This is insane. Where is the democracy if laws are passed "for institutional reasons as to not create a precedent" when this precedent would be to respect the democratic will ?
It is a symptomatic geek way of thinking to believe that when things only differ quantitatively, they do not differ at all. That is so not true.
The quantitative difference is so huge between the difficulty to make hardware and software, and between how many patents are involved in a physical device vs. a program, that it makes a qualitative difference.
One has to consider the two "potential worlds": the one with software patents, the other without, and try to figure out which one is more desirable. The very existence of patent is not a fact of nature, something written in a big book. It is not written somewhere that if you have an idea in some country at some time you can prevent somebody else form having the same idea 15,000km away 10 years later. If patents do not help, they should not exist.
For softwares, they do not help. You can not find *one* person with one convaincing example of acceptable patent on an algorithm.
I remember a few years ago having having received a reply to one of my mail. The guy who had replied had used a web-based mail client, and the funny part was that my original mail was quoted in his reply and some word in my mail had been replaced by links to web sites... Obviously, his client was doing this.
Actually, I am making some basic anti-MS rant here, but I would feel more condident if I had some secure chip in my PC able to check the MBR and loaded kernel. My only problem is if that damn chip includes a private key that the manufacturer knows and I do not. As long as no such keys exist, I am fine. I am even fine with private keys that nobody knows but the chip.
By instilling the fear in the customer's heart, they prepare him for the sacrifices required by the war on terroris^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hspywares. Soon, we will all welcome and cheer our saver, the allmighty NGSCB! aka pallaidum, aka TCPA. No more privacy and control on your own data and communications, but that's the price to pay, my friend. They can put virii IN THE KERNEL if you do not have a big TCPA chip deep in the guts of your PC.
Microsoft "Palladium": A Business Overview
Combining Microsoft Windows Features, Personal Computing Hardware, and Software Applications for Greater Security, Personal Privacy and System Integrity
I am a programmer and a researcher in computer science, thus one of those supposed to benefit from a software patent system. And frankly, both from what I have experienced personnaly and from what I see in the press, I dont feel protected *at all* by software patents.
Software patents are so silly that any dispute related to them can not be based on rational argument and any form of justice that should derive from it. Those disputs are pure lawyer technical fights. They require money and are possible only between big entities (read corporations).
So, Sir, software patents are not an incentive at all. They are a way to lock the market to keep small structures and individuals out. Anybody saying the opposite is a liar or an idiot.
AFAIU, the current version of the proposal (i.e. without the parliament amendments) is again listed as a A-item for the feb 17 meeting (council of the ministers of finance), which means that it will be accepted without vote if nobody complains. Such a A-item is just a technical simplification for proposal which have a global consensus. The system is consistent since any one of the present representative can ask for the item to be removed. This is what happened twice with the polish minister.
Note that this means that if the proposal is not removed, all present ministers are either agreeing with the proposal (and lacking any form of respect for democracy), or totally clueless about the whole stuff since (which would not be surprising, remember that they are ministers of finance).
I was until recently a french citizen and basically left the country when they started to put 8Mb DSL everywhere (they are now deploying ADSL2+ which goes up to 20Mbs).
So I am now in Switzerland. Beautiful country. However, the bandwith situation is pretty bad: 786kbs up / 128kbs down dsl for a monthly cost of 32 euros (US$42).
Basically it seems that the historic operator (Swisscom) controls the lines and there is no competition. The situation was the same 4 years ago in France, until under the pressure of both Europe and a governmental agency (the ART) real comptetion could emerge.
I was the happy owner of a IBM 570e and now of a T41p. Unfortunately contrary to the 570e, the T41p has both the red IBM thingy and the pad.
However, there exists a palmrest without pad (part #91P8399, see http://www.indexcomputer.net/91p8399.html) but I could not get precise information about what happens to the warranty if I buy and install it myself. Thus, the pad remains (and I hate it).
For the bad guys, I use my own laptop at work and at home with a very restrictive fire-wall (ssh and dhcp when required, period). I use ssh for any remote things, and I keep all critical stuff (passwd, bank related numbers and codes, etc.) in a file encrypted with gpg and decrypted on the fly in emacs, never saved in clear. My xautolock locks after 2 min of inactivity. I recently installed a 802.11g network at home and use WPA-PSK.
For the bad luck, I burn my (small) CVS repository on CD twice every day and ssh-copy it once a week (in an encrypted form) to a former professional account I have access to (legally) which is 800km from my home and itself heavily backuped by a very competent staff.
I could add that I am an systematic office-locker. Do I qualify for "paranoid" ?
The difference between french "police" and "gendarmerie" is clear: the former is part of the "ministere de l'interieur" (minister of internal affairs ?) and the second is part of the "ministere de la defense" (minister of defence).
From a more practical perspective, there seem to be far more discipline and order in the gendarmerie than in the police.
Maybe this is a move to prevent the "Big IP Crisis" that would eventually disrupt
the whole software patent system.
By letting free-software and
open-source people use patents, they reduce a bit the pressure and legimitate the software patents for future litigations.
I have to disagree for the keyboard thing. I used a 570e for 3 years and a t41p for 9 month, I use my computer something like 10h a day and for my taste it is the best keyboard, ever.
* Legal counsel decides it's a bad idea because it could expose them to liability
I guess we all agree that clearly exposes how much open-source dudes are less respectfull of IP than corporations.
* It really does expose them to liability. For example, you could exceed FCC restrictions on the ISM bands by programming your card to emit more power than it should on frequencies it's not allowed in the US to be in.
I hear that often, I dont get it. This argument is true as long as we considere that it is harder to de-compile and hack the binary driver than directly hack the source code. In fact, it has to be so much harder that in makes a difference in term of responsability of the hardware manufacturer ? But we know that it is not true.
It would be like saying someone is more responsible for exploits in his products if he gives the code than if he does not. That's total nonsense.
* You could make a linux-based device cheaper than their stand-alone equivelent.
I dont understand this one.
* There are bits of licensed code in the driver that aren't theirs to give out.
The arguments valid for one manufacturer are valid for the others. The point is more that "so many IP are involved, it would take 200 years just to be sure everybody agrees" (same reason as why algorithm patents suck)
* They are using a reference design and the driver contains features unique to their product. If they let the driver out, people will be able to buy the cheaper implementation of the same reference design and get those features.
I Had a 570e for three years, and have a T41p since january. Both are great laptops which work with no glitch under Linux (except the 570e's winmodem). I carry my laptop all the time in a standard backpack and use it both at work and at home, in trains, public places, etc. It is thus under serious physical stress.
The 570e had a screen failure when I was living in France, and despite I bought it in the US, and had lost all the related documents (I did not even remembered where I bought it), IBM accepted with no discussion to considere the factory date as a starting date for the warranty and applied the 3 years world-wide warranty I had (they were able to find that from the serial number).
They picked it up in Paris and take it back 4 days later fixed for free. Technical point: they had no problem I removed the HD before giving them the PC to repair.
I see people complaining about the motivation of Real. It is irrelevant here. Nobody thinks that Real is defending anything but its own interest. Nevertheless, despite that greedy motivation, what they are doing here is positive.
I wonder how they will look like in the future when they will sue some hacker's ass because they have broken their stream format to make a free player (as in speech).
Real is trying exploit Apple's hardware designers ? Maybe. But here the free software community will exploit Real's art of PR and court games.
I agree. It is simply amazing to read so many articles in which people considere the requirement for the GPL to be extreme. They are definitely not compared to what any other licence expect you to do or not do.
Nevertheless, because open-source is re-used and combined far more than close software, the effet of the GPL is extreme. For many it seems that the "if you dont like the GPL, dont use GPL softwares" is not valid because the GPL is becoming omnipresent, and thus there is no choice in many case. Reminds me a bit what is the usual situation with corporations.
There is a simple criterion: if you, the user, have a way to read your private keys, it is fine. Encryption is here to help you.
When your stuff is encrypted and you can not read your own private keys, the encryption is not here to help you. And you are, definitely, a sucker.
Slashdot Mirror
This is insane. Where is the democracy if laws are passed "for institutional reasons as to not create a precedent" when this precedent would be to respect the democratic will ?
--
Go Debian!
Polish said they would support any state opposing the A-item, too.
It is a symptomatic geek way of thinking to believe that when things only differ quantitatively, they do not differ at all. That is so not true.
The quantitative difference is so huge between the difficulty to make hardware and software, and between how many patents are involved in a physical device vs. a program, that it makes a qualitative difference.
One has to consider the two "potential worlds": the one with software patents, the other without, and try to figure out which one is more desirable. The very existence of patent is not a fact of nature, something written in a big book. It is not written somewhere that if you have an idea in some country at some time you can prevent somebody else form having the same idea 15,000km away 10 years later. If patents do not help, they should not exist.
For softwares, they do not help. You can not find *one* person with one convaincing example of acceptable patent on an algorithm.
--
Go Debian!
What should be the penatly, according to you ?
--
Go Debian!
So it's just a lucky fluke that someone other than the bad guys knows about it.
Sure
Come on.
--
Go Debian!
I remember a few years ago having having received a reply to one of my mail. The guy who had replied had used a web-based mail client, and the funny part was that my original mail was quoted in his reply and some word in my mail had been replaced by links to web sites
Pretty upsetting if you ask me.
--
Go Debian!
Actually, I am making some basic anti-MS rant here, but I would feel more condident if I had some secure chip in my PC able to check the MBR and loaded kernel. My only problem is if that damn chip includes a private key that the manufacturer knows and I do not. As long as no such keys exist, I am fine. I am even fine with private keys that nobody knows but the chip.
--
Go Debian!
By instilling the fear in the customer's heart, they prepare him for the sacrifices required by the war on terroris^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hspywares. Soon, we will all welcome and cheer our saver, the allmighty NGSCB! aka pallaidum, aka TCPA. No more privacy and control on your own data and communications, but that's the price to pay, my friend. They can put virii IN THE KERNEL if you do not have a big TCPA chip deep in the guts of your PC.
Microsoft "Palladium": A Business Overview
Combining Microsoft Windows Features, Personal Computing Hardware, and Software Applications for Greater Security, Personal Privacy and System Integrity
Sure.
--
Go Debian!
Dear Sir,
I am a programmer and a researcher in computer science, thus one of those supposed to benefit from a software patent system. And frankly, both from what I have experienced personnaly and from what I see in the press, I dont feel protected *at all* by software patents.
Software patents are so silly that any dispute related to them can not be based on rational argument and any form of justice that should derive from it. Those disputs are pure lawyer technical fights. They require money and are possible only between big entities (read corporations).
So, Sir, software patents are not an incentive at all. They are a way to lock the market to keep small structures and individuals out. Anybody saying the opposite is a liar or an idiot.
--
Go Debian!
AFAIU, the current version of the proposal (i.e. without the parliament amendments) is again listed as a A-item for the feb 17 meeting (council of the ministers of finance), which means that it will be accepted without vote if nobody complains. Such a A-item is just a technical simplification for proposal which have a global consensus. The system is consistent since any one of the present representative can ask for the item to be removed. This is what happened twice with the polish minister.
Note that this means that if the proposal is not removed, all present ministers are either agreeing with the proposal (and lacking any form of respect for democracy), or totally clueless about the whole stuff since (which would not be surprising, remember that they are ministers of finance).
--
Go Debian!
I was until recently a french citizen and basically left the country when they started to put 8Mb DSL everywhere (they are now deploying ADSL2+ which goes up to 20Mbs).
So I am now in Switzerland. Beautiful country. However, the bandwith situation is pretty bad: 786kbs up / 128kbs down dsl for a monthly cost of 32 euros (US$42).
Basically it seems that the historic operator (Swisscom) controls the lines and there is no competition. The situation was the same 4 years ago in France, until under the pressure of both Europe and a governmental agency (the ART) real comptetion could emerge.
--
Go Debian!
I was the happy owner of a IBM 570e and now of a T41p. Unfortunately contrary to the 570e, the T41p has both the red IBM thingy and the pad.
However, there exists a palmrest without pad (part #91P8399, see http://www.indexcomputer.net/91p8399.html) but I could not get precise information about what happens to the warranty if I buy and install it myself. Thus, the pad remains (and I hate it).
For the bad guys, I use my own laptop at work and at home with a very restrictive fire-wall (ssh and dhcp when required, period). I use ssh for any remote things, and I keep all critical stuff (passwd, bank related numbers and codes, etc.) in a file encrypted with gpg and decrypted on the fly in emacs, never saved in clear. My xautolock locks after 2 min of inactivity. I recently installed a 802.11g network at home and use WPA-PSK.
For the bad luck, I burn my (small) CVS repository on CD twice every day and ssh-copy it once a week (in an encrypted form) to a former professional account I have access to (legally) which is 800km from my home and itself heavily backuped by a very competent staff.
I could add that I am an systematic office-locker. Do I qualify for "paranoid" ?
--
Go Debian!
The difference between french "police" and "gendarmerie" is clear: the former is part of the "ministere de l'interieur" (minister of internal affairs ?) and the second is part of the "ministere de la defense" (minister of defence).
From a more practical perspective, there seem to be far more discipline and order in the gendarmerie than in the police.
It may seem confusing, but the "gendarmerie" is not the police. It is an army force dedicated to civil troubles and criminal investigation.
Maybe this is a move to prevent the "Big IP Crisis" that would eventually disrupt the whole software patent system.
By letting free-software and open-source people use patents, they reduce a bit the pressure and legimitate the software patents for future litigations.
--
Go Debian!
I have to disagree for the keyboard thing. I used a 570e for 3 years and a t41p for 9 month, I use my computer something like 10h a day and for my taste it is the best keyboard, ever.
I dont get the scheme on top of http://members.aol.com/golomb20/intro.htm. The sequence is 1, 3, 5 and 2. How one can measure 6 with that ?
--
Go Debian!
* Legal counsel decides it's a bad idea because it could expose them to liability
I guess we all agree that clearly exposes how much open-source dudes are less respectfull of IP than corporations.
* It really does expose them to liability. For example, you could exceed FCC restrictions on the ISM bands by programming your card to emit more power than it should on frequencies it's not allowed in the US to be in.
I hear that often, I dont get it. This argument is true as long as we considere that it is harder to de-compile and hack the binary driver than directly hack the source code. In fact, it has to be so much harder that in makes a difference in term of responsability of the hardware manufacturer ? But we know that it is not true.
It would be like saying someone is more responsible for exploits in his products if he gives the code than if he does not. That's total nonsense.
* You could make a linux-based device cheaper than their stand-alone equivelent.
I dont understand this one.
* There are bits of licensed code in the driver that aren't theirs to give out.
The arguments valid for one manufacturer are valid for the others. The point is more that "so many IP are involved, it would take 200 years just to be sure everybody agrees" (same reason as why algorithm patents suck)
* They are using a reference design and the driver contains features unique to their product. If they let the driver out, people will be able to buy the cheaper implementation of the same reference design and get those features.
Decompiling is the key here again.
--
Go Debian!
I am not sure to get your point. They put "being open-source" at the top of their priority list, that's all.
I Had a 570e for three years, and have a T41p since january. Both are great laptops which work with no glitch under Linux (except the 570e's winmodem). I carry my laptop all the time in a standard backpack and use it both at work and at home, in trains, public places, etc. It is thus under serious physical stress.
The 570e had a screen failure when I was living in France, and despite I bought it in the US, and had lost all the related documents (I did not even remembered where I bought it), IBM accepted with no discussion to considere the factory date as a starting date for the warranty and applied the 3 years world-wide warranty I had (they were able to find that from the serial number).
They picked it up in Paris and take it back 4 days later fixed for free. Technical point: they had no problem I removed the HD before giving them the PC to repair.
Cheers.
I see people complaining about the motivation of Real. It is irrelevant here. Nobody thinks that Real is defending anything but its own interest. Nevertheless, despite that greedy motivation, what they are doing here is positive.
I wonder how they will look like in the future when they will sue some hacker's ass because they have broken their stream format to make a free player (as in speech).
Real is trying exploit Apple's hardware designers ? Maybe. But here the free software community will exploit Real's art of PR and court games.
--
Go Debian!
I agree. It is simply amazing to read so many articles in which people considere the requirement for the GPL to be extreme. They are definitely not compared to what any other licence expect you to do or not do.
Nevertheless, because open-source is re-used and combined far more than close software, the effet of the GPL is extreme. For many it seems that the "if you dont like the GPL, dont use GPL softwares" is not valid because the GPL is becoming omnipresent, and thus there is no choice in many case. Reminds me a bit what is the usual situation with corporations.
--
Go Debian!
Memorandum in support, pages 26-28. A must read!
There is a simple criterion: if you, the user, have a way to read your private keys, it is fine. Encryption is here to help you. When your stuff is encrypted and you can not read your own private keys, the encryption is not here to help you. And you are, definitely, a sucker.