Which part of "it is astonishing that SCO has not offered any competent evidence to create a disputed fact regarding whether IBM has infringed SCO's alleged copyrights through IBM's Linux activities" doesn't make sense?
There is no infringement of SCO copyright code in linux. SCO couldn't produce any to save their butts.
Its not that Science and God must be mutually exclusive, it is that the principles which Science and Faith are based on are mutually exclusive. Its the faithful who want to force God into Science in place of scientific principles which are contradictory to their faith.
The director of the Microsoft linux lab comes right out and says the intention of the testing was to "put to rest the myth that Linux can run on anything.", so you already know that the test has no credibility since its objective was not to find out IF linux can run on anything as is generally assumed. The conclusion to the test came before the test or the results, sounds like standard Microsoft tactics.
Anyhow, reading Hilf's responses in the interview it appears that the tests showed that linux does run on anything based on their test results. He admited that "The tests, which found that Windows performed as well as Linux on legacy hardware" and therefore linux did run on the legacy hardware as installed "out-of-the-box". So the title to the article is wrong as Microsoft's own tests proved that linux would run on the legacy hardware.
Now I suspect that what Hilf wanted to say was that BOTH the Windows and linux installations did not run adequately on the legacy hardware with "out-of-the-box" installs. But he doesn't want to admit it because he actually does realize why there is a wide spread assumption that linux runs well on legacy hardware, because it does.
Note the response to the journalist's question about why there was a "linux runs on anything" assumption, "Hilf said the technical capability to modify Linux, to strip it down to run with a minimal set of services and software so that it could run on all sorts of hardware devices, had generated that larger assumption that any type of Linux distribution could run on all sorts of hardware devices".
And here Hilf is at first correct and then only half correct. It is true that you can strip down linux to make it more efficient and capable on legacy hardware, and it is also true that the latest desktop distros take advantage of the latest hardware and therefore have similar requirements to Windows. But he fails to acknowlege two facts that I suspect he is aware of, 1) even the latest distros can be pared down so they can be efficeintly used on legacy hardware for applications which have reduced resource requirements, and 2) there are light weight linux distros out there which are capable of effectively running on legacy hardware.
Case in point. I can, and have, taken a 533MHz system with a Via Eden processor, 128MB of RAM, dual ethernet cards, and one wireless network card and install the latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Fedora Core and have the latest kernel, selinux ACL, iptables, apache, bind, dhcpd, openvpn, and nfs and then proceed to efficiently use the box as a small business web server, file server, firewalled router, wireless access point, caching nameserver, and LAN dhcp server. And the first step is to simply click on only the software packages you need on the box when going through the graphical install.
And the second case in point, as has been pointed out in several other posts I've read, a usable desktop can be made out of legacy hardware using something like knoppix, damn small linux, or any other distro that was designed to use limited resources.
They are really grabbing at straws in their linux lab at Microsoft to try and prove their misconceptions about linux.
You missed the point, but that may be because its expressor is not a rhetorical genius.
I didn't say they weren't confused; I said their confusion can be understood through an evolutionary and/or linguistic lens, and to look down on such users is unwise.
If I missed your point it is because what you said is "...a lot of people think that. And the ones who think that are correct..." which comes across as saying their belief that IE is the internet is a correct assumption. You further supported that point with "...IE == the internet in the same way that Outlook == my email..." which are both false statements. It didn't read like you were explaining the how and whys of the misunderstanding, it appeared you were reinforcing the laymans misunderstanding by stating that their perception was correct.
As far as linquistic evolution having any relation to the incorrect assumption that IE == Internet there are none. Internet Explorer did not become synonmyous with the Internet the same way Kleenex became synonymous with tissue.
This conversation is about attitudes towards how some people actually perceive IE
No, there was no mention of attitudes until your last post. It also seems from that last post that you are suggesting I have a low opinion of people who have the misconception that IE == Internet. I'm not sure how you derived that from my posts but lets remove that topic from this discussion immediately. I do not look down on anyone who has misconceptions about technology.
I have no idea where you are headed with the specialized society and attacks on my grammer, it is all completely irrelevant. To pull the discussion back on track examine the root of the discussion:...I would also argue that vanilla naming creates its own confusion. How many people think Internet Explorer IS the internet?...
And I still stand by my arguement. You can analyze why there is the confusion, the affects of society on confusion, the importance of the confusion, and my bad grammar, but it will not change the fact that: 1) IE != Internet 2) Laymen who believe that IE == Internet are wrong 3) Naming software with simple names related to their purpose is no guarantee that users will understand what it is and how to use it.
Re:If you can't take the heat...
on
Peter Quinn Resigns
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Interesting comment. We'll likely never fully understand all the reasons why he resigned, but if his intentions are to ensure that attention remains focused on the policy and facts at hand then he has just dealt a powerful blow to his adversaries.
With the dirty tricks that certain companies will use to pay off or bully decision makers his resignation seems to take away their second tactic which seems to have been employed because the first was not an option. So now with Quinn out of the picture and a super luminance spot light on the issue at hand any shenanigans are likely to cast a very visible shadow.
Its probably time now for the scumbags to slink away before they are exposed. Hopefully time will have them exposed anyway.
"And the ones who think that are correct, in many important respects"
No, they are confused and no level of logical perturbations are going to change that fact.
"Why should she spend the time to learn about the tcp/ip suite, bgp, autonomous systems, the difference between cat-5 and cat-6 cable? She uses her television set quite successfully without understanding the physics of radio-wave transmission, the inner politics of NBC, or cathode ray tubes. It's the beauty of abstraction, baby!"
Exactly. However, while the Television is an excellent abstraction which is designed and marketed in a way that a lay person can move from virtually any make and model of television to another with little difficulty Internet Explorer is not, perhaps only due to the name accompanied with a complete misunderstanding of what the internet is.
When that same lay person moves from their desktop to another and does not see the big blue e on the desktop they don't know what to do because they have a false perception of what is necessary to recieve the internet. Of course once someone points out FireFox/Opera/Safari/Konquere/etc and they open it up the familiar controls and the internet are all there.
So what the lay person needs to know is not the science and technology behind the internet, what they need to know is only the same principles they know about their TV. A connecting media, rabbit ears/cable/sattelite/ethernet/wifi, and the viewer with controls, web browser/CRT/buttons/dials. Since the lay person can understand that a Sony/Zenith/RCA/Samsung TV are all televisions its not unreasonable to have them associate IE/FireFox/Opera/Safari Browsers as web browsers.
That's funny, a good name for a product is one that will confuse and guile the customer. I've taken a couple of introductory marketing classes as part of my education and perhaps my memory is failing me but your logic seems to be contradictory to good marketing. In fact that sure sounds a lot like fraudulent marketing.
"the holy grail of marketing: the customer identifies the entire concept with your brand. See Kleenex, Xerox"
Here we can agree, but its interesting you bring up those two companies. Kleenex and Xerox have become synonymous with the purpose of their products not because they used some derivative naming scheme but rather they have an unrelated name associated with a quality product and the consumers themselves added the companies names to their vocabulary as synonyms to the general purpose of the product. The same cannot be said about Internet Explorer as it uses a name derived from the purpose and so Microsoft marketing created the synonym with the name.
"The downside of this is that when commoditization sets in, generic versions piggyback on your brand. See Kleenex, Xerox"
And here we disagree. The fact that these companies names have been made synonymous with the purpose of the product by the consumer means they have mindshare which they can leverage against their competition.
"Because most of the customers are non-techies and are most comfortable with the boring vanilla names..."
Based on the naming conventions on other platforms out there, including the one that holds a monopoly share of desktops, customers have no problem dealing with application names which have no obvious relation to their purpose. I see no basis for the vanilla_name == comfortable_user assumption.
"I resent your associating boring with vanilla"
haha, I actually find vanilla to be an interesting flavor, but we weren't talking about flavors or spices were we.
Wow, you crack a joke about the Windows Start button and you immediately get a series of bent out of shape slashdotters giving you a hard time.
Somebody seems to be sensitive about the Windows UI, you don't suppose the Windows developers are spending way too much time on slashdot? Then again its probably just the Vista test group making sure the latest build renders ol' slashdot, or astroturfers practicing their trade.:)
"even if you're the only one who uses the computer"
Which ironically is the complete opposite of Windows where you don't have to login with a password and you ASSUME you are the only one using the computer when in reality there are probably several script kiddies who are also using the computer, with no password.:P
Although it could be debated as to which platform has confusing names, i.e. what is Excel, what is Visio, what is Access, what is Outlook, ad nauseam, I actualy have a contrarian view for you.
Why give applications boring vanilla names like photoshop, media player, etc.?
With the names that are given to many linux applications it could be argued that someone new to the platform would be lost, but I say they will be lost anyway and when they do learn about the applications that meet their needs the interesting names will leave an impression which will differentiate them from the applications on competing platforms that have common names.
I would also argue that vanilla naming creates its own confusion. How many people think Internet Explorer IS the internet?
Reading arguments on Slashdot is like watching the Special Olympics - it's retards all the way down.
Reading slashdot comments and being upset that there are arguments is like watching the special olympics and expecting not to find retards. It's the entire point.
Replying to comments on slashdot concerning how retarded the arguements are is something only a retard would... oh wait
Andrew Tridgell has copyrights on rsync as old as 1996, possibly even older.
This patent never should have passed the Novel or Obviousness tests. I find it amazing reading some of these patents that have been issued and finding that the patent itself explains why it should not be patentable. From the uspto.gov website:
"The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention."
Now I'll get a long list of replies with "if it was obvious how come nobody did it before". All I can tell you is that just because somebody hasn't done it doesn't mean its not obvious.
Let me explain it this way, if you have a problem that needs to be solved by developing a software application and you can sit down with a developer and he says "yeah, I can do that" then its obvious. If the developer says "thats impossible" and somebody then spends significant time and resources trying to find a solution and does, they very well may have something that is patentable.
That said I would also point out that in 99.999% of all cases software algorithms and solutions are not patentable, they should be covered by copyright. And copyright covers the actual code a binaries, not reverse engineering. If somebody does the same thing with their own code it is not a copyright violation.
From actions which are destructive to the economics of the open source model. The leech who is selling the software which was intended to be open source ends up diluting the base upon which the open source model works. Open source is still a very new economic model but the following article from Perens is a good explanantion...
From the article the following paragraph explains some of the internal workings of an open source project and from this you can see how the leech will be pulling away resources that could be driving the project...
Only when the software becomes useful to others does the Open Source paradigm work fully, because only then will other parties have an incentive to use the software. Once they are using the software, these other parties will have an incentive to extend the software to implement additional features that are of interest to them.
The incremental cost of adding a feature is much smaller than the cost of the entire development. Parties that create modifications have an incentive to write them in such a way that they will be accepted by the other developers on the project and will be merged into the main body of source code that is shared by all developers. If this merge does not happen, the continuing cost of maintaining the added feature will be higher, since its developers must track changes to the main source code and maintain compatibility with that changing base.
Thus, Open Source tends to foster a community of developers who make contributions to a useful product. The cost and risk of developing the product is distributed among these developers, and any combination of them can carry on the project if others leave. Distribution of cost and risk begins as soon as the project is mature enough to build a community outside of its initial developer.
So you see, the thieves who steal from the open source community are no better than the theives that steal from the closed source community.
It seems your pet peeve is based on a mis-understanding of what is said.
Obviously using GPLed code illegally in a proprietary product does not suddenly make the original open source project closed, and I can understand how suggesting such a condition could cause some people to get riled, but that is not what I said and I don't think I've ever seen anyone suggest such a concept either.
Open source code released under the GPL is available for anyone to use even in a product they wish to sell for profit, however, the ownership of the source code is still maintained by copyright law and is only licensed for use. Copyright law is an enabling force behind the licensing practice for GPLed source code.
If a developer gets heart burn over releasing their own code under the GPL then all they have to do is leave the GPLed code alone. Its that simple.
As far as your suggestion for a restatement of the line, I can accept it. Your statement is much clearer on the guidelines imposed by the GPL but it is basically the same statement which I made.
It's won't be as easy to use copyright law as a stick to force people to open up the sourcecode
Actually that should read more like:
Without copyright law it will be impossible to force anyone who uses GPL code to abide by the guidelines of the license and keep the source code open.
The way you say it makes it sound like people are running around with the GPL beating up developers left and right trying to force them to release their source code. The GPL has no impact at all as long as your not borrowing from the pool of GPLed code.
without copyright, there would be nothing to stop you taking GPL software, modifying it, and giving copies away - for free - without source code
Hmm, a coward, not surprising considering the twisted interpretation of the GPLs purpose. Anyhow, let me provide some enlightenment.
The issue the GPL is concerned with is not free binaries without source code, its more like scumbag companies who rip off open source code for inclusion in their products which they require you to PAY for and yet they have no intention of releasing their source code or giving anything back to the project.
Of course there is more to it than that, but that bit should address you twisted perspective.
Sorry Aim_Here, but I do not have the ability to read minds. The discussion of the subject would be much more efficient if you'd just spit out what your thinking.
Anyhow, I'll take a jab at it based on your previous post about what is proprietary after copyright is gone.
Proprietary suggests that "something exclusively owned by someone, often with connotations that it is exclusive and cannot be used by other parties without negotiations".
Obviously if you do not have access to source code which at one time was open then the source code has become proprietary. Yes you would still have access to the original code, and yes you could legally make copies of the binary produced from the now closed source code, but what you would not have is the new code that was added to the original code. And thus the project that once was an open source project will have forked into a closed source proprietary project.
Current open source licenses rely on copyright law as the legal muscle to ensure that licensees of the source code abid by the rules of the license which quite often involves keeping the source code open. Once copyright law is gone so too is the legal means of ensuring companies abide by the license.
So as the parent post suggested, eliminating copyright law would very likely result in many open source projects being ripped off by companies who would turn them into proprietary products.
"In the absence of copyright law, what does 'proprietary' mean?"
It means that companies will pillage the open source projects for code, create a product based on that code, and then sell the product without releasing the source code or any improvements they may have made to the code.
Presently the copyright holders of open source code can take legal action against anyone who does not follow the guildlines of the GPL (or some other OSS license), the license under which they have released their code.
Several companies have already been caught violating open source licenses and to date they have all agreed to abide by the license. If copyright law is abolished then the open source licenses will lose their legal strength. The pillaging will only become worse as you will see companies ripping off open source code for their closed source proprietary products with zero legal repercussions.
At least that is what I suspect he meant by his statement.;)
Don't get me wrong, I do not disagree or dispute much of your opinion or analysis of the article, but I think the patent office needs to be strict on certain aspects of patentablility requirements, one of them being useful/operative/working inventions. While I agree with your concern over determining patentability based on the breadth of the patent filed I believe the invention absolutely MUST pass the operative test or should be rejected. I don't care if it takes 5, 10, 30, or a thousand years. By lowering the standards for acceptance of patents the issues we are dealing with in the courts will only get worse.
As for your DNA sequencing technology example, both methods were operative and both recieved patents. Oxford holds the patent for Edwin Southern's sequencing process and Cetus holds the patent for Kary's PCR development. The fact that PCR makes sequencing significantly faster than Southern blot analysis doesn't make one any less patentable. The key here is that they each passed the criteria for patentability.
Now if we make another comparison, say the Oxford patent to Pavel's portable stereo patent we find a distinct difference. While the Southern blotting method patented by Oxford was slow it did work. However, Pavel's patent was on an idea of what he would like a device to do but not how the device would accomplish the objective, it was non-working. Pavel's patent should have been rejected since much of the patent was only an idea or suggestion but not a working solution.
'The term "useful" in this connection refers to the condition that the subject matter has a useful purpose and also includes operativeness, that is, a machine which will not operate to perform the intended purpose would not be called useful, and therefore would not be granted a patent.'
Therefore, if it took 30 years to make the thing work then at the end of the 30 years when they had a "useful" invention it should then be patented.
That is part of the problem with the current patent system, not the system itself, the law, or even the legal interpretations, its that its not being applied properly. It seems that many of the patents we see in the news now days surrounded by law suits end up failing the test of useful, non-obvious, or novel, by any sense of these words. But somehow stupidity rules at the patent office and in the courts.
And looking back through history it appears it has never been applied properly so you have cases like Ford vs Seldon, Pavel vs Sony, and all the scum bag leeching we see in the courts today. The system is a failure because those in charge of applying the system have failed.
Again a late reply, but at least this will be in the record...
I have not read Pavel's patent but from your description it seems to be of the "claim staking" variety.
There is no such thing as a "claim staking" patent. There are two types of patents, utility and design. I'm not sure which patent Pavel's is supposed to be as it appears to be a utility patent because it suggests improvement to existing portable audio technology of the day, and yet in the end it doesn't, or perhaps it is a design patent because at the time nobody had a portable audio device which consisted of all the components seperated and held together by a belt, but then nobody is infringing that part of the patent.
When the idea of geostationary communications satellites was first proposed it was non-obvious (if only because very few people were thinking about such things). This perhaps could have been patented.
Actually, no, you cannot patent an idea and you cannot patent the laws of physics. Along with reading the patents you should read some of the information at http://www.uspto.gov/ especially the FAQ sections. You will find this line in one of the FAQs on patents:
"A patent cannot be obtained on a mere idea or suggestion. Patent applications are examined for both technical and legal merit."
So again, reading Pavel's patent it looks like what he has patented is the belt, not the player. There is no technical merit to his idea of a hi-fidelity portable audio player.
"the examiner will attempt to combine two or more prior patents, and attempt to find all of the features in a combination of those prior patents. If the examiner is successful in finding such a combination, the examiner will generally reject the invention as an obvious combination of items known in the prior art"
Unforetunately reason does not always rule and so not only was Pavel granted a patent but today we see many companies receiving patents which they should not. Note the following statement from the bitlaw site:
"Previous interpretations of the statute have also listed the following items as nonstatutory:
methods of doing business, and mere printed matter."
And yet e-commerce business methods are patented left and right. What a mess.
Technically a company is not necessarily a for-profit venture and therefore it should be specified whether a company is non-profit or for-profit. You will come across this very early if you read up on starting a business from places like http://www.sba.gov/
That said I agree that for-profit does not mean at all costs and ethics be damned. Obviously there are many companies that throw ethics out the window and believe in the principle "the ends justify the means". In fact it seems that entire countries and cultures are deviantly bent towards that principle. I think this propensisty towards lack of ethics in business is creating the expectation that any for-profit venture lacks ethics.
So don't get too upset about people specifying profit vs non-profit but keep up the sentiment on ethics as a requirement for good business, your not alone.
Slashdot Mirror
"Copying may have occurred here"
5 4208&tid=123&tid=155&tid=106
Where have you been?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?id=05/02/10/12
Which part of "it is astonishing that SCO has not offered any competent evidence to create a disputed fact regarding whether IBM has infringed SCO's alleged copyrights through IBM's Linux activities" doesn't make sense?
There is no infringement of SCO copyright code in linux. SCO couldn't produce any to save their butts.
Pastor,
Its not that Science and God must be mutually exclusive, it is that the principles which Science and Faith are based on are mutually exclusive. Its the faithful who want to force God into Science in place of scientific principles which are contradictory to their faith.
burnin
The director of the Microsoft linux lab comes right out and says the intention of the testing was to "put to rest the myth that Linux can run on anything.", so you already know that the test has no credibility since its objective was not to find out IF linux can run on anything as is generally assumed. The conclusion to the test came before the test or the results, sounds like standard Microsoft tactics.
Anyhow, reading Hilf's responses in the interview it appears that the tests showed that linux does run on anything based on their test results. He admited that "The tests, which found that Windows performed as well as Linux on legacy hardware" and therefore linux did run on the legacy hardware as installed "out-of-the-box". So the title to the article is wrong as Microsoft's own tests proved that linux would run on the legacy hardware.
Now I suspect that what Hilf wanted to say was that BOTH the Windows and linux installations did not run adequately on the legacy hardware with "out-of-the-box" installs. But he doesn't want to admit it because he actually does realize why there is a wide spread assumption that linux runs well on legacy hardware, because it does.
Note the response to the journalist's question about why there was a "linux runs on anything" assumption, "Hilf said the technical capability to modify Linux, to strip it down to run with a minimal set of services and software so that it could run on all sorts of hardware devices, had generated that larger assumption that any type of Linux distribution could run on all sorts of hardware devices".
And here Hilf is at first correct and then only half correct. It is true that you can strip down linux to make it more efficient and capable on legacy hardware, and it is also true that the latest desktop distros take advantage of the latest hardware and therefore have similar requirements to Windows. But he fails to acknowlege two facts that I suspect he is aware of, 1) even the latest distros can be pared down so they can be efficeintly used on legacy hardware for applications which have reduced resource requirements, and 2) there are light weight linux distros out there which are capable of effectively running on legacy hardware.
Case in point. I can, and have, taken a 533MHz system with a Via Eden processor, 128MB of RAM, dual ethernet cards, and one wireless network card and install the latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Fedora Core and have the latest kernel, selinux ACL, iptables, apache, bind, dhcpd, openvpn, and nfs and then proceed to efficiently use the box as a small business web server, file server, firewalled router, wireless access point, caching nameserver, and LAN dhcp server. And the first step is to simply click on only the software packages you need on the box when going through the graphical install.
And the second case in point, as has been pointed out in several other posts I've read, a usable desktop can be made out of legacy hardware using something like knoppix, damn small linux, or any other distro that was designed to use limited resources.
They are really grabbing at straws in their linux lab at Microsoft to try and prove their misconceptions about linux.
burnin
If I missed your point it is because what you said is "...a lot of people think that. And the ones who think that are correct..." which comes across as saying their belief that IE is the internet is a correct assumption. You further supported that point with "...IE == the internet in the same way that Outlook == my email..." which are both false statements. It didn't read like you were explaining the how and whys of the misunderstanding, it appeared you were reinforcing the laymans misunderstanding by stating that their perception was correct.
As far as linquistic evolution having any relation to the incorrect assumption that IE == Internet there are none. Internet Explorer did not become synonmyous with the Internet the same way Kleenex became synonymous with tissue.
No, there was no mention of attitudes until your last post. It also seems from that last post that you are suggesting I have a low opinion of people who have the misconception that IE == Internet. I'm not sure how you derived that from my posts but lets remove that topic from this discussion immediately. I do not look down on anyone who has misconceptions about technology.
I have no idea where you are headed with the specialized society and attacks on my grammer, it is all completely irrelevant. To pull the discussion back on track examine the root of the discussion:
And I still stand by my arguement. You can analyze why there is the confusion, the affects of society on confusion, the importance of the confusion, and my bad grammar, but it will not change the fact that:
1) IE != Internet
2) Laymen who believe that IE == Internet are wrong
3) Naming software with simple names related to their purpose is no guarantee that users will understand what it is and how to use it.
Interesting comment. We'll likely never fully understand all the reasons why he resigned, but if his intentions are to ensure that attention remains focused on the policy and facts at hand then he has just dealt a powerful blow to his adversaries.
With the dirty tricks that certain companies will use to pay off or bully decision makers his resignation seems to take away their second tactic which seems to have been employed because the first was not an option. So now with Quinn out of the picture and a super luminance spot light on the issue at hand any shenanigans are likely to cast a very visible shadow.
Its probably time now for the scumbags to slink away before they are exposed. Hopefully time will have them exposed anyway.
"And the ones who think that are correct, in many important respects"
No, they are confused and no level of logical perturbations are going to change that fact.
"Why should she spend the time to learn about the tcp/ip suite, bgp, autonomous systems, the difference between cat-5 and cat-6 cable? She uses her television set quite successfully without understanding the physics of radio-wave transmission, the inner politics of NBC, or cathode ray tubes. It's the beauty of abstraction, baby!"
Exactly. However, while the Television is an excellent abstraction which is designed and marketed in a way that a lay person can move from virtually any make and model of television to another with little difficulty Internet Explorer is not, perhaps only due to the name accompanied with a complete misunderstanding of what the internet is.
When that same lay person moves from their desktop to another and does not see the big blue e on the desktop they don't know what to do because they have a false perception of what is necessary to recieve the internet. Of course once someone points out FireFox/Opera/Safari/Konquere/etc and they open it up the familiar controls and the internet are all there.
So what the lay person needs to know is not the science and technology behind the internet, what they need to know is only the same principles they know about their TV. A connecting media, rabbit ears/cable/sattelite/ethernet/wifi, and the viewer with controls, web browser/CRT/buttons/dials. Since the lay person can understand that a Sony/Zenith/RCA/Samsung TV are all televisions its not unreasonable to have them associate IE/FireFox/Opera/Safari Browsers as web browsers.
burnin
"Which is precisely what makes it a good name"
That's funny, a good name for a product is one that will confuse and guile the customer. I've taken a couple of introductory marketing classes as part of my education and perhaps my memory is failing me but your logic seems to be contradictory to good marketing. In fact that sure sounds a lot like fraudulent marketing.
"the holy grail of marketing: the customer identifies the entire concept with your brand. See Kleenex, Xerox"
Here we can agree, but its interesting you bring up those two companies. Kleenex and Xerox have become synonymous with the purpose of their products not because they used some derivative naming scheme but rather they have an unrelated name associated with a quality product and the consumers themselves added the companies names to their vocabulary as synonyms to the general purpose of the product. The same cannot be said about Internet Explorer as it uses a name derived from the purpose and so Microsoft marketing created the synonym with the name.
"The downside of this is that when commoditization sets in, generic versions piggyback on your brand. See Kleenex, Xerox"
And here we disagree. The fact that these companies names have been made synonymous with the purpose of the product by the consumer means they have mindshare which they can leverage against their competition.
burnin
"Because most of the customers are non-techies and are most comfortable with the boring vanilla names..."
Based on the naming conventions on other platforms out there, including the one that holds a monopoly share of desktops, customers have no problem dealing with application names which have no obvious relation to their purpose. I see no basis for the vanilla_name == comfortable_user assumption.
"I resent your associating boring with vanilla"
haha, I actually find vanilla to be an interesting flavor, but we weren't talking about flavors or spices were we.
Try reading about vanilla at http://www.slangsite.com/slang/V.html, and chill (no, don't stand naked in a meat locker).
burnin
"any chance we could address this issue"
If you find it to be an issue I think somebody has already addressed it for you, enjoy.
Wow, you crack a joke about the Windows Start button and you immediately get a series of bent out of shape slashdotters giving you a hard time.
:)
Somebody seems to be sensitive about the Windows UI, you don't suppose the Windows developers are spending way too much time on slashdot? Then again its probably just the Vista test group making sure the latest build renders ol' slashdot, or astroturfers practicing their trade.
"even if you're the only one who uses the computer"
:P
Which ironically is the complete opposite of Windows where you don't have to login with a password and you ASSUME you are the only one using the computer when in reality there are probably several script kiddies who are also using the computer, with no password.
burnin
"Is it too much to ask"...
:)
Yes, so don't.
burnin
Although it could be debated as to which platform has confusing names, i.e. what is Excel, what is Visio, what is Access, what is Outlook, ad nauseam, I actualy have a contrarian view for you.
Why give applications boring vanilla names like photoshop, media player, etc.?
With the names that are given to many linux applications it could be argued that someone new to the platform would be lost, but I say they will be lost anyway and when they do learn about the applications that meet their needs the interesting names will leave an impression which will differentiate them from the applications on competing platforms that have common names.
I would also argue that vanilla naming creates its own confusion. How many people think Internet Explorer IS the internet?
I say we stick with the fun names.
burnin
Replying to comments on slashdot concerning how retarded the arguements are is something only a retard would
So this guy patented rsync?
Andrew Tridgell has copyrights on rsync as old as 1996, possibly even older.
This patent never should have passed the Novel or Obviousness tests. I find it amazing reading some of these patents that have been issued and finding that the patent itself explains why it should not be patentable. From the uspto.gov website:
"The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention."
Now I'll get a long list of replies with "if it was obvious how come nobody did it before". All I can tell you is that just because somebody hasn't done it doesn't mean its not obvious.
Let me explain it this way, if you have a problem that needs to be solved by developing a software application and you can sit down with a developer and he says "yeah, I can do that" then its obvious. If the developer says "thats impossible" and somebody then spends significant time and resources trying to find a solution and does, they very well may have something that is patentable.
That said I would also point out that in 99.999% of all cases software algorithms and solutions are not patentable, they should be covered by copyright. And copyright covers the actual code a binaries, not reverse engineering. If somebody does the same thing with their own code it is not a copyright violation.
burnin
From actions which are destructive to the economics of the open source model. The leech who is selling the software which was intended to be open source ends up diluting the base upon which the open source model works. Open source is still a very new economic model but the following article from Perens is a good explanantion...
http://perens.com/Articles/Economic.html
From the article the following paragraph explains some of the internal workings of an open source project and from this you can see how the leech will be pulling away resources that could be driving the project...
So you see, the thieves who steal from the open source community are no better than the theives that steal from the closed source community.
burnin
It seems your pet peeve is based on a mis-understanding of what is said.
Obviously using GPLed code illegally in a proprietary product does not suddenly make the original open source project closed, and I can understand how suggesting such a condition could cause some people to get riled, but that is not what I said and I don't think I've ever seen anyone suggest such a concept either.
Open source code released under the GPL is available for anyone to use even in a product they wish to sell for profit, however, the ownership of the source code is still maintained by copyright law and is only licensed for use. Copyright law is an enabling force behind the licensing practice for GPLed source code.
If a developer gets heart burn over releasing their own code under the GPL then all they have to do is leave the GPLed code alone. Its that simple.
As far as your suggestion for a restatement of the line, I can accept it. Your statement is much clearer on the guidelines imposed by the GPL but it is basically the same statement which I made.
burnin
Actually that should read more like:
Without copyright law it will be impossible to force anyone who uses GPL code to abide by the guidelines of the license and keep the source code open.
The way you say it makes it sound like people are running around with the GPL beating up developers left and right trying to force them to release their source code. The GPL has no impact at all as long as your not borrowing from the pool of GPLed code.
burnin
Hmm, a coward, not surprising considering the twisted interpretation of the GPLs purpose. Anyhow, let me provide some enlightenment.
The issue the GPL is concerned with is not free binaries without source code, its more like scumbag companies who rip off open source code for inclusion in their products which they require you to PAY for and yet they have no intention of releasing their source code or giving anything back to the project.
Of course there is more to it than that, but that bit should address you twisted perspective.
burnin
Sorry Aim_Here, but I do not have the ability to read minds. The discussion of the subject would be much more efficient if you'd just spit out what your thinking.
Anyhow, I'll take a jab at it based on your previous post about what is proprietary after copyright is gone.
Proprietary suggests that "something exclusively owned by someone, often with connotations that it is exclusive and cannot be used by other parties without negotiations".
Obviously if you do not have access to source code which at one time was open then the source code has become proprietary. Yes you would still have access to the original code, and yes you could legally make copies of the binary produced from the now closed source code, but what you would not have is the new code that was added to the original code. And thus the project that once was an open source project will have forked into a closed source proprietary project.
Current open source licenses rely on copyright law as the legal muscle to ensure that licensees of the source code abid by the rules of the license which quite often involves keeping the source code open. Once copyright law is gone so too is the legal means of ensuring companies abide by the license.
So as the parent post suggested, eliminating copyright law would very likely result in many open source projects being ripped off by companies who would turn them into proprietary products.
burnin
"In the absence of copyright law, what does 'proprietary' mean?"
;)
It means that companies will pillage the open source projects for code, create a product based on that code, and then sell the product without releasing the source code or any improvements they may have made to the code.
Presently the copyright holders of open source code can take legal action against anyone who does not follow the guildlines of the GPL (or some other OSS license), the license under which they have released their code.
Several companies have already been caught violating open source licenses and to date they have all agreed to abide by the license. If copyright law is abolished then the open source licenses will lose their legal strength. The pillaging will only become worse as you will see companies ripping off open source code for their closed source proprietary products with zero legal repercussions.
At least that is what I suspect he meant by his statement.
burnin
Don't get me wrong, I do not disagree or dispute much of your opinion or analysis of the article, but I think the patent office needs to be strict on certain aspects of patentablility requirements, one of them being useful/operative/working inventions. While I agree with your concern over determining patentability based on the breadth of the patent filed I believe the invention absolutely MUST pass the operative test or should be rejected. I don't care if it takes 5, 10, 30, or a thousand years. By lowering the standards for acceptance of patents the issues we are dealing with in the courts will only get worse.
As for your DNA sequencing technology example, both methods were operative and both recieved patents. Oxford holds the patent for Edwin Southern's sequencing process and Cetus holds the patent for Kary's PCR development. The fact that PCR makes sequencing significantly faster than Southern blot analysis doesn't make one any less patentable. The key here is that they each passed the criteria for patentability.
Now if we make another comparison, say the Oxford patent to Pavel's portable stereo patent we find a distinct difference. While the Southern blotting method patented by Oxford was slow it did work. However, Pavel's patent was on an idea of what he would like a device to do but not how the device would accomplish the objective, it was non-working. Pavel's patent should have been rejected since much of the patent was only an idea or suggestion but not a working solution.
burnin
In that case the patent should not have been approved until the "critical specification" was resolved.
From http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/
'The term "useful" in this connection refers to the condition that the subject matter has a useful purpose and also includes operativeness, that is, a machine which will not operate to perform the intended purpose would not be called useful, and therefore would not be granted a patent.'
Therefore, if it took 30 years to make the thing work then at the end of the 30 years when they had a "useful" invention it should then be patented.
That is part of the problem with the current patent system, not the system itself, the law, or even the legal interpretations, its that its not being applied properly. It seems that many of the patents we see in the news now days surrounded by law suits end up failing the test of useful, non-obvious, or novel, by any sense of these words. But somehow stupidity rules at the patent office and in the courts.
And looking back through history it appears it has never been applied properly so you have cases like Ford vs Seldon, Pavel vs Sony, and all the scum bag leeching we see in the courts today. The system is a failure because those in charge of applying the system have failed.
burnin
There is no such thing as a "claim staking" patent. There are two types of patents, utility and design. I'm not sure which patent Pavel's is supposed to be as it appears to be a utility patent because it suggests improvement to existing portable audio technology of the day, and yet in the end it doesn't, or perhaps it is a design patent because at the time nobody had a portable audio device which consisted of all the components seperated and held together by a belt, but then nobody is infringing that part of the patent.
Actually, no, you cannot patent an idea and you cannot patent the laws of physics. Along with reading the patents you should read some of the information at http://www.uspto.gov/ especially the FAQ sections. You will find this line in one of the FAQs on patents:
"A patent cannot be obtained on a mere idea or suggestion. Patent applications are examined for both technical and legal merit."
So again, reading Pavel's patent it looks like what he has patented is the belt, not the player. There is no technical merit to his idea of a hi-fidelity portable audio player.
It would also be good to read up on some legal interpretations of patent law, might I suggest http://www.bitlaw.com/patent/requirements.html.
"the examiner will attempt to combine two or more prior patents, and attempt to find all of the features in a combination of those prior patents. If the examiner is successful in finding such a combination, the examiner will generally reject the invention as an obvious combination of items known in the prior art"
Unforetunately reason does not always rule and so not only was Pavel granted a patent but today we see many companies receiving patents which they should not. Note the following statement from the bitlaw site:
"Previous interpretations of the statute have also listed the following items as nonstatutory:
methods of doing business, and
mere printed matter."
And yet e-commerce business methods are patented left and right. What a mess.
burnin
Technically a company is not necessarily a for-profit venture and therefore it should be specified whether a company is non-profit or for-profit. You will come across this very early if you read up on starting a business from places like http://www.sba.gov/
That said I agree that for-profit does not mean at all costs and ethics be damned. Obviously there are many companies that throw ethics out the window and believe in the principle "the ends justify the means". In fact it seems that entire countries and cultures are deviantly bent towards that principle. I think this propensisty towards lack of ethics in business is creating the expectation that any for-profit venture lacks ethics.
So don't get too upset about people specifying profit vs non-profit but keep up the sentiment on ethics as a requirement for good business, your not alone.
burnin