I'd wager there must have been some "UNIX" code in Linux at one time, albeit not intentionally and perhaps only small chunks for SCO to have made any claim at all.
Your basic premise that human behaviour is rational is flawed. To use the classic Nazi extreme (well-favoured here), how exactly were Aryans (if there was such a thing) better than Jews? Nor would this be the first time a company has told an outright lie before the courts...
Wow, you really put things in perspective for me. I've always thought tthat the average person is pretty dumb, but even dumber than the average slashdotter? Unreal. I mean, we're talking about people who use words that didn't even exist 5 years ago (i.e., Wi-Fi) and definitions for other words that are outdated by at least 50 years (i.e., piracy). And the average person is dumber than that?!? All I can say is...wow.
A better analogy would be Coca-Cola suing you. If some subset of an industry actively works to piss off their target demographic, they are unlikely to have future customers. It doesn't matter if the majority of them get sued (rightly or not), it just matters if the majority think those who did shouldn't have. And this is the risk that is being pointed out. It doesn't actually matter if the people they sue bought a single CD or not, what matters is all the people who say "damned if I will ever buy one again from them."
There is one fundamental flaw in the software patent field that exacerbates all the other ones - the duration (>10 years?). When pretty much everything is replaced in 5 years, if you haven't recouped your costs by then, it probably wasn't worth making in the first place. And if a bad or overreaching patent was approved, it would go away soon enough to not be a total inconvenience (think gif, and the myriad workarounds that took years to produce...).
The second is that the case of prior art presented by MS was a process that was developed contemporaneously with the process under question. It is not clear that one predates the other, and the other process was not patented.
This brings up two issues. The first is a matter of timing. If the patent holder can prove that they had something before the other group, and that the patent came a little later, there could be some issues. OTOH, if it can be proven that the other company had their product/concept finished first, it is more clear-cut.
The second is you mention of a lack of patent for the competing product. That is a total non-issue and a red herring. Most prior arts that I have seen, especially in the formative days of any patentable category are going to be unpatented, by definition. Ever hear of a patent for the wheel (yes, the basic definition, not the many doubtless patented variants from there...)? Well, guess why.
Something like that could cripple any number of companies, resulting in decreased productivity,lost jobs, reduced quality of life, and awareness of the organization that takes credit for it. That is a blow against the corporate space and, while not causing death, could conceivably have a greater impact on society in general than WTC did (more people die of the flu in the US in two years than died in WTC - just a blip on the greater scale).
The only thing that WTC did directly to me is expose yet again how pathetic humanity can be, how unaware the world in general is to security (both physical and cyber), and how much politics and media can spin anything.
Now when the new TV viewing stats come up, the average adult will be listed as watching 3.5 days of television/movies per week, while children will average 10 days per week. This in turn will lead to a new variation of the old joke, "115% of all statistics are made up."
Find me the flaws in their health code. They had a rigorous (some might say scientific, given the time) test for contagious parasitic microbes, and they required frequent hand-washing as a matter of conduct (recently proven to be sufficient to reduce your risk of catching a cold by 75%) thousands of years before other cultures were thinking it might be an idea before doing surgery (and some of those cultures had the bible to reference at that time). There are more, too. I challenge you to research those, then research the dates of the oldest known copies regarding those laws, and tell me they didn't have something that no one else at their time had.
Note the difference between health laws, and social codes. Removing some of the religious-based social codes (which require more philosophy to examine the validity thereof), I don't think you will find a more reasonable set of laws anywhere. Even the slavery laws were progressive for the time.
This is THE machine for anyone who leaves their laptop at work, but still needs it for site visits. Most of the time, it just sits on your desk, but when you need to go to a client you just take it with you. No need to build a brand-new demo environment for the 2-hour show, while still having most of the conveniences of a desktop - enough power, flexible screen positioning, flexible keyboard positioning. If you're not moving it more than once a month, though, there are probably better solutions.
When someone writes software and releases it under the GPL, they have set free another piece of software. Software makers use the artificial method of copyright to recapture this software and to claim ownership of it. This is not unlike the slave traders of old...[Free Software] is an inanimate object
Which other of my inanimate objects require freedom today. My car? My house? Are we going to include their protection in our various countries' constitutions? Will they get to vote?
I don't mind the idea of free software, and intellectual freedom in general (note that this doesn't apply to copyright, which is another issue which 'copyleft' doesn't handle but the FSF does address) but your anthropomorphisation is a little too farfetched. Fact of the matter is, digital products are easy to copy, and so we look at them as being less someone's property than physical products (maybe with reason). Equating this to slavery is wrong and trivializes that crime. Slavery is objectionable to me, clearly to you, and most times to the slave. Copyright-restricted software isn't so objectionable to me (IP-restricted is a different matter again), apparently is to you, and neither of that matters so much in the whole 'software slavery' issue because the software doesn't give a damn! Even you aren't giving it a choice on whether it wants to be free. It is a thing, which can't be enslaved. Hell, even PETA and the nuttier animal-rights groups (whether PETA is nutty is an opinion you can form for yourself, but there are always more extreme groups...) wouldn't try to say that (about things and not creatures) with a straight face, and I'm surprised you could.
First off, when your discussion uses personal attacks, you detract from the facts and opinions presented by both sides. Now I don't know if I started it, but it has been escalating nicely./. readers, enjoy.:)
Let's deal with the socialist aspect first. Like most human issues, black and white isn't working. Here's the definition of socialism. Do we have crown corporations? Check. Do we have government monopolies? Check. Does the state own capital? Check (do you actually think you own your land property - think again). That satisfies the economic requirements for socialism. Since it is advocated by our previous and current governments, that satisfies the political requirements. If you look at the definitions further down the page, we meet those criteria on our taxation system just fine (G.S.T. rebates, weighted marginal tax rates, etc.). We may not be as socialist as what you think of as socialist, but then your definition may be more stringent (and no more or less valid) than mine or the one I referenced.
As for dictatorship, we have a party system where the leader is selected not on his own merits, but because we liked more of his friends than the other guy. This leads to further abuse in their daily work because the party leader has significant control over other party members' careers. If they vote the wrong way (and there are certain types of votes where they are basically required to vote the party line) it's political suicide. That isn't conducive to a open and free system where people vote by their conscience, and gives any majority government amazing license. Think NAFTA, and others in the current leadership if you look a bit. And what if he does something wrong (like at the B.C. summit in 1997, and his subsequent tasteless jokes on the matter), with absolutely no repercussions, and it starts sounding like a dictatorship to me. If he had absolute power, you'd have to agree, but he's as close as you can b without being there, up to and including potential tramplings of our constitution.
Hey, you're supposed to save up your IP ranting for the next big SCO release tomorrow. How do we know it will be tomorrow? There wasn't one today, and when was the last time more than 2 days went by without a press release from them? So don't jump the gun, and let us all find our analogies for why our side is correct. We need to maintain focus here, so we can have an event more like WWF Raw than a poetry reading.
[Use] common sense to come up with something that's a happy, or at least workable compromise.
Nonsense! Let's log every packet that goes through a router, log everything, and make sure that Grandma isn't passing around TollHouse cookie recipes without permission. When we hear rumors and unsupported claims, we'll alter our color-coded setting of how scary the Internet is today. We'll call the department that protects us from Grandma InternetLand Security.
Yeah, trust the politicians (or business...or me;) to do the right thing...
Look around buddy. Canada is a social democratic dictatorship. We heavily support social welfare (public health, 'welfare', public pension) and social conscience laws (drinking laws, gun laws). We vote in our leaders, hence democratic (not a polular vote, but a vote nonetheless). Note that the soviets voted for their leaders while they were communist - they just had one choice. And we are a dictatorship. Once our dear leader is voted in, short of a federal offence, he stays in for up to 5 years at his discretion. So where was I wrong? Now, we may not be as socialist as some countries, but face it, the needle is left of the centre line...
Slashdot Mirror
Dear 265275*,
Thank you for your input in comment 7259667. Please keep up the valuable commentary.
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Please design a viable rocket-powered vessel that looks like a vagina.
No can do. It always ends up looking like a hot air balloon...
...given that Beijing is attempting to showcase a four-decade-old technology...
Now find a quiet corner and unknot your undies.
Yes, In North America, we prefer three-decade-old technology...
I'd wager there must have been some "UNIX" code in Linux at one time, albeit not intentionally and perhaps only small chunks for SCO to have made any claim at all.
Your basic premise that human behaviour is rational is flawed. To use the classic Nazi extreme (well-favoured here), how exactly were Aryans (if there was such a thing) better than Jews? Nor would this be the first time a company has told an outright lie before the courts...
Wow, you really put things in perspective for me. I've always thought tthat the average person is pretty dumb, but even dumber than the average slashdotter? Unreal. I mean, we're talking about people who use words that didn't even exist 5 years ago (i.e., Wi-Fi) and definitions for other words that are outdated by at least 50 years (i.e., piracy). And the average person is dumber than that?!? All I can say is...wow.
A better analogy would be Coca-Cola suing you. If some subset of an industry actively works to piss off their target demographic, they are unlikely to have future customers. It doesn't matter if the majority of them get sued (rightly or not), it just matters if the majority think those who did shouldn't have. And this is the risk that is being pointed out. It doesn't actually matter if the people they sue bought a single CD or not, what matters is all the people who say "damned if I will ever buy one again from them."
There is one fundamental flaw in the software patent field that exacerbates all the other ones - the duration (>10 years?). When pretty much everything is replaced in 5 years, if you haven't recouped your costs by then, it probably wasn't worth making in the first place. And if a bad or overreaching patent was approved, it would go away soon enough to not be a total inconvenience (think gif, and the myriad workarounds that took years to produce...).
The second is that the case of prior art presented by MS was a process that was developed contemporaneously with the process under question. It is not clear that one predates the other, and the other process was not patented.
This brings up two issues. The first is a matter of timing. If the patent holder can prove that they had something before the other group, and that the patent came a little later, there could be some issues. OTOH, if it can be proven that the other company had their product/concept finished first, it is more clear-cut.
The second is you mention of a lack of patent for the competing product. That is a total non-issue and a red herring. Most prior arts that I have seen, especially in the formative days of any patentable category are going to be unpatented, by definition. Ever hear of a patent for the wheel (yes, the basic definition, not the many doubtless patented variants from there...)? Well, guess why.
Something like that could cripple any number of companies, resulting in decreased productivity,lost jobs, reduced quality of life, and awareness of the organization that takes credit for it. That is a blow against the corporate space and, while not causing death, could conceivably have a greater impact on society in general than WTC did (more people die of the flu in the US in two years than died in WTC - just a blip on the greater scale).
The only thing that WTC did directly to me is expose yet again how pathetic humanity can be, how unaware the world in general is to security (both physical and cyber), and how much politics and media can spin anything.
How does that help me? I find it difficult to produce bullshit in the needed quantities. Ah yes, slashdot to the rescue...
Now when the new TV viewing stats come up, the average adult will be listed as watching 3.5 days of television/movies per week, while children will average 10 days per week. This in turn will lead to a new variation of the old joke, "115% of all statistics are made up."
Find me the flaws in their health code. They had a rigorous (some might say scientific, given the time) test for contagious parasitic microbes, and they required frequent hand-washing as a matter of conduct (recently proven to be sufficient to reduce your risk of catching a cold by 75%) thousands of years before other cultures were thinking it might be an idea before doing surgery (and some of those cultures had the bible to reference at that time). There are more, too. I challenge you to research those, then research the dates of the oldest known copies regarding those laws, and tell me they didn't have something that no one else at their time had.
Note the difference between health laws, and social codes. Removing some of the religious-based social codes (which require more philosophy to examine the validity thereof), I don't think you will find a more reasonable set of laws anywhere. Even the slavery laws were progressive for the time.
Reinc takes forever...and the character selection phase is buggy as hell.
I just want to know what the bill would be if you let go of a (tin Canadian) dime from say, 3 feet away, and if you would survive to get the bill.
Plus a multi-language clip from a presumed music industry worker on how piracy threatens his job...
They're going to have to be a bit more creative if they want to stop people from using P2P.
As long as they don't put a blurb about the evils of piracy as the first track, I'm okay with that...
This is THE machine for anyone who leaves their laptop at work, but still needs it for site visits. Most of the time, it just sits on your desk, but when you need to go to a client you just take it with you. No need to build a brand-new demo environment for the 2-hour show, while still having most of the conveniences of a desktop - enough power, flexible screen positioning, flexible keyboard positioning. If you're not moving it more than once a month, though, there are probably better solutions.
When someone writes software and releases it under the GPL, they have set free another piece of software. Software makers use the artificial method of copyright to recapture this software and to claim ownership of it. This is not unlike the slave traders of old...[Free Software] is an inanimate object
Which other of my inanimate objects require freedom today. My car? My house? Are we going to include their protection in our various countries' constitutions? Will they get to vote?
I don't mind the idea of free software, and intellectual freedom in general (note that this doesn't apply to copyright, which is another issue which 'copyleft' doesn't handle but the FSF does address) but your anthropomorphisation is a little too farfetched. Fact of the matter is, digital products are easy to copy, and so we look at them as being less someone's property than physical products (maybe with reason). Equating this to slavery is wrong and trivializes that crime. Slavery is objectionable to me, clearly to you, and most times to the slave. Copyright-restricted software isn't so objectionable to me (IP-restricted is a different matter again), apparently is to you, and neither of that matters so much in the whole 'software slavery' issue because the software doesn't give a damn! Even you aren't giving it a choice on whether it wants to be free. It is a thing, which can't be enslaved. Hell, even PETA and the nuttier animal-rights groups (whether PETA is nutty is an opinion you can form for yourself, but there are always more extreme groups...) wouldn't try to say that (about things and not creatures) with a straight face, and I'm surprised you could.
First off, when your discussion uses personal attacks, you detract from the facts and opinions presented by both sides. Now I don't know if I started it, but it has been escalating nicely. /. readers, enjoy. :)
Let's deal with the socialist aspect first. Like most human issues, black and white isn't working. Here's the definition of socialism. Do we have crown corporations? Check. Do we have government monopolies? Check. Does the state own capital? Check (do you actually think you own your land property - think again). That satisfies the economic requirements for socialism. Since it is advocated by our previous and current governments, that satisfies the political requirements. If you look at the definitions further down the page, we meet those criteria on our taxation system just fine (G.S.T. rebates, weighted marginal tax rates, etc.). We may not be as socialist as what you think of as socialist, but then your definition may be more stringent (and no more or less valid) than mine or the one I referenced.
As for dictatorship, we have a party system where the leader is selected not on his own merits, but because we liked more of his friends than the other guy. This leads to further abuse in their daily work because the party leader has significant control over other party members' careers. If they vote the wrong way (and there are certain types of votes where they are basically required to vote the party line) it's political suicide. That isn't conducive to a open and free system where people vote by their conscience, and gives any majority government amazing license. Think NAFTA, and others in the current leadership if you look a bit. And what if he does something wrong (like at the B.C. summit in 1997, and his subsequent tasteless jokes on the matter), with absolutely no repercussions, and it starts sounding like a dictatorship to me. If he had absolute power, you'd have to agree, but he's as close as you can b without being there, up to and including potential tramplings of our constitution.
Hey, you're supposed to save up your IP ranting for the next big SCO release tomorrow. How do we know it will be tomorrow? There wasn't one today, and when was the last time more than 2 days went by without a press release from them? So don't jump the gun, and let us all find our analogies for why our side is correct. We need to maintain focus here, so we can have an event more like WWF Raw than a poetry reading.
[joke]
First off, I would appreciate it if you would put links to pr0n into a tag like everyone else.
Secondly, how dare you talk about google that way?!?!
[/joke]
[Use] common sense to come up with something that's a happy, or at least workable compromise.
;) to do the right thing...
Nonsense! Let's log every packet that goes through a router, log everything, and make sure that Grandma isn't passing around TollHouse cookie recipes without permission. When we hear rumors and unsupported claims, we'll alter our color-coded setting of how scary the Internet is today. We'll call the department that protects us from Grandma InternetLand Security.
Yeah, trust the politicians (or business...or me
Yeah, could be, I don't keep up much with the Liberal party...
Look around buddy. Canada is a social democratic dictatorship. We heavily support social welfare (public health, 'welfare', public pension) and social conscience laws (drinking laws, gun laws). We vote in our leaders, hence democratic (not a polular vote, but a vote nonetheless). Note that the soviets voted for their leaders while they were communist - they just had one choice. And we are a dictatorship. Once our dear leader is voted in, short of a federal offence, he stays in for up to 5 years at his discretion. So where was I wrong? Now, we may not be as socialist as some countries, but face it, the needle is left of the centre line...