I have no problem with Canada. Mexico is a little dangerous, and South America is beautiful. I think you mean a United States of America hater, and not even that is true. The ignorant arrogance of a great number of Americans is certainly offensive, but I don't hate it. It's the consequences of that ignorant arrogance I hate.
Of course everything here sucks.
Not everything, just the US postal service. Maybe one time before the horseless carriage the USPS was the best in the world, now it simply is not. Having a letter take 6-10 days to cross the country is NOT the best in the world. But why bother with facts or numbers when you can just hate-monger away on slashdot.
I'm glad that not knowing anything didn't stop you from posting.
First, you must be able to ship there.
With exception of Burma, Siera Leone, North Korea and other countries with active civil wars and a complete lack of Government, you can ship anywhere in the world with ease. I have shipped packages from Australia to Britain, France, China and Japan without the slightest difficulty. To ship to Hungary is more expensive and takes longer, but still can be done. The only country I've had trouble with shipping is the United States of America. And that's usually been recieving, not sending.
OK, maybe that's no problem, though the unit cost'll be pretty high and insurance may be necessary (and also pretty expensive) because of package loss problems mentioned in other threads.
True, the United States Postal Service is extremely poor by First World standards. Even China has a more reliable postal service.
Second, you must know what duties and taxes to pay on the shipment. And you'll have to keep up as tariffs change. This must be done for each country that you want to ship to.
With very few exceptions, duties and taxes are payed by THE RECEIVER. Again, duties and taxes are payed BY THE RECIEVER.
Third, warranties: If you're a retailer like Amazon, you may not have much say in removing warranties. Additionally, different countries have different laws about how much warranty is inherent (as do different states in the U.S., and for that matter, probably different states, provinces, federal districts, etc. in other countries). So you'll need a legal framework (for each country/region/province/whatever, mind you) to handle the finer points of warranty law; this must also be kept up to date with the most recent laws.
There are no international warranties. Warranties apply to goods in the country from which they are sold. That way, when you buy a gadget on your next overseas holiday, there is no requirement on the retailer to provide a warranty in your home country (duh). They are only required to provide a valid warranty in the country of sale.
It's one thing if you've got a presence in the country. But if you don't, it's probably not that reasonable to try to ship to that country.
Wow, I guess the ~$10-20 BILLION in goods that my country ships internationally each year without offices overseas is just a small group of unreasonable people, or could it be INTERNATIONAL TRADE ?????????????
I play Quake, Unreal Tournament, America's Army, etc. on Linux. Can't think of any better games that I'd want to play on Linux -- nor any that I can't.
When I can play 'Shogun: Total War' under Linux, that Winders partition is GONE DADDY GONE.
IIRC, there were no tabs in NS4.5, and tabs are the thing I enjoy most in modern browsers. Then there is the search fields in the toolbar, very cool, plus Opera's location bar prefixs, I love being able to type 'g innovation' or 'a domain:au news' in the location bar and have a google or alltheweb search come back.
And some of the innovation is coming from web page developers rather than the browser, some java applets are getting very nice. Robust, functional etc.
And then of course there is XUL, which is IMHO brilliant, but likely to die. To be able to turn the browser into another application with a markup language is way beyond cool.
I hope you didn't think I meant Senator Alston was a political genius, no way in _the world. Brendon Nelson is who I was referring to.
No, Richard Alston's genius is that he realises that being a genius confers no advantage in Australian politics. Quite the opposite in fact. He's not real smart, but he's a survivor.
Heh, I'm actually thinking of going to London or something a rather for a year or so. I just finished an Honours degree in Computing Science and can't even find a graduate job. I'm currently nightfilling at the supermarket too.
Well, after working for nearly 10 years in IT, I have been unemployed for 18 months. I love to code, but it looks as though I might be pulling coffees for a while.
The Brain Drain will continue. These pompous arses are too busy looking after their friends and themselves.
If only it were that simple. A staggeringly ineffecient and ineffective bureaucracy at federal, state and local levels that employs one third of the workforce and that spends a staggering percentage of GDP has been steadily growing in size and waste over the last 20 years.
To pay for this malarkey, many Australians now pay almost 60% of their income in open and hidden taxes, plus they spend nearly 25% of their time feeding the govt it's monthly diet of forms and dealing with the most convoluted and idiotic tax law in the western world.
This systematic destruction of wealth has been offset by the completely disingenuous strategy of creating a bubble economy through the 'first home owners grant scheme' and lowering interest rates. And we all know how that turned out for Japan.
Anyway, it might be time to look at immigrating to somewhere with some culture to offset the inevitable poverty.
There are probably only around 20-30% of politicians that are excellent at their job and understand the game well.
Senator Alston may understand the political game well, but that doesn't mean he's not a technological moron. Remember, this is the bloke who thought that Australians wouldn't go to overseas internet gambling sites because they wouldn't pay the long distance phone charges.
The fact is in Australia, and probably in any other democratic country is that we vote for the person/party that is least worst during election time.
Actually, in most democratic countries, of those who vote ~90% of voters vote for the exactly the same party at each election. Which means that all electioneering is basically aimed at the swinging vote (the upper middle class usually). What this would mean, if elected officials actually kept election promises, is that policy would be dictated by the small 10% of swinging voters. But we all know that policy is dictated by the rich and carried out by our 'elected officials'.
I'm afraid that the Liberals will be around for the next 4 years, and that is a very long time, and a very long time for the broadband market to be suffering. I think Australia will go down as missing entirely the broadband boat and done well _not improving the I.T and Telecoms infrastructure.
If the liberals are returned to power at the next election, I am moving to New Zealand.
Look at these are two days in Australian politics and think, are Australians governed by morons?
Short answer: Yes and No.
Long answer: Q:Is the Government of Australia staffed with morons? A:Not entirely. Q:Are the elected officials of Australia our best and brightest? A:Not even close.
How are you going to market a timesheet system being Open Source as an advantage? Where's the opportunity?
Well, depending on the quality, I might use it as a 'loss-leader' for consulting work.
Or, I may use it as part of a business solution package, where I bundle up a bunch of simple applications (including timesheet, receivables, ordering ) for small business, and sell a whole system of server, clients + backup service + support.
I once worked for a company that spent $10,000 for me to build a simple timesheet system for them. If I build it opensource, I may gain the advantage that there are dozens or even hundreds of software consultants/contractors out there that may help me build my Timesheet programme into a solid, feature rich, robust and (relatively)bug free source-base/framework that I can use in the above scenarios.
And why stop at Timesheets? If a community was created, a whole range of powerfull business frameworks could be developed. Imagine going into a potential client and saying,
"Well, this part is open source, and always will be, but I can build extentions specific to your company and put them under a different licence (LGPL, BSD etc). And by doing so, I can build your system for $10K less than those.NET guys, plus your investment is protected because you can always get the source code to continue work in-house at a later date"
They never expect this to get to court. There isn't sufficient evidence for a win. The endgame strategy is to be bought up, and they have an insurance policy already set up, whereby another firm is committed to buying them even in the event that IBM doesn't. (Think Microsoft, even though there are antitrust issues there). Therefore, it benefits SCO to keep the publicity on high, as it is their only chance for a big win. Think of it as trolling on a corporate level. They never expect this to get to court. There isn't sufficient evidence for a win. The endgame strategy is to be bought up, and they have an insurance policy already set up, whereby another firm is committed to buying them even in the event that IBM doesn't. (Think Microsoft, even though there are antitrust issues there). Therefore, it benefits SCO to keep the publicity on high, as it is their only chance for a big win. Think of it as trolling on a corporate level.
Alternatives solicited
Well, since you asked, I'll provide my theory, which is a combination of the plays above with a twist.
This lawsuit smells of Microsoft, and not for the usual paranoid reasons, but for very good ones. Allow me to elaborate. Recently, poor Ballmer was trying to get some quality snow time, when he was interupted by a news of a potential disaster.
The city of Munich was considering moving a 14,000 license installed base to Linux. Now the reason that this is a disaster is not because it is huge lucrative account. Yes, it adds to the bottom line, but relative to Microsoft's size it was a drop in the bucket.
No, the reason that it was a potential disaster is the same reason that the CIA went on a murderous rampage in South America in any country unfortunate enough to elect a socialist government who were actually succeeding at governing and creating prosperity for the people. It became known as "The Danger of A Good Example". For the CIA it was absolutely imperitave that NO socialist government should ever be seen as a success.
In the same way it was imperitave for Microsoft that No large scale Linux installation in a modern industrialised country is ever seen as a success. Because as soon as there is competition, Microsoft's margins will die and their great bloated hulking organisation will suddenly be bleeding $20M a month and the stock price will plummet, which will lead to a mass programmer exodus as their stock options head into negative value territory.
So what does Ballmer do? He offers a 90% discount. Now I don't know about those Germans, but when I suddenly get a 90% discount, I start to wonder about how I've been 90% screwed for years. It makes me suspicious. "You mean, even though you have charged $100 for that software before, it's really only worth $10."
Now the worst part is that, after crunching the numbers, the good people of Munich Council decided that even with a 90% discount, it was still a better deal in the long run to go with Linux.
"Arrrrrghhhhhhhh" cried Ballmer as he pulled his remaining 4 strands of hair out. "Microsoft has always been a lowest cost producer/predatory pricing strategy company, if we can't compete on price, what can we do to stop this Tsunami?" And then the light went on "Aha, FUD, FUD, glorious FUD, let's FUD Linux out of the marketplace."
And so the ball breakers at Redmond paid a visit to the good Mormons of Utah with a fine plan to save the executives from selling their $3M mansion+boat. Unfortunately, the plan was that IBM was supposed to be drawn into long drawn-out media slanging match. But so far, IBM has remained silent, as you do when a small annoying dog starts barking at you. As you remain silent, the dog starts barking more hysterically, then whining, then it eventually shuts up.
I think SCO is that small annoying dog, desperate to get a reaction, because as long as there is controversy surrounding Linux, Microsoft has a FUD tool in it's arsenal when fighting for big accounts. But if there is no controversy, if the little dog starts whimpering and goes away, then it's back to disaster time for MS.
It's street legal...and a joy to drive:oD It must be a lot easier for a vehicle to be street legal in the US than in Australia.
The car companies here have got the govt here by the goolies, and it extremely difficult to get anything that doesn't come the major car manufactures made street legal.
And these aren't vulnerable to forgery? Sounds to me like the cash is actually stored in the device (if you lose it, you lose that money). How long before some geek hacks it and loads it up with free cash?
Well, I did read the digital cash faq below, but let me answer that question my own way. Yes, the cards are vunerable, but only up to $500. A cash forger can make millions of dollars worth of forgeries.
Sure, you could get thousands of cards (they had a small deposit IIRC), however I have a feeling that a transaction is recorded when you load the card up with cash (against the card, not the person supplying the cash), and each time you go in and out of a station.
If suddenly bunches of cards started appearing with a $500 balance, without a corresponding transaction, the Ocotopus Authority is alerted almost immediately that something is wrong, giving them a chance to investigate or change the security protocol. Which is not to say that the transaction server couldn't be hacked. But it would be a lot of trouble to go to just to get a few free train rides and vending machine products.
Of course, if there were a wider adoption of the card, both the opportunity and motivation for fraud would increase. I'd imagine at that time the system could be modified to strengthen it's resistance by using stronger cryptography (public/private key pairs, blinds and 'digital cash tokens')
BTW, AFAIK the Octopus card has not had any incidents of fraud, but maybe it's not reported like the CC companies don't.
I think you're misinterpreting the privacy advocates, here.
I am a privacy advocate. Just an informed one. I was refering to people who automatically assume that all technology is designed to reduce their privacy, whereas sometimes technology can be designed to increase your privacy.
We don't have problems with an anonymous cashless society, I think... just one where there is no such thing as an anonymous purchace.
I agree.
Most cashless societies tend to have a link back to who you are (ATM cards, credit cards, etc.).This idea wouldn't, so I don't mind it as much. It's like certified credsticks.
Except it's not certified, which currently makes it vunerable to fraud.
I'm not baring people from getting a new job. I'm saying that they can't use their job with me as a means of striking it rich with one of my competitors. With a non-compete, I can march into court and easily get a restraining order, something that a non-disclosure agreement does not allow me to do. (Note that I have never had to do this, something I credit to my laying down a solid legal framework in the first place.)
Wow! So that's freedom in the 'land of the free' huh? Well, in the civilised world your ass would be thrown out of court quicktime, no restraining order, no RESTRICTING A PERSON'S ABILITY TO TRADE, which is illegal in many civilised countries, but obviously NOT YOURS. Oh, I forgot, your antitrust laws no longer serve any function.
Other than the magnetic strip not wearing out, what's the advantage?
When I lived in Hong Kong there was a smart card (not Credit Card) called Octopus. Basically, you buy the smart-card, you add cash funds to it, and then you can use it to ride the train system.
It was incredibly convenient, not to have to buy tickets, and much greater throughput than ticket machines. You just walked through the gate and swiped your wallet over the reader.
Anyways, it wasn't long before they figured out the advantage of converting the vending machines in the station over to Octopus. No cash to collect, just fill it up with product and collect the money from the Octopus administrators, less administrative fee.
I can tell you from experience, it beats the hell out of coins, changing money, messing about with cash, fumbling about with change. Just swipe your card and get your product. Faster, easier and much more effecient.
Best of all, the cards were anonymous, which means the govt couldn't track you via the card. Disadvantage of course is that if the card was lost or stolen, there was no recovery. I guess for that reason the maximum you could put on the card was HK$500.
To me this was the first step towards an anonymous cashless society, which despite the Orwellian protests of the tin-foilers, is IMO, A Good Thing(tm). Money spreads disease, has an administrative cost, is vunerable to forgery. If we can have all the advantages of cash, including anonymity, then I say, let's get rid of cash.
What is Microsoft's definition of 'give away'? Do they mean - - A charity/NPO can obtain a master CD which they can install on as many PC's as they like, forever more? - A charity/NPO will be able to download the latest updates, the latest operating system and the latest features at no cost into the forseeable future (say 100 years)? - A charity/NPO will be granted total exemption from licence tracking and auditing into the forseeable future?
No? Perhaps they mean.
- We will give away our software and do whatever else is necessary, by whatever means, to destroy all current and future competition in the desktop operating system market, and THEN when our monopoly is returned and assured, we will review those charity/NPO software licences and collect our rightful due?
Even free is a bad deal when someone can enforce a EULA at some future date. Under the EULA, Microsoft (and many other software companies) are not selling a product they are granting a licence. A product, once purchased, becomes the property of the purchaser, whereas a licence can be revoked.
which I would have thought could be argued to grant a license to use such patent -
Well, it could certainly be argued, but would it be upheld?
after all if you explicitly say to someone "here you are, you can change this and make your own stuff" it's hard to succesfully accuse them of stealing it.
Sorry to nitpick, but you can't steal a patent, as it is in the public domain. You can only infringe on it.
Back to the topic at hand. This case may bring to light the absurdity of software patents, because AFAIK software is the only 'thing' covered by both patents and copyright. How can this be? When a patent is granted it is placed in the public domain, ergo no copyright.
So as you (and many others) have pointed out SCO has already given away their copyrights via the GPL (or infringed on their own copyright, depending on how you look at it), but they are apparently claiming patent infringement.
If patent infringement is upheld, would that not imply that patents superseed copyright? AFAIK, that decision has never been made before.
Say I patent a widget, and someone takes a photo of that widget, would that mean that they have infringed the patent? Does that sound any more absurd than this lawsuit?
I suggest you obtain a copy of the verdict records from a court that deals with a wide variety of cases. Ten bucks says you'll come to the conclusion that regardless of who the legal counsel is on both sides, justice is truly served far more often than not.
I have done this (spent time at the local courthouse), and I disagree, but not in the "the rich get away with anything because of the quality of their legal representation" way that the previous poster claimed.
No, it's more along the line of, at a given time in history, twelve people (or one judge) tend to have a set of fears, desires, loves and hates that tend them towards making personal decisions regardless of the law. This is what some people call "natural justice", where judicial decisions are made on the basis of people's feelings. Something that Janet Reno used with great success in Florida to railroad people into jail on child-sex-abuse charges, despite the fact that she faced counsel of greater competence than her, and in many cases there was no evidence or even likelihood that most of those people were even guilty.
So while legal justice is very rarely served in a court (with the exception of Judge Judy of course), natural justice tends shaft rich and poor alike on a regular basis.
I think what the previous posters mean by "diligence" is that SCO didn't do their homework to see if they possibly had any conflicting IP in the Linux kernek before jumping on the bandwagon themselves and offering their own distro. In that case, it's their own damn fault; even if there is offending code in the kernel, it is now legal to have because the people owning the copyright placed it under the GPL by selling linux with the accompanying license. It's sort of a "you may be right, but tough shit" situation for SCO here.
IANAL, however, I believe that is incorrect if it is patent infringment. The copyrights have no effect on patent claims. If SCO claims patent infringement, and it is upheld, then it makes no difference that they distributed a product that infringes patents, because the patents belong to them.
Copyright infringement on the other hand is another matter. And in that case they have shot themselves in the foot by offering up the technology under the GPL.
Of course, I wouldn't want to sue IBM for patent infringement. That might be a very slippery slope.
There was something like an 80% approval rating in Panama for the US removal of drug lord Noriega from Panama. Just keep pretending that everyone is on equal moral ground no matter what their actions and no one has the right to enforce a moral code in the world. You're basically arguing for anarchy.
And you are basically arguing for 'might is right regardless', which, if true, is a completely redundant argument.
Amazingly so, in the countries where this 'disappear' stuff does happen, there aren't big forums like slashdot and 'alternative' news organizations allowed to spread the alarm. So we really don't have to worry until all the ranting goes silent.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and WRONG. When the ranting starts is EXACTLY the time to start worrying. When it goes silent, it is too late, you are already living in a Police State, and it is illegal to complain about it.
How did the term 'facism' come to mean any kind of distastefull behaviour?
Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK the term 'facism' comes from the 'faci', Mussolini's special police who went around beating up dissenters and shouting pro-goverment slogans in the streets.
Now we can definitely say that this type of organisation exists in Iraq, but for the Americans, all of their secret police are in countries outside the USA (although recent events seem to suggest begginnings of a 'faci' inside the US too).
When the CIA deposed the democratically elected Government of Iran, and installed the Shah, they helped the Shah to create a secret police that arrested, tortured and murdered thousands of people. They set up the same type of organisation in Chile, Cuba, Guatemala and many other countries as well.
So, at this moment in history, you couldn't really say the United States Goverment is a facist organisation INSIDE THE UNITED STATES. That really only occurs in small countries unfortunate enough to appear on the US's economic (oil, resources) or Cold War (location) radar. Then what occurs could definitely be described as facism, only most Americans don't get to hear about it.
Except that the Bush administration is well on its way to banning ALL stem cell research. Including the research on stem cells drawn (or manufactured) from adults. Consenting adults. Consenting, rational adults. Consenting, rational adults unharmed by the procedure.
Wow, my understanding of stem cells must be way off. Aren't stem cells the cells that create the fetus and then disappear in the first year of life? That would make taking them from an adult kinda difficult. But then, my understanding of stem cells might be completely wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah but you responded to an America-hater.
I have no problem with Canada. Mexico is a little dangerous, and South America is beautiful. I think you mean a United States of America hater, and not even that is true. The ignorant arrogance of a great number of Americans is certainly offensive, but I don't hate it. It's the consequences of that ignorant arrogance I hate.
Of course everything here sucks.
Not everything, just the US postal service. Maybe one time before the horseless carriage the USPS was the best in the world, now it simply is not. Having a letter take 6-10 days to cross the country is NOT the best in the world. But why bother with facts or numbers when you can just hate-monger away on slashdot.
I'm glad that not knowing anything didn't stop you from posting.
.....
First, you must be able to ship there.
With exception of Burma, Siera Leone, North Korea and other countries with active civil wars and a complete lack of Government,
you can ship anywhere in the world with ease. I have shipped packages from Australia to Britain, France, China and Japan without the slightest difficulty. To ship to Hungary is more expensive and takes longer, but still can be done. The only country I've had trouble with shipping is the United States of America. And that's usually been recieving, not sending.
OK, maybe that's no problem, though the unit cost'll be pretty high and insurance may be necessary (and also pretty expensive) because of package loss problems mentioned in other threads.
True, the United States Postal Service is extremely poor by First World standards. Even China has a more reliable postal service.
Second, you must know what duties and taxes to pay on the shipment. And you'll have to keep up as tariffs change. This must be done for each country that you want to ship to.
With very few exceptions, duties and taxes are payed by THE RECEIVER. Again, duties and taxes are payed BY THE RECIEVER.
Third, warranties: If you're a retailer like Amazon, you may not have much say in removing warranties. Additionally, different countries have different laws about how much warranty is inherent (as do different states in the U.S., and for that matter, probably different states, provinces, federal districts, etc. in other countries). So you'll need a legal framework (for each country/region/province/whatever, mind you) to handle the finer points of warranty law; this must also be kept up to date with the most recent laws.
There are no international warranties. Warranties apply to goods in the country from which they are sold. That way, when you buy a gadget on your next overseas holiday, there is no requirement on the retailer to provide a warranty in your home country (duh). They are only required to provide a valid warranty in the country of sale.
It's one thing if you've got a presence in the country. But if you don't, it's probably not that reasonable to try to ship to that country.
Wow, I guess the ~$10-20 BILLION in goods that my country ships internationally each year without offices overseas is just a small group of unreasonable people, or could it be INTERNATIONAL TRADE ?????????????
Sheesh
I have no idea what to do with it (yet) but it is certainly cool. Very cool indeed.
I play Quake, Unreal Tournament, America's Army, etc. on Linux. Can't think of any better games that I'd want to play on Linux -- nor any that I can't.
When I can play 'Shogun: Total War' under Linux, that Winders partition is GONE DADDY GONE.
IIRC, there were no tabs in NS4.5, and tabs are the thing I enjoy most in modern browsers. Then there is the search fields in the toolbar, very cool, plus Opera's location bar prefixs, I love being able to type 'g innovation' or 'a domain:au news' in the location bar and have a google or alltheweb search come back.
And some of the innovation is coming from web page developers rather than the browser, some java applets are getting very nice. Robust, functional etc.
And then of course there is XUL, which is IMHO brilliant, but likely to die. To be able to turn the browser into another application with a markup language is way beyond cool.
In short, I think Marc is spitting sour grapes.
I hope you didn't think I meant Senator Alston was a political genius, no way in _the world. Brendon Nelson is who I was referring to.
No, Richard Alston's genius is that he realises that being a genius confers no advantage in Australian politics. Quite the opposite in fact. He's not real smart, but he's a survivor.
Heh, I'm actually thinking of going to London or something a rather for a year or so. I just finished an Honours degree in Computing Science and can't even find a graduate job. I'm currently nightfilling at the supermarket too.
Well, after working for nearly 10 years in IT, I have been unemployed for 18 months. I love to code, but it looks as though I might be pulling coffees for a while.
The Brain Drain will continue. These pompous arses are too busy looking after their friends and themselves.
If only it were that simple. A staggeringly ineffecient and ineffective bureaucracy at federal, state and local levels that employs one third of the workforce and that spends a staggering percentage of GDP has been steadily growing in size and waste over the last 20 years.
To pay for this malarkey, many Australians now pay almost 60% of their income in open and hidden taxes, plus they spend nearly 25% of their time feeding the govt it's monthly diet of forms and dealing with the most convoluted and idiotic tax law in the western world.
This systematic destruction of wealth has been offset by the completely disingenuous strategy of creating a bubble economy through the 'first home owners grant scheme' and lowering interest rates. And we all know how that turned out for Japan.
Anyway, it might be time to look at immigrating to somewhere with some culture to offset the inevitable poverty.
There are probably only around 20-30% of politicians that are excellent at their job and understand the game well.
Senator Alston may understand the political game well, but that doesn't mean he's not a technological moron. Remember, this is the bloke who thought that Australians wouldn't go to overseas internet gambling sites because they wouldn't pay the long distance phone charges.
The fact is in Australia, and probably in any other democratic country is that we vote for the person/party that is least worst during election time.
Actually, in most democratic countries, of those who vote ~90% of voters vote for the exactly the same party at each election. Which means that all electioneering is basically aimed at the swinging vote (the upper middle class usually). What this would mean, if elected officials actually kept election promises, is that policy would be dictated by the small 10% of swinging voters. But we all know that policy is dictated by the rich and carried out by our 'elected officials'.
I'm afraid that the Liberals will be around for the next 4 years, and that is a very long time, and a very long time for the broadband market to be suffering. I think Australia will go down as missing entirely the broadband boat and done well _not improving the I.T and Telecoms infrastructure.
If the liberals are returned to power at the next election, I am moving to New Zealand.
Look at these are two days in Australian politics and think, are Australians governed by morons?
Short answer: Yes and No.
Long answer:
Q:Is the Government of Australia staffed with morons?
A:Not entirely.
Q:Are the elected officials of Australia our best and brightest?
A:Not even close.
How are you going to market a timesheet system being Open Source as an advantage?
.NET guys, plus your investment is protected because you can always get the source code to continue work in-house at a later date"
Where's the opportunity?
Well, depending on the quality, I might use it as a 'loss-leader' for consulting work.
Or, I may use it as part of a business solution package, where I bundle up a bunch of simple applications (including timesheet, receivables, ordering ) for small business, and sell a whole system of server, clients + backup service + support.
I once worked for a company that spent $10,000 for me to build a simple timesheet system for them. If I build it opensource, I may gain the advantage that there are dozens or even hundreds of software consultants/contractors out there that may help me build my Timesheet programme into a solid, feature rich, robust and (relatively)bug free source-base/framework that I can use in the above scenarios.
And why stop at Timesheets? If a community was created, a whole range of powerfull business frameworks could be developed. Imagine going into a potential client and saying,
"Well, this part is open source, and always will be, but I can build extentions specific to your company and put them under a different licence (LGPL, BSD etc). And by doing so, I can build your system for $10K less than those
You won't find a good OSS timesheet system.
Is that true? That sounds like an opportunity to me.
They never expect this to get to court. There isn't sufficient evidence for a win. The endgame strategy is to be bought up, and they have an insurance policy already set up, whereby another firm is committed to buying them even in the event that IBM doesn't. (Think Microsoft, even though there are antitrust issues there). Therefore, it benefits SCO to keep the publicity on high, as it is their only chance for a big win. Think of it as trolling on a corporate level.
They never expect this to get to court. There isn't sufficient evidence for a win. The endgame strategy is to be bought up, and they have an insurance policy already set up, whereby another firm is committed to buying them even in the event that IBM doesn't. (Think Microsoft, even though there are antitrust issues there). Therefore, it benefits SCO to keep the publicity on high, as it is their only chance for a big win. Think of it as trolling on a corporate level.
Alternatives solicited
Well, since you asked, I'll provide my theory, which is a combination of the plays above with a twist.
This lawsuit smells of Microsoft, and not for the usual paranoid reasons, but for very good ones. Allow me to elaborate.
Recently, poor Ballmer was trying to get some quality snow time, when he was interupted by a news of a potential disaster.
The city of Munich was considering moving a 14,000 license installed base to Linux. Now the reason that this is a disaster is not because it is huge lucrative account. Yes, it adds to the bottom line, but relative to Microsoft's size it was a drop in the bucket.
No, the reason that it was a potential disaster is the same reason that the CIA went on a murderous rampage in South America in any country unfortunate enough to elect a socialist government who were actually succeeding at governing and creating prosperity for the people. It became known as "The Danger of A Good Example". For the CIA it was absolutely imperitave that NO socialist government should ever be seen as a success.
In the same way it was imperitave for Microsoft that No large scale Linux installation in a modern industrialised country is ever seen as a success. Because as soon as there is competition, Microsoft's margins will die and their great bloated hulking organisation will suddenly be bleeding $20M a month and the stock price will plummet, which will lead to a mass programmer exodus as their stock options head into negative value territory.
So what does Ballmer do? He offers a 90% discount. Now I don't know about those Germans, but when I suddenly get a 90% discount, I start to wonder about how I've been 90% screwed for years. It makes me suspicious. "You mean, even though you have charged $100 for that software before, it's really only worth $10."
Now the worst part is that, after crunching the numbers, the good people of Munich Council decided that even with a 90% discount, it was still a better deal in the long run to go with Linux.
"Arrrrrghhhhhhhh" cried Ballmer as he pulled his remaining 4 strands of hair out. "Microsoft has always been a lowest cost producer/predatory pricing strategy company, if we can't compete on price, what can we do to stop this Tsunami?" And then the light went on "Aha, FUD, FUD, glorious FUD, let's FUD Linux out of the marketplace."
And so the ball breakers at Redmond paid a visit to the good Mormons of Utah with a fine plan to save the executives from selling their $3M mansion+boat. Unfortunately, the plan was that IBM was supposed to be drawn into long drawn-out media slanging match. But so far, IBM has remained silent, as you do when a small annoying dog starts barking at you. As you remain silent, the dog starts barking more hysterically, then whining, then it eventually shuts up.
I think SCO is that small annoying dog, desperate to get a reaction, because as long as there is controversy surrounding Linux, Microsoft has a FUD tool in it's arsenal when fighting for big accounts. But if there is no controversy, if the little dog starts whimpering and goes away, then it's back to disaster time for MS.
It's street legal...and a joy to drive :oD
It must be a lot easier for a vehicle to be street legal in the US than in Australia.
The car companies here have got the govt here by the goolies, and it extremely difficult to get anything that doesn't come the major car manufactures made street legal.
Cool project BTW. Thanks for the link.
And these aren't vulnerable to forgery? Sounds to me like the cash is actually stored in the device (if you lose it, you lose that money). How long before some geek hacks it and loads it up with free cash?
Well, I did read the digital cash faq below, but let me answer that question my own way. Yes, the cards are vunerable, but only up to $500. A cash forger can make millions of dollars worth of forgeries.
Sure, you could get thousands of cards (they had a small deposit IIRC), however I have a feeling that a transaction is recorded when you load the card up with cash (against the card, not the person supplying the cash), and each time you go in and out of a station.
If suddenly bunches of cards started appearing with a $500 balance, without a corresponding transaction, the Ocotopus Authority is alerted almost immediately that something is wrong, giving them a chance to investigate or change the security protocol. Which is not to say that the transaction server couldn't be hacked. But it would be a lot of trouble to go to just to get a few free train rides and vending machine products.
Of course, if there were a wider adoption of the card, both the opportunity and motivation for fraud would increase. I'd imagine at that time the system could be modified to strengthen it's resistance by using stronger cryptography (public/private key pairs, blinds and 'digital cash tokens')
BTW, AFAIK the Octopus card has not had any incidents of fraud, but maybe it's not reported like the CC companies don't.
I think you're misinterpreting the privacy advocates, here.
I am a privacy advocate. Just an informed one. I was refering to people who automatically assume that all technology is designed to reduce their privacy, whereas sometimes technology can be designed to increase your privacy.
We don't have problems with an anonymous cashless society, I think... just one where there is no such thing as an anonymous purchace.
I agree.
Most cashless societies tend to have a link back to who you are (ATM cards, credit cards, etc.).This idea wouldn't, so I don't mind it as much. It's like certified credsticks.
Except it's not certified, which currently makes it vunerable to fraud.
I'm not baring people from getting a new job. I'm saying that they can't use their job with me as a means of striking it rich with one of my competitors. With a non-compete, I can march into court and easily get a restraining order, something that a non-disclosure agreement does not allow me to do. (Note that I have never had to do this, something I credit to my laying down a solid legal framework in the first place.)
Wow! So that's freedom in the 'land of the free' huh? Well, in the civilised world your ass would be thrown out of court quicktime, no restraining order, no RESTRICTING A PERSON'S ABILITY TO TRADE, which is illegal in many civilised countries, but obviously NOT YOURS. Oh, I forgot, your antitrust laws no longer serve any function.
One more reason to never work in the USA.
Other than the magnetic strip not wearing out, what's the advantage?
When I lived in Hong Kong there was a smart card (not Credit Card) called Octopus. Basically, you buy the smart-card, you add cash funds to it, and then you can use it to ride the train system.
It was incredibly convenient, not to have to buy tickets, and much greater throughput than ticket machines. You just walked through the gate and swiped your wallet over the reader.
Anyways, it wasn't long before they figured out the advantage of converting the vending machines in the station over to Octopus. No cash to collect, just fill it up with product and collect the money from the Octopus administrators, less administrative fee.
I can tell you from experience, it beats the hell out of coins, changing money, messing about with cash, fumbling about with change. Just swipe your card and get your product. Faster, easier and much more effecient.
Best of all, the cards were anonymous, which means the govt couldn't track you via the card. Disadvantage of course is that if the card was lost or stolen, there was no recovery. I guess for that reason the maximum you could put on the card was HK$500.
To me this was the first step towards an anonymous cashless society, which despite the Orwellian protests of the tin-foilers, is IMO, A Good Thing(tm). Money spreads disease, has an administrative cost, is vunerable to forgery. If we can have all the advantages of cash, including anonymity, then I say, let's get rid of cash.
What is Microsoft's definition of 'give away'?
Do they mean -
- A charity/NPO can obtain a master CD which they can install on as many PC's as they like, forever more?
- A charity/NPO will be able to download the latest updates, the latest operating system and the latest features at no cost into the forseeable future (say 100 years)?
- A charity/NPO will be granted total exemption from licence tracking and auditing into the forseeable future?
No? Perhaps they mean.
- We will give away our software and do whatever else is necessary, by whatever means, to destroy all current and future competition in the desktop operating system market, and THEN when our monopoly is returned and assured, we will review those charity/NPO software licences and collect our rightful due?
Even free is a bad deal when someone can enforce a EULA at some future date. Under the EULA, Microsoft (and many other software companies) are not selling a product they are granting a licence. A product, once purchased, becomes the property of the purchaser, whereas a licence can be revoked.
which I would have thought could be argued to grant a license to use such patent -
Well, it could certainly be argued, but would it be upheld?
after all if you explicitly say to someone "here you are, you can change this and make your own stuff" it's hard to succesfully accuse them of stealing it.
Sorry to nitpick, but you can't steal a patent, as it is in the public domain. You can only infringe on it.
Back to the topic at hand. This case may bring to light the absurdity of software patents, because AFAIK software is the only 'thing' covered by both patents and copyright. How can this be? When a patent is granted it is placed in the public domain, ergo no copyright.
So as you (and many others) have pointed out SCO has already given away their copyrights via the GPL (or infringed on their own copyright, depending on how you look at it), but they are apparently claiming patent infringement.
If patent infringement is upheld, would that not imply that patents superseed copyright? AFAIK, that decision has never been made before.
Say I patent a widget, and someone takes a photo of that widget, would that mean that they have infringed the patent? Does that sound any more absurd than this lawsuit?
I suggest you obtain a copy of the verdict records from a court that deals with a wide variety of cases. Ten bucks says you'll come to the conclusion that regardless of who the legal counsel is on both sides, justice is truly served far more often than not.
I have done this (spent time at the local courthouse), and I disagree, but not in the "the rich get away with anything because of the quality of their legal representation" way that the previous poster claimed.
No, it's more along the line of, at a given time in history, twelve people (or one judge) tend to have a set of fears, desires, loves and hates that tend them towards making personal decisions regardless of the law. This is what some people call "natural justice", where judicial decisions are made on the basis of people's feelings. Something that Janet Reno used with great success in Florida to railroad people into jail on child-sex-abuse charges, despite the fact that she faced counsel of greater competence than her, and in many cases there was no evidence or even likelihood that most of those people were even guilty.
So while legal justice is very rarely served in a court (with the exception of Judge Judy of course), natural justice tends shaft rich and poor alike on a regular basis.
I think what the previous posters mean by "diligence" is that SCO didn't do their homework to see if they possibly had any conflicting IP in the Linux kernek before jumping on the bandwagon themselves and offering their own distro. In that case, it's their own damn fault; even if there is offending code in the kernel, it is now legal to have because the people owning the copyright placed it under the GPL by selling linux with the accompanying license. It's sort of a "you may be right, but tough shit" situation for SCO here.
IANAL, however, I believe that is incorrect if it is patent infringment. The copyrights have no effect on patent claims. If SCO claims patent infringement, and it is upheld, then it makes no difference that they distributed a product that infringes patents, because the patents belong to them.
Copyright infringement on the other hand is another matter. And in that case they have shot themselves in the foot by offering up the technology under the GPL.
Of course, I wouldn't want to sue IBM for patent infringement. That might be a very slippery slope.
Too bad he's going down such a low path so soon in his carear.
There's a high path for lawyers?????
There was something like an 80% approval rating in Panama for the US removal of drug lord Noriega from Panama. Just keep pretending that everyone is on equal moral ground no matter what their actions and no one has the right to enforce a moral code in the world. You're basically arguing for anarchy.
And you are basically arguing for 'might is right regardless', which, if true, is a completely redundant argument.
Amazingly so, in the countries where this 'disappear' stuff does happen, there aren't big forums like slashdot and 'alternative' news organizations allowed to spread the alarm. So we really don't have to worry until all the ranting goes silent.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and WRONG. When the ranting starts is EXACTLY the time to start worrying. When it goes silent, it is too late, you are already living in a Police State, and it is illegal to complain about it.
How did the term 'facism' come to mean any kind of distastefull behaviour?
Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK the term 'facism' comes from the 'faci', Mussolini's special police who went around beating up dissenters and shouting pro-goverment slogans in the streets.
Now we can definitely say that this type of organisation exists in Iraq, but for the Americans, all of their secret police are in countries outside the USA (although recent events seem to suggest begginnings of a 'faci' inside the US too).
When the CIA deposed the democratically elected Government of Iran, and installed the Shah, they helped the Shah to create a secret police that arrested, tortured and murdered thousands of people. They set up the same type of organisation in Chile, Cuba, Guatemala and many other countries as well.
So, at this moment in history, you couldn't really say the United States Goverment is a facist organisation INSIDE THE UNITED STATES. That really only occurs in small countries unfortunate enough to appear on the US's economic (oil, resources) or Cold War (location) radar. Then what occurs could definitely be described as facism, only most Americans don't get to hear about it.
just my 1.19 US cents
Except that the Bush administration is well on its way to banning ALL stem cell research. Including the research on stem cells drawn (or manufactured) from adults. Consenting adults. Consenting, rational adults. Consenting, rational adults unharmed by the procedure.
Wow, my understanding of stem cells must be way off. Aren't stem cells the cells that create the fetus and then disappear in the first year of life?
That would make taking them from an adult kinda difficult.
But then, my understanding of stem cells might be completely wrong.