPUs require more power and generate more heat so small integrated units are poorly suited to this. These net appliances are also designed with economy of scale in mind.
The many, cheap approach is not suited to a rapidly evolving product cycle. If MS or Sony came out with new models of their little boxes ever month (as is often the case in today's PC market) the increased cost of support and risk of defects would make the low-end market cost prohibitive. If anything the PC market is swallowing the WebTV/console gaming market, not the other way arround.
Kent County Int'l , circa 1985. I'm pretty sure the same stung at LaGuardia would get you locked up.
Grab a six pack. Drive to the local airport. Park at the end of the runway. Get out, slam three, and lay upside down on the hood. When that baby lands you'll get a heck of a rush.
I'll bet dollars to donuts that if someone is crazy enough to market it they'll be sued out of business within a month. The inner ear is extremely sensitive and overstimulation can cause permanent damage.
This is from the USPTO.gov website.
Here is the trademark info.
Word Mark LINUX
Owner Name (REGISTRANT) Croce, William R. Della, Jr.
Owner Address 33 Snow Hill St. Boston MASSACHUSETTS 02113 INDIVIDUAL UNITED STATES
Owner Name (LAST LISTED OWNER) TORVALDS, LINUS
Looks like VALinux owns it.
I called Linus and you can get an overview of what he said by reading the comment I posted "Conversation with Linus"
Here is the trademark info.
Word Mark LINUX
Owner Name (REGISTRANT) Croce, William R. Della, Jr.
Owner Address 33 Snow Hill St. Boston MASSACHUSETTS 02113 INDIVIDUAL UNITED STATES
Owner Name (LAST LISTED OWNER) TORVALDS, LINUS
Looks to me like VALinux owns the trademark. That is probably why you contact John Hall with any immediate questions.
As far as being impotent against non-OS uses of the Linux word, that is a really fine line as any lawyer will tell you. Most people could'nt afford the litigation anyway. You may be able to get away with a parody website bit ince you try to use another company's reputation to sell your product its another matter entirely. If they registered it as a certification mark it would make litigation much easier. But it is also true to say that a trademark doesn't have to be registered to be considered litigable. Actual first use of the mark is most important. Linus has the defacto rights to Linux as a certification mark. Heck, for years he has been the sentry on what goes into the kernel. I tried not to take too much of his time since it was dinner time.
I called Mr. Linus Torvalds and asked him about this domain auction problem. He assured me that any legitimate projects have nothing to worry about. His lawyer informed him that he needed to take action. Refusal to enforce a trademark makes future enforcement impossible. As long as the registered domain is a legitimate project and all references to Linux indicate the trademark there shouldn't be any problems.
As the registered owner of NLinux.com/.net/.org I was a little concerned. My project is just getting off the ground and it's mostly just a hobby. The last thing I need to deal with is a letter from some lawyer.
Linus said he is terribly busy with the Transmeta rollout on Jan 19th, but as soon as he gets a moment he'll address this issue. If you are extremely concerned about your domain then contact John T. Hall-VALinux Vice President, Support and Professional Services.
Trevor Lowing
I've has an account with them for over a year now. I can't say I've really had any problems getting through to CIHost. What they do to fix problems is a little different. About six months ago I decided to change my domain name. In the same process I parked the .Net and .org domains with them. How do you change a domain name at CIHost? Why blow away the old domain and recreate a blank one. Wipo, everything! I spent the next four months talking back and forth with supoort trying to set up the new domain. The first problem was that I could FTP to my .com but the only way I could see it was to http to my .org, and then you still couldn't see any graphics, just the html. So they belw away my domain and gave me a blank one again. Then I requested PHP setup. After a day I'd get an email saying that it had been done. I'd log in and go the my CGI-Bin. No PHP. After four or five times requesting PHP I finally got someone to hook me up by blowing away my domain and setting it up on another server. Anyhow, can anyone suggest a decent cheap or free hosting agent that supports full domain hosting, PHP, CGI, MySQL or PostgreSQL, unlimited bandwith and enough elbow room to grow..
Oh, here we go again. How many useful and productive projects has RedHat contributed to? Gnome? You have to be kidding. Gnome is like my crappy '79 FireBird rusting away in the garage. Every now and again I grab ye' ol' can o' Bondo and patch the rustholes but we know that baby ain't ever gonna run.
Branding is not value added. If I take a picture of the Mona Lisa and fudge my signature on the bottom I don't deserve credit for the origional.
RedHat and any other "Distributor" will fall face in the dust unless they can find a way to provide some product or service that is demanaded by consumers and not easily replaced by competitors. They know that. Look at the acquisitions they have already made.
As to them not explicitly saying "I take credit for it all". My retort is to say,"How are they crediting the true authors anyway". RedHat.com certainly doesn't mention the selfless contributors. If I propped a crate up in front of the Statue of Liberty and started charging admission I'd bet ya' that most people would think I owned the thing- or made it. Most people just being introduced to Linux probably think that Debian is a knockoff of RedHat.