I think that both parties will benefit by a quiet deal that allows Psystar to sell their boxes; paying Apple a nice "per copy" price for OS-X. Apple does not want to litigate the "monopoly" argument; Psystar does not want to litigate "Breech of OS-X EULA". The nice think of a settlement is that it does not bind Apple to make the same deal with another white box maker.
I do think that the legal question "How much anti-competition is allowed in an EULA" is an interesting one, but that it is better fought between two well funded parties. It might end up in a Supreme Court appeal.
As far as I know serious research on the effectiveness of the UK cameras showed (at best) a hardly measurable impact on crime.
Cameras can extend the eyes of the police force, but they do not provide more hands on the street. For and effective use of cameras you need communication with your officers on the street to direct them to the scene (and hope they arrive in time). Cameras are very good in recording crime and can help in catching criminals; some say that arresting suspects raises the registered crime rate, because 60% of petty crime goes unreported.
I see more in streamlining the administration, so that police officers spend less time in the office typing reports on (stone age) computers, and can spend more time patrolling on the streets.
It is not just the OLPC, there are many manufacturers making sub-notebooks (think EeePC), that run Linux nicely, but have not the power to run Vista. Microsoft could have just given this market to Linux... but that would have been "defeat".
So spin spin spin, Microsoft allows OEM sales of XP for small laptops... while other manufacturers hear that XP can not be sold anymore...
Pleas, for our amusement, publish your correspondence with the PRS. (Blacking out your address and if you're in a friendly mood that of the PRS too.) If you don't mind to infringe copyrights, you can publish the letter from the PRS completely.
Then, publish the URL on Slashdot, so that we have another target for a good slashdotting.
What does the company lose when bugfixes and amall enhancements are given back to the Open Source community?
How much does the company gain from giving those enhancements back?
Having a good name with some FOSS projects is not bad; profit starts when other people maintain your private extensions for free.
LIBERTYVILLE, IL - 15 May 2006 - Motorola (NYSE: MOT) today announced the launch of opensource.motorola.com, a new resource aimed at sharing source code, original open source projects and new ideas and information with open source developers around the world.
Why would one force a developer to use a specific editor? As long as it creates source files that can be compiled and checked into the version control system any text editor can be used. (I used Vim in an environment dominated by Visual Studio, no problems.) The only thing management has to do is obtain proper licenses for the editors used. The programmer is more productive with an editor (s)he is familiar with.
This is a different kind of attack: the "old" collision prefix attack had two blocks X and Y with the same hash that allowed one to create two programs:
X; if (X) then GOOD else EVIL and
Y; if (X) then GOOD else EVIL but the evil code would be in the signed good program, it would not be run.
The new attack is different: it is a method to generate blocks GX and EX for two random files such that the files GOOD+GX and EVIL+EX hash to the same checksum.
I do think that this "object lifetime" bug is NOT a memory leak, but that does not change the effects (crash) of the system.
What is interesting is to see that garbage collection changes one class of bugs (forgetting to explicitly deallocate memory) to another one: unintentionally keeping objects around. Princeton's "obstacle object" lifetime policy was stepped upon by a Dotnet library; Java has similar problems in its libraries. For the Princeton car software, an explicit deallocation routine (like in C/C++) would have been easy to implement.
Problem is that both C/C++ style memory leaks and C#/Java hidden reference bugs usually remain hidden until the system crashes or trashes after some time. It makes them hard to find in the course of ordinary testing.
I'ld like to add that they need to produce millions of near identical computers to get the economy of scale to produce it at $150-200 cost. A run for the US toys stores would be too small. It is possible that some surplus will end up in regular "western" sales channels.
The EU is punishing a company for violation of EU competition laws. Most of the time European companies, but this time it is an US company. (Isn't that company under US court overview for some actions?)
The problem is that EU competition law has some restrictions on the size of the fine, it used to be 10% of revenue maximum at the time MS was fined... currently the maximum fine is 25% of revenue. However, it is not common in Europe to go for the maximum punishment on the first offence. While the 500 million Euro may feel like a parking fine to Microsoft, the next fine is likely to be bigger.
Note: This is the verdict on appeal in the "Windows XP" case... Microsoft has appealed a few "heel dragging" additional fines too. The European Commission has not sat silent during this appeal, but started investigating the "Windows Vista" complaints (add a dash of Office to that too). There is no Commission verdict on that yet, but I predict a guilty there too (firewalls, anti-virus).
US law isn't binding for the European Commission, but I can imagine that Mrs. Kroes would like to ask some questions regarding this topic to Microsoft. There seems to be a pattern of unduly influencing the votes of national standardization bodies throughout the EU.
Things wouldn't look too bad for Microsoft if it didn't meet Mrs. Kroes in her position as "Competition Commissioner" before or if they didn't make a lasting impression in the encounters before. I am pretty sure that Microsoft's assault on the ISO standardization process will be part of the "Office Software" anti-monopoly proceedings of the EU. Few companies have risked the wrath of the EC a second time...
We see some rapidly growing economies in Asia... China and India are the biggest, but many of the smaller countries there have shown remarkable advances over the years. From a humanitarian point of view it's good to see the poverty reduce and the money available for research increase. Globally the state of physics research is good; it's even growing in the USA, but just growing harder world-wide. This will mean that the world will be able to solve its most pressing problems bar one: the hunger for money of the US corporations. The US should be so wise to realize that they'll be the third or fourth biggest economy of the world in a couple of years and start specializing in a few markets, leaving bulk production to China and India.
65 years is the maximum sentence. While I think that sending people to prison for simply sending out mass-mailings is somewhat excessive, Soloway has committed severer offenses by using botnets and spoofing email headers. It would be fair if he got a year to reconsider his way of life (plus fines to negate his illegal profits).
Seriously, I hope someday, somebody can write a short (one page) clear and simple
document explaining who owns the various *nix names and code.
I'd like this short document to be sued and win so make it "proven".
I hate it to destroy your hopes, but Unix ownership is a mess. AT&T sued several times, handled title to System V code to Novell, who settled with UCB. (That's where Free/Open/NetBSD got their freedom.) SCO claims to have received ownership on SysV from Novell, which is currently contested in Utah District Court.
Many of the commercial Unices have some AT&T code in their kernels and utilities. Most of the original AT&T code has been bug-fixed out and there is serious dispute whether copyright applies on the remaining fragments. Other Unix variants are based on BSD code and lack any code where (AT&T/Novell/SCO) may claim copyright upon. Sun is a special case, as they contributed to SystemV and have more rights than mere SystemV licensees.
Are you still with me or did you lose the plot somewhere?
Sorry, you can not sue a document. There has to be a lawsuit regarding a real conflict between two legal entities.
Go back and you'll see the exact same comments when Windows 2000 came out, when Windows XP was released, when the first Xbox was released and when the Xbox 360 was released.
Microsoft still doesn't know how to make an operating system that works...
Not really. The RIAA would certainly like to create an environment of fear, however if they lose cases and have to pay the defendants legal fees, more people will be willing to go to court. They can only maintain their environment of fear if they're winning their cases or getting settlements.
Don't forget that a lawsuit costs the RIAA money (in lawyers fees). They can only recoup the costs when they win their cases. Every dropped lawsuit is a loss for the RIAA; double the loss if they have to pay the defendent's lawyer too.
Slashdot and Groklaw analyses of RIAA "evidence" showed significant holes. It is unclear how much relevance the MediaSentry logs have, there are issues with time-stamping and dynamic IP addresses, shared (WiFi) networking, decoy mp3 files and last but not least no proof that the subscriber to the IP package was the one operating the sharing computer. The RIAA seems to ignore the possibility of remote control of a system. With so many holes in the evidence even the guilty can get out.
Security is important: there's confidentiality that should be protected (think credit card numbers and other ID theft); systems should be available (downtime of a webshop or adserver costs revenue) but most important integrety of systems and data should be OK. Consider what happens when people break into a bank and start transfering money from random accounts. (People defacing webservers are small fry in this category.)
As far as I see it is essential that write down that the application will be distributed under the GPL and that you'll get the copyrights on the finished work (if that's the deal.) Under the "work for hire" doctrine your employer normally gets the copyrights on your work.
Copyrights have to be transferred in writing, but a copyright transfer can be seen as payment. You could put something like: "Upon completion of the work [employer] will transfer the copyrights on..." in your employment contract; but you should get another paper with the actual transfer.
I would not mind leaving copyrights with an employer, if I got full relicensing rights. What matters is that I can give permission to xxxBSD to use a BSD license for my code.
Disclaimer: IANAL, use this advice at your own risk. If it breaks, you may keep the pieces, etc. etc.
Remember, this is Slashdot.
Firstly, all of the discussion about the machine influences the minds of hardware and software developers; I expect to see more low-power / long battery life laptops this year; some of the OLPC hardware innovations (LCD display) will be available in next years models.
The software will cause a rethinking on how schoolkids could work with computers, but I don't see a quick adoption in PC operating systems. Applications for collaboration may pick up some of the sugar features; PDAs may pick up features quicker than PCs. Sugar is such a radical design that it is safe to predict that it won't be adopted for 100%... On the other hand it is safe to predict that some elements will be adopted. Without an in depth review it's hard to tell which features are "good" and likely to be picked up and which are bad and likely to be avoided.
Slashdot Mirror
I do think that the legal question "How much anti-competition is allowed in an EULA" is an interesting one, but that it is better fought between two well funded parties. It might end up in a Supreme Court appeal.
Can it decrypt SSL/SSH in real time?
As far as I know serious research on the effectiveness of the UK cameras showed (at best) a hardly measurable impact on crime.
Cameras can extend the eyes of the police force, but they do not provide more hands on the street. For and effective use of cameras you need communication with your officers on the street to direct them to the scene (and hope they arrive in time). Cameras are very good in recording crime and can help in catching criminals; some say that arresting suspects raises the registered crime rate, because 60% of petty crime goes unreported.
I see more in streamlining the administration, so that police officers spend less time in the office typing reports on (stone age) computers, and can spend more time patrolling on the streets.
It is not just the OLPC, there are many manufacturers making sub-notebooks (think EeePC), that run Linux nicely, but have not the power to run Vista. Microsoft could have just given this market to Linux... but that would have been "defeat".
So spin spin spin, Microsoft allows OEM sales of XP for small laptops... while other manufacturers hear that XP can not be sold anymore...
Then, publish the URL on Slashdot, so that we have another target for a good slashdotting.
How much does the company gain from giving those enhancements back?
Having a good name with some FOSS projects is not bad; profit starts when other people maintain your private extensions for free.
more...
- Bully Open Source developers
- Bully your employees
- Bully your customers when they ask for the source
- ...
- Profit!
And then "meet the SFLC!"Why would one force a developer to use a specific editor? As long as it creates source files that can be compiled and checked into the version control system any text editor can be used. (I used Vim in an environment dominated by Visual Studio, no problems.) The only thing management has to do is obtain proper licenses for the editors used. The programmer is more productive with an editor (s)he is familiar with.
Furthermore, You can not just say "work", you have to specify the work like in "Slashdot comment #21571179"
This is a different kind of attack: the "old" collision prefix attack had two blocks X and Y with the same hash that allowed one to create two programs:
X; if (X) then GOOD else EVIL
and
Y; if (X) then GOOD else EVIL
but the evil code would be in the signed good program, it would not be run.
The new attack is different: it is a method to generate blocks GX and EX for two random files such that the files GOOD+GX and EVIL+EX hash to the same checksum.
What is interesting is to see that garbage collection changes one class of bugs (forgetting to explicitly deallocate memory) to another one: unintentionally keeping objects around. Princeton's "obstacle object" lifetime policy was stepped upon by a Dotnet library; Java has similar problems in its libraries. For the Princeton car software, an explicit deallocation routine (like in C/C++) would have been easy to implement.
Problem is that both C/C++ style memory leaks and C#/Java hidden reference bugs usually remain hidden until the system crashes or trashes after some time. It makes them hard to find in the course of ordinary testing.
I'ld like to add that they need to produce millions of near identical computers to get the economy of scale to produce it at $150-200 cost. A run for the US toys stores would be too small. It is possible that some surplus will end up in regular "western" sales channels.
The EU is punishing a company for violation of EU competition laws. Most of the time European companies, but this time it is an US company. (Isn't that company under US court overview for some actions?)
The problem is that EU competition law has some restrictions on the size of the fine, it used to be 10% of revenue maximum at the time MS was fined... currently the maximum fine is 25% of revenue. However, it is not common in Europe to go for the maximum punishment on the first offence. While the 500 million Euro may feel like a parking fine to Microsoft, the next fine is likely to be bigger.
Note: This is the verdict on appeal in the "Windows XP" case... Microsoft has appealed a few "heel dragging" additional fines too. The European Commission has not sat silent during this appeal, but started investigating the "Windows Vista" complaints (add a dash of Office to that too). There is no Commission verdict on that yet, but I predict a guilty there too (firewalls, anti-virus).
US law isn't binding for the European Commission, but I can imagine that Mrs. Kroes would like to ask some questions regarding this topic to Microsoft. There seems to be a pattern of unduly influencing the votes of national standardization bodies throughout the EU.
Things wouldn't look too bad for Microsoft if it didn't meet Mrs. Kroes in her position as "Competition Commissioner" before or if they didn't make a lasting impression in the encounters before. I am pretty sure that Microsoft's assault on the ISO standardization process will be part of the "Office Software" anti-monopoly proceedings of the EU. Few companies have risked the wrath of the EC a second time...
When the storm has settled the dust devils will come to clean the rovers... no worry!
We see some rapidly growing economies in Asia... China and India are the biggest, but many of the smaller countries there have shown remarkable advances over the years. From a humanitarian point of view it's good to see the poverty reduce and the money available for research increase.
Globally the state of physics research is good; it's even growing in the USA, but just growing harder world-wide. This will mean that the world will be able to solve its most pressing problems bar one: the hunger for money of the US corporations. The US should be so wise to realize that they'll be the third or fourth biggest economy of the world in a couple of years and start specializing in a few markets, leaving bulk production to China and India.
65 years is the maximum sentence. While I think that sending people to prison for simply sending out mass-mailings is somewhat excessive, Soloway has committed severer offenses by using botnets and spoofing email headers. It would be fair if he got a year to reconsider his way of life (plus fines to negate his illegal profits).
But the judge convicted on a contract violation for reverse-engineering the protocol.
Many of the commercial Unices have some AT&T code in their kernels and utilities. Most of the original AT&T code has been bug-fixed out and there is serious dispute whether copyright applies on the remaining fragments. Other Unix variants are based on BSD code and lack any code where (AT&T/Novell/SCO) may claim copyright upon. Sun is a special case, as they contributed to SystemV and have more rights than mere SystemV licensees.
Are you still with me or did you lose the plot somewhere?
Sorry, you can not sue a document. There has to be a lawsuit regarding a real conflict between two legal entities.
YAWN
Slashdot and Groklaw analyses of RIAA "evidence" showed significant holes. It is unclear how much relevance the MediaSentry logs have, there are issues with time-stamping and dynamic IP addresses, shared (WiFi) networking, decoy mp3 files and last but not least no proof that the subscriber to the IP package was the one operating the sharing computer. The RIAA seems to ignore the possibility of remote control of a system. With so many holes in the evidence even the guilty can get out.
Security is important: there's confidentiality that should be protected (think credit card numbers and other ID theft); systems should be available (downtime of a webshop or adserver costs revenue) but most important integrety of systems and data should be OK. Consider what happens when people break into a bank and start transfering money from random accounts. (People defacing webservers are small fry in this category.)
As far as I see it is essential that write down that the application will be distributed under the GPL and that you'll get the copyrights on the finished work (if that's the deal.) Under the "work for hire" doctrine your employer normally gets the copyrights on your work. ..." in your employment contract; but you should get another paper with the actual transfer.
Copyrights have to be transferred in writing, but a copyright transfer can be seen as payment. You could put something like: "Upon completion of the work [employer] will transfer the copyrights on
I would not mind leaving copyrights with an employer, if I got full relicensing rights. What matters is that I can give permission to xxxBSD to use a BSD license for my code.
Disclaimer: IANAL, use this advice at your own risk. If it breaks, you may keep the pieces, etc. etc.
Remember, this is Slashdot.
Firstly, all of the discussion about the machine influences the minds of hardware and software developers; I expect to see more low-power / long battery life laptops this year; some of the OLPC hardware innovations (LCD display) will be available in next years models.
The software will cause a rethinking on how schoolkids could work with computers, but I don't see a quick adoption in PC operating systems. Applications for collaboration may pick up some of the sugar features; PDAs may pick up features quicker than PCs.
Sugar is such a radical design that it is safe to predict that it won't be adopted for 100%... On the other hand it is safe to predict that some elements will be adopted. Without an in depth review it's hard to tell which features are "good" and likely to be picked up and which are bad and likely to be avoided.