I guess that trade mark "Open Office" is older than the decision to name the Open Source branch of Star Office "Open Office", in which case it would be Sun who would have been in violation.
Turning a journey through a game into a notebook (iBook) is indeed an enormous invention. Just imagine: Every time you need a new notebook, you just have to play your favourite game! However I wonder how your gameplay affects the created notbook. Will you get a better processor if you achieve higher score? Will the clock speed depend on how fast you played? What will determine the memory and hard disk size?
> If no laws have been claimed to be violated, there cannot be a lawsuit.
Yes there can. Lawsuit are filed over breaches of contract and torts. In this case it is the latter, patent infringement being a tort.
No, there can't. You can only file a lawsuit over breach of contract because there's a law saying you have to fulfil your contracts. And you can only file a lawsuit over tort because there's a law that says so.
There are some respected mathematicians that will tell you that every equation is a lie. The meaning of the equals sign depends on the context. For example \sum_{n=1}^{\infty}a_n=s means that the limit of an associated sequence of partial sums is equal to s. This story doesn't even some close to revealing the problems with the "equals" sign.
That's because the meaning of "\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}a_n" is "the limit of the associated sequence of partial sums". Assuming that the sequence converges, the limt is just a number. And the equation says that this number equals s. No special meaning of the equals sign is needed here. Note that the sum would have the same meaning if it were not on the left of an equals sign, but e.g. a factor in a product. You wouldn't then say that this gives a new meaning to the product sign, would you?
and suggest that it's somehow like complaining that a student in drivers' ed who has only driven automatic transmissions will naturally have trouble behind the wheel of a real car.
So cars with automatic transmission are only imaginary cars? Strange, they seem to fulfil the role of a real car quite well.
Now shut up with your stupid synchronous transmission!:-)
I've once heard that originally Pascal used an arrow to the left (i.e. a single arrow character, not <-) for assignment, but that got changed because ASCII didn't have the arrow.
Actually, originally in BASIC you had to write: "LET a=5" to set a to 5. However, BASIC implementations tried to reduce typing and allowed omitting the LET (I wonder how many people never new that LET actually existed). There were also other abbreviations like "?" for "PRINT" (that one always puzzled me: How could one get the idea to encode "PRINT" as "?", which is a sign which actually implies asking for something? The more logical way would have been to shorten "INPUT" to "?", and then maybe shorten "PRINT" to "!").
In third grade I wrote a BASIC program that rendered a flying saucer landing. The assignment was to draw a static picture with pixel output. That experience probably guided me to my current profession. I didn't own a computer until the 90's so I would not have gotten that experience any other way.
Let me guess: You got an F because your image wasn't static, as was demanded, and the experience guided you to get an MBA and go to management because you figured it's much more fun to set requirements and blame people for not fulfilling them than to write better than required code and then get blamed for it?:-)
Indeed. Also "aa" should have been "a<a". And I know my HTML entities table (well, at least the most important entities), but it's easy to forget that you have to use them on Slashdot, because they are needed so seldom here. And of course, the preview button doesn't help if it isn't followed by actually previewing, rather than just noticing that it doesn't look completely wrong on first sight:-)
Hmmm... I just noted that 6*9 / 6 is, of course, 9. So maybe the true problem is all of them knowing the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the testers didn't get the joke:-)
The nerd in me wants to point out that == is what they are looking for, but that concept isn't taught until later in school anyways so I'll leave that alone:)
Of course the true nerd knows that the operator used for this depends on the language. C and C derived languages (and thanks to the pervasiveness of C, most newer languages) use == for equality and = for assignment. But not all do so. Pascal for example uses = for equality and:= for assignment, and so does Ada. BASIC uses = both for equality and assignment.
No, as everyone who ever has programmed in BASIC knows, = is both for assigning variables and for comparing them. However nobody seems to have had the idea to extend that to other operators. For example a=b as statement could have meant "set a so that it is less or equal to b", i.e. if a is larger than b, then set it equal to b. And aa would have been "decrement a" (for floating point numbers, it would have set a to the next-lower floating point value).:-)
If no laws have been claimed to be violated, there cannot be a lawsuit. The relevant laws in this case are those which say that you may not use ideas for which other people hold patents, unless those people give permission to do so, and those which say you may not copy stuff other people created without permission (unless those people are long dead).
The "of the current version" clause is interesting: It actually means that as soon as a new version is published, all those distributing the previous version cannot distribute anything until they changed the implementation to match the new specification. Change versions fast enough, and no one will have a real chance to comply.
Are there still parts of Java not released under GPL? In that case, it could be those parts which are covered by the patents and copyright in question.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't. I don't want Oracle to get offspring.
I guess that trade mark "Open Office" is older than the decision to name the Open Source branch of Star Office "Open Office", in which case it would be Sun who would have been in violation.
Nothing. They fear a lawsuit by Oracle, because since ancient times the right to predict the future was the sole property of oracles.
Turning a journey through a game into a notebook (iBook) is indeed an enormous invention. Just imagine: Every time you need a new notebook, you just have to play your favourite game! However I wonder how your gameplay affects the created notbook. Will you get a better processor if you achieve higher score? Will the clock speed depend on how fast you played? What will determine the memory and hard disk size?
But then it's not x = the number of ducks a pond in a given pond, but x = floor(the number of ducks a pond in a given pond)
Well, there exists an integer x for which x = the number of ducks a pond in a given pond.
I doubt that. What about the duck which just half left the pond?
> If no laws have been claimed to be violated, there cannot be a lawsuit.
Yes there can. Lawsuit are filed over breaches of contract and torts. In this case it is the latter, patent infringement being a tort.
No, there can't. You can only file a lawsuit over breach of contract because there's a law saying you have to fulfil your contracts. And you can only file a lawsuit over tort because there's a law that says so.
A 7 within 5? I've never seen such a number. What does it mean to write a 7 inside a 5?
There are some respected mathematicians that will tell you that every equation is a lie. The meaning of the equals sign depends on the context. For example \sum_{n=1}^{\infty}a_n=s means
that the limit of an associated sequence of partial sums is equal to s. This story doesn't even some close to revealing the problems with the "equals" sign.
That's because the meaning of "\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}a_n" is "the limit of the associated sequence of partial sums". Assuming that the sequence converges, the limt is just a number. And the equation says that this number equals s. No special meaning of the equals sign is needed here. Note that the sum would have the same meaning if it were not on the left of an equals sign, but e.g. a factor in a product. You wouldn't then say that this gives a new meaning to the product sign, would you?
So cars with automatic transmission are only imaginary cars? Strange, they seem to fulfil the role of a real car quite well.
Now shut up with your stupid synchronous transmission! :-)
I've once heard that originally Pascal used an arrow to the left (i.e. a single arrow character, not <-) for assignment, but that got changed because ASCII didn't have the arrow.
Actually, originally in BASIC you had to write: "LET a=5" to set a to 5. However, BASIC implementations tried to reduce typing and allowed omitting the LET (I wonder how many people never new that LET actually existed). There were also other abbreviations like "?" for "PRINT" (that one always puzzled me: How could one get the idea to encode "PRINT" as "?", which is a sign which actually implies asking for something? The more logical way would have been to shorten "INPUT" to "?", and then maybe shorten "PRINT" to "!").
It is "fill in the blank" - but filling the blank with 9 doesn't make it a correct equation. Filling it with 7 does.
I'm just saying maybe it's a little more logical on this side of the pond ;)
*ducks*
There are ducks in the pond?
Let me guess: You got an F because your image wasn't static, as was demanded, and the experience guided you to get an MBA and go to management because you figured it's much more fun to set requirements and blame people for not fulfilling them than to write better than required code and then get blamed for it? :-)
Indeed. Also "aa" should have been "a<a". And I know my HTML entities table (well, at least the most important entities), but it's easy to forget that you have to use them on Slashdot, because they are needed so seldom here. And of course, the preview button doesn't help if it isn't followed by actually previewing, rather than just noticing that it doesn't look completely wrong on first sight :-)
Hmmm ... I just noted that 6*9 / 6 is, of course, 9. So maybe the true problem is all of them knowing the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the testers didn't get the joke :-)
Well, I would, of course, put in (the answer to life, the universe and everything)/6
Of course the true nerd knows that the operator used for this depends on the language. C and C derived languages (and thanks to the pervasiveness of C, most newer languages) use == for equality and = for assignment. But not all do so. Pascal for example uses = for equality and := for assignment, and so does Ada. BASIC uses = both for equality and assignment.
Let's see ... :-)
3 = 3 is true.
true = 3 is false.
Therefore 3 = 3 = 3 is false.
No, as everyone who ever has programmed in BASIC knows, = is both for assigning variables and for comparing them. However nobody seems to have had the idea to extend that to other operators. For example a=b as statement could have meant "set a so that it is less or equal to b", i.e. if a is larger than b, then set it equal to b. And aa would have been "decrement a" (for floating point numbers, it would have set a to the next-lower floating point value). :-)
If no laws have been claimed to be violated, there cannot be a lawsuit. The relevant laws in this case are those which say that you may not use ideas for which other people hold patents, unless those people give permission to do so, and those which say you may not copy stuff other people created without permission (unless those people are long dead).
Which major player has used Mono yet?
The "of the current version" clause is interesting: It actually means that as soon as a new version is published, all those distributing the previous version cannot distribute anything until they changed the implementation to match the new specification. Change versions fast enough, and no one will have a real chance to comply.
Are there still parts of Java not released under GPL? In that case, it could be those parts which are covered by the patents and copyright in question.