Retail Business's have been crying about this for years. You can order something out of state and get it 6~8% cheaper (-shipping) than if you bought it locally.
It also makes them want to put their bussiness online and bring in money from outsite their state.
I would think _not_ inforcing a state internet tax would be more profitable.
I have had the same problem (no high quaility midi software for linux) and was thinking about trying VMware and just running windows software on my linux box. Has anyone here tried VM for audio/midi recording yet? (windows on linux)
"...This law makes reproduction or distribution of copyrighted works, such as software programs and musical recordings, illegal, even if there was no financial gain involved."
There is a link about it. http://bmi.com/legislation/news99/aug2099.asp
The article refers to someone making large quanities avalible for d/l but I think the law technicly apples even if there are only one copy.
1. Put code in their software that checks that you are using it according to thier software agreement. 2. Put code in that allows them to terminate the use of the software if you are not using it as per their agreemment. 3. Disallows any "reverse engineering".
Then it would seem to me that that software company could force you to upload every thing you do with that software and everything related to you do with the software (check to make sure the other computers on the network are not interferring with the software etc.) and because they do not have to show you their code they would'nt even have to tell you they are doing it.
This would probably be an extreme view but companies tend to push laws to the limit and I am sure some will try it.
and we were worried about the goverment wanting to be big brother...
"When desktop adoption does take place, it will be in large businesses, because the lack of applications won't affect them,"
He's got it partly right... They will only change OS if it make then more monney.That's why most companies use windows (desktop) now. Migrating to Linux would cost them big money with retraining personal, hardware upgrades, and administration costs. The gain of a slightly faster and more stable platform is outweighed by the costs.
That's also why Linux/Apache (or BSD/Apache) is popular on the internet. It's faster, cheaper and more stable than using NT and the cost savings overall outweigh the expenses for most companies.
You come out with a killer app that will save (or make) them big money and it becomes more cost effective to use it won't matter how ready the desktop is. As long a it will make more money they will migrate to it. If they don't their competition will...
I have been using litestep from the begining. If you a "blessed" with having to use a windows box you should check it out . It uses a little less memory than exporer (the default win32 shel) and looks a little nicer. Seems to be a little more stable too. (I now only reboot my windows box 3 times a day instead of 5:-| )
Here's a good link to find more info about litestep and other opensource window shells.
If there is life anywhere else in our solar system then it is most likely that life is common in the universe. In light of this would be very irresponsable of NASA to take a chance of contaminating europa.
In just a few years (<25?) we will be able to explore without contaminating it if we want to.
History shows that we are always sorry when we desimate historical and important finds just because we don't have the technolgy to do it right.
"Oh, ok, so I sit with my daughter as she does a search, and clicks on a seemingly harmless link and poof, there's porn, what do I tell her?"
You tell her it's a Bad Thing (or a good thing depending on your family values). And open up a dialog.
You are right, nothing is going to stop kids from finding porn on the internet but I disagree thatnothing works. Disscussion does work. Having supervision at the library is the only real choice .
Our kids WILL find porn and other Bad Things on the internet and in life in general. As parents we have to be prepared to deal with this and use it to open a dialog on values.
I would have to agree. I probably deserved my first post in this thread to be moderated down. (although I was just trying to make sure that the letter could be read by everyone.)
But moderating down the post where I admit my mistate was kind of pathetic.
Oh well perhaps the slashdot guys will read this thread and it will give them some insight as to the problems with the current moderation system.
Moderators: Feel free to moderate this as you wish:-P
From: Richard Caley To: ask_tim@oreilly.com Subject: Open Source, Patents and O'Reilly
A quick topical question.
You are probably aware of RMS' [Richard Stallman's] recent call for a boycott of Amazon.com for their persuit of a software patent claim against a rival.
As a company with close connections with both Amamzon and the Open Source community, O'Reilly's position on this issue would be very interesting. To me and I'm sure to many others.
--Richard
Richard,
I have struggled with this issue since RMS first approached me to sign on to his campaign. I've declined to urge a boycott because I do think that Amazon provides an incredible service, and one that many of our customers find valuable. At the same time, I completely agree with RMS that the Amazon 1-Click Patent is one more example of an "intellectual property" milieu gone mad.
In the first place, this patent should have never been allowed. It's a completely trivial application of cookies, a technology that was introduced several years before Amazon filed for their patent. It's even more ironic that in private conversation, one of the authors of the "cookies" spec mentioned to me that they considered the idea "too trivial to patent." To characterize "1-Click" as an "invention" is a parody. Like so many software patents, it is a land grab, an attempt to hoodwink a patent system that has not gotten up to speed on the state of the art in computer science. I'm not completely opposed to software patents, since there are some things that do in fact qualify as legitimate "inventions", but when I see people patenting obvious ideas, ideas that are already in wide use, it makes my blood boil.
I also want to say that a patent on something like "1-Click ordering" is a slap in the face of Tim Berners-Lee and all of the other pioneers who created the opportunity that Amazon has done such a good job of exploiting. Amazon wouldn't have existed without the generosity of people like Tim, who made legitimate, far-reaching inventions, and put them out into the public domain for all to build upon. Anyone who puts a small gloss on this fundamental technology, calls it proprietary, and then tries to keep others from building further on it, is a thief. The gift was given to all of us, and anyone who tries to make it their own is stealing our patrimony.
Patents like this are also incredibly short-sighted! The web has exploded because it was an open platform that sparked countless innovations by users. Fence in that platform, and who knows what opportunities will never come to light?
I urge Amazon to give up on this patent. I am confident that it will eventually be overturned in any case. And in the meantime, Amazon will not only reap a harvest of ill will, they will erode the soil of innovation on the web. What's more, they are a fierce competitor who has already established a dominant market position. They can win without resorting to cheap tricks.
I'm sorry to have taken so long to respond to your question. I thought it best to give Amazon a chance to respond to a private letter before going public with my response. Here's the email I sent to Jeff Bezos on January 5:
Subject: Amazon 1-Click patent Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2000 10:03:59 -0800 From: Tim O'Reilly To: jeff@amazon.com
I wanted to give you guys the heads up that I'm getting a lot of pressure from my customers (via my Ask Tim column on our website and direct customer e-mail) to comment publically on the Amazon 1-Click patent. I was also approached by Richard Stallman to help him publicize his Amazon boycott, and I declined, but I do want to let you know that I agree with his message although not with his methods. I will be forced to make some kind of public comment shortly, and I wanted to let you know what the substance of it will be before it goes out to the world.
First off, I think that you are reaping a harvest of ill-will with the technical community. While I know you are setting your sights on a wider consumer audience, the serious technical community represents the core of your early adopters and many of your best customers, especially in the book market. You have only to look at the presence of O'Reilly books on your bestseller lists vs. those at your competitors to realize how much of your computer book sales are driven by the hard core technical community that is O'Reilly's customer base. And I can tell you that those customers are solidly against software patents.
Second (and this is the point most important to me), the web has grown so rapidly because it has been an open platform for experimentation and innovation. It broke us loose from the single-vendor stranglehold that Microsoft has had on much of the software industry, and created a new paradigm with opportunities for countless new players, including Amazon. The technologies that you have used to launch your amazing success would never have become widespread if the early web players, from Tim Berners-Lee on, had acted as you have acted in filing and enforcing this patent. Because, of course, you are not the only one who can play the patent game. And once the web becomes fenced in by competing patents and other attempts to make this glorious open playing field into a proprietary wasteland, the springs of further innovation will dry up. In short, I think you're pissing in the well.
Patents such as yours are the first step in vitiating the web, in raising the barriers to entry not just for your competitors, but for the technological innovators who might otherwise come up with great new ideas that you could put to use in your own business. It's a well known technology truism that all of the smart people don't work for you, and that one of the surest ways to success is to get more ideas and more work out of people outside your own fences. This is one of the key insights that brought us the internet, and is the key to the success of open source projects like Linux, Perl, and Apache.
There are more than a few similarities between sustainable farming (versus resource exploitation) and technological innovation that are worth meditating upon. You may gain short-term advantage by taking as much as you can from the soil without regard to building it up again, but eventually, your soil quality will decline, and you'll find yourselves having to spend more and more on added fertilizer.
You've gained enormous competitive advantage by making use of technologies that were freely given to the world. If players like yourselves succeed in replacing that gift economy with a dog-eat-dog world in which everyone tries to keep their advances to themselves, and worse, tries to keep others from replicating them, you'll soon find yourself either spending a larger and larger part of your budget on developing your own technology, or, more likely, you'll find yourself hostage again to commercial software vendors whose interests may not be aligned with your own.
If you see yourselves primarily as a technology company, you might want to play the Microsoft game of trying to corner the technology market with proprietary APIs, file formats, and patents, but if you see yourself as a great customer service and marketing company, you want other people inventing technology platforms that you can build on. That's been a key part of your success so far: You've been able to take a great open platform, and build vertical applications that provide a fabulous service to your customers. Filing frivolous patents will only retard the growth of the platform.
And that's a third point: The patent is very unlikely to be upheld in the long run. It's a classic example of the kind of software patent that would never be granted if the patent office had even the slightest clue about software: A trivial application of cookies. I'd be very surprised if there isn't a fair amount of prior art even in using cookies in conjunction with saved credit card information. But even if there isn't, the basic method of saving state information about prior visitors is so fundamental that there's nothing new in what you did.
Finally, I want to say that I admire you guys tremendously. I speak and write constantly about Amazon as the paradigmatic example of "the next generation of computer applications." I think that you're a terrific competitor, delivering a terrific service, and I don't think you need to use tools like this patent to keep yourselves on top. You can win without it, and I firmly believe that in the long run, it will do you more harm than good.
I realize that having come out so strongly behind this patent, it would be very difficult for you to do an about-face and back off from it. However, I urge you to do so, and would be glad to help you craft a PR strategy that would make it a net win for you in terms of public perception. In fact, I'd love to see this as part of a wider effort by Amazon to embrace and support the open standards of the Web and the power of open source software, both of which have been foundations of your success.
As I've suggested publically on more than one occasion, I believe that the companies that have profited most from the web have an obligation to give something back. This is more than a "thank you" to the developers who made your success possible; it's also an act of self-interest, to keep the innovations coming.
I hope these comments have given you food for thought. I'd love to hear back from you, and to find a way to work with you to support the open standards of the web.
Jeff replied via email on January 27. While I don't have permission to quote his message, I can give you the substance of it, namely that he shares my concern for both customers and innovation, but that while he believes the patent process can sometimes be abused, he believes that this is not the case with Amazon's 1-Click patent.
Given this response, I've decided that I need to speak out on this issue. While the Amazon 1-Click patent is far from the most obvious abuse of the patent system, it is one that affects the competitive landscape of my own business, and one where, as a publishing industry spokesperson, I most feel obliged to make a statement.
What's more, since you sent in your question, the situation has gotten worse. The patent office has also granted Amazon a patent on their Associates program. They haven't yet tried to enforce this patent against their competitors, but if what they've done with 1-Click is any sign of their intentions, I imagine that it's only a matter of time unless their customers and suppliers speak out about their reckless behavior.
I'm also publishing an "open letter to amazon" that I invite customers to sign. I hope to give Amazon an idea of just how many of their customers share the feelings that this patent is anti-competitive and that it is having a chilling effect on the growth of e-commerce applications.
What's more, we've put together a patent web site on the O'Reilly Network for breaking news on this and other software patent issues. We'll develop this site as the issue unfolds.
Those of you who want to review the actual Amazon 1-click patent filing can obtain it from the IBM patent server via www.patents.ibm.com. There are a number of other Amazon e-commerce patents available there for your scrutiny, including the Associates patent.
Artists make about.06 a CD after expenses. (expenses would depend on the deal they made). Most artists don't see any real money till after there 2nd gold cd.
I play guitar and keyboards plus type code so my wrists take a lot of abuse...
I have mounted my mousepad to the arm of my chair and place my keyboard in my lap. I use the old style IBM keyboards (mine is a ~10 years old). This allows me to constanly change my postion in the chair and move the keyboard around to change the angle my wrists are at to the keyboard. It works for me.
One of the big secrets to avoiding wrists problems is to find a postion that allows you to work with your wrists in a straight but relaxed postion and take a break when ever your wrists even begin to feel tight.
I would recomend borrowing a few different keyboards and trying them for a few days at a time. Everybody is built a little different, no one keyboard is going to be best for everyone.
Microsoft would never to anything to compermise our privacy. Microsoft is the leader in OS....
<<ding>>>
A fatal exception 0E has occured at F0AD:42494C4C The current application will be terminated.
* Press any key to terminate the current application. * Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE again to restart your computer. You will lose any unsaved information in all applications.
Just saying windows sucks won't help me. I'm the guy in my company who has to justify the hardware/software my company uses. We currently use Redhat for our servers but my managment and our clients are pushing me to try win2000. (hey it's the new thing and M$ says it's great.)
I do not want us to use win2000 because of the problems I have had with NT but I need to convince my superiors that win2000 sucks as well. Win2000 is new and I still have to give it a try.
Can anyone give me any insight into realworld problems they have had in using win2000?
Perhaps you could save me (and people like me some grief.)
Slashdot Mirror
But you can give them your email address and they will email it to you. (we will see )
k ing.asp?userid=4LN6ZHK7W8&srefer=
Here's the link
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bookshelf/ebooks/
Retail Business's have been crying about this for years. You can order something out of state and get it 6~8% cheaper (-shipping) than if you bought it locally.
It also makes them want to put their bussiness online and bring in money from outsite their state.
I would think _not_ inforcing a state internet tax
would be more profitable.
I have had the same problem (no high quaility
midi software for linux) and was thinking about trying VMware and just running windows software on my linux box. Has anyone here tried VM for audio/midi recording yet? (windows on linux)
"...This law makes
reproduction or distribution of copyrighted works,
such as software programs and musical recordings,
illegal, even if there was no financial gain involved."
There is a link about it.
http://bmi.com/legislation/news99/aug2099.asp
The article refers to someone making large quanities avalible for d/l but I think the law
technicly apples even if there are only one copy.
But I am not a lawyer....
I noticed this in the employment section of there website...
"Applicant should be capable of developing command/response serial communications software on
WinNT using Visual C++.
"Roger, we have lift-off, hold on I have a blue screen, abort! abort!"
If the UCITA allows a software company to;
1. Put code in their software that checks that
you are using it according to thier software
agreement.
2. Put code in that allows them to terminate the
use of the software if you are not using
it as per their agreemment.
3. Disallows any "reverse engineering".
Then it would seem to me that that software company could force you to upload every thing you do with that software and everything related to
you do with the software (check to make sure the other computers on the network are not interferring with the software etc.) and because they do not have to show you their code they would'nt even have to tell you they are doing it.
This would probably be an extreme view but companies tend to push laws to the limit and I am sure some will try it.
and we were worried about the goverment wanting to be big brother...
"When desktop adoption does take place, it will be in large businesses,
because the lack of applications won't affect them,"
He's got it partly right...
They will only change OS if it make then more monney.That's why most companies use windows (desktop) now. Migrating to Linux would cost them big money with retraining personal, hardware upgrades, and administration costs. The gain of a slightly faster and more stable
platform is outweighed by the costs.
That's also why Linux/Apache (or BSD/Apache) is popular on the internet. It's faster, cheaper and more stable than using NT and the cost savings overall outweigh the expenses for most companies.
You come out with a killer app that will save (or make) them big money and it becomes more cost effective to use it won't matter how ready the desktop is. As long a it will make more money they will migrate to it. If they don't their competition will...
I have been using litestep from the begining. If you a "blessed" with having to use a windows box you should check it out . It uses a little less memory than exporer (the default win32 shel) and looks a little nicer. Seems to be a little more stable too. (I now only reboot my windows box 3 times a day instead of 5 :-| )
Here's a good link to find more info about litestep and other opensource window shells.
http://floach.pimpin.net
If there is life anywhere else in our solar system then it is most likely that life is common in the universe. In light of this would be very irresponsable of NASA to take a chance of contaminating europa.
In just a few years (<25?) we will be able to explore without contaminating it if we want to.
History shows that we are always sorry when we desimate historical and important finds just because we don't have the technolgy to do it right.
Good for NASA
"Oh, ok, so I sit with my daughter as she does a search, and clicks on a seemingly harmless
link and poof, there's porn, what do I tell her?"
You tell her it's a Bad Thing (or a good thing depending on your family values). And open up a dialog.
You are right, nothing is going to stop kids from finding porn on the internet but I disagree thatnothing works. Disscussion does work. Having supervision at the library is the only real choice .
Our kids WILL find porn and other Bad Things on the internet and in life in general. As parents we
have to be prepared to deal with this and use it to open a dialog on values.
Seems to me that it would be a lot better to use adult supervision instead of blocking sites.
I had a work project that required me to obtain some "childrens pictures" online. (try looking for
pictures of children online and NOT finding porn.)
The filters would have not stopped what I found.
The only way I see to protect chilf\dren and not censor vaild material is with adults supervizing children online.
I would have to agree. I probably deserved my
:-P
first post in this thread to be moderated down.
(although I was just trying to make sure that the
letter could be read by everyone.)
But moderating down the post where I admit my
mistate was kind of pathetic.
Oh well perhaps the slashdot guys will read this
thread and it will give them some insight as to the problems with the current moderation system.
Moderators:
Feel free to moderate this as you wish
"if you are trying to be helpful then you should state your intentions."
Your right, I should have
Believe it....
/.ed before I could read them. I was trying to be a nice guy.
I simply posted it because the last 3~4 stories
I have tried to read got
SO FUCKING LIGHTEN UP!
From: Richard Caley
To: ask_tim@oreilly.com
Subject: Open Source, Patents and O'Reilly
A quick topical question.
You are probably aware of RMS' [Richard Stallman's] recent call for a boycott
of Amazon.com for their persuit of a software patent claim against a rival.
As a company with close connections with both Amamzon and the Open Source
community, O'Reilly's position on this issue would be very interesting. To me
and I'm sure to many others.
--Richard
Richard,
I have struggled with this issue since RMS first approached me to sign on to his
campaign. I've declined to urge a boycott because I do think that Amazon
provides an incredible service, and one that many of our customers find valuable.
At the same time, I completely agree with RMS that the Amazon 1-Click Patent
is one more example of an "intellectual property" milieu gone mad.
In the first place, this patent should have never been allowed. It's a completely
trivial application of cookies, a technology that was introduced several years
before Amazon filed for their patent. It's even more ironic that in private
conversation, one of the authors of the "cookies" spec mentioned to me that
they considered the idea "too trivial to patent." To characterize "1-Click" as an
"invention" is a parody. Like so many software patents, it is a land grab, an
attempt to hoodwink a patent system that has not gotten up to speed on the
state of the art in computer science. I'm not completely opposed to software
patents, since there are some things that do in fact qualify as legitimate
"inventions", but when I see people patenting obvious ideas, ideas that are
already in wide use, it makes my blood boil.
I also want to say that a patent on something like "1-Click ordering" is a slap in
the face of Tim Berners-Lee and all of the other pioneers who created the
opportunity that Amazon has done such a good job of exploiting. Amazon
wouldn't have existed without the generosity of people like Tim, who made
legitimate, far-reaching inventions, and put them out into the public domain for
all to build upon. Anyone who puts a small gloss on this fundamental
technology, calls it proprietary, and then tries to keep others from building
further on it, is a thief. The gift was given to all of us, and anyone who tries to
make it their own is stealing our patrimony.
Patents like this are also incredibly short-sighted! The web has exploded because
it was an open platform that sparked countless innovations by users. Fence in
that platform, and who knows what opportunities will never come to light?
I urge Amazon to give up on this patent. I am confident that it will eventually be
overturned in any case. And in the meantime, Amazon will not only reap a
harvest of ill will, they will erode the soil of innovation on the web. What's more,
they are a fierce competitor who has already established a dominant market
position. They can win without resorting to cheap tricks.
I'm sorry to have taken so long to respond to your question. I thought it best to
give Amazon a chance to respond to a private letter before going public with my
response. Here's the email I sent to Jeff Bezos on January 5:
Subject: Amazon 1-Click patent
Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2000 10:03:59 -0800
From: Tim O'Reilly
To: jeff@amazon.com
I wanted to give you guys the heads up that I'm getting a lot of
pressure from my customers (via my Ask Tim column on our
website and direct customer e-mail) to comment publically on the
Amazon 1-Click patent. I was also approached by Richard
Stallman to help him publicize his Amazon boycott, and I declined,
but I do want to let you know that I agree with his message
although not with his methods. I will be forced to make some kind
of public comment shortly, and I wanted to let you know what the
substance of it will be before it goes out to the world.
First off, I think that you are reaping a harvest of ill-will with the
technical community. While I know you are setting your sights on
a wider consumer audience, the serious technical community
represents the core of your early adopters and many of your best
customers, especially in the book market. You have only to look at
the presence of O'Reilly books on your bestseller lists vs. those at
your competitors to realize how much of your computer book
sales are driven by the hard core technical community that is
O'Reilly's customer base. And I can tell you that those customers
are solidly against software patents.
Second (and this is the point most important to me), the web has
grown so rapidly because it has been an open platform for
experimentation and innovation. It broke us loose from the
single-vendor stranglehold that Microsoft has had on much of the
software industry, and created a new paradigm with opportunities
for countless new players, including Amazon. The technologies
that you have used to launch your amazing success would never
have become widespread if the early web players, from Tim
Berners-Lee on, had acted as you have acted in filing and
enforcing this patent. Because, of course, you are not the only
one who can play the patent game. And once the web becomes
fenced in by competing patents and other attempts to make this
glorious open playing field into a proprietary wasteland, the
springs of further innovation will dry up. In short, I think you're
pissing in the well.
Patents such as yours are the first step in vitiating the web, in
raising the barriers to entry not just for your competitors, but for
the technological innovators who might otherwise come up with
great new ideas that you could put to use in your own business.
It's a well known technology truism that all of the smart people
don't work for you, and that one of the surest ways to success is
to get more ideas and more work out of people outside your own
fences. This is one of the key insights that brought us the
internet, and is the key to the success of open source projects like
Linux, Perl, and Apache.
There are more than a few similarities between sustainable farming
(versus resource exploitation) and technological innovation that
are worth meditating upon. You may gain short-term advantage
by taking as much as you can from the soil without regard to
building it up again, but eventually, your soil quality will decline,
and you'll find yourselves having to spend more and more on
added fertilizer.
You've gained enormous competitive advantage by making use of
technologies that were freely given to the world. If players like
yourselves succeed in replacing that gift economy with a
dog-eat-dog world in which everyone tries to keep their advances
to themselves, and worse, tries to keep others from replicating
them, you'll soon find yourself either spending a larger and larger
part of your budget on developing your own technology, or, more
likely, you'll find yourself hostage again to commercial software
vendors whose interests may not be aligned with your own.
If you see yourselves primarily as a technology company, you
might want to play the Microsoft game of trying to corner the
technology market with proprietary APIs, file formats, and
patents, but if you see yourself as a great customer service and
marketing company, you want other people inventing technology
platforms that you can build on. That's been a key part of your
success so far: You've been able to take a great open platform,
and build vertical applications that provide a fabulous service to
your customers. Filing frivolous patents will only retard the
growth of the platform.
And that's a third point: The patent is very unlikely to be upheld
in the long run. It's a classic example of the kind of software
patent that would never be granted if the patent office had even
the slightest clue about software: A trivial application of cookies.
I'd be very surprised if there isn't a fair amount of prior art even in
using cookies in conjunction with saved credit card information.
But even if there isn't, the basic method of saving state
information about prior visitors is so fundamental that there's
nothing new in what you did.
Finally, I want to say that I admire you guys tremendously. I
speak and write constantly about Amazon as the paradigmatic
example of "the next generation of computer applications." I think
that you're a terrific competitor, delivering a terrific service, and I
don't think you need to use tools like this patent to keep
yourselves on top. You can win without it, and I firmly believe
that in the long run, it will do you more harm than good.
I realize that having come out so strongly behind this patent, it
would be very difficult for you to do an about-face and back off
from it. However, I urge you to do so, and would be glad to help
you craft a PR strategy that would make it a net win for you in
terms of public perception. In fact, I'd love to see this as part of a
wider effort by Amazon to embrace and support the open
standards of the Web and the power of open source software,
both of which have been foundations of your success.
As I've suggested publically on more than one occasion, I believe
that the companies that have profited most from the web have an
obligation to give something back. This is more than a "thank
you" to the developers who made your success possible; it's also
an act of self-interest, to keep the innovations coming.
I hope these comments have given you food for thought. I'd love
to hear back from you, and to find a way to work with you to
support the open standards of the web.
Jeff replied via email on January 27. While I don't have permission to quote his
message, I can give you the substance of it, namely that he shares my concern
for both customers and innovation, but that while he believes the patent process
can sometimes be abused, he believes that this is not the case with Amazon's
1-Click patent.
Given this response, I've decided that I need to speak out on this issue. While
the Amazon 1-Click patent is far from the most obvious abuse of the patent
system, it is one that affects the competitive landscape of my own business, and
one where, as a publishing industry spokesperson, I most feel obliged to make a
statement.
What's more, since you sent in your question, the situation has gotten worse.
The patent office has also granted Amazon a patent on their Associates program.
They haven't yet tried to enforce this patent against their competitors, but if what
they've done with 1-Click is any sign of their intentions, I imagine that it's only a
matter of time unless their customers and suppliers speak out about their reckless
behavior.
I'm also publishing an "open letter to amazon" that I invite customers to sign. I
hope to give Amazon an idea of just how many of their customers share the
feelings that this patent is anti-competitive and that it is having a chilling effect
on the growth of e-commerce applications.
What's more, we've put together a patent web site on the O'Reilly Network for
breaking news on this and other software patent issues. We'll develop this site
as the issue unfolds.
Those of you who want to review the actual Amazon 1-click patent filing can
obtain it from the IBM patent server via www.patents.ibm.com. There are a
number of other Amazon e-commerce patents available there for your scrutiny,
including the Associates patent.
--Tim
Return to: Ask Tim Archive
Artists make about .06 a CD after expenses. (expenses would depend on the deal they made). Most artists don't see any real money till after there 2nd gold cd.
I would guess microsoft is using cloking..
i.e. using a script to server one set of pages
to surfers and another set of pages to search
engines by checking ip #s.
This is a common technic for porn sites and is
becoming common for larger e-commerce sites.
However it is really in poor taste to use it
to steal hits from your competitors.
I play guitar and keyboards plus type code so my wrists take a lot of abuse...
I have mounted my mousepad to the arm of my chair and place my keyboard in my lap. I use the old style IBM keyboards (mine is a ~10 years old). This allows me to constanly change my postion in the chair and move the keyboard around to change the angle my wrists are at to the keyboard. It works for me.
One of the big secrets to avoiding wrists problems is to find a postion that allows you to work with your wrists in a straight but relaxed postion and take a break when ever your wrists even begin to feel tight.
I would recomend borrowing a few different keyboards and trying them for a few days at a time. Everybody is built a little different, no one keyboard is going to be best for everyone.
Good luck!
I had the same problem with a simalar compaq and found a fix at compaq's web site.
Microsoft would never to anything to compermise our privacy. Microsoft is the leader in OS....
<<ding>>>
A fatal exception 0E has occured at F0AD:42494C4C
The current application will be terminated.
* Press any key to terminate the current application.
* Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE again to restart your computer.
You will lose any unsaved information in all applications.
Press any key to continue
Damnit! where the hell is the "any" key?
Just saying windows sucks won't help me. I'm the guy in my company who has to justify the hardware/software my company uses. We currently use Redhat for our servers but my managment and our clients are pushing me to try win2000. (hey it's the new thing and M$ says it's great.)
I do not want us to use win2000 because of the problems I have had with NT but I need to convince my superiors that win2000 sucks as well. Win2000 is new and I still have to give it a try.
Can anyone give me any insight into realworld problems they have had in using win2000?
Perhaps you could save me (and people like me some grief.)