The EFF is just doing their job, as lawyers, to explain the worst case possibilities of this ruling.
You can bet your ass that Blizzard's lawyers, and EA's lawyers, and MS's lawyers, and Sun's lawyers, and IBM's lawyers, and probably even SCO's lawyers are reading up trying to figure out how they can best leverage this into their own products.
Next thing you know, your iPod will only work with iTunes.
This ruling gives publishers the ability to take away all consumer rights under copyright law. It basically overrules copyright law with whatever they put in their EULA.
You can't play without clicking through the license. You can't read the EULA without opening the package and running the software. You can't return unopened software (to most stores, again for mostly copyright reasons).
So unless you consent to the possibility of giving up all rights, you should not purchase any software. You have no idea what the restrictions of the license are until after you've given them your money.
An extension of this could mean that any documents you create under a future version of MS Office could potentially be copyrighted by MS. Granted that would be a very stupid thing for MS to do, but this ruling seems to make it possible.
Even more importantly, that agreement gives them an automatic, built-in licensee for all their bullshit, giving the patent merit if it happens to be granted.
MS will probably license this one to sell Sun a per-seat site license for "a method for wiping your ass with the Constitution."
I'd have said "...THIS corp has nothing to lose..."
Patent applications do cost time and money, but for large companies (like Sun, MS, IBM... you know, the ones with "patent arsenals") its a drop in the bucket. Small companies can't afford to patent every trivial thing they do. These frivolous "defensive" patents are nothing more than anti-competitive practices.
Crushing a small, innovative startup, then donating the proceeds to charity is very noble, indeed.
Sun couldn't use this patent to beat off. The charity thing is a PR stunt.
Computing a total by multiplication and addition is not new, unobvious, or novel, and should not be granted a patent in the first place. Even if granted, I can't imagine anyone* who would legitimately pay to license it from Sun.
What's next? A patent on quantity discount?
* A notable exception would be Microsoft, who has repeatedly demonstrated that they will buy a license for any frivolous bullshit patent, just to keep the broken system alive. As they aren't actually licensing it for the technology, I don't consider that legitimate.
No, you really can blame Sun for it. It is a problem with the Patent system, but that doesn't mean its right for Sun (or for everyone else) to exploit it.
There's problems in MS Windows (and Linux, and MacOSX), but does that mean the l33t h@x0rz who write destructive exploits are not to be blamed for their actions?
Hey! Maybe that's the 3rd patent, to be disclosed in a future filing.
(I know, bad form self-replying, but...)
"A method for filing frivolous patent applications such that the USPTO will feel guilty if they do not grant them."
By associating the patent with raising money for charity, if the USPTO denies the patent, its like they're stealing money "from the children." Fucking brilliant!
Yeah, except maybe for RedHat, Novell, or any other commercial entity that sells an "enterprise" edition...
Isn't this kind of like basic accounting? I haven't bothered to read the article (IHBTRTFA?) but this is absolutely insane.
"determining a number of employees of the entity, and determining a total licensing cost using the number of employees and the per-employee cost"
Uh... You mean Counting and Multiplication? I'm pretty sure I learned prior art in the first grade. Surely someone at the USPTO has completed elementary school, or at least seen Sesame Street?
You take their word for it, put your car in the shop, then when you go pick it up, the mechanic tells you "OK. We did something, but we won't tell you what we did, and your car may still blow up."
But that still doesn't answer the grandparent post's question of whether there is an actual law... Not that it matters, but its hard to take MS's focus on security seriously when their patching tools won't tell you whether or not you are vulnerable (just that you MAY be vulnerable). How is Microsoft's scanner any better than the code below? (and mine works cross-platform, too!)
main() {
printf("Scanning for vulnerabilites...\n");
sleep(5);
printf("Your computer may be vulnerable. Please update.\n"); }
Exactly. If I were developing a tool for idiot (though I prefer the more accurate term "ignorant") users, it would work something like this:
- run the scanner - it says "your computer is vulnerable. do [this] to fix it.", where [this] could be anything from "click here", to "run software update", to pages of command lines... whatever it takes. - they do [this] - run the scanner again - it says "your computer is not vulnerable." * - user sends email to their entire addressbook forwarding the virus alert adding "i tried it, and it really works!" at the top.
* If the user makes an error when applying the fix, the scanner would again tell them to perform the fix. If most users cannot perform the fix on the first try, then it is too hard. Running the Software Update is not too hard and, in my experience, doesn't leave much room for user error.
having the program output a legal-safe "your computer may be vulnerable" before and after the user applies the "fix" can only lead to more general confusion for an idiot, and more general pissed-offedness for a clueful user.
I don't use Windows, so I haven't been able to experience this firsthand, but I don't think the point of the article was that scanning was easy. It isn't. That's why Red Hat's system is a pain in the ass. However if you follow their procedure, you can (eventually) get to a point where you are confident that you have eliminated the vulnerability.
The problem with Microsoft's system is that even after you follow their patching procedure, you still don't know if the problem is fixed, and they give you no way to be sure. The scanner says to update. Update says no new patches. But the scanner still says you "may be vulnerable". Leaving the user in an endless loop of wonder is not a sufficient solution.
The article's author's scanner, i gather from its site, does a better job of informing the user where the problem is and how to fix it (software update, then delete "these" files, and ignore "these" files). After running his scanner and performing the suggested steps, a subsequent run should say "its all good", or again give a specific list of things to do, eventually resulting in "you are not affected."
Microsoft should be offering tools and patching procedures that get you to a "you are not affected" state. Their increased focus on security should not depend on third-party tools and patches.
Mass media news has tended towards entertainment, and promoting politicians as celebrities. Look at John Kerry's latest campaign tour of Letterman, Regis&Kelly, etc. He is promoting his campaign like Ben Affleck promotes a movie.
I'm sure its quite effective with some demographics, but I wonder if its actually an effective way to win this year's election.
That's pretty similar to my "Unemployed Lawyers" theory.
Unemployment is really bad, so there's all these out of work lawyers sitting around reading legal briefs trying to find work. They come up with some absurd interpretations of the DMCA or the PATRIOT Act, then approach some sue-happy company with their angle, hoping for a bite.
If they're not unemployed, they still sit around making up work for themselves for fear of losing their job.
Maybe Toshiba entered the deal so fewer of their laptops get "mishandled". If UPS is responsible for repairs, maybe they'd tell their employees to be careful with the Toshiba/UPS warranty boxes.
It would still be "Open Season" on the Dells, but denting a Toshiba could get you fired...
No, I think you miunderstand what the bad behavior is.
The bad behavior is filing frivolous patents, and most software patents I've seen fall into that category. Apple is supporting the system that perpetuates this sort of crap. Longhorn will surely have translucent windows, and you can bet your Powerbook that Microsoft won't be forking over any $$$ to license that "technology."
Apple has a history of bad patent behavior. The licensed "1-click shopping" from Amazon, giving credibility to one of the most ridiculous patents ever. Everyone else had to redesign their shopping sites to have at least 2 clicks, or run the risk of violating Amazon's patent.
Translucent windows are not patentable at this time. There is prior art. Maybe it wasn't perfect, but it's what people were trying to do when they did the "grab a chunk of the desktop wallpaper" hacks that fake translucency in Eterm, rxterm and pretty much any recent *term on X11. The faking was necessary because of limitations of the X11 API (I don't recall the details). X11 wouldn't let us do real transparency, so we did what we could to approximate it.
Apple's windows can be "really" transparent since OSX uses a compositing engine with alpha blending in its core graphics system. Every window drawn on the screen is put there by the Quartz engine. Its pretty obvious to anyone in the field (ie. a Mac programmer with access to Apple's API documentation) that a window can be made translucent simply by changing a parameter in a function call (give or take). The "invention" of translucent windows was already there. Apple's implementation is a big improvement, but its not an invention.
Its pretty insane, especially on the heels of last week's article about stealing an election:
The outcomes of the 20 closest [House of Reps] races would have changed by swinging an average of 2,593 votes each.
Is that within the margin of the "thousands" that were turned away? By what margin did Bush "win" the election in 2000?
Looks like Diebold election machines will only be useful as media players. (yes, i know the hack was on a Diebold ATM, but how many scewups does a company get before we stop trusting them with our system of government?)
Are there any good tricks to stop it from installing.NET? I have an old project that I'd like to be able to compile again (I had Visual Studio at my last job, but not at home), but I want to keep my only windows computer as "clean" as possible for the few legacy apps I still need on it.
No kidding. Right after the primaries were over, I read an article that John Kerry has to play catchup. He ONLY had raised about $100 million for his campaign, and was trailing Bush's $150 million.
That's insane. The dollar amount alone is ludicrous. There are plenty of better ways this country could spend 1/4 billion dollars.
But what's worse is that the "news" media implies that Kerry's big fat wad isn't enough. Sure media companies will be raking in the dough selling TV spots to the Presidential Pissing Match, but isn't there still some speck of journalistic integrity? The presidency isn't supposed to be about bling-bling.
This isn't E! reporting about B-Fleck blowing $20-mill on a ring for his spoiled-brat ex-fiancee. This is the two people applying for the most important job in our country demonstrating that they have no fiscal responsibility.
At least Ben was blinded by love. What's these guy's excuse?
You can get digital copies of some o'reilly books for free. Its all up to the author.
Digital copies aren't as easy to flip through to find what you want (which is how i tend to use O'Reilly books), but they're out there.
Re:WinFS WILL be in the next version, just no netw
on
Microsoft Clips Longhorn
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I have to elaborate on this...
One episode of South Park had the town trying to free a serial baby murderer. The judge asked "tell me one positive thing about killing babies." One of the kids answered "well, its easy."
Well yeah it probably is, physically, pretty easy. Babies are typically much smaller, weaker and more fragile than most adults. But that doesn't mean that everyone is going to go around killing babies. In fact almost no one does. Why not? Because its wrong. True its illegal, but even if it weren't people still wouldn't do it because its pretty cut-and-dry WRONG.
Likewise everyone has the capability to easily "steal" (as they like to say) music, whether or not there is DRM. Every DRM mechanism devised so far has been so trivially defeated that the industry looks foolish for trying. Yet the music industry thrives. Millions of people trade music on file sharing networks, but even no-talent hacks like Britney Spears and William Hung still sell massive quantities of CDs.
Its absurd. Go after the real "pirates" (whoever they are) using the existing and more than sufficient legal means. Price your products competitively so people can afford to buy them from you. But be realistic about it. Not everyone can afford to buy every CD at $15-a-pop. Friends share things. They always have, and they always will. Music and movies bring people together.
Build that into your business model and embrace it. Treat your customers right and your business will be viable way beyond the digital age.
Slashdot Mirror
The EFF is just doing their job, as lawyers, to explain the worst case possibilities of this ruling.
You can bet your ass that Blizzard's lawyers, and EA's lawyers, and MS's lawyers, and Sun's lawyers, and IBM's lawyers, and probably even SCO's lawyers are reading up trying to figure out how they can best leverage this into their own products.
Next thing you know, your iPod will only work with iTunes.
Oh. Right...
It roughly translates to "Boycott Blizzard."
This ruling gives publishers the ability to take away all consumer rights under copyright law. It basically overrules copyright law with whatever they put in their EULA.
You can't play without clicking through the license. You can't read the EULA without opening the package and running the software. You can't return unopened software (to most stores, again for mostly copyright reasons).
So unless you consent to the possibility of giving up all rights, you should not purchase any software. You have no idea what the restrictions of the license are until after you've given them your money.
An extension of this could mean that any documents you create under a future version of MS Office could potentially be copyrighted by MS. Granted that would be a very stupid thing for MS to do, but this ruling seems to make it possible.
Even more importantly, that agreement gives them an automatic, built-in licensee for all their bullshit, giving the patent merit if it happens to be granted.
MS will probably license this one to sell Sun a per-seat site license for "a method for wiping your ass with the Constitution."
Like I said below, I bet that's the third patent they haven't announce yet.
"A method for fronting like a good guy, when you're actually being a complete asshole."
I'd have said "...THIS corp has nothing to lose..."
Patent applications do cost time and money, but for large companies (like Sun, MS, IBM... you know, the ones with "patent arsenals") its a drop in the bucket. Small companies can't afford to patent every trivial thing they do. These frivolous "defensive" patents are nothing more than anti-competitive practices.
Crushing a small, innovative startup, then donating the proceeds to charity is very noble, indeed.
Sun couldn't use this patent to beat off. The charity thing is a PR stunt.
Computing a total by multiplication and addition is not new, unobvious, or novel, and should not be granted a patent in the first place. Even if granted, I can't imagine anyone* who would legitimately pay to license it from Sun.
What's next? A patent on quantity discount?
* A notable exception would be Microsoft, who has repeatedly demonstrated that they will buy a license for any frivolous bullshit patent, just to keep the broken system alive. As they aren't actually licensing it for the technology, I don't consider that legitimate.
No, you really can blame Sun for it. It is a problem with the Patent system, but that doesn't mean its right for Sun (or for everyone else) to exploit it.
There's problems in MS Windows (and Linux, and MacOSX), but does that mean the l33t h@x0rz who write destructive exploits are not to be blamed for their actions?
Hey! Maybe that's the 3rd patent, to be disclosed in a future filing.
(I know, bad form self-replying, but...)
"A method for filing frivolous patent applications such that the USPTO will feel guilty if they do not grant them."
By associating the patent with raising money for charity, if the USPTO denies the patent, its like they're stealing money "from the children." Fucking brilliant!
they're only filed, so far. hopefully they won't be granted, and Jon will look like an ass for making an empty pledge to charitiy.
Yeah, except maybe for RedHat, Novell, or any other commercial entity that sells an "enterprise" edition...
Isn't this kind of like basic accounting? I haven't bothered to read the article (IHBTRTFA?) but this is absolutely insane.
"determining a number of employees of the entity, and determining a total licensing cost using the number of employees and the per-employee cost"
Uh... You mean Counting and Multiplication? I'm pretty sure I learned prior art in the first grade. Surely someone at the USPTO has completed elementary school, or at least seen Sesame Street?
You take their word for it, put your car in the shop, then when you go pick it up, the mechanic tells you "OK. We did something, but we won't tell you what we did, and your car may still blow up."
But that still doesn't answer the grandparent post's question of whether there is an actual law... Not that it matters, but its hard to take MS's focus on security seriously when their patching tools won't tell you whether or not you are vulnerable (just that you MAY be vulnerable). How is Microsoft's scanner any better than the code below? (and mine works cross-platform, too!)
Exactly. If I were developing a tool for idiot (though I prefer the more accurate term "ignorant") users, it would work something like this:
- run the scanner
- it says "your computer is vulnerable. do [this] to fix it.", where [this] could be anything from "click here", to "run software update", to pages of command lines... whatever it takes.
- they do [this]
- run the scanner again
- it says "your computer is not vulnerable." *
- user sends email to their entire addressbook forwarding the virus alert adding "i tried it, and it really works!" at the top.
* If the user makes an error when applying the fix, the scanner would again tell them to perform the fix. If most users cannot perform the fix on the first try, then it is too hard. Running the Software Update is not too hard and, in my experience, doesn't leave much room for user error.
having the program output a legal-safe "your computer may be vulnerable" before and after the user applies the "fix" can only lead to more general confusion for an idiot, and more general pissed-offedness for a clueful user.
I don't use Windows, so I haven't been able to experience this firsthand, but I don't think the point of the article was that scanning was easy. It isn't. That's why Red Hat's system is a pain in the ass. However if you follow their procedure, you can (eventually) get to a point where you are confident that you have eliminated the vulnerability.
The problem with Microsoft's system is that even after you follow their patching procedure, you still don't know if the problem is fixed, and they give you no way to be sure. The scanner says to update. Update says no new patches. But the scanner still says you "may be vulnerable". Leaving the user in an endless loop of wonder is not a sufficient solution.
The article's author's scanner, i gather from its site, does a better job of informing the user where the problem is and how to fix it (software update, then delete "these" files, and ignore "these" files). After running his scanner and performing the suggested steps, a subsequent run should say "its all good", or again give a specific list of things to do, eventually resulting in "you are not affected."
Microsoft should be offering tools and patching procedures that get you to a "you are not affected" state. Their increased focus on security should not depend on third-party tools and patches.
(As a counter argument...)
Britney Spears.
Mass media news has tended towards entertainment, and promoting politicians as celebrities. Look at John Kerry's latest campaign tour of Letterman, Regis&Kelly, etc. He is promoting his campaign like Ben Affleck promotes a movie.
I'm sure its quite effective with some demographics, but I wonder if its actually an effective way to win this year's election.
That's pretty similar to my "Unemployed Lawyers" theory.
Unemployment is really bad, so there's all these out of work lawyers sitting around reading legal briefs trying to find work. They come up with some absurd interpretations of the DMCA or the PATRIOT Act, then approach some sue-happy company with their angle, hoping for a bite.
If they're not unemployed, they still sit around making up work for themselves for fear of losing their job.
Just a theory...
Ahhh, but do you think Playboy could slashdot slashdot?
i mean, really... do you think they could possibly convince enough visitors to click over to slashdot? what would the article have to be?
Oh yeah. How 'bout that geek cred! ;)
Maybe Toshiba entered the deal so fewer of their laptops get "mishandled". If UPS is responsible for repairs, maybe they'd tell their employees to be careful with the Toshiba/UPS warranty boxes.
It would still be "Open Season" on the Dells, but denting a Toshiba could get you fired...
No, I think you miunderstand what the bad behavior is.
The bad behavior is filing frivolous patents, and most software patents I've seen fall into that category. Apple is supporting the system that perpetuates this sort of crap. Longhorn will surely have translucent windows, and you can bet your Powerbook that Microsoft won't be forking over any $$$ to license that "technology."
Apple has a history of bad patent behavior. The licensed "1-click shopping" from Amazon, giving credibility to one of the most ridiculous patents ever. Everyone else had to redesign their shopping sites to have at least 2 clicks, or run the risk of violating Amazon's patent.
Translucent windows are not patentable at this time. There is prior art. Maybe it wasn't perfect, but it's what people were trying to do when they did the "grab a chunk of the desktop wallpaper" hacks that fake translucency in Eterm, rxterm and pretty much any recent *term on X11. The faking was necessary because of limitations of the X11 API (I don't recall the details). X11 wouldn't let us do real transparency, so we did what we could to approximate it.
Apple's windows can be "really" transparent since OSX uses a compositing engine with alpha blending in its core graphics system. Every window drawn on the screen is put there by the Quartz engine. Its pretty obvious to anyone in the field (ie. a Mac programmer with access to Apple's API documentation) that a window can be made translucent simply by changing a parameter in a function call (give or take). The "invention" of translucent windows was already there. Apple's implementation is a big improvement, but its not an invention.
Is that within the margin of the "thousands" that were turned away? By what margin did Bush "win" the election in 2000?
Looks like Diebold election machines will only be useful as media players. (yes, i know the hack was on a Diebold ATM, but how many scewups does a company get before we stop trusting them with our system of government?)
it does try to install .NET
.NET? I have an old project that I'd like to be able to compile again (I had Visual Studio at my last job, but not at home), but I want to keep my only windows computer as "clean" as possible for the few legacy apps I still need on it.
Are there any good tricks to stop it from installing
who the hell donates money to politicians
No kidding. Right after the primaries were over, I read an article that John Kerry has to play catchup. He ONLY had raised about $100 million for his campaign, and was trailing Bush's $150 million.
That's insane. The dollar amount alone is ludicrous. There are plenty of better ways this country could spend 1/4 billion dollars.
But what's worse is that the "news" media implies that Kerry's big fat wad isn't enough. Sure media companies will be raking in the dough selling TV spots to the Presidential Pissing Match, but isn't there still some speck of journalistic integrity? The presidency isn't supposed to be about bling-bling.
This isn't E! reporting about B-Fleck blowing $20-mill on a ring for his spoiled-brat ex-fiancee. This is the two people applying for the most important job in our country demonstrating that they have no fiscal responsibility.
At least Ben was blinded by love. What's these guy's excuse?
You can get digital copies of some o'reilly books for free. Its all up to the author.
Digital copies aren't as easy to flip through to find what you want (which is how i tend to use O'Reilly books), but they're out there.
I have to elaborate on this...
One episode of South Park had the town trying to free a serial baby murderer. The judge asked "tell me one positive thing about killing babies." One of the kids answered "well, its easy."
Well yeah it probably is, physically, pretty easy. Babies are typically much smaller, weaker and more fragile than most adults. But that doesn't mean that everyone is going to go around killing babies. In fact almost no one does. Why not? Because its wrong. True its illegal, but even if it weren't people still wouldn't do it because its pretty cut-and-dry WRONG.
Likewise everyone has the capability to easily "steal" (as they like to say) music, whether or not there is DRM. Every DRM mechanism devised so far has been so trivially defeated that the industry looks foolish for trying. Yet the music industry thrives. Millions of people trade music on file sharing networks, but even no-talent hacks like Britney Spears and William Hung still sell massive quantities of CDs.
Its absurd. Go after the real "pirates" (whoever they are) using the existing and more than sufficient legal means. Price your products competitively so people can afford to buy them from you. But be realistic about it. Not everyone can afford to buy every CD at $15-a-pop. Friends share things. They always have, and they always will. Music and movies bring people together.
Build that into your business model and embrace it. Treat your customers right and your business will be viable way beyond the digital age.