I cannot see how an IP infringement claim agains a USER could succeed. As someone else pointed out - if your Ford infringes a Mercedes patent, YOU don't get sued, FORD does.
Before that happens, Mercedes have to tell Ford that there is an infringement, and Ford has to stop doing it in cars produced after that time In the case of product already sold, Ford could get sued for losses if Mercedes can show that people actually bought Ford cars instead of Mercedes as a result of the patent infringement. Other than that, Mercedes could demand, and sue for, licence fees for the patented technology. These would have to be credible. Ie could not exceed the value of the patent to Ford.
thus: If the patent saves Ford $1 in making a car, or adds $1 to the value of the car, a plausible royalty would 12.5c, and not $50.
So if the "stolen" IP adds $0 to the value of the free software, a credible royalty would be 12.5% of $0. I don't see an real world company persuing this type of claim for monitary gain. (They might for other evil reasons [See SCO]).
As almost everyone has said on Groklaw: Users are not at risk. The Author of the offending package may be required by the (perported) IP owner to withdraw his software, or rewrite it so that it does not offend the IP in question.
Nevertheless, the likes of IBM might want to insure againsf frivolous lawsuits. How much has the SCO case cost them to date?
If/when When the claims come in, Lloyds members pay up what they owe. even if it does bankrupt them personally. That is why Lloyds is still in businesss - you do a deal with them, they keep their side of the bargain. (American Insurance companies are Limited Liability - if the claims exceed the value of the company, they dont get paid in full.)
Even so, you have to admit its very lenient. Personally, I think 640k years would be more aappropriate. I am sure the majority of/.ers would support my call for it to be raised to 640 life sentences.
Or did I realise that the pedestrians were simulated computer people and I have no intentions of doing such an act in real life?
You may have even learned/taught friends that if you do this with a real car, you kill real people, perhaps even saving lives.
Same with most "over the top" senarios in games - as has been pointed out elsewhere - if your kid can't tell the difference between games and real life, then you have much bigger problems than censoring his/her gaming tastes! (You could try feeding them on "virtual burgers" for a couple of days:-)
This is the BBC, and the UK is not America. Speaking as a UK parent (My kids are over 18), I have to say that I totally ignored the ratings system because
1) When I was a kid I could get to watch X rated movies if I wanted.
2) I don't believe _most_ kids are affected by sex or violence in films and games any more than they are by violence in cartoons. I have watched loads of kids grow up, not just my own: some are fragile and need protecting, but not many. Anyway, TV news is pretty horrific - blown up people and the like.
3) The concept of censorship lacks credibility in the UK. For years, the person in charge of the British Board of Film Censors was Legally registered blind In the 1950's there was a famous obscenity trial "Lady Chatterly's Lover" where the prosecution said "would you let your wife or servants read this book" - the court fell over laughing, and the trial was abandoned. I am pretty sure there has been no sucessful prosecution for obscenity in the media since. We laugh at your "wardrobe malfunctions" and think you Americans are all wimps.
4) Terrorism and abduction are more serious threats than video games. Seriously, your kid is not likely to suffer death or injury from watching X-rated stuff. He/she might from playing football or cricket. I have seen children suffer serious injury playing in the park. When my parents were kids, they were machingunned and bombed by the Germans.Many parents in London come from counties where people are being killed on a daily basis (I have neighbours from Israel, Iraq, Somalia, and Sudan) There is a definite "get a life" factor here.
Very few parents are "sitting in front of the TV while their children play" in the UK - owing to our tax structure, having children pretty much guarantees poverty (50% of families in London with children live below the poverty line - and this often does mean going without meals, not just going without designer clothes). Parents are struggling to make ends meet, not just single parents. Parents are petty grateful that GTA will occupy their kids for days on end, unlike a night out at the cinema, where the money is gone in a single night's entertainment. Especially as one kid's copy entertains 4 or more kids for several days! Many want to be more involved in their children's lives, but find the conflict with the struggle for survival is a serious problem.
Dixons is seen as a dealer in electronics. If you wanted film technology, you would probably go somewhere else - perhaps where the staff know what "ASA" means?
Tesco loyalty card system like a sophisticated representative democratic process
I think its more like having your own KGB agent to track your movements.
I shop in Tesco. I do not have a loyalty card. I pay cash. I also shop in Asda (Walmart), Netto and Safeways/Morrisons.
Since my local Safeways became Morrisons, the prices have crashed, but the choice has become very "northern" (Mushy peas and black pudding are easy to find, while plantains and Greek bread have gone). I complained that they no longer stocked cocoa, and was told "You are the fifth customer who has complained about that today". They are gradually recovering though. I buy Greek bread from a Turkish shop, and Challa bread from the Happening Beigel Bakery (A Jewish bread shop staffed entirely by Moslems, 100 yards from where the mosque where the "Mad Mullas" preach terrorism), plantains from Dalston market. What do I care? You don't need a loyalty card system or database to know the customers are disatisfied. You need good management to change the stocking policy in response, not a computer.
If its anything like the last project I worked on with >1M SLOC, hiring 10 really good programmers instead of 5 good and 50 average ones would have done the job with 640k of SLOC and 10% of the computing power. And 1% of the bugs.
No one would consider paying 100 times as much for a good football player, would they, and anyone can see a good football player is 100 times better than an average one!
One of the major objections to software patents is that there is not a court in any land that is capable of understanding the issues involved in the fast moving field of software, and hence the only possible outcome is that the party with most money wins. In the general case, no equitable resolution is possible, and hence no patent law is feasible at present.
The other major objection is that software by definition implements algorithms, which are, in essence, indistinguishable from mathematical formulae. Maths is a property of the universe, and hence cannot be "invented" only discovered. Therefore there can be no possibility of a software "invention" and hence no patents. Of course, some politicians are prepared are prepared to vote against Newton's Laws, and other laws of physics. Many do not subscribe to the concept of "reality". Politicians need to be closely supervised.
The council of ministers is working in the general direction of "power corrupts, absolute power is kind of cute". Hence the recent "NO" votes in everal major EU member states.
Yes, I was in Holland and France when the votes were held. Most people there were not voting against the concept of the EU, they were giving the politicians a bitch-slap for not adequately addressing corruption.
In previous employment, One of my colleagues left software to be a meat porter (for more money) and another to become a carpenter (he wanted to do something tangible). A third (different company) became a farmer "I'm fed up with nanoseconds, I dont want to worry about any unit of time smaller than a season".
Personally, I would love the money that other people who have studied for similar amounts of time get (Doctors, lawyers, etc) and I'd also love to be bullied less (You can't have your holiday now! Wait till after X, Y, Z etc)
I worked for a while as a truck driver, and it was less stressfull, but similar pay! Unfortunately the hours were longer, and even more bullying, and a worrying disregard of health and safety regulations.
In what way does LISP eliminate hardware access? Not in a "LISP machine", surely? In any case, its two fundamental instructions "CAR" and "CDR" stand for Content of Address Register, and Content of Data Register! These were certainly hardware registers sometime in the 1970's when LISP was invented!
My other CAR is a CDR is fine on your bumper, but don't try to execute it!
a little common sense would probably go a long way here
Quite possibly, but completely irrelevant.
A survey I did a few years back, shows conclusively that radiation from mobile phones utterly destroys common sense at 30 paces, unless you are wearing a tin-foil hat! This explains the connection between mobile phone usage and car accidents, according to Police Officer Dibble, and the Local Inquirer.
Special computer to read 7 and 9-track tapes? Hell, I designed PC interfaces for these tape drives, until SCSI made me redundant.
Why not transfer the whole data to DVD and then sell copies of the DVD? NASA get to do their research, and other people get to analyse the data in new and interesting ways.
FreeBSD as starting to become what Linux could have ???
Linux started life as a clone of BSD, because BSD had legal problems. Now you can have the real thing for free, why would you want the cheap imitation?
Slashdot Mirror
Before that happens, Mercedes have to tell Ford that there is an infringement, and Ford has to stop doing it in cars produced after that time In the case of product already sold, Ford could get sued for losses if Mercedes can show that people actually bought Ford cars instead of Mercedes as a result of the patent infringement. Other than that, Mercedes could demand, and sue for, licence fees for the patented technology. These would have to be credible. Ie could not exceed the value of the patent to Ford. thus: If the patent saves Ford $1 in making a car, or adds $1 to the value of the car, a plausible royalty would 12.5c, and not $50.
So if the "stolen" IP adds $0 to the value of the free software, a credible royalty would be 12.5% of $0. I don't see an real world company persuing this type of claim for monitary gain. (They might for other evil reasons [See SCO]).
As almost everyone has said on Groklaw: Users are not at risk. The Author of the offending package may be required by the (perported) IP owner to withdraw his software, or rewrite it so that it does not offend the IP in question.
Nevertheless, the likes of IBM might want to insure againsf frivolous lawsuits. How much has the SCO case cost them to date?
caveat: I am not a lawyer, but I play one on /.
Even so, you have to admit its very lenient. Personally, I think 640k years would be more aappropriate. I am sure the majority of /.ers would support my call for it to be raised to 640 life sentences.
You may have even learned/taught friends that if you do this with a real car, you kill real people, perhaps even saving lives.
Same with most "over the top" senarios in games - as has been pointed out elsewhere - if your kid can't tell the difference between games and real life, then you have much bigger problems than censoring his/her gaming tastes! (You could try feeding them on "virtual burgers" for a couple of days :-)
So long as spyware will run on it, most users won't notice a difference. You could replace the CPU with a marshmallow, and a lot would not notice.
Thats what the Cell Archtecture does, and it comes from some mighty big players.
1) When I was a kid I could get to watch X rated movies if I wanted.
2) I don't believe _most_ kids are affected by sex or violence in films and games any more than they are by violence in cartoons. I have watched loads of kids grow up, not just my own: some are fragile and need protecting, but not many. Anyway, TV news is pretty horrific - blown up people and the like.
3) The concept of censorship lacks credibility in the UK. For years, the person in charge of the British Board of Film Censors was Legally registered blind In the 1950's there was a famous obscenity trial "Lady Chatterly's Lover" where the prosecution said "would you let your wife or servants read this book" - the court fell over laughing, and the trial was abandoned. I am pretty sure there has been no sucessful prosecution for obscenity in the media since. We laugh at your "wardrobe malfunctions" and think you Americans are all wimps.
4) Terrorism and abduction are more serious threats than video games. Seriously, your kid is not likely to suffer death or injury from watching X-rated stuff. He/she might from playing football or cricket. I have seen children suffer serious injury playing in the park. When my parents were kids, they were machingunned and bombed by the Germans.Many parents in London come from counties where people are being killed on a daily basis (I have neighbours from Israel, Iraq, Somalia, and Sudan) There is a definite "get a life" factor here.
Very few parents are "sitting in front of the TV while their children play" in the UK - owing to our tax structure, having children pretty much guarantees poverty (50% of families in London with children live below the poverty line - and this often does mean going without meals, not just going without designer clothes). Parents are struggling to make ends meet, not just single parents. Parents are petty grateful that GTA will occupy their kids for days on end, unlike a night out at the cinema, where the money is gone in a single night's entertainment. Especially as one kid's copy entertains 4 or more kids for several days! Many want to be more involved in their children's lives, but find the conflict with the struggle for survival is a serious problem.
Actually, the perfectly ornery FreeBSD worked fine on my Tosh till I sold it. Perhaps it I had said it was a Mac I would have got more money for it!
Dixons is seen as a dealer in electronics. If you wanted film technology, you would probably go somewhere else - perhaps where the staff know what "ASA" means?
And they write great software too!!!
You have to wonder? Why not use both brain cells: Of course they do!
I think its more like having your own KGB agent to track your movements.
I shop in Tesco. I do not have a loyalty card. I pay cash. I also shop in Asda (Walmart), Netto and Safeways/Morrisons.
Since my local Safeways became Morrisons, the prices have crashed, but the choice has become very "northern" (Mushy peas and black pudding are easy to find, while plantains and Greek bread have gone). I complained that they no longer stocked cocoa, and was told "You are the fifth customer who has complained about that today". They are gradually recovering though. I buy Greek bread from a Turkish shop, and Challa bread from the Happening Beigel Bakery (A Jewish bread shop staffed entirely by Moslems, 100 yards from where the mosque where the "Mad Mullas" preach terrorism), plantains from Dalston market. What do I care? You don't need a loyalty card system or database to know the customers are disatisfied. You need good management to change the stocking policy in response, not a computer.
They make great light sabres!
And glovves for hiding their finger prints.
If its anything like the last project I worked on with >1M SLOC, hiring 10 really good programmers instead of 5 good and 50 average ones would have done the job with 640k of SLOC and 10% of the computing power. And 1% of the bugs.
No, wait...
Second
User
Systems
Engineering
That's because your "bits" are too large. Perhaps you should not reply to all that spam!
The other major objection is that software by definition implements algorithms, which are, in essence, indistinguishable from mathematical formulae. Maths is a property of the universe, and hence cannot be "invented" only discovered. Therefore there can be no possibility of a software "invention" and hence no patents. Of course, some politicians are prepared are prepared to vote against Newton's Laws, and other laws of physics. Many do not subscribe to the concept of "reality". Politicians need to be closely supervised.
The council of ministers is working in the general direction of "power corrupts, absolute power is kind of cute". Hence the recent "NO" votes in everal major EU member states.
Yes, I was in Holland and France when the votes were held. Most people there were not voting against the concept of the EU, they were giving the politicians a bitch-slap for not adequately addressing corruption.
Personally, I would love the money that other people who have studied for similar amounts of time get (Doctors, lawyers, etc) and I'd also love to be bullied less (You can't have your holiday now! Wait till after X, Y, Z etc)
I worked for a while as a truck driver, and it was less stressfull, but similar pay! Unfortunately the hours were longer, and even more bullying, and a worrying disregard of health and safety regulations.
In what way does LISP eliminate hardware access? Not in a "LISP machine", surely? In any case, its two fundamental instructions "CAR" and "CDR" stand for Content of Address Register, and Content of Data Register! These were certainly hardware registers sometime in the 1970's when LISP was invented!
My other CAR is a CDR is fine on your bumper, but don't try to execute it!
Quite possibly, but completely irrelevant.
A survey I did a few years back, shows conclusively that radiation from mobile phones utterly destroys common sense at 30 paces, unless you are wearing a tin-foil hat! This explains the connection between mobile phone usage and car accidents, according to Police Officer Dibble, and the Local Inquirer.
Special computer to read 7 and 9-track tapes? Hell, I designed PC interfaces for these tape drives, until SCSI made me redundant.
Why not transfer the whole data to DVD and then sell copies of the DVD? NASA get to do their research, and other people get to analyse the data in new and interesting ways.
Linux started life as a clone of BSD, because BSD had legal problems. Now you can have the real thing for free, why would you want the cheap imitation?
I was expecting it to be "Foghorn Leghorn", but maybe Ive seen to many cartoons lately!