It's not the software patent overloads as much as the DVD CCA and DMCA overlords. They own CSS, and DeCSS is illegal. There's no way to legally distribute anything that can decode CSS without sending them a royalty for every copy, so any form of free or Free software is ruled out.
Apparently this is a new level of shrinkwrap licensing where package is no longer complete once you remove the shrinkwrap from the outside of the box... and since the license is on the website you can most clearly access it before making your purchase.
I'm not sure if that holds water or not, but if you're going to challenge them they most clearly already have the lawyers assembled to fight you even though they thought the lawyers were there for a challenge from the MPAA, DVD CCA, and other Hollywood interests...
But, if the guy is such an expert inthe search field, isn't it posible that source code was his? How would that impact everything from a legal point?
When you write code in a work for hire relationship, you do not own the code you wrote. Your employer owns it, and when you and your employer break up you lose all access to it.
Besides, the charges right now don't center around the source code, they center arround the claim that he illegally accessed a computer system (by using a friend's account) and then caused electronic "damage" to it. This really is more of an ex-employee hacking case than a source code ownership issue right now.
The question is, did Microsoft know anything about it? How much code was being written into MSN Search?
And if you RTFA, those questions are still unanswered.
The man in question here was a former AltaVista employee, and he allegedly downloaded the secret source code for the crawling engine after leaving the company, but before working for Microsoft.
It seems that so far Microsoft has not been implicated in the investigation at all, and nobody's accusing him of having introduced AltaVista's code into MSN's project. It's an interesting possiblity, but so far there's no authorty making that link.
GBP50 (Roughly US$90) is quite a bit for a patentable idea that isn't good enough to actually get developed.
Remember, what's shown on this site isn't the actual patent concept... the idea of hooking wires together to convert one interface format to another is not good enough to get a patent. He had to have come up with some unknown enhancement beyond that for that program... and I doubt it was terribly useful seeing that this unpatentable idea that his new invention depends on hasn't been rolled out by anybody on the market yet.
However... that's not even practical because the signal to noise ratio is so high there'd be nothing left after the RFI filter did its work.
The solution is to use the Bluetooth hop between to create some meaningful distance between the wire and the cell phone transmitter. Being right next to a Bluetooth reciever is not an issue because Bluetooth uses a much weaker signal (since it's designed to only go for a few feet, not miles) and therefore an RFI filter has a chance to do its thing and the result is a useful signal.
Effectively, this solution is working because bluetooth uses a much lower power RF signal so the wire is not interfered with... he's just built himself a custom connection so that a hearing aid can be connected to the bluetooth tranciever.
So really, all that really needs to be on the market for this to be a mainstream solution are A: Bluetooth adapters that connect to the phone and have a standard 2.5 mm output, and then B: an adaptor to convert that to a hearing aid-friendly conector. It'd have the side effect of letting all of us also connect our favorite handsfree piece to the phone by Bluetooth
Bluetooth is an important add-on to cellular technology because as hearing aid users clearly realized right from the start, there's a lot of RF coming out of that little thing! We hear about all of these questionable health risks... why are we even taking the chances?
As somebody who is not an American citizen, he likely cannot get security clearance to work for the American miliatary aerospace industry... and that's the only one that still exists, everyone else buys from the USA.
Governments that are political friends of the USA have access to officially made missles... and any government that's not one is also usually not allowed to possess such missiles thanks to international embargos...
So, just who exactly is his target audience. Who, other than a terrorist organization or government able to order the official version would want a missile?
Good, go, that means there will be more jobs for those of us who are both qualified AND actually like what we do...
Sometimes I wonder if some of the trouble the IT industry got into was when IT became the highest-earning after-graduation major at many colleges. I was in college in 2000 and I saw many students who just plain did not understand their computer at all trying to learn how to be an IT geek just in hope of the money... it wouldn't surprise me that such people are now moving on to the next big thing now that IT isn't so hot anymore.
On the news channels on DirecTV, I often see ads for businesses that claim to have limitless potential, but they need people to come forward to invest and help distribute whatever they're selling. They claim it's a way to get rich without having to do much work.
Hey, wait a second. If your product really does sell itself, you wouldn't need my help. You'd be selling that product directly without any need for other investors to share the profits with. Something's just not right with that picture. Real business plans don't need to buy TV time...
Every time I see a TV programme where someone who was interviewed who had been ripped off, I have to keep remembering that all semblence of common sense and decency went out of their minds in the pursuit of wealth.
This is an interesting component of 419 schemes that cause US law enforcement resources to not care about them. See, since any 419 scheme in order to be credible involves an offer of what would have been an illegal transfer of money to you, the fact you got burned becomes a natural consequence of your attempt to break the law.
If we have so many laws against money transfers to terrorists, just how do you think a few million is going to be given to you in any way that the IRS can't get its hands on?... You should know that if you do get the money promised in the way they promise you'd be breaking the law, and that's why law enforcement isn't behind you when you go crying "SCAM!"
There are 435 seats in the house. Given the 210+210=420 result, I'd say there are 15 members in serious need of immediate replacement that both sides of the debate can agree on. Where were they?
Orkut seems out of beta. However, in order to get in you must have a sponsoring member who is already on Orkut... they seem happy being a closed social circle that way.
Of course those "forbidden" topics would be the first to flock to any wide open service since they str banned by nearly all others. We'll quickly be finding out what Google's policy on censorship is going to be...
You are forgettin one: Google Accounts, where you have a "single signon" for most of those services. And Orkut too, btw.
That's what I refered to as Google starting to merge those accounts.
BTW... Orkut isn't really a Google product. It's a semi-public spinoff that was developed by a Google employee on company time... that employee owns the domain name, not Google itself.
Blogger, AdWords, and AdSense accounts don't work there, yet...
Re:Google is losing its main draw: SIMPLICITY.
on
New Google Groups in Beta
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Google's Search interface hasn't changed at all. If you don't want a free e-mail account from them, they don't force one on you... in fact they've taken the opposite tact of baring the doors so that some people who want in can't get into that right now.
This makes perfect sense from a business perspective. They're expanding into becoming a full-service portal, but making search the main focus throughout all of their offerings.
On the other hand, Google seems to be in the business of only getting into things they can be #1 at doing.... it's quite possible that Google Groups will become the most read of such discussion sites after this goes live.
Besides, I'm sure all of these Groups will be completely included in Google's index, while Yahoo! Groups and Delphi Forums and other such sites are not because they usually require a signon to see most of the content.
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It's not the software patent overloads as much as the DVD CCA and DMCA overlords. They own CSS, and DeCSS is illegal. There's no way to legally distribute anything that can decode CSS without sending them a royalty for every copy, so any form of free or Free software is ruled out.
Apparently this is a new level of shrinkwrap licensing where package is no longer complete once you remove the shrinkwrap from the outside of the box... and since the license is on the website you can most clearly access it before making your purchase.
I'm not sure if that holds water or not, but if you're going to challenge them they most clearly already have the lawyers assembled to fight you even though they thought the lawyers were there for a challenge from the MPAA, DVD CCA, and other Hollywood interests...
If you can replicate code you wrote before from memory alone, then you have written the same code twice and are not copying anything.
But, if the guy is such an expert inthe search field, isn't it posible that source code was his? How would that impact everything from a legal point?
When you write code in a work for hire relationship, you do not own the code you wrote. Your employer owns it, and when you and your employer break up you lose all access to it.
Besides, the charges right now don't center around the source code, they center arround the claim that he illegally accessed a computer system (by using a friend's account) and then caused electronic "damage" to it. This really is more of an ex-employee hacking case than a source code ownership issue right now.
The question is, did Microsoft know anything about it? How much code was being written into MSN Search?
And if you RTFA, those questions are still unanswered.
The man in question here was a former AltaVista employee, and he allegedly downloaded the secret source code for the crawling engine after leaving the company, but before working for Microsoft.
It seems that so far Microsoft has not been implicated in the investigation at all, and nobody's accusing him of having introduced AltaVista's code into MSN's project. It's an interesting possiblity, but so far there's no authorty making that link.
GBP50 (Roughly US$90) is quite a bit for a patentable idea that isn't good enough to actually get developed. Remember, what's shown on this site isn't the actual patent concept... the idea of hooking wires together to convert one interface format to another is not good enough to get a patent. He had to have come up with some unknown enhancement beyond that for that program... and I doubt it was terribly useful seeing that this unpatentable idea that his new invention depends on hasn't been rolled out by anybody on the market yet.
At least they web-posted the report... just think what'd happen if they put it out just in book form.
However... that's not even practical because the signal to noise ratio is so high there'd be nothing left after the RFI filter did its work.
The solution is to use the Bluetooth hop between to create some meaningful distance between the wire and the cell phone transmitter. Being right next to a Bluetooth reciever is not an issue because Bluetooth uses a much weaker signal (since it's designed to only go for a few feet, not miles) and therefore an RFI filter has a chance to do its thing and the result is a useful signal.
Effectively, this solution is working because bluetooth uses a much lower power RF signal so the wire is not interfered with... he's just built himself a custom connection so that a hearing aid can be connected to the bluetooth tranciever.
So really, all that really needs to be on the market for this to be a mainstream solution are A: Bluetooth adapters that connect to the phone and have a standard 2.5 mm output, and then B: an adaptor to convert that to a hearing aid-friendly conector. It'd have the side effect of letting all of us also connect our favorite handsfree piece to the phone by Bluetooth
Bluetooth is an important add-on to cellular technology because as hearing aid users clearly realized right from the start, there's a lot of RF coming out of that little thing! We hear about all of these questionable health risks... why are we even taking the chances?
Would you please name that bill. Afterall, the business of the Senate is public record... and that incident would be clearly visible already.
Wouldn't Castro be defined as a "terrorist" due to the fact he's an unelected dictator with history of killing those who challenge him?
The USA just hasn't invaded Cuba because it doesn't have anything we want and isn't a serious threat to us either.
As somebody who is not an American citizen, he likely cannot get security clearance to work for the American miliatary aerospace industry... and that's the only one that still exists, everyone else buys from the USA.
Governments that are political friends of the USA have access to officially made missles... and any government that's not one is also usually not allowed to possess such missiles thanks to international embargos...
So, just who exactly is his target audience. Who, other than a terrorist organization or government able to order the official version would want a missile?
Good, go, that means there will be more jobs for those of us who are both qualified AND actually like what we do...
Sometimes I wonder if some of the trouble the IT industry got into was when IT became the highest-earning after-graduation major at many colleges. I was in college in 2000 and I saw many students who just plain did not understand their computer at all trying to learn how to be an IT geek just in hope of the money... it wouldn't surprise me that such people are now moving on to the next big thing now that IT isn't so hot anymore.
On the news channels on DirecTV, I often see ads for businesses that claim to have limitless potential, but they need people to come forward to invest and help distribute whatever they're selling. They claim it's a way to get rich without having to do much work.
Hey, wait a second. If your product really does sell itself, you wouldn't need my help. You'd be selling that product directly without any need for other investors to share the profits with. Something's just not right with that picture. Real business plans don't need to buy TV time...
Every time I see a TV programme where someone who was interviewed who had been ripped off, I have to keep remembering that all semblence of common sense and decency went out of their minds in the pursuit of wealth.
This is an interesting component of 419 schemes that cause US law enforcement resources to not care about them. See, since any 419 scheme in order to be credible involves an offer of what would have been an illegal transfer of money to you, the fact you got burned becomes a natural consequence of your attempt to break the law.
If we have so many laws against money transfers to terrorists, just how do you think a few million is going to be given to you in any way that the IRS can't get its hands on?... You should know that if you do get the money promised in the way they promise you'd be breaking the law, and that's why law enforcement isn't behind you when you go crying "SCAM!"
There are 435 seats in the house. Given the 210+210=420 result, I'd say there are 15 members in serious need of immediate replacement that both sides of the debate can agree on. Where were they?
GMail's holding cards close to the vest...
Orkut seems out of beta. However, in order to get in you must have a sponsoring member who is already on Orkut... they seem happy being a closed social circle that way.
Of course those "forbidden" topics would be the first to flock to any wide open service since they str banned by nearly all others. We'll quickly be finding out what Google's policy on censorship is going to be...
You are forgettin one: Google Accounts, where you have a "single signon" for most of those services.
And Orkut too, btw.
That's what I refered to as Google starting to merge those accounts.
BTW... Orkut isn't really a Google product. It's a semi-public spinoff that was developed by a Google employee on company time... that employee owns the domain name, not Google itself.
That wasn't Delphi that Google bought... it was Deja (formerly known as DejaNews) who they aquired.
Not true...
Blogger, AdWords, and AdSense accounts don't work there, yet...
Google's Search interface hasn't changed at all. If you don't want a free e-mail account from them, they don't force one on you... in fact they've taken the opposite tact of baring the doors so that some people who want in can't get into that right now.
This makes perfect sense from a business perspective. They're expanding into becoming a full-service portal, but making search the main focus throughout all of their offerings.
On the other hand, Google seems to be in the business of only getting into things they can be #1 at doing.... it's quite possible that Google Groups will become the most read of such discussion sites after this goes live.
Besides, I'm sure all of these Groups will be completely included in Google's index, while Yahoo! Groups and Delphi Forums and other such sites are not because they usually require a signon to see most of the content.