The main difference between a software patent and copyright is that patents carry the power to exclude. Eolas wants MSFT to pay a half billion in fines, as well as injoin then from ever using their patented tech.
And, IMO, this isn't some zealoted friend-to-OSS approach. If this continues, I see Eolas having their own web browser, and the patents keep anyone from competing with them - if they want plugins and applets.
...Eolas' seminal research in next-generation Web applications,... has
led to patents for the development of fundamental and revolutionary Web browser technologies, including the systems which currently provide plug-ins and applets to over 500 million users
Firstly, I don't want "fundamental" browser technologies patented.
Secondly, this is apparently applets too, not just plug ins. Seems to say that embedding that JAR file puts you on the wrong side of da law.
Does their patent only cover "on the web"? Do plugins in winamp or the like meet the criteria too?
Re:I have always wondered...
on
Blind Lake
·
· Score: 1
Light emanating from earth really does'nt die out, right?
Sure it does, if you assume the universe is infinate, eventually it's going to be blocked by a planet or moon or asteroid or nebula or sucked into a black hole or some kind of magical space jibber jabber.
I had them ship me 1000 (live) crickets for my bearded dragon once. They left the screened on the doorstep, emblazened with "live crickets" all over it, oblivious to the fact that the lawn service guys were there at the same time spraying pesticide all over the place.
Lucky I was home, else I'd have 1000 dead crickets, or worse, a poisoned dragon.
It doesnt damage your credit score for you to pull your report, and even when others pull it, it's a seperate number from your score. And there are actually different levels of pulling the credit score as well - ie; those visa pre-approval spams you get in the mail every day don't hurt you.
The only way it hurts you is when you go to apply for a mortgage, they look at the credit history, and see that every bank from here to timbuktoo has pulled your history in the last few months. Then its a giant red flag that you're in financial trouble and have been running around trying to borrow more and more money.
But don't hesitate to pull it yourself. No loan officer alive would look down on you for showing some financial common sense.
Not true. At least, not true in the legal sense, here in the US.
Look at a piece of currency, see where it says "This note is legal tender for all debts private and public". That means the law says this is money, and if you "tender" it to pay a "debt", it must be accepted.
Thats why currency came to being - back in the olden times every bank printed their own "currency" and noone would accept it because noone knew what was legit and what wasnt. So you had the era of people carrying around little pouches of gold dust, and a shot of whiskey costing a "pinch", and of course bartenders with giant oversized ham-fists.
The feds stepped in to fix it and said "this is money, this is how you pay people, and they may not refuse it".
Of course, you can always go buy a postal money order.
Our beloved PHB went ahead and ordered me to build a new computer and throw the old one out. So I threw it out in the dumpster I call my house.
I found that the heatsink/fan had come loose - the plastic retention mechanism snapped (someone beat the shit out of that machine). Luckily the fool had the presence of mind to install an external drive caddy, and remove the HDD before shipping.
I installed a new heatsink, and hot damn the sunofabitch still works! I can't find one flaw with it.
So the morale of the story - free 2.6ghz P4, Gigabyte GS-667, 1 Gig DDR333 ram, DVD/CDRW for me! Hip Hip Hooray!
In this economy, look at the car commercials on TV. 0% financing! Everyone drives away!
The fact is, car salesmen don't give a rats ass about your credit score, or if you can afford the vehicle. The lendors do, but they profit more when you cant pay.
So the bank offers you 15% financing over 6 years? So your debt/income ratio is 85%. They don't care!
Like I said, they profit when you can't pay, they collect a payment or two, then you default, they reposess, sell the vehicle again! Hooray pre-owned BMWs!
I was watching Discovery Channel where a couple undercover cops went and bought a Hummvee with a bunch of totally made up bogus documents that cost them 20 bucks on the street, no credit history, and $1000 bucks in cash to put down. They then came back and explained to the salesman just how they conned him.
Thing is, with that cash down I can use your identity to buy a $80,000 car, drive it straight to the chop shop, head out and buy another.
I dunno about your bank, but mine makes me show ID to make a withdrawal or cash a check, but not a deposit.
Which makes sense. I mean I don't think there are any lunatics running around putting money in strangers bank accounts. I wish there were.
They even make me put a thumbprint on the checks now, if I'm not an account holder at that bank.
Last time I was at the bank I waited 15 minutes while some fool threw a tantrum because they wouldn't accept his expired out-of-state drivers license as ID.
Fed-Ex or UPS won't replace your item if you didn't get insurance, either.
We just got a PC shipped back to us from the field by UPS. The box was smashed, and the machine looks like CowboyNeal sat on it. Picking it up I could hear all the fancy shmance electromonical doodads rattling around inside the twisted case.
UPS won't do shit about it, because the fool didn't pay the 5 bucks for insurance.
You cant prevent crimes from happening, you can only improve the ability to catch the criminals, and reduce the damages.
Worried about ID theft? Keep a close eye on your credit card bills, credit scores, etc.. Buy a paper shredder. Shred all bank statements and whatnot before you throw them out. Internet-shminternet, dumpster diving is the fastest way to someone's finances. Get the carbons at the gas station, or stores where they still use the old carbon-thinger credit card machine.
Cringely is a blowhard trying to scare people, but frankly this isn't news. Using the 'net really doesn't make this easier - it's always been easy.
I knew someone who got screwed big time by a gas station who would keep the carbons, and double bill her every time she filled up, the cash going straight into the owners pocket. She was a dope for letting it go on so long, as she never bothered scrutinizing her Visa bills. Turned out the station was owned by a Russian mobster. This was long before the world wide weeb.
Well, that's you. Plenty love their giant Nike swoosh on their hat and A&C shirt and pants.
OT, the Intel Inside P4 stickers are a "steal me" sign for burglars. The last company I worked for had me put together a handful of higher-end PC's for the engineering folks - not major tech but top-of-the-line consumer stuff. They were P3's if I recall correctly.
Anyways, since I'm a little goofy I took all the "P3 Inside!" stickers, and stuck them on a bunch of 286's and dumb terminals for the Sys/36 they had. I stuck them on my phone and whatnot.
One night, the company was burglarized (by the cleaning service, it turned out, but thats neither here nor there). The high end PC's I built were untouched, but the 286s and dumb terminals were taken. Figure a burglar doesnt want to spend more than 5 or 10 minutes in the building, he's got to be selective.
I feel that if mandrake goes down this route, not only will it lose many linux users who will chose other distros, it may also effect public perception of linux and open source software.
Nah, don't be shocked when eventually all of the popular distros are forced to go this route. You can "buy" the distro, sure, but it's like a suggested donation - it's almost like panhandling as a business model. So buy the version with no ads in the installer, or download the free version and put up with the ads.
As for public perception, the public is used to this with free software. There's tons of ad-supported software out there. People are used to it.
As for Open Source? Linux is Open Source, you don't need to use a distro at all. Be a real man, compile everything from the source code. It's a huge PITA, Mandrake et al provide you a useful service in avoiding that PITA - it's only fair they be compensated for it.
If the "commercial" version, ie; the version that you pay cash money for has ads, then screw 'em.
But if you're getting it for free, big deal. It's not like I sit and gawk at the installation screen anyways, I just get it started and then find something else to do for a half hour or so.
Believe it or not, Free isn't all that great of a business model. It's shocking, I know.
Well, I have hands free and voice dialing. I just say "Home" or "Office" or whatever and the phone does the work for me.
You can't legislate common sense, and I wish people would get off the "ban phones/smoking/talking while driving" crap. The woman who just had a fight with her boyfriend is more dangerous on the road, since she's not paying attention.
If you're driving recklessly, then you should be charged as such. If you arent, then you shouldn't be.
The real solution is to have traffic cops actually pull over tailgaters and morons who swerve across lanes without signalling, rather than just standing around like Mr Potatohead with a radar gun (which has been proven to cause a ton of accidents as motorists slam on the brakes suddenly when they catch sight of him).
Imagine you're a salesman or some other profession where you spend all day in your car. Ever tried to use a laptop in a car, while you're sitting in the drivers seat? Being able to hang it on the wheel is ideal.
Nah that's not dumb. Using the laptop while you're driving is dumb.
Nah, say you're a new age yuppie/hippie and you're all into power crystals and sensory deprivation but are also an important exec at a dotcom startup. You want to meditate, but don't want to miss an important call while you're in the tank.
Besides, who says stuff needs to be useful? Look at Apple - they've built an empire out of useless yuppie crap.
Because you are a delicate genius who is called upon to solve prolems of global import, and need 100% focus upon the problem at hand, else countless lives may be at stake.
Like me. I get those calls all the time and it's hard to negotiate peace in the middle east and solve the energy crisis with the TV blaring and some kid pulling my pantleg asking if he can have some Oreos a half hour before dinner.
The site isn't dedicated to OSS zealotry, Mac fanaticism, or destroying Microsoft. It's about reporting violations of specific judgements against them.
Perhaps they recognize that everyone who would be likely to have a legitimate grievance are those who actually use Windows.
What good is listening to whines from a linux user who has no idea what he's talking about, but is just parroting some crap he read on slashdot?
Slashdot Mirror
The main difference between a software patent and copyright is that patents carry the power to exclude. Eolas wants MSFT to pay a half billion in fines, as well as injoin then from ever using their patented tech.
And, IMO, this isn't some zealoted friend-to-OSS approach. If this continues, I see Eolas having their own web browser, and the patents keep anyone from competing with them - if they want plugins and applets.
Firstly, I don't want "fundamental" browser technologies patented.
Secondly, this is apparently applets too, not just plug ins. Seems to say that embedding that JAR file puts you on the wrong side of da law.
Does their patent only cover "on the web"? Do plugins in winamp or the like meet the criteria too?
Light emanating from earth really does'nt die out, right?
Sure it does, if you assume the universe is infinate, eventually it's going to be blocked by a planet or moon or asteroid or nebula or sucked into a black hole or some kind of magical space jibber jabber.
Space is only mostly empty.
Why does the side bar overlap the comments with Mozilla Firebird?
It works perfectly fine with IE.
Is it that slashdot is a shitty webpage, or the Firebird is a shitty browser?
This sounds so gay as to be positively unreadable.
I bet you just love all the attention he pays to Uranus.
They certainly aren't bright.
I had them ship me 1000 (live) crickets for my bearded dragon once. They left the screened on the doorstep, emblazened with "live crickets" all over it, oblivious to the fact that the lawn service guys were there at the same time spraying pesticide all over the place.
Lucky I was home, else I'd have 1000 dead crickets, or worse, a poisoned dragon.
What can brown do for you? Not much.
It doesnt damage your credit score for you to pull your report, and even when others pull it, it's a seperate number from your score. And there are actually different levels of pulling the credit score as well - ie; those visa pre-approval spams you get in the mail every day don't hurt you.
The only way it hurts you is when you go to apply for a mortgage, they look at the credit history, and see that every bank from here to timbuktoo has pulled your history in the last few months. Then its a giant red flag that you're in financial trouble and have been running around trying to borrow more and more money.
But don't hesitate to pull it yourself. No loan officer alive would look down on you for showing some financial common sense.
Not true. At least, not true in the legal sense, here in the US.
Look at a piece of currency, see where it says "This note is legal tender for all debts private and public". That means the law says this is money, and if you "tender" it to pay a "debt", it must be accepted.
Thats why currency came to being - back in the olden times every bank printed their own "currency" and noone would accept it because noone knew what was legit and what wasnt. So you had the era of people carrying around little pouches of gold dust, and a shot of whiskey costing a "pinch", and of course bartenders with giant oversized ham-fists.
The feds stepped in to fix it and said "this is money, this is how you pay people, and they may not refuse it".
Of course, you can always go buy a postal money order.
But my story has a happy ending!
Our beloved PHB went ahead and ordered me to build a new computer and throw the old one out. So I threw it out in the dumpster I call my house.
I found that the heatsink/fan had come loose - the plastic retention mechanism snapped (someone beat the shit out of that machine). Luckily the fool had the presence of mind to install an external drive caddy, and remove the HDD before shipping.
I installed a new heatsink, and hot damn the sunofabitch still works! I can't find one flaw with it.
So the morale of the story - free 2.6ghz P4, Gigabyte GS-667, 1 Gig DDR333 ram, DVD/CDRW for me! Hip Hip Hooray!
It's funny, but wrong!
In this economy, look at the car commercials on TV. 0% financing! Everyone drives away!
The fact is, car salesmen don't give a rats ass about your credit score, or if you can afford the vehicle. The lendors do, but they profit more when you cant pay.
So the bank offers you 15% financing over 6 years? So your debt/income ratio is 85%. They don't care!
Like I said, they profit when you can't pay, they collect a payment or two, then you default, they reposess, sell the vehicle again! Hooray pre-owned BMWs!
I was watching Discovery Channel where a couple undercover cops went and bought a Hummvee with a bunch of totally made up bogus documents that cost them 20 bucks on the street, no credit history, and $1000 bucks in cash to put down. They then came back and explained to the salesman just how they conned him.
Thing is, with that cash down I can use your identity to buy a $80,000 car, drive it straight to the chop shop, head out and buy another.
I dunno about your bank, but mine makes me show ID to make a withdrawal or cash a check, but not a deposit.
Which makes sense. I mean I don't think there are any lunatics running around putting money in strangers bank accounts. I wish there were.
They even make me put a thumbprint on the checks now, if I'm not an account holder at that bank.
Last time I was at the bank I waited 15 minutes while some fool threw a tantrum because they wouldn't accept his expired out-of-state drivers license as ID.
Priority mail with insurance.
Fed-Ex or UPS won't replace your item if you didn't get insurance, either.
We just got a PC shipped back to us from the field by UPS. The box was smashed, and the machine looks like CowboyNeal sat on it. Picking it up I could hear all the fancy shmance electromonical doodads rattling around inside the twisted case.
UPS won't do shit about it, because the fool didn't pay the 5 bucks for insurance.
think i'm making this up?
Naw, I think you saw it on the Simpsons.
You cant prevent crimes from happening, you can only improve the ability to catch the criminals, and reduce the damages.
Worried about ID theft? Keep a close eye on your credit card bills, credit scores, etc.. Buy a paper shredder. Shred all bank statements and whatnot before you throw them out. Internet-shminternet, dumpster diving is the fastest way to someone's finances. Get the carbons at the gas station, or stores where they still use the old carbon-thinger credit card machine.
Cringely is a blowhard trying to scare people, but frankly this isn't news. Using the 'net really doesn't make this easier - it's always been easy.
I knew someone who got screwed big time by a gas station who would keep the carbons, and double bill her every time she filled up, the cash going straight into the owners pocket. She was a dope for letting it go on so long, as she never bothered scrutinizing her Visa bills. Turned out the station was owned by a Russian mobster. This was long before the world wide weeb.
Well, that's you. Plenty love their giant Nike swoosh on their hat and A&C shirt and pants.
OT, the Intel Inside P4 stickers are a "steal me" sign for burglars. The last company I worked for had me put together a handful of higher-end PC's for the engineering folks - not major tech but top-of-the-line consumer stuff. They were P3's if I recall correctly.
Anyways, since I'm a little goofy I took all the "P3 Inside!" stickers, and stuck them on a bunch of 286's and dumb terminals for the Sys/36 they had. I stuck them on my phone and whatnot.
One night, the company was burglarized (by the cleaning service, it turned out, but thats neither here nor there). The high end PC's I built were untouched, but the 286s and dumb terminals were taken. Figure a burglar doesnt want to spend more than 5 or 10 minutes in the building, he's got to be selective.
I feel that if mandrake goes down this route, not only will it lose many linux users who will chose other distros, it may also effect public perception of linux and open source software.
Nah, don't be shocked when eventually all of the popular distros are forced to go this route. You can "buy" the distro, sure, but it's like a suggested donation - it's almost like panhandling as a business model. So buy the version with no ads in the installer, or download the free version and put up with the ads.
As for public perception, the public is used to this with free software. There's tons of ad-supported software out there. People are used to it.
As for Open Source? Linux is Open Source, you don't need to use a distro at all. Be a real man, compile everything from the source code. It's a huge PITA, Mandrake et al provide you a useful service in avoiding that PITA - it's only fair they be compensated for it.
Subsidized? Why bother? People pay top dollar for the priviledge of becoming a walking billboard for Abercrombie & Fitch and the like.
People plaster their cars with those same NASCAR stickers. Geeks plaster their computers with "Powered by AMD!" or "Intel Inside".
If the "commercial" version, ie; the version that you pay cash money for has ads, then screw 'em.
But if you're getting it for free, big deal. It's not like I sit and gawk at the installation screen anyways, I just get it started and then find something else to do for a half hour or so.
Believe it or not, Free isn't all that great of a business model. It's shocking, I know.
Well, I have hands free and voice dialing. I just say "Home" or "Office" or whatever and the phone does the work for me.
You can't legislate common sense, and I wish people would get off the "ban phones/smoking/talking while driving" crap. The woman who just had a fight with her boyfriend is more dangerous on the road, since she's not paying attention.
If you're driving recklessly, then you should be charged as such. If you arent, then you shouldn't be.
The real solution is to have traffic cops actually pull over tailgaters and morons who swerve across lanes without signalling, rather than just standing around like Mr Potatohead with a radar gun (which has been proven to cause a ton of accidents as motorists slam on the brakes suddenly when they catch sight of him).
Imagine you're a salesman or some other profession where you spend all day in your car. Ever tried to use a laptop in a car, while you're sitting in the drivers seat? Being able to hang it on the wheel is ideal.
Nah that's not dumb. Using the laptop while you're driving is dumb.
Nah, say you're a new age yuppie/hippie and you're all into power crystals and sensory deprivation but are also an important exec at a dotcom startup. You want to meditate, but don't want to miss an important call while you're in the tank.
Besides, who says stuff needs to be useful? Look at Apple - they've built an empire out of useless yuppie crap.
Because you are a delicate genius who is called upon to solve prolems of global import, and need 100% focus upon the problem at hand, else countless lives may be at stake.
Like me. I get those calls all the time and it's hard to negotiate peace in the middle east and solve the energy crisis with the TV blaring and some kid pulling my pantleg asking if he can have some Oreos a half hour before dinner.
Why is this in the "related links" section?
"Compare the best prices on: Consumer Electronics"
Which forwards you to osdn.pricegrabber.com?
Is tricking people into generating those $0.00001 referral clicks is the new business model? Not selling enough subscriptions?
What's the deal?
"tail f-ing" each other is something lunix and mac users do nightly.
I'm bored.
The site isn't dedicated to OSS zealotry, Mac fanaticism, or destroying Microsoft. It's about reporting violations of specific judgements against them.
Perhaps they recognize that everyone who would be likely to have a legitimate grievance are those who actually use Windows.
What good is listening to whines from a linux user who has no idea what he's talking about, but is just parroting some crap he read on slashdot?