The biggest difference betwenn the US and China is that our crackpots can be voted out of office.
The idea that their is any ECONOMICS to be gained by a lunar presence is utter nonsense. The best possible outcome would be a sulf-sustaining community after 30 years and trillions of dollars.
I'm actually pretty glad to see China moving in this direction. When rice-bowls start going empty because of a boon-doggle space program, maybe they'll be some sparks for change and revolution.
Well landing is ONE way to put it. The other way to put it is that it SMASHED into the face of the moon never to be heard from again.
Planned impact or not, it's not really a landing if your space-craft doesn't SURVIVE. If NASA wanted to CRASH a probe into the moon it could have done it WAY before the Soviets.
Occassionally the Romans were harassed by acts of terrorism.
They mostly responded by ahniahlating the territory where the threat came from. What we did to Iraq is a slap on the wrist compared to what Rome did to Judea and Carthage.
Someone steals your invaluable coin collection, then tapes a single coin each of your worthless Richie-Rich comic collection that he knew you were selling in a forthcoming rummage sale.
After selling a few Richie-Rich comics, you notice that the coins are taped into the comic books. But, like a nimrod, you just keep selling all your Richie-Rich comics as-is under the assumption that the third party will be held liable for damages even though you KNEW you were selling your coin collection away.
You gave the buyers no indication that you knew their was a valuable coin in the worthless comic. You gave them an EXPLICIT license to complete rights to the contents of what they bought.
After collecting your $1.50 for 200 comics you sue the third party for the difference between $1.50 and the appraised value of the coin collection.
It sounds rediculous but thats effectively what SCO did. That is, except the fact that Linux is WAAAY cooler than Richie-Rich. The idea that you could hold the third party liable for losses AFTER you discovered the error AND were in your power to prevent it.
OK, I'll give you one more REALISTIC example. Lets say that you're an auction house. You discover that an insider has hidden VERY valuable paintings right underneath some low-value works. He's replaced the good stuff with copies. The ploy is that his "associates" will high-ball the junk work and walk away with Mona-Lisas.
Someone in the house discovers the ploy at the last moment. Two of ten of the valuable paintings have been sold under "Dogs programming Linux" or something like that. At that point the auction manager chooses to proceed with the auction as-is to preserve face and deal with the issue afterward.
After selling "Newfoundland waxing his car" the valuable works have all gone. Ironically, their is a deranged billionaire dog-lover in attendence who bids of the pooch paintings and wins bids on five of the ten.
The auction master does not inform the property people of the mixup and a transfer of property occurs. The deranged billionaire takes posession of five of the ten dog paintings concealing master-pieces. The crooks walk away with the other five including "Chihauhau making Tacos".
Does the Deranged Billionaire dog lover retain ownership of the concealed master-pieces. He made a transaction in good faith. The auction house management had knowledge of the actual nature of the dog paintings. A transaction occured, both parties acting in good-faith.
Now the crooks would obviously have to return their works because they KNEW it was a fradulent transaction. In the case of the Deranged Billionaire, I believe he would RETAIN the property since the auction house KNOWINGLY sold him property and KNEW the contents.
So here the Linux community sits with these alleged "tainted code" items. SCO distributed them KNOWINGLY under GPL. They were under no obligation to do so. In fact they were compelled (by prior agreements) NOT TO!!!!
Irregardless of the actions of an errant third party, SCO KNEW that they were distributing their OWN source code under a license which effectively made it free as long as you didn't try to sell it. Had SCO exercised due dilligence by a) stopping distribution and b) notifying the parties involved of the error, they would have retained ownership to the code in question.
Their is no law or contract that can prevent you from doing something DUMB!!!!! If I willingly and knowingly give my stuff away, I can't point to my friend and say "He tricked me into doing it." Not as long as I had already discovered the trick.
I would think that if someone has a well-defined coding style that the same stuff would crop up in more than one place. The same naming conventions, etc...
The question is... is the code sections relevant. One can look at music where theft of concept is rampant and effectively expected. Proving infringement is notoriously difficult to do as the simply tweaking the rythm or melody will result in a different work.
It's almost like trying to copyright a design pattern. It's more like a method or a strategy, a way of going about things. In some cases these could be absoluetly trivial problems that have trivial solutions. In such cases, it's no wonder that one would respond (code) in the same fashion.
If their truly is "infringing" code it really has to be LARGE CHUNKS. As we all know, code from two different (but similar) systems is about as interchangeable melted lego bricks. The idea that someone could intentionally chop out small pieces VERBATIM and expect it to work is pretty silly.
Copying large grained, well encapsulated, functional modules of code is the only software plagarism could possibly be effective. 5-10 lines wouldn't work correctly without major modification, it's not worth copying. It would have to be in the range of hundreds and thousands of contiguous lines which match in a functional fashion.
Anything below that threshold is effectively the same as putting a thousand (code) monkeys in a room with PCs and seeing if they randomly repeat AT&Ts greatest sonnets.
We (Tivoli Indy) had an IBM IP guy come in and explain a lot of this stuff. He basically explained the strategy of patenting anything and everything possible.
Effectively, if someone sues them they search their IMMENSE inventory of patents and find things that apply (even remotely). After that, it's a simple matter of cross-licensing or annihalation via litigation.
BTW, IBM is the #1 patent holder in the US. They file more patent applications than ALL OTHER parties in the US. They have a VERY NICE incentive program for folks to patent what they do. And they DO take advantage of it.
Is it even possible to sell all-rights associated with a copyright but NOT the copyright itself?????
As the owner of the copyright, doesn't Novell still have rights to use ALL of it's code. It may not be able to distribute it, but it still has use rights.
If this is the case, it is possible that a third party could BUY Novell. Gut the company of all it's IP sell it's trademarks and abandon the corporate shell with which SCO has a contract.
In that case wouldn't the liberated IP be free of contract restraints. The only liable party would be the gutted company (Novell in name only) for violating a contract. At that point the company likely would no longer have any assests or revenue (nothing to sue)?
In that case, Novell as the copyright owner could simply grant a license by publishing the relevant code under GPL. Than the issue is finished!!!!
In the case where Novell agreed NOT to grant license (giving SCO exclusive rights). Novell could simply sell the Copyrights to say... IBM and retain rights of use. Then IBM could say... sell it back also retaining use rights.
Wouldn't it be VERY HARD to determine WHAT damages would be?
IBM may have violated the license by inserting proprietary code into an open source project. But SCO, knowingly (and still apparently legally in all scenarios (since they were authorized to sub-license)) and willingly published the code under GPL.
Any damages would be constrained between the time IBM released the "stolen code" and the time when SCO blessed the code by knowingly releasing it under GPL.
Even beyond that, the fact that SCO DID publish it knowingly and willingly under GPL could be interpreted as implicit or even explicit permission for the code to be there in the first place thus indemnifying IBM from fault and damages.
It looks like SCO MUST now reveal WHAT code is affected just to stay relevant. They must differentiate their stuff from both Linux AND the source they received (under license) from Novell.
Isn't there a possibility that the "relevant code" is a derivative work from the code licensed by SCO from Novell?
In that case, Novell would have no say in this matter. Unless, the terms of the deal said that Novell ALSO owned any IP from derivative work by SCO. In which case the SCO lawyers may very well be shoe-ins for the dumbass-incompetent attorney of the year award:-)
Well, squares don't generally appear in nature. Which means the square casing you suggest is definitely NOT-NATURAL as you suggest it SHOULD be!!! But the shape of their NEW disc format looks like the profile of MOST hills.
The memory stick is blue/purple/white. I believe it complements the color scheme on their cameras. Additionally, it makes it VERY EASY to locate the stick when you open the side compartment which is internally BLACK.
BTW, the shape of the memory stick is roughly equivalent to that of a plant cell. So it too is a NATURAL shape.:-)
One must face the underlying economics of selling game consoles....
Sony LOSES MONEY on EVERY PS2 they sell.
They make the money back by effectively "Taxing" the games that are sold for PS2 and selling accessories. It's exactly the same in the printer business.
I guess what I'm saying is that you can either LIVE with their pricing structure. OR, you can buy a mini-laptop with the latest NVidia/ATI chipset and do your portable gaming that way at 10x the price of their comparitively VERY INEXPENSIVE hardware.
Unlike the BetaMax days, Sony now licenses it's technologies. Both Mini-Disc and Memory Stick have third-party vendors.
The strategy is simple, if you can make just as much money licensing a technology as you can selling your own, it doesn't matter. As a matter of fact, it's easier.
From the photos, it appears as if this format has a permanent casement. (I could be wrong, the casement COULD be removeable).
Given that this device's prime demographic are adolescent boys, a media format WITHOUT a durable casement is probably DOOMED!!!!!
Beyond that, I think we all get pissed off handling CD/DVDs in general as they are just SO DAMMED FRAGILE.
I was very GLAD to see that one of the new Ultra-DVD formats has a hard case in the spec. This is probably since it is aimed squarely at media production and data archiving folks who need DURABLE formats. But beyond that, It will certainly be nice to have something that CAN be scratched and say... OH WELL!!!!
If Sony had provided PC drives AND openened up licensing, it would have been a PERFECT replacement for the ubiquitous but now VIRTUALLY USELESS floppy.
Mini-Discs have come into the $2 range do to their utility in Audio Recording. That seriously beats both Zip(100-250) and LS-120(240).
Come to think of it, a 3.5" format MiniDisc that would act like a floppy would STILL kick ass since CD-RW STILL doesn't work at the BIOS level. AND CD-RW is STILL a NAKED format (no shell means scratches).
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I highly encourage China to buy miliatary technology and technical expertise from the French. That should keep the US safe for several decades.
The biggest difference betwenn the US and China is that our crackpots can be voted out of office.
The idea that their is any ECONOMICS to be gained by a lunar presence is utter nonsense. The best possible outcome would be a sulf-sustaining community after 30 years and trillions of dollars.
I'm actually pretty glad to see China moving in this direction. When rice-bowls start going empty because of a boon-doggle space program, maybe they'll be some sparks for change and revolution.
Well landing is ONE way to put it. The other way to put it is that it SMASHED into the face of the moon never to be heard from again.
Planned impact or not, it's not really a landing if your space-craft doesn't SURVIVE. If NASA wanted to CRASH a probe into the moon it could have done it WAY before the Soviets.
Occassionally the Romans were harassed by acts of terrorism.
They mostly responded by ahniahlating the territory where the threat came from. What we did to Iraq is a slap on the wrist compared to what Rome did to Judea and Carthage.
VERY cool law.
One question, do you have the right to a 1hr lunch?????
Careful,
;-) It is BSD based, is it not?
SCO might start to claim that they own MacOSX as well
IBM has it's own Java implementation. It happens to perform a LOT better.
They are quite safe from Sun's ineptitude.
Actually stupid (or non-stupid) metaphors seems to be the totality of how law is taught & interpreted.
The metaphor could be a REAL case with a verdict or a hypothetical case (for us who are forward looking).
Actually it's more like.
Someone steals your invaluable coin collection, then tapes a single coin each of your worthless Richie-Rich comic collection that he knew you were selling in a forthcoming rummage sale.
After selling a few Richie-Rich comics, you notice that the coins are taped into the comic books. But, like a nimrod, you just keep selling all your Richie-Rich comics as-is under the assumption that the third party will be held liable for damages even though you KNEW you were selling your coin collection away.
You gave the buyers no indication that you knew their was a valuable coin in the worthless comic. You gave them an EXPLICIT license to complete rights to the contents of what they bought.
After collecting your $1.50 for 200 comics you sue the third party for the difference between $1.50 and the appraised value of the coin collection.
It sounds rediculous but thats effectively what SCO did. That is, except the fact that Linux is WAAAY cooler than Richie-Rich. The idea that you could hold the third party liable for losses AFTER you discovered the error AND were in your power to prevent it.
OK, I'll give you one more REALISTIC example. Lets say that you're an auction house. You discover that an insider has hidden VERY valuable paintings right underneath some low-value works. He's replaced the good stuff with copies. The ploy is that his "associates" will high-ball the junk work and walk away with Mona-Lisas.
Someone in the house discovers the ploy at the last moment. Two of ten of the valuable paintings have been sold under "Dogs programming Linux" or something like that. At that point the auction manager chooses to proceed with the auction as-is to preserve face and deal with the issue afterward.
After selling "Newfoundland waxing his car" the valuable works have all gone. Ironically, their is a deranged billionaire dog-lover in attendence who bids of the pooch paintings and wins bids on five of the ten.
The auction master does not inform the property people of the mixup and a transfer of property occurs. The deranged billionaire takes posession of five of the ten dog paintings concealing master-pieces. The crooks walk away with the other five including "Chihauhau making Tacos".
Does the Deranged Billionaire dog lover retain ownership of the concealed master-pieces. He made a transaction in good faith. The auction house management had knowledge of the actual nature of the dog paintings. A transaction occured, both parties acting in good-faith.
Now the crooks would obviously have to return their works because they KNEW it was a fradulent transaction. In the case of the Deranged Billionaire, I believe he would RETAIN the property since the auction house KNOWINGLY sold him property and KNEW the contents.
So here the Linux community sits with these alleged "tainted code" items. SCO distributed them KNOWINGLY under GPL. They were under no obligation to do so. In fact they were compelled (by prior agreements) NOT TO!!!!
Irregardless of the actions of an errant third party, SCO KNEW that they were distributing their OWN source code under a license which effectively made it free as long as you didn't try to sell it. Had SCO exercised due dilligence by a) stopping distribution and b) notifying the parties involved of the error, they would have retained ownership to the code in question.
Their is no law or contract that can prevent you from doing something DUMB!!!!! If I willingly and knowingly give my stuff away, I can't point to my friend and say "He tricked me into doing it." Not as long as I had already discovered the trick.
Rightfully said. He one in a free and fair election and perfectly fair election ... 5-4.
Be careful,
SCO might sue YOU now for publishing their proprietary source code (as identified by the diff utility).
This is a very good point.
... is the code sections relevant. One can look at music where theft of concept is rampant and effectively expected. Proving infringement is notoriously difficult to do as the simply tweaking the rythm or melody will result in a different work.
I would think that if someone has a well-defined coding style that the same stuff would crop up in more than one place. The same naming conventions, etc...
The question is
It's almost like trying to copyright a design pattern. It's more like a method or a strategy, a way of going about things. In some cases these could be absoluetly trivial problems that have trivial solutions. In such cases, it's no wonder that one would respond (code) in the same fashion.
If their truly is "infringing" code it really has to be LARGE CHUNKS. As we all know, code from two different (but similar) systems is about as interchangeable melted lego bricks. The idea that someone could intentionally chop out small pieces VERBATIM and expect it to work is pretty silly.
Copying large grained, well encapsulated, functional modules of code is the only software plagarism could possibly be effective. 5-10 lines wouldn't work correctly without major modification, it's not worth copying. It would have to be in the range of hundreds and thousands of contiguous lines which match in a functional fashion.
Anything below that threshold is effectively the same as putting a thousand (code) monkeys in a room with PCs and seeing if they randomly repeat AT&Ts greatest sonnets.
Yeah,
We (Tivoli Indy) had an IBM IP guy come in and explain a lot of this stuff. He basically explained the strategy of patenting anything and everything possible.
Effectively, if someone sues them they search their IMMENSE inventory of patents and find things that apply (even remotely). After that, it's a simple matter of cross-licensing or annihalation via litigation.
BTW, IBM is the #1 patent holder in the US. They file more patent applications than ALL OTHER parties in the US. They have a VERY NICE incentive program for folks to patent what they do. And they DO take advantage of it.
Is it even possible to sell all-rights associated with a copyright but NOT the copyright itself?????
As the owner of the copyright, doesn't Novell still have rights to use ALL of it's code. It may not be able to distribute it, but it still has use rights.
If this is the case, it is possible that a third party could BUY Novell. Gut the company of all it's IP sell it's trademarks and abandon the corporate shell with which SCO has a contract.
In that case wouldn't the liberated IP be free of contract restraints. The only liable party would be the gutted company (Novell in name only) for violating a contract. At that point the company likely would no longer have any assests or revenue (nothing to sue)?
In that case, Novell as the copyright owner could simply grant a license by publishing the relevant code under GPL. Than the issue is finished!!!!
... IBM and retain rights of use. Then IBM could say ... sell it back also retaining use rights.
In the case where Novell agreed NOT to grant license (giving SCO exclusive rights). Novell could simply sell the Copyrights to say
Simple!!!
If Novell DOES own the UNIX copyrights, this will likely result in either
1) licensing from Novell or...
2) IBM buying out Novell wholesale. This would likely put a stop to the ENTIRE issue.
Wouldn't it be VERY HARD to determine WHAT damages would be?
IBM may have violated the license by inserting proprietary code into an open source project. But SCO, knowingly (and still apparently legally in all scenarios (since they were authorized to sub-license)) and willingly published the code under GPL.
Any damages would be constrained between the time IBM released the "stolen code" and the time when SCO blessed the code by knowingly releasing it under GPL.
Even beyond that, the fact that SCO DID publish it knowingly and willingly under GPL could be interpreted as implicit or even explicit permission for the code to be there in the first place thus indemnifying IBM from fault and damages.
It looks like SCO MUST now reveal WHAT code is affected just to stay relevant. They must differentiate their stuff from both Linux AND the source they received (under license) from Novell.
Isn't there a possibility that the "relevant code" is a derivative work from the code licensed by SCO from Novell?
:-)
In that case, Novell would have no say in this matter. Unless, the terms of the deal said that Novell ALSO owned any IP from derivative work by SCO. In which case the SCO lawyers may very well be shoe-ins for the dumbass-incompetent attorney of the year award
Well, squares don't generally appear in nature. Which means the square casing you suggest is definitely NOT-NATURAL as you suggest it SHOULD be!!! But the shape of their NEW disc format looks like the profile of MOST hills.
:-)
The memory stick is blue/purple/white. I believe it complements the color scheme on their cameras. Additionally, it makes it VERY EASY to locate the stick when you open the side compartment which is internally BLACK.
BTW, the shape of the memory stick is roughly equivalent to that of a plant cell. So it too is a NATURAL shape.
One must face the underlying economics of selling game consoles ....
Sony LOSES MONEY on EVERY PS2 they sell.
They make the money back by effectively "Taxing" the games that are sold for PS2 and selling accessories. It's exactly the same in the printer business.
I guess what I'm saying is that you can either LIVE with their pricing structure. OR, you can buy a mini-laptop with the latest NVidia/ATI chipset and do your portable gaming that way at 10x the price of their comparitively VERY INEXPENSIVE hardware.
Who says that no-one will rip apart one a PSP, learn how the drive mechanism works and develop a "ripper" for PSP games.
Of course, running them will be an altogether MORE difficult matter.
Unlike the BetaMax days, Sony now licenses it's technologies. Both Mini-Disc and Memory Stick have third-party vendors.
The strategy is simple, if you can make just as much money licensing a technology as you can selling your own, it doesn't matter. As a matter of fact, it's easier.
From the photos, it appears as if this format has a permanent casement. (I could be wrong, the casement COULD be removeable).
... OH WELL!!!!
Given that this device's prime demographic are adolescent boys, a media format WITHOUT a durable casement is probably DOOMED!!!!!
Beyond that, I think we all get pissed off handling CD/DVDs in general as they are just SO DAMMED FRAGILE.
I was very GLAD to see that one of the new Ultra-DVD formats has a hard case in the spec. This is probably since it is aimed squarely at media production and data archiving folks who need DURABLE formats. But beyond that, It will certainly be nice to have something that CAN be scratched and say
It's a REAL shame too.
If Sony had provided PC drives AND openened up licensing, it would have been a PERFECT replacement for the ubiquitous but now VIRTUALLY USELESS floppy.
Mini-Discs have come into the $2 range do to their utility in Audio Recording. That seriously beats both Zip(100-250) and LS-120(240).
Come to think of it, a 3.5" format MiniDisc that would act like a floppy would STILL kick ass since CD-RW STILL doesn't work at the BIOS level. AND CD-RW is STILL a NAKED format (no shell means scratches).
You must be a prolific coder if you can write 1.8Gigs of code for your Aibo.
:-)
I think a memory stick slot for Aibo would be JUST FINE. Heck, maybe they can get him to play MP3's on command.
Not that Aibo has ever held any appeal for me. I'll stick with my REAL dog