A much closer precedent for this sort of tomfoolery was the IETF's MARID working group.
For those of you who don't remember, Microsoft allied themselves (and their Sender ID standard) with Meng Weng Wong/PoBox's SPF standard, to create a supposed uber-standard known as 'Caller ID' (SPF v2). Later on, it came to light that MS owned key patents on many of the methodologies which SPF2 and Sender ID used, and their patent license was abhorrent to many of the working group's participants. The IETF then disbanded the working group.
I'm working from memory, so I don't have much in the way of sources, but googling for "Microsoft MARID" should turn over a few stones.
Based upon my cursory reading of the patent, it appears to be just the sort of thing that the EU keeps throwing out, again and again.
Admittedly in WIPO countries (since the patent is registered in the.us and.us patent law allows these kinds of shenanigans) royalties may have to be paid, but the EU parliament's reasonably clear stance on such things should go a long way towards making sure that this patent is a dead duck in a lot of the civilised world.
Regardless, this sort of patent tomfoolery should be illegal. WIPO should (although this will never happen) declare a patent unenforcable under the terms of the Berne Convention should said patent have been undisclosed during a supposedly 'open' working group.
Not that this sort of behavior is exactly unexpected from MS. It's what killed MARID.
Dell, at least in.au, sell a series of machines called the 'N-series' or 'N-class' or somesuch; I presume that the 'N' is for 'Naked.'
We bought 5 of them about a year ago with Celery (the fastest of all vegetables) 2.4 CPUs, 256MB RAM and 80GB disks for the princely sum of $600 AUs apiece. No OS, monitor, or CD-ROM drive; fine for us, they were firewalls. Quick slackware install off the 512MB USB key and away they went.
No, Piracy is violence and murder atop the high seas. Selling thousands of bootleg copies of Windows XP or Britney Spears is both a violation of good taste and large scale copyright infringement.
Nothing annoys me more than people referring to copyright infringement as 'piracy'. It does a dishonour to those I know who have actually had to fend off real pirates in their time (e.g. my best mate's dad, who's Chief Engineer on a very large Shell product carrier.)
Of course, that merely highlights a greater need for internal consistency.
I'm sorry, but an application which calls itself 'Mozilla Firefox' is obviously somehow 'some sort of Mozilla.' If people related to the project decide to claim otherwise, then the left hand and the right hand need to talk to each other a little bit more.
You're missing the full 6.4GBps to main memory which each discrete hammer CPU gets at the moment.
Although, that said, it's probably a win for a simple 2-way machine because there's no need for the attendent overcomplexity of NUMA implementations; all memory is in one zone, and considered 'local'.
Government intervention in capitalism should have one focus only: to address and correct 'Market Failure.'
This is obviously what's happening here; there's a market, it's not being serviced, and the City is stepping in.
For an incumbent telecoms monopoly who had no interest in servicing this area a priori (otherwise the City would not have had to DIY) to cry 'unfair competition' is idiotic. Since when has the Government had a natural advantage in the telecommunications space? It's hardly their core business.
From another standpoint, a Government performing a task is no different than the citizens who elected said government performing the same task themselves. The Government is merely acting on behalf of those who elected it.
The ILEC in question here should back the fuck off gracefully before something really horrible happens. Messing with Governments isn't smart, especially when said Governments are trying to score poltical points by doing this 'for the poor'.
"Five years ago, the best connection you could get was Optimum Online in the NY area (8 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up)."
You have my heartfelt sympathies. Five years ago, the best residential-grade connection you could get in Australia was Optusnet Cable, which came with a 3GB data cap and you were lucky to see 2Mb through it on a good day, when the wind was right. If you lived in an area with the cable. If not, you had to use Telstra Cable (again, if you could get it; 100MB/month plus 19c/MB over 100MB) or a modem.
I don't think you Americans truly appreciate the sad state of affairs in this country WRT connectivity. The uninformed sarcasm in your post doesn't help, either.
D) If somebody decides to sue THEM for patent infringement, IBM still have 800-billion-trillion patents which cover almost every aspect of the design of the universe with which to lawyer the other party's sorry arse back to MBA school.
I'll add my $A0.02 worth of support for Westnet; I have been a customer of theirs since June 04 and have not had a single minute of downtime that has been caused by anything other than my screwups (and the shit power in our rental place.)
I pay $A109.95 a month for 512/512 DSL with 30GB of included data, and $A10/GB additional to that (although the 30GB is only for transit data, not data received via a second tier IX such as Pipe or VIX, so it's very hard to move 30GB in a month on a 512K line in any event).
Wrong... once a piece of IP is licensed to an individual under certain terms, said license cannot be revoked later.
Case in point, if I develop software under the GPL, and then decide to move to a proprietary model after I have a substantive userbase, then it would be 100% legally correct for my annoyed users to fork the last GPL version and start their own (e.g. OpenMOSIX, OpenGFS, OpenSSH, etc.)
Whilst the FreeBSD Foundation's rights to distribute the software can, in fact, be revoked at any point, Sun cannot revoke the rights of end users to use the software distributed to them by the Foundation.
I think you may be right. The APIC_IO code in Linux I think would automatically downgrade even if selected, but in BSD it didn't. If you happen to have had a dual processor motherboard with a single processor loaded, BSD would work fine, or one with a chipset that could support SMP, but didn't have the socket for it. It's been a while since I had to mess with servers to this level, having moved on to networking.
Most modern K7/P4 motherboards have an integrated local APIC in any event.
I also seem to remember an issue where using an SMP kernel on a MP motherboard which was only loaded with one CPU did cause issues back in the linux 2.0/early 2.2 days (circa mid 1999). I never did figure out what was happening there.
From the syslog on my very uniprocessor athlon 2000+ machine (this machine has booted FreeBSD 4.6 with an SMP kernel in the past):
Total of 1 processors activated (3301.37 BogoMIPS). ...changing IO-APIC physical APIC ID to 2... ok. ..TIMER: vector=0x31 pin1=2 pin2=0
testing the IO APIC.......................
done.
Whilst corporations loathe vendor lockin, they love accoutability, especially for huge, towering vertical monoliths of software packages such as ERPs.
If my ERP breaks, I don't have time to read mailing lists and ask in IRC channels for somebody to help me write a patch. I want a butt connected with my boot, preferably somebody senior representing the vendor, and then I want a fix available in a time which meets my SLA.
I would find that amusing. Especially if it lead, directly or indirectly, to the falling-by-the-wayside-with-vultures-circling-the- carcass of Great Plains packages such as Solomon. Three years on and I'm still scarred.
What ERP software does Microsoft have which is even capable of playing in this space? The products they acquired after the Great Plains acquisition certainly aren't (speaking as somebody who had to administer said package for several years in the early 21st century.)
One presumes MS know what they're doing, but this is certainly a weird gambit.
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I hate nitpicking my own posts, but I got the names of MS's two standards backwards:
'Sender ID' was the later, merged-with-SPF standard.
'Caller ID' was their own, patent-encumbered proposal.
Sorry. That is all.
A much closer precedent for this sort of tomfoolery was the IETF's MARID working group.
For those of you who don't remember, Microsoft allied themselves (and their Sender ID standard) with Meng Weng Wong/PoBox's SPF standard, to create a supposed uber-standard known as 'Caller ID' (SPF v2). Later on, it came to light that MS owned key patents on many of the methodologies which SPF2 and Sender ID used, and their patent license was abhorrent to many of the working group's participants. The IETF then disbanded the working group.
I'm working from memory, so I don't have much in the way of sources, but googling for "Microsoft MARID" should turn over a few stones.
Based upon my cursory reading of the patent, it appears to be just the sort of thing that the EU keeps throwing out, again and again.
.us and .us patent law allows these kinds of shenanigans) royalties may have to be paid, but the EU parliament's reasonably clear stance on such things should go a long way towards making sure that this patent is a dead duck in a lot of the civilised world.
Admittedly in WIPO countries (since the patent is registered in the
Regardless, this sort of patent tomfoolery should be illegal. WIPO should (although this will never happen) declare a patent unenforcable under the terms of the Berne Convention should said patent have been undisclosed during a supposedly 'open' working group.
Not that this sort of behavior is exactly unexpected from MS. It's what killed MARID.
Dell, at least in .au, sell a series of machines called the 'N-series' or 'N-class' or somesuch; I presume that the 'N' is for 'Naked.'
We bought 5 of them about a year ago with Celery (the fastest of all vegetables) 2.4 CPUs, 256MB RAM and 80GB disks for the princely sum of $600 AUs apiece. No OS, monitor, or CD-ROM drive; fine for us, they were firewalls. Quick slackware install off the 512MB USB key and away they went.
English is a living language. As speakers of English, it falls to us to accept as either valid or invalid new meanings for existing words.
I choose to reject 'piracy' as even back in 1771 (or whenever 'twas) it was an attempt to add an emotional charge to a far lesser transgression.
Your mileage may vary, and I don't expect a free iPod spammer to understand the subtleties.
No, Piracy is violence and murder atop the high seas. Selling thousands of bootleg copies of Windows XP or Britney Spears is both a violation of good taste and large scale copyright infringement.
Nothing annoys me more than people referring to copyright infringement as 'piracy'. It does a dishonour to those I know who have actually had to fend off real pirates in their time (e.g. my best mate's dad, who's Chief Engineer on a very large Shell product carrier.)
MSSQL server has done this since at least Version 6.5.
No, i'm not paid to be a Windows sysadmin any more. Haven't since 1998.
Of course, that merely highlights a greater need for internal consistency.
I'm sorry, but an application which calls itself 'Mozilla Firefox' is obviously somehow 'some sort of Mozilla.' If people related to the project decide to claim otherwise, then the left hand and the right hand need to talk to each other a little bit more.
No. Firefox is as much a Mozilla as Seamonkey (Moz Suite) is.
Case in point, the titlebar for this window is 'Mozilla 1.8b1 Released, Firefox Growth Slowing - Mozilla Firefox'
You're missing the full 6.4GBps to main memory which each discrete hammer CPU gets at the moment.
Although, that said, it's probably a win for a simple 2-way machine because there's no need for the attendent overcomplexity of NUMA implementations; all memory is in one zone, and considered 'local'.
...that this show is a repeat.
Lousy cheap networks.
It lengthens, it strengthens... It's a friend, a companion, it's the only product you will ever need, you can drive it away today.
Now all we gotta do is wait for this thing to score an own goal and it'll get shot at the airport on its way home.
:)
I love soccer fans
when your first amendment rights are being violated? ...Your lips are moving!
Thankyou, I'll be here all week.
Comparing Goatse to spam is like comparing apples and oranges. One is stretchy and excellent, and the other is annoying and a blight on the landscape.
Please don't make that mistake again.
Government intervention in capitalism should have one focus only: to address and correct 'Market Failure.'
This is obviously what's happening here; there's a market, it's not being serviced, and the City is stepping in.
For an incumbent telecoms monopoly who had no interest in servicing this area a priori (otherwise the City would not have had to DIY) to cry 'unfair competition' is idiotic. Since when has the Government had a natural advantage in the telecommunications space? It's hardly their core business.
From another standpoint, a Government performing a task is no different than the citizens who elected said government performing the same task themselves. The Government is merely acting on behalf of those who elected it.
The ILEC in question here should back the fuck off gracefully before something really horrible happens. Messing with Governments isn't smart, especially when said Governments are trying to score poltical points by doing this 'for the poor'.
I must have listened to that Bill Hicks bit 1000 times by now, but I still have absolutely no idea wtf a Lincoln Log is.
Care to explain?
"Five years ago, the best connection you could get was Optimum Online in the NY area (8 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up)."
You have my heartfelt sympathies. Five years ago, the best residential-grade connection you could get in Australia was Optusnet Cable, which came with a 3GB data cap and you were lucky to see 2Mb through it on a good day, when the wind was right. If you lived in an area with the cable. If not, you had to use Telstra Cable (again, if you could get it; 100MB/month plus 19c/MB over 100MB) or a modem.
I don't think you Americans truly appreciate the sad state of affairs in this country WRT connectivity. The uninformed sarcasm in your post doesn't help, either.
Grow up.
More to the point:
D) If somebody decides to sue THEM for patent infringement, IBM still have 800-billion-trillion patents which cover almost every aspect of the design of the universe with which to lawyer the other party's sorry arse back to MBA school.
I'll add my $A0.02 worth of support for Westnet; I have been a customer of theirs since June 04 and have not had a single minute of downtime that has been caused by anything other than my screwups (and the shit power in our rental place.)
I pay $A109.95 a month for 512/512 DSL with 30GB of included data, and $A10/GB additional to that (although the 30GB is only for transit data, not data received via a second tier IX such as Pipe or VIX, so it's very hard to move 30GB in a month on a 512K line in any event).
Wrong... once a piece of IP is licensed to an individual under certain terms, said license cannot be revoked later.
Case in point, if I develop software under the GPL, and then decide to move to a proprietary model after I have a substantive userbase, then it would be 100% legally correct for my annoyed users to fork the last GPL version and start their own (e.g. OpenMOSIX, OpenGFS, OpenSSH, etc.)
Whilst the FreeBSD Foundation's rights to distribute the software can, in fact, be revoked at any point, Sun cannot revoke the rights of end users to use the software distributed to them by the Foundation.
I think you may be right. The APIC_IO code in Linux I think would automatically downgrade even if selected, but in BSD it didn't. If you happen to have had a dual processor motherboard with a single processor loaded, BSD would work fine, or one with a chipset that could support SMP, but didn't have the socket for it. It's been a while since I had to mess with servers to this level, having moved on to networking.
Most modern K7/P4 motherboards have an integrated local APIC in any event.
I also seem to remember an issue where using an SMP kernel on a MP motherboard which was only loaded with one CPU did cause issues back in the linux 2.0/early 2.2 days (circa mid 1999). I never did figure out what was happening there.
From the syslog on my very uniprocessor athlon 2000+ machine (this machine has booted FreeBSD 4.6 with an SMP kernel in the past):
Total of 1 processors activated (3301.37 BogoMIPS).testing the IO APIC.......................
done.
Whilst corporations loathe vendor lockin, they love accoutability, especially for huge, towering vertical monoliths of software packages such as ERPs.
If my ERP breaks, I don't have time to read mailing lists and ask in IRC channels for somebody to help me write a patch. I want a butt connected with my boot, preferably somebody senior representing the vendor, and then I want a fix available in a time which meets my SLA.
Anything less is unacceptable.
I would find that amusing. Especially if it lead, directly or indirectly, to the falling-by-the-wayside-with-vultures-circling-the- carcass of Great Plains packages such as Solomon. Three years on and I'm still scarred.
VB3! IT WAS WRITTEN IN VB3 FFS!!!!
What ERP software does Microsoft have which is even capable of playing in this space? The products they acquired after the Great Plains acquisition certainly aren't (speaking as somebody who had to administer said package for several years in the early 21st century.)
One presumes MS know what they're doing, but this is certainly a weird gambit.