Microsoft must have no mechanism for tracking work order/help requests. Come on. Every manager has daily/weekly/monthly reports that show the number of requests opened/closed/carried over and it flags old requests, and it sorts by age, so the oldest issue shows up at the top of the list. A manager would have seen this.
I have some familiarity with software for call center reporting. The managerial reports tended to show aggregate data, absolute numbers and percentages or contacts, closed issues, open issues, etc. There was never any reporting of an individual issue. In statistics class isolated outliers were often discard because of the distortion they would cause in the "good" data. I expect something similar would occur is any statistical analysis of long term call center trends. It is doubtful that a manager would be reviewed based upon outliers rather than averages, so his reports would probably not bother to show outliers.
The following is counterintuitive but the goal of many call centers is not to have perfect customer service. If you don't have a certain percentage of people getting tired of waiting on hold and hanging up then you are considered overstaffed, losing money due to excessive payroll. The specific percentage of desired hang ups varies with the average caller's revenue or cost (usually "baked" into original sale price in anticipation of future support) and the average staffer's cost. There is also a partially valid assumption that if its important they will call back, more so on the support side than the sales side.
When the help desk guy was assigned to make the followup call, he didn't notice and find it odd that the original call came in 10 years ago? He didn't call his supervisor over and say, "hey I think somebody made a mistake here! Maybe we should just close this out."
Closing out the ticket because the original start date *indicates* it is ten years old would be a bad idea. Presumably there was a typo in the call back date, 98 to 08, but it could have just as easily been in the original call date, 08 -> 98. The body of the report would have to be read to get context.
First of all, copyright exists to promote the arts and sciences, not to make anyone money. It is a tradeoff made by the public, where they give up some rights (being able to copy works) in order to encourage authors to make works.
Forgive me, but that is a quite intricate dance. Copyright exists to promote the useful arts and sciences, but financial reward was the intended mechanism of that promotion. I think it is somewhat disingenuous to suggest that profit is not an intended component of the system.
Originally, copyright had no effect on individuals. No one had the ability to make mass reproductions. To copy a book, an individual had to hand copy it, since individuals didn't own printing presses.
I'm seeing more dancing here. Intermediaries did own printing presses and these would be the alternate suppliers to the mass market, much as people pirated their music via Napster at one time rather than rip it from borrowed CDs themselves.
Copyright was an industrial limitation, to keep publishers from publishing books before the author got a chance to make some profit.
This is different in the digital age. We all have printing presses now. Copyright needs to be reevaluated.
That makes no sense, how does an increase in the number of unauthorized publishers change anything? Whether the "printing" is done by an unauthorized publisher or a modern individual the author has no chance to make a profit. Why was it wrong to deprive authors of this revenue in the pre-digital age but OK in the digital age? Copyright existed to give an author a chance at profit so as to encourage authors, how are digital authors rewarded for their effort if they are deprived of profits?
"Demand for software decreases, supply will decrease."
Thanks to the digital age we have, the software supply is infinite.
You have severely misunderstood. The supply is new works created by authors. The demand is paying customers. The removal of copyright reduces the number of paying customers, therefore fewer authors will create new works. This includes open source authors. Keep in mind that many open source authors are subsidized by organizations that profit from patent and copyrights. Destroy these revenue streams and the subsidization of open source will also be destroyed.
So only the hobbyist developers remain? Not really, they are discouraged as well. Limiting copyright will harm open source by effectively removing the GPL for example. If as suggested copyrights should expire after 5 years and the works enter the public domain then corporations would be free to offer derived works and not share their changes. This would surely offer further discouragement to GPL authors who chose the GPL over BSD specifically to prevent this.
In short, I do not think you have thought these things through very far. Things are far more complicated than you suggest.
I think you'll find that it is customary to use brackets around an inferred term if it does not appear in the source material.
You wrote:
"In many of the instances that content is provided digitally, it is further held hostage behind walls of incompatibilities, digital restrictions, overpricing, poor terms of services, and other devaluing options. All in the name of "protecting" digital content."
In this particular case, I think you'll also find that I never stated nor inferred that overpricing was the problem.
You wrote:
"The preciously few times that digital content is loosed upon the populace at a fair price and fair terms, it blooms and propers. Which (if we are to be "intellectually honest") means that the failure to prevent copyright infringement is a failure to provide what the average consumer wants."
At the risk of sounding cliche, all you have done is produce a strawman argument and then successfully knock it down.
I'll see your cliche and raise another: pot, kettle, black.;-)
I had gotten your point. I just wanted to emphasize that contrary to popular opinion a minor bit of deterrence works quite well with software as well. The myths that copy protection does not work because it is crackable and that fair pricing deters piracy are popular.
FWIW. The good that I described had no perfect substitute, was crackable, yet copy protection largely worked. Unlike the hope diamond, the U2 single and the chemistry app are of sufficiently low value that a little copy protection incentivizes a customer to buy rather than crack.
"This copyright things is all wrong and unfair. It no longer serves its original purpose. It needs some severe reworking, such as reducing terms to 5 or 10 years."
Really? Why is copyright any more or less unfair now that goods are digital in nature rather than physical? Why wasn't it unfair when the photocopier made copying sheet music trivial? When the cassette tape made coping vinyl records trivial?
If the length of copyrights were 5 or 10 years, guess what? There would be very little "unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content" online.
There would also be a significant drop in software development, the profit incentive being undercut. Since a previous post was so successful in dressing up personal opinion with econ 101 I guess I'll do the same.:-) Demand for software decreases, supply will decrease. How does less software contribute to the useful arts and sciences? By protecting the profit motive, copyright's actual function, the useful arts and sciences are promoted. Digital media has not changed this.
it is further held hostage behind walls of... overpricing...
You dressed up your opinion quite nicely, but it fails a reality check at various points. One is that pricing contributes to piracy. I witnessed the commercial distribution of low cost software to university students. Piracy happens regardless of price and fairness, it only needs to be trivial to copy. The slightest hiccup, copy protection, works. See: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=418746&cid=22051616
Your customer is not your enemy
Neither are they your friend. They will steal from you if they can easily do so when anonymous and getting caught has a near zero probability.
Two - in the case of car and home locks - deterrence is enough.
This works amazingly well with software as well. I witnessed the sale of a chemistry app at a university bookstore. The app was required and low cost (under $20 IIRC). The first quarter it had no copy protection and the ratio of books to apps was about 15:1. The next quarter it had copy protection and the ratio was nearly 1:1. Many people will pirate if they can do so easily. The conventional wisdom that low prices will deter piracy are wrong. Hacks were quickly developed to remove the copy protection, it was an off the shelf solution used by other commercial products, but the sales remained near 1:1 in subsequent quarters.
The slightest roadblock to piracy, making a normal disk copy fail, will deter many and sufficiently incentivize them to buy a low cost product. Hacks to remove the copy protection don't change this.
Anyone missing the big picture?... What about the rest of the students who weren't expelled and are being educated by these idiots? That's the real story.
Well, you are missing an important detail. Instructors and administrators are two very different groups of people.
It's a state university. That means they're bound by the Constitution and cannot expel students without affording them due process.
Keep in mind that "due process" does not mean you get your "day in court". An administrative hearing conducted by university staff counts. Due process merely means that the established procedure is conducted by the proper authorities.
"If this system is only for commercial airliners then weapon designers won't bother updated existing missile systems."
Nope, bzzzt...wrong. The weapon designers will consider any potentially successful defense, regardless of purpose, as a credible threat to the success of their product (i.e. the weapon) and they will most likely take steps or at least research how much it would cost to neutralize the new defense.
Researching a countermeasure is one thing, updating missiles in the field or deploying new missiles is something very different. Especially given that "flawed" design that would make the defense inapplicable to the military. The missile would be unarguably targeting civilian airliners.
History has shown time and again, regardless of circumstances, that weapons and armor (or more recently other types of defenses) are in a continual arms race (pun intended) against one another which leaves no potential advantage unexplored or method unemployed in the service of either attack or defense.
Wrong. Expanding rifle bullets is one example. The technology was outlawed by international convention and has remained in the domain of civilian hunting ammunition.
Since the airplane laser is there to "jam" the missiles' optical/IR tracking instead of destroying them, it should certainly be possible to redesign the missiles' guidance system to use the airplane's anti-missile jamming laser as a homing beacon, turning the defense mechanism into a practical bull's eye target.
Which explains why they are researching some new solution rather than use the military's current solution(s). If this system is only for commercial airliners then weapon designers won't bother updated existing missile systems.
Like many DHS and other agencies' schemes, they may initially look good on paper (particularly to the uninformed public)...
We are also both part of the uninformed public, our slashdot theories are worth even less than DHS papers.:-)
Sane religious people are not threatened by science, the idiot ones are. You'll note that the sane religious types are not trying to block stem cell research but the idiot ones shout loudly enough that it happens anyway.
It is also true that sane scientists are not threatened by religion. However people with political agendas see demons everywhere, they have quite a bit in common with the religious idiots. Given your mischaracterization of the stem cell issue I fear you are coming from a more political philosophy than a scientific one. Stem cell research is not blocked. New sources of embryonic stem cells is prohibited *if* you are using the US government's money but not if you are using Bill Gates' money. That is regrettable, but it is an inconvenience not a block. The US scientific community can secure funding elsewhere, use existing embryonic lines, or perform non-embryonic stem cell research. The international scientific community is unaffected.
I think you misunderstand that the GPL is a license, not a contract.
Oh I understand that. I just think that things are a bit more complicated than you suggest. That both parties finding reasonable remedies is likely, but not a given as you seem to suggest.
Once you remove the GPLed code from your own, you are free to do whatever you like with it. There are no "GPL-cooties" that infect the ones and zeros as long as you refrain from distributing the infringing parts in the future.
As I said before, not all software can be easily updated, in particular software in embedded devices. Note such devices have been the subject of past GPL violations. While you can license your cleaned software in any manner you wish in the future, as any GPL based author is free to do, your software that has been combined with GPL code, shipped, not recalled, and is still in use is a very different story. More below.
The reason the GPL has "never been tested" in court as so many are fond of saying is that by time a case gets there, the violator would be an idiot to bring the GPL into the picture if they were not in compliance. They settle or pay damages and cure the breach (by either complying or removing the infringing code).
Note that I said the copyright holder "asked", not "forced", proprietary software to be opened. A GPL zealot may consider no other remedy acceptable. It is not a given that you will be able reach some other accommodation. The potential actual and punitive damages in the embedded scenario above may "force" you to open your code.
But the demands could range anywhere from the original authore getting credit to having to pay them (large piles of) money to just not being given a license.
You do realize that I used the word "may", not "will", with respect to tainting code?
Which means that Microsoft could, if they felt like it, demand that you make your source code public.
You have gone to the absurd. Who is more likely to insist that you make your source code available, the copyright holder of a GPL'd work or Microsoft? Now consider if the particular author is a GPL zealot. "May taint your code" stands.
In no case, ever, has the offender been forced to accept that particular remedy instead of an injunction or damages.
Which is why I used the word "may" rather than "will". The fact that the FSF, or some other copyright holder, has not asked for that remedy does not mean they are unable to do so in the future. If you have a software product, or a hardware device with easily reprogrammable firmware, then it is less likely. Assuming of course the copyright holder is not a GPL zealot, which is of course quite possible. However if the device is not easily reprogrammable, or recallable, it becomes more likely.
There is no difference between infringing copyright of GPL-licensed code and infringing copyright of otherwise-licensed code! Therefore, specifically singling out the GPL and ignoring everything else is nothing but FUD.
Wrong, the GPL'd code is viral and may taint your code, making your code GPL'd as well. If you steal Microsoft's code they will not argue that you make your source code public.
"Bill Gates... donated $30 million to an ambitious telescope"
Talk about an expensive subsitute phallus. Most guys just buy a Corvette and get over it.
But the scientist gets to drop lines like "Wanna visit my secluded Hawaiian getaway, I'll show you the stars. Don't forget to pack a parka." http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/mko/
As opposed to the bridge to nowhere or the Woodstock memorial.
Bridges and memorials don't pose a challenge to religious dogma.
You seem philosophically akin to the ignorant bible thumper who takes the mistranslated English version of the bible literally in every way, you seem to merely be the mirror image that thinks science means anti-religion. The truth is that science and religion are compatible. The Vatican operates a telescope and funds research:
Dark Matter and Energy in the Cosmos
The Acceleration of the Universe
Quasars
Globular Clusters
A Supernova Discovery http://clavius.as.arizona.edu/vo/R1024/Research.html
History is full of religious people who are also scientists. One example is psychics professor and atronomer, and Roman Catholic Priest, Georges Lemaître. The guy who proposed the big bang theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
You should note that some scientists were closed minded and dismissed Lemaître's theory because he was a priest, not on merit. I guess for some science becomes a religion and their minds close. I prefer the approach of Hawking and other scientists throughout history, that scientists are exploring the mechanics of the universe and that proving/disproving the existence of God is outside of their work.
Their best bet is to tighten up on their recruitment and code review processes.
That is somewhat naive. Are you expecting that the lazy programmer who included GPL'd code is going to leave the GPL licensing text in the file? Recruiting more talented people would mean that cheating may be more subtle. Rather than five new files with GPL licensing text intact appearing in version control one day, functions are cut and paste from GPL'd file on a daily basis boosting the offending programmers perceived performance.
That would certainly beat complaining that it MAY turn out that some of their employees may be breaking various laws and that if they are then the victims may be gosh darned unreasonable about it.
I don't think you understand the purpose of risk sections in SEC reports. It is not for complaining, it is for enumerating any conceivable risk so that you can claim shareholders were informed and preempt a shareholder lawsuit. If FSF were a publicly traded company you would see equally far fetched risks, one being that the GPL may be invalidated in court. It would be silly to say that they are expecting the latter to happen. However there would be a slashdot thread saying they are, much like the current McAfee thread.
about the only thing in the patent that may be innovative [that is that hasn't already been done] is claim 25 about their new manufacturing process [or not, it could be obvious in of its self, who knows] other than that, why hasn't this been thrown out yet due to prior art?
One family of patents is the process patent. The invention is the manufacturing process, not the item. Whether or not the items manufactured are ordinary is irrelevant.
Don't want to be bound to the terms of the GPL? Don't use GPL code!
Just another piece of FUD.
You are seriously mistaken. You are assuming that it is company policy to inappropriately incorporate GPL'd code. It may be against policy but a programmer may get lazy and do it on his own. Hell, it could be a relatively honest mistake like confusing a GPL'd lib for a LGPL'd lib. A GPL related lawsuit would be an appropriate item in the risks section of an SEC filing.
Do you guys have a clue as to what goes into the risks section of an SEC filing? Pretty much anything conceivable. That way if it happens it is harder to get sued by an ambulance chasing lawyer who found *one* unhappy shareholder and filed a class action suit. So if you are a publicly traded company you probably should have a risk enumerated that a programmer will violate policy and inappropriately incorporate GPL'd code.
Solar doesn't quiet work that way the 1% of land that comes from Finland will not equal the 1% of land that comes from Spain, you need to place it where it will receive optimum sunlight northern Europe gets significantly less sunlight than southern Europe both in terms of hours per day and lumens.
Yes, I know, that is why I mentioned latitude as one of the variables to consider.:-) I only mentioned differentiating between Morocco and the EU since I think it is far more practical to think of the EU as a single entity with a single power grid. Picking a single percentage to allocate to solar seems reasonable given that the EU already has a history of collectivism where different members make greater contributions than others.
So in order for solar panels to be efficient they need to be placed in an area that has a large period of uninterrupted sunlight
Germany feels otherwise. Despite not having optimal weather they find solar quite useful. They are not looking for a single magic bullet, they employ various technologies including solar. I believe this approach should be applied more widely, might as well do something with those roofs.
Three percent of the land area of Morocco could support all of the electricity for Western Europe.'
Great from an environmental perspective, unless you are a Moroccan. However it sounds even worse with respect to foreign dependence on energy. At least there are multiple countries/regions to buy oil from. If you out source your solar farm you are in a crisis as fast as someone can throw a switch.
How about each EU member commits 1% of its own territory (roofs count), to the EU power grid. The EU has 10x the area of Morocco, 1/3 the solar power given cloudy days and higher latitudes would seem to be indicate 1% of its land area.
"Where you fail is thinking that the level of stress experienced in a mugging approaches the level of trauma suffered in close combat or rape. I have friends who were robbed at gun point, I have family members who saw combat in the infantry, the latter includes highly motivated soldiers who fought in a popular war. Your analogy is quite poor. The biochemical responses are on very different levels."
Wonderful. Anecdotal examples to back up your argument.
Your outrage would be far more convincing if your examples were not hypotheticals contrived to resuscitate your argument that muggings and rapes are equivalent traumatic events.;-)
In any case the anecdotal evidence is consistent with traumatic memories research done at the University of California. I forget which campus, one with a medical program, perhaps UCLA or UC Irvine? I read an article about it three or four years ago. It focused on the memories of combat veterans.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft must have no mechanism for tracking work order/help requests. Come on. Every manager has daily/weekly/monthly reports that show the number of requests opened/closed/carried over and it flags old requests, and it sorts by age, so the oldest issue shows up at the top of the list. A manager would have seen this.
I have some familiarity with software for call center reporting. The managerial reports tended to show aggregate data, absolute numbers and percentages or contacts, closed issues, open issues, etc. There was never any reporting of an individual issue. In statistics class isolated outliers were often discard because of the distortion they would cause in the "good" data. I expect something similar would occur is any statistical analysis of long term call center trends. It is doubtful that a manager would be reviewed based upon outliers rather than averages, so his reports would probably not bother to show outliers.
The following is counterintuitive but the goal of many call centers is not to have perfect customer service. If you don't have a certain percentage of people getting tired of waiting on hold and hanging up then you are considered overstaffed, losing money due to excessive payroll. The specific percentage of desired hang ups varies with the average caller's revenue or cost (usually "baked" into original sale price in anticipation of future support) and the average staffer's cost. There is also a partially valid assumption that if its important they will call back, more so on the support side than the sales side.
When the help desk guy was assigned to make the followup call, he didn't notice and find it odd that the original call came in 10 years ago? He didn't call his supervisor over and say, "hey I think somebody made a mistake here! Maybe we should just close this out."
Closing out the ticket because the original start date *indicates* it is ten years old would be a bad idea. Presumably there was a typo in the call back date, 98 to 08, but it could have just as easily been in the original call date, 08 -> 98. The body of the report would have to be read to get context.
First of all, copyright exists to promote the arts and sciences, not to make anyone money. It is a tradeoff made by the public, where they give up some rights (being able to copy works) in order to encourage authors to make works.
Forgive me, but that is a quite intricate dance. Copyright exists to promote the useful arts and sciences, but financial reward was the intended mechanism of that promotion. I think it is somewhat disingenuous to suggest that profit is not an intended component of the system.
Originally, copyright had no effect on individuals. No one had the ability to make mass reproductions. To copy a book, an individual had to hand copy it, since individuals didn't own printing presses.
I'm seeing more dancing here. Intermediaries did own printing presses and these would be the alternate suppliers to the mass market, much as people pirated their music via Napster at one time rather than rip it from borrowed CDs themselves.
Copyright was an industrial limitation, to keep publishers from publishing books before the author got a chance to make some profit. This is different in the digital age. We all have printing presses now. Copyright needs to be reevaluated.
That makes no sense, how does an increase in the number of unauthorized publishers change anything? Whether the "printing" is done by an unauthorized publisher or a modern individual the author has no chance to make a profit. Why was it wrong to deprive authors of this revenue in the pre-digital age but OK in the digital age? Copyright existed to give an author a chance at profit so as to encourage authors, how are digital authors rewarded for their effort if they are deprived of profits?
"Demand for software decreases, supply will decrease."
Thanks to the digital age we have, the software supply is infinite.
You have severely misunderstood. The supply is new works created by authors. The demand is paying customers. The removal of copyright reduces the number of paying customers, therefore fewer authors will create new works. This includes open source authors. Keep in mind that many open source authors are subsidized by organizations that profit from patent and copyrights. Destroy these revenue streams and the subsidization of open source will also be destroyed.
So only the hobbyist developers remain? Not really, they are discouraged as well. Limiting copyright will harm open source by effectively removing the GPL for example. If as suggested copyrights should expire after 5 years and the works enter the public domain then corporations would be free to offer derived works and not share their changes. This would surely offer further discouragement to GPL authors who chose the GPL over BSD specifically to prevent this.
In short, I do not think you have thought these things through very far. Things are far more complicated than you suggest.
"overpricing"
;-)
I think you'll find that it is customary to use brackets around an inferred term if it does not appear in the source material.
You wrote:
"In many of the instances that content is provided digitally, it is further held hostage behind walls of incompatibilities, digital restrictions, overpricing, poor terms of services, and other devaluing options. All in the name of "protecting" digital content."
In this particular case, I think you'll also find that I never stated nor inferred that overpricing was the problem.
You wrote:
"The preciously few times that digital content is loosed upon the populace at a fair price and fair terms, it blooms and propers. Which (if we are to be "intellectually honest") means that the failure to prevent copyright infringement is a failure to provide what the average consumer wants."
At the risk of sounding cliche, all you have done is produce a strawman argument and then successfully knock it down.
I'll see your cliche and raise another: pot, kettle, black.
I had gotten your point. I just wanted to emphasize that contrary to popular opinion a minor bit of deterrence works quite well with software as well. The myths that copy protection does not work because it is crackable and that fair pricing deters piracy are popular.
FWIW. The good that I described had no perfect substitute, was crackable, yet copy protection largely worked. Unlike the hope diamond, the U2 single and the chemistry app are of sufficiently low value that a little copy protection incentivizes a customer to buy rather than crack.
"This copyright things is all wrong and unfair. It no longer serves its original purpose. It needs some severe reworking, such as reducing terms to 5 or 10 years."
:-) Demand for software decreases, supply will decrease. How does less software contribute to the useful arts and sciences? By protecting the profit motive, copyright's actual function, the useful arts and sciences are promoted. Digital media has not changed this.
Really? Why is copyright any more or less unfair now that goods are digital in nature rather than physical? Why wasn't it unfair when the photocopier made copying sheet music trivial? When the cassette tape made coping vinyl records trivial?
If the length of copyrights were 5 or 10 years, guess what? There would be very little "unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content" online.
There would also be a significant drop in software development, the profit incentive being undercut. Since a previous post was so successful in dressing up personal opinion with econ 101 I guess I'll do the same.
it is further held hostage behind walls of ... overpricing ...
You dressed up your opinion quite nicely, but it fails a reality check at various points. One is that pricing contributes to piracy. I witnessed the commercial distribution of low cost software to university students. Piracy happens regardless of price and fairness, it only needs to be trivial to copy. The slightest hiccup, copy protection, works. See:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=418746&cid=22051616
Your customer is not your enemy
Neither are they your friend. They will steal from you if they can easily do so when anonymous and getting caught has a near zero probability.
Two - in the case of car and home locks - deterrence is enough.
This works amazingly well with software as well. I witnessed the sale of a chemistry app at a university bookstore. The app was required and low cost (under $20 IIRC). The first quarter it had no copy protection and the ratio of books to apps was about 15:1. The next quarter it had copy protection and the ratio was nearly 1:1. Many people will pirate if they can do so easily. The conventional wisdom that low prices will deter piracy are wrong. Hacks were quickly developed to remove the copy protection, it was an off the shelf solution used by other commercial products, but the sales remained near 1:1 in subsequent quarters.
The slightest roadblock to piracy, making a normal disk copy fail, will deter many and sufficiently incentivize them to buy a low cost product. Hacks to remove the copy protection don't change this.
Anyone missing the big picture? ... What about the rest of the students who weren't expelled and are being educated by these idiots? That's the real story.
Well, you are missing an important detail. Instructors and administrators are two very different groups of people.
It's a state university. That means they're bound by the Constitution and cannot expel students without affording them due process.
Keep in mind that "due process" does not mean you get your "day in court". An administrative hearing conducted by university staff counts. Due process merely means that the established procedure is conducted by the proper authorities.
"If this system is only for commercial airliners then weapon designers won't bother updated existing missile systems."
Nope, bzzzt...wrong. The weapon designers will consider any potentially successful defense, regardless of purpose, as a credible threat to the success of their product (i.e. the weapon) and they will most likely take steps or at least research how much it would cost to neutralize the new defense.
Researching a countermeasure is one thing, updating missiles in the field or deploying new missiles is something very different. Especially given that "flawed" design that would make the defense inapplicable to the military. The missile would be unarguably targeting civilian airliners.
History has shown time and again, regardless of circumstances, that weapons and armor (or more recently other types of defenses) are in a continual arms race (pun intended) against one another which leaves no potential advantage unexplored or method unemployed in the service of either attack or defense.
Wrong. Expanding rifle bullets is one example. The technology was outlawed by international convention and has remained in the domain of civilian hunting ammunition.
Since the airplane laser is there to "jam" the missiles' optical/IR tracking instead of destroying them, it should certainly be possible to redesign the missiles' guidance system to use the airplane's anti-missile jamming laser as a homing beacon, turning the defense mechanism into a practical bull's eye target.
...
:-)
Which explains why they are researching some new solution rather than use the military's current solution(s). If this system is only for commercial airliners then weapon designers won't bother updated existing missile systems.
Like many DHS and other agencies' schemes, they may initially look good on paper (particularly to the uninformed public)
We are also both part of the uninformed public, our slashdot theories are worth even less than DHS papers.
Sane religious people are not threatened by science, the idiot ones are. You'll note that the sane religious types are not trying to block stem cell research but the idiot ones shout loudly enough that it happens anyway.
It is also true that sane scientists are not threatened by religion. However people with political agendas see demons everywhere, they have quite a bit in common with the religious idiots. Given your mischaracterization of the stem cell issue I fear you are coming from a more political philosophy than a scientific one. Stem cell research is not blocked. New sources of embryonic stem cells is prohibited *if* you are using the US government's money but not if you are using Bill Gates' money. That is regrettable, but it is an inconvenience not a block. The US scientific community can secure funding elsewhere, use existing embryonic lines, or perform non-embryonic stem cell research. The international scientific community is unaffected.
I think you misunderstand that the GPL is a license, not a contract.
Oh I understand that. I just think that things are a bit more complicated than you suggest. That both parties finding reasonable remedies is likely, but not a given as you seem to suggest.
Once you remove the GPLed code from your own, you are free to do whatever you like with it. There are no "GPL-cooties" that infect the ones and zeros as long as you refrain from distributing the infringing parts in the future.
As I said before, not all software can be easily updated, in particular software in embedded devices. Note such devices have been the subject of past GPL violations. While you can license your cleaned software in any manner you wish in the future, as any GPL based author is free to do, your software that has been combined with GPL code, shipped, not recalled, and is still in use is a very different story. More below.
The reason the GPL has "never been tested" in court as so many are fond of saying is that by time a case gets there, the violator would be an idiot to bring the GPL into the picture if they were not in compliance. They settle or pay damages and cure the breach (by either complying or removing the infringing code).
Note that I said the copyright holder "asked", not "forced", proprietary software to be opened. A GPL zealot may consider no other remedy acceptable. It is not a given that you will be able reach some other accommodation. The potential actual and punitive damages in the embedded scenario above may "force" you to open your code.
But the demands could range anywhere from the original authore getting credit to having to pay them (large piles of) money to just not being given a license.
You do realize that I used the word "may", not "will", with respect to tainting code?
Which means that Microsoft could, if they felt like it, demand that you make your source code public.
You have gone to the absurd. Who is more likely to insist that you make your source code available, the copyright holder of a GPL'd work or Microsoft? Now consider if the particular author is a GPL zealot. "May taint your code" stands.
In no case, ever, has the offender been forced to accept that particular remedy instead of an injunction or damages.
Which is why I used the word "may" rather than "will". The fact that the FSF, or some other copyright holder, has not asked for that remedy does not mean they are unable to do so in the future. If you have a software product, or a hardware device with easily reprogrammable firmware, then it is less likely. Assuming of course the copyright holder is not a GPL zealot, which is of course quite possible. However if the device is not easily reprogrammable, or recallable, it becomes more likely.
There is no difference between infringing copyright of GPL-licensed code and infringing copyright of otherwise-licensed code! Therefore, specifically singling out the GPL and ignoring everything else is nothing but FUD.
Wrong, the GPL'd code is viral and may taint your code, making your code GPL'd as well. If you steal Microsoft's code they will not argue that you make your source code public.
"Bill Gates... donated $30 million to an ambitious telescope"
Talk about an expensive subsitute phallus. Most guys just buy a Corvette and get over it.
But the scientist gets to drop lines like "Wanna visit my secluded Hawaiian getaway, I'll show you the stars. Don't forget to pack a parka."
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/mko/
As opposed to the bridge to nowhere or the Woodstock memorial.
Bridges and memorials don't pose a challenge to religious dogma.
You seem philosophically akin to the ignorant bible thumper who takes the mistranslated English version of the bible literally in every way, you seem to merely be the mirror image that thinks science means anti-religion. The truth is that science and religion are compatible. The Vatican operates a telescope and funds research:
Dark Matter and Energy in the Cosmos
The Acceleration of the Universe
Quasars
Globular Clusters
A Supernova Discovery
http://clavius.as.arizona.edu/vo/R1024/Research.html
History is full of religious people who are also scientists. One example is psychics professor and atronomer, and Roman Catholic Priest, Georges Lemaître. The guy who proposed the big bang theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
You should note that some scientists were closed minded and dismissed Lemaître's theory because he was a priest, not on merit. I guess for some science becomes a religion and their minds close. I prefer the approach of Hawking and other scientists throughout history, that scientists are exploring the mechanics of the universe and that proving/disproving the existence of God is outside of their work.
Their best bet is to tighten up on their recruitment and code review processes.
That is somewhat naive. Are you expecting that the lazy programmer who included GPL'd code is going to leave the GPL licensing text in the file? Recruiting more talented people would mean that cheating may be more subtle. Rather than five new files with GPL licensing text intact appearing in version control one day, functions are cut and paste from GPL'd file on a daily basis boosting the offending programmers perceived performance.
That would certainly beat complaining that it MAY turn out that some of their employees may be breaking various laws and that if they are then the victims may be gosh darned unreasonable about it.
I don't think you understand the purpose of risk sections in SEC reports. It is not for complaining, it is for enumerating any conceivable risk so that you can claim shareholders were informed and preempt a shareholder lawsuit. If FSF were a publicly traded company you would see equally far fetched risks, one being that the GPL may be invalidated in court. It would be silly to say that they are expecting the latter to happen. However there would be a slashdot thread saying they are, much like the current McAfee thread.
about the only thing in the patent that may be innovative [that is that hasn't already been done] is claim 25 about their new manufacturing process [or not, it could be obvious in of its self, who knows] other than that, why hasn't this been thrown out yet due to prior art?
One family of patents is the process patent. The invention is the manufacturing process, not the item. Whether or not the items manufactured are ordinary is irrelevant.
Don't want to be bound to the terms of the GPL? Don't use GPL code! Just another piece of FUD.
You are seriously mistaken. You are assuming that it is company policy to inappropriately incorporate GPL'd code. It may be against policy but a programmer may get lazy and do it on his own. Hell, it could be a relatively honest mistake like confusing a GPL'd lib for a LGPL'd lib. A GPL related lawsuit would be an appropriate item in the risks section of an SEC filing.
Do you guys have a clue as to what goes into the risks section of an SEC filing? Pretty much anything conceivable. That way if it happens it is harder to get sued by an ambulance chasing lawyer who found *one* unhappy shareholder and filed a class action suit. So if you are a publicly traded company you probably should have a risk enumerated that a programmer will violate policy and inappropriately incorporate GPL'd code.
Solar doesn't quiet work that way the 1% of land that comes from Finland will not equal the 1% of land that comes from Spain, you need to place it where it will receive optimum sunlight northern Europe gets significantly less sunlight than southern Europe both in terms of hours per day and lumens.
:-) I only mentioned differentiating between Morocco and the EU since I think it is far more practical to think of the EU as a single entity with a single power grid. Picking a single percentage to allocate to solar seems reasonable given that the EU already has a history of collectivism where different members make greater contributions than others.
Yes, I know, that is why I mentioned latitude as one of the variables to consider.
So in order for solar panels to be efficient they need to be placed in an area that has a large period of uninterrupted sunlight
Germany feels otherwise. Despite not having optimal weather they find solar quite useful. They are not looking for a single magic bullet, they employ various technologies including solar. I believe this approach should be applied more widely, might as well do something with those roofs.
Three percent of the land area of Morocco could support all of the electricity for Western Europe.'
Great from an environmental perspective, unless you are a Moroccan. However it sounds even worse with respect to foreign dependence on energy. At least there are multiple countries/regions to buy oil from. If you out source your solar farm you are in a crisis as fast as someone can throw a switch.
How about each EU member commits 1% of its own territory (roofs count), to the EU power grid. The EU has 10x the area of Morocco, 1/3 the solar power given cloudy days and higher latitudes would seem to be indicate 1% of its land area.
"Where you fail is thinking that the level of stress experienced in a mugging approaches the level of trauma suffered in close combat or rape. I have friends who were robbed at gun point, I have family members who saw combat in the infantry, the latter includes highly motivated soldiers who fought in a popular war. Your analogy is quite poor. The biochemical responses are on very different levels."
;-)
Wonderful. Anecdotal examples to back up your argument.
Your outrage would be far more convincing if your examples were not hypotheticals contrived to resuscitate your argument that muggings and rapes are equivalent traumatic events.
In any case the anecdotal evidence is consistent with traumatic memories research done at the University of California. I forget which campus, one with a medical program, perhaps UCLA or UC Irvine? I read an article about it three or four years ago. It focused on the memories of combat veterans.