The judge most certainly did make the statement that the rangeCheck code was trivial:
Caleb Garling tweets: "Alsup says he's been writing code since this trial started. He's written rangeCheck code a "100 times". Incredulous Oracle claiming damages...."
The judge didn't say that a high school student could do it (that was a witness, as the judge mentioned), but he did say it was trivial, and implied that he agrees with the witness:
"Judge: rangeCheck! All it does is make sure the numbers you're inputting are within a range, and gives them some sort of exceptional treatment. That witness, when he said a high school student could do it-- "
Michel's argument is a familiar and persuasive one...
It is a familiar one, but entirely unpersuasive. It fact, it not only borders on the absurd, it dives head first into ridiculousness territory. The relationship between patents and mathematics is unsalvageable, as the two are wholly incompatible.
Why should a program expressed in VHDL and uploaded to an FPGA be worthy of patent protection, whilst the same algorithm implemented in C and running on a CPU isn't?
Neither one should be patentable. The FPGA is a human creation, and should be patentable (under certain circumstances). The mathematics performed on the FPGA are products of nature, and therefore should not be patentable.
Ever.
The CPU is a human creation, and should be patentable (under certain circumstances). The mathematics performed on the CPU are products of nature, and therefore should not be patentable.
Ever.
It amazes me that this simple, blindingly obvious, distinction evades so many people.
So why wouldn't they pull a move often used by every other bad company?
Has everyone on this thread gone brain dead? Microsoft sued Motorola for patent infringement, so Motorola sued back. Microsoft lost, as it should, as it is the company who always chooses to litigate rather than innovate.
...but actually Microsoft's public statements would count against any legal actions they could attempt against Miguel De Icaza.
Soracle's public statements didn't keep Google out of court. Even if Miguel ultimately won (which would be the correct and just outcome), he would be destroyed in the process. The only reason Google isn't terribly concerned is because any damage award is relatively minor compared to Google's total value.
If prior versions of Microsoft software are any guide (and they are), you can expect the following behavior:
If your house catches on fire, HomeOS will offer to help you. The standard edition will automatically throw grease on the fire, because water is a "premium" feature. If you go online and update to the "premium" edition before your house burns down, water will be sprayed after the next reboot, but only if you accept the terms that say Microsoft owns everything in the house that survives.
Can anyone refresh our recollection as to why we need these two competing projects?
We don't, but you can thank SUN/Oracle for the split. Soracle was dragging ass on OpenOffice.org, so the latter was forked into LibreOffice. Soracle treated LibreOffice developers like shit, and the Free Software community noticed, so many of us went to LibreOffice on principle as much as anything else.
And that's not even the entire story. Just an important note.
Because I think it is similar to SOFTWARE PATENTS.
This bears no similarity to software patents at all. Software patents are patents on math and other things that are not patentable, while this is a copyright on a creative performance (one of the things copyright legitimately protects). It's a HUGE difference.
I've never been able to understand how some people manage to reconcile belief in the Christian God with guns and military.
That's easy: Christians promote the parts of their fantasy that are easy, and distance themselves from the parts that are inconvenient. They've been doing it for 2000 years, and they're not about to stop now.
You wield no market power, so you can do whatever you want with your book price. The publishers targeted by the lawsuit exert a combined market power so great as to be able to control the market when in collusion. This is why they are being sued, and rightfully so.
I was going to moderate, but part of the National Review tap dancing explanation was so ludicrous that I had to respond instead:
We never would have published it...
This is where I expected an explanation to follow, describing why the article was published. Instead, we got:
...but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer.
Okay, class, raise your hands if you can spot the inconsistency. I'll paraphrase:
"We published it because we didn't think enough people outside of our normal demographic would read it. We have total editorial control, and we could have refused to publish it if we didn't agree with it, but we made a conscious decision to publish it anyway. Now, faced with an unexpected backlash, we have to find a way to back pedal for the masses without offending our paying customers by actually apologizing."
The National Review needs to fire the PR department, too.
My advertising threshold dropped to zero pretty quickly in 2009, which is when I cut the Cable due to a negligible benefit/price ratio. I tried Hulu, which was great for about two weeks:
The first week of watching Hulu, I had to watch 15 seconds of commercial per half-hour show. I could tolerate that, so I was fairly happy. In week two, I had to watch one 30-second commercial per half-hour show; which was starting to annoy me, but which was just barely tolerable. In week three, Hulu started showing two or three 30-second commercials per half hour show.
Seeing where this was ultimately headed, I stopped watching Hulu and subscribed to Netflix instead. That hit the perfect sweet spot, so that's where I stayed. Even Netflix's recent price increases (due to greedy studios raising what they charge Netflix) are way, way better than watching even one commercial on TV/Hulu (which is run by the same TV people who flooded us with commercials to begin with).
If the time ever comes where Netflix streaming has even one commercial, I'll cancel my Netflix subscription too.
This is one of the stupidest patents I've ever heard of.
This statement is equally valid for all software patents. There is nothing in this software patent that is any stupider than anything in any other software patent. They are all equally stupid, and should never have been granted to begin with.
All it took to bring this country's creative innovation to a screeching halt was one stupid appeals court decision that math and algorithms were patentable.
I stopped reading on the first page, after listening to the really lame floppy drive sound. Sadly, I can't claim that I stopped reading due to an above-retarded IQ. I stopped reading because I followed the link to the really cool video of the Imperial March done with floppy drive motors. By the time that video was done, my short attention span kicked in, and I was bored.
At one point SCO got BS&F to agree to represent them through appeals for what BS&F had already received plus a percentage of the proceeds.
Which is a strategic mistake on the part of BS&F, and should be considered a conflict of interest, since it gives them a stake in the outcome. It no longer makes them attorneys for the plaintiffs, but rather turns them into the plaintiffs. They may have become more focused on their own best interest, and less focused on their client's best interest.
Yup, lack of sheets was exactly what was stopping me from using Calc.
This is a welcome addition, even if I've only needed the feature once ever; but recently. I'm implementing a new subsection for the office management software I wrote for a client. They have been storing all of their information for this new subsection in an Access database with 487 sheets. In order to get the data into PostgreSQL, I wanted to use Calc to load the database and then export it as tab-delimited text. Needless to say, that didn't work since LibreOffice didn't support enough sheets.
Worse, the Linux command line tools that read Access databases didn't convert the money amounts correctly, so I couldn't use them for the conversion. I had to find someone with Microsoft Office to do the conversion for me.
So just because you don't have a need for that many tabs doesn't mean that the need isn't real for other people.
Not that $1.6 billion would hurt them much, but all they'd have to do is threaten to stop selling the iPad in China. At that point, the government will just make Proview go away.
Not in anyone's wildest delusions would that be the outcome. A much more likely outcome would be the Chinese government telling Apple to not let the door hit them on the ass on the way out, and just formally authorize the sale and distribution of iPad clones in China.
Apple has exactly zero leverage against China, since the Chinese hold all of Apple's manufacturing capacity, and have the will and capability of cloning anything Apple makes.
You have that backwards. Bush was the first administration to withhold federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, with the reason being, my god tells me to.
While I agree that Microsoft always has been, is, and always will be evil; who's more to blame: Microsoft, or the idiot who buys the product knowing the company is evil?
Slashdot Mirror
The judge makes no such claim
The judge most certainly did make the statement that the rangeCheck code was trivial:
Caleb Garling tweets: "Alsup says he's been writing code since this trial started. He's written rangeCheck code a "100 times". Incredulous Oracle claiming damages...."
The judge didn't say that a high school student could do it (that was a witness, as the judge mentioned), but he did say it was trivial, and implied that he agrees with the witness:
"Judge: rangeCheck! All it does is make sure the numbers you're inputting are within a range, and gives them some sort of exceptional treatment. That witness, when he said a high school student could do it-- "
Michel's argument is a familiar and persuasive one...
It is a familiar one, but entirely unpersuasive. It fact, it not only borders on the absurd, it dives head first into ridiculousness territory. The relationship between patents and mathematics is unsalvageable, as the two are wholly incompatible.
Why should a program expressed in VHDL and uploaded to an FPGA be worthy of patent protection, whilst the same algorithm implemented in C and running on a CPU isn't?
Neither one should be patentable. The FPGA is a human creation, and should be patentable (under certain circumstances). The mathematics performed on the FPGA are products of nature, and therefore should not be patentable.
Ever.
The CPU is a human creation, and should be patentable (under certain circumstances). The mathematics performed on the CPU are products of nature, and therefore should not be patentable.
Ever.
It amazes me that this simple, blindingly obvious, distinction evades so many people.
Oracle lost the copyright phase in its entirely, and Google won the copyright phase in its entirety. Google owes Oracle nothing in copyright damages.
Read Groklaw, and stop looking stupid.
So why wouldn't they pull a move often used by every other bad company?
Has everyone on this thread gone brain dead? Microsoft sued Motorola for patent infringement, so Motorola sued back. Microsoft lost, as it should, as it is the company who always chooses to litigate rather than innovate.
Microsoft has no one to blame but themselves.
If APIs are copyrightable, could other companies use that against Oracle?
No, because Oracle isn't compatible with anything.
...but actually Microsoft's public statements would count against any legal actions they could attempt against Miguel De Icaza.
Soracle's public statements didn't keep Google out of court. Even if Miguel ultimately won (which would be the correct and just outcome), he would be destroyed in the process. The only reason Google isn't terribly concerned is because any damage award is relatively minor compared to Google's total value.
If prior versions of Microsoft software are any guide (and they are), you can expect the following behavior:
If your house catches on fire, HomeOS will offer to help you. The standard edition will automatically throw grease on the fire, because water is a "premium" feature. If you go online and update to the "premium" edition before your house burns down, water will be sprayed after the next reboot, but only if you accept the terms that say Microsoft owns everything in the house that survives.
Can anyone refresh our recollection as to why we need these two competing projects?
We don't, but you can thank SUN/Oracle for the split. Soracle was dragging ass on OpenOffice.org, so the latter was forked into LibreOffice. Soracle treated LibreOffice developers like shit, and the Free Software community noticed, so many of us went to LibreOffice on principle as much as anything else.
And that's not even the entire story. Just an important note.
Because I think it is similar to SOFTWARE PATENTS.
This bears no similarity to software patents at all. Software patents are patents on math and other things that are not patentable, while this is a copyright on a creative performance (one of the things copyright legitimately protects). It's a HUGE difference.
I've never been able to understand how some people manage to reconcile belief in the Christian God with guns and military.
That's easy: Christians promote the parts of their fantasy that are easy, and distance themselves from the parts that are inconvenient. They've been doing it for 2000 years, and they're not about to stop now.
He says that he's a Christian and you accuse him of not thinking critically. How do you know that he doesn't have a PhD in theology?
The latter would prove the former.
I have a book in the iBookstore.
You wield no market power, so you can do whatever you want with your book price. The publishers targeted by the lawsuit exert a combined market power so great as to be able to control the market when in collusion. This is why they are being sued, and rightfully so.
I was going to moderate, but part of the National Review tap dancing explanation was so ludicrous that I had to respond instead:
We never would have published it...
This is where I expected an explanation to follow, describing why the article was published. Instead, we got:
...but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer.
Okay, class, raise your hands if you can spot the inconsistency. I'll paraphrase:
"We published it because we didn't think enough people outside of our normal demographic would read it. We have total editorial control, and we could have refused to publish it if we didn't agree with it, but we made a conscious decision to publish it anyway. Now, faced with an unexpected backlash, we have to find a way to back pedal for the masses without offending our paying customers by actually apologizing."
The National Review needs to fire the PR department, too.
My advertising threshold dropped to zero pretty quickly in 2009, which is when I cut the Cable due to a negligible benefit/price ratio. I tried Hulu, which was great for about two weeks:
The first week of watching Hulu, I had to watch 15 seconds of commercial per half-hour show. I could tolerate that, so I was fairly happy. In week two, I had to watch one 30-second commercial per half-hour show; which was starting to annoy me, but which was just barely tolerable. In week three, Hulu started showing two or three 30-second commercials per half hour show.
Seeing where this was ultimately headed, I stopped watching Hulu and subscribed to Netflix instead. That hit the perfect sweet spot, so that's where I stayed. Even Netflix's recent price increases (due to greedy studios raising what they charge Netflix) are way, way better than watching even one commercial on TV/Hulu (which is run by the same TV people who flooded us with commercials to begin with).
If the time ever comes where Netflix streaming has even one commercial, I'll cancel my Netflix subscription too.
This is one of the stupidest patents I've ever heard of.
This statement is equally valid for all software patents. There is nothing in this software patent that is any stupider than anything in any other software patent. They are all equally stupid, and should never have been granted to begin with.
All it took to bring this country's creative innovation to a screeching halt was one stupid appeals court decision that math and algorithms were patentable.
I stopped reading on the first page, after listening to the really lame floppy drive sound. Sadly, I can't claim that I stopped reading due to an above-retarded IQ. I stopped reading because I followed the link to the really cool video of the Imperial March done with floppy drive motors. By the time that video was done, my short attention span kicked in, and I was bored.
How many software patents are simply applied math?
Each and every one of them.
Don't feel too bad. These aren't the Jedi powers you were looking for, anyway.
Suppose some entity puts all of their software patents into a pool.
You have just described the open invention network:
http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/
At one point SCO got BS&F to agree to represent them through appeals for what BS&F had already received plus a percentage of the proceeds.
Which is a strategic mistake on the part of BS&F, and should be considered a conflict of interest, since it gives them a stake in the outcome. It no longer makes them attorneys for the plaintiffs, but rather turns them into the plaintiffs. They may have become more focused on their own best interest, and less focused on their client's best interest.
Yup, lack of sheets was exactly what was stopping me from using Calc.
This is a welcome addition, even if I've only needed the feature once ever; but recently. I'm implementing a new subsection for the office management software I wrote for a client. They have been storing all of their information for this new subsection in an Access database with 487 sheets. In order to get the data into PostgreSQL, I wanted to use Calc to load the database and then export it as tab-delimited text. Needless to say, that didn't work since LibreOffice didn't support enough sheets.
Worse, the Linux command line tools that read Access databases didn't convert the money amounts correctly, so I couldn't use them for the conversion. I had to find someone with Microsoft Office to do the conversion for me.
So just because you don't have a need for that many tabs doesn't mean that the need isn't real for other people.
Not that $1.6 billion would hurt them much, but all they'd have to do is threaten to stop selling the iPad in China. At that point, the government will just make Proview go away.
Not in anyone's wildest delusions would that be the outcome. A much more likely outcome would be the Chinese government telling Apple to not let the door hit them on the ass on the way out, and just formally authorize the sale and distribution of iPad clones in China.
Apple has exactly zero leverage against China, since the Chinese hold all of Apple's manufacturing capacity, and have the will and capability of cloning anything Apple makes.
You have that backwards. Bush was the first administration to withhold federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, with the reason being, my god tells me to.
While I agree that Microsoft always has been, is, and always will be evil; who's more to blame: Microsoft, or the idiot who buys the product knowing the company is evil?
Stupid Slashdot mangled my message. It should have been, "I moved all of my domains to 1&1".