I'm pretty sure that's what I've been telling you, but feel free to ignore any inconvinient facts
The problem is, I don't consider you an authority on the subject. I have no reason to believe anyone who is crazy enough to debate this for over a week on Slashdot with somebody who obviously isn't interested in your opinion. Whatever your motive is, it's interesting how you're as passionate about this as the bible thumpers are about their religion.
Could someone explain to me why this is a discussion about "software patents" and not just "patents" in general? You could just as easily have 2347 vaguely worded patents preventing your from implementing even the most trivial non-computer tasks.
One reason is that in the non-computer world it can cost thousands of dollars to manufacture even just a prototype. When it comes to software, anyone can do it with a little time and interest. Patents were supposed to make that initial investment worth the risk. Its completely unnecessary with software.
Studies that indicate that haven't been successfully replicated. And BGH doesn't survive the human stomach
I'm not interested in participating in this particular experiment.
What you're doing right now is just making up paranoid stories.
Once upon a time my government had very strict rules about product labeling. Somehow or other the system has failed recently. That's not paranoia, that is a legitimate concern.
Because there's no verifiable scientific difference between milk from BGH-treated cows and untreated cows.
Except that the milk contains trace amounts of BGH, and the label doesn't indicate that it does. I don't care if the products are banned. I want to know which ones have it and which ones don't. I won't buy the ones that do.
But gratz on ignoring all my other points.
I don't care to debate your terminator gene propaganda. I choose to avoid them. If you say that its irrational for me to want to know what is in my food then you aren't worth talking to.
if you don't believe that corn didn't just evolve that way, but had to be reshaped by humans 7500 years ago
They were not manipulating DNA the same way Monsanto does. It's foolish to even suggest they are the same thing.
I do know it for sure.
You believe you know it for sure. So did the people who invented asbestos believe it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
They do have a choice; they've always had a choice
We do not. Go into any grocery store and try to pick the stuff that is genetically modified, and which isn't. Try to figure out which milk has BGH in it, and which doesn't. Even try to pick the products without aspartame in them. You can't because it's listed under hundreds of different brand names.
Where do you think corn came from in the first place, genius?
Right. 7000 years ago the native americans created it in laboratories under a microscope.
with absolutely no danger of mammalian toxicity
Says you. And Aspartame is safe, and so is Bovine Growth Hormone too? Obviously you know this for sure and I should trust that you aren't just arguing for the sake of arguing. There can't possibly be any side effects so why even indicate their presence on the labeling?
Give people a choice, and nobody will buy this shit anymore.
The point should be that genetic modification of our food isn't worth the risk. It isn't enough to try to prove that they are safe. It needs to be shown why we can't go on without them. They can't do that because we've got along just fine for what a hundred thousand years or so now without them.
Get rid of this crap, and get rid of aspartame. That would be a good start.
I completely agree. My father bought a laptop that came preloaded with Vista. There are several "Unknown Device"'s in his device manager, and his wireless doesn't seem to work. He asked me if I could dual boot Ubuntu on it like we did for his desktop. I was quite shocked when Feisty installed flawlessly and everything including his video acceleration and even wireless worked "out of the box". The only sad part of the story is that he was unable to find a laptop locally without Windows on it already.
Also, this could open a whole new antitrust litigation. They are attacking "the little guy", who the patent system is supposed to be set up to protect. If they win any patent cases against Linux, they prove they are a monopoly.
Sure, a small Linux distributor is exactly the sort of organization to take on Microsoft's hundreds of lawyers and billions of dollars.
Maybe not, but IBM has more money than all the distributors combined, and has invested a lot of cash into it's Linux business already. Once SCO is dead, I hope they find a way to get some revenge over the OS/2 thing.
Total assets: (In millions of USD)
MSFT: 63,891.00
IBM: 101,621.00
we demand they open source things that they aren't legally allowed to release code for
Not really. We demand that they not use proprietary technologies that they aren't legally allowed to release code for in their drivers, and open source them. Most times we'd just be happy if they would publish proper hardware specs that allow us to write our own open drivers for their devices without having to reverse engineer their proprietary code.
So basically it's the kernel+libc from Solaris, with the Debian userland...
Ubuntu actually (notice the ugly brown colour on everything). I've played with it quite a bit mostly in VMWare. They've done quite a bit of tweaking to make things work in a more Solaris friendly manner, like Solaris 'zones' work properly, and apparently you it is able to install Solaris native packages alongside your deb's somehow. There's some weird oddities as far as a Linux user would be concerned. I have no idea how to make users home directories exist in/home instead of/exports/home or whatever silly thing it is in Solaris, and the device files don't make much sense to me and are complicated by having 'slices' on top of partitions (/dev/c0d0s0 or something like that rather than than/dev/hda1 etc). BSD users might feel more comfortable with it, but I think its terrible. I wasn't able to get any DRI acceleration happening, and my sound card didn't work properly. It's quite a bit of fun to play with if you're into that kind of thing though.
But if you dare enter #solaris on Freenode for help, don't mention Linux whatever you do. You'll be chastised and ridiculed for being simple minded. It's unfortunate, but a lot like what you get in #debian most times.
The Mono team admits that their implementation of ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows.Forms is a "potential" problem.
I see:
Jim Miller at Microsoft has made a statement on the patents covering ISO/ECMA, (he is one of the inventors listed in the patent).
Basically a grant is given to anyone who want to implement those components for free and for any purpose
And as for the other stuff it says:
Mono's strategy for dealing with any potential issues that might arise with ASP.NET, ADO.NET or Windows.Forms is: (1) work around the patent by using a different implementation technique that retains the API, but changes the mechanism; if that is not possible, we would (2) remove the pieces of code that were covered by those patents, and also (3) find prior art that would render the patent useless.
So that doesn't really sound like an admission of any potential problems at all.. It's a strategy to avoid those problems.
first big example: MSFT & IBM. The pattern usually resolves to MSFT=wins big, Partner(s)=at best manages to survive but not really thrive from the partnership, or at worst they lose their butts.
Corel would be a better example. IBM isn't really losing their butts. They did get screwed by Bill, but their butt is doing much better these days.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is, I don't consider you an authority on the subject. I have no reason to believe anyone who is crazy enough to debate this for over a week on Slashdot with somebody who obviously isn't interested in your opinion. Whatever your motive is, it's interesting how you're as passionate about this as the bible thumpers are about their religion.
So much that we shouldn't even bother letting the consumer know what he's buying. Nonsense indeed.
Meh.. Maybe it should be illegal to cam a movie. They suck anyway, I'd rather wait for the DVD screener. At least it's still legal to download them. :)
Thalidomide underwent safety testing too.
You're confused already? Try to pay more attention.
One reason is that in the non-computer world it can cost thousands of dollars to manufacture even just a prototype. When it comes to software, anyone can do it with a little time and interest. Patents were supposed to make that initial investment worth the risk. Its completely unnecessary with software.
I'm not interested in participating in this particular experiment.
Once upon a time my government had very strict rules about product labeling. Somehow or other the system has failed recently. That's not paranoia, that is a legitimate concern.
Except that the milk contains trace amounts of BGH, and the label doesn't indicate that it does. I don't care if the products are banned. I want to know which ones have it and which ones don't. I won't buy the ones that do.
I don't care to debate your terminator gene propaganda. I choose to avoid them. If you say that its irrational for me to want to know what is in my food then you aren't worth talking to.
No. You're an idiot. I never said it was. Just another example of a horrible thing to do to the food supply and not tell anyone about it.
They were not manipulating DNA the same way Monsanto does. It's foolish to even suggest they are the same thing.
You believe you know it for sure. So did the people who invented asbestos believe it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
We do not. Go into any grocery store and try to pick the stuff that is genetically modified, and which isn't. Try to figure out which milk has BGH in it, and which doesn't. Even try to pick the products without aspartame in them. You can't because it's listed under hundreds of different brand names.
Right. 7000 years ago the native americans created it in laboratories under a microscope.
Says you. And Aspartame is safe, and so is Bovine Growth Hormone too? Obviously you know this for sure and I should trust that you aren't just arguing for the sake of arguing. There can't possibly be any side effects so why even indicate their presence on the labeling?
Give people a choice, and nobody will buy this shit anymore.
We don't have to manipulate the genes of our food supply, and introduce synthetic chemicals to it to "advance as a people".
The point should be that genetic modification of our food isn't worth the risk. It isn't enough to try to prove that they are safe. It needs to be shown why we can't go on without them. They can't do that because we've got along just fine for what a hundred thousand years or so now without them.
Get rid of this crap, and get rid of aspartame. That would be a good start.
Haven't others been doing this for a few years already?
With Vista? I don't know anyone who's had a pleasant experience with it after being used to XP. It has regressed in usability and driver support.
I completely agree. My father bought a laptop that came preloaded with Vista. There are several "Unknown Device"'s in his device manager, and his wireless doesn't seem to work. He asked me if I could dual boot Ubuntu on it like we did for his desktop. I was quite shocked when Feisty installed flawlessly and everything including his video acceleration and even wireless worked "out of the box". The only sad part of the story is that he was unable to find a laptop locally without Windows on it already.
Also, this could open a whole new antitrust litigation. They are attacking "the little guy", who the patent system is supposed to be set up to protect. If they win any patent cases against Linux, they prove they are a monopoly.
Maybe not, but IBM has more money than all the distributors combined, and has invested a lot of cash into it's Linux business already. Once SCO is dead, I hope they find a way to get some revenge over the OS/2 thing.
Total assets: (In millions of USD)
MSFT: 63,891.00
IBM: 101,621.00
Not really. We demand that they not use proprietary technologies that they aren't legally allowed to release code for in their drivers, and open source them. Most times we'd just be happy if they would publish proper hardware specs that allow us to write our own open drivers for their devices without having to reverse engineer their proprietary code.
Ubuntu actually (notice the ugly brown colour on everything). I've played with it quite a bit mostly in VMWare. They've done quite a bit of tweaking to make things work in a more Solaris friendly manner, like Solaris 'zones' work properly, and apparently you it is able to install Solaris native packages alongside your deb's somehow. There's some weird oddities as far as a Linux user would be concerned. I have no idea how to make users home directories exist in
But if you dare enter #solaris on Freenode for help, don't mention Linux whatever you do. You'll be chastised and ridiculed for being simple minded. It's unfortunate, but a lot like what you get in #debian most times.
Nexenta is already about as Linux-like as you can get. Hopefully they'll trade in their antique package manager for apt as well.
I guess we can assume the George Lucas To Quit Movie Business story is dead..
Because without a strategy they would be problems. With one, they aren't.
I see:
And as for the other stuff it says:
So that doesn't really sound like an admission of any potential problems at all.. It's a strategy to avoid those problems.
Corel would be a better example. IBM isn't really losing their butts. They did get screwed by Bill, but their butt is doing much better these days.