As someone who frequently has to be in secured areas.. I hope at least some of the models never, ever have a camera, as is it a pain to either have to lock my phone in the car or to hand it over to some $10 an hour security guard prior to entry or have it confiscated by the same guard on the way out if I forget to hand it to him on the way in.
I think that's the crux of the case though. Depending on how courts decide on the issue, refusing to license the software to run on compatible hardware from a third party could be construed as an anti-competitive behavior. Precedent was set with Bell for splitting up a company to solve the issue. It would be interesting to see a court ordered separation of the hardware and software divisions of both IBM and Apple.
What? IBM still has a hardware division ? I'm flabbergasted!:-)
As long the the new product was designed and built without the engineers (both hardware and software) having access to the original product, your are required to allow them to presuming they have negotiated the appropriate licenses for any patents.
Not quite true.. in the 60's IBM got hit for applying engineering changes for the simple purpose of excluding interoperability between hardware.. had an IBM mainframe but wanted to by cheaper EMC storage.. would work until an IBMer saw and reported.. then all the sudden there would be an engineering change to the IBM hardware with would break the competitor hardware.
As was well as terminating support for any IBM software that was not running on IBM hardware.
Between the two, IBM did a fairly good job of being monopolistic.. until the DOJ got involved.
Depends on the schema change involved. Never saw any with add or delete a column, which was 95+% of what happened in my environment. As for the remaining changes, I don't ever remember things becoming inconsistent, might have been pure luck , really good design and implementation or just bad memory on my part (I'll have to query some of my former colleagues).
One thing to remember is that while all three sites were running the same application, the end user never, ever switch sites (unless the site failed or was taken down) so until the user finished the activity in the app his data was isolated to 1 data center.
Actually, we would deadvertize, and stop the synchronization, then change the code and the schema in the database and readvertize leaving the sync off, move to the second site do the same thing but restart the sync between sites 1 and 2..
When site 3 was done.. then all three sites would after a few minutes, be back in sync.
Precisely, I've spent the last 12 years (prior to be laid off) working in a hot-hot-hot solution. Each center was fully redundant and ran at no more then 50% dedicated utilization. Each data center got 1 week worth of planned maint every quarter for hardware and software updates when that data center was completely off line leaving a hot-hot solution.. if something else happened we still had a "live" data center while scrambling to recover the other two.
We ran completely without change windows as we would simply deadvertize an entire data center do the work and readvertize, them move on to the next data center. In the event of high importance, say a cert advisory requiring an immediate update, we would follow the same procedures just as soon as all the requisite mgmt paperwork was complete.
And yes, we were running some of the most visible and highest traffic websites on the internet.
And if you had two identical data centers, where each in and of itself was redundant with software designed to function seamlessly across the two in a hot-hot configuration.. there would have been NO downtime.. the university would have been up the entire time with little to no data loss.
So say I'm Amazon and my data center burns down.. 48 hours with ZERO sales for a disaster recovery scenario vs normal operations for the time it takes to rebuild/move the burned data center..
I think I'll take disaster avoidance and keep selling things:-)
Data center redundancy is a need thing. However, most data center designs for get to address the two largest causes of down time... people and software. People are people and will always make mistakes, as such there are still things that can be done to reduce the impact of human error.
Software, very rarely is designed for use in redundant systems. More likely, the design is for use in a hot-cold or hot-warm recovery scenario. Very rarely is it designed for multiple hot across multiple data centers.
Remember, good disaster avoidance is always cheaper than disaster recovery when done right.
Pick your pocket while you're waking down the street, copy the contents across into a trojaned version, and then slip the replacement back into the victim's pocket. Or, if that's hard, tell them they dropped their phone and hand it back.
Why go to that much work, just set up a small site in a confined area and simply send new firmware to any cell phone you decide you need to be able to control.
For all the barking of the agencies, it's obvious they haven't encountered the treatment I and my colleagues have encountered re-entering the US from abroad only to have laptops have the data examined, and that data be copied for "further analysis" or even the laptop confiscated for an undetermined amount of time.
It's just a matter of time before other countries make the same advertisment about travel to the US.... What's the old saying (Kettle calling the Pot black).
Does it really matter? How many people when traveling keep their laptop, cellphone, ipod, etc isolated 100% of the time? For a skilled person with the right tools it only takes a matter of minutes to open a laptop and add bugging devices. Pop out one wireless lan card and replace with another with "special" control code in the firmware.
After all, you're daughter won't be living in "your" household anymore. She'll be living in her university's environment. It doesn't matter if you're a FOSS zealot. You won't be there to support her machine at 2am when she has a paper due the next morning. Nor will the normal student IT help drone who probably doesn't understand anything about Linux. Make it as simple for the people at the university to support her as possible. And, unfortunately, that usually means either a Windows box or a Mac box.
Really?!? My daughter went off to Texas A&M, admittedly with a dual boot solution, but more importantly both sides of the house were setup to allow me remote access to trouble shoot and repair as needed. That said, my daughter spent 4 years living on Linux (initially gentoo and later ubuntu) and only hit two applications that between the two us couldn't be made to work with her linux install.
Now, if the original poster isn't sufficiently skilled to do remote diagnosis and repair, that might make a small change in how one feels about.
Do you think the average college helpdesk is prepared to answer random Linux questions?
Asking the tour guides is just plain silly. You might as well ask them what brand ERP the college uses.
Most colleges would allow a linux installation but are unprepared to provide support to every possible linux variation and configuration.
I wouldn't expect the help desk to answer random questions linux questions, but I surely would expect them to be able to tell me the addresses of the campus name servers, the type of encryption being run on the network (ssl-1, ssl-2, tsl, ssh/ssp) and what ports they are running on if they have been moved off of the default ports (lots of universities feel more secure because they "hide" the ports -- security by obscurity never works), the default level of support for the systems they support (nothing other than XP sp 3 and IE 8, or Vista and IE 8) and most importanly, who to complain to when a particular configuration of University software/hardware doesn't play nice.
In short, install VirtualBox/VMware in case she needs it, be a bit flexible, and don't worry about it.
I would also make sure that what ever browser she uses has the ability for her to pick her User-Agent string. Frequently, online applications can be made to work simply by switching user-agents.
Also watch out for Blackboard and/or WebCT (blackboard bought out webct), as both tend to have strange requirements that only some of the time can be fooled by user agent changes, the rest of the time it requires either a virtual solution or dual boot capability.
And yes, as a long time unix/linux guy (25 year career), I was amazed how much stuff on the University of Texas networks had problems with me running linux as a graduate student. The biggest two problems were authenticating with the the campus network -- code required ssl-1, which by default was not available on my laptop and connecting to BlackBoards chat function which is essentially Internet Relay Chat down with active-x in a browser.
No way in h - e - double hockey sticks would I bring my production notebook on a trip with me overseas.
Who in their right mind lets a "production" machine out of the building? Production machine stays put. Travel with a secondary notebook or better yet a low cost netbook. (Best use yet for netbooks,, cheap throw aways).
What about the cost to Carriers in subsidizing phones from the manufacturers? I know very few people who pay full price for an unlocked phone from the manufacturer. Almost everyone takes a subsidized phone from the Carrier.
Use indelible paint, or burn it into the surface of the netbook's plastic case. However you decide to do it, make sure that it's obvious and can be seen by the user and everyone around them (incl. airport security people when they inspect the device). Have a message something like:
THIS COMPUTER WAS STOLEN FROM <your name/phone number>
Be careful with this, otherwise you will spend a LOT of time in police stations explaining how you came into possession of a stolen netbook. If you do decide to go this route, be sure that you are NEVER, EVER without your passport...
New school teaches every language + programmming concepts and our poster complains - maybe the new gen kids are unteachable.
Or just part of generation that has been taught the fine art of regurgitation rather than the more complex how to think, as well as being rewarded for every little thing they did right along the way.
Either way it doesn't matter, as somewhere between 30 and 50 you will run head on into the ageism that is so rampant in the technology industries.
So what did Toyota do that prevents competitors from innovating something better?
Depends on what they patented and how willing or unwilling they are to license.
But it comes down to if you improve upon and existing patent you have to license the that patent. If B is an improvement on A.. you still have to license A. And if you create C that is an improvement on B.. you must license A and B to not be infringing.
So how will they prove beyond a reasonable doubt that some actual theft has gone on?
If GS has any brains, they don't go after him in criminal court they go after him in civil court, where the statndard is the preponderance of evidence and then attach anything any everything that in his name to pay off the billions of dollars they will get from the jury.
All the while waiting on the feds to figure out how to nail him in criminal court, after all international spying is federal jurisdiction
Err... Pretty much none? Do you have a specific country in mind for this? Because it certainly isn't happening where I live...
Just realized how long ago that was.. last time I was in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands in 1994-95... Mickey and Minnie were hocking all sorts of non-disney stuff
That could be financial ruin for a company built around one artist's output. Say I create art and sell it. If I have a gallery that sells my art, the day that I die the gallery is financially in jeopardy. Maybe a 6 month grace period would suffice.
A small grace period, which would require a super majority of congress to change would be acceptable, but no more than 18 to 24 months.
Which artist counts when a creation is a collaborative effort (i.e the LOTR movie)? Death of every single participant?
Typically, the director is the one with the copyright which he in turn assigns to the movie studio. So since the actors are either paid scale or have a negotiated payment rate that doesn't involve a copyright, it seems logical to place a movie into the public domain upon the death of the director.
I think copyright has to accommodate this somewhat. However I agree with the parent's point... they are not falling into Public Domain at all these days and that should be corrected.
I would say the system is definitely broken, when copyright for a work belonging to an individual is 75 years after death and belonging to a corporation is 100 years.
Next time you are in Europe look at how many Disney characters are used all over the place.. Disney messed up and didn't get copyright extended in Europe before Mickey and Minnie hit 50 years and if I recall correctly, a few other characters escaped into the public domain before the EU changed the copyright to match the US limits.
Personal opinion, NO copyright should extend past the death of the artist.
It the MPAA/RIAA have a legitimate point of view, then I can barely comprehend what illegitimate is.
My thoughts exactly. I have no idea how this guy thinks that "we should be able to rape the Public Domain, but nothing we have can ever enter into it, and nobody has any fair use rights" could possibly be considered "legitimate". --
As one of my graduate school professors was quite fond of saying... "If you are in the IP business, you are in the litigation business!"
What this means is that any Intellectual Property has no protected value until it has been tried in court. Yes, the RIAA/MPAA can claim any value they want ($15 for a music CD, $25 for a BlueRay disk) and people will pay for it. However, until they take someone to court or someone takes them to court the IP has NO value.
Any one remember a few years back when just about ever album was comming out with some form of DRM on it.... Anyone also remember that Phillips, the holder of the IP on Compact Disks.. took the record companies to court to force them to remove the compact disk label off all the albums that had DRM as DRM made the disks unplayable on large numbers of certified compatible compact disk players?
That's a case where Phillips the IP holder took the record companies to court because the record companies were infringing on Phillips IP.
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As someone who frequently has to be in secured areas.. I hope at least some of the models never, ever have a camera, as is it a pain to either have to lock my phone in the car or to hand it over to some $10 an hour security guard prior to entry or have it confiscated by the same guard on the way out if I forget to hand it to him on the way in.
What? IBM still has a hardware division ? I'm flabbergasted! :-)
As long the the new product was designed and built without the engineers (both hardware and software) having access to the original product, your are required to allow them to presuming they have negotiated the appropriate licenses for any patents.
Not quite true.. in the 60's IBM got hit for applying engineering changes for the simple purpose of excluding interoperability between hardware .. had an IBM mainframe but wanted to by cheaper EMC storage.. would work until an IBMer saw and reported .. then all the sudden there would be an engineering change to the IBM hardware with would break the competitor hardware.
As was well as terminating support for any IBM software that was not running on IBM hardware.
Between the two, IBM did a fairly good job of being monopolistic .. until the DOJ got involved.
Depends on the schema change involved. Never saw any with add or delete a column, which was 95+% of what happened in my environment. As for the remaining changes, I don't ever remember things becoming inconsistent, might have been pure luck , really good design and implementation or just bad memory on my part (I'll have to query some of my former colleagues).
One thing to remember is that while all three sites were running the same application, the end user never, ever switch sites (unless the site failed or was taken down) so until the user finished the activity in the app his data was isolated to 1 data center.
Actually, we would deadvertize, and stop the synchronization, then change the code and the schema in the database and readvertize leaving the sync off, move to the second site do the same thing but restart the sync between sites 1 and 2..
When site 3 was done.. then all three sites would after a few minutes, be back in sync.
Precisely, I've spent the last 12 years (prior to be laid off) working in a hot-hot-hot solution. Each center was fully redundant and ran at no more then 50% dedicated utilization. Each data center got 1 week worth of planned maint every quarter for hardware and software updates when that data center was completely off line leaving a hot-hot solution.. if something else happened we still had a "live" data center while scrambling to recover the other two.
We ran completely without change windows as we would simply deadvertize an entire data center do the work and readvertize, them move on to the next data center. In the event of high importance, say a cert advisory requiring an immediate update, we would follow the same procedures just as soon as all the requisite mgmt paperwork was complete.
And yes, we were running some of the most visible and highest traffic websites on the internet.
And if you had two identical data centers, where each in and of itself was redundant with software designed to function seamlessly across the two in a hot-hot configuration .. there would have been NO downtime.. the university would have been up the entire time with little to no data loss.
So say I'm Amazon and my data center burns down.. 48 hours with ZERO sales for a disaster recovery scenario vs normal operations for the time it takes to rebuild/move the burned data center..
I think I'll take disaster avoidance and keep selling things :-)
Data center redundancy is a need thing. However, most data center designs for get to address the two largest causes of down time ... people and software. People are people and will always make mistakes, as such there are still things that can be done to reduce the impact of human error.
Software, very rarely is designed for use in redundant systems. More likely, the design is for use in a hot-cold or hot-warm recovery scenario. Very rarely is it designed for multiple hot across multiple data centers.
Remember, good disaster avoidance is always cheaper than disaster recovery when done right.
Why go to that much work, just set up a small site in a confined area and simply send new firmware to any cell phone you decide you need to be able to control.
For all the barking of the agencies, it's obvious they haven't encountered the treatment I and my colleagues have encountered re-entering the US from abroad only to have laptops have the data examined, and that data be copied for "further analysis" or even the laptop confiscated for an undetermined amount of time.
It's just a matter of time before other countries make the same advertisment about travel to the US.... What's the old saying (Kettle calling the Pot black).
Does it really matter? How many people when traveling keep their laptop, cellphone, ipod, etc isolated 100% of the time? For a skilled person with the right tools it only takes a matter of minutes to open a laptop and add bugging devices. Pop out one wireless lan card and replace with another with "special" control code in the firmware.
Really?!? My daughter went off to Texas A&M, admittedly with a dual boot solution, but more importantly both sides of the house were setup to allow me remote access to trouble shoot and repair as needed. That said, my daughter spent 4 years living on Linux (initially gentoo and later ubuntu) and only hit two applications that between the two us couldn't be made to work with her linux install.
Now, if the original poster isn't sufficiently skilled to do remote diagnosis and repair, that might make a small change in how one feels about.
Let me ask you a question in return..
Do you think the average college helpdesk is prepared to answer random Linux questions?
Asking the tour guides is just plain silly. You might as well ask them what brand ERP the college uses.
Most colleges would allow a linux installation but are unprepared to provide support to every possible linux variation and configuration.
I wouldn't expect the help desk to answer random questions linux questions, but I surely would expect them to be able to tell me the addresses of the campus name servers, the type of encryption being run on the network (ssl-1, ssl-2, tsl, ssh/ssp) and what ports they are running on if they have been moved off of the default ports (lots of universities feel more secure because they "hide" the ports -- security by obscurity never works), the default level of support for the systems they support (nothing other than XP sp 3 and IE 8, or Vista and IE 8) and most importanly, who to complain to when a particular configuration of University software/hardware doesn't play nice.
That's all I expect...
I would also make sure that what ever browser she uses has the ability for her to pick her User-Agent string. Frequently, online applications can be made to work simply by switching user-agents.
Also watch out for Blackboard and/or WebCT (blackboard bought out webct), as both tend to have strange requirements that only some of the time can be fooled by user agent changes, the rest of the time it requires either a virtual solution or dual boot capability.
And yes, as a long time unix/linux guy (25 year career), I was amazed how much stuff on the University of Texas networks had problems with me running linux as a graduate student. The biggest two problems were authenticating with the the campus network -- code required ssl-1, which by default was not available on my laptop and connecting to BlackBoards chat function which is essentially Internet Relay Chat down with active-x in a browser.
Who in their right mind lets a "production" machine out of the building? Production machine stays put. Travel with a secondary notebook or better yet
a low cost netbook. (Best use yet for netbooks,, cheap throw aways).
What about the cost to Carriers in subsidizing phones from the manufacturers? I know very few people who pay full price for an unlocked phone from the manufacturer. Almost everyone takes a subsidized phone from the Carrier.
And since the manufacturers aren't going broke...
Use indelible paint, or burn it into the surface of the netbook's plastic case. However you decide to do it, make sure that it's obvious and can be seen by the user and everyone around them (incl. airport security people when they inspect the device). Have a message something like:
THIS COMPUTER WAS STOLEN FROM <your name/phone number>
Be careful with this, otherwise you will spend a LOT of time in police stations explaining how you came into possession of a stolen netbook. If you do decide to go this route, be sure that you are NEVER, EVER without your passport ...
Or just part of generation that has been taught the fine art of regurgitation rather than the more complex how to think, as well as being rewarded for every little thing they did right along the way.
Either way it doesn't matter, as somewhere between 30 and 50 you will run head on into the ageism that is so rampant in the technology industries.
Depends on what they patented and how willing or unwilling they are to license.
But it comes down to if you improve upon and existing patent you have to license the that patent. If .. you still have to license A. And if you create C that is an improvement on B.. you must license A and B to not be infringing.
B is an improvement on A
If GS has any brains, they don't go after him in criminal court they go after him in civil court, where the statndard is the preponderance of evidence and then attach anything any everything that in his name to pay off the billions of dollars they will get from the jury.
All the while waiting on the feds to figure out how to nail him in criminal court, after all international spying is federal jurisdiction
Just realized how long ago that was.. last time I was in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands in 1994-95... Mickey and Minnie were hocking all sorts of non-disney stuff
A small grace period, which would require a super majority of congress to change would be acceptable, but no more than 18 to 24 months.
Typically, the director is the one with the copyright which he in turn assigns to the movie studio. So since the actors are either paid scale or have a negotiated payment rate that doesn't involve a copyright, it seems logical to place a movie into the public domain upon the death of the director.
I would say the system is definitely broken, when copyright for a work belonging to an individual is 75 years after death and belonging to a corporation is 100 years.
Next time you are in Europe look at how many Disney characters are used all over the place.. Disney messed up and didn't get copyright extended in Europe before Mickey and Minnie hit 50 years and if I recall correctly, a few other characters escaped into the public domain before the EU changed the copyright to match the US limits.
Personal opinion, NO copyright should extend past the death of the artist.
As one of my graduate school professors was quite fond of saying... "If you are in the IP business, you are in the litigation business!"
What this means is that any Intellectual Property has no protected value until it has been tried in court. Yes, the RIAA/MPAA can claim any value they want ($15 for a music CD, $25 for a BlueRay disk) and people will pay for it. However, until they take someone to court or someone takes them to court the IP has NO value.
Any one remember a few years back when just about ever album was comming out with some form of DRM on it.... Anyone also remember that Phillips, the holder of the IP on Compact Disks.. took the record companies to court to force them to remove the compact disk label off all the albums that had DRM as DRM made the disks unplayable on large numbers of certified compatible compact disk players?
That's a case where Phillips the IP holder took the record companies to court because the record companies were infringing on Phillips IP.