Linux owns the server space, MSFT's hardly even a relevant player, that's not going to change
Actually MS is gaining in the server market. Netcraft shows that Apache is dropping whereas MS is increasing in servers. Though this talks about Apache not Linux, while Apache runs on Linux and Windows as well as OX S (I have it installed on my Macbook Pro) and Solaris, MS Internet Information Server only runs on Windows. Easily at least. If ISS is gaining not only is Apache loosing ground but Linux is as well.
Several countries (eg Belgium and Spain) have laws which allow them to prosecute "crimes against humanity" in whatever country they occur.
Spain has charges against Henry Kissinger for his support of Gen Pinochet in Chile. If I recall right some Spaniards were some of Pinochet's victims. But Universal Jurisdiction "is a controversial principle in international law whereby states claim criminal jurisdiction over persons whose alleged crimes were committed outside the boundaries of the prosecuting state, regardless of nationality, country of residence, or any other relation with the prosecuting country."
So if they go to Canada or Mexico first, THEN get on a plane to Cuba, its okay?
It doesn't matter how a US citizen gets to Cuba, if a Cuban stamp is on their passport they will be arrested when they come back. Unless they are Cuban, then they are allowed to travel to Cuba to visit family something like every three years. You can also be arrested for bringing those Cuban cigars you bought in Canada with you back into the US.
Sure you can and you can be sued in a US court as well for acts in other nations. There's a little known law in the US that allows people in other countries to sue those in the US for different things, the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789. For instance in Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co Shell Oil is being sued in a US court for supporting the Nigerian government while the government executed Ken Saro Wiwa and killed some people in Nigeria. However the Bush admin is trying to gut the law so his buddies like Shell and Exxon Mobil Corporation can get away with supporting murderers and human right violators.
especially in light of the fact that MS refuses to identify these patents?
Well that's their ace in the hole isn't it? As long as they won't identify a specific patent, they aren't limited to a subset of distros that provide, for instance, access to windows shares, ability to read/write ntfs partitions, RDP, or any other MS technologies that *might* be what they're talking about. You can bet that any non-legal personnel at MS will not disclose what patents they refer to outside of a courtroom, because as soon as they do they start limiting themselves.
Actually if MS refuses to identify the patents being violated MS can loose the rights to those patents. It's called Laches, Doctrine Of or Doctrine of Latches.
Don't these kinds of threats put MS in legal jeopardy? Couldn't Linux companies sue MS claiming that Balmer's statements are harming their business,...
It would seem to me to be a variation of Slander of Title, but whether or not a "variation" counts here I do not know.
Perhaps patents should have to be actively protected, like trademarks, and if a company lets another company use their patent for too long uncontested it becomes public domain.
Patents have to be protected as it is. If a patent isn't protected, via Laches, Doctrine Of or Doctrine of Latches a patent owner can loose their patent rights if they don't enforce those rights.
I couldn't tell from the article, but which intellectual property is MS saying open source solutions are infringing on?
Like SCO MS has never, and will never, say what IP Linux and Open Office violates. The figures Ballmer and MS uses, that Open Source violates 238 MS patents comes from a study conducted by people at PUBPAT, Public Patent Foundation, that concluded 238 patents "Might" be violated. They said "Might" not does, and they didn't say which ones. PUBPAT did the study for Open Source Risk Management, an insurance startup that insures FOOS users against patent or copyright infringement lawsuits.
They're far and away the biggest creditor, at least until IBM's counterclaims are adjudicated. They should be able to get the court to appoint a receiver to liquidate SCO, shouldn't they?
Novell is not a SCO creditor. Repeat after me, NOVELL IS NOT A SCO CREDITOR. The money SCO owes Novell is Novell's property, Novell owns it but SCO collected it and was supposed to give it to Novell but didn't. Then Novell would pay SCO a commission of, I believe it was 5% of the money. This is very important distinction for this case, in bankruptcy property owners get their property first, only after property owners get their property does the creditors get paid, if there are assets left.
IBM is investing a lot more then their getting back (i may be wrong here, as we(i) don't know whats in their agenda for the years to come - this could be one of those investments where you loose money for 10 years, and start making money in 20
For the past few years at least IBM has been shifting it's business focus on providing services, and software, instead of hardware, this could explain it's sale of the PC division to Lenovo. Commodity hardware venders operate on razor thin margins.
Those who bought SCOX during the ridiculous days of $15 to $19 a share have lost -99% of their money. The company used to be worth around $400 million, now less than $4 million
What would of been nice was to sale short. An option to sale a 1000 shares of SCO at $15 would net $14,000 plus now.
I think a lifetime of indentured servitude as a pool boy at a Holiday Inn would probably be justice for Daryl McBride.
That's not good enough for Darl. Instead Holiday Inn should pimp his ass with them getting all the income. Then again maybe not, he might enjoy being fucked in the ass.
The XO is special. It's built tough, but nonetheless, we have to accept that children might cherish their XO, but they will treat it roughly, too. Try to imagine a child walking several kilometres to school through monsoon rains with nothing but a big taro leaf as an umbrella, horsing around with his friends, dropping the laptop onto the ground to kill birds with his slingshot, tripping and falling in the mud on the river bank.... You get the idea. If we could get two good years out of one of these laptops, we'd be miles ahead of anything else, at a fraction of the expense.
As a kid growing up an XO wouldn't have lasted long for me. Not because I'd of broken it but because I would have taken it apart to see how it worked. I liked hacking a lot of stuff I got, back then I was able to build my own shortwave radio and wanted to get my amateur radio license. But I had trouble learning Morse code which was needed to get a license. Thankfully I recently learned that requirement was dropped so I may go ahead and get my license. I figure that once I do I can practice Morse code. As for weather, most of the tyme I was in college I rode my bike with textbooks and later a laptop in my backpack to campus, an 8.6 mile ride. I just made sure I had a plastic bag to put things into to keep dry when it rained. Actually I rode my bike like that 200 miles a week, frequently while raining.
about the only reason I think they made office for Mac OS was to get some slack from the monopoly law suits
MS had software for Macs before they ever came out with Windows. Up until the 1990s Apple's share of the market was big, not as big as Windows' share is now but it was big. In education the market share Apple had was about 50%. Back then Apple was smart about the educational market, they offered an educational discount of about 50%. But they lowered the discount in the '90s. It's barely 10% now. MS now uses the Mac market for testing. They'll try something new in the Mac version of software first and if it works they'll add it to the Windows version. If it fails MS doesn't lose anything.
I understand that for some states the cutoff for party change is coming up in a week or so. Even if it isn't, changing now means you won't risk forgetting it until it's too late. It also means you'll have a chance to correct any errors before the deadline.
I hadn't thought about a cutoff for registration. However some states allow you to register on election day, or used to at least. Also I'm already registered I just need to change some info on it. I'll have to check on that where I live, however I don't want to change my party affiliation 'til the election because I'd rather avoid being added to any lists and don't like getting political junk in the mail. If I want something I'll subscribe to it. I also don't believe a person should have to declare any party affiliation when registering to vote. I've been registered to vote in 2 states and both required this even if it was "No Party Preference". The state has no need to know. All they have to know is what the voter wants.
In an open primary, Republicans could vote for the worst [votefortheworst.com] Democrat, and Democrats could vote for the worst Republican.
While this is a potential negative of open primaries I think those who would do something like this are shortsighted for putting their political party above having the best candidate win the election. Instead of being able to think for themselves they let the party think for them.
Has Ron Paul stated his views on these?
I didn't find anything either however I imagine he supports copyrights and patents. He wants the government to follow the Constitution of the USA and it specifically enumerates to the federal government the power to grant them.
However, here's the important thing: to take advantage of their patents, Microsoft does not need to sue.
According to Doctrine of Latches Microsoft eventually has to enforce it's patent rights or it loses them.
Can you imagine the havoc this can still wreak despite no past damages? Some ingrained system is distributed with Linux, and then a few years after some major corporations have settled on using it, Microsoft jumps out and says, "Okay, fine, you don't have to pay retroactively since you didn't know. But from now on, pay us $10k per computer."
Even if MS were able to enforce legal patents and do this, they first have to name the patents being violated. Within days of naming those patents the offending code will be removed and new code added. So there won't be much if any disruption in the market. But let's say there is a big disruption, then some big businesses would be hiring big lawyers and lobbyists to pressure congress to make software patents illegal. Either way MS would loose.
I'm pretty sure you can only lose rights to sue for not enforcing Trademarks, not patents. If you can find any evidence to the contrary, please post it.
Thanks to another poster I found this:
" *11 The doctrine of latches, meaning undue delay in claiming one's rights, may result in loss of those rights. In this case the loss may be the right to a priority date, or the right to a patent."
If Microsoft takes too long to enforce it's patent rights it loses those rights. What I don't understand is that because MS has some good lawyers who can explain this to MS MS hasn't filed any lawsuits. The only reasons I can think of is to spread FUD or because they have no evidence to back up their position.
If I'm Microsoft and I think I have patents that Linux infringes upon, why would I want to specify which ones?
Because somebody with the resources can sue Microsoft. If I had the money I could start a business selling products, Linux and Open Office, that MS says violates MS patents. I could then sue MS requesting they show what patents I am violating or pay damages for the libel and slander MS spreads.
When the day comes that some of these patents are real (assuming any are) are you going to dig into your checkbook and pay the hundreds of millions in damages?
First, they're not real. Don't you think Microsoft would've been happy to name them, if they are?
Microsoft can't name the patents Linux and OO violates because MS didn't conduct or higher someone else to conduct the study. The study Ballmer and the rest of MS says Linux and OO violates MS patents was done by Public Patent Foundation for Open Source Risk Management an insurance company that sales insurance to businesses that use Open Source Software. And the study concluded Linux and OO "MAY" violate MS patents, not that they do.
So, why don't you spine up. Form a company selling a fairly complete distro, say a respin of Redhat, and preemptively sue Microsoft for damaging your business with their false claims of patent infringets.
If I had the money I'd do just this, file a lawsuit requesting they show what patents Linux AND Open Office violates or stop the liable and slander. Unfortunately not only do I not have the money but being on disability I'm not even employed.
The question is how bad will be their fall? Will it be like IBM and Apple, who emerged with new life and remade themselves? Or will it be like SGI or Commodore?
the only reason that they made a deal with Novell is to make money off the people who wanted an enterprise Linux solution, so that MS can make money from Open Source.
I don't think the MS deal with Novell had anything to do with trying to make a profit off of Linux. MS could have easily made money off of Linux by selling a version of MS Office for Linux. If MS had created such a version 7 years ago I doubt Open Office would have gained as big, and getting bigger, a share of office suites. There was some demand for Office for Linux otherwise CodeWeavers never would of thought they could make a profit from creating CrossOver to run MS Office on Linux. OO may not of been developed either. Even at this late date MS could probably make money releasing MS Office for Linux, the longer they wait the lower the chances are though.
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Linux owns the server space, MSFT's hardly even a relevant player, that's not going to change
Actually MS is gaining in the server market. Netcraft shows that Apache is dropping whereas MS is increasing in servers. Though this talks about Apache not Linux, while Apache runs on Linux and Windows as well as OX S (I have it installed on my Macbook Pro) and Solaris, MS Internet Information Server only runs on Windows. Easily at least. If ISS is gaining not only is Apache loosing ground but Linux is as well.
FalconSeveral countries (eg Belgium and Spain) have laws which allow them to prosecute "crimes against humanity" in whatever country they occur.
Spain has charges against Henry Kissinger for his support of Gen Pinochet in Chile. If I recall right some Spaniards were some of Pinochet's victims. But Universal Jurisdiction "is a controversial principle in international law whereby states claim criminal jurisdiction over persons whose alleged crimes were committed outside the boundaries of the prosecuting state, regardless of nationality, country of residence, or any other relation with the prosecuting country."
FalconSo if they go to Canada or Mexico first, THEN get on a plane to Cuba, its okay?
It doesn't matter how a US citizen gets to Cuba, if a Cuban stamp is on their passport they will be arrested when they come back. Unless they are Cuban, then they are allowed to travel to Cuba to visit family something like every three years. You can also be arrested for bringing those Cuban cigars you bought in Canada with you back into the US.
Falconyou can't by definition break US law.
Sure you can and you can be sued in a US court as well for acts in other nations. There's a little known law in the US that allows people in other countries to sue those in the US for different things, the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789. For instance in Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co Shell Oil is being sued in a US court for supporting the Nigerian government while the government executed Ken Saro Wiwa and killed some people in Nigeria. However the Bush admin is trying to gut the law so his buddies like Shell and Exxon Mobil Corporation can get away with supporting murderers and human right violators.
Falconespecially in light of the fact that MS refuses to identify these patents?
Well that's their ace in the hole isn't it? As long as they won't identify a specific patent, they aren't limited to a subset of distros that provide, for instance, access to windows shares, ability to read/write ntfs partitions, RDP, or any other MS technologies that *might* be what they're talking about. You can bet that any non-legal personnel at MS will not disclose what patents they refer to outside of a courtroom, because as soon as they do they start limiting themselves.
Actually if MS refuses to identify the patents being violated MS can loose the rights to those patents. It's called Laches, Doctrine Of or Doctrine of Latches.
Falcon1) Can threatening people with unnamed patents for an extended time open up defenses of patent misuse? Prosecution latches?
Close, it's called Laches, Doctrine Of or Doctrine of Latches.
FaclonDon't these kinds of threats put MS in legal jeopardy? Couldn't Linux companies sue MS claiming that Balmer's statements are harming their business,...
It would seem to me to be a variation of Slander of Title, but whether or not a "variation" counts here I do not know.
With patents it's called Laches, Doctrine Of or Doctrine of Latches. If a patent owner does not enforce those patents they can loose the rights to the patents.
FalconPerhaps patents should have to be actively protected, like trademarks, and if a company lets another company use their patent for too long uncontested it becomes public domain.
Patents have to be protected as it is. If a patent isn't protected, via Laches, Doctrine Of or Doctrine of Latches a patent owner can loose their patent rights if they don't enforce those rights.
FalconI couldn't tell from the article, but which intellectual property is MS saying open source solutions are infringing on?
Like SCO MS has never, and will never, say what IP Linux and Open Office violates. The figures Ballmer and MS uses, that Open Source violates 238 MS patents comes from a study conducted by people at PUBPAT, Public Patent Foundation, that concluded 238 patents "Might" be violated. They said "Might" not does, and they didn't say which ones. PUBPAT did the study for Open Source Risk Management, an insurance startup that insures FOOS users against patent or copyright infringement lawsuits.
FalconOne issue of the SCO/Novell suit is whether SCO owns the Unix System V code (by owning its copyrights), or whether Novell still does instead.
The judge has already ruled Novell owns System V, the only thing needed is to decide how much Novell money SCO owes.
FalconThey're far and away the biggest creditor, at least until IBM's counterclaims are adjudicated. They should be able to get the court to appoint a receiver to liquidate SCO, shouldn't they?
Novell is not a SCO creditor. Repeat after me, NOVELL IS NOT A SCO CREDITOR. The money SCO owes Novell is Novell's property, Novell owns it but SCO collected it and was supposed to give it to Novell but didn't. Then Novell would pay SCO a commission of, I believe it was 5% of the money. This is very important distinction for this case, in bankruptcy property owners get their property first, only after property owners get their property does the creditors get paid, if there are assets left.
FalconIBM is investing a lot more then their getting back (i may be wrong here, as we(i) don't know whats in their agenda for the years to come - this could be one of those investments where you loose money for 10 years, and start making money in 20
For the past few years at least IBM has been shifting it's business focus on providing services, and software, instead of hardware, this could explain it's sale of the PC division to Lenovo. Commodity hardware venders operate on razor thin margins.
FalconThose who bought SCOX during the ridiculous days of $15 to $19 a share have lost -99% of their money. The company used to be worth around $400 million, now less than $4 million
What would of been nice was to sale short. An option to sale a 1000 shares of SCO at $15 would net $14,000 plus now.
FalconI think a lifetime of indentured servitude as a pool boy at a Holiday Inn would probably be justice for Daryl McBride.
That's not good enough for Darl. Instead Holiday Inn should pimp his ass with them getting all the income. Then again maybe not, he might enjoy being fucked in the ass.
FalconThe XO is special. It's built tough, but nonetheless, we have to accept that children might cherish their XO, but they will treat it roughly, too. Try to imagine a child walking several kilometres to school through monsoon rains with nothing but a big taro leaf as an umbrella, horsing around with his friends, dropping the laptop onto the ground to kill birds with his slingshot, tripping and falling in the mud on the river bank.... You get the idea. If we could get two good years out of one of these laptops, we'd be miles ahead of anything else, at a fraction of the expense.
As a kid growing up an XO wouldn't have lasted long for me. Not because I'd of broken it but because I would have taken it apart to see how it worked. I liked hacking a lot of stuff I got, back then I was able to build my own shortwave radio and wanted to get my amateur radio license. But I had trouble learning Morse code which was needed to get a license. Thankfully I recently learned that requirement was dropped so I may go ahead and get my license. I figure that once I do I can practice Morse code. As for weather, most of the tyme I was in college I rode my bike with textbooks and later a laptop in my backpack to campus, an 8.6 mile ride. I just made sure I had a plastic bag to put things into to keep dry when it rained. Actually I rode my bike like that 200 miles a week, frequently while raining.
Falconabout the only reason I think they made office for Mac OS was to get some slack from the monopoly law suits
MS had software for Macs before they ever came out with Windows. Up until the 1990s Apple's share of the market was big, not as big as Windows' share is now but it was big. In education the market share Apple had was about 50%. Back then Apple was smart about the educational market, they offered an educational discount of about 50%. But they lowered the discount in the '90s. It's barely 10% now. MS now uses the Mac market for testing. They'll try something new in the Mac version of software first and if it works they'll add it to the Windows version. If it fails MS doesn't lose anything.
FalconI understand that for some states the cutoff for party change is coming up in a week or so. Even if it isn't, changing now means you won't risk forgetting it until it's too late. It also means you'll have a chance to correct any errors before the deadline.
I hadn't thought about a cutoff for registration. However some states allow you to register on election day, or used to at least. Also I'm already registered I just need to change some info on it. I'll have to check on that where I live, however I don't want to change my party affiliation 'til the election because I'd rather avoid being added to any lists and don't like getting political junk in the mail. If I want something I'll subscribe to it. I also don't believe a person should have to declare any party affiliation when registering to vote. I've been registered to vote in 2 states and both required this even if it was "No Party Preference". The state has no need to know. All they have to know is what the voter wants.
FalconIn an open primary, Republicans could vote for the worst [votefortheworst.com] Democrat, and Democrats could vote for the worst Republican.
While this is a potential negative of open primaries I think those who would do something like this are shortsighted for putting their political party above having the best candidate win the election. Instead of being able to think for themselves they let the party think for them.
Has Ron Paul stated his views on these?
I didn't find anything either however I imagine he supports copyrights and patents. He wants the government to follow the Constitution of the USA and it specifically enumerates to the federal government the power to grant them.
FalconHowever, here's the important thing: to take advantage of their patents, Microsoft does not need to sue.
According to Doctrine of Latches Microsoft eventually has to enforce it's patent rights or it loses them.
Can you imagine the havoc this can still wreak despite no past damages? Some ingrained system is distributed with Linux, and then a few years after some major corporations have settled on using it, Microsoft jumps out and says, "Okay, fine, you don't have to pay retroactively since you didn't know. But from now on, pay us $10k per computer."
Even if MS were able to enforce legal patents and do this, they first have to name the patents being violated. Within days of naming those patents the offending code will be removed and new code added. So there won't be much if any disruption in the market. But let's say there is a big disruption, then some big businesses would be hiring big lawyers and lobbyists to pressure congress to make software patents illegal. Either way MS would loose.
FalconI'm pretty sure you can only lose rights to sue for not enforcing Trademarks, not patents. If you can find any evidence to the contrary, please post it.
Thanks to another poster I found this:
" *11 The doctrine of latches, meaning undue delay in claiming one's rights, may result in loss of those rights. In this case the loss may be the right to a priority date, or the right to a patent."
If Microsoft takes too long to enforce it's patent rights it loses those rights. What I don't understand is that because MS has some good lawyers who can explain this to MS MS hasn't filed any lawsuits. The only reasons I can think of is to spread FUD or because they have no evidence to back up their position.
FalconIf I'm Microsoft and I think I have patents that Linux infringes upon, why would I want to specify which ones?
Because somebody with the resources can sue Microsoft. If I had the money I could start a business selling products, Linux and Open Office, that MS says violates MS patents. I could then sue MS requesting they show what patents I am violating or pay damages for the libel and slander MS spreads.
FalconWhen the day comes that some of these patents are real (assuming any are) are you going to dig into your checkbook and pay the hundreds of millions in damages?
First, they're not real. Don't you think Microsoft would've been happy to name them, if they are?
Microsoft can't name the patents Linux and OO violates because MS didn't conduct or higher someone else to conduct the study. The study Ballmer and the rest of MS says Linux and OO violates MS patents was done by Public Patent Foundation for Open Source Risk Management an insurance company that sales insurance to businesses that use Open Source Software. And the study concluded Linux and OO "MAY" violate MS patents, not that they do.
FalconSo, why don't you spine up. Form a company selling a fairly complete distro, say a respin of Redhat, and preemptively sue Microsoft for damaging your business with their false claims of patent infringets.
If I had the money I'd do just this, file a lawsuit requesting they show what patents Linux AND Open Office violates or stop the liable and slander. Unfortunately not only do I not have the money but being on disability I'm not even employed.
FalconThe question is how bad will be their fall? Will it be like IBM and Apple, who emerged with new life and remade themselves? Or will it be like SGI or Commodore?
Unlike Commodore which died SGI has changed their focus. SGI now builds High Performance and supercomputers. Here's an article on CNN Money about SGI, Marking First 25 Years, SGI Highlights How Its Customers Have Changed the World.
Falconthe only reason that they made a deal with Novell is to make money off the people who wanted an enterprise Linux solution, so that MS can make money from Open Source.
I don't think the MS deal with Novell had anything to do with trying to make a profit off of Linux. MS could have easily made money off of Linux by selling a version of MS Office for Linux. If MS had created such a version 7 years ago I doubt Open Office would have gained as big, and getting bigger, a share of office suites. There was some demand for Office for Linux otherwise CodeWeavers never would of thought they could make a profit from creating CrossOver to run MS Office on Linux. OO may not of been developed either. Even at this late date MS could probably make money releasing MS Office for Linux, the longer they wait the lower the chances are though.