I should have put the links in there to begin with. I'll give you half-credit because I did have my locations mixed up. The European cases I was thinking of were in London, England and Mannheim, Germany, where Rambuses cases were dismissed when Rambus' patents were ruled invalid by the European Patent Office. The conviction of fraud in the JEDEC process was ruled by judge Robert Payne in federal court in the U.S.
The price fixing is a separate issue that I do think the DRAM companies engaged in. The patent issue, however, happened differently than you are saying.
JEDEC has strict rules that everyone involved must disclose any patents that may be relevent to the standards they are working toward so that those issues can be dealt with before a standard is decided on. Rambus had some memory patents that had been filed but not issued. Rambus disclosed none of those. Then, as they attended and gathered information about the technologies being discussed, they were adding amendments to their existing applications with those specific technologies. Therefore, it would still have the earlier filing date to look like they had the patent before JEDEC decided on it. Rambus was actually found guilty of this fraud against JEDEC by a European court.
These are all the occurrences of the word 'patent' in the GPLv2. If you could point out to me which of them state that you must donate your patents, I'd be interested in which language you're speaking and why you think it's English.
Well, you didn't waste any time jumping on the frothing insult bandwagon in response to a reasonable post. I admit in looking at it now that I did not explain fully what I meant. It's called "writer-based prose", where the rest of the concept was still in my mind, so I didn't notice that I didn't get everything out explicitly to the reader. From tracking this issue on Groklaw for quite a while there is a lot of legal basis in my head I was forgetting to specify.
*MY ORIGINAL COMMENT* Even under GPLv2, however, it would result in Microsoft giving rights to their patents. END ORIGINAL COMMENT I disagree. Under GPLv2 it would result in Microsoft not being allowed to distribute Linux. Their sole remedy is to cease distribution of the GPL'd code/program which conflicts with their other agreements (barring weaseling out of the original agreements.
I was referring to a hypothetical, which I'll describe in a second. Your comment is entirely correct in the current real life situation, which is that Microsoft is NOT distributing anything that they are claiming patent infringement on. Since they are making those patent threats, Section 7 of GPLv2 does say that MS cannot distribute that software.
My hypothetical is referring to what some people think is going on. WHAT IF Microsoft actually did choose to start distributing Linux anyway, even with their patent threats? There are multiple factors here. MS' distribution would be not allowed, so as you mention, the copyright owners of that GPL code can demand that MS stop distribution. That's not what I was talking about because it's the less interesting result. The element I was talking about is that MS in that hypothetical situation have put themselves under the legal doctrine called "estoppel".
You will find some definitions of estoppel in this Groklaw article. It basically means that if someone behaves with actions that demonstrate that they are allowing or giving permission for something, they cannot come back later and attack you with litigation for acting in accordance with that implied permission. So in this hypothetical situation, if MS were to actually distribute Linux to people with all the GPLv2 implications, that is implied permission that you are free to use it. Then, if they ever tried to sue anyone over patent rights on that, the defense of estoppel would shut that down.
That is what I meant by "giving rights to their patents", not "you must donate your patents", which you tried to attribute to me. MS would be basically giving up their patent enforcement rights for that particular software, not that the law would force them to donate ownership of them or anything.
I have read and understood the full text of GPLv2. My point was not coming from a clause contained in the GPL license; it was based on other legal principles.
The GPLv3 relates to prohibiting agreements like the Microsoft-Novell agreement. Even under GPLv2, however, it would result in Microsoft giving rights to their patents. Remember, this only would apply IF Microsoft directly distributed Linux, which they haven't in this case.
You hit one of the points big time. I have done this trick before, if you're just trying to read a long article of text only in a web page. Just shrink the width of your browser window so the text goes down to a smaller column width. One of the larger difficulties with long lines of text is tracking backward quickly along that line without accidentally jumping off and losing your place. If you shrink it down to just several words wide, you basically can eliminate one axis of scanning. Your eye can pick up the four or five words on the line at once, without having to do any left/right movement, so you can just quickly read down while picking up each line as a whole.
I've found that one trick to do wonders for easing eye strain as well as speeding up reading.
I posted a comment there on his page, refuting his arguments. It wasn't too hard to rationally shoot most of them down. I was able to refute 6 of 7, but one of them I just wasn't familiar enough with. Here's the comment if you're interested: ----------------
I can't take you very seriously because there is a lot of misdirection and hand-waving in your article. I will give you credit that I didn't see any outright lies, which Microsoft directly uses, though. Here I'll point out some problems with your points.
"They include open source code in their products." You bring up the TCP/IP implementation as an example. That's not a good idea on your part because it's exactly the example people use to point out why Microsoft likes to let other people come up with good stuff under the BSD license and then selfishly take it with no thank-yous or giving in return. When it comes to a mutual sharing license that they can't take selfish advantage of, like the GPL, they spit venom, lies, quasi-legal lobbying interference with government action, violation of their court-ordered code of conduct from their anti-trust conviction, etc., etc. So basically, your first point illustrates that they just like code that other people open without restrictions so they can just snatch it.
"They support open source vendors." I won't say a lot here because I'm not familiar with these Microsoft "programs created to test and verify open source applications on Microsoft platforms". If they do that, fair enough.
"They benefit from open source everyday." It's called FUD. Have you read the content of the "free press" they pay for? That's kind of a twisted way to look at things to say that your competitors benefit you by giving you the opportunity to smear them with falsehoods. You're not understanding what the alternative situation was to this "battle with open source" they've been waging in the press. Before open source was maturing, Microsoft didn't have a big war in the press and had close to 100% market share. Everyone just kept buying it because they had never heard of anything else. Now Microsoft is having to viciously attack to slow the slide of their market share. Open source isn't doing them any favors there.
"They open source code." Ah, UNIX tools for Windows. This is beating the ground where the dead horse rotted away several years ago. They did a small token action on a minor product most people don't use once, and we're supposed to be reminded of that over and over? That hardly seems like strong evidence to make it one of the "Seven Reasons Microsoft Loves Open Source". That's weak, man.
"They are adopting open source culture." You're not recognizing what this is. Culture means actually doing something, which they're not. This is co-opting the language of open source to try to pretend to be something good, while remaining the wolf in sheep's clothing. It's the same with their proprietary data-dump of their new MS Office format, which they have ironically called "Microsoft Office Open XML". They want to have that word Open associated with them, even though the format is very closed and does not contain specs enough for anyone else to use it.
"They aren't threatened by open source." Well this looks like a good place to continue the talk about the office document formats. They are threatened at least as much, if not more, by other forms of openness than just by Linux. Have you kept up with Microsoft's conduct in Massachusetts over the document format decision? They have been putting out some of their most blatant lies to convince them to use the Microsoft document formats, rather than go to a neutral document format that can be used by anyone, including Microsoft if they wanted to stop their tantrums long enough to do it. Read some of Andy Updegrove's blog to find out some of the story about that, including how they fed a false character assasination story on Peter Quinn to Boston Globe reporter Steve Kurkjian. The story was published before they even
That's a good, noble, smart-ass attitude about it, but not always realistic. Think of the difference of what happens. First, if the company buys the monitor for you, it begins the jealousy factor, where others want to have it too, so managers and such, who wouldn't have any need for it, start asking, and it ends up wasting the company a lot of money.
If, on the other hand, you bring in a used monitor you got for free or $50 or so, you can do whatever you want with no hassle, and it put no obligation on the company. If anyone has any jealousy issues about it, the company can just say, "You're free to bring in an extra monitor for yourself if you want it too."
I agree that if the company has the budget to spare for it, and they're a decent company, they should be handling it, but depending on the number of employees and financial situation of the company, it's sometimes reasonable to help out on occasion when it does make your work easier. And I guess that does address your main point. It DOES benefit him, because being stuck using one monitor is awful and frustrating when you really want to work with two.
How far do you want to take that stand or yours? I brought in my scientific calculator from home, and most of the engineers I work with have their own personal calculators here at work, too. Calculators are not a one-size-fits-all; there's some personal preference there, but I wouldn't demand the company to order me one because "it's for work, and they should provide it". I also really like a certain type of pen, which the company doesn't have in the supply cupboards, so I bring those from home, too. I guess the guiding principle I have is that the company provides what's needed to do the job, but if there are extras that make it easier, and the cost is fairly cheap, I don't mind getting it for my own convenience. You could also think of it this way, that the company pays well, so if there are some things you want to buy to customize your work area, they've indirectly bought them for you. But by it being general funds in everyone's check, each person can customize what they want, instead of the company having to manage everyone's preferences and order a bunch of individual stuff.
I found this quite a lot, that you don't know the benefit if you've never tried it. For people who have only ever used one monitor, it's impossible to understand how good two is. They have gotten pretty good and efficient at dealing with the issues through alt-tab and virtual desktops and such. Doing those things has become such second nature that they don't seem bothersome. Once you give two monitors a try, though, and give it a few days to start realizing how your work becomes easier and faster, you feel you can never go back.
I work at a semiconductor company doing chip layout design. They came through about 6 months ago with upgrades offering the choice: One 24" LCD, or two 19" LCDs. Everyone in my group opted for the dual screens. It is absolutely the bomb because of what the parent poster mentioned. Total square inches sounds good, but managing that space (and trying to look at it) when the height and width are both too big is problematic. Having two discrete viewing areas is a huge improvement.
When doing layout design, it's a very visual, graphical thing. However, the layout is being done to match a schematic, which we also need to have open for reference. Plus there are other utilities and tools in the software for managing your list of layers you're viewing, lists of design rule violations to be cleaned up, etc. Having the layout maximized on one screen is great, while the schematic, etc. are on the other screen for reference.
I'm a positionally oriented person when it comes to windows in my workspace. When I had just the one monitor, I used to arrange the windows around toward different corners and edges of my screen. They were sized big enough to see, so they were very overlapping in the middle. It's a Linux station, so I had my window behavior set for "focus follows mouse", but not to automatically raise windows. I set a hotkey to raise/lower windows, so I could just point to an exposed edge of the one I wanted and hit the key to raise it. Or I would sometimes just point in the middle of the screen and start hitting that button to cycle through the windows I had going on.
Then again, big companies are more willing to pay developers to work hard on a project that they own outright and to which they can sell exclusive rights. I've worked at one of them, and they paid people to work on FreeBSD. It's not such a bad deal.
There. The second time you got it right. One of the reasons why FOSS works so well is that people are mostly programming to their interests. Big companies can pay people to do things that they don't really care about, but it's generally not as high a quality of work as people who are working on something because they love it.
I'm reluctant to "give away" my code under a license that takes away (or at least reserves for me) rights from other people that may want to use it -- I'd like to really give it away, no strings attached, or to actually sell it. The GPL's it's-yours-but-you-can-only-like-I-say seems a lot like giving a "gift" to someone that you really bought for yourself.
Here's a way of thinking of the GPL that may change some of your attitude to it. Let's say you were a generous donor to the community and wanted to donate a really nice new playground to the city parks that would be free and available for anyone to use. To make sure your gift stayed available for everyone to use, you add the condition that the city cannot close it off and make it a "pay to enter" playground. Your gift was to the people in the community, but if you don't have that condition on it, it leaves the city with the "freedom" to take that gift away from those you wanted to give it to.
from pulling that big a number out of it. There are no hybrids that cost $10,000 more than non-hybrid equivalents. They are generally around 3 to 4 thousand different. As someone points out, you can do a very direct comparison with the prices of the Honda Civics and Accords, which have hybrid and non-hybrid versions. There is also now those versions of the Toyota Camry.
"The Signal" is a podcast about Firefly-related news. That method you mention is what they use, and it sounds incredible. It's also way easy. I had listened to many episodes of their podcast before I was shocked to hear that they are not in the same studio. They described the method in one of their shows. The two cohosts, Les and Kari, are in different cities. They make a call on a cell phone to have the other person's audio in their ear, but then they are just sitting in front of a microphone to record their half of the conversation. Editing in post overlays them, and it sounds completely transparent like they're sitting together. Give a listen to an episode of "The Signal" to find out how good that audio and cohost banter sounds.
(subtle plug) On second thought, I think you should listen to several episodes of that podcast to really get a feel for it. You might just also get hooked on Firefly.
I was thinking about this from my mind's perspective as a semiconductor engineer. I started to run through various logic combinations of win/loss for $LARGECORP and $NORMALGUY to figure out what is fair. At first, I was thinking that loser pays the lesser of the two court costs would work, but then I did come up with one more variable that needs to be figured in. If you say loser pays the lesser of the costs, you don't want to allow the self-representing pro se litigants to file frivilous cases and then have to pay nothing if they lose.
I propose a system of: Loser pays the costs of the lesser of the two legal defenses, not including pro se. Large vs. pro se needs a medium amount set, though. Here is how it would work out in each combination, which seems fair in my view. These can be looked at in either direction of plaintiff/defendant, as I will describe a win for each side.
$LARGECORP vs. $NORMALGUY or vice versa This is the situation we're normally discussing with these RIAA cases. 1. If $LARGECORP wins, they have the favorable decision, plus a little chunk of cash, which is not that important to them anyway. $NORMALGUY is only on the hook for having to pay to $LARGECORP the cost of his own reasonably priced attorney fees, not the cost of the corporate dream team, which would bankrupt most individuals. 2. If $NORMALGUY wins, he recovers his costs, so pursuing justice and truth has not hurt him financially, and he is incentivised to fight for what's right. $LARGECORP can not file cases by the hundreds to use as bullying because defendants are now enabled to defend instead of settle and it costs $LARGECORP a financial penalty for each one.
$NORMALGUY vs. $PRO_SE or vice versa 1. If $NORMALGUY wins, he is reimbursed for his hassle, and $PRO_SE is penalized a reasonable amount. 2. If $PRO_SE wins, he is rewarded for seeking the right, and $NORMALGUY is penalized a reasonable amount.
$LARGECORP vs. $PRO_SE or vice versa This is the one where there is no representative medium sized amount to specify as the costs to be paid. You could set up some kind of estimate where the judge comes up with an approximate amount of billable hours the defense would be, times an hourly rate of one regular attorney. Or, you could just just set a default amount into law of $10,000 or something so there's no arguing over the amount. It still effectively puts a medium sized financial penalty in place to deter frivilous lawsuits from either side.
I think that would really work well for court reform of civil cases. It would be a clear and consistent rule to enforce that would clear up a lot of the abuse of the court system, and it would take some of the unlimited power away from the corporations.
Generally good, but part of that is just bogus. You said:
All those cases you settled earlier, out of court where no precident was established? They aren't really settled now, unless the duration for appeals has also lapsed. If some Boston Legal sized firm takes one client's case, they will call all the new and old litigants that look promising, put together a whopping big countersuit, and your worst nightmare downside is now, at the very least, several billion dollars.
First of all, there was no court judgement, so there is nothing to appeal. Second, remember what settlement of a lawsuit generally means. I just about guarantee that the RIAA settlement offers included the stipulation that the defendant could not pursue any legal action against them. So those who have settled have already sold off that right.
As someone pointed out, the old updates and patches for Win98 and Win2K will still be available for a long time on WindowsUpdate. They just won't be releasing new ones. I have had to do re-installs for myself and friends several times, and I know can get owned before it finishes downloading the updates. So here is a pretty basic sequence to safely install and update. Preferrably this would all be done behind at least a basic consumer router, though.
Preferred software to have first--1. Your Windows install CDs 2. I have a utilities CD-R for new installs that has a bunch of stuff on it (Zone Alarm, Firefox, Thunderbird, Flash, Quicktime), but the two you really need are Zone Alarm and Firefox. Zone Alarm will control incoming and outgoing connections. 3. If the system is XP, hopefully have the Service Pack 2 on CD-R since it's a huge beast to download through WindowsUpdate.
Steps with the computer unhooked from the net: Wipe the hard drive and do the basic Windows install. Install Zone Alarm, Firefox. Configure IE--it actually has a cool feature that I haven't seen in other browsers, where you can set the overall security settings, but list particular domains as exceptions. I turn up the overall settings to high/paranoid, and then list *.microsoft.com as lower security so it can run the WindowsUpdate ActiveX control.
Then plug into the router/internet. Start into the repetitive patch and reboot sequence of WindowsUpdate. Zone Alarm will ask for permission whenever IE tries to access it, so you can just click "Allow" each time it asks, without setting it to permanently have permission.
You're fairly safe from that point, using Firefox for your browsing and keeping good control with Zone Alarm of which programs you want to have net access and when you want them to. You can continue pretty safely this way for many years, or as long as your hardware holds up. About the only danger vector is if you use a separate email client. Email attachments get downloaded, and you have the responsibility to be careful of what you accept and/or virus scan them. I just use Yahoo Mail, so everything gets virus scanned before it gets to my computer. I think most other web mail sites do that too.
That item about the veg oil sales in New York getting shut down is the law being mis-applied. Antitrust laws are supposed to encourage competition and prevent a dominant company from doing sales tactics that would block potential competitors from entering the market. So regardless of the wording of the laws with regard to what can and can't be done, they are not even supposed to APPLY to small companies that are trying to enter into the market.
The other problem with this is that it should only apply if the companies are selling the same thing. You can't look at the market price of milk, and then decide that that is also the market price of water, Pepsi, Chardonnay, etc. because they are all things you drink. Vegetable oil fuel is a different product than petro diesel, which has a different cost to acquire/produce. The thing they quoted about not to sell for less than some amount below the market price is to prevent a large company from selling at a loss to drive out smaller competitors who can't afford to sell at a loss. When you are talking about veg oil fuel, they are still making a profit at $1.04 a gallon, so that is not predatory pricing.
So for both of those reasons, they have grounds to fight the state government in court on this.
I've seen a couple of blog posts about it, and I think this is a good one that describes it well. The movie execs don't seem to understand what they just paid for. There is a Bittorrent protocol, which we are familiar with, and then there is the Bittorrent, Inc. company. They are not really very related to each other, except that Bram Cohen is kind of involved in both. The media deal was with the Bittorrent company and, specifically, their website: bittorrent.com. The execs don't seem to realize that it has no bearing at all on the continuing use of bittorrent clients by millions of people.
Also, you can get approved for a home loan with a good interest rate without a FICO score. Even someone who has been through a bankruptcy can get a good loan if they have paid their bills (rent, utilities) early or on time for about 2-3 years. Then, a mortgage lender who does manual underwriting (meaning they actually look at the person's situation, instead of just the FICO number) can get them a good loan. A FICO score is just the easiest, brainless way of evaluating for loans.
The FICO score is an "I love debt" score. It is entirely figured on the amount and types of debt you have and your payment history on them. Someone who has a net worth of millions and makes $200K a year income would still have a 0 FICO score if they paid cash for everything. That person could write a check to buy 2 of those houses, but couldn't get approved for a loan from a finance company that only looks at credit scores.
I think Americans have a bad habit of worshipping at the altar of the credit score. That timeline you listed just made me sad. 24.9% APR? A $12K car loan for a broke person? Why do you talk about these like they are good things? That person is immediately diving back into credit cards and car loans. Isn't debt what put them into bankruptcy before? One of the sayings of alcoholics anonymous is that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Their plan of living on credit worked so well for them before, why do they think it will work better this time?
My timeline was that it was finally driven home to me that having debt adds risk to your life and just costs you more in paying interest to banks than just saving up and paying for things. My wife and I got very focused and lived on a tight budget for a while, and paid off all of our debt except our mortgage in about 10 months. We are now working on paying off our house mortgage early, and will have a paid-for house and no debt at all in about a year and a half to two years.
When you don't owe your life to banks, that is a kind of freedom that most Americans don't understand or appreciate.
Yes, actually, they are. Your username may say that you're a lawyer, but you are certainly not correct here. Parents are always responsible for the actions of their children. If someone's 16 year old kid gets drunk and in a car wreck and causes hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills, the parents are on the hook and on the receiving end of the lawsuit. There may be some recourse in rare situations where official paperwork is done for an emancipated minor. That would probably free the parents from liability for the child.
I was introduced to that game early this year, and have been playing it frequently with friends/relatives ever since. One of the things that is so great about it is the flexibility of the number of players. It is still really fun with 2, 3, or 4 people. With some expansion sets, you can get up to 5 or 6, but I haven't played with that many yet.
I have tried out MythTV in a couple of forms before, and coule basically get it working easily enough, except for that steaming pile which was the supposed export to DVD or VCD. I tried a couple of their methods with NUVexport and Mythburn, and they wouldn't do squat. I had burned DVDs in Linux with K3B on that machine, so I couldn't figure out why MythTV couldn't handle it. Since some people were supposedly able to get it working with these ugly hacks, I wondered why the MythTV group was taking so long to actually put it in the main program so it would really work.
Slashdot Mirror
I should have put the links in there to begin with. I'll give you half-credit because I did have my locations mixed up. The European cases I was thinking of were in London, England and Mannheim, Germany, where Rambuses cases were dismissed when Rambus' patents were ruled invalid by the European Patent Office. The conviction of fraud in the JEDEC process was ruled by judge Robert Payne in federal court in the U.S.
There ya go, links, information, etc.
The price fixing is a separate issue that I do think the DRAM companies engaged in. The patent issue, however, happened differently than you are saying.
JEDEC has strict rules that everyone involved must disclose any patents that may be relevent to the standards they are working toward so that those issues can be dealt with before a standard is decided on. Rambus had some memory patents that had been filed but not issued. Rambus disclosed none of those. Then, as they attended and gathered information about the technologies being discussed, they were adding amendments to their existing applications with those specific technologies. Therefore, it would still have the earlier filing date to look like they had the patent before JEDEC decided on it. Rambus was actually found guilty of this fraud against JEDEC by a European court.
Well, you didn't waste any time jumping on the frothing insult bandwagon in response to a reasonable post. I admit in looking at it now that I did not explain fully what I meant. It's called "writer-based prose", where the rest of the concept was still in my mind, so I didn't notice that I didn't get everything out explicitly to the reader. From tracking this issue on Groklaw for quite a while there is a lot of legal basis in my head I was forgetting to specify.
I was referring to a hypothetical, which I'll describe in a second. Your comment is entirely correct in the current real life situation, which is that Microsoft is NOT distributing anything that they are claiming patent infringement on. Since they are making those patent threats, Section 7 of GPLv2 does say that MS cannot distribute that software.
My hypothetical is referring to what some people think is going on. WHAT IF Microsoft actually did choose to start distributing Linux anyway, even with their patent threats? There are multiple factors here. MS' distribution would be not allowed, so as you mention, the copyright owners of that GPL code can demand that MS stop distribution. That's not what I was talking about because it's the less interesting result. The element I was talking about is that MS in that hypothetical situation have put themselves under the legal doctrine called "estoppel".
You will find some definitions of estoppel in this Groklaw article. It basically means that if someone behaves with actions that demonstrate that they are allowing or giving permission for something, they cannot come back later and attack you with litigation for acting in accordance with that implied permission. So in this hypothetical situation, if MS were to actually distribute Linux to people with all the GPLv2 implications, that is implied permission that you are free to use it. Then, if they ever tried to sue anyone over patent rights on that, the defense of estoppel would shut that down.
That is what I meant by "giving rights to their patents", not "you must donate your patents", which you tried to attribute to me. MS would be basically giving up their patent enforcement rights for that particular software, not that the law would force them to donate ownership of them or anything.
I have read and understood the full text of GPLv2. My point was not coming from a clause contained in the GPL license; it was based on other legal principles.
The GPLv3 relates to prohibiting agreements like the Microsoft-Novell agreement. Even under GPLv2, however, it would result in Microsoft giving rights to their patents. Remember, this only would apply IF Microsoft directly distributed Linux, which they haven't in this case.
You hit one of the points big time. I have done this trick before, if you're just trying to read a long article of text only in a web page. Just shrink the width of your browser window so the text goes down to a smaller column width. One of the larger difficulties with long lines of text is tracking backward quickly along that line without accidentally jumping off and losing your place. If you shrink it down to just several words wide, you basically can eliminate one axis of scanning. Your eye can pick up the four or five words on the line at once, without having to do any left/right movement, so you can just quickly read down while picking up each line as a whole.
I've found that one trick to do wonders for easing eye strain as well as speeding up reading.
I posted a comment there on his page, refuting his arguments. It wasn't too hard to rationally shoot most of them down. I was able to refute 6 of 7, but one of them I just wasn't familiar enough with. Here's the comment if you're interested:
----------------
I can't take you very seriously because there is a lot of misdirection and hand-waving in your article. I will give you credit that I didn't see any outright lies, which Microsoft directly uses, though. Here I'll point out some problems with your points.
"They include open source code in their products."
You bring up the TCP/IP implementation as an example. That's not a good idea on your part because it's exactly the example people use to point out why Microsoft likes to let other people come up with good stuff under the BSD license and then selfishly take it with no thank-yous or giving in return. When it comes to a mutual sharing license that they can't take selfish advantage of, like the GPL, they spit venom, lies, quasi-legal lobbying interference with government action, violation of their court-ordered code of conduct from their anti-trust conviction, etc., etc. So basically, your first point illustrates that they just like code that other people open without restrictions so they can just snatch it.
"They support open source vendors."
I won't say a lot here because I'm not familiar with these Microsoft "programs created to test and verify open source applications on Microsoft platforms". If they do that, fair enough.
"They benefit from open source everyday."
It's called FUD. Have you read the content of the "free press" they pay for? That's kind of a twisted way to look at things to say that your competitors benefit you by giving you the opportunity to smear them with falsehoods. You're not understanding what the alternative situation was to this "battle with open source" they've been waging in the press. Before open source was maturing, Microsoft didn't have a big war in the press and had close to 100% market share. Everyone just kept buying it because they had never heard of anything else. Now Microsoft is having to viciously attack to slow the slide of their market share. Open source isn't doing them any favors there.
"They open source code."
Ah, UNIX tools for Windows. This is beating the ground where the dead horse rotted away several years ago. They did a small token action on a minor product most people don't use once, and we're supposed to be reminded of that over and over? That hardly seems like strong evidence to make it one of the "Seven Reasons Microsoft Loves Open Source". That's weak, man.
"They are adopting open source culture."
You're not recognizing what this is. Culture means actually doing something, which they're not. This is co-opting the language of open source to try to pretend to be something good, while remaining the wolf in sheep's clothing. It's the same with their proprietary data-dump of their new MS Office format, which they have ironically called "Microsoft Office Open XML". They want to have that word Open associated with them, even though the format is very closed and does not contain specs enough for anyone else to use it.
"They aren't threatened by open source."
Well this looks like a good place to continue the talk about the office document formats. They are threatened at least as much, if not more, by other forms of openness than just by Linux. Have you kept up with Microsoft's conduct in Massachusetts over the document format decision? They have been putting out some of their most blatant lies to convince them to use the Microsoft document formats, rather than go to a neutral document format that can be used by anyone, including Microsoft if they wanted to stop their tantrums long enough to do it. Read some of Andy Updegrove's blog to find out some of the story about that, including how they fed a false character assasination story on Peter Quinn to Boston Globe reporter Steve Kurkjian. The story was published before they even
That's a good, noble, smart-ass attitude about it, but not always realistic. Think of the difference of what happens.
First, if the company buys the monitor for you, it begins the jealousy factor, where others want to have it too, so managers and such, who wouldn't have any need for it, start asking, and it ends up wasting the company a lot of money.
If, on the other hand, you bring in a used monitor you got for free or $50 or so, you can do whatever you want with no hassle, and it put no obligation on the company. If anyone has any jealousy issues about it, the company can just say, "You're free to bring in an extra monitor for yourself if you want it too."
I agree that if the company has the budget to spare for it, and they're a decent company, they should be handling it, but depending on the number of employees and financial situation of the company, it's sometimes reasonable to help out on occasion when it does make your work easier. And I guess that does address your main point. It DOES benefit him, because being stuck using one monitor is awful and frustrating when you really want to work with two.
How far do you want to take that stand or yours? I brought in my scientific calculator from home, and most of the engineers I work with have their own personal calculators here at work, too. Calculators are not a one-size-fits-all; there's some personal preference there, but I wouldn't demand the company to order me one because "it's for work, and they should provide it". I also really like a certain type of pen, which the company doesn't have in the supply cupboards, so I bring those from home, too. I guess the guiding principle I have is that the company provides what's needed to do the job, but if there are extras that make it easier, and the cost is fairly cheap, I don't mind getting it for my own convenience. You could also think of it this way, that the company pays well, so if there are some things you want to buy to customize your work area, they've indirectly bought them for you. But by it being general funds in everyone's check, each person can customize what they want, instead of the company having to manage everyone's preferences and order a bunch of individual stuff.
I found this quite a lot, that you don't know the benefit if you've never tried it. For people who have only ever used one monitor, it's impossible to understand how good two is. They have gotten pretty good and efficient at dealing with the issues through alt-tab and virtual desktops and such. Doing those things has become such second nature that they don't seem bothersome. Once you give two monitors a try, though, and give it a few days to start realizing how your work becomes easier and faster, you feel you can never go back.
I work at a semiconductor company doing chip layout design. They came through about 6 months ago with upgrades offering the choice: One 24" LCD, or two 19" LCDs. Everyone in my group opted for the dual screens. It is absolutely the bomb because of what the parent poster mentioned. Total square inches sounds good, but managing that space (and trying to look at it) when the height and width are both too big is problematic. Having two discrete viewing areas is a huge improvement.
When doing layout design, it's a very visual, graphical thing. However, the layout is being done to match a schematic, which we also need to have open for reference. Plus there are other utilities and tools in the software for managing your list of layers you're viewing, lists of design rule violations to be cleaned up, etc. Having the layout maximized on one screen is great, while the schematic, etc. are on the other screen for reference.
I'm a positionally oriented person when it comes to windows in my workspace. When I had just the one monitor, I used to arrange the windows around toward different corners and edges of my screen. They were sized big enough to see, so they were very overlapping in the middle. It's a Linux station, so I had my window behavior set for "focus follows mouse", but not to automatically raise windows. I set a hotkey to raise/lower windows, so I could just point to an exposed edge of the one I wanted and hit the key to raise it. Or I would sometimes just point in the middle of the screen and start hitting that button to cycle through the windows I had going on.
There. The second time you got it right. One of the reasons why FOSS works so well is that people are mostly programming to their interests. Big companies can pay people to do things that they don't really care about, but it's generally not as high a quality of work as people who are working on something because they love it.
Here's a way of thinking of the GPL that may change some of your attitude to it. Let's say you were a generous donor to the community and wanted to donate a really nice new playground to the city parks that would be free and available for anyone to use. To make sure your gift stayed available for everyone to use, you add the condition that the city cannot close it off and make it a "pay to enter" playground. Your gift was to the people in the community, but if you don't have that condition on it, it leaves the city with the "freedom" to take that gift away from those you wanted to give it to.
from pulling that big a number out of it. There are no hybrids that cost $10,000 more than non-hybrid equivalents. They are generally around 3 to 4 thousand different. As someone points out, you can do a very direct comparison with the prices of the Honda Civics and Accords, which have hybrid and non-hybrid versions. There is also now those versions of the Toyota Camry.
"The Signal" is a podcast about Firefly-related news. That method you mention is what they use, and it sounds incredible. It's also way easy. I had listened to many episodes of their podcast before I was shocked to hear that they are not in the same studio. They described the method in one of their shows. The two cohosts, Les and Kari, are in different cities. They make a call on a cell phone to have the other person's audio in their ear, but then they are just sitting in front of a microphone to record their half of the conversation. Editing in post overlays them, and it sounds completely transparent like they're sitting together. Give a listen to an episode of "The Signal" to find out how good that audio and cohost banter sounds.
(subtle plug) On second thought, I think you should listen to several episodes of that podcast to really get a feel for it. You might just also get hooked on Firefly.
I was thinking about this from my mind's perspective as a semiconductor engineer. I started to run through various logic combinations of win/loss for $LARGECORP and $NORMALGUY to figure out what is fair. At first, I was thinking that loser pays the lesser of the two court costs would work, but then I did come up with one more variable that needs to be figured in. If you say loser pays the lesser of the costs, you don't want to allow the self-representing pro se litigants to file frivilous cases and then have to pay nothing if they lose.
I propose a system of: Loser pays the costs of the lesser of the two legal defenses, not including pro se. Large vs. pro se needs a medium amount set, though. Here is how it would work out in each combination, which seems fair in my view. These can be looked at in either direction of plaintiff/defendant, as I will describe a win for each side.
$LARGECORP vs. $NORMALGUY or vice versa
This is the situation we're normally discussing with these RIAA cases.
1. If $LARGECORP wins, they have the favorable decision, plus a little chunk of cash, which is not that important to them anyway. $NORMALGUY is only on the hook for having to pay to $LARGECORP the cost of his own reasonably priced attorney fees, not the cost of the corporate dream team, which would bankrupt most individuals.
2. If $NORMALGUY wins, he recovers his costs, so pursuing justice and truth has not hurt him financially, and he is incentivised to fight for what's right. $LARGECORP can not file cases by the hundreds to use as bullying because defendants are now enabled to defend instead of settle and it costs $LARGECORP a financial penalty for each one.
$NORMALGUY vs. $PRO_SE or vice versa
1. If $NORMALGUY wins, he is reimbursed for his hassle, and $PRO_SE is penalized a reasonable amount.
2. If $PRO_SE wins, he is rewarded for seeking the right, and $NORMALGUY is penalized a reasonable amount.
$LARGECORP vs. $PRO_SE or vice versa
This is the one where there is no representative medium sized amount to specify as the costs to be paid. You could set up some kind of estimate where the judge comes up with an approximate amount of billable hours the defense would be, times an hourly rate of one regular attorney. Or, you could just just set a default amount into law of $10,000 or something so there's no arguing over the amount. It still effectively puts a medium sized financial penalty in place to deter frivilous lawsuits from either side.
I think that would really work well for court reform of civil cases. It would be a clear and consistent rule to enforce that would clear up a lot of the abuse of the court system, and it would take some of the unlimited power away from the corporations.
First of all, there was no court judgement, so there is nothing to appeal. Second, remember what settlement of a lawsuit generally means. I just about guarantee that the RIAA settlement offers included the stipulation that the defendant could not pursue any legal action against them. So those who have settled have already sold off that right.
It's actually Novell's money. There is a Novell partial summary judgement motion pending before the court to get that money back.
Until TurboTax releases a Linux version...yes.
As someone pointed out, the old updates and patches for Win98 and Win2K will still be available for a long time on WindowsUpdate. They just won't be releasing new ones. I have had to do re-installs for myself and friends several times, and I know can get owned before it finishes downloading the updates. So here is a pretty basic sequence to safely install and update. Preferrably this would all be done behind at least a basic consumer router, though.
Preferred software to have first--1. Your Windows install CDs 2. I have a utilities CD-R for new installs that has a bunch of stuff on it (Zone Alarm, Firefox, Thunderbird, Flash, Quicktime), but the two you really need are Zone Alarm and Firefox. Zone Alarm will control incoming and outgoing connections. 3. If the system is XP, hopefully have the Service Pack 2 on CD-R since it's a huge beast to download through WindowsUpdate.
Steps with the computer unhooked from the net:
Wipe the hard drive and do the basic Windows install.
Install Zone Alarm, Firefox.
Configure IE--it actually has a cool feature that I haven't seen in other browsers, where you can set the overall security settings, but list particular domains as exceptions. I turn up the overall settings to high/paranoid, and then list *.microsoft.com as lower security so it can run the WindowsUpdate ActiveX control.
Then plug into the router/internet.
Start into the repetitive patch and reboot sequence of WindowsUpdate. Zone Alarm will ask for permission whenever IE tries to access it, so you can just click "Allow" each time it asks, without setting it to permanently have permission.
You're fairly safe from that point, using Firefox for your browsing and keeping good control with Zone Alarm of which programs you want to have net access and when you want them to. You can continue pretty safely this way for many years, or as long as your hardware holds up. About the only danger vector is if you use a separate email client. Email attachments get downloaded, and you have the responsibility to be careful of what you accept and/or virus scan them. I just use Yahoo Mail, so everything gets virus scanned before it gets to my computer. I think most other web mail sites do that too.
That item about the veg oil sales in New York getting shut down is the law being mis-applied. Antitrust laws are supposed to encourage competition and prevent a dominant company from doing sales tactics that would block potential competitors from entering the market. So regardless of the wording of the laws with regard to what can and can't be done, they are not even supposed to APPLY to small companies that are trying to enter into the market.
The other problem with this is that it should only apply if the companies are selling the same thing. You can't look at the market price of milk, and then decide that that is also the market price of water, Pepsi, Chardonnay, etc. because they are all things you drink. Vegetable oil fuel is a different product than petro diesel, which has a different cost to acquire/produce. The thing they quoted about not to sell for less than some amount below the market price is to prevent a large company from selling at a loss to drive out smaller competitors who can't afford to sell at a loss. When you are talking about veg oil fuel, they are still making a profit at $1.04 a gallon, so that is not predatory pricing.
So for both of those reasons, they have grounds to fight the state government in court on this.
I've seen a couple of blog posts about it, and I think this is a good one that describes it well. The movie execs don't seem to understand what they just paid for. There is a Bittorrent protocol, which we are familiar with, and then there is the Bittorrent, Inc. company. They are not really very related to each other, except that Bram Cohen is kind of involved in both. The media deal was with the Bittorrent company and, specifically, their website: bittorrent.com. The execs don't seem to realize that it has no bearing at all on the continuing use of bittorrent clients by millions of people.
Also, you can get approved for a home loan with a good interest rate without a FICO score. Even someone who has been through a bankruptcy can get a good loan if they have paid their bills (rent, utilities) early or on time for about 2-3 years. Then, a mortgage lender who does manual underwriting (meaning they actually look at the person's situation, instead of just the FICO number) can get them a good loan. A FICO score is just the easiest, brainless way of evaluating for loans.
The FICO score is an "I love debt" score. It is entirely figured on the amount and types of debt you have and your payment history on them. Someone who has a net worth of millions and makes $200K a year income would still have a 0 FICO score if they paid cash for everything. That person could write a check to buy 2 of those houses, but couldn't get approved for a loan from a finance company that only looks at credit scores.
I think Americans have a bad habit of worshipping at the altar of the credit score. That timeline you listed just made me sad. 24.9% APR? A $12K car loan for a broke person? Why do you talk about these like they are good things? That person is immediately diving back into credit cards and car loans. Isn't debt what put them into bankruptcy before? One of the sayings of alcoholics anonymous is that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Their plan of living on credit worked so well for them before, why do they think it will work better this time?
My timeline was that it was finally driven home to me that having debt adds risk to your life and just costs you more in paying interest to banks than just saving up and paying for things. My wife and I got very focused and lived on a tight budget for a while, and paid off all of our debt except our mortgage in about 10 months. We are now working on paying off our house mortgage early, and will have a paid-for house and no debt at all in about a year and a half to two years.
When you don't owe your life to banks, that is a kind of freedom that most Americans don't understand or appreciate.
Yes, actually, they are. Your username may say that you're a lawyer, but you are certainly not correct here. Parents are always responsible for the actions of their children. If someone's 16 year old kid gets drunk and in a car wreck and causes hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills, the parents are on the hook and on the receiving end of the lawsuit. There may be some recourse in rare situations where official paperwork is done for an emancipated minor. That would probably free the parents from liability for the child.
I was introduced to that game early this year, and have been playing it frequently with friends/relatives ever since. One of the things that is so great about it is the flexibility of the number of players. It is still really fun with 2, 3, or 4 people. With some expansion sets, you can get up to 5 or 6, but I haven't played with that many yet.
They have a pirate guy on the front page with a special you can find by locating the pirate treasure chest icon on the site.
I have tried out MythTV in a couple of forms before, and coule basically get it working easily enough, except for that steaming pile which was the supposed export to DVD or VCD. I tried a couple of their methods with NUVexport and Mythburn, and they wouldn't do squat. I had burned DVDs in Linux with K3B on that machine, so I couldn't figure out why MythTV couldn't handle it. Since some people were supposedly able to get it working with these ugly hacks, I wondered why the MythTV group was taking so long to actually put it in the main program so it would really work.