Re:Once they threaten that, they're dead (in europ
on
EU May Fine Microsoft
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I doubt MS would ever even consider pulling out of any area. A desktop without MS software is a desktop with something else. Microsofts whole tactic has been to eliminate competition whatever the cost, even at a big loss. They usually do this by displacing competative software on as many desktops as possible, not leaving any profit space for the competition to live in.
Pulling out of the EU would create a huge profit space for competition.
That means it is impossible for a platform provider to charge a royalty in a non-discriminatory way.
In the case of this discussion, Non-Descriminatory is refering to patent licensing, not to standards. (AFAIK, that whole part of the question was about licensing and not standards, but that is all interpretation.) In patent licensing, non-descriminatory means anyone can get equal access for equal cost/terms.
Your point seems to be that it is not fair to standards users, which is true and also the main point of the overall discussion. But licencing terms alone CAN be non-descriminatory outside of that context. That seems to be the fine line W3C is walking.
1. If the intellectual property owner owns the idea, of course they don't pay themselves. It doesn't make any difference who it is. If IBM owns a patent, they don't pay themselves, they just use it. That is what IP is about. Why do you even ask?
2. The companies that own the IP want fiefdoms. This is where they get their control and money. They use whatever influence/tricks they have to convence standards bodies to use their patents so they can get control, and through control profits. Submarine patents are dirty business, so companies are avoiding it now (except Rambus). Now they want to work above board and make it just plain acceptable.
As to why the W3C would accept this position has more to do with the influence/pressure being placed on them rather than any moral fiber (or lack there of). They had a good stand not using patents, but lots of pressure wares you down after a while.
The really stupid part is that those greedy types that are begging for all this are blinding themselves to what they are opening themselves up to. Sure, they get their patent accepted. But everyone else gets theirs accepted as well. Now your patent gives you one advantage, but all the other patented standards just set you back lots.
I can't imagine why any college would have required all students to own a computer way back when net access in the classroom was only a dream.
Yes, I imagine you don't have that much imagination.
Harvy Mudd (Claremont, CA) required undergraduates to have, or purchase from the school, PCs in 1983 (or earlier, anyone know when it started?) Thats 8, not 9. This has been going on for a long time.
Computers are useful for more than just Net Access. Word processing springs to mind, as well as programming, modeling and simulation, or even drawing and games. The internet may be all you can think of but it wasn't part of their scope. They found things to do without it all the same.
It's someone who doesn't think God exists, but isn't willing to say so out loud.
Do What??? That whole statement seems to center around the premise that I even care.
Do you wander around all day saying "I Don't Believe in Santa Clause." Do you confront people with your disbelief? Do you join the "Don't believe in Santa Clause" movement?
NO!.
I don't care. Plain and simple.
To be more accurate, I don't care about organized religion, churches, meetings, prayers, et al. I do believe that the basic teachings included in most religious texts, be it the bibles, Qu'ran (sp?) or whatever, all have good ideas about human cooperation and peace. But the absolutism that these texts are held to is just closed minded and dangerous.
My offer is: Read the text, pay attention to the parts about peace, cooperation, love your neighbor, help others, all that stuff. The rest of the stuff that doesn't really fit with modern knowledge (science, astornomy et al) is just historical efforts to understand science but have been outdated by modern knowledge. And when it says "This is the absolute, correct word of God and shall not be disparaged in any way" think "Some human is making a power play and trying to control his neighbors" or "Microsoft".
Sorry for the confusion. Only the Cat story was related indirectly to you (greenrd). The rest was a ramble.
Why is there a contradiction between the two statements? Please elaborate When one person declares that other people are doing something immoral, yet that immoral act is something that otherwise does not affect them or anyone else (Pr0n, Gay, alternate religion,...), they may call for those people to be suppressed or corrected. (I speak of the extremist like Jerry Fallwell et al.) The action they are seeking to eleminate is not public, does not affect others, and is not illegal.
They declare that those peoples difference in moral attitude affects them and the rest of the country merely by existing.
Yet they may (and often do) offend other people with their own public statements. They defend their own right to public expression while refusing other people the same right. That is the contridiction.
I'm sorry, but you're not making much sense to me. WHat do you mean?
Refelxitivity: a made up word, root in the mathematical reflexive property where: If A = B then B = A.
People should recognize that other people have the same rights that they do, and that they are subject to the same restrictions that they place on others.
It's copyrighted whether he states it or not. Copyright law says everything is copyrighted when it is written. (Even your little blurb)
RMS is only reminding you of that, not establishing it.
It was discovered today that people posting messages in a B'nai Brith web site were incouraging others to join the movement of Zion and help clean the holy land of the infidels of moslem. It is felt that such activity could be considered dangerous to the safety and wellbeing of the Palistinian people of that region, and therefore the web site should be censored for the public good.
It's amazing what happens when you reverse a complaint.
Heard of a person who was veggie for moral reasons. She had a pet cat, and forced the cat to eat veggie also. The cat almost died of malnutrition before someone finally banged it through her head that cats need meat to survive.
Morality is nice, in all areas (food, society, religion...). It's when one person forces their ideas of morality on others that things tend to go bad, not the moral idea itself.
So what constitutes forcing your views on others and them forcing their views on you?
Force of law?
Social persecution?
Preaching in public?
Being Visible?
Existing?
For so many people, other people merely existing constitutes an attack on their own moral ideals. But those same people feel they deserve the freedom to preach their own morals wide and loud, or worse.
What will it take to let make people recognize the reflexitivity of the situation, your rights == my rights, and live with it?
That's the closest reference yet.
What I was drawing from was Burning Chrome, in which corporate armies attack and defend corporate campuses/fortresses with their own armies of modern military hardware. It takes "Corporate Raiders" and "Hostile Takovers" to a new level.
When the corporations get their own militaries and have wars, I'll be scared.
Right now, it's still possible (though not fun) to keep you head down and avoid most of the fallout. When the bullets start flying, consumers be the first casualties. ["Hey, that guy's buying the competing product! Quick, kill the competition's cash flow!"]
Dateline December 31, 2001: AP
"In a final decision, Judge Kollar-Kotelly presiding over the punishment phase of the Microsoft anti-trust has decided that the company must pay 3 Billion dollars in penalties and be split up into three seperate companies. One will be primarily concerned with operating systems, the second with development tools and desktop applications, the third with internet applications and services. Upon hearing the results, Steve Balmer, President and CEO of Microsoft (MSFT) said "What! We paid millions of dollers to retry this and still got the same result? We didn't even lie this time around? Where can I buy a better judge?" The department of justice noted that the extra expence of handeling the case to the same conclusion would come from Microsofts penalty fine."
There are several theories about "The beginning of life" that mostly center around where complex molecules came from first.
They have been found in meteors and comet debries. They have been generated in labs under "lightning" conditions. They form deep underground in oil deposits.
Saying any one was first doesn't make much difference, when all of them were present when early life (self reproducing compounds) first appeared.
It's like saying the sand that made the silicon that made the microprocessor in my computer came from california while the sand that made the silicon that made the microprocessor in your computer came from florida, so they are very different computers for that reason.
Now, if he were to claim that complex-self-reproducing compounds came from off-world, and the mechanism that they use is the same mechanism that most cells use today, then he'd have something different.
I don't happen to believe that people should not be able to own software (in the copyright since). I also beleve that software should have proper attribution if the copyright owner requests it.
The prior post was basicly juxtoposing two quotes from the article and seeing how he makes one type of demand in one place and a different type of demand in another place.
I mostly agree with FSF except for their request that all software should be without copyright protection. Copyright has its place. If FSF doesn't like it, their is nothing stopping them from continuing to do what they are doing now, writing good software and licencing it with the GPL.
Also off topic: It seems that the recent increase in the recognition and deployment of GNU, Free, Open, other similar software can be largely attributed to the publicity around Linux. Linux may have its technical basis in GNU, but currently, GNU has its publicity base supported by Linux. We say that Microsoft is a marketing company whose PR outperforms their products. This is an important analysis. It would be difficult to gauge just how much recognition GNU and free software would have today if it had not been for the publicity of the Linux kernel project. Other projects would certainly still exist and continue to grow, but it seems like the catalyst that was Linux brought together a lot of the peices of GNU and made them more public and recognizable. Linux owes its foundation to GNU, but GNU owes its wide recognition to Linux. Its not a one way street.
If all software can be distributed freely, then there is no money to be had writing software. None. Nada. All you can make money on is support/service, which isn't working so well for Redhat right now.
There is still a market for straight development. If someone wants a program that does some specific task, and that program does not exist anywhere, they have to write it. That usually involves hiring a programmer. Tada, work!
This mostly involves custom, highly specific, vertical tasks. But, today, a majority of software developed is like this.
We see lots of general software out there, like OS, editors, compilers, databases, whatever. But hidden inside most companies is a warehouse of custom code developed in house for very specific tasks. These are the dark matter of the software world. There is a lot of it, but few people ever see it.
Today, some argue that the "right to choose your own software license" is the greatest software freedom. By contrast, I think that it is an inappropriate power, not a freedom.
(BTW, I encourage you to thank the GNU project by reminding people that the system so often called "Linux" is actually the GNU system with Linux as its kernel).
If it is not appropriate for people to own or control software, is it appropriate for people to own or control (or even suggest) attribution of software? Or is that just another restriction being placed on software that shouldn't be allowed.
Today, some argue that the "right to choose your own software license" is the greatest software freedom. By contrast, I think that, like slavery, it is an inappropriate power, not a freedom. The two situations both cause harm, and they differ only in the degree of harm that each causes
I like freedom too, but this is a bit of a stretch. People have rights, including their own freedom. Software does not have its own freedom, it is a tool used by people. Controlling software is like controlling your own car or your own bank account. It won't do anything by itself. It needs someone to use it. This is not even in the same conversation as slavery!
Stating arbitrarily that noone should be allowed to determine the outcome of their own work is nuts. Patents are abused heavily, but copyright has its place. Copyright cannot prevent competition by alternative implementation, patents can.
The best action for Free and OS is to compete with a better implementation, not to take away what the competition (Closed source) has. Taking away their basis for existance is as bad as them trying to take ours through IP, patents and crazy restrictive laws. Its no more right for us than it is for them. Open competition on features/licence terms is good. Restriction on what licence terms/implementation restrictions/legal activities are available is no good for either side.
The overview talks about how C/C++ has become overloaded and needs to be simplified. Isn't that the same reasoning that lead to Java. how different will this be from just using Java? (syntax aside, just object orientation and capable architecture).
That was a smart move. It doesn't mean he's giving in. It means he knows how to release the information in a way that the DMCA can't hurt him.
He saw what happened to DeCSS. What he needs to do is create a whole product/application that has real legal uses (along with possibly some infrenging uses). Then release that. The legal uses should make the application valid under DMCA, while the information can "leak" through code or specifications.
Not to say the powers that bee won't try to stop it anyway, but a valid application goes a long way towards sidesteping the DMCA.
Imagine if Livid had been released before DeCSS. Same code, real usefull application. It can't be labeled a pirate tool, but it still releases the information.
It's fun to watch the corporations manuvering and battling each other over market space that doesn't really matter.
In some ways they must, because they don't know whether this market will take off or not. They can't afford to be left behind when the wind changes. But it is expensive and wastefull to do so when it doesn't work out. Even if the E-Book market never really takes off, publishers still have to fight for control of the channel simply to maintain monopoly on their titles.
Slashdot Mirror
Pulling out of the EU would create a huge profit space for competition.
In the case of this discussion, Non-Descriminatory is refering to patent licensing, not to standards. (AFAIK, that whole part of the question was about licensing and not standards, but that is all interpretation.) In patent licensing, non-descriminatory means anyone can get equal access for equal cost/terms.
Your point seems to be that it is not fair to standards users, which is true and also the main point of the overall discussion. But licencing terms alone CAN be non-descriminatory outside of that context. That seems to be the fine line W3C is walking.
2. The companies that own the IP want fiefdoms. This is where they get their control and money. They use whatever influence/tricks they have to convence standards bodies to use their patents so they can get control, and through control profits. Submarine patents are dirty business, so companies are avoiding it now (except Rambus). Now they want to work above board and make it just plain acceptable.
As to why the W3C would accept this position has more to do with the influence/pressure being placed on them rather than any moral fiber (or lack there of). They had a good stand not using patents, but lots of pressure wares you down after a while.
The really stupid part is that those greedy types that are begging for all this are blinding themselves to what they are opening themselves up to. Sure, they get their patent accepted. But everyone else gets theirs accepted as well. Now your patent gives you one advantage, but all the other patented standards just set you back lots.
Yes, I imagine you don't have that much imagination.
Harvy Mudd (Claremont, CA) required undergraduates to have, or purchase from the school, PCs in 1983 (or earlier, anyone know when it started?) Thats 8, not 9. This has been going on for a long time.
Computers are useful for more than just Net Access. Word processing springs to mind, as well as programming, modeling and simulation, or even drawing and games. The internet may be all you can think of but it wasn't part of their scope. They found things to do without it all the same.
Do What??? That whole statement seems to center around the premise that I even care.
Do you wander around all day saying "I Don't Believe in Santa Clause." Do you confront people with your disbelief? Do you join the "Don't believe in Santa Clause" movement?
NO!.
I don't care. Plain and simple.
To be more accurate, I don't care about organized religion, churches, meetings, prayers, et al. I do believe that the basic teachings included in most religious texts, be it the bibles, Qu'ran (sp?) or whatever, all have good ideas about human cooperation and peace. But the absolutism that these texts are held to is just closed minded and dangerous.
My offer is: Read the text, pay attention to the parts about peace, cooperation, love your neighbor, help others, all that stuff. The rest of the stuff that doesn't really fit with modern knowledge (science, astornomy et al) is just historical efforts to understand science but have been outdated by modern knowledge. And when it says "This is the absolute, correct word of God and shall not be disparaged in any way" think "Some human is making a power play and trying to control his neighbors" or "Microsoft".
Why is there a contradiction between the two statements? Please elaborate ...), they may call for those people to be suppressed or corrected. (I speak of the extremist like Jerry Fallwell et al.) The action they are seeking to eleminate is not public, does not affect others, and is not illegal.
They declare that those peoples difference in moral attitude affects them and the rest of the country merely by existing.
When one person declares that other people are doing something immoral, yet that immoral act is something that otherwise does not affect them or anyone else (Pr0n, Gay, alternate religion,
Yet they may (and often do) offend other people with their own public statements. They defend their own right to public expression while refusing other people the same right. That is the contridiction.
I'm sorry, but you're not making much sense to me. WHat do you mean?
Refelxitivity: a made up word, root in the mathematical reflexive property where:
If A = B then B = A.
People should recognize that other people have the same rights that they do, and that they are subject to the same restrictions that they place on others.
It's copyrighted whether he states it or not. Copyright law says everything is copyrighted when it is written. (Even your little blurb)
RMS is only reminding you of that, not establishing it.
It's amazing what happens when you reverse a complaint.
Morality is nice, in all areas (food, society, religion...). It's when one person forces their ideas of morality on others that things tend to go bad, not the moral idea itself.
So what constitutes forcing your views on others and them forcing their views on you?
Force of law?
Social persecution?
Preaching in public?
Being Visible?
Existing?
For so many people, other people merely existing constitutes an attack on their own moral ideals. But those same people feel they deserve the freedom to preach their own morals wide and loud, or worse.
What will it take to let make people recognize the reflexitivity of the situation, your rights == my rights, and live with it?
That's the closest reference yet.
What I was drawing from was Burning Chrome, in which corporate armies attack and defend corporate campuses/fortresses with their own armies of modern military hardware. It takes "Corporate Raiders" and "Hostile Takovers" to a new level.
Right now, it's still possible (though not fun) to keep you head down and avoid most of the fallout.
When the bullets start flying, consumers be the first casualties. ["Hey, that guy's buying the competing product! Quick, kill the competition's cash flow!"]
Home Office.
Don't need cubes here (yet)
...then I realized that right now, I have a foozball table, big screen TV and a bar in my office, and a pool table and gym in the next room.
"In a final decision, Judge Kollar-Kotelly presiding over the punishment phase of the Microsoft anti-trust has decided that the company must pay 3 Billion dollars in penalties and be split up into three seperate companies. One will be primarily concerned with operating systems, the second with development tools and desktop applications, the third with internet applications and services. Upon hearing the results, Steve Balmer, President and CEO of Microsoft (MSFT) said "What! We paid millions of dollers to retry this and still got the same result? We didn't even lie this time around? Where can I buy a better judge?" The department of justice noted that the extra expence of handeling the case to the same conclusion would come from Microsofts penalty fine."
And so it goes.
They have been found in meteors and comet debries. They have been generated in labs under "lightning" conditions. They form deep underground in oil deposits.
Saying any one was first doesn't make much difference, when all of them were present when early life (self reproducing compounds) first appeared.
It's like saying the sand that made the silicon that made the microprocessor in my computer came from california while the sand that made the silicon that made the microprocessor in your computer came from florida, so they are very different computers for that reason.
Now, if he were to claim that complex-self-reproducing compounds came from off-world, and the mechanism that they use is the same mechanism that most cells use today, then he'd have something different.
I don't happen to believe that people should not be able to own software (in the copyright since). I also beleve that software should have proper attribution if the copyright owner requests it.
The prior post was basicly juxtoposing two quotes from the article and seeing how he makes one type of demand in one place and a different type of demand in another place.
I mostly agree with FSF except for their request that all software should be without copyright protection. Copyright has its place. If FSF doesn't like it, their is nothing stopping them from continuing to do what they are doing now, writing good software and licencing it with the GPL.
Also off topic:
It seems that the recent increase in the recognition and deployment of GNU, Free, Open, other similar software can be largely attributed to the publicity around Linux. Linux may have its technical basis in GNU, but currently, GNU has its publicity base supported by Linux. We say that Microsoft is a marketing company whose PR outperforms their products. This is an important analysis. It would be difficult to gauge just how much recognition GNU and free software would have today if it had not been for the publicity of the Linux kernel project. Other projects would certainly still exist and continue to grow, but it seems like the catalyst that was Linux brought together a lot of the peices of GNU and made them more public and recognizable. Linux owes its foundation to GNU, but GNU owes its wide recognition to Linux. Its not a one way street.
There is still a market for straight development. If someone wants a program that does some specific task, and that program does not exist anywhere, they have to write it. That usually involves hiring a programmer. Tada, work!
This mostly involves custom, highly specific, vertical tasks. But, today, a majority of software developed is like this.
We see lots of general software out there, like OS, editors, compilers, databases, whatever. But hidden inside most companies is a warehouse of custom code developed in house for very specific tasks. These are the dark matter of the software world. There is a lot of it, but few people ever see it.
(BTW, I encourage you to thank the GNU project by reminding people that the system so often called "Linux" is actually the GNU system with Linux as its kernel).
If it is not appropriate for people to own or control software, is it appropriate for people to own or control (or even suggest) attribution of software? Or is that just another restriction being placed on software that shouldn't be allowed.
I like freedom too, but this is a bit of a stretch. People have rights, including their own freedom. Software does not have its own freedom, it is a tool used by people. Controlling software is like controlling your own car or your own bank account. It won't do anything by itself. It needs someone to use it. This is not even in the same conversation as slavery!
Stating arbitrarily that noone should be allowed to determine the outcome of their own work is nuts. Patents are abused heavily, but copyright has its place. Copyright cannot prevent competition by alternative implementation, patents can.
The best action for Free and OS is to compete with a better implementation, not to take away what the competition (Closed source) has. Taking away their basis for existance is as bad as them trying to take ours through IP, patents and crazy restrictive laws. Its no more right for us than it is for them. Open competition on features/licence terms is good. Restriction on what licence terms/implementation restrictions/legal activities are available is no good for either side.
I did read the spec. I was refering to the purpose/reason for new design, not the implementation.
The overview talks about how C/C++ has become overloaded and needs to be simplified. Isn't that the same reasoning that lead to Java. how different will this be from just using Java? (syntax aside, just object orientation and capable architecture).
He saw what happened to DeCSS. What he needs to do is create a whole product/application that has real legal uses (along with possibly some infrenging uses). Then release that. The legal uses should make the application valid under DMCA, while the information can "leak" through code or specifications.
Not to say the powers that bee won't try to stop it anyway, but a valid application goes a long way towards sidesteping the DMCA.
Imagine if Livid had been released before DeCSS. Same code, real usefull application. It can't be labeled a pirate tool, but it still releases the information.
Matrix: The Eigen Sanction
This is a spin on a Nicholas Petrelly quote from last year when he said Information does not want to be free, people want it to be free.
Unfortunately, even though he is an open source supporter, he is still a bit lost in the world of intellectual property.
In some ways they must, because they don't know whether this market will take off or not. They can't afford to be left behind when the wind changes. But it is expensive and wastefull to do so when it doesn't work out. Even if the E-Book market never really takes off, publishers still have to fight for control of the channel simply to maintain monopoly on their titles.
Sort of damned if you do and damned if you don't.