a computer company could own everything, have the legal rights to everything without any liabilites
So maybe that's the way to go to limit the patent feeding frenzy. Get some legislation (or bend something that already exists) to make software companies responsible for their implementations of patented software. OK, that wasn't worded very well, but you know what I mean - if they want any given patent to be enforceable they should accept liability for anything they implement that includes that patent.
Anyone remember reading about the server at the University of North Carolina that was missing for four years because it had accidentally been sealed up behind some drywall?? It never missed a packet, apparently.
Closer to home, I have a keyboard that still functions after numerous fizzy, sugar-loaded beverages have been spilled into it. Some keys need to be pounded a little harder than normal, but I'm not replacing it until my son either: 1)develops better hand-to-mouth coordination while playing Quidditch; or 2)finally lets all the magic smoke out...
On the other hand, unless you designed and built your own motherboard, there could be a hardware keylogger in there, catching the raw keycodes before any driver gets them. If it was built right, it could have a buddy-buddy relationship with your onboard NIC so that it could slip UDP packets into your outbound datastream.
And while we're being paranoid here, remember a couple of years ago that Japanese wristwatch cellphone, where you stick your finger in your ear and talk into the strap? Wouldn't be too hard to scatter the components of one of those (or maybe WIFI) around your motherboard so that it could phone home from time to time. OK, so the casing should screen out wireless transmissions, but what about the spare pairs in the cat5 cable that ties the case to the wall? Or the speaker wires? Or the power cable?
Yeah, yeah, overly paranoid, I know. But if Open Source is suspect, where you can actually review the code if you want to, why not also suspect complex electronics that are more difficult to examine?
Well, I think that's yet another illusion. Think disgruntled employees being paid by Bad Guys to insert a bit of code.... You may trust the company that made your software, but how can you possibly trust every one of their employees? And once it's in, since it's trusted it could be there for years.
And then, of course, there's the question of outsourcing to a foreign country... Who's to say that the programming companies in India (or anywhere else) don't have some disgruntled employees among them? And I don't mean disgruntled with their own bosses, so much as disgruntled at the rich western nations that take advantage of the poorer eastern nations.
How is Open Source different from that? Oh yeah, you pay more for outsourcing...
This was probably just them dipping a toe in the water. Hell, they've destroyed SCO (who had an old Unix and their own version of Linux), cost IBM plenty (those lawyers have to be paid), discredited Novell (what exactly do they own?) and made a lot of people think twice.
On the other hand, there's the risk that: 1)the GPL gets validated in court; and 2)Linux is legally declared unencumbered by patent/copyright violations. Also, OSS projects may be reevaluated by companies that were waiting for the legal dust to settle.
BTW, doesn't IBM have a regiment of lawyers on the payroll anyway? If so, I doubt their pay would be different depending on whether they're filing court papers or surfing the Internet.
As long as it's more than SCO can easily raise, it doesn't really matter if the number is not quite accurate. So, does SCO have that $48M, and can Baystar insist on cash?
cf MPAA wanting mobiles banned because people can talk to friends about crap movies as soon as they've seen it.
What happened with that? Did they give up? Always seemed like a stupid idea to me, because most people are going to be home (or near a phone/computer) within 30 minutes of leaving the movie, and then they can make calls, send email & IM their friends to spread the word. MPAA gains 30 minutes at most... And anyone who's seriously bummed about being suckered into seeing a crap movie can always can always talk loudly about it in the parking lot...
The problem with giving up the name "Windows" is that, like it or not, "Home PC"=="Windows" in the minds of a rather large slice of the home computer market. Whatever they call it, people will still think of it as Windows.
Which suggests a novel approach to making that agreement stick, regardless of the name. We're all familiar with the mythical "reasonable man" approach to settling things like trademark infringement - if a "reasonable man" isn't confused by similar trademarks, then there's no infringement. OK, that's oversimplified, who cares? So, if the "reasonable man" always views any OS from Microsoft as being "Microsoft's Windows" would that be enough to nail them??
You'd like to think that if the 'final' version of Longhorn was found to be in gross violation, that the government would tell them not to start any mass CD production until it was fixed. In fact, if Microsoft got that message right now, they'd have absolutely no excuse two years down the line.
Of course, the government doesn't have the balls to either: 1)send that message; or 2)stick to it.
The argument still stands, though - it wasn't Linux that stole ELF. It really doesn't matter whether SCO likes it or not, it's now a publically licensed standard and if SCO don't like that, they need to go after the people that released it into the wild. If that means they have to take on IBM (been there), Microsoft (byte the hand that feeds them) and, oh my(!) themselves, well, they just need to suck it up and get on with it:
The dude I'm thinking of was cycling through rush-hour traffic in London (England), which moves around 3 furlongs-per-fortnight on a good day. Cycling was substantially faster than any other mode of transport, probably including helicopters, as a large part of his route was close to the approach and departure flight paths in and out of Heathrow.
A Volkswagen Lupo 3L TDI was involved in a new world record when it circumnavigated mainland Britain at an average fuel consumption of 119.48 mpg, or 2.36 litres per 100 kilometres. This figure has just been ratified by Guinness World Records(TM).
[...snip...]
Staying as close as possible to the coastline of Britain, the gruelling 3,738 mile route was far from the economy ideal of straight, level and uncrowded roads.
And back in the 80's there was a review in one of the UK motoring magazines that tested a Citroen AX. With all the fuel economy stuff available at the time, they were getting around 120mpg.
Sure, neither of these cars would stand a chance in a collision with a late-model American Urban Assault Vehicle (SUV), but they'd fare better than any of the ultra-light electric go-carts...
I used to know a guy who would cycle 15 miles each way to work and back, every day. He kept that up for at least 4 years that I know of, and probably several more. Last I heard he was in Africa doing some kind of missionary work.
7a) Numerous tech-savvy reporters point out that it's only Dell's Linux that's affected, and that Redhat, Suse, Mandrake, Gentoo, Debian, &c are completely untouched.
IMHO Microsoft are going to need a lot more than one failed Linux distro to overcome the embarrassment of having CERT and Homeland Security publically state: "don't use Internet Explorer because it's complete crap"...
A small screwdriver worked back and forth tends to snap those pesky security pins right off...then you can use the regular torx drives to remove them.
I find that the same small flatblade screwdriver is often adequate to remove torx-head screws. It doesn't have to fit perfectly, it just has to be big enough to wedge across the middle of the haed.
I have a feeling that this has been happening already. With the amount of money they have in the bank, you'd think Microsoft would be able to pay some damn good programmers, but they don't ever seem to be able to fix Internet Explorer... A constant stream of bugs and fixes provides a perfect means to deliver unwanted updates (DRM, anyone?) as well as some more bugs for the next round.
Yes, they don't charge for bugfixes (umm, yeah, Windows 98...) but every little "fix" could be used to tighten their grip on the market, which is always going to be good for the bottom line eventually, providing they don't get caught.
space debris is not designed to penetrate armor. Usually it is quite small stuff.
Wrenches, dead satellites, etc, right?
when a piece of space debris hits the outer shell of your space station it instantly vaporizes
You can't rely on complete vaporization. The object, and the outer shell of your space station, would vaporize up to the point where the outer shell is either completely vaporized at the point of impact, or is thin/soft enough to punch through. Then you've got the remaining mass of the object AND a plasma cloud heading for the inner shell... Possibly accompanied by drops of molten material and/or shards of the outer shell.
Slashdot Mirror
So maybe that's the way to go to limit the patent feeding frenzy. Get some legislation (or bend something that already exists) to make software companies responsible for their implementations of patented software. OK, that wasn't worded very well, but you know what I mean - if they want any given patent to be enforceable they should accept liability for anything they implement that includes that patent.
Yeah. How about "ls -lt *.jpg"?? Woah! Patent infringement...
Closer to home, I have a keyboard that still functions after numerous fizzy, sugar-loaded beverages have been spilled into it. Some keys need to be pounded a little harder than normal, but I'm not replacing it until my son either: 1)develops better hand-to-mouth coordination while playing Quidditch; or 2)finally lets all the magic smoke out...
And while we're being paranoid here, remember a couple of years ago that Japanese wristwatch cellphone, where you stick your finger in your ear and talk into the strap? Wouldn't be too hard to scatter the components of one of those (or maybe WIFI) around your motherboard so that it could phone home from time to time. OK, so the casing should screen out wireless transmissions, but what about the spare pairs in the cat5 cable that ties the case to the wall? Or the speaker wires? Or the power cable?
Yeah, yeah, overly paranoid, I know. But if Open Source is suspect, where you can actually review the code if you want to, why not also suspect complex electronics that are more difficult to examine?
And then, of course, there's the question of outsourcing to a foreign country... Who's to say that the programming companies in India (or anywhere else) don't have some disgruntled employees among them? And I don't mean disgruntled with their own bosses, so much as disgruntled at the rich western nations that take advantage of the poorer eastern nations.
How is Open Source different from that? Oh yeah, you pay more for outsourcing...
I kinda assumed that transparency meant something like you don't have a hope in hell of seeing how much we're screwing you over ...
On the other hand, there's the risk that: 1)the GPL gets validated in court; and 2)Linux is legally declared unencumbered by patent/copyright violations. Also, OSS projects may be reevaluated by companies that were waiting for the legal dust to settle.
BTW, doesn't IBM have a regiment of lawyers on the payroll anyway? If so, I doubt their pay would be different depending on whether they're filing court papers or surfing the Internet.
As long as it's more than SCO can easily raise, it doesn't really matter if the number is not quite accurate. So, does SCO have that $48M, and can Baystar insist on cash?
What happened with that? Did they give up? Always seemed like a stupid idea to me, because most people are going to be home (or near a phone/computer) within 30 minutes of leaving the movie, and then they can make calls, send email & IM their friends to spread the word. MPAA gains 30 minutes at most... And anyone who's seriously bummed about being suckered into seeing a crap movie can always can always talk loudly about it in the parking lot...
Which suggests a novel approach to making that agreement stick, regardless of the name. We're all familiar with the mythical "reasonable man" approach to settling things like trademark infringement - if a "reasonable man" isn't confused by similar trademarks, then there's no infringement. OK, that's oversimplified, who cares? So, if the "reasonable man" always views any OS from Microsoft as being "Microsoft's Windows" would that be enough to nail them??
Of course, the government doesn't have the balls to either: 1)send that message; or 2)stick to it.
Oh, shoot, what was I thinking... I gotta stop posting when I'm tired...
Might have been nice if the site could have been redirected to a static page explaining what was going on. Their ISP could probably have hosted it.
So, a fairer comparison would be to strap a jet engine on top of a car... Errmmmm, never mind... That one's been done...
The dude I'm thinking of was cycling through rush-hour traffic in London (England), which moves around 3 furlongs-per-fortnight on a good day. Cycling was substantially faster than any other mode of transport, probably including helicopters, as a large part of his route was close to the approach and departure flight paths in and out of Heathrow.
And back in the 80's there was a review in one of the UK motoring magazines that tested a Citroen AX. With all the fuel economy stuff available at the time, they were getting around 120mpg.
Sure, neither of these cars would stand a chance in a collision with a late-model American Urban Assault Vehicle (SUV), but they'd fare better than any of the ultra-light electric go-carts...
I used to know a guy who would cycle 15 miles each way to work and back, every day. He kept that up for at least 4 years that I know of, and probably several more. Last I heard he was in Africa doing some kind of missionary work.
7a) Numerous tech-savvy reporters point out that it's only Dell's Linux that's affected, and that Redhat, Suse, Mandrake, Gentoo, Debian, &c are completely untouched.
IMHO Microsoft are going to need a lot more than one failed Linux distro to overcome the embarrassment of having CERT and Homeland Security publically state: "don't use Internet Explorer because it's complete crap"...
I find that the same small flatblade screwdriver is often adequate to remove torx-head screws. It doesn't have to fit perfectly, it just has to be big enough to wedge across the middle of the haed.
Yes, they don't charge for bugfixes (umm, yeah, Windows 98...) but every little "fix" could be used to tighten their grip on the market, which is always going to be good for the bottom line eventually, providing they don't get caught.
Wrenches, dead satellites, etc, right?
You can't rely on complete vaporization. The object, and the outer shell of your space station, would vaporize up to the point where the outer shell is either completely vaporized at the point of impact, or is thin/soft enough to punch through. Then you've got the remaining mass of the object AND a plasma cloud heading for the inner shell... Possibly accompanied by drops of molten material and/or shards of the outer shell.
So, how does the speed of any kind of meteorite compare to the speed of the kinds of bullets a bulletproof vest actually stops??
Remind me never to occupy the same space habitat as you...
That would be Trans-continental ...