Adobe could have created a proprietary format and tried to defend it via patents, but they haven't. They could have also tried to make money off of 3rd parties trying to create PDF reader/writers by charging for patent licenses, but they haven't. This is the reason that the PDF format (and, by association, Adobe) is the leader in this area.
First, the article stares that the original letter about this was sent back in December of 2005 - this is before the merger/rename was completed. This means that we can't blame SBC (now renamed to AT&T) for starting this.
OTOH, knowing how the 'new' AT&T (aka SBC) has handled things before, I don't think there is any hope of them just letting this go and ignoring that they have the patent. If anything, they now have more money and lawyers to persue other companies.
However, this is predicated upon the fact that the system defined NULL is 0
0 (zero) is always equivalent to a NULL pointer in ISO standard C (and, by extension) ISO standard C++. it doesn't matter what the 'real' NULL pointer value is (I remember that some odd-ball architecture uses a non-zero value) - the standard requires 0 to test as equal to NULL.
The US backed Saddam Hussein's Iraq in its war against Iran because Iran was the enemy.
The US backed the Taliban (as a part of the Mujahideen) against the USSR.
Those are just 2 of many examples (just the ones that come to mind when I hear that saying) - there are many other examples of the problem with this saying (from many countries/companies/families/etc).
Note: I don't think that IBM is/will become an enemy of Linux/OSS (they have enough valid reasons to back them), it's just that the OP's saying has problems.
Also: This is actually an old Middle-Eastern saying that is usually translated as: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
50 hour week is more or less standard in the finance sector, my minimum hours were supposedly 48 hours but i never worked less than 50, usually 60+ and unpaid overtime at weekends which was compulsory.
Not in the several financial firms I've worked for. 40 hours/week has been the written standard (with the occasional big project requiring more). Yes, I usually put in more then 40 - but that's more due to my liking the work rather then it being required (or even expected).
I interviewed with TT about a year and a half ago and decided that I really didn't want to work there.
Near the end of the interview, they happened to mention that the new CEO had imposed a mandatory 50 hour work week - no matter the work load. Salaries weren't set to match the hours, of course.
The Tech guys I met were very nice and it looked like they were working on some interesting projects (moving their infrastructure from 3rd party apps to in-house solutions), but the mandatory overtime was a killer.
However a court will have to decide if it is in fact a sales tax (aka purchase tax, a sales tax would have to be paid by the seller:P)
Since most Use Tax laws have been on the books for well over a century (remember - they originally were enacted for catalog based mail-order purchases), I'm pretty sure they've already been tested in court enough times that this isn;t an issue.
I don't smoke but if I received a bill for back sales tax on online purchases from out of state I would refuse to pay.
And the state would probably end up taking your house/car/etc...
Sellers are required to collect sales tax if they sell to people in the same state.
Buyers are required to pay sales tax (on in state purchases) or Use Tax on items that they buy from other states (AFAIK, all 50 states have Use Tax laws).
Just because the seller doesn't withhold the tax doesn't mean that you don't owe it. It works the same with employment taxes - if you employer doesn't withhold taxes (or just doesn't give it to the government...) you still owe the taxes.
The back of my Illinois tax form has had a 'Use Tax' form forever. You're supposed to pay it for all items purchased outside of the state.
There is nothing new about this - it's been around as long as mail-order has. It only become a big deal since the Internet made it a lot easier to do it.
I remember when I was a kid (1960's) that states were making a big deal about mail-order catalog companies not paying sales tax...
Let's face it, ever since Douggy's Dad had to resign for sexually harrassing the staff, SCO has had the whiff of being a shitty little disreputable bunch of corner crack monkeys lucky enough to be sitting on a product that people would actually pay to make and improve for them.
Boy, have you been on mars for a couple of years or what?
This SCO is not the company formerly known as the Santa Cruz Operation. That company sold its Unix operation to Caldera and then renamed itself Tarantella after its current main product.
Caldera renamed itself to The SCO Group and then decided that they wern't a Linux company anymore, they were a Unix company. Of course, they aren't a Unix company anymore either - they only seem to exit to sue other companies now.
How was the Newton wrong? It may not have taken off, but it definitely had an impact.
Agreed. The only thing 'wrong' with the Newton was the timing of Job's return to Apple.
If Job's would have waited a couple of months, the Newton spin-off to its own company would have been complete and he would have had a harder time killing it.
Newton was a victim of Job's return to Apple and his removing of everything from his predecessor's regime.
... and no part of the suite can handle Publisher files, which is a real setback for the cause, as far as I'm concerned.
As a former user of MS-Publisher, I'd have to say that this isn't really a problem for the majority of Office users (it doesn't even come with most Office versions).
Publisher is a fine program - for the low end of the market (but it can't compare to any of the mid- or hi-end DTP programs). I wish there was an equivalent program available as OSS, but it isn't a 'setback for the cause'.
Note: I haven't used the latest version of Publisher (stopped doing my rocketry club's newsletter a while ago) - my main interaction is to tell people on my Web Host's forum who have problems using Publisher to do their sites (honest!) that they should switch to another program.
I would be interested to find out if there are any other mdbs alumni on slashdot.
Well, there's at least one - me.
I worked in the Consulting division in Chicago from 1989-1991 (Hired when they closed the Dallas office).
It was (and probably still is)an 'interesting' company. A victim of expanding too fast and in the wrong direction.
K-Man could have competed with dBase, but dBase was better positioned and marketed.
mdbs was an excellent non-relational DB, but got steamrollered by the relational movement.
Guru (K-Man with some simple AI thrown in) was interesting, and is still one of their products.
Object/1 was an excellent development tool but it was written for OS/2 as Windows 3.0 was being released and the Windows version too way too long to develop.
mdbs (the company) still exists, but I'm not sure how well(or how many) employee's it has now (it went from 150 when I started to less then 80 when I left).
I don't know if it is a good idea. Our company website has the.ws domain. When I give people our website address, they always ask: dot what? becasue they always expect.com or.net.
They're probably wondering why your company's main office is in Western Samoa... (and for the clueless,.tv wasn't created for TV show fan sites...).
I'm curious: do you live in the US? If so, do you find that the projects' max bids are reasonable? I ask this because I notice that a lot of the bidders are from India or Eastern Europe and the maximums that buyers are willing to pay are for the most part...insane!
Follow the link he gave - it redirects to his RentaCoder developer page.
He's from St. Petersburg, Russia. Also, he's done 205 Rentacoder jobs that average $26.71/job - approximately $5475.55 in income. Considering that Rentacoder takes a chunk of that, and he has seen less then $5000 for his work.
Back when I was unemployed, I bid on several jobs and actually won one - it was a rather fun project that paid well for a Rentacoder job, but I ended up making less then $10/hr.
Unless you're a developer from a place with a really low cost of living, Rentacoder doesn't make sense. OTOH, if you need a quick & dirty project done, it's a good place to find a quick & dirty solution.
Companies get what they want (the ability to cut development time and costs with prewritten code they can easily adapt).
Which they have to release the source code for free. (GPL)
1. Mozilla isn't purely GPL'd (it's a mishmash of NPL/MPL/GPL/LGPL depending on the part. They are working on cleaning this up).
2. Even with GPL'd software, you only need to release the source if you distribute the binary. If you develop/enhance GPL'd software, you don't have to release the binary/source if you don't want to.
Along comes Novell, replaces the marketing staff, and flushes that leadership down the toilet.
Novell made several mistakes with WordPrefect, but it was already almost dead before Novell bought them.
This was during the switch from MS-DOS apps to Windows apps. Wordperfect, like several other publishers, came out late with Windows apps that were bloated and wern't that good (Lotus 123 and dBase are more examples of really bad transitions to Windows).
Novell then gathered up some of these apps, rewrote some of them, and made 'PerfectOffice' - a half-way decent office suite. Unfortunately, by this time, MS had already taken over most of the market with Office...
Obviously, they resell these to places that make remanufactured ink cartridges, and the printer makers don't seem to care.
If you look a little closer, you'll see that it's actually a program designed and suppported by the printer companies.
The program had a list of cartridges that were eligable for the ream of paper - they were all the ones that were easy to refill (i.e. not chipped).
That program (and the collection bins) are the printer manufacturers way of removing those cartridges from the supply. If there aren't empty cartridges to refill, people will buy more new cartridges.
>> Given the apparent vigor of AppGen, I'm sure that the VARs weren't concerned that this would happen.
Again, a lot of companies are have problems because they think their data backups are working (up until they need to access them...).
Insuring that software escrows are occuring (and audited) is a part of doing business. If they ignore this important part of doing business, what other things are they ignoring?
Slashdot Mirror
Does the PDF standard belong to Adobe? - Yes, but they publish the standard in enough detail so that anyone can use it to read/write standard PDFs. See http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/ind ex_reference.html
e s-pdf.txt
Do they charge for this, their patents pertaining to PDF, etc? - No, not as long as you're trying to be compliant with the PDF standard. See http://www.ietf.org/ietf/IPR/adobe-ipr-draft-zill
Adobe could have created a proprietary format and tried to defend it via patents, but they haven't. They could have also tried to make money off of 3rd parties trying to create PDF reader/writers by charging for patent licenses, but they haven't.
This is the reason that the PDF format (and, by association, Adobe) is the leader in this area.
First, the article stares that the original letter about this was sent back in December of 2005 - this is before the merger/rename was completed. This means that we can't blame SBC (now renamed to AT&T) for starting this.
OTOH, knowing how the 'new' AT&T (aka SBC) has handled things before, I don't think there is any hope of them just letting this go and ignoring that they have the patent. If anything, they now have more money and lawyers to persue other companies.
The US backed Saddam Hussein's Iraq in its war against Iran because Iran was the enemy.
The US backed the Taliban (as a part of the Mujahideen) against the USSR.
Those are just 2 of many examples (just the ones that come to mind when I hear that saying) - there are many other examples of the problem with this saying (from many countries/companies/families/etc).
Note: I don't think that IBM is/will become an enemy of Linux/OSS (they have enough valid reasons to back them), it's just that the OP's saying has problems.
Also: This is actually an old Middle-Eastern saying that is usually translated as: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Near the end of the interview, they happened to mention that the new CEO had imposed a mandatory 50 hour work week - no matter the work load. Salaries weren't set to match the hours, of course.
The Tech guys I met were very nice and it looked like they were working on some interesting projects (moving their infrastructure from 3rd party apps to in-house solutions), but the mandatory overtime was a killer.
Sellers are required to collect sales tax if they sell to people in the same state.
Buyers are required to pay sales tax (on in state purchases) or Use Tax on items that they buy from other states (AFAIK, all 50 states have Use Tax laws).
Just because the seller doesn't withhold the tax doesn't mean that you don't owe it. It works the same with employment taxes - if you employer doesn't withhold taxes (or just doesn't give it to the government...) you still owe the taxes.
It isn't a 'sales tax' it's a 'use tax'.
The back of my Illinois tax form has had a 'Use Tax' form forever. You're supposed to pay it for all items purchased outside of the state.
There is nothing new about this - it's been around as long as mail-order has. It only become a big deal since the Internet made it a lot easier to do it.
I remember when I was a kid (1960's) that states were making a big deal about mail-order catalog companies not paying sales tax...
This SCO is not the company formerly known as the Santa Cruz Operation. That company sold its Unix operation to Caldera and then renamed itself Tarantella after its current main product.
Caldera renamed itself to The SCO Group and then decided that they wern't a Linux company anymore, they were a Unix company. Of course, they aren't a Unix company anymore either - they only seem to exit to sue other companies now.
If Job's would have waited a couple of months, the Newton spin-off to its own company would have been complete and he would have had a harder time killing it.
Newton was a victim of Job's return to Apple and his removing of everything from his predecessor's regime.
Publisher is a fine program - for the low end of the market (but it can't compare to any of the mid- or hi-end DTP programs). I wish there was an equivalent program available as OSS, but it isn't a 'setback for the cause'.
Note: I haven't used the latest version of Publisher (stopped doing my rocketry club's newsletter a while ago) - my main interaction is to tell people on my Web Host's forum who have problems using Publisher to do their sites (honest!) that they should switch to another program.
Andre Lamothe Launches XGameStation
It was (and probably still is)an 'interesting' company. A victim of expanding too fast and in the wrong direction.
K-Man could have competed with dBase, but dBase was better positioned and marketed.
mdbs was an excellent non-relational DB, but got steamrollered by the relational movement.
Guru (K-Man with some simple AI thrown in) was interesting, and is still one of their products.
Object/1 was an excellent development tool but it was written for OS/2 as Windows 3.0 was being released and the Windows version too way too long to develop.
mdbs (the company) still exists, but I'm not sure how well(or how many) employee's it has now (it went from 150 when I started to less then 80 when I left).
goto Rackshack.net and you'll get the 'official' word (and a redirect to EV1Servers.net)
For some reason there seems to be a lot of confusion about this.
He's from St. Petersburg, Russia. Also, he's done 205 Rentacoder jobs that average $26.71/job - approximately $5475.55 in income. Considering that Rentacoder takes a chunk of that, and he has seen less then $5000 for his work.
Back when I was unemployed, I bid on several jobs and actually won one - it was a rather fun project that paid well for a Rentacoder job, but I ended up making less then $10/hr.
Unless you're a developer from a place with a really low cost of living, Rentacoder doesn't make sense. OTOH, if you need a quick & dirty project done, it's a good place to find a quick & dirty solution.
Interesting idea, but it sounds like the book is typical of Clarke's more recent books - poor...
It's depressing to watch the quality of work decline like Clark's has over the recent past.
2. Even with GPL'd software, you only need to release the source if you distribute the binary. If you develop/enhance GPL'd software, you don't have to release the binary/source if you don't want to.
This was during the switch from MS-DOS apps to Windows apps. Wordperfect, like several other publishers, came out late with Windows apps that were bloated and wern't that good (Lotus 123 and dBase are more examples of really bad transitions to Windows).
Novell then gathered up some of these apps, rewrote some of them, and made 'PerfectOffice' - a half-way decent office suite. Unfortunately, by this time, MS had already taken over most of the market with Office...
The program had a list of cartridges that were eligable for the ream of paper - they were all the ones that were easy to refill (i.e. not chipped).
That program (and the collection bins) are the printer manufacturers way of removing those cartridges from the supply. If there aren't empty cartridges to refill, people will buy more new cartridges.
>> Given the apparent vigor of AppGen, I'm sure that the VARs weren't concerned that this would happen.
Again, a lot of companies are have problems because they think their data backups are working (up until they need to access them...).
Insuring that software escrows are occuring (and audited) is a part of doing business. If they ignore this important part of doing business, what other things are they ignoring?