Living in the UK, I feel obliged to mention that the Human Rights Act (1999...I think) does give an explicit right to privacy, among many other laudible provisions.
The first big case in this area is goiing on at the moment - Cathrine Zita Jones is suing Hello! (a celebrity magazine) for invasion of her privacy on the basis that they took shots of her wedding without her consent.
Now you may be a bit less protected in the US, but we haven't quite lost our libeties yet here! You can't even lock up non-citizens without charge/trial, it is all very civilised...
Point A: I also quote AIX.
Point B: As shown by Berkely/Apple/MS/Palm etc, making an OS is fundamentally not that hard, just throw coders/money at it untill done. Are we now suggesting IBM has a shortage of either?
Nope, not that good a claim...even SCO's own filing says that there are no specific lines of code copied. It is concepts that are said to have been reused. Wondering about the stupidity of assuming that IBM and Linus et al are unable to make a decent OS is left as an excersise for the reader.
The suit does not allgege that any code was directly copied - it alleges that the concepts were reused, and that linux could not have adanced so far/fast without IBM slipping SCO code to us under the table. I find this quite insulting.
Amusingly, it then goes on the say that Big Blue does not have the expertise to produce a OS without SCO code *snigger snigger*. Now I have seen IBM accused of many things, but technical incompetence is not one of them. I would personally say that OS/2 and the fact that IBM produced the original arch suggests they might just be able to program and design...jeez.
Combine this with IBM's famous paranoia on IP issues, and it starts (!) to sound like complete and utter bollocks from a failing company.
Personally I hope they don't get bought out by IBM but crushed into a small, smoking pile of rubble. I will then enjoy seeing IBM perchase the UNIX rights for pennies in the dollar when SCO go tits up.
...so I'm a blogger. You're telling me that I can go from having a easy to read and search text site with quite low bandwidth costs to paying through the nose to give a video stream to everyone?
And if the cells get smaller, the amount of routing hops increases, and my friend's bandwidth goes down as his node fetches and sends me, my other buddy, my dog, and my neighbour files off Kazaa because he is nearest to the wired pipe. There is fundamentally only so much bandwidth in the air, and it is not enough to support ubiquitous wireless use. The failure here seems to be not appreciating that people will all want to connect to certain nodes, as they supply the (wired) bandwidth.
but still not effectively because...
on
Wireless Mesh Networks
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
This assumes that the network does not have to connect to the outside world. If and when people want to read/post on slashdot etc, (You just know that one of the first actions would be someone irradiating the neighbourhood from the slashdot link to their server;) you need to link up to a high bandwidth pipe, or the slashdot server itself (unlikely there is a link) now the network then has to coalese around the point where the bandwith to outside machines. The mesh needs to route the furthest away machines to this, and each hop increases the bandwidth used. In contested, quite limited spectrum. So even assuming no microwaves etc add to the fun, the network cannot function effectively unless many people share their bandwidth (must be varied locations, not just one big pipe). If you are in a situation where you can do this, there is obviously a lot of wired networks provided already, and the point of a mesh network disappears. If you are somewhere with few local links to a wired net, the mesh network has fundamental problems with contention and the total amount of spectrum availible for the high bandwith links.
Yes, but the issue is what happens when the network density increases. There is only so much spectrum you can use for bandwidth, so if me, my next door neighbour, the whole street and their dog have a wireless link, our connection speeds all go down big time. This is the reason that cellphone networks sometimes have problems placing your call, even with digital compression. You thought contention on a wired network is bad? You'd better just be hoping this doesn't catch on as spectrum is *VERY* limited.
Well, I'll buy it as working for a small business but you would find it very difficult to have a big network as all of the network chatter takes up an increasing amount of spectrum. This is the same problem P2P networks have (a similar arch) and they can only solve it by having a network that cannot see all nodes. This is not a good idea for a wider net for obvious reasons.
Personally I can see recorded music becoming much more of a promotional tool for concerts, movies etc (see Will Smith) if it becomes impossible to make a direct profit from music distribution. For this reason, I can't help thinking that the claimed danger to the concept of the 'star' posed by the comodification of music is somewhat misguided IMHO - there is still massive value in the artist as brand. Eminem sells clothes, movies, music, books, pencil cases, and his earnings from endorsements and concerts make quite a healty living for him without royalites. The shift would seem to be from marketing the music to music as marketing.
The worring thing is the vision of a future of excessivly maketed pop drones designed to build a valuble brand...oh, wait...
Umm...less bookkeeping/charges between merchant and payment authority (of whichever kind). Problem with this is that unless you prepay or have credit with the payment authority, they still have to bill you. A bank could make this a kickass system, but as I have mentioned elsewhere they have little to no interest in cutting revenue from their business customers.
Unless you get billed in a $10 bulk by Peppercoin.
So we have *drum roll* another internet currency! Hoorah, the old ones did so well. Noone has the funds to get to critical mass now - you need a LOT of vendors to accept the currency for consumers to be interested. Not that VISA/MC would just sit there if you tried to get to this level.
See beenz.com (oh, it isn't there?) for history of such schemes.
It is a neat idea, but what does it do that a prepayment card does not? Think beenz.com or similar. This also pays in bulk - the customers pay for the web currency and beenz pay the merchant for all purchases in one lump sum, so fees are not an issue.
Please remember this has to be the kind of dump truck that can withstand being hit by screw sized projectiles at maybe 1500 miles an hour. You want to carry it up?;)
...is that it is a chain reaction. It is relatively safe up there at the moment, but if we ever get a satelite (say) hit then the debris caused by it's disintergration will cause further problems. I am sure those with even the slightest imagination can see the ongoing process that happens next. You want to go up after that has been becoming exponetially worse for a year or two?
The point about the EU investigation is that it is instructed to take an overall view. A investigation by an EU Commissioner is not like a DA considering whether to make charges - Mario Monti is judge, jury, and exicutioner. If he feels that fines are neccisary then he can levy them. And it is important to note that these are not pissant fines - they can be up to 10% of revenue made during the period over which they are held to be infining (also defined by the Commisioner).
I know, I know, insert declaimation of dictatorship here.;)
That Mario Monti has the power to examine all complaints made *as a whole* rather then being limited to only those made at the start of the process. This judicial effectiveness is why the EU will not always be stuck playing catch-up with MS, unlike the US. In addition, the political climate in Brussels is a lot less favorable for MS (think Reno rather then Ashcroft) and the EU has previously made several rulings agains MS Passport etc.
"The forms of Microsoft's abusive conduct are often closely interrelated, and their market foreclosure effects in many instances reinforce each other. The effectiveness of Microsoft's anti-competitive behaviours in preserving Microsoft's existing desktop dominance and in leveraging that dominance into related markets can only truly be understood if these behaviours and their exclusionary impact are viewed as a whole, rather than examined in isolation from each other."
Is it just me or do these guys appear to be the first legal agressors against Micorsoft to understand the real issue?
Slashdot Mirror
The first big case in this area is goiing on at the moment - Cathrine Zita Jones is suing Hello! (a celebrity magazine) for invasion of her privacy on the basis that they took shots of her wedding without her consent.
Now you may be a bit less protected in the US, but we haven't quite lost our libeties yet here! You can't even lock up non-citizens without charge/trial, it is all very civilised...
Why is not wanting to be tracked by every company under the sun lunatic?
And they are not being sued for patent issues!
They are being sold for violating an NDA (it's specious, believe me) something entirely different.
Point A: I also quote AIX. Point B: As shown by Berkely/Apple/MS/Palm etc, making an OS is fundamentally not that hard, just throw coders/money at it untill done. Are we now suggesting IBM has a shortage of either?
Nope, not that good a claim...even SCO's own filing says that there are no specific lines of code copied. It is concepts that are said to have been reused. Wondering about the stupidity of assuming that IBM and Linus et al are unable to make a decent OS is left as an excersise for the reader.
Goodbye SCO, I won't miss you...
...so I can say this: SCO are absolute motherfuckers.
Umm... no thanks.
*sniggers*
And if the cells get smaller, the amount of routing hops increases, and my friend's bandwidth goes down as his node fetches and sends me, my other buddy, my dog, and my neighbour files off Kazaa because he is nearest to the wired pipe. There is fundamentally only so much bandwidth in the air, and it is not enough to support ubiquitous wireless use. The failure here seems to be not appreciating that people will all want to connect to certain nodes, as they supply the (wired) bandwidth.
you see?
Yes, but the issue is what happens when the network density increases. There is only so much spectrum you can use for bandwidth, so if me, my next door neighbour, the whole street and their dog have a wireless link, our connection speeds all go down big time. This is the reason that cellphone networks sometimes have problems placing your call, even with digital compression. You thought contention on a wired network is bad? You'd better just be hoping this doesn't catch on as spectrum is *VERY* limited.
Well, I'll buy it as working for a small business but you would find it very difficult to have a big network as all of the network chatter takes up an increasing amount of spectrum. This is the same problem P2P networks have (a similar arch) and they can only solve it by having a network that cannot see all nodes. This is not a good idea for a wider net for obvious reasons.
The worring thing is the vision of a future of excessivly maketed pop drones designed to build a valuble brand...oh, wait...
want to know why they are called the bowels? cos they certainly put out enough s...anyway, time to move on
Umm...less bookkeeping/charges between merchant and payment authority (of whichever kind). Problem with this is that unless you prepay or have credit with the payment authority, they still have to bill you. A bank could make this a kickass system, but as I have mentioned elsewhere they have little to no interest in cutting revenue from their business customers.
Methinks that VISA, MC et al do not exactly have a vested interest in helping merchants avoid credit card charges....
So we have *drum roll* another internet currency! Hoorah, the old ones did so well. Noone has the funds to get to critical mass now - you need a LOT of vendors to accept the currency for consumers to be interested. Not that VISA/MC would just sit there if you tried to get to this level.
See beenz.com (oh, it isn't there?) for history of such schemes.
Same old, same old?
Mmm, tempting!
And who said you can't still do over people for VC?
Please remember this has to be the kind of dump truck that can withstand being hit by screw sized projectiles at maybe 1500 miles an hour. You want to carry it up? ;)
...is that it is a chain reaction. It is relatively safe up there at the moment, but if we ever get a satelite (say) hit then the debris caused by it's disintergration will cause further problems. I am sure those with even the slightest imagination can see the ongoing process that happens next. You want to go up after that has been becoming exponetially worse for a year or two?
I know, I know, insert declaimation of dictatorship here. ;)
Could be good. ;)
Is it just me or do these guys appear to be the first legal agressors against Micorsoft to understand the real issue?