It probably would not be necessary to rename the kernel. If you read up on the history of the trademark you'll see that it is of very doubtful validity (this is not any kind of attack or criticism: just a statement of fact).
> But in the case of Kindle, Amazon is combining a proprietary e-book format with a > proprietary device that both displays the books as text, and reads them aloud. They > cannot invoke your argument as easily as a third-party TTS provider would be able to.
They are still making no copies and therefor not impinging on copyright law.
> The guy has a perfectly reasonable point. Decent TTS in a widely-used device will > basically kill the audiobook market, and authors should be compensated in some > way for the revenue lost there.
Why? Copyright grants a monopoly on making copies. TTS make no copies. So it reduces demand for some special kinds of copies: so what? As someone up thread observed, should authors get royalties on the sales of magnifying glasses because they reduce demand for large type books? Revenue is not a right.
> That chart doesn't make any sense. There's no numbers, but the chart would show that > Linux+Apple combined have less than 10% market share, and Linux's is slightly higher > than Apple's. Are Net Applications' numbers that severely skewed?
Net Applications's numbers are market share, either dollar volume of units sold. Ballmer's chart probably shows installed base.
> All I can think of is standing outside the door of a supermarket and asking people to > tell you what OS you use.
Not too far off. They probably paid a survey research outfit a large lump of money to interview a carefully selected sample of the population about their computer usage.
Unauthorized copies are only a threat if their share of the installed base is growing. I suspect that it is shrinking, and so constitutes an opportunity. Trouble is, it is more of an opportunity for Linux than for Microsoft.
Installed base can be measured by survey research. Good survey research is very expensive, though. The results are not the sort of thing that gets put up on a Web site as a "free sample". They are, however, the sort of thing companies like Microsoft buy.
There is revenue market share and unit sales market share. Both are reported by companies such as Net Applications, but neither reflects the Linux installed base because neither includes copies of Ubuntu etc that were not sold.
As you say, Ballmer is talking about use. His chart is probably based on the sort of expensive survey research that companies don't normally share with anyone and shows what people are actually using regardless of what they bought. Net Applications, on the other hand, is most likely telling us about sales by Linux vendors, either in units or dollar volume.
> If you can confirm that they're definitely going to give you the bad reference, it's not > going to hurt you to pack your things *today* and walk with no notice - it *is* an > at-will state, after all.
Doesn't matter whether is an at-will state or not. Anywhere in the USA you have the right to quit private employment without notice or reason. "At will" means that your employer can terminate you "at will" (in the absence of a contract).
The right thing for the poster to do, though, is talk to a lawyer.
...point out to them that giving a false bad reference is libel. It also possible that a threat like this is extortion or actionable on some other grounds: ask your lawyer about that.
> As I understand it, the overseas opinion is that Americas 'reputation overseas' was > destroyed when that 'crook' Bush 'invaded' Iraq.
No. said "reputation" was "destroyed" when Bush was classified as "right wing" (not that they weren't justified in being cautious during the eight years that the White House was occupied by the stupidest man to ever serve as President).
> So you're telling me those same nutjobs are suddenly going to forgive America because > some low-level dork in a new administration signs the DNS root?
No. They have "forgiven America" because it has elected a president that they classify as "left wing". It doesn't matter what he actually does: note the absence of any outcry over his failure to do anything about torture of prisoners and denial of habeus corpus.
> Note to self: Left-wing nut jobs are even crazier than I thought.
"Left wing nuts" are exactly as crazy as "right wing nuts": totally insane.
I believe that they mean that the cloud of stuff has an 800 km^2 collision cross-section. For planning purposes how long the cloud is is much less important than how fat it is.
It's the Air Force that does the tracking. But you are right: they don't have the resources to track all 19,000+ objects with sufficient precision to predict collisions such as this one. They watch all the stuff just closely enough to know which bits might endanger something critical like the ISS and then track that relatively small number of objects with great precision. I don't know if the limitation is due to the radar equipment or a lack of processing power.
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No. Those who can't write laws, thereby obligating those who can to spend time they could have spent doing writing licenses instead.
> Just because I admitted that it's my laptop, I now can't take the 5th?
That isn't what happened. He had already shown them some of the files.
It probably would not be necessary to rename the kernel. If you read up on the history of the trademark you'll see that it is of very doubtful validity (this is not any kind of attack or criticism: just a statement of fact).
Then it is even less useful.
> But in the case of Kindle, Amazon is combining a proprietary e-book format with a
> proprietary device that both displays the books as text, and reads them aloud. They
> cannot invoke your argument as easily as a third-party TTS provider would be able to.
They are still making no copies and therefor not impinging on copyright law.
> The guy has a perfectly reasonable point. Decent TTS in a widely-used device will
> basically kill the audiobook market, and authors should be compensated in some
> way for the revenue lost there.
Why? Copyright grants a monopoly on making copies. TTS make no copies. So it reduces demand for some special kinds of copies: so what? As someone up thread observed, should authors get royalties on the sales of magnifying glasses because they reduce demand for large type books? Revenue is not a right.
You have no idea what they patented until you read the claims.
> That chart doesn't make any sense. There's no numbers, but the chart would show that
> Linux+Apple combined have less than 10% market share, and Linux's is slightly higher
> than Apple's. Are Net Applications' numbers that severely skewed?
Net Applications's numbers are market share, either dollar volume of units sold. Ballmer's chart probably shows installed base.
> All I can think of is standing outside the door of a supermarket and asking people to
> tell you what OS you use.
Not too far off. They probably paid a survey research outfit a large lump of money to interview a carefully selected sample of the population about their computer usage.
Unauthorized copies are only a threat if their share of the installed base is growing. I suspect that it is shrinking, and so constitutes an opportunity. Trouble is, it is more of an opportunity for Linux than for Microsoft.
Installed base can be measured by survey research. Good survey research is very expensive, though. The results are not the sort of thing that gets put up on a Web site as a "free sample". They are, however, the sort of thing companies like Microsoft buy.
There is revenue market share and unit sales market share. Both are reported by companies such as Net Applications, but neither reflects the Linux installed base because neither includes copies of Ubuntu etc that were not sold.
As you say, Ballmer is talking about use. His chart is probably based on the sort of expensive survey research that companies don't normally share with anyone and shows what people are actually using regardless of what they bought. Net Applications, on the other hand, is most likely telling us about sales by Linux vendors, either in units or dollar volume.
> If you can confirm that they're definitely going to give you the bad reference, it's not
> going to hurt you to pack your things *today* and walk with no notice - it *is* an
> at-will state, after all.
Doesn't matter whether is an at-will state or not. Anywhere in the USA you have the right to quit private employment without notice or reason. "At will" means that your employer can terminate you "at will" (in the absence of a contract).
The right thing for the poster to do, though, is talk to a lawyer.
...point out to them that giving a false bad reference is libel. It also possible that a threat like this is extortion or actionable on some other grounds: ask your lawyer about that.
> The BBC has to worry less about pleasing its corporate masters and more about serving
> the public, since it's the public that's footing the bill.
No. It is the government footing the bill and the politicians who are its masters.
> It's essentially the same principle that keeps Consumer Reports and public radio a cut
> above the rest.
No. Only those members of the public who choose to do so donate to Consumer's Union.
> As I understand it, the overseas opinion is that Americas 'reputation overseas' was
> destroyed when that 'crook' Bush 'invaded' Iraq.
No. said "reputation" was "destroyed" when Bush was classified as "right wing" (not that they weren't justified in being cautious during the eight years that the White House was occupied by the stupidest man to ever serve as President).
> So you're telling me those same nutjobs are suddenly going to forgive America because
> some low-level dork in a new administration signs the DNS root?
No. They have "forgiven America" because it has elected a president that they classify as "left wing". It doesn't matter what he actually does: note the absence of any outcry over his failure to do anything about torture of prisoners and denial of habeus corpus.
> Note to self: Left-wing nut jobs are even crazier than I thought.
"Left wing nuts" are exactly as crazy as "right wing nuts": totally insane.
No background color or rebus is going work for many (perhaps most) users. You have display NOT SECURE in large enough type that they can't miss it.
> Uh, any idea just how complex doing this would be, even supposing the laser could be
> funded and then built in a timely manner?
Yes.
Presumably one of the things they want to evaluate is performance.
I believe that they mean that the cloud of stuff has an 800 km^2 collision cross-section. For planning purposes how long the cloud is is much less important than how fat it is.
It's the Air Force that does the tracking. But you are right: they don't have the resources to track all 19,000+ objects with sufficient precision to predict collisions such as this one. They watch all the stuff just closely enough to know which bits might endanger something critical like the ISS and then track that relatively small number of objects with great precision. I don't know if the limitation is due to the radar equipment or a lack of processing power.
Actually, seeing as it is from Microsoft research, there is little chance that it will ever be implemented.
But the other 1% sound pretty interesting.
There is a 64 bit version for Linux.