The letter is interesting, the comments from groklaw less so. No disrespect to them, but the first statement on groklaw's site is "IANAL".
Could we not have had, before yet again pouring gasoline onto the blazing inferno which is slashdot's collective readership, some input from someone who "IAL"?
Through contacts, we have pointed out to Google (and submitted spam reports and submitted poor results reports) that one of our competitors has 2,700 duplicate doorway entry pages to their site. Several hundred of those are illegally indexed using "our" trademarked name. We also advised them of another competitor with 159,000 doorway pages - all indexed and showing up in results. Google's response . . . (silence)
If your competitor is illegally using your trademarked name, then get off your ass and do something about it yourself. Why should Google fight your battles for you ?
The industry is much more interested in massive projects involving well tested technologies than in, what is the domain of universities, small projects with both high risk and high intellectual value.
And what, pray tell, is a "high risk" project in the context of the typical student's comfortable life making out and smoking pot at a university?
IT doesn't matter because everyone can do it now. Can anyone on/. not figure out how to build an iTunes music store from a technical perspective? Does anyone here not know how to create a scalable mail system? That knowledge (or know-how) is commodity knowledge now.
I bet most/. ers could knock up an iTunes store all right. But I'll bet.01% could actually build a scalable, well-managed, backed up version that you would bet your business on.
Duuh.. perhaps your walkie talkie might not be able to reach quite as far as the global phone network ? At least without requiring a 20 metre tall antenna that would turn your ears bright pink when you made a call ?
I'm not an American but I hear where you're comig from. Maybe you're right about Americans in general, I don't know.
However IMO the way to combat racism is to attack it where it appears, not to make a blanket outburst like he/she did, when no-one had actually said anything remotely racist. That just insults those of us who are fairly conscious of not being racist in our attitudes. It makes me, for one, assume that the person has some kind of obsession about racism, does not have a balanced view, and has nothing worth saying.
Just because their black, doesn't mean their dumb.
[sic]
I thought maybe you were replying to someone's post saying that because these people were black, they were dumb. But no. Looks like you just put that out there yourself, and then refuted your own statement. Not quite sure why that makes you "insightful". To me it makes you -5, racist.
I thought Microsoft and IBM just signed a huge Xbox 2 chip deal? Maybe I am too idealistic and the proper way to act is to sue your business partners. Maybe thats why I don't own a big company:)
Big companies like IBM, Microsoft, et al don't act in a single-minded way like we individuals tend to. You can't run a big company with a "you're my enemy so I won't do business with you" mentality.
There are many, many examples where IBM competes or cooperates with Microsoft and others. An even more extreme example is Sony, where, one half of the business is frantically taking on file swappers and copiers, and the other half is making bucks from selling devices used to copy and swap files.
How many people with any brains would work at the USPTO if your insane scheme was adopted ? Would you ?
Denuding the USPTO of its staff by making them personally acountable - a principle that does not even apply in the real world - would harldy improve matters.
Its a quesiton of incentives and motives, not of quality of personnel.
Currently the patent system is not friendly to small startups anyway. So there is little to lose.
The deposit should be in the order of $2000. Any company/individual that has any chance whatsoever of succeeding in the real world must be able to raise that amount of capital to lock down their IP. And anyone who is filing more than a handful of patents is either a giant corporate or a serial patent wanker.
However, don't call it a deposit - call it a bounty. When you file your patent, you put it up. If anyone disproves your patent, based on prior art, then they get to keep half of it (USPTO keeps the other half for processing costs). This way, we get (for example) smart people in the third world (with Internet access) able to make a living by doing what the USPTO patent examiners clearly don't - actually checking patents out to see if they make any sense or not. Those people should pay $100 for the right to make a patent challenge - non-refundable if their challenge fails.
Call me an unashamed advocate of the market bu the current system is clearly fscked.
You know, when I hear you say (re Kaparov):...."He's not just looking to beat you in his first match; he's looking to utterly destroy, smash and humiliate you with a dramatic and embarrassing win."...then I realise that we inhabit utterly different worlds. I could certainly be destroyed, smashed and humiliated if a drunken Hell's Angel knocked me out with a pool cue and strung me up from a streetlight by my underpants, but just because some other guy moved a few wooden pieces to better places than I did ? Naaaah.
You are right, this is the only solution. You need to specify that your interface expects, say, 10K hits per minute most of the time, and then specify that you are running a superbowl ad this weekend and it may burst real high, but just for a while.
It will take many eons before there is any better defece against DDOS attacks, and while the whole world seems to be laoded with poisoned/blasta'd machines just waiting to take part, this is the best that is possible with today's technology.
One of the first rules of business is not to make your cusotmers your enemy.
Correction: that rule only applies when you are not a monopoly. When you are, the first rule of business is to gouge your customers as hard and as often as you can.
Code Generation is for people who don't understand or are too lazy for abstraction
Not so. Code generation is a subject that a lot of baloney gets talked about. I know a tiny bit about the subject since we kept our company afloat for quite a while selling a complex code generator to OEMs.
There are two types of programmers IMO.
Those that have built their own little code generator that they think kicks the ass of everyone else's code generator.
Those that think code generators are a load of bollocks.
Some points about code generators:
They are most useful in two situations:
Where you have rigid, fixed and often standards-based formats that prevent you from using abstraction (EJBs being the classic case)
When you have one source medium and many target mediums. For example, you might read UML and use it to generate SQL, HTML, JSPs, EJBs and all the other bits of a multi-tier app.
Building the generator part of a code generator is real easy. Building the other bits (what you might call the re-generator) - i.e., that allow users to add their own constructs to the code, edit the generated code appropriately, upgrade the templates over time while still preserving user code, etc. etc. is probably 95% of the work. What most people think of as code generators are simple scripts that spew text into a file.
Genuine inquiry - just why is it easier to manage a single z/VM box with 100 Linux instances on it than it is to maintain 100 rackmounted x86 boxes ??
I can see that installation of a virtual machine sure is a lot easier than plugging in a physical one.
But presumably each of these 100 linux instances has to be upgraded, managed, patched, etc. separately? So why is management easier under VM? Either way I'm going to be sitting at my desk logging into 100 linux instances.
Like the original poster, I call bullshit too. If you claim to have 1.7 million genuine opt-ins on your list, yet its so sensitive you aren't even prepared to say what the list is, you're hiding something.
A naive and shortsighted idea. Shortsighted because it begins with the notion of "computer", as if a computer is a basestation on which the modal form of activity is to install software from boxes or whathave you. This might not be the case in 10-20 years, so the very concept of "see and approve" is ludicrous. This also doesn't say anything about granularity - will a "can this computer do periodic checks of itself" over the internet be sufficient? If no, then you very quickly get into absurdities. At any rate, why is this a "right" rather than a nicety? Why can't the market handle this? Don't buy from companies whose security implementations you don't trust.
You're right, I don't think the article writer has any concept of the world outside his own PC. He says that the vendor (to enforce payment or so on) should not be able to disable code running on the PC, but should be able to disable code running on the vendor's server. Easy for any vendor to get around (by making the PC touch the server from time to time) and irrelevant in a world of distributed computing.
I guess perhaps you're being funny but your suggestion has several holes the size of barn doors in it:
If the software product or hardware product reaches end of life and the current company does not develop a follow-on product with corresponding upgrade offer to registered customers
[..here's my upgrade offer - the new product costs $100 - as an existing user, you can upgrade to it for just $99.99...]
then the source code [software and firmware and documentation in digital format] will be sent to registered software and hardware customers, and, the source code will declared open source and offered to all via internet.
[...so in your eyes the only products ever allowed to be sold will be those that can legally be open sourced- which is probably about 1% of the products around today...]
If the initial development company is sold, source code will be offered and sent, if requested, to registered software and hardware owners.
[...in other words you don't think people should be allowed to sell their software companies - they certainly wouldn't be worth anything under your scenario...]
If the initial development company ceases to exist, source code will be sent to registered software and hardware owners, and, the source code will be declared open source and offered to all via internet. If an operating system integer upgrade [v1.X -> v2.X] requires the user to purchase new operating system software or hardware, then the source code will be offered to registered customers.
Thats just plain stupid. Why would anyone release an integer upgrade if it triggered some crackpot scheme ?? What if they don't use numbers at all ?
In 1996 we built a portable transaction monitor that is used today in several very large web applications that run on Linux. The entire TP monitor is only several thousand lines of C, the applications are extremely simple, and it all works beautifully.
In 1998 we were asked to make something very similar, but using MTS and COM+. The animal works, but it is incredibly complex, slow, unstable, and frankly impossible to control totally. When we approach the limits of the system in any sense, it collapses, and we cannot do anything to discover why.
I know jack shit about.NET and would never consider using it, but I have seen exactly the same experience with J2EE. Relatively simple applications, which solely produce web pages from the data in a single underlying RDBMS, and could be easily (and appropriately) built just using servlets, are turned into stinking, creaking and groaning and sluggish monsters by introducing EJB servers in the middle.
Anything that introduces more threads and more machines is going to have a wicked effect on your performance and productivity. Its not unique to.NET.
That said, if there has to be a big crusty layer in the middle, I'd rather it was built by someone else than the Borg - in the scale of their commercial interests, your application's scalability and reliability come very low indeed.
I have a script (which I now just forward my virus emails to) which automatically scans the Recieved: lines and finds the last mail server that collects emails for me. Wherever that mail server got forwarded the email from is the ISP that my script bounces the email to (so they can figure out who it came from and have them de-virus their box).
Unless the people who are sending you emails make the same spelling mistake, your strategy won't work very well:
I think overall you can measure the amount of heat that a device will produce by measuring how much it draws from the power source, sinc ein the end all that juice is being turned to heat anyway.
Hyuk, hyuk, not quite - you forgot about the LEDs on the front panel and perhaps also on the network card. Subtract at least 14mW from the total for light !
If this were a new plan to track "normal people" then the mass of posters would be up in arms and screaming to kill it before it even gets past the brainstorming phase.......I was shocked at the number of posts that either say its cool or not much of a big deal. Obviously, it is because the target of such tracking is less than human and less deserving of privacy and the right to anonymity.
Just because you say "obviously" don't make it so. Maybe people are saying that they like the idea not because the target is "less than human", but because:
The target is ill and needs help
The target is getting something for nothing which others are paying for
FueledByRamen, you're one crazy son of a bitch, but I salute you - you've got balls (well, at the moment you have, assuming you haven't tried out any of the/. advice yet). And I am really looking forward to your next post "Solving a sanitary mess" when your toilets block up.
Seriously though, there is life outside whatever burnt out dot com shell you are currently living in, with only the roaches keeping you company. You need to get out and get your bare feet on the grass for a while. Smoke something. Lie in the sun with your eyes closed. Try and forget there was ever a place and time when you thought it would be smart to do your own high voltage wiring.
could someone PLEASE start a project to replace what ever code SCO claims to have copyright over ?
Actually I claim ownership over the whole of linux myself - I wrote most of it in my spare time using notepad on the computer here in my cube at Walmart's admin offices. Oh yeah, and some of it I wrote on my palm pilot on the bus on the way to work..
Why are you panicking? Life is full of people who act like bullies. Usually they get whats coming to them. The key here is to draw SCO so far into this that they overstretch themselves, go belly up and take their shareholders down with them.
Slashdot Mirror
Could we not have had, before yet again pouring gasoline onto the blazing inferno which is slashdot's collective readership, some input from someone who "IAL"?
If your competitor is illegally using your trademarked name, then get off your ass and do something about it yourself. Why should Google fight your battles for you ?
Sheeesh
And what, pray tell, is a "high risk" project in the context of the typical student's comfortable life making out and smoking pot at a university?
I bet most /. ers could knock up an iTunes store all right. But I'll bet .01% could actually build a scalable, well-managed, backed up version that you would bet your business on.
Duuh.. perhaps your walkie talkie might not be able to reach quite as far as the global phone network ? At least without requiring a 20 metre tall antenna that would turn your ears bright pink when you made a call ?
However IMO the way to combat racism is to attack it where it appears, not to make a blanket outburst like he/she did, when no-one had actually said anything remotely racist. That just insults those of us who are fairly conscious of not being racist in our attitudes. It makes me, for one, assume that the person has some kind of obsession about racism, does not have a balanced view, and has nothing worth saying.
I thought maybe you were replying to someone's post saying that because these people were black, they were dumb. But no. Looks like you just put that out there yourself, and then refuted your own statement. Not quite sure why that makes you "insightful". To me it makes you -5, racist.
Big companies like IBM, Microsoft, et al don't act in a single-minded way like we individuals tend to. You can't run a big company with a "you're my enemy so I won't do business with you" mentality.
There are many, many examples where IBM competes or cooperates with Microsoft and others. An even more extreme example is Sony, where, one half of the business is frantically taking on file swappers and copiers, and the other half is making bucks from selling devices used to copy and swap files.
Denuding the USPTO of its staff by making them personally acountable - a principle that does not even apply in the real world - would harldy improve matters.
Its a quesiton of incentives and motives, not of quality of personnel.
Currently the patent system is not friendly to small startups anyway. So there is little to lose.
The deposit should be in the order of $2000. Any company/individual that has any chance whatsoever of succeeding in the real world must be able to raise that amount of capital to lock down their IP. And anyone who is filing more than a handful of patents is either a giant corporate or a serial patent wanker.
However, don't call it a deposit - call it a bounty. When you file your patent, you put it up. If anyone disproves your patent, based on prior art, then they get to keep half of it (USPTO keeps the other half for processing costs). This way, we get (for example) smart people in the third world (with Internet access) able to make a living by doing what the USPTO patent examiners clearly don't - actually checking patents out to see if they make any sense or not. Those people should pay $100 for the right to make a patent challenge - non-refundable if their challenge fails.
Call me an unashamed advocate of the market bu the current system is clearly fscked.
You know, when I hear you say (re Kaparov):...."He's not just looking to beat you in his first match; he's looking to utterly destroy, smash and humiliate you with a dramatic and embarrassing win."...then I realise that we inhabit utterly different worlds. I could certainly be destroyed, smashed and humiliated if a drunken Hell's Angel knocked me out with a pool cue and strung me up from a streetlight by my underpants, but just because some other guy moved a few wooden pieces to better places than I did ? Naaaah.
It will take many eons before there is any better defece against DDOS attacks, and while the whole world seems to be laoded with poisoned/blasta'd machines just waiting to take part, this is the best that is possible with today's technology.
No SQL in your UI code? Sure, good move. Instead, move all your SQL into a back end and then call into it from your UI code. This goes as follows:
Correction: that rule only applies when you are not a monopoly. When you are, the first rule of business is to gouge your customers as hard and as often as you can.
Not so. Code generation is a subject that a lot of baloney gets talked about. I know a tiny bit about the subject since we kept our company afloat for quite a while selling a complex code generator to OEMs.
There are two types of programmers IMO.
- Those that have built their own little code generator that they think kicks the ass of everyone else's code generator.
- Those that think code generators are a load of bollocks.
Some points about code generators:I can see that installation of a virtual machine sure is a lot easier than plugging in a physical one.
But presumably each of these 100 linux instances has to be upgraded, managed, patched, etc. separately? So why is management easier under VM? Either way I'm going to be sitting at my desk logging into 100 linux instances.
Like the original poster, I call bullshit too. If you claim to have 1.7 million genuine opt-ins on your list, yet its so sensitive you aren't even prepared to say what the list is, you're hiding something.
You're right, I don't think the article writer has any concept of the world outside his own PC. He says that the vendor (to enforce payment or so on) should not be able to disable code running on the PC, but should be able to disable code running on the vendor's server. Easy for any vendor to get around (by making the PC touch the server from time to time) and irrelevant in a world of distributed computing.
If the software product or hardware product reaches end of life and the current company does not develop a follow-on product with corresponding upgrade offer to registered customers
[..here's my upgrade offer - the new product costs $100 - as an existing user, you can upgrade to it for just $99.99...]
then the source code [software and firmware and documentation in digital format] will be sent to registered software and hardware customers, and, the source code will declared open source and offered to all via internet.
[...so in your eyes the only products ever allowed to be sold will be those that can legally be open sourced- which is probably about 1% of the products around today...]
If the initial development company is sold, source code will be offered and sent, if requested, to registered software and hardware owners.
[...in other words you don't think people should be allowed to sell their software companies - they certainly wouldn't be worth anything under your scenario...]
If the initial development company ceases to exist, source code will be sent to registered software and hardware owners, and, the source code will be declared open source and offered to all via internet. If an operating system integer upgrade [v1.X -> v2.X] requires the user to purchase new operating system software or hardware, then the source code will be offered to registered customers.
Thats just plain stupid. Why would anyone release an integer upgrade if it triggered some crackpot scheme ?? What if they don't use numbers at all ?
In 1998 we were asked to make something very similar, but using MTS and COM+. The animal works, but it is incredibly complex, slow, unstable, and frankly impossible to control totally. When we approach the limits of the system in any sense, it collapses, and we cannot do anything to discover why.
I know jack shit about .NET and would never consider using it, but I have seen exactly the same experience with J2EE. Relatively simple applications, which solely produce web pages from the data in a single underlying RDBMS, and could be easily (and appropriately) built just using servlets, are turned into stinking, creaking and groaning and sluggish monsters by introducing EJB servers in the middle.
Anything that introduces more threads and more machines is going to have a wicked effect on your performance and productivity. Its not unique to .NET.
That said, if there has to be a big crusty layer in the middle, I'd rather it was built by someone else than the Borg - in the scale of their commercial interests, your application's scalability and reliability come very low indeed.
Unless the people who are sending you emails make the same spelling mistake, your strategy won't work very well:
Repeat after me:
"i" before "e" except after "c"!
Hyuk, hyuk, not quite - you forgot about the LEDs on the front panel and perhaps also on the network card. Subtract at least 14mW from the total for light !
Just because you say "obviously" don't make it so. Maybe people are saying that they like the idea not because the target is "less than human", but because:
Seriously though, there is life outside whatever burnt out dot com shell you are currently living in, with only the roaches keeping you company. You need to get out and get your bare feet on the grass for a while. Smoke something. Lie in the sun with your eyes closed. Try and forget there was ever a place and time when you thought it would be smart to do your own high voltage wiring.
Actually I claim ownership over the whole of linux myself - I wrote most of it in my spare time using notepad on the computer here in my cube at Walmart's admin offices. Oh yeah, and some of it I wrote on my palm pilot on the bus on the way to work..
Why are you panicking? Life is full of people who act like bullies. Usually they get whats coming to them. The key here is to draw SCO so far into this that they overstretch themselves, go belly up and take their shareholders down with them.