Taking patents away from drug companies is a bad idea. It would have a chilling effect on research and development. Why develop a new wonder drug drug if you fear it will be taken by the government?
I think a better way is to require the companies to license the patent to competitors for a reasonable fee. This insures they profit from their R&D and it creates compeition in the marketplace.
As I understand it, this was the original intention of patents, to make technology widely available while protecting the investment made by the developer. I don't think it was meant to provide rapacious profits to drug companies by giving them a patent on the key to life or death for some patients.
No, this is worse. As I read it, if I were in Australia and someone who didn't like me called up my ISP and said I had child porn on my site, the ISP would be required to report me to the police, even if I don't have any such thing on my site. This makes it easy to harass innocent people.
It's quite possible, since I haven't read the text of the bill, that the ISP is required to verify the complaint, but that seems like it's forcing the ISP to play the role of investigative agency.
Finally, this law would make it easy for an unscrupulous telco, not that I'm saying there are any, to shut down small competitors. They simply flood them with complaints about child pornography. They could simply report every site handled by the ISP, forcing the expenditure of outrageous resources by the ISP to prevent having to pay out the fee for every site they provide.
No matter how you look at it, this is a silly law. It's already a law in most countries that you report crimes that you become aware of. Perhaps the legislator's energies could be better spent on funding intervention programs to break the cycles of abuse that lead to the problem in the first place.
Unfortunately, the USPTO seems to have a large rubber approve stamp to use on all MS patent applications. Microsoft has already receieved several patents of dubious merit, many of which have been talked about here in the past.
People are still getting too caught up on the wrong thing. The problem isn't even what MS is getting a patent on. The problem is a system that allows anyone to patent software at all. Software is already protected by copyright, it had no need for patent protection as well. By allowing people to patent software, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Innovation will grind to a halt. Who wants to spend years reviewing a large program for potential patent violations? The only companies that will be able to write software will be those that have obtained cross-licensing agreements with one another. In other words, the big companies like MS and IBM. The day of the small programming shop are numbered.
Very few companies innovate. Most have climates that stifle innovation rather than encourage it. Large companies are good at buying up small companies that have made innovations and then turning those innovations into money makers.
If we eliminate the small start ups that are responsible for the majority of innovations in our country, we will be giving away even more of our jobs to other countries who have more rational approaches to intellectual property protection.
In the event we manage to force everyone to acknowledge and enforce software patents throughout the world, we'll slow the pace of innovation in technology at a time when it is needed more than ever.
The point is they aren't doing this directly to make money, they are doing this to remove products that help Linux. The game plan is to hurt Linux and other open source software.
In my opinion, this is clearly an anti-trust violation. Again, Microsoft is using it's deep pockets to strong-arm the competition. What is ironic is that Linux has so few viruses that most Linux users have no need for an anti-virus product at this time.
Now, if you want to be a real tin-hatter, you could imagine that M$ is getting a lot of knowledge on how to create Linux viruses from these aquisitions...
The biggest anoyance is that it's not using a standard format for those files. If it were, not only would you have compatability within the product family; but with other families (Adobe, F/OSS, etc) as well.
...this is a very frustrating bug to deal with.
This isn't a bug, this is a marketing feature. Microsoft did this on purpose in order to force companies to upgrade their software.
This could be a public service actually. This way anyone wishing to lie would have to pony up for a license fee. There would be an actual list of registered liars! Of course an automatic license might have to be granted to all politicians, but I'm sure that the politicians and Microsoft could work something out.
Microsoft could make even more billions! They hold seminars to teach people the proper use of prevarication.
Frankly, I can't imagine why they haven't already pursued patents in this area. Of course, they might be worried that such a patent might be too broad...
Companies take their lead from top management. Microsoft isn't some rogue corporation going off doing bad things against the wishes of Bill Gates. If that was so, all he'd have to do is fire the managers that did such things, thus setting an example. On the contrary, Microsoft apparently promotes managers who use unethical and illegal tactics to generate additional sales.
Managers don't go off and use questionable tactics without the full knowledge and support of their superiors. To do otherwise means losing your job and that nice pay check.
A while back Microsoft changed it's policies on retention of email. They instructed everyone to delete all email as soon as reasonable and never to keep email past thirty days. Ostensibly this was done to save server space, which is probably part of the reason. On the other hand, it also neatly eliminates potentially incriminating evidence that might indicate which managers knew about decisions to use illegal strategies and how far up the chain of command such decisions went.
Bill Gates isn't solely responsible for the bad behavior at Microsoft. Obviously managers had to be willing to bend and break rules and laws and they bear some of the guilt. The stock holders are also responsible. They sat back and counted their money even as stories about Microsoft's illegal activities were coming out. I haven't heard of any demands by stock holders that Microsoft cease it's monopolistic tactics. Finally, our government bears a large part of the rsponsibility for the current situation and the effect it has on software development. The Bush administration effectively neutered the Justice department's conviction of Microsoft when they told Justice that they couldn't seek to break up the company. As a result, Microsoft got a slap on the wrist and what should have been a ruinous penalty got turned into a marketing opportunity.
So Yes, it was Bill, and Microsoft, and Stockholders, and the Government, and all of us who have not made it clear to our representatives in government that we won't tolerate this kind of behavior by a U.S. corporation.
I'm not so sure you can say that Gates is not a political leader. He might not be running for office, but he seems to have a lot of influence over those who do. Microsoft's relationship with Ireland and with many bureaucrats in the EU seems to be having a very large effect on their political process. Individuals who are supposed to represent the views of their individual countries seem to be voting the way that Microsoft and Bill Gates want them to rather than their own citizens. This certainly demonstrates a great deal of political power.
We suspect that the right of FOSS to exist is under attack. Gates is leading the charge. Fundementally it's a political battle. Gates knows that if he can blacken the name of all the FOSS supporters, by equating them with communitsts, than he can use that to sway members of congress to vote for legislation that is beneficial to MS and harmful to FOSS.
The really scary thing is that what has happened in the EU demonstrates just how weak-willed political representatives can be. I don't see any reason to believe that our own representatives are cut from any finer cloth than those of the EU.
Gates and others who want to see FOSS fail know that a free market would clobber them. FOSS will dominate many areas of software, including Linux, withing a few years if special protections and lawsuits don't prevent it.
Gates could lose a substantial portion of his empire. He'll use whatever tactics he thinks will work in order to keep that from happening.
Why in the world would AOL base their new browser on IE, a seriously flawed piece of software from a security stand point, instead of Netscape/Mozilla. They paid for Netscape and now Mozilla based browsers are considered far safer than IE. If I were setting policy at a company I would not allow the use of IE or any program based on IE simply because of the security problems.
AOL bought Netscape. Why not take advantage of that and when they bring out the new browser they could have commercials about how they built it on Mozilla because that way it's safer.
Hydrogen isn't exactly a perfect fuel either. Hydrogen has to be generated, usually by splitting water, which requires electricity. That electricity is often generated by burning fossil fuels like oil or coal. (Yes, it can also be generated by other greener means, but most power production in the U.S. still involves fossil fuels. BTW, wind power is probably the best option since it actually takes energy out of the atmosphere directly.) Storage of Hydrogen safely is also problematic.
Right now, the best bet for the environment is probably the hybrid vehicle. I'm especially interested in the new Honda Accord which is coming out since I've been driving Accords all my life. These vehicles use the energy generated by burning gasoline much more sensibly. Regenerative braking and instant off/on for the engine help dramatically lower the fuel consumption without turning your car into a wimp. (Anyone driving in Boston or Chicago will appreciate the need for a little get up and go when dealing with crazy drivers.)
No matter how green the car is, you still have to get people to buy it. People are attracted to the Humvee because of it's military association. I hope the same magnetism influences them to buy hybrids based on the new design discussed in the article.
While we keep trying to ignore it, the problems with our climate are going to continue to increase. We've increased the carbon in our atmosphere by over one third in the last few decades. You can't change the global makeup of your atmosphere without expecting some pretty dramatic changes in how that atmosphere behaves. We should all be doing our part to lower the impact our daily lives have on our already stressed environment.
People should be marching on their state capitols demanding that the current e-voting machines be replaced with verifiable voting methods such as paper ballots until such time as everyone can be satisfied that the e-voting machines are fair and reliable. (Which probably means when they produce a clear paper trail.)
The foundation of our system of government is put at risk by sloppy or malicious coding and we all sit at home and go about our lives as if nothing is truely at risk. The degree of apathy that has been shown on this issue is astonishing.
Avi Rubin, the leading authority on e-voting, gave a great interview in the recent Dr. Dobbs Journel. I think what he says is something that every voter should hear. (His writings on e-voting are here.) The problem is not whether or not a certain political party or company has rigged these machines to fix the election, it's that the very design and nature of these machines makes it possible to do so in a way that is undetectable.
Up until now, if you wanted to steal an election, you had to coordinate the work of a large number of people in across a large number of states unless you could blame it all on a bunch of people voting incorrectly in one county in Florida. Now, you could subtley alter the programming of these machines and shift a small percentage of the results produced by each one. It would be almost impossible to detect.
It's not just the presidential race that is affected, its all the races. Think of the money that is controlled by these politicians and the incentives available to people who want to make sure they get the "right" political climate in the future. If this type of cheating doesn't happen this election, it will happen in another, and soon.
The only way to make sure that these machines can be trusted is to:
Make the source open to viewing by anyone who wishes to see it. The source should be posted on the Internet and paper copies should be supplied to voters on request.
Run the software on an operating system that is also open source. It's already been shown that the Diebold machines can be compromised via the Microsoft Windows operating system.
Produce a paper audit trail and a printed voting receipt that can be used to verify the results the machine reports.
They say we get the government we deserve. If we don't raise hell with out state governments and election boards over the use of these machines, you can be certain of it.
Linux used to have a purely monolithic kernel, now most of the device drivers are loaded based on configuration information obtained from a scan doen at boot time and configuration files.
The original design decision of using a monolithic kernel was roundly criticized by a number of people. Things change, sometimes very quickly, in the Linux world. That is one of the great strengths of Linux.
Microsoft claims their OS can't run without being tightly integrated with Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player. Were that actually true, it would make anything done in Linux's early history look downright brilliant by comparison.
Microsoft may have millions to pour into design but that still doesn't compare to the sheer numbers and quality of engineers that contribute to Linux. What many people fail to realize is that the guys who work on Linux as a hobby are the same ones who write the books on OS theory, build operating systems for other companies, and do the research that MS incorporates into it's own products. The people that contribute to Linux do so because they want to build something really cool. Because the work is vetted by anywhere from dozens to hundreds of programmers before it becomes part of the source tree, only the best code gets in.
Currently there is no way to duplicate the results you can get with a popular FOSS project in a private enterprise environment. Over the next few year, I believe that Linux will become the dominant OS in terms of speed, efficiency and cost of ownership. Just look at the progress that Linux has made in the past few years versus Windows and the various flavors of UNIX.
More and more companies and even governments are standardizing on Linux for servers and even desktop computers. As Linux becomes even more populer, it's open nature will attract even more programmers to it. The next generation of programmers growing up and going to school in Mexico, India, and Africa, are all learning on Linux, not Windows. Their first chance to tinker with an operating system and put their own ideas into practice will be with Linux, which is Open, not Windows, which they can't touch.
Eventually, FOSS and privately developed software will find an equilibrium. There are many areas in which privately developed software is superior to FOSS, but Operating Systems is not one of them. Most widely used applications will shift over to FOSS. The same thing will happen with software intended for governments and in areas like security where being able to inspect the source code for security problems is critical. Privately developed software will continue to be viable in niche markets, in areas like games, and in many places I can't predict.
And yes, I have studied computer science and operating system design. I've also studied my own Linux box. I've even learned a good deal about the kernel code, something I am free to do with Linux.
When I first read about using power lines to provide broadband Internet access, I was very excited, especially since I lived in an area in which there was no real competition in broadband. It seemed like a great idea. At the time I didn't realize that the unshielded power lines would interfere with Amateur Radio.
Radio Amateurs, HAMs, have played critical roles in almost every large disaster that has happened in this country. They provided emergency communications when no other communications technologies were working. Groups of HAMs regularly set up disaster drills where they perfect their ability to get information in and out of a disaster torn area. HAMs have also helped advance radio technology. The very first wireless Internet connections were set up by HAMs using 2-meter rigs connected to their computers back in the days of the first IBM PC and Apple IIe.
There might be all kinds of rules that the power companies have to follow to prevent interference with HAM radio, but my guess is that they'll just ignore them. How many amateur radio operators are going to have the fiscal resources needed to take on a big power company?
My guess is that everyone will quickly forget about this debate until a disaster strikes. Then maybe people will wonder why the communications were so poor and count the lives that were lost because of it.
If the power companies are going to disrupt the ability of HAM radio operators to provide communications during disasters, they should bear the cost of setting up alternative communication networks that can supply the needed communications. It's a cost of doing business.
Another question springs to mind, why this particular frequency spectrum, is it dictated by the application, or was this spectrum selected because there was they figured that amateur radio operators couldn't organize real opposition to it?
As I stated later in my post, it's not practical to change all our energy production to wind. There is no single solution to this problem. The point I was trying to make was that there are practical things that can be done right now that will start to move things in the right direction.
If the user isn't using IE and isn't running a server (such as httpd), then it's quite unlikely that anything bad will happen. Unless someone specifically targets the machine and scans for all activated services, etc, and launches an attack against an un-patched vulnerability.
I would be brave enough to state that a Win2k / WinXP / Win2003 is just as secure as UNIX / FreeBSD / OSX, if: -
The user using the machine doesn't have admin rights,
Windows and related networking software is kept up-to-date,
Doesn't use IE / related mail product.
No, Windows is not just as secure. The point is that there are lots of script kiddies constantly scanning the range of ports used for cable and dsl networked computers. Once they get a response, they scan all the ports on that IP looking for open/vulnerable services. They target Windows because the vast majority of computers on the Internet are running Windows. Look at all the posts in this thread. You can find numerous accounts where Windows computers were infected within minutes of being connected to the Internet.
It's possible that Linux/Unix would be far less secure if it received as much attention from the hacker community, but there are some good arguments that it wouldn't be. Linux/Unix has been a part of the Internet since it was first conceived and the programmers that have worked on Linux and UNIX have generally been more aware of networking and security issues.
Linux has a much more modular design than Windows. Windows has been tightly integrated on the basis of Marketing and Legal rather than Engineering decisions. I doubt that Windows will ever be secure without substantial redesign of the entire OS. Unless Microsoft is successful at throwing up legal roadblocks, Linux is going to continue to outstrip Windows in security, reliability, and eventually usability.
It will take more than one idea or technology to solve this problem. Windmills, for instance, might be a complementary solution. Windmills take energy directly out of the atmosphere, which can help counteract the most direct effects of global warming. I believe I saw a post here on/. that said that if 95% of the world's energy was produced by windmills, we would be extracting more energy from the atmosphere then is being added by global warming.
95% is probably an impractically large number. In reality, we need lots of cooperating elements in order to solve this problem. We need to immediately curtail the growth of carbon emissions and then work to reduce it. We need to increase the number and capacity of carbon sinks. New trees need to be planted to replace those being lost in South America. We need to understand what effect the regions of the ocean suffering from hypoxia are having on the oceans ability to absorb carbon dioxide. We need to find out what other problems are being caused by the change in the makeup of the atmosphere and work to fix them.
The U.S. is going to have to step up and become a leader in environmental issues again. This could be the most important long term threat the world has ever had to deal with. The U.S. has been one of the largest producers of CO2 pollution. It's only recently that other large countries have been generating more. The U.S. risks becoming the scapegoat for the entire problem and the target of justifiable anger. Our actions here in the U.S. affect everyone in the world.
I hope that the U.S. and other nations find the strength and will to rise above pettiness and cooperate to solve this problem. It certainly can't be done by any one nation alone.
RFID in drivers licenses means that the license information can be read from a short distance away, say in a turnstile or any other narrow entrance. This would enable someone to determine everyone who attends events, night clubs, etc. Someone with an appropriate RFID receiver could walk through a crowd and record who is present.
While such a system would make life easier and safer for police, it would make anonymity a thing of the past. How long would it be before our current representatives, who are completely gung ho on helping business, would allow businesses to use the RFID to identify customers entering and leaving businesses? The businesses could use the information to run credit checks. Businesses could determine how much money you have to spend the moment you walk in the door.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I think the potential abuses of this technology far outweigh the benefits.
It is a shame that we in the U.S. have reacted to 9/11 the way we have. The world is a dangerous place and it makes sense to put reasonable security procedures in place, but no amount of protection will protect us 100%. There will always be a risk, especially in a free society. Personally, I accept that risk and embrace it. That risk is the price of freedom.
The terrorists that attacked us sought to destroy our way of life and make us afraid. They win each time we accept another limitation on our freedom in the name of security. Don't let them win.
Is that these actions by Microsoft fundementally affect everyone. Open Source makes perfect sense for certain types of infrastructure applications, the Operating System being the best example. Everyone who uses the OS can contribute to its growth in capabilities and maturity. Everyone benefits except the vendors of Operating Systems.
Open Source make especially good sense for governments as well, since they all have similar needs and limited budgets. Contrary to what Microsoft believes, my tax dollars are not intented as a hand out for Bill Gates. I want them used wisely. If Bill Gates wants my money, he can get it by producing software that I purchase willingly, not software that I am forced to pay for by Micrsoft's creative marketing "agreements" with computer vendors.
Now, for all those who are going to scream about how we should all just watch quietly as Microsoft goes about it's business of squeezing us for money... MS is a convicted monopolist. I personally believe that there is no place for a monopoly in a free market economy. It will always result in the devistation of the marketplace, just as MS has. Capital for software development didn't dry up just because of the Dotcom meltdown. It has vanished because no one wants to invest in developing a software product that MS might decide to compete against.
Those of you who are unemployed software engineers, think about this very carefully. MS is part of the reason you are out of work. MS has become the impediment to innovation in our industry, not Open Source.
If you want a good example, just look at Firefox vs. IE. MS stopped development work on IE after they "won" the browser wars. Firefox is quietly taking over the market now by being better, faster, and far more secure. This could only be done by an Open Source project, because we saw what happened to Netscape when they tried to compete against the company that controlled the operating system.
MS should have been broken up. It would have been the healthiest thing for both the stock holders and the software market. The new companies created out of the old Microsoft would eventually be worth far more than the current company is and we'd all see better software being developed as competition heated up again.
I have a very nice mouse, a Logitech Mouseman Wheel mouse with 4 buttons. It's several years old and I can't find it on the shelves or Internet anymore. The wonderful thing is that it fits my hand. It's comfortable. I don't end the day with fingers hurting and my hand cramping.
It seems to me that Logitech finally came up with a great mouse when it produced the model that I have. Now I can't find anything remotely like it. Some marketers have told companies that egronomic is out and "style" is in.
I don't care about style. Ok, that's not completely true, but I don't care more about style than comfort. What I look for first in any user interface component is comfort and ease of use. If it looks good after that, so much the better.
I'd like companies to quit changing things just for the sake of change. Find what works and stick with it. Find better ways to point at things on the screen. Find ways to make it even easier to use a mouse all day without developing repetitive motion disorders. Concentrate on those first and style a distant second.
I believe that part of the reason that open source based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying technology.... I have evidence to back it up!
No, you have a story, that's not evidence. Besides, most of what you say here is wrong either because you are uninformed or deliberately spreading misinformation.
We all know that linux isn't even close to being ready for the desktop
Many of my friends now use Linux as their desktop operating system. I also use Linux as my desktop OS when I'm not playing games. Walmart has started selling Linux equipped PCs which are selling fairly well. The fact is that for the average PC user, Linux will work just fine. There will be a learning curve, but that would be true of any new technology.
After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it.
Given that so many others have been running Bind and Apache for many years without substantial problems, I'd have to say that you probably misconfigured your system.
The "weekend volunteers" that you refer to are some of the finest programmers in the world or the code that they have written is comparable with that written by the best. If they weren't, the code they wrote would not get past the peer reviews and into these popular open source projects. The people who write code for Open Source projects are often the same people who write for the large software development companies. The difference is that they write Open Source code out of love for the work and the project, and the respect of their peers.
While MS might have a "full development team" working on some projects, I doubt they have a full team working on any mature product that isn't undergoing constant new development. What resources they have are devoted to adding marketable features that will bring in additional sales, not necessarily reworking the code in pursuit of engineering excellence.
Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled
filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with some level of stability.
Again you have demonstrated that you are badly misinformed about Linux. The 2.6 Kernel does in fact have SMP support. There are at least 3 journeling file systems that I can think of off the top of my head, ext3, jfs, and rieserfs.
As for being based on "old technology", Linux has caught up and passed MS. Linux now often incorporates new standards and technologies before the large software companies can even get them on the planning schedule. Linux developers have already put in place buffer overflow protection stipulated by new security standards that Microsoft has endorsed but has been unable to implement to-date. Microsoft hasn't even been able to finish and release it's new security patch, SP2 on-time, leaving millions of PC users vulnerable to viruses, trojans, and other malware. It is truely hard to appreciate just what it means to have thousands of people working on a single project and contributing their enthusiasm and expertise.
There are many places where you can get help on configuring Linux machines. It appears, based on your posting, that you went about it by yourself without much knowledge of Linux. Had you looked for help, I believe you would have had far different results. I suggest you check out The Linux Documentation Project, my own site which is aimed at new Linux users moving over from Windows, and A How To Get Linux HOWTO that I have been working on. Perhaps you'll find that your experience changes when you work with the community rather than on your own.
To be fair Microsoft does somewhat have a point as IBM, one of the foremost advocates of Linux, is pushing the virtual-Linux-on-a-mainframe concept, and a lot of people are buying. It seems that Microsoft was tageting that competitor rather than Linux-running-on-obsoleted-developer-PC.
In fact, what IBM is pushing is running hundreds of virtual Linux machines on a single IBM mainframe. This substantially reduces the cost of maintaining a large Linux installation. What would have been fair would have been a comparison between an IBM mainframe running hundreds of virtual Linux servers and hundreds of PC's running Windows.
Oh wait... That is the kind of comparison that IBM is using to sell such systems...
I guess I'll never make anyones list of greatest programmers, but I think Java is plenty cool, especially with some of the recent changes. Java has gone from being a trivial scripting language that was primarily useful for animating pictures on the web to a very powerful language that can occasionally outperform C++, especially on web appliations.
Java is far easier to learn than C++. While Java does not provide all the flexibility of C++, most of the time I don't need to be able to write code that interacts directly with the hardware.
The days of managing memory by hand should have become a distant memory for all but a handful of programmers long ago. Memory management bugs are among the most common and difficult bugs to fix.
When I first started programming Assembler programmers made all the same comments about us "sissy" C programmers that the C++ programmers make about programmers in Java and other memory managed languages. There aren't so many assembly language programmers around these days...
Here is what burns me when spammers make the claim that they are like bulk mailers. A bulk mailer or any direct mail marketer pays for each piece of mail he or she sends out. On the other hand, we all wind up paying for the spam that is sent out by these guys in increased costs for the ISPs which eventually result in slower expansion of technology and/or increased rates for consumers.
So here is my proposal, for what little it's worth, make any person who wants to spam, i.e, send more than say 100 emails to people who have not registered to recieve them, pay for a license that is based on the number of emails he or she is going to send. Perhaps they should be charged a penny per email. The money can be used to pay for the computers for schools and public libraries, expanded Internet capability, and to enforce the anti-spam laws.
The price might be too high, or perhaps even too low. That's not the important part. The important thing is to make it clear to people who send unsolicited emails that the bandwidth they are using has a cost and that they will pay it.
Now we can keep all the opposition politicians from voting against our bills by preventing them from getting to Washington in the first place! We'll just tell them that Tom Ridge is in a meeting with the vice president and can't be located!
My wife, who works in the MMORPG Industry, tells me that she believes that Sir Bruce's numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.
I'd like to point out that some companies, including the one my wife works for, are extremely reluctant to reveal these kinds of numbers and consider them closely held proprietary secrets. Therefore, it's unlikely that all these numbers came from the game companies themselves. Numbers that did come from game companies might be a bit inflated. It's hard to resist the temptation to make your game look just a little bit better.
Just a word of caution that you shouldn't believe everything you read.... even on/.
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Taking patents away from drug companies is a bad idea. It would have a chilling effect on research and development. Why develop a new wonder drug drug if you fear it will be taken by the government?
I think a better way is to require the companies to license the patent to competitors for a reasonable fee. This insures they profit from their R&D and it creates compeition in the marketplace.
As I understand it, this was the original intention of patents, to make technology widely available while protecting the investment made by the developer. I don't think it was meant to provide rapacious profits to drug companies by giving them a patent on the key to life or death for some patients.
No, this is worse. As I read it, if I were in Australia and someone who didn't like me called up my ISP and said I had child porn on my site, the ISP would be required to report me to the police, even if I don't have any such thing on my site. This makes it easy to harass innocent people.
It's quite possible, since I haven't read the text of the bill, that the ISP is required to verify the complaint, but that seems like it's forcing the ISP to play the role of investigative agency.
Finally, this law would make it easy for an unscrupulous telco, not that I'm saying there are any, to shut down small competitors. They simply flood them with complaints about child pornography. They could simply report every site handled by the ISP, forcing the expenditure of outrageous resources by the ISP to prevent having to pay out the fee for every site they provide.
No matter how you look at it, this is a silly law. It's already a law in most countries that you report crimes that you become aware of. Perhaps the legislator's energies could be better spent on funding intervention programs to break the cycles of abuse that lead to the problem in the first place.
Unfortunately, the USPTO seems to have a large rubber approve stamp to use on all MS patent applications. Microsoft has already receieved several patents of dubious merit, many of which have been talked about here in the past.
People are still getting too caught up on the wrong thing. The problem isn't even what MS is getting a patent on. The problem is a system that allows anyone to patent software at all. Software is already protected by copyright, it had no need for patent protection as well. By allowing people to patent software, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Innovation will grind to a halt. Who wants to spend years reviewing a large program for potential patent violations? The only companies that will be able to write software will be those that have obtained cross-licensing agreements with one another. In other words, the big companies like MS and IBM. The day of the small programming shop are numbered.
Very few companies innovate. Most have climates that stifle innovation rather than encourage it. Large companies are good at buying up small companies that have made innovations and then turning those innovations into money makers.
If we eliminate the small start ups that are responsible for the majority of innovations in our country, we will be giving away even more of our jobs to other countries who have more rational approaches to intellectual property protection.
In the event we manage to force everyone to acknowledge and enforce software patents throughout the world, we'll slow the pace of innovation in technology at a time when it is needed more than ever.
The point is they aren't doing this directly to make money, they are doing this to remove products that help Linux. The game plan is to hurt Linux and other open source software.
In my opinion, this is clearly an anti-trust violation. Again, Microsoft is using it's deep pockets to strong-arm the competition. What is ironic is that Linux has so few viruses that most Linux users have no need for an anti-virus product at this time.
Now, if you want to be a real tin-hatter, you could imagine that M$ is getting a lot of knowledge on how to create Linux viruses from these aquisitions...
The biggest anoyance is that it's not using a standard format for those files. If it were, not only would you have compatability within the product family; but with other families (Adobe, F/OSS, etc) as well.
...this is a very frustrating bug to deal with.
This isn't a bug, this is a marketing feature. Microsoft did this on purpose in order to force companies to upgrade their software.
This could be a public service actually. This way anyone wishing to lie would have to pony up for a license fee. There would be an actual list of registered liars! Of course an automatic license might have to be granted to all politicians, but I'm sure that the politicians and Microsoft could work something out.
Microsoft could make even more billions! They hold seminars to teach people the proper use of prevarication.
Frankly, I can't imagine why they haven't already pursued patents in this area. Of course, they might be worried that such a patent might be too broad...
Companies take their lead from top management. Microsoft isn't some rogue corporation going off doing bad things against the wishes of Bill Gates. If that was so, all he'd have to do is fire the managers that did such things, thus setting an example. On the contrary, Microsoft apparently promotes managers who use unethical and illegal tactics to generate additional sales.
Managers don't go off and use questionable tactics without the full knowledge and support of their superiors. To do otherwise means losing your job and that nice pay check.
A while back Microsoft changed it's policies on retention of email. They instructed everyone to delete all email as soon as reasonable and never to keep email past thirty days. Ostensibly this was done to save server space, which is probably part of the reason. On the other hand, it also neatly eliminates potentially incriminating evidence that might indicate which managers knew about decisions to use illegal strategies and how far up the chain of command such decisions went.
Bill Gates isn't solely responsible for the bad behavior at Microsoft. Obviously managers had to be willing to bend and break rules and laws and they bear some of the guilt. The stock holders are also responsible. They sat back and counted their money even as stories about Microsoft's illegal activities were coming out. I haven't heard of any demands by stock holders that Microsoft cease it's monopolistic tactics. Finally, our government bears a large part of the rsponsibility for the current situation and the effect it has on software development. The Bush administration effectively neutered the Justice department's conviction of Microsoft when they told Justice that they couldn't seek to break up the company. As a result, Microsoft got a slap on the wrist and what should have been a ruinous penalty got turned into a marketing opportunity.
So Yes, it was Bill, and Microsoft, and Stockholders, and the Government, and all of us who have not made it clear to our representatives in government that we won't tolerate this kind of behavior by a U.S. corporation.
I'm not so sure you can say that Gates is not a political leader. He might not be running for office, but he seems to have a lot of influence over those who do. Microsoft's relationship with Ireland and with many bureaucrats in the EU seems to be having a very large effect on their political process. Individuals who are supposed to represent the views of their individual countries seem to be voting the way that Microsoft and Bill Gates want them to rather than their own citizens. This certainly demonstrates a great deal of political power.
We suspect that the right of FOSS to exist is under attack. Gates is leading the charge. Fundementally it's a political battle. Gates knows that if he can blacken the name of all the FOSS supporters, by equating them with communitsts, than he can use that to sway members of congress to vote for legislation that is beneficial to MS and harmful to FOSS.
The really scary thing is that what has happened in the EU demonstrates just how weak-willed political representatives can be. I don't see any reason to believe that our own representatives are cut from any finer cloth than those of the EU.
Gates and others who want to see FOSS fail know that a free market would clobber them. FOSS will dominate many areas of software, including Linux, withing a few years if special protections and lawsuits don't prevent it.
Gates could lose a substantial portion of his empire. He'll use whatever tactics he thinks will work in order to keep that from happening.
Why in the world would AOL base their new browser on IE, a seriously flawed piece of software from a security stand point, instead of Netscape/Mozilla. They paid for Netscape and now Mozilla based browsers are considered far safer than IE. If I were setting policy at a company I would not allow the use of IE or any program based on IE simply because of the security problems.
AOL bought Netscape. Why not take advantage of that and when they bring out the new browser they could have commercials about how they built it on Mozilla because that way it's safer.
Hydrogen isn't exactly a perfect fuel either. Hydrogen has to be generated, usually by splitting water, which requires electricity. That electricity is often generated by burning fossil fuels like oil or coal. (Yes, it can also be generated by other greener means, but most power production in the U.S. still involves fossil fuels. BTW, wind power is probably the best option since it actually takes energy out of the atmosphere directly.) Storage of Hydrogen safely is also problematic.
Right now, the best bet for the environment is probably the hybrid vehicle. I'm especially interested in the new Honda Accord which is coming out since I've been driving Accords all my life. These vehicles use the energy generated by burning gasoline much more sensibly. Regenerative braking and instant off/on for the engine help dramatically lower the fuel consumption without turning your car into a wimp. (Anyone driving in Boston or Chicago will appreciate the need for a little get up and go when dealing with crazy drivers.)
No matter how green the car is, you still have to get people to buy it. People are attracted to the Humvee because of it's military association. I hope the same magnetism influences them to buy hybrids based on the new design discussed in the article.
While we keep trying to ignore it, the problems with our climate are going to continue to increase. We've increased the carbon in our atmosphere by over one third in the last few decades. You can't change the global makeup of your atmosphere without expecting some pretty dramatic changes in how that atmosphere behaves. We should all be doing our part to lower the impact our daily lives have on our already stressed environment.
People should be marching on their state capitols demanding that the current e-voting machines be replaced with verifiable voting methods such as paper ballots until such time as everyone can be satisfied that the e-voting machines are fair and reliable. (Which probably means when they produce a clear paper trail.)
The foundation of our system of government is put at risk by sloppy or malicious coding and we all sit at home and go about our lives as if nothing is truely at risk. The degree of apathy that has been shown on this issue is astonishing.
Avi Rubin, the leading authority on e-voting, gave a great interview in the recent Dr. Dobbs Journel. I think what he says is something that every voter should hear. (His writings on e-voting are here.) The problem is not whether or not a certain political party or company has rigged these machines to fix the election, it's that the very design and nature of these machines makes it possible to do so in a way that is undetectable.
Up until now, if you wanted to steal an election, you had to coordinate the work of a large number of people in across a large number of states unless you could blame it all on a bunch of people voting incorrectly in one county in Florida. Now, you could subtley alter the programming of these machines and shift a small percentage of the results produced by each one. It would be almost impossible to detect.
It's not just the presidential race that is affected, its all the races. Think of the money that is controlled by these politicians and the incentives available to people who want to make sure they get the "right" political climate in the future. If this type of cheating doesn't happen this election, it will happen in another, and soon.
The only way to make sure that these machines can be trusted is to:
They say we get the government we deserve. If we don't raise hell with out state governments and election boards over the use of these machines, you can be certain of it.
Linux used to have a purely monolithic kernel, now most of the device drivers are loaded based on configuration information obtained from a scan doen at boot time and configuration files.
The original design decision of using a monolithic kernel was roundly criticized by a number of people. Things change, sometimes very quickly, in the Linux world. That is one of the great strengths of Linux.
Microsoft claims their OS can't run without being tightly integrated with Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player. Were that actually true, it would make anything done in Linux's early history look downright brilliant by comparison.
Microsoft may have millions to pour into design but that still doesn't compare to the sheer numbers and quality of engineers that contribute to Linux. What many people fail to realize is that the guys who work on Linux as a hobby are the same ones who write the books on OS theory, build operating systems for other companies, and do the research that MS incorporates into it's own products. The people that contribute to Linux do so because they want to build something really cool. Because the work is vetted by anywhere from dozens to hundreds of programmers before it becomes part of the source tree, only the best code gets in.
Currently there is no way to duplicate the results you can get with a popular FOSS project in a private enterprise environment. Over the next few year, I believe that Linux will become the dominant OS in terms of speed, efficiency and cost of ownership. Just look at the progress that Linux has made in the past few years versus Windows and the various flavors of UNIX.
More and more companies and even governments are standardizing on Linux for servers and even desktop computers. As Linux becomes even more populer, it's open nature will attract even more programmers to it. The next generation of programmers growing up and going to school in Mexico, India, and Africa, are all learning on Linux, not Windows. Their first chance to tinker with an operating system and put their own ideas into practice will be with Linux, which is Open, not Windows, which they can't touch.
Eventually, FOSS and privately developed software will find an equilibrium. There are many areas in which privately developed software is superior to FOSS, but Operating Systems is not one of them. Most widely used applications will shift over to FOSS. The same thing will happen with software intended for governments and in areas like security where being able to inspect the source code for security problems is critical. Privately developed software will continue to be viable in niche markets, in areas like games, and in many places I can't predict.
And yes, I have studied computer science and operating system design. I've also studied my own Linux box. I've even learned a good deal about the kernel code, something I am free to do with Linux.
When I first read about using power lines to provide broadband Internet access, I was very excited, especially since I lived in an area in which there was no real competition in broadband. It seemed like a great idea. At the time I didn't realize that the unshielded power lines would interfere with Amateur Radio.
Radio Amateurs, HAMs, have played critical roles in almost every large disaster that has happened in this country. They provided emergency communications when no other communications technologies were working. Groups of HAMs regularly set up disaster drills where they perfect their ability to get information in and out of a disaster torn area. HAMs have also helped advance radio technology. The very first wireless Internet connections were set up by HAMs using 2-meter rigs connected to their computers back in the days of the first IBM PC and Apple IIe.
There might be all kinds of rules that the power companies have to follow to prevent interference with HAM radio, but my guess is that they'll just ignore them. How many amateur radio operators are going to have the fiscal resources needed to take on a big power company?
My guess is that everyone will quickly forget about this debate until a disaster strikes. Then maybe people will wonder why the communications were so poor and count the lives that were lost because of it.
If the power companies are going to disrupt the ability of HAM radio operators to provide communications during disasters, they should bear the cost of setting up alternative communication networks that can supply the needed communications. It's a cost of doing business.
Another question springs to mind, why this particular frequency spectrum, is it dictated by the application, or was this spectrum selected because there was they figured that amateur radio operators couldn't organize real opposition to it?
As I stated later in my post, it's not practical to change all our energy production to wind. There is no single solution to this problem. The point I was trying to make was that there are practical things that can be done right now that will start to move things in the right direction.
If the user isn't using IE and isn't running a server (such as httpd), then it's quite unlikely that anything bad will happen. Unless someone specifically targets the machine and scans for all activated services, etc, and launches an attack against an un-patched vulnerability.
I would be brave enough to state that a Win2k / WinXP / Win2003 is just as secure as UNIX / FreeBSD / OSX, if: -
No, Windows is not just as secure. The point is that there are lots of script kiddies constantly scanning the range of ports used for cable and dsl networked computers. Once they get a response, they scan all the ports on that IP looking for open/vulnerable services. They target Windows because the vast majority of computers on the Internet are running Windows. Look at all the posts in this thread. You can find numerous accounts where Windows computers were infected within minutes of being connected to the Internet.
It's possible that Linux/Unix would be far less secure if it received as much attention from the hacker community, but there are some good arguments that it wouldn't be. Linux/Unix has been a part of the Internet since it was first conceived and the programmers that have worked on Linux and UNIX have generally been more aware of networking and security issues.
Linux has a much more modular design than Windows. Windows has been tightly integrated on the basis of Marketing and Legal rather than Engineering decisions. I doubt that Windows will ever be secure without substantial redesign of the entire OS. Unless Microsoft is successful at throwing up legal roadblocks, Linux is going to continue to outstrip Windows in security, reliability, and eventually usability.
It will take more than one idea or technology to solve this problem. Windmills, for instance, might be a complementary solution. Windmills take energy directly out of the atmosphere, which can help counteract the most direct effects of global warming. I believe I saw a post here on /. that said that if 95% of the world's energy was produced by windmills, we would be extracting more energy from the atmosphere then is being added by global warming.
95% is probably an impractically large number. In reality, we need lots of cooperating elements in order to solve this problem. We need to immediately curtail the growth of carbon emissions and then work to reduce it. We need to increase the number and capacity of carbon sinks. New trees need to be planted to replace those being lost in South America. We need to understand what effect the regions of the ocean suffering from hypoxia are having on the oceans ability to absorb carbon dioxide. We need to find out what other problems are being caused by the change in the makeup of the atmosphere and work to fix them.
The U.S. is going to have to step up and become a leader in environmental issues again. This could be the most important long term threat the world has ever had to deal with. The U.S. has been one of the largest producers of CO2 pollution. It's only recently that other large countries have been generating more. The U.S. risks becoming the scapegoat for the entire problem and the target of justifiable anger. Our actions here in the U.S. affect everyone in the world.
I hope that the U.S. and other nations find the strength and will to rise above pettiness and cooperate to solve this problem. It certainly can't be done by any one nation alone.
RFID in drivers licenses means that the license information can be read from a short distance away, say in a turnstile or any other narrow entrance. This would enable someone to determine everyone who attends events, night clubs, etc. Someone with an appropriate RFID receiver could walk through a crowd and record who is present.
While such a system would make life easier and safer for police, it would make anonymity a thing of the past. How long would it be before our current representatives, who are completely gung ho on helping business, would allow businesses to use the RFID to identify customers entering and leaving businesses? The businesses could use the information to run credit checks. Businesses could determine how much money you have to spend the moment you walk in the door.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I think the potential abuses of this technology far outweigh the benefits.
It is a shame that we in the U.S. have reacted to 9/11 the way we have. The world is a dangerous place and it makes sense to put reasonable security procedures in place, but no amount of protection will protect us 100%. There will always be a risk, especially in a free society. Personally, I accept that risk and embrace it. That risk is the price of freedom.
The terrorists that attacked us sought to destroy our way of life and make us afraid. They win each time we accept another limitation on our freedom in the name of security. Don't let them win.
Is that these actions by Microsoft fundementally affect everyone. Open Source makes perfect sense for certain types of infrastructure applications, the Operating System being the best example. Everyone who uses the OS can contribute to its growth in capabilities and maturity. Everyone benefits except the vendors of Operating Systems.
Open Source make especially good sense for governments as well, since they all have similar needs and limited budgets. Contrary to what Microsoft believes, my tax dollars are not intented as a hand out for Bill Gates. I want them used wisely. If Bill Gates wants my money, he can get it by producing software that I purchase willingly, not software that I am forced to pay for by Micrsoft's creative marketing "agreements" with computer vendors.
Now, for all those who are going to scream about how we should all just watch quietly as Microsoft goes about it's business of squeezing us for money... MS is a convicted monopolist. I personally believe that there is no place for a monopoly in a free market economy. It will always result in the devistation of the marketplace, just as MS has. Capital for software development didn't dry up just because of the Dotcom meltdown. It has vanished because no one wants to invest in developing a software product that MS might decide to compete against.
Those of you who are unemployed software engineers, think about this very carefully. MS is part of the reason you are out of work. MS has become the impediment to innovation in our industry, not Open Source.
If you want a good example, just look at Firefox vs. IE. MS stopped development work on IE after they "won" the browser wars. Firefox is quietly taking over the market now by being better, faster, and far more secure. This could only be done by an Open Source project, because we saw what happened to Netscape when they tried to compete against the company that controlled the operating system.
MS should have been broken up. It would have been the healthiest thing for both the stock holders and the software market. The new companies created out of the old Microsoft would eventually be worth far more than the current company is and we'd all see better software being developed as competition heated up again.
I have a very nice mouse, a Logitech Mouseman Wheel mouse with 4 buttons. It's several years old and I can't find it on the shelves or Internet anymore. The wonderful thing is that it fits my hand. It's comfortable. I don't end the day with fingers hurting and my hand cramping.
It seems to me that Logitech finally came up with a great mouse when it produced the model that I have. Now I can't find anything remotely like it. Some marketers have told companies that egronomic is out and "style" is in.
I don't care about style. Ok, that's not completely true, but I don't care more about style than comfort. What I look for first in any user interface component is comfort and ease of use. If it looks good after that, so much the better.
I'd like companies to quit changing things just for the sake of change. Find what works and stick with it. Find better ways to point at things on the screen. Find ways to make it even easier to use a mouse all day without developing repetitive motion disorders. Concentrate on those first and style a distant second.
No, you have a story, that's not evidence. Besides, most of what you say here is wrong either because you are uninformed or deliberately spreading misinformation.
We all know that linux isn't even close to being ready for the desktopMany of my friends now use Linux as their desktop operating system. I also use Linux as my desktop OS when I'm not playing games. Walmart has started selling Linux equipped PCs which are selling fairly well. The fact is that for the average PC user, Linux will work just fine. There will be a learning curve, but that would be true of any new technology.
After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it.Given that so many others have been running Bind and Apache for many years without substantial problems, I'd have to say that you probably misconfigured your system.
The "weekend volunteers" that you refer to are some of the finest programmers in the world or the code that they have written is comparable with that written by the best. If they weren't, the code they wrote would not get past the peer reviews and into these popular open source projects. The people who write code for Open Source projects are often the same people who write for the large software development companies. The difference is that they write Open Source code out of love for the work and the project, and the respect of their peers.
While MS might have a "full development team" working on some projects, I doubt they have a full team working on any mature product that isn't undergoing constant new development. What resources they have are devoted to adding marketable features that will bring in additional sales, not necessarily reworking the code in pursuit of engineering excellence.
Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with some level of stability.Again you have demonstrated that you are badly misinformed about Linux. The 2.6 Kernel does in fact have SMP support. There are at least 3 journeling file systems that I can think of off the top of my head, ext3, jfs, and rieserfs.
As for being based on "old technology", Linux has caught up and passed MS. Linux now often incorporates new standards and technologies before the large software companies can even get them on the planning schedule. Linux developers have already put in place buffer overflow protection stipulated by new security standards that Microsoft has endorsed but has been unable to implement to-date. Microsoft hasn't even been able to finish and release it's new security patch, SP2 on-time, leaving millions of PC users vulnerable to viruses, trojans, and other malware. It is truely hard to appreciate just what it means to have thousands of people working on a single project and contributing their enthusiasm and expertise.
There are many places where you can get help on configuring Linux machines. It appears, based on your posting, that you went about it by yourself without much knowledge of Linux. Had you looked for help, I believe you would have had far different results. I suggest you check out The Linux Documentation Project, my own site which is aimed at new Linux users moving over from Windows, and A How To Get Linux HOWTO that I have been working on. Perhaps you'll find that your experience changes when you work with the community rather than on your own.
In fact, what IBM is pushing is running hundreds of virtual Linux machines on a single IBM mainframe. This substantially reduces the cost of maintaining a large Linux installation. What would have been fair would have been a comparison between an IBM mainframe running hundreds of virtual Linux servers and hundreds of PC's running Windows.
Oh wait... That is the kind of comparison that IBM is using to sell such systems...
I guess I'll never make anyones list of greatest programmers, but I think Java is plenty cool, especially with some of the recent changes. Java has gone from being a trivial scripting language that was primarily useful for animating pictures on the web to a very powerful language that can occasionally outperform C++, especially on web appliations.
Java is far easier to learn than C++. While Java does not provide all the flexibility of C++, most of the time I don't need to be able to write code that interacts directly with the hardware.
The days of managing memory by hand should have become a distant memory for all but a handful of programmers long ago. Memory management bugs are among the most common and difficult bugs to fix.
When I first started programming Assembler programmers made all the same comments about us "sissy" C programmers that the C++ programmers make about programmers in Java and other memory managed languages. There aren't so many assembly language programmers around these days...
Here is what burns me when spammers make the claim that they are like bulk mailers. A bulk mailer or any direct mail marketer pays for each piece of mail he or she sends out. On the other hand, we all wind up paying for the spam that is sent out by these guys in increased costs for the ISPs which eventually result in slower expansion of technology and/or increased rates for consumers.
So here is my proposal, for what little it's worth, make any person who wants to spam, i.e, send more than say 100 emails to people who have not registered to recieve them, pay for a license that is based on the number of emails he or she is going to send. Perhaps they should be charged a penny per email. The money can be used to pay for the computers for schools and public libraries, expanded Internet capability, and to enforce the anti-spam laws.
The price might be too high, or perhaps even too low. That's not the important part. The important thing is to make it clear to people who send unsolicited emails that the bandwidth they are using has a cost and that they will pay it.
Now we can keep all the opposition politicians from voting against our bills by preventing them from getting to Washington in the first place! We'll just tell them that Tom Ridge is in a meeting with the vice president and can't be located!
My wife, who works in the MMORPG Industry, tells me that she believes that Sir Bruce's numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.
I'd like to point out that some companies, including the one my wife works for, are extremely reluctant to reveal these kinds of numbers and consider them closely held proprietary secrets. Therefore, it's unlikely that all these numbers came from the game companies themselves. Numbers that did come from game companies might be a bit inflated. It's hard to resist the temptation to make your game look just a little bit better.
Just a word of caution that you shouldn't believe everything you read.... even on /.