A vaccine is something that stimulates the immune system with antigens. Most vaccines are preventive, but this one happens to be a therapeutic vaccine--you give it after the disease has already started. There are a few other examples of therapeutic vaccines.
It will probably become more difficult for Joe Coder to just submit a patch to fix a bug. At worst, a lengthy background check will become required to verify that he hasn't worked on something similar for a corporation. At best, he'll have to complete some paperwork before he gains committer status.
That didn't start with this lawsuit.
Furthermore, even if "bad code" slips in, it can simply be removed. That sort of thing has happened before and it's not the end of the world. The only reason SCO's complaint hasn't been addressed yet is because they haven't told anybody yet what their complaint actually is. As soon as they come forward, it will be addressed within days at most.
Open source is in a better situation than proprietary, closed-source software when it comes to copyright violations. If a closed source company puts someone else's code into their products, they might be trying to get away with it; that's why courts penalize such conduct pretty harshly in the rare cases where it is actually discovered. But it makes no sense to put copyrighted code into Linux because it's so trivial for copyright holders to check--obviously, when that occurs, it's either an accident or stupidity, and both proof and attribution are so trivial. That's why merely requiring removal of the code from the open source project is usually sufficient.
So, no, I don't think anything has changed with the SCO lawsuit. People have been worrying about these issues for many years, and they have been dealing with them for many years. The only thing that's different about SCO is the spectacle and PR that surrounds it, probably just intended to drive up SCO's stock price.
Now Apple has changed its license to appease the FSF, but the first thing the FSF does is spout off about how the changes aren't good enough, and even if they were Apple would still be condemned for not opening up all of OS X.
RMS didn't say "don't use Darwin" or any of that, he said that people shouldn't use the APSL for new projects.
Apple has already given back a lot of code (ZeroConf, KHTML updates, etc.),
Apple doesn't have the resources to handle the development necessary to put together a modern OS. Without GNU C, Mach, X11, the BSD kernel and environment, and lots of other free software, and the interoperability with UNIX workstations that brings, Apple would probably be facing bankruptcy by now.
When a company like Apple puts out software under any license, proprietary or free, people have a right and a duty to analyze it carefully and figure out what the implications are. And it is very useful for people like RMS to share those results. RMS didn't flame or insult Apple, he just stated the results of his analysis.
But whiners and zealots like you can't deal with the facts. You support Apple because it's a religion to you, not a tool to get work done.
Maybe it's just me, but I really don't get the problem here. If you don't agree with their license, then you have a very simple option:
Don't Give Them Your Code
To which one might add, in order not to support them:
Don't Use Their Code
And, you know what,
That's all RMS is saying.
Apple don't have to release any of their software as Open Source.
No, they don't. But just because they do doesn't mean anybody owes them anything. Furthermore, just because some company throws out some piece of software "for free" doesn't mean they are above criticism or analysis. And if their software comes with too many strings attached, then that is certainly worth pointing out.
Or do you only view intellectual property as being worthless?
Well, I don't. Companies like Apple are free to do with their intellectual property what they like, and people like RMS are free to point out the problems with their licenses. OK?
I'm getting tired of all the same stuff being said OVER AND OVER AGAIN, without any real information being said.
I don't know what that has to do with my posting. McBride made an incorrect statement about patent ownership, and I corrected it. That is real information, both about patents and about McBride's incompetence.
Unfortunately there is no way to know the specifics without full access to the legal discovery process,
But SCO keeps making press releases and badmouthing Linux and the GPL, without presenting a shred of evidence. The least we can do is counter their bogus claims when they are factually incorrect, as they are in this case.
This would create more hassles than it would fix. Inputting and updating these lists would take an inordinate amount of time. Don't forget the postal unions, paying postal workers to update these databases would only increase your postage rates more.
There is nothing to "input"--the postal office can get the data from public records (phone books, credit reporting agencies, bulk mailing companies, etc.).
Not to mention that the lists are usually long out of date.
That doesn't matter. Those lists aren't used for addressing people by name, they are used to resolve ambiguities. Even if large portions of the lists were out of date, they'd still be able to resolve most incorrectly addressed mail.
There is an alternative?
Sure: use a system of county and neighborhood names. People can remember those much more easily, and they are much more robust to misspellings. The only reason for ZIP codes that are numbers historically is manual data entry and easy computer recognition.
So, you mail would be addressed to
John Smith 1100 5th Ave. Greenwich Village -- North New York City New York
BIG Misconception - We don't give a damn about anything above the address line unless it is a business/non-person entity, or a building (by name).
I know that the US postal office doesn't give a damn about names; my point is that it should.
but putting mail through manual sorting because some dumbass neglected to add a St or Ave and we have to hunt down a solution is extremely time consuming.
The technology to read stuff above the address line is there and use it for mail routing automatically and instantaneously has existed for many years. If the US postal service doesn't use it, that is its fault, not the consumer's fault.
Based on what? Are you saying that there are duplications of NUMA and SMP code between SCO and Linux? And what would the problem with that be?
Linus and the team will learn an important lesson about tracking the pedigree of all code submissions.
They are tracking the pedigree of all the code, but SCO doesn't give them a chance to respond to their claims. If SCO came clean with their assertions, we could resolve this issue in a few hours. It would probably turn out that the code in question was either contributed by one of SCO's predecessors, or that SCO copied it from Linux into their software.
But all you implementers, keep a fallback strategy in mind, be it BSD or Solaris or whatever.
There are about half a dozen open source kernels people could fall back on. But until SCO actually makes concrete and specific claims and there is a demonstrable problem, there is no point in worrying. So far, this looks like an SCO stock price manipulation scam. Merely the existence of duplicated code in Linux and some SCO software is neither surprising nor particularly worrisome for Linux (it may be to SCO, which may have violated the GPL once more).
They may have directly licensed the non-GPL code, methods, etc from Caldera while using that as a base.
If they only licensed "the non-GPL code", then that doesn't protect them against lawsuits over the Linux kernel, which is entirely covered by the GPL. And if they included the non-GPL'ed code into the Linux kernel and claim that that portion of the code is still not GPL'ed, then they cannot redistribute the result under the GPL.
No matter which way you look at it, Lycoris cannot distribute the Linux kernel in a way in which they and their customers are immune from SCO's claims and other Linux users aren't.
In the release McBride said, "Novell continues to say that it owns the UNIX System V patents, yet it must know that it does not. A simple review of U.S. Patent Office records reveals that SCO owns those patents."
The US Patent Office does not keep track of ownership of patents; they merely record inventors and who the patent is assigned to intially (from the application). Or does McBride think everybody registers all their patent-related contracts with the USPTO?
Well, this is good: McBride obviously has absolutely no clue about intellectual property, which just further supports the notion that SCO's claims are completely groundless. The lawyers are going to have a lot of fun with SCO in court.
IANAL, but my understanding is that when it comes to intellectual property, failure to defend that property is grounds for de facto loss of rights to that property.
Your understanding is wrong. The only intellectual property you lose through non-enforcement is trademarks.
If 300+ million people can't address mail "correctly", then perhaps there is something wrong with the address system or the way the addresses are processed.
For example, the US postal office has access to lists of people and their addresses--if someone writes "1234 31st Street" instead of "1234 31st Avenue", then that should be easy to correct since there is unlikely to be a "Peter Clark" living at both places.
Maybe the US postal system should advise cities to change street names, or maybe it should introduce something more mnemonic and redundant than ZIP codes. Using a meaningless nine digit sequence of numbers to help route mail has to be one of the more stupid decisions; even phone numbers have mnemonics, and at least with phone numbers, you get immediate feedback when you transpose two digits.
It's easy to blame the user, but the postal system has to work for customers, not the other way around. People do transpose digits, they do write "5" and "S" indistinguishably, and that just isn't going to change.
The configuration of the Linux kernel and version specificity of kernel modules is a major headache. Other operating systems manage to let developers distribute kernel modules that can be compiled and run against a wide variety of kernel versions and that have a lifetime of several years. But the Linux kernel interfaces apparently are not guaranteed to be stable and most kernel modules are just distributed as part of a monolithic kernel source tree (millions of lines!). And configuring a kernel itself is a big headache, usually requiring several tries to get something working.
Many of the things that are in the kernel probably shouldn't even be in the kernel but could easily be implemented in user space if the Linux kernel only had appropriate interfaces. For example, many file systems, PPP, and many USB drivers could be put into user mode programs, but the Linux kernel lacks the interfaces to do it.
All Lycoris Desktop/LX users are unaffected by this new licensing program and are immune to any further changes in the SCO licensing structure due to the perpetuity of the prior agreement.
Unless Lycoris is referring to the GPL when they are talking about the "prior agreement", it is impossible for them to have another agreement with SCO: the GPL simply does not permit redistribution of code under side-agreements. Either everybody can redistribute or nobody can. That clause is in there precisely to keep companies from doing what SCO is doing.
What happens when the person who invented it is not even the same company that holds it? [...] But the new shell company just fires everyone and keeps the 'assests'. No this is not the way patents are ment to 'promote science'.
Sure it is: without the ability to buy and sell patents, and without the ability to hold patents without manufacturing something, patents would be worthless. In fact, they would be worse than worthless because then really only a few big companies could have them and could use them to exclude everybody else.
I mean, if I invent something and patent it and GM or Microsoft just start using my patent without paying, what do you want me to do? Devote my time to legal issues for the next decade? It makes sense in that case to sell the patent to an intellectual property company that is capable of actually pursuing GM or Microsoft.
Now, I don't particular like patents, and I like software patents even less. I think the patent system should be reformed to exclude software patents and to shorten the duration of many other patents. But the ability to trade in patents and the option of not making a product are essential; without them, the patent system would be even more broken than it already is.
Had one company swipe one of our products then 'patent' it. Luckly we a) had TONS of prior art, and b) they had NO clue what they were doing.
Well, and what they did might even have been justified: if you manufacture something and keep the process secret, you get no protection from the patent system, and you shouldn't. The whole point of patents is to get companies to disclose what they are doing publicy. If you don't disclose (through patenting or publication), you are at risk that someone else patents what you have already been doing. That, again, is the way a consistent patent system has to work.
I find it interesting that "geeks" can't see one of them be capable of being a terrorist.
I have no problem accepting the idea that geeks can be terrorists.
However, basing a terrorism and conspiracy conviction on a verbal admission of intent obtained under a threat of harsh penalties is chilling because that is exactly how the legal system works in totalitarian governments. Of course, that sort of thing works well for eliminating terrorism, but it also works well for eliminating justice.
Finally his lawyer and the judge would not let him plead to something he is not guilty of. This isn't some over worked state court and judge this is a federal court.
Oh, so you are saying that judges have some kind of independent knowledge of who is guilty and who is not? Why don't we do away with evidence, juries, and trials altogether then and just have judges announce the verdict?
The fact is that until a public trial has taken place, with all the evidence presented in public, guilt or innocence has not been determined. Trials should take place really even if the defendant admits his guilt.
I know plea bargaining can be abused, but to do away with the practice would be a gross violation of the rights of defendants -- they have a right to plea guilty for whatever reason.
Your argument doesn't work. Eliminating plea bargains doesn't take away the right to plead guilty for "whatever reason". Eliminating plea bargains is a restriction on the conduct of prosecutors and judges, not on the conduct of defendants. The defendant can still plead guilty to whatever he likes.
If there is a good thing about software patents, it is that IBM, HP, and Sun's patent portfolios are working for Linux, not against it. That's not because it happens to be convenient for IBM right now to use their patents, it's because those companies are shipping Linux and therefore have given people license to use their patents as far as Linux/GPL'ed software is concerned.
I would feel safer if software patents were just abolished, but with all major UNIX companies shipping Linux, they may actually help. In fact, GPL'ed and open source software may be an effective, cheap, and fair vehicle to achieve patent cross-licensing among multiple companies, because the patents and patent licenses basically go with the software and don't require any separate negotiations.
this isn't exactly new. Plenty of mice have either two wheels, one for horizontal and one for vertical scrolling, or they use a point stick like the IBM Scrollpoint. There are many other designs as well.
It seems odd and not very efficient to design a mouse with a tilting wheel for horizontal scrolling; maybe that's simply to avoid the patents on all the other bidirectional scrolling mice people have developed.
Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban. Prosecutors agreed to drop charges of conspiring to levy war against the United States and conspiring to provide material support for terrorism.
Plea bargains are a travesty of justice. Telling someone "we can prosecute you for a crime on which there is the death penalty, or you can plead guilty to a lesser charge" creates a grave risk of making the innocent plead guilty. This is really not all that different from the interrogation and torture techniques used by the inquisition or totalitarian governments. Furthermore, it allows the guilty to get away with lesser charges.
I think the utilitarian argument for these kinds of arrangements doesn't work: no matter how many criminals we catch through plea bargains or how many crimes we prevent, the cost of such arrangements--sacrificing a fair trial and a thorough, public examination of the charges and evidence--is just too high. Plea bargains are killing the patient in order to save him.
"You and the others in the group were prepared to take up arms, and die as martyrs if necessary, to defend the Taliban. Is this true?" U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones asked Hawash during the hearing.
This, too, is rather chilling. It's not that conspiracy might not be a prosecutable crime under some circumstances, and maybe this is one of them. But in this phrasing, he didn't actually admit to doing anything, he was just "prepared to do" something.
The rewards of the patent should go to the people who invented the technology, not the people who happen to make a product. That is the intent of the patent system, and it is what is needed in order to encourage innovation. It is nice when inventor and manufacturer coincide, but they don't have to.
For example, a generic drug maker could make a patented drug tomorrow if they liked, but it's the original patent holder that paid the cost of developing the drug in the first place.
Unfortunately, in the public's mind, the manufacturer is often confused with the inventor: Microsoft, Apple, Palm, and other companies are getting far more credit for innovation than they actually deserve.
There are many things wrong with the patent system, and there are many things wrong with this particular patent. But there is nothing wrong with rewarding the inventors over the manufacturers.
The source code is owned by the same people who owned the computers, laptops, and any other assets of the company. Most likely, that is not you. If those people decided not to do anything with the source code, that was their right: they can waste their money any way they like. Or maybe it's not wasted: if they own another company with a competing product, the last thing they will want is for this thing to get out. So, no, you don't own the code and there is nothing you can do with it or about it unless you can establish who does and get their permission.
There is a bill floating around Congress that would require copyright holders to pay a tiny ($1) fee every few years to maintain copyright protection for their works precisely to get creative works out of this sort of limbo. But even then, you might still be contractually bound not to disclose the software.
If this matters to you, you could try to make it part of your employment contract next time that under a well-defined set of circumstances (bankruptcy, five years elapsed without a product), your copyright reverts to you or the software may get published. In fact, customers might like such clauses as well (source escrow). But most companies won't go for it.
I have really tried hard to like any of the Linux PDAs and I use Linux everywhere else, but they simply aren't competitive as mainstream PDAs; a $99 Zire makes a better PDA than any of the much bulkier and more costly Linux PDAs.
What Linux PDAs need is a completely newly designed GUI, designed specifically for small screen devices, not some adaptation of toolkits that originated on desktops (Qt, Gtk+, Java).
If the jury was asked whether RIM violated the patent, they probably made the right decision in saying that they did.
But that's because NTP's patent is ridiculous. Who are they going to go after next? TabletPC users who happen to use a wireless connection? People who read E-mail through a handheld connected to their cell phone?
RIM is right in having this patent re-examined. Now, I think RIM itself is a thoroughly disgusting company when it comes to stupid patents and that if this infringement claim holds up it would be poetic justice. But that is little satisfaction in the long term: if these kinds of patents hold up in court, it is bad for the industry.
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A vaccine is something that stimulates the immune system with antigens. Most vaccines are preventive, but this one happens to be a therapeutic vaccine--you give it after the disease has already started. There are a few other examples of therapeutic vaccines.
It will probably become more difficult for Joe Coder to just submit a patch to fix a bug. At worst, a lengthy background check will become required to verify that he hasn't worked on something similar for a corporation. At best, he'll have to complete some paperwork before he gains committer status.
That didn't start with this lawsuit.
Furthermore, even if "bad code" slips in, it can simply be removed. That sort of thing has happened before and it's not the end of the world. The only reason SCO's complaint hasn't been addressed yet is because they haven't told anybody yet what their complaint actually is. As soon as they come forward, it will be addressed within days at most.
Open source is in a better situation than proprietary, closed-source software when it comes to copyright violations. If a closed source company puts someone else's code into their products, they might be trying to get away with it; that's why courts penalize such conduct pretty harshly in the rare cases where it is actually discovered. But it makes no sense to put copyrighted code into Linux because it's so trivial for copyright holders to check--obviously, when that occurs, it's either an accident or stupidity, and both proof and attribution are so trivial. That's why merely requiring removal of the code from the open source project is usually sufficient.
So, no, I don't think anything has changed with the SCO lawsuit. People have been worrying about these issues for many years, and they have been dealing with them for many years. The only thing that's different about SCO is the spectacle and PR that surrounds it, probably just intended to drive up SCO's stock price.
Now Apple has changed its license to appease the FSF, but the first thing the FSF does is spout off about how the changes aren't good enough, and even if they were Apple would still be condemned for not opening up all of OS X.
RMS didn't say "don't use Darwin" or any of that, he said that people shouldn't use the APSL for new projects.
Apple has already given back a lot of code (ZeroConf, KHTML updates, etc.),
Apple doesn't have the resources to handle the development necessary to put together a modern OS. Without GNU C, Mach, X11, the BSD kernel and environment, and lots of other free software, and the interoperability with UNIX workstations that brings, Apple would probably be facing bankruptcy by now.
When a company like Apple puts out software under any license, proprietary or free, people have a right and a duty to analyze it carefully and figure out what the implications are. And it is very useful for people like RMS to share those results. RMS didn't flame or insult Apple, he just stated the results of his analysis.
But whiners and zealots like you can't deal with the facts. You support Apple because it's a religion to you, not a tool to get work done.
Maybe it's just me, but I really don't get the problem here. If you don't agree with their license, then you have a very simple option:
Don't Give Them Your Code
To which one might add, in order not to support them:
Don't Use Their Code
And, you know what,
That's all RMS is saying.
Apple don't have to release any of their software as Open Source.
No, they don't. But just because they do doesn't mean anybody owes them anything. Furthermore, just because some company throws out some piece of software "for free" doesn't mean they are above criticism or analysis. And if their software comes with too many strings attached, then that is certainly worth pointing out.
Or do you only view intellectual property as being worthless?
Well, I don't. Companies like Apple are free to do with their intellectual property what they like, and people like RMS are free to point out the problems with their licenses. OK?
I'm getting tired of all the same stuff being said OVER AND OVER AGAIN, without any real information being said.
I don't know what that has to do with my posting. McBride made an incorrect statement about patent ownership, and I corrected it. That is real information, both about patents and about McBride's incompetence.
Unfortunately there is no way to know the specifics without full access to the legal discovery process,
But SCO keeps making press releases and badmouthing Linux and the GPL, without presenting a shred of evidence. The least we can do is counter their bogus claims when they are factually incorrect, as they are in this case.
There is nothing to "input"--the postal office can get the data from public records (phone books, credit reporting agencies, bulk mailing companies, etc.).
Not to mention that the lists are usually long out of date.
That doesn't matter. Those lists aren't used for addressing people by name, they are used to resolve ambiguities. Even if large portions of the lists were out of date, they'd still be able to resolve most incorrectly addressed mail.
There is an alternative?
Sure: use a system of county and neighborhood names. People can remember those much more easily, and they are much more robust to misspellings. The only reason for ZIP codes that are numbers historically is manual data entry and easy computer recognition.
So, you mail would be addressed to
BIG Misconception - We don't give a damn about anything above the address line unless it is a business/non-person entity, or a building (by name).
I know that the US postal office doesn't give a damn about names; my point is that it should.
but putting mail through manual sorting because some dumbass neglected to add a St or Ave and we have to hunt down a solution is extremely time consuming.
The technology to read stuff above the address line is there and use it for mail routing automatically and instantaneously has existed for many years. If the US postal service doesn't use it, that is its fault, not the consumer's fault.
NUMA and SMP will probably be yanked,
Based on what? Are you saying that there are duplications of NUMA and SMP code between SCO and Linux? And what would the problem with that be?
Linus and the team will learn an important lesson about tracking the pedigree of all code submissions.
They are tracking the pedigree of all the code, but SCO doesn't give them a chance to respond to their claims. If SCO came clean with their assertions, we could resolve this issue in a few hours. It would probably turn out that the code in question was either contributed by one of SCO's predecessors, or that SCO copied it from Linux into their software.
But all you implementers, keep a fallback strategy in mind, be it BSD or Solaris or whatever.
There are about half a dozen open source kernels people could fall back on. But until SCO actually makes concrete and specific claims and there is a demonstrable problem, there is no point in worrying. So far, this looks like an SCO stock price manipulation scam. Merely the existence of duplicated code in Linux and some SCO software is neither surprising nor particularly worrisome for Linux (it may be to SCO, which may have violated the GPL once more).
They may have directly licensed the non-GPL code, methods, etc from Caldera while using that as a base.
If they only licensed "the non-GPL code", then that doesn't protect them against lawsuits over the Linux kernel, which is entirely covered by the GPL. And if they included the non-GPL'ed code into the Linux kernel and claim that that portion of the code is still not GPL'ed, then they cannot redistribute the result under the GPL.
No matter which way you look at it, Lycoris cannot distribute the Linux kernel in a way in which they and their customers are immune from SCO's claims and other Linux users aren't.
In the release McBride said, "Novell continues to say that it owns the UNIX System V patents, yet it must know that it does not. A simple review of U.S. Patent Office records reveals that SCO owns those patents."
The US Patent Office does not keep track of ownership of patents; they merely record inventors and who the patent is assigned to intially (from the application). Or does McBride think everybody registers all their patent-related contracts with the USPTO?
Well, this is good: McBride obviously has absolutely no clue about intellectual property, which just further supports the notion that SCO's claims are completely groundless. The lawyers are going to have a lot of fun with SCO in court.
IANAL, but my understanding is that when it comes to intellectual property, failure to defend that property is grounds for de facto loss of rights to that property.
Your understanding is wrong. The only intellectual property you lose through non-enforcement is trademarks.
If 300+ million people can't address mail "correctly", then perhaps there is something wrong with the address system or the way the addresses are processed.
For example, the US postal office has access to lists of people and their addresses--if someone writes "1234 31st Street" instead of "1234 31st Avenue", then that should be easy to correct since there is unlikely to be a "Peter Clark" living at both places.
Maybe the US postal system should advise cities to change street names, or maybe it should introduce something more mnemonic and redundant than ZIP codes. Using a meaningless nine digit sequence of numbers to help route mail has to be one of the more stupid decisions; even phone numbers have mnemonics, and at least with phone numbers, you get immediate feedback when you transpose two digits.
It's easy to blame the user, but the postal system has to work for customers, not the other way around. People do transpose digits, they do write "5" and "S" indistinguishably, and that just isn't going to change.
The configuration of the Linux kernel and version specificity of kernel modules is a major headache. Other operating systems manage to let developers distribute kernel modules that can be compiled and run against a wide variety of kernel versions and that have a lifetime of several years. But the Linux kernel interfaces apparently are not guaranteed to be stable and most kernel modules are just distributed as part of a monolithic kernel source tree (millions of lines!). And configuring a kernel itself is a big headache, usually requiring several tries to get something working.
Many of the things that are in the kernel probably shouldn't even be in the kernel but could easily be implemented in user space if the Linux kernel only had appropriate interfaces. For example, many file systems, PPP, and many USB drivers could be put into user mode programs, but the Linux kernel lacks the interfaces to do it.
All Lycoris Desktop/LX users are unaffected by this new licensing program and are immune to any further changes in the SCO licensing structure due to the perpetuity of the prior agreement.
Unless Lycoris is referring to the GPL when they are talking about the "prior agreement", it is impossible for them to have another agreement with SCO: the GPL simply does not permit redistribution of code under side-agreements. Either everybody can redistribute or nobody can. That clause is in there precisely to keep companies from doing what SCO is doing.
What happens when the person who invented it is not even the same company that holds it? [...] But the new shell company just fires everyone and keeps the 'assests'. No this is not the way patents are ment to 'promote science'.
Sure it is: without the ability to buy and sell patents, and without the ability to hold patents without manufacturing something, patents would be worthless. In fact, they would be worse than worthless because then really only a few big companies could have them and could use them to exclude everybody else.
I mean, if I invent something and patent it and GM or Microsoft just start using my patent without paying, what do you want me to do? Devote my time to legal issues for the next decade? It makes sense in that case to sell the patent to an intellectual property company that is capable of actually pursuing GM or Microsoft.
Now, I don't particular like patents, and I like software patents even less. I think the patent system should be reformed to exclude software patents and to shorten the duration of many other patents. But the ability to trade in patents and the option of not making a product are essential; without them, the patent system would be even more broken than it already is.
Had one company swipe one of our products then 'patent' it. Luckly we a) had TONS of prior art, and b) they had NO clue what they were doing.
Well, and what they did might even have been justified: if you manufacture something and keep the process secret, you get no protection from the patent system, and you shouldn't. The whole point of patents is to get companies to disclose what they are doing publicy. If you don't disclose (through patenting or publication), you are at risk that someone else patents what you have already been doing. That, again, is the way a consistent patent system has to work.
I find it interesting that "geeks" can't see one of them be capable of being a terrorist.
I have no problem accepting the idea that geeks can be terrorists.
However, basing a terrorism and conspiracy conviction on a verbal admission of intent obtained under a threat of harsh penalties is chilling because that is exactly how the legal system works in totalitarian governments. Of course, that sort of thing works well for eliminating terrorism, but it also works well for eliminating justice.
Finally his lawyer and the judge would not let him plead to something he is not guilty of. This isn't some over worked state court and judge this is a federal court.
Oh, so you are saying that judges have some kind of independent knowledge of who is guilty and who is not? Why don't we do away with evidence, juries, and trials altogether then and just have judges announce the verdict?
The fact is that until a public trial has taken place, with all the evidence presented in public, guilt or innocence has not been determined. Trials should take place really even if the defendant admits his guilt.
I know plea bargaining can be abused, but to do away with the practice would be a gross violation of the rights of defendants -- they have a right to plea guilty for whatever reason.
Your argument doesn't work. Eliminating plea bargains doesn't take away the right to plead guilty for "whatever reason". Eliminating plea bargains is a restriction on the conduct of prosecutors and judges, not on the conduct of defendants. The defendant can still plead guilty to whatever he likes.
If there is a good thing about software patents, it is that IBM, HP, and Sun's patent portfolios are working for Linux, not against it. That's not because it happens to be convenient for IBM right now to use their patents, it's because those companies are shipping Linux and therefore have given people license to use their patents as far as Linux/GPL'ed software is concerned.
I would feel safer if software patents were just abolished, but with all major UNIX companies shipping Linux, they may actually help. In fact, GPL'ed and open source software may be an effective, cheap, and fair vehicle to achieve patent cross-licensing among multiple companies, because the patents and patent licenses basically go with the software and don't require any separate negotiations.
this isn't exactly new. Plenty of mice have either two wheels, one for horizontal and one for vertical scrolling, or they use a point stick like the IBM Scrollpoint. There are many other designs as well.
It seems odd and not very efficient to design a mouse with a tilting wheel for horizontal scrolling; maybe that's simply to avoid the patents on all the other bidirectional scrolling mice people have developed.
designed more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses than to enable unauthorised spying."
Seems to me to amount to the same thing, only that children and employees don't have the power to object to the "unauthorized spying".
Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban. Prosecutors agreed to drop charges of conspiring to levy war against the United States and conspiring to provide material support for terrorism.
Plea bargains are a travesty of justice. Telling someone "we can prosecute you for a crime on which there is the death penalty, or you can plead guilty to a lesser charge" creates a grave risk of making the innocent plead guilty. This is really not all that different from the interrogation and torture techniques used by the inquisition or totalitarian governments. Furthermore, it allows the guilty to get away with lesser charges.
I think the utilitarian argument for these kinds of arrangements doesn't work: no matter how many criminals we catch through plea bargains or how many crimes we prevent, the cost of such arrangements--sacrificing a fair trial and a thorough, public examination of the charges and evidence--is just too high. Plea bargains are killing the patient in order to save him.
"You and the others in the group were prepared to take up arms, and die as martyrs if necessary, to defend the Taliban. Is this true?" U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones asked Hawash during the hearing.
This, too, is rather chilling. It's not that conspiracy might not be a prosecutable crime under some circumstances, and maybe this is one of them. But in this phrasing, he didn't actually admit to doing anything, he was just "prepared to do" something.
RIM makes a product, NTP doesn't.
The rewards of the patent should go to the people who invented the technology, not the people who happen to make a product. That is the intent of the patent system, and it is what is needed in order to encourage innovation. It is nice when inventor and manufacturer coincide, but they don't have to.
For example, a generic drug maker could make a patented drug tomorrow if they liked, but it's the original patent holder that paid the cost of developing the drug in the first place.
Unfortunately, in the public's mind, the manufacturer is often confused with the inventor: Microsoft, Apple, Palm, and other companies are getting far more credit for innovation than they actually deserve.
There are many things wrong with the patent system, and there are many things wrong with this particular patent. But there is nothing wrong with rewarding the inventors over the manufacturers.
The source code is owned by the same people who owned the computers, laptops, and any other assets of the company. Most likely, that is not you. If those people decided not to do anything with the source code, that was their right: they can waste their money any way they like. Or maybe it's not wasted: if they own another company with a competing product, the last thing they will want is for this thing to get out. So, no, you don't own the code and there is nothing you can do with it or about it unless you can establish who does and get their permission.
There is a bill floating around Congress that would require copyright holders to pay a tiny ($1) fee every few years to maintain copyright protection for their works precisely to get creative works out of this sort of limbo. But even then, you might still be contractually bound not to disclose the software.
If this matters to you, you could try to make it part of your employment contract next time that under a well-defined set of circumstances (bankruptcy, five years elapsed without a product), your copyright reverts to you or the software may get published. In fact, customers might like such clauses as well (source escrow). But most companies won't go for it.
I have really tried hard to like any of the Linux PDAs and I use Linux everywhere else, but they simply aren't competitive as mainstream PDAs; a $99 Zire makes a better PDA than any of the much bulkier and more costly Linux PDAs.
What Linux PDAs need is a completely newly designed GUI, designed specifically for small screen devices, not some adaptation of toolkits that originated on desktops (Qt, Gtk+, Java).
If the jury was asked whether RIM violated the patent, they probably made the right decision in saying that they did.
But that's because NTP's patent is ridiculous. Who are they going to go after next? TabletPC users who happen to use a wireless connection? People who read E-mail through a handheld connected to their cell phone?
RIM is right in having this patent re-examined. Now, I think RIM itself is a thoroughly disgusting company when it comes to stupid patents and that if this infringement claim holds up it would be poetic justice. But that is little satisfaction in the long term: if these kinds of patents hold up in court, it is bad for the industry.