SCO doesn't have any patents. I think they're asserting rights to code that was added to derivative versions of System V by their licensees. But their story changes every few weeks or so. Re "post-SCO", I'd be interested to see what Groklaw morphs into if and when the SCO case settles down. Maybe they'll perform a similar service (analysis of legal documents and courtroom proceedings) for other IP property disputes with widespread repercussions in the tech industry.
Some are already saying that SCO may be the tip of the iceberg as far as FOSS IP problems are concerned, even as SCO's case seems to be declining. (See the current issue of Fortune magazine, with Darl McBride on the cover, unfortunately not available online except to paid subscribers). Of course, one can argue that proprietary software should be held to same standards, but in practice FOSS is an easier target because the source code can be examined by hungry lawyers and they can always bring up the worldwide, quasi-anonymous nature of development of some projects.
(Slightly expanded) I haven't heard even one customer ask me for a streamlined, more robust alternative to MFC. But all the time, customers are asking me, how do we take advantage of the tremendous investment in innovation is Microsoft is making with.NET and Longhorn which will enable the next wave of great software from dedicated developers like ourselves?
If you were Steve Ballmer, what would you do with all the winning "prove that you are talented enough to work at Microsoft" submissions from college grads?
I suspect the line "ten years late and a dollar short" came near the end of the last of several contentious MS meetings on WTL.
I thought the paragraph that began with "Juan Sixpack" was funny. Boris Sixpack! So I did a google search, and found that the exact same post appeared on another web site in response to a different story on Linux a couple of days ago. Things like that have a way of ticking off site maintainers.
Lou Gerstner was playing a round of golf with Steve Jobs and Scott McNealy. Gerstner, as it turns out, was a weak golfer, but the other two CEOs acknowledged being impressed with how he was turning around IBM. "What's your secret with dealing with Gates?" They kept badgering him, so later Gerstner had one of his secretaries mail each of them a package with three envelopes.
The first envelope was marked: "Open after a weak quarter". Inside was a slip of paper that said, "Bash Microsoft at every opportunity. Sue them for antitrust violations, write memorandum to the DOJ and EU, badmouth their products and strategy, hire joke writers to come up with nasty bits about how awful they are." The second was marked "Open only when your job is in serious jeopardy" and it said: "Settle with Microsoft. Get a nice piece of their monopoly profits to tide you over, do platform cross-licensing, appear on stage with Bill and Steve and talk about partnership and interoperability for the benefit of customers." And the last was "When the board is meeting to discuss your job." Inside was a paper that said only "Prepare three envelopes."
"Mr. Clark, that investment was great, we now have a working prototype. Now if you'll agree to kick in another $400 million, I believe we'll really take the industry by storm..."
During the latter part of Albert Einstein's tenure at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, management decided to ramp up its hiring efforts. One day a slew of new hires were brought in to be introduced to the great man. "Dr. Einstein, this is an amazing honor", said the first newbie. "I'm thrilled at the opportunity to work with you because, while I'm not half as brilliant as you are, I do happen to have an IQ of 180". "Outstanding", replied Einstein. "I'm sure we can have many profitable discussions regarding quantum mechanics". The second hire revealed that his IQ was 150. "Excellent", said Einstein. "There are many research areas in relativistic mechanics where we can work together".
The third man stepped forward and admitted his IQ was only 110. "But you do enjoy the arts, that is quite satisfactory", said Einstein. "I myself enjoy playing the piano, rather badly I'm afraid". Finally the fourth man stepped forward and said, "Dr. Einstein? Uh, like, my IQ is only 60! So what now?" Einstein paused for what seemed to be a full minute, cupping his jaw with his hand, occasionally stopping to mutter "hmm... I see". Finally he smiled at the man and said, "So Mr. ----, have you heard of any exciting new branding strategies in corporate America?"
Yes, but that question was answered in 1990 when businesses and consumers migrated en masse to Windows 3.0 and lots of folks decided to use a PC for the first time (not a coincidence). It's true that the MS-DOS command line sucked, but so did Windows 3.0.
Reelect the President of the United States [=> selects Bush/Cheney and exits]
Examine long lists of politicians [=> next screen]
2. Select your voting preference:
Typical [=> selects Bush/Cheney and exits]
Custom [=> next screen]
3. Are you sure?
No [=> selects Bush/Cheney and exits]
Yes [=> next screen]
4. Please enter your choice for Vice President (default value: Richard B. Cheney, Wyoming)
[If text entry exactly matches any valid VP candidate, including middle initial and state, select that ticket and exit]
How about sticking with the machine-punched ballots, which are scanned into a computer so the results are displayed on a screen while the voter is still in the booth. Then if the voter disagrees, the ballot can be disregarded. The official tally would count only the paper ballots, with the computer tally available as a check.
Do we have anything going on in Congress to limit the scope and term of software patents, and/or increase the effectiveness of the USPTO, or are we still just venting about it?
They were supported by Navigator 1.1 in March 1995. Microsoft's patent filing references Netscape's spec, including this explanation:
This simple mechanism provides a powerful new tool which enables a host of new types of applications to be written for web-based environments. Shopping applications can now store information about the currently selected items, for fee services can send back registration information and free the client from retyping a user-id on next connection, sites can store per-user preferences on the client, and have the client supply those preferences every time that site is connected to.
Whatever happened to paylars.com, the site that purported to collect credit card donations for the millionaire rock stars who claimed they were being cheated by Napster? It featured a hilarious message board with a random mix of posts from pro- and anti-Napster folks, Metallica fans who wanted to talk music, and techies exchanging downloading tips. The donation jar never seemed to rise above a few hundred USD.
When Deep Blue beat Kasparov, the computer had an unfair advantage (besides being a computer): it knew all about Kasparov's past games and tendencies, but not vice versa. Kasparov improved his performance in subsequent matches by insisting on having access to the computer in advance to play many test games. Under these more balanced rules the top human players are in rough parity with the computer even though the machines' raw performance has continued to increase according to Moore's law, or better.
AI researchers originally had high hopes of using chess as a practical test for machine intelligence. But AFAIK the current generation of chess playing machines rely mainly on brute force calculation, along with a substantial repertoire of "book" moves. Since the number of possible chess moves from a given position is subject to combinatorial explosion, improvement based on increasing dosages of brute force will eventually slow to a crawl. Chess masters aren't increasing their endowment of brain cells, but they can think intuitively and spatially and are steadily learning how to play more effectively against the machines. So I think the author's point is that grandmasters are likely to soon gain the upper hand, and will maintain this lead until programmers successfully implement more sophisticated approaches.
"Mr. Newton, we were looking for someone with an advanced degree in either Aristotelian natural philosophy or alchemic science, and 5+ years experience in the computation of epicycles. However we will keep your resume on file and will let you know if a suitable opportunity arises."
first detective: "You know, Fink, ordinarily we say that anything you remember would be helpful. But I'll be honest with you, Fink: that was not helpful."
second detective: "You notice he's not writing it down."
Slashdot Mirror
And no peeking at the answers in the back of the book!
Slashdot is a device that turns coders into posters of caffeine jokes.
Some are already saying that SCO may be the tip of the iceberg as far as FOSS IP problems are concerned, even as SCO's case seems to be declining. (See the current issue of Fortune magazine, with Darl McBride on the cover, unfortunately not available online except to paid subscribers). Of course, one can argue that proprietary software should be held to same standards, but in practice FOSS is an easier target because the source code can be examined by hungry lawyers and they can always bring up the worldwide, quasi-anonymous nature of development of some projects.
(Slightly expanded) I haven't heard even one customer ask me for a streamlined, more robust alternative to MFC. But all the time, customers are asking me, how do we take advantage of the tremendous investment in innovation is Microsoft is making with .NET and Longhorn which will enable the next wave of great software from dedicated developers like ourselves?
I suspect the line "ten years late and a dollar short" came near the end of the last of several contentious MS meetings on WTL.
Let me know when they've got Paul Allen sitting behind them when they make one of these announcements.
I thought the paragraph that began with "Juan Sixpack" was funny. Boris Sixpack! So I did a google search, and found that the exact same post appeared on another web site in response to a different story on Linux a couple of days ago. Things like that have a way of ticking off site maintainers.
The first envelope was marked: "Open after a weak quarter". Inside was a slip of paper that said, "Bash Microsoft at every opportunity. Sue them for antitrust violations, write memorandum to the DOJ and EU, badmouth their products and strategy, hire joke writers to come up with nasty bits about how awful they are." The second was marked "Open only when your job is in serious jeopardy" and it said: "Settle with Microsoft. Get a nice piece of their monopoly profits to tide you over, do platform cross-licensing, appear on stage with Bill and Steve and talk about partnership and interoperability for the benefit of customers." And the last was "When the board is meeting to discuss your job." Inside was a paper that said only "Prepare three envelopes."
However, their identities cannot be revealed because all parties signed confidentiality agreements.
Now if Skilling and Lay get sent to the pen this'll be a good year.
Overheard in the Linden, UT Starbucks: "Then let's hang him for his bad macros!"
"Mr. Clark, that investment was great, we now have a working prototype. Now if you'll agree to kick in another $400 million, I believe we'll really take the industry by storm..."
During the latter part of Albert Einstein's tenure at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, management decided to ramp up its hiring efforts. One day a slew of new hires were brought in to be introduced to the great man. "Dr. Einstein, this is an amazing honor", said the first newbie. "I'm thrilled at the opportunity to work with you because, while I'm not half as brilliant as you are, I do happen to have an IQ of 180". "Outstanding", replied Einstein. "I'm sure we can have many profitable discussions regarding quantum mechanics". The second hire revealed that his IQ was 150. "Excellent", said Einstein. "There are many research areas in relativistic mechanics where we can work together". The third man stepped forward and admitted his IQ was only 110. "But you do enjoy the arts, that is quite satisfactory", said Einstein. "I myself enjoy playing the piano, rather badly I'm afraid". Finally the fourth man stepped forward and said, "Dr. Einstein? Uh, like, my IQ is only 60! So what now?" Einstein paused for what seemed to be a full minute, cupping his jaw with his hand, occasionally stopping to mutter "hmm... I see". Finally he smiled at the man and said, "So Mr. ----, have you heard of any exciting new branding strategies in corporate America?"
Yes, but that question was answered in 1990 when businesses and consumers migrated en masse to Windows 3.0 and lots of folks decided to use a PC for the first time (not a coincidence). It's true that the MS-DOS command line sucked, but so did Windows 3.0.
WE LIED
But I'm wondering what ever came of the oil ministry money that was locked up. Did anyone ever manage to unblock the funds?
Is there a reason why patent claims aren't posted on the www for public comment before they're approved? I can't think of any.
2. Select your voting preference:
3. Are you sure?
4. Please enter your choice for Vice President (default value: Richard B. Cheney, Wyoming)
[If text entry exactly matches any valid VP candidate, including middle initial and state, select that ticket and exit]
5. Do you mean: Richard B. Cheney, Wyoming
How about sticking with the machine-punched ballots, which are scanned into a computer so the results are displayed on a screen while the voter is still in the booth. Then if the voter disagrees, the ballot can be disregarded. The official tally would count only the paper ballots, with the computer tally available as a check.
Do we have anything going on in Congress to limit the scope and term of software patents, and/or increase the effectiveness of the USPTO, or are we still just venting about it?
They were supported by Navigator 1.1 in March 1995. Microsoft's patent filing references Netscape's spec, including this explanation:
This simple mechanism provides a powerful new tool which enables a host of new types of applications to be written for web-based environments. Shopping applications can now store information about the currently selected items, for fee services can send back registration information and free the client from retyping a user-id on next connection, sites can store per-user preferences on the client, and have the client supply those preferences every time that site is connected to.
Whatever happened to paylars.com, the site that purported to collect credit card donations for the millionaire rock stars who claimed they were being cheated by Napster? It featured a hilarious message board with a random mix of posts from pro- and anti-Napster folks, Metallica fans who wanted to talk music, and techies exchanging downloading tips. The donation jar never seemed to rise above a few hundred USD.
AI researchers originally had high hopes of using chess as a practical test for machine intelligence. But AFAIK the current generation of chess playing machines rely mainly on brute force calculation, along with a substantial repertoire of "book" moves. Since the number of possible chess moves from a given position is subject to combinatorial explosion, improvement based on increasing dosages of brute force will eventually slow to a crawl. Chess masters aren't increasing their endowment of brain cells, but they can think intuitively and spatially and are steadily learning how to play more effectively against the machines. So I think the author's point is that grandmasters are likely to soon gain the upper hand, and will maintain this lead until programmers successfully implement more sophisticated approaches.
"Mr. Newton, we were looking for someone with an advanced degree in either Aristotelian natural philosophy or alchemic science, and 5+ years experience in the computation of epicycles. However we will keep your resume on file and will let you know if a suitable opportunity arises."
second detective: "You notice he's not writing it down."
- from Barton Fink