Sorry, bub, but if you live in a country that support terrorism, or invades its neighbors over oil fields, or whatever, and you're not presently in jail or on your back sick, and you're not taking up arms to overthrow the illegal and oppressive dictator who got you into the mess, then you are not innocent.
Is this is troll? Are you seriously suggesting that any time your government does something that you consider morally reprehensible you should attempt violent revolution? Anyway, just to inject a few facts: there is no evidence that Iraq supported terrorism with the exception of that by Palestinians against Israel (and that, however wrong, was probably supported by 80% of the Iraqi population and of most other Arab countries); the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait occurred ten years ago -- and was appropriately dealt with by the UN then. American bombing of Iraq killed children who were not even born at that time. By your logic, I should not have any sympathy for those killed in 9/11 because they were citizens of a country that failed to intervene when their government dispossessed the Native Americans or allowed slavery.
I do wonder what percentage of Americans subconsciously reacts as you do, and whether this is the reason America appears to have no guilt about lying to the UN (in an attempt to get support for the attack on Iraq) and then going ahead, in full violation on internation law, when such support was not forthcoming.
Short term, I believe you are substantially right. However, I think it is interesting to look at the long term big picture.
Most would agree that, in all nations, a certain amount of military expenditure is necessary to national defense. How much depends on the threats a nation currently faces. What I think you are concerned about is the effect on a society when military spending exceeds what is needed for national defense: when it becomes part of the leadership of a nation's attempt to project power outside its own borders. In the short term, this is mostly detrimental to both the citizens of that country and the citizens of the other nations the military power threatens. Paradoxically, though, I think excessive military spending and international adventurism act to sap the economic strength of countries that undertake it. In the long term, this has the beneficial effect of tending to prevent those countries' ability to indefinitely control the destiny of others.
One of the finest books ever written is Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. In it, he clearly demonstrates, based on historical experience, the importance of economic power in being able to maintain military strength (and thus the means to project power outside one's own borders).
Thus, while sorry for the citizens of any country whose lives are damaged by their leader's power ambitions, I recognise that the consequent damage to their countries' economies is in the world's long term best interests.
An end user can't be sued over copyright since he's not the one copying. - This is flawed in that many Linux distributors have licensing agreements with end users where they waive all responsibility for copyright vioaltions. This shifts the burden from the copyright infringer to the end user.
Let me see if I understand your point here correctly: I believe you are saying that SCO can go after end users because Red Hat copied Linux and provided a copy to the end user, on the basis that Red Hat told the end user they were responsible for the copy -- correct? So, if I go into a bookstore and buy RedHat CD and documentation, I infringed SCO's supposed copyright. IANAL, but the law is even more screwed up than I thought if this is true.
The first is that price performance figures are based on date submitted. Thus, comparing a system submitted on 29Jul2003 with one submitted on 04Sep2002 is going to be misleading. For sure, the current price on the older system will be lower than listed. Also, the pricing on the newer system is for a system that is not yet even available. The only way of comparing price performance points is to ask vendors for quotations when one is ready to buy.
It certainly does seem that the Linux/DB2 combination works pretty well for high throughput, relatively small database systems. I am surprised how economical such a powerful system is.
Somewhat of topic, but I notice once again that the Japanese, in the form of NCR, have easily the most scalable systems at the high end. The evidence for this is everywhere, but I doubt many outside Japan realise it.
It is true that Compaq (and others) reverse engineered the BIOS in order to avoid paying license fees to IBM. This was made a lot easier by the fact that IBM published the ROM BIOS specification. A good short summary of the original IBM PC Concept is available in the Wikipedia. This states in part:
The original PC was an IBM attempt to get into the home computer market then dominated by the Apple II.
Rather than going through the usual IBM design process, which had already failed to design an affordable microcomputer (for example the failed IBM 5100), a special team were assembled to bypass normal company restrictions and get soemthing to market rapidly. The project was given the code name Project Chess.
The team consisted of just 12 people headed by William Lowe. They succeeded - development of the PC took about a year. To achieve this they first decided to build the machine with "off-the-shelf" parts from a variety of different Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM)s and countries. Previously IBM had developed their own components. Second they decided on an open architecture so that other manufacturers could produce and sell compatible machines - the IBM PC compatibles, so the specification of the ROM BIOS was published. IBM hoped to maintain their position in the market by royalties from licencing the BIOS, and by keeping ahead of the competition.
Unfortunately for IBM, other manufacturers rapidly reverse engineered the BIOS to produce their own royalty-free versions. (Compaq Computer Corporation manufactured the first cloned IBM PC compatible in 1984)
About the only mainstream chip that I can think of off the top-of-my-head that's not U.S. bred is the ARM
Japan (think NEC, Fujitsu and Sony) have mass produced high performance chips. True, they do not turn up in your US assembled PC, but they exist. Also, think about graphics processors. True, much of the design takes place in the US, but the manufacturing technology is developed in Taiwan.
Low hardware prices occur because of competition between hardware vendors combined with technology allowing cheap production. Macintosh and SunSparc were not more expensive because of some defect in the software they used. They were more expensive because the hardware was proprietary.
IBM deserve credit for making the IBM PC an open standard plus making PCs credible in a business setting. Once that decision was made and Intel, AMD, IBM, Seagate and others produced inexpensive parts that IBM PCs could leverage, cheap PCs were going to happen.
The only area where it can be argued Microsoft helped (by later having a desktop monopoly) was to make it easier, and thus a little cheaper, for peripheral suppliers who only needed to target drivers for one platform (except, of course, Windows has never been very compatible with Windows).
they are using the Midori distro because of the support for written Chinese (not specific on the dialect)
When dealing with the Chinese written language, dialect is more or less irrelevant. The only issue is whether to support 'traditional' or 'simplified' Chinese characters. In mainland China, simplified characters (introduced when the communists took control) is usually desired. In Taiwan and elsewhere, traditional characters are usually employed. When using Unicode, this is almost entirely a font issue. When using older doublebyte character sets, the appropriate encoding system must be supported. I am not absolutely certain, but I think Midori supports everything commonly used.
I have seen the fact that the case will not reach court until 2005 in a couple of places. Susprisingly, it still seems not to be widely recognised. See, for instance SCO Changes Tactics In Dispute Over Linux...
Mark J. Heise, a partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner, the law firm representing SCO, said yesterday that he expected that a copyright claim would now be added to the contract accusation in the I.B.M. suit. Unless the case is settled, a resolution of the matters in the suit will not come soon. The trial is not scheduled to begin in a federal court until April 2005.
Let's tell them we will buy their licenses but only if each license has a provision that if a court finds that Linux didn't steal any code, then they will give us a full refund plus pay a penalty.
IMHO SCO would be happy to accept this. At the point they lose the case, SCO rapidly ceases to exist. In the meantime, collecting license fees under any conditions will boost their stock price -- and that is all they really care about.
... can she get a lawyer and countersue SCO for their aggressive, deceptive tactics?
If and when SCO loses, they are rapidly going to be out of business. Any small business that spends legal fees going after SCO at this point will just be wasting money.
You make a good point, but I think we (meaning the human race) will go to Mars within the next twenty years. My prediction is that it will be the Chinese. The US would have severe problems funding it -- anti missile technology to protect against (well something) and other military projects will take priority. The Chinese want to be the next superpower. The recognition they would receive from pulling something like this off would be worth any investment to them.
All RIAA is achieving is making itself unpopular with a certain class of people. Whether upset by RIAA or apathetic (or, admittedly not at/., even supportive) noone is going to buy more licensed music because of their efforts. They may achieve a reduction in file sharing (they will never eliminate it) but those that stop getting their music this way will just go back to taping what they like instead.
Frankly, anything that deters users from blindly installing everything Windows Updates throws at them may be a blessing. Apart from certain security updates, I believe there are as many problems created as solved by it.
Do you use IE like most people do? You can only block all cookies (and lose the use of your netbank, for instance) or allow all cookies.
I rarely use IE and hate Microsoft as much as most people here, but I must correct factual errors. IE allows you to except specific domains from cookie controls.
I am prepared to be convinced otherwise, but this Swedish law seems misguided to me.
I did read the article and noted that InterTrust won the first round. That does not change my view that, generally, American organisations have an advantage in US courts.
Could you please indicate to me the serious repercussions that have befallen it as a result of DOJ vs. Microsoft.
Your point that Sony can also attract the best in legal representation is of course true. Still, other things being equal, I would expect Microsoft to win. In the DOJ dispute, they were up against pretty much the rest of the IT industry in addition to the regulators. They still walked away scot free. Anyway, a Japanese company is at a disadvantage against an American company in a US court.
Regardless of the result, I do not think it will provide any reassurance that organisations with limited resources could fight patent claims and win.
InterTrust's suit is essentially identical to SCO's
Both lawsuits are based on claims of misuse of IP (I hate that term) but the similarity ends there. SCO owns no Unix patents. It is actually quite unclear what SCO thinks it does have, but their case is in no way based on patent infringement. InterTrust does hold patents that it claims are heavily infringed by Microsoft and a court has indicated that the claims are not frivilous.
If there is any natural justice, both SCO and InterTrust should lose. With the American justice system, one can never be certain.
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Hear, hear! Only one caveat: it was not even NATO that imposed the no-fly zones, just some of the NATO countries.
Is this is troll? Are you seriously suggesting that any time your government does something that you consider morally reprehensible you should attempt violent revolution? Anyway, just to inject a few facts: there is no evidence that Iraq supported terrorism with the exception of that by Palestinians against Israel (and that, however wrong, was probably supported by 80% of the Iraqi population and of most other Arab countries); the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait occurred ten years ago -- and was appropriately dealt with by the UN then. American bombing of Iraq killed children who were not even born at that time. By your logic, I should not have any sympathy for those killed in 9/11 because they were citizens of a country that failed to intervene when their government dispossessed the Native Americans or allowed slavery.
I do wonder what percentage of Americans subconsciously reacts as you do, and whether this is the reason America appears to have no guilt about lying to the UN (in an attempt to get support for the attack on Iraq) and then going ahead, in full violation on internation law, when such support was not forthcoming.
Most would agree that, in all nations, a certain amount of military expenditure is necessary to national defense. How much depends on the threats a nation currently faces. What I think you are concerned about is the effect on a society when military spending exceeds what is needed for national defense: when it becomes part of the leadership of a nation's attempt to project power outside its own borders. In the short term, this is mostly detrimental to both the citizens of that country and the citizens of the other nations the military power threatens. Paradoxically, though, I think excessive military spending and international adventurism act to sap the economic strength of countries that undertake it. In the long term, this has the beneficial effect of tending to prevent those countries' ability to indefinitely control the destiny of others.
One of the finest books ever written is Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. In it, he clearly demonstrates, based on historical experience, the importance of economic power in being able to maintain military strength (and thus the means to project power outside one's own borders).
Thus, while sorry for the citizens of any country whose lives are damaged by their leader's power ambitions, I recognise that the consequent damage to their countries' economies is in the world's long term best interests.
When are they going to tune this for performance? I guess short term, they could go for a server farm of 14MHz servers.
Let me see if I understand your point here correctly: I believe you are saying that SCO can go after end users because Red Hat copied Linux and provided a copy to the end user, on the basis that Red Hat told the end user they were responsible for the copy -- correct? So, if I go into a bookstore and buy RedHat CD and documentation, I infringed SCO's supposed copyright. IANAL, but the law is even more screwed up than I thought if this is true.
It certainly does seem that the Linux/DB2 combination works pretty well for high throughput, relatively small database systems. I am surprised how economical such a powerful system is.
Somewhat of topic, but I notice once again that the Japanese, in the form of NCR, have easily the most scalable systems at the high end. The evidence for this is everywhere, but I doubt many outside Japan realise it.
Pretty good, but Google does not offer to translate all these wierd English pages for me!
Yes, you are right. I should have mentioned the IME issue.
The original PC was an IBM attempt to get into the home computer market then dominated by the Apple II.
Rather than going through the usual IBM design process, which had already failed to design an affordable microcomputer (for example the failed IBM 5100), a special team were assembled to bypass normal company restrictions and get soemthing to market rapidly. The project was given the code name Project Chess.
The team consisted of just 12 people headed by William Lowe. They succeeded - development of the PC took about a year. To achieve this they first decided to build the machine with "off-the-shelf" parts from a variety of different Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM)s and countries. Previously IBM had developed their own components. Second they decided on an open architecture so that other manufacturers could produce and sell compatible machines - the IBM PC compatibles, so the specification of the ROM BIOS was published. IBM hoped to maintain their position in the market by royalties from licencing the BIOS, and by keeping ahead of the competition.
Unfortunately for IBM, other manufacturers rapidly reverse engineered the BIOS to produce their own royalty-free versions. (Compaq Computer Corporation manufactured the first cloned IBM PC compatible in 1984)
Japan (think NEC, Fujitsu and Sony) have mass produced high performance chips. True, they do not turn up in your US assembled PC, but they exist. Also, think about graphics processors. True, much of the design takes place in the US, but the manufacturing technology is developed in Taiwan.
IBM deserve credit for making the IBM PC an open standard plus making PCs credible in a business setting. Once that decision was made and Intel, AMD, IBM, Seagate and others produced inexpensive parts that IBM PCs could leverage, cheap PCs were going to happen.
The only area where it can be argued Microsoft helped (by later having a desktop monopoly) was to make it easier, and thus a little cheaper, for peripheral suppliers who only needed to target drivers for one platform (except, of course, Windows has never been very compatible with Windows).
When dealing with the Chinese written language, dialect is more or less irrelevant. The only issue is whether to support 'traditional' or 'simplified' Chinese characters. In mainland China, simplified characters (introduced when the communists took control) is usually desired. In Taiwan and elsewhere, traditional characters are usually employed. When using Unicode, this is almost entirely a font issue. When using older doublebyte character sets, the appropriate encoding system must be supported. I am not absolutely certain, but I think Midori supports everything commonly used.
I have seen the fact that the case will not reach court until 2005 in a couple of places. Susprisingly, it still seems not to be widely recognised. See, for instance SCO Changes Tactics In Dispute Over Linux ...
Mark J. Heise, a partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner, the law firm representing SCO, said yesterday that he expected that a copyright claim would now be added to the contract accusation in the I.B.M. suit. Unless the case is settled, a resolution of the matters in the suit will not come soon. The trial is not scheduled to begin in a federal court until April 2005.
IMHO SCO would be happy to accept this. At the point they lose the case, SCO rapidly ceases to exist. In the meantime, collecting license fees under any conditions will boost their stock price -- and that is all they really care about.
There is no way SCO is going down within five months. This case is not going to hit the courts until 2005.
If and when SCO loses, they are rapidly going to be out of business. Any small business that spends legal fees going after SCO at this point will just be wasting money.
You make a good point, but I think we (meaning the human race) will go to Mars within the next twenty years. My prediction is that it will be the Chinese. The US would have severe problems funding it -- anti missile technology to protect against (well something) and other military projects will take priority. The Chinese want to be the next superpower. The recognition they would receive from pulling something like this off would be worth any investment to them.
All RIAA is achieving is making itself unpopular with a certain class of people. Whether upset by RIAA or apathetic (or, admittedly not at /., even supportive) noone is going to buy more licensed music because of their efforts. They may achieve a reduction in file sharing (they will never eliminate it) but those that stop getting their music this way will just go back to taping what they like instead.
On a lighter note, I think kr*pware to replace cr*pware (i.e. Exchange) would be kind of appropriate.
LOL, but actually I find it significant that web services is not number one.
Frankly, anything that deters users from blindly installing everything Windows Updates throws at them may be a blessing. Apart from certain security updates, I believe there are as many problems created as solved by it.
I rarely use IE and hate Microsoft as much as most people here, but I must correct factual errors. IE allows you to except specific domains from cookie controls.
I am prepared to be convinced otherwise, but this Swedish law seems misguided to me.
Could you please indicate to me the serious repercussions that have befallen it as a result of DOJ vs. Microsoft.
Regardless of the result, I do not think it will provide any reassurance that organisations with limited resources could fight patent claims and win.
Both lawsuits are based on claims of misuse of IP (I hate that term) but the similarity ends there. SCO owns no Unix patents. It is actually quite unclear what SCO thinks it does have, but their case is in no way based on patent infringement. InterTrust does hold patents that it claims are heavily infringed by Microsoft and a court has indicated that the claims are not frivilous.
If there is any natural justice, both SCO and InterTrust should lose. With the American justice system, one can never be certain.