Re:What annoys me about the Reuters article...
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. However, this virus spreads by stupid users that open viral email attachments. It has nothing to do with any flaws in windows. The same virus could have worked with linux except that linux users are smarter than windows users.
Uhm, no. You need to do a chmod +x on any file before it will execute.
No, [a business] doesn't [exist to serve the community].
I'm generally talking about a mom-and-pop class of business on Main Street USA (like the owner of a video game arcade in the original post), not some multinational coporation with stockholders.
If the owner of a business wants to exclude someone based on race, gender, sexual preference, etc., let him/her.
Let me guess: you're a white, middle-class male who has never experienced any form of discrimination first-hand.
Such a business will not be as successful as the one down the street that doesn't engage in such behavior, because many people (such as I) will boycott a business that engages in discrimination.
That's easy for you to claim, but the most probable scenario is that you wouldn't even know they engaged in such discrimination until you witnessed it first-hand.
It's not wrong to let a person run his/her business the way he/she wants
Yes it is. Sorry you just can't see it.
What annoys me about the Reuters article...
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... is that they never mention that the virus infects only computers running Windows. The media fail to mention this most of the time. If they did, perhaps people would either put more pressure on Microsoft to secure their software or stop using Windows altogether.
There are many people out there who think computer viruses are just part of computing and that there's little to be done about it. It's similar to the many people who think crashing is also just a part of computing. Take the same people and put them on a computer running either Mac OS X or Linux and, after a few days, you get an an astonished statement back: "It doesn't crash!"
The media should rake Microsoft over the coals every time this happens. Bill Gates should personally tried to be reached every time for comment/inverview on CNN. The problem is the media doesn't know any better.
An owner of an establishment should be able to refuse entry to anyone he/she wants, for any reason. It's his/her property, after all.
There is a distinction between private property for one's home (where I agree you can do as you please) and a business open to the general public. In the latter case, a business exists to serve the community. As such, you give up some absolute rights.
Laws are apparently needed because of prejudice and hatred against minorites, women, and even men with long hair (as a non-race/gender example). Again, if you want absolute dominion, you have a recourse: don't be open to the general public. A second recourse is get a different line of work if you don't like the terms so much.
Let the owner decide who he/she wants inside, and potential patrons will vote with their pocketbooks.)
While I agree that patrons should vote with their dollars, it should be based on the quality of a business good and services, not admittance.
Business owners perceive too much power. I hope there are many more lawsuits to slap that wrong notion out of their heads.
I reserve the right to throw anybody out of the store I want.
You can't reserve a right you never had in the first place. In California in particular, the Unruh Civil Rights Act (California Civil Code, section 51) prohibits all forms of arbitrary discrimination (as affirmed by several sourt cases since: I have the citations available). You can't throw people out because you don't like they way they look or dress. If they are engaged in the business of the establishment (in your case, playing video games as opposed to loitering) and are not making a disturbance, there's little you can do about it.
The fallacy is that the "Reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" is a legal myth: you have no such right. Unfortunately, not enough people sue business owners to assert their civil rights. Civil rights trump business owners' private property rights (and rightfully so).
If you want absolute dominion over who can be in your business, then don't have it open to the general public: have paid membership requirements or by "by appointment only" and be a private club instead.
And if Apple (or Xerox) had patented the GUI, the amount of innovation in GUI development would have been miniscule because it would have been hard-wired to a single closed platform.
I specifically said "desktop GUI." Perhaps because it wasn't patented, we've been using the same basic interface for 20 years so because nobody was forced to invent something different. The irony is that the GUI innovation has been miniscule overall and you don't realize it. Will we still be using a desktop metaphor in the year 2020? 2050?
And what if you cannot "invent around" it because the algorithm is fundamental?
Then you're not smart enough so, go into a different line of work. You aren't entitled to good ideas.
RSA Data Security, Inc. refused point blank to license the RSA patent to open source implementations. Internet security was set back by a decade by one company's greed.
While I'm not familiar with the specifics of that case, even if I assume you're right, one bad case doesn't invalidate the entire concept. It's easy to point out bad cases because they make news. It's much harder to point out good cases because nobody ever hears about them because the system worked as it was supposed to.
[Patents] put all the power to use an idea in the hands of the patent owner...
Precisely where it belongs. Congratulations: you understand patents.
... while ignoring society's interest in a vibrant and competitive marketplace.
You don't understand patents after all, I'm afraid. As part of a patent, the inventor is compelled to disclose the invention and precise details about it. Society benefits from this information enormously. If you're smart enough, you may see an even better way to do something, and thus innovation is fostered. Sorry if you just can't "get it."
The copyright alternative is a case of "adapt or die"
Copyright for software is largely useless. It only protects you from the most lazy people who simply copy your code. If I look at your running program, or even your source code, then go off and write my own code in my own way, I'm immune from you and any legal retalliation you may try.
Additionally, copyrighted source code in the case of large software vendors is also kept proprietary. Society can never see it; society doesn't benefit.
The current patent system is designed for manufacturing, not for a dynamic industry such as the software industry
It certainly is not designed exclusively for manufacturing. Easy example: the paper clip. It's a simple invention designed to hold paper together. It doesn't manufacture anything. (There was also a different patent for a machine to bend wire into a paper clip, but that's irrelevant to the point at hand.)
Copyrights protects us very well
Hardly. Another easy example: desktop GUIs. Back in 1984, Apple had copyrights on all their code to produce the Mac GUI. Microsoft comes along with Windows and copies many of the ideas.* Apple tried to stretch copyright law into patent law to stop Microsoft and failed. An idea like a desktop GUI isn't protected at all by copyright.
The software industry grew large despite the existence of patents, not because of patent regulation.
Patents aren't used much in software at all, so of course their existence played little role. The bulk of the software out there simply isn't worthy of a patent.
The Patent system makes many mistakes. Prior art is usually not recognized.
Granted, but I don't subscribe to the "throw the baby out with the bathwater" idea.
Patents are an inefficient tool. They don't help me.
Newsflash: not everything in the world is designed to help you. If you're a mediocre software developer who can only get along by copying other people's ideas, then patents should hinder you. The world doesn't owe you a living. If, however, you are an exceptional developer and innovative thinker, then patents will help you by preventing the hoards of mediocre developers from stealing you blind. Go invent something truly innovative in software. Then we'll see if you change your mind about software patents.
The race for the best implementation and the consumer adaption shouldn'd be replaced by monopoly law that limits competition or even kills development.
Again, if it forces your hand to "invent around" a patent and, perhaps even by dumb luck, invent something better, good. The patent then did its other job: to advance society.
* To make this example simpler, I'm ignoring the fact that Apple stole the idea of a desktop GUI from Xerox who are probably kicking themselves in the ass to this day for not having patented desktop GUIs in the first place.
Microsoft, Cisco, et al, come out with certification programs as a way to bilk money out of IT workers. They managed to convince portions of the industry that, "To insure competence, look for certified engineers." And of course you have to keep getting recertified.
Such a scheme isn't new, however. Probably the king of it is Hallmark that pushed it so far that people send greeting cards to others they really don't even like any more.
They very well may be roadblocks to your progress of leeching off of somebody else's idea (by definition) instead of inventing something new.
The... legal industry... is in conflict of interest by perpetuating [software patents].
I don't see the conflict of interest since it's not their business to get rid of patents. If it were and they were also perpetuating them, then it would be a conflict. Sorry to burst your conspiracy-theory bubble.
To anyone [sic] accomplished, experienced software engineer..., software patents are an obstacle to progress and counterproductive to innovation.
To anyone like you who is prevented from leeching off others' ideas, I could see how that would be the case. Clearly, you've never invented anything truly innovative. If you had, I'm sure you'd want it protected rather than somebody else, say Microsoft, from coming along and stealing your idea.
Sorry, but you just don't "get it." You can respond if you like, but this is my last response to you.
Without monopolies, we wouldn't have a coherent phone system infrastructure, or a reasonable electrical system. Regulated monopolies are necessary for infrastructure-type systems. What's bad are blanket, uninformed statements.
With regard to patents in particular, the concept is completely necessary to promote innovation. It seems sad (not to mention annoying) to have to explain it yet again every time an article on patents appears on Slashdot.
If you're an inventor and you invent something useful, after having spent many hours and money, why should somebody else be free to come along and simply steal your idea? Patents exist specifically to grant limited-time monopolies to reward inventors for their effort. If you're another inventor and want to cash-in on a patented invention, well it forces your hand to invent something even better or perhaps even revolutionary. Again, patents promote innovation.
With regard to software patents in particular, there is nothing wrong with being able to patent inventions that just so happen to use software as part of said invention. The fact that there are bad/silly software patents doesn't invalidate the whole concept.
an involuntary subsidy by the software industry for the self-serving legal industry
Doing business in general also requires an involuntary subsidy for the legal industry. So does divorce. So does death (wills, estate managment). So does just about everything else when you have to deal with other people. Why are you singling out software patents?
That's just off the top of my head.
The rest of your points ramblings not even worth responding to. Perhaps you should spend a bit more time thinking before you form an opinion.
Well, then they changed it. Waaaay back in 1984, it was AppleTalk, complete with its own cabling system and connectors. At some point, it got renamed to LocalTalk. At some much later point, it was renamed back to AppleTalk and prepended to Filing Protocol. They probably dropped the "Talk" relatively recently because it didn't add anything to the name.
Also, many of my teachers like to distribute the student's presentations later online so that all of the students can view them again, it's also nice for students who were absent. Conflicting formats make this difficult.
Then the teachers should only require PDF. Then the application used to create presentations is irrelevant.
That is, the only purpose that most TV users would use for a 30-second skip is to skip commercials...
FYI: I use 30-second skip all the time to skip over parts of cooking shows. When I get the gist of what's going on, I don't need to sit there to watch onions carmelize.
In other countries it IS a ruleimposed by their equivalent of the FAA.
But it's for the same reason: cell tower disruption, not plane disruption.
Many airlines simply carry over federal rules similarly to the way county health departments carry over state health department rules. The more-specific entity, be it an individual airline or a county health department, is free to impose rules that are more strict than federal rules.
My only nit with your post was about cell phones vs. 802.11 signals and why nobody cares about the latter.
As has been observed, wireless internet access is too cheap to meter for a business. Business should set it up themselves (or an outside company should charge a one-time fee for setting it up).
The problem is that wireless providers get into the mix and want to turn a profit independent of the hosting business.
No cell phones while flying, I can understand. But all our PDA's and laptops with 802.11b are always on, blasting 2.4 GHz signals all across the pacific, and no-one cares.
For the millionth time, the prohibition of cell phone use is an FCC rule, not an FAA rule. It has to do with cell phone "seeing" too many towers simultaneously because of the added 3rd dimension of flight, i.e., the cell phones are above multiple towers simultaneously and cause problems for the cell providers.
The FCC doesn't care about 802.11 because (a) they don't care about 802.11 hotspot disruption and (b) said disruption can't happen anyway since 802.11 range is at best about 300 feet, not 30,000.
Mach as used in MacOS X is derived from Mach 3.0 (a microkernel) from Project Mach at Carnegie-Melon University. I don't think it has anything in common with any BSD kernel.
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There are many people out there who think computer viruses are just part of computing and that there's little to be done about it. It's similar to the many people who think crashing is also just a part of computing. Take the same people and put them on a computer running either Mac OS X or Linux and, after a few days, you get an an astonished statement back: "It doesn't crash!"
The media should rake Microsoft over the coals every time this happens. Bill Gates should personally tried to be reached every time for comment/inverview on CNN. The problem is the media doesn't know any better.
Laws are apparently needed because of prejudice and hatred against minorites, women, and even men with long hair (as a non-race/gender example). Again, if you want absolute dominion, you have a recourse: don't be open to the general public. A second recourse is get a different line of work if you don't like the terms so much.
While I agree that patrons should vote with their dollars, it should be based on the quality of a business good and services, not admittance.Business owners perceive too much power. I hope there are many more lawsuits to slap that wrong notion out of their heads.
The fallacy is that the "Reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" is a legal myth: you have no such right. Unfortunately, not enough people sue business owners to assert their civil rights. Civil rights trump business owners' private property rights (and rightfully so).
If you want absolute dominion over who can be in your business, then don't have it open to the general public: have paid membership requirements or by "by appointment only" and be a private club instead.
Additionally, copyrighted source code in the case of large software vendors is also kept proprietary. Society can never see it; society doesn't benefit.
* To make this example simpler, I'm ignoring the fact that Apple stole the idea of a desktop GUI from Xerox who are probably kicking themselves in the ass to this day for not having patented desktop GUIs in the first place.
Such a scheme isn't new, however. Probably the king of it is Hallmark that pushed it so far that people send greeting cards to others they really don't even like any more.
Sorry, but you just don't "get it." You can respond if you like, but this is my last response to you.
With regard to patents in particular, the concept is completely necessary to promote innovation. It seems sad (not to mention annoying) to have to explain it yet again every time an article on patents appears on Slashdot.
If you're an inventor and you invent something useful, after having spent many hours and money, why should somebody else be free to come along and simply steal your idea? Patents exist specifically to grant limited-time monopolies to reward inventors for their effort. If you're another inventor and want to cash-in on a patented invention, well it forces your hand to invent something even better or perhaps even revolutionary. Again, patents promote innovation.
With regard to software patents in particular, there is nothing wrong with being able to patent inventions that just so happen to use software as part of said invention. The fact that there are bad/silly software patents doesn't invalidate the whole concept.
Doing business in general also requires an involuntary subsidy for the legal industry. So does divorce. So does death (wills, estate managment). So does just about everything else when you have to deal with other people. Why are you singling out software patents? The rest of your points ramblings not even worth responding to. Perhaps you should spend a bit more time thinking before you form an opinion.Well, then they changed it. Waaaay back in 1984, it was AppleTalk, complete with its own cabling system and connectors. At some point, it got renamed to LocalTalk. At some much later point, it was renamed back to AppleTalk and prepended to Filing Protocol. They probably dropped the "Talk" relatively recently because it didn't add anything to the name.
Actually, it's "AppleTalk Filing Protocol."
I asked about any given law, not just the aforementioned one.
My only nit with your post was about cell phones vs. 802.11 signals and why nobody cares about the latter.
As has been observed, wireless internet access is too cheap to meter for a business. Business should set it up themselves (or an outside company should charge a one-time fee for setting it up). The problem is that wireless providers get into the mix and want to turn a profit independent of the hosting business.
The FCC doesn't care about 802.11 because (a) they don't care about 802.11 hotspot disruption and (b) said disruption can't happen anyway since 802.11 range is at best about 300 feet, not 30,000.
Why not just get a hard-disk-based MP3 player in the trunk instead? I have one and like it a lot.
This is a great resource for many kinds of in-home wiring.