Re:It's just a standard response to Freedom.
on
McVoy Strikes Back
·
· Score: 1
The following quote says it all: 'The open source guys can scrape together enough resources to reverse engineer stuff. That's easy. It's way cheaper to reverse engineer something than to create something new.
I'd have to strongly disagree here. I reverse engineered stuff for a living: figuring out what the hell another (group of) engineer(s) was thinking when they created something is much much harder than turning your own thoughts into a working piece of software.
Freedos also runs great inside the FreeBSD 'doscmd' tool (comes standard with the install).
doscmd(1) emulates just enough of the bios in userspace on bsd to do useful things, like running that old TurboPascal 3.0 suite, and creating dos-bootable filesystem images (ever had to find a way to produce the effect of format/s c: or sys c: on a real OS?)
if you recompile it with X11 support, you can nearly play lemmings!
moreover, you don't have to go through an expensive procedure to get copyright.
if you want protection against patent suits here's what to do: - print a list of all your projects files and their MD5 checksums - have that list timestamped by a notary or something equally legally binding - when sued, produce your code, show that the md5sums match and that you had those at date XXX
of course, be sure to keep the exact versions of all your files you used to md5sum (hint: cvs)
note: Patent offices (at least in europe) do not accept the availability of code at some ftp site as proof of prior art, you have to prove beyond doubt that your code existed before a certain time
All the juri rapporteur and the European commission have done is to cloud the issue in confusion.
At the heart of the proposal lies a text that makes/everything under the sun/ be patentable, just as in the US, as long as a computer is somehow involved.
The effect of the cloud of confusion is to make people think that actually the EU has a more restrictive system than the US, but patent lawyers will know better.
'technical contribution' is completely undefined and the clear limit of article 52(2)c, an explicit ban on software patents is removed.
That means that business methods like 'selling cucumbers with the aid of a data-transmission device' will be patentable. As long as 'business' is not mentioned in the claim.
Do some background reading (www.ffii.org) before you post nonsense like 'EU will get better patent regime than US'
What you refer to is the 'not software as such' myth. That is how it is/now/: the software itself cannot be patented, but inventions that happen to contain software may be patented.
Despite the impression McCarthy and e.g. Bolkestein want to confer, the EC draft directive actually/removes/ this limitation: anything 'with a computer' is by definition technical, and hence patentable. So software 'as such' will be patentable.
The report you point to is from a hardcore pro swpat organization, that complains that the EC is not going far enough in extending the scope of the patent system. What they don't like about the proposal is that it even/pretends/ to limit the patent system.
Bogomips are not a mesure of performance by any stretch of the imagination. bogus+mips = bogomips.
Actually, neither are FLOPS. It wildly depends on what you do in your program, and no benchmark is representative.
As an instructor for the course 'Optimizing for the CRAY J932' told my class: the 'Theoretical Peak Performance' is the performance the manufacturer guarantees you won't exceed.
www.eurolinux.org, an organisation that has been figthing Eu patents for quite a while, pointed out that the EU press release, whose view is quoted here, contradicts the actual proposal, which in fact allows unlimited patentability, hidden behind hollow words.
What is more, the BSA, althought officially claiming to be 'disappointed' by the proposal wrote it themselves.
See http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/eubsa-swpat0202 for more info
The wouldn't call it 'Eden' if they read This Other Eden by Ben Elton.
In that story, playing around 2080, a Bill-Gates
alike power-hungry super rich advertising genius
manages to sell comfortable family sized 'bio-domes' to half the world's population
to survive the upcoming ecological disaster that will make the earth unable to sustain life.
>> 1. Companies find another, intelligent way of dealing with intellectual rights issues.
>> 2. The USA (and elsewhere) will become a corporate-financed police state.
In issues like these, it helps to ask yourself this simple question:
Now, what's more likely?
While I am sure journals aren't exactly pots of gold,
Actually, they are. North Holland, the scientific branch of Elsevier is responsible for a large art
of the groups profits. As regards the costs: the non-profit American Physical Society publishes high quality titles that are two orders of magnitude cheaper than Elsevier and Kluwer, they charge only the actual const of printing and overhead.
What is more, because of the importance of their titles, they can charge exorbitant subscription fees. Libraries just can't afford to not subscribe. But they increase their fees by amounts of the order of 10% each year, forcing ibraries, with their fixed budget to drop some of the competing journals.
In some fields (e.g. physics) most actual communication of results already takes place through the so called 'preprint servers'
e.g. xxx.lanl.gov. Publication in a paper journal only serves as an 'approval stamp', a year after the actual publication.
If someone were to add a peer review system to these preprint servers, you could do away with the paper titles altogether.
The system screws scientists in every way. The only reason it lasts is because of the reputation of the titles, which creates a vicious circle. Sooner or later scientist will have to break this circle.
If scientist don't wake up, I guess they don't deserve better.
media-independent means needed?
on
Spambot Poisoner
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· Score: 1
Nokia has started spamming me over SMS
(pager service) after I bought one of
their mobile phones.
The bummer is that I can't easily change
my mobile phone #.
I tried: calling them up and yelling, but
that hasn't helped. I also called my GSM network
provider, to ask them a) to block the spammers acces to their network. and b) enable me to disable SMS services.
Since Nokia is presumably a big business partner
of the network provider, I'm not holding my breath.
> For you I would like to recommend some reading:
>
> Building Linux Clusters by David HM > > Spector published by O'Reilly, (hmmm site seems to be
> down, come back later, or check Google cached version)
Check the readers comments section: 15 are extremely negative, only 1 is positive.
1. A device for manipulating information, represented by inscriptions
of a countable sequence of symbols chosen from any fixed finite
countable set A. Said symbols being inscribed on a surface of any
finite topological dimension, such inscribed surface being termed a
'tape'.
The device being supplied with a pointer to at least one specific
position on at least one such tape, such pointer being termed a
'head'.
The device having an automaton maintaining at each moment in time
exactly one of a finite number of possible states. One of these
states being designated the special 'final state'. Said automaton
being supplied with a finite list of prescriptions, each of which
governing:
a) the optional transition of the state of the automaton
to a new state,
b) the optional transformation of an inscribed symbol at the
position of a head to a new symbol chosen from the finite
countable set A.
c) the optional motion of any of the heads over a finite
distance in any direction.
such transitions being dependent on
a) the current state maintained by the automaton
b) the current symbols at the positions of the heads.
The device being operated in a manner comprising the following
steps:
1) the symbols at the heads being recognized
2) the current state being recognized
3) selecting a rule from said finite list applicable to said
symbols and states
4) effecting the changes prescribed by said rule
5) unless the automaton maintains the 'final state', repeat
from step 1.
2. Any device capable of the same class of manipulations of
information, as defined in claim 1, which results from composing
any of the functional parts of the device described in claim 1
together with a device to interrupt the power so as to effect the
end of the cycle of steps 1 - 5.
That should cover the some pretty universal machines,
and the best solution to the Halting Problem.
I'm trying to get some media coverage of the
terrible decision that is about to be made,
and I need some help in presenting the arguments.
The most difficult thing is to briefly explain
newcomers that although patents seem to serve
protection of Intellectual property, they do exactly the opposite.
Does anyone have (pointers to) examples of US
startups that had their innovations taken away
from them by a large company with a trivial patent
portofolio?
If it is all so bad, my audience asks me, how
come the american IT startups are still in existence and drive the stockmarket booms?
I noticed it is very difficult to find (european) politicians that know about the issue, or even
ones that know which fellow party members are
supposed to cover this topic.
Well, still two months to keep trying to convince
some people...
Slashdot Mirror
Freedos also runs great inside the FreeBSD 'doscmd' tool (comes standard with the install).
/s c: or sys c: on a real OS?)
doscmd(1) emulates just enough of the bios in userspace on bsd to do useful things, like running that old TurboPascal 3.0 suite, and creating dos-bootable filesystem images (ever had to find a way to produce the effect of format
if you recompile it with X11 support, you can nearly play lemmings!
moreover, you don't have to go through an expensive procedure to get copyright.
if you want protection against patent suits here's what to do:
- print a list of all your projects files and their MD5 checksums
- have that list timestamped by a notary or something equally legally binding
- when sued, produce your code, show that the md5sums match and that you had those at date XXX
of course, be sure to keep the exact versions of all your files you used to md5sum (hint: cvs)
note: Patent offices (at least in europe) do not accept the availability of code at some ftp site as proof of prior art, you have to prove beyond doubt that your code existed before a certain time
This ./ article is very misleading
/everything under the sun/ be patentable, just as in the US, as long as a computer is somehow involved.
All the juri rapporteur and the European commission have done is to cloud the issue in confusion.
At the heart of the proposal lies a text that makes
The effect of the cloud of confusion is to make people think that actually the EU has a more restrictive system than the US, but patent lawyers will know better.
'technical contribution' is completely undefined and the clear limit of article 52(2)c, an explicit ban on software patents is removed.
That means that business methods like 'selling cucumbers with the aid of a data-transmission device' will be patentable. As long as 'business' is not mentioned in the claim.
Do some background reading (www.ffii.org) before you post nonsense like 'EU will get better patent regime than US'
What you refer to is the 'not software as such' myth. That is how it is /now/: the software itself cannot be patented, but inventions that happen to contain software may be patented.
/removes/ this limitation: anything 'with a computer' is by definition technical, and hence patentable. So software 'as such' will be patentable.
/pretends/ to limit the patent system.
Despite the impression McCarthy and e.g. Bolkestein want to confer, the EC draft directive actually
The report you point to is from a hardcore pro swpat organization, that complains that the EC is not going far enough in extending the scope of the patent system. What they don't like about the proposal is that it even
Actually, neither are FLOPS. It wildly depends on what you do in your program, and no benchmark is representative.
As an instructor for the course 'Optimizing for the CRAY J932' told my class: the 'Theoretical Peak Performance' is the performance the manufacturer guarantees you won't exceed.
Please stop repeating the EC lies.
www.eurolinux.org, an organisation that has been
figthing Eu patents for quite a while, pointed
out that the EU press release, whose view is quoted
here, contradicts the actual proposal, which in
fact allows unlimited patentability, hidden
behind hollow words.
What is more, the BSA, althought officially claiming
to be 'disappointed' by the proposal wrote it themselves.
See http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/eubsa-swpat0202
for more info
The wouldn't call it 'Eden' if they read This Other Eden by Ben Elton.
In that story, playing around 2080, a Bill-Gates
alike power-hungry super rich advertising genius
manages to sell comfortable family sized 'bio-domes' to half the world's population
to survive the upcoming ecological disaster that will make the earth unable to sustain life.
>> 2. The USA (and elsewhere) will become a corporate-financed police state.
In issues like these, it helps to ask yourself this simple question: Now, what's more likely?
While I am sure journals aren't exactly pots of gold,
Actually, they are. North Holland, the scientific branch of Elsevier is responsible for a large art of the groups profits. As regards the costs: the non-profit American Physical Society publishes high quality titles that are two orders of magnitude cheaper than Elsevier and Kluwer, they charge only the actual const of printing and overhead.
What is more, because of the importance of their titles, they can charge exorbitant subscription fees. Libraries just can't afford to not subscribe. But they increase their fees by amounts of the order of 10% each year, forcing ibraries, with their fixed budget to drop some of the competing journals.
In some fields (e.g. physics) most actual communication of results already takes place through the so called 'preprint servers' e.g. xxx.lanl.gov. Publication in a paper journal only serves as an 'approval stamp', a year after the actual publication.
If someone were to add a peer review system to these preprint servers, you could do away with the paper titles altogether.
The system screws scientists in every way. The only reason it lasts is because of the reputation of the titles, which creates a vicious circle. Sooner or later scientist will have to break this circle.
If scientist don't wake up, I guess they don't deserve better.
Nokia has started spamming me over SMS
(pager service) after I bought one of
their mobile phones.
The bummer is that I can't easily change
my mobile phone #.
I tried: calling them up and yelling, but
that hasn't helped. I also called my GSM network
provider, to ask them a) to block the spammers acces to their network. and b) enable me to disable SMS services.
Since Nokia is presumably a big business partner
of the network provider, I'm not holding my breath.
Ideas anyone?
Where does the belief come from that if you
make a lot of money 'you must be doing something
right'?
If 'something' = making money, its tautological,
and if 'something'!= making money its reverse
is equally likely. So here's the new paradigm:
If you make a lot of money, you must
be doing something wrong.
Like really hurting people or society or so.
Ample support by M$ and Intel practices, Al Capone, and probably also by the practices of
/. favourites sun and amd.
Actually the Netherlands made up their mind
last friday to vote against.
> For you I would like to recommend some reading:
>
> Building Linux Clusters by David HM > > Spector published by O'Reilly, (hmmm site seems to be
> down, come back later, or check Google cached version)
Check the readers comments section: 15 are extremely negative, only 1 is positive.
Claims:
1. A device for manipulating information, represented by inscriptions
of a countable sequence of symbols chosen from any fixed finite
countable set A. Said symbols being inscribed on a surface of any
finite topological dimension, such inscribed surface being termed a
'tape'.
The device being supplied with a pointer to at least one specific
position on at least one such tape, such pointer being termed a
'head'.
The device having an automaton maintaining at each moment in time
exactly one of a finite number of possible states. One of these
states being designated the special 'final state'. Said automaton
being supplied with a finite list of prescriptions, each of which
governing:
a) the optional transition of the state of the automaton
to a new state,
b) the optional transformation of an inscribed symbol at the
position of a head to a new symbol chosen from the finite
countable set A.
c) the optional motion of any of the heads over a finite
distance in any direction.
such transitions being dependent on
a) the current state maintained by the automaton
b) the current symbols at the positions of the heads.
The device being operated in a manner comprising the following
steps:
1) the symbols at the heads being recognized
2) the current state being recognized
3) selecting a rule from said finite list applicable to said
symbols and states
4) effecting the changes prescribed by said rule
5) unless the automaton maintains the 'final state', repeat
from step 1.
2. Any device capable of the same class of manipulations of
information, as defined in claim 1, which results from composing
any of the functional parts of the device described in claim 1
together with a device to interrupt the power so as to effect the
end of the cycle of steps 1 - 5.
That should cover the some pretty universal machines,
and the best solution to the Halting Problem.
I'm trying to get some media coverage of the
terrible decision that is about to be made,
and I need some help in presenting the arguments.
The most difficult thing is to briefly explain
newcomers that although patents seem to serve
protection of Intellectual property, they do exactly the opposite.
Does anyone have (pointers to) examples of US
startups that had their innovations taken away
from them by a large company with a trivial patent
portofolio?
If it is all so bad, my audience asks me, how
come the american IT startups are still in existence and drive the stockmarket booms?
I noticed it is very difficult to find (european) politicians that know about the issue, or even
ones that know which fellow party members are
supposed to cover this topic.
Well, still two months to keep trying to convince
some people...