I'd say it's a vulnerability in the exact same sense - naive or non-techie people are the most likely to fall for it.
Unfortunately it's exactly that type of person who is targeted by and falls for every other vulnerability. It may help if the window title of the dialogue box made it clear what site had thrown the window up. However, I'm not sure it could be completely eliminated without significantly reducing javascript support.
For those who can't be bothered to RTFA, the Mozilla vulnerability is essentially a standard link with an "onMouseOver" bit which runs a little piece of JavaScript.
The JavaScript pauses for a few seconds (while you presumably get distracted by another page) then flashes up a "Please enter some text" dialogue box.
A similar effect could be achieved by calling the JavaScript on pretty much any event; the vulnerability relies on it being unclear which site caused the dialogue box to pop up. I can see how it could be classed a vulnerability, but it's hardly earth shattering.
In fact, the cost will rise _quadratically_ with the number of patented features you want to include. If a player had MPEG2, MPEG4, WMV, WMA, MP3, WTF and FOOBAR support, each licensed at 5%, I'd have to put the price up by another $75 just
And you can say goodbye to those DVD players which handle just about everything, including JPEG, MP3, DivX, Xvid, Video CD, audio CDs etc. The patent licensing would work out at 110% of the purchase price.
I recall hearing something similar. My understanding was that if the World Health Organisation deems a drug sufficiently important, they put it on a list. Medicines on that list have to be made available at sensible prices (and you can't sue people making generics in third world countries, regardless of the patent issues). Great for PR (Our company has 8 different products on the list! Aren't we great!) but lousy for the bottom line - you'll spend millions on research only to find you can't sell it at £500 a dose worldwide.
However, that's for medicines already in production. I doubt it covers stuff still in research.
Wonderful, wonderful. So now only one company in most of the developed world can research this promising avenue, rather than pooling the resources of charities, drugs companies and other researchers worldwide?
The human race is going to be the first race in history to litigate itself into oblivion.
You are correct, though your argument misses a few points.
You must understand a corporate IT environment:
Desktop systems aren't generally upgraded much (if at all). This is why the PC on the corporate user's desk has 1 or 2 spare memory slots, a BIOS which doesn't allow twiddling with low-level settings like memory timings and 1 spare drive bay if you're lucky. The system is simply chucked out - either when it starts to get too slow or in an upgrade cycle, which may happen every 2-3 years.
TCO is therefore based on other things - mainly staff. How many PCs you know cost over £20,000 per year (at a couple-of-years-above-junior level)? Microsoft use the "Unix admins are more expensive!" line. That's true, but you don't generally need such a high staff:computer ratio, which negates the extra cost. This is something which non-Unix people generally just don't understand.
Microsoft licenses in business tend to be of the "renewable every N years" variety. You get to pay Microsoft every few years, regardless of whether or not you want to use the new versions of any of their products.
My guess is AT&T's license is due to expire in around 2006-2008.
I miss the simplicity of applying different languages to paragraphs in MS Word.
I admit this one's completely illogical, but anyhow:
Select the text
Go to Format, Character...
In the "Fonts" tab, you can choose the language of your selection (there's a combo box in the middle, you'll need the relevant dictionaries installed to spellcheck).
Don't ask me why it's there, I accept it's stupid.
Please define "huge document". My degree dissertation was 17,000 words, 105 pages, several screenshots, automatically generated table of contents and works beautifully.
I migrated to a late OpenOffice beta part way through producing it partly because StarOffice 5.2 (which it started life on) was too unstable.
There is a difference between making a poor argument and speaking complete tosh.
Clearly in this instance, my argument was poor. Let me try and rephrase it.
It is my opinion, based upon the current state of IT, that there is no software in existence which demonstrates novel, nonobvious ideas. I am not convinced that such software is even possible.
You are welcome to disagree with this opinion, however, I would appreciate you understanding how I reach it.
Firstly, I wish to discard the typical Slashdot approach "it's all numbers, how can you patent numbers?". While technically correct, you could apply the same argument to any tangible object in existence, viz: "It's all atoms, how can you patent atoms?". The clever (and, in theory, patentable) bit is what you do with the numbers.
My argument is therefore:
The concepts of IT (by which I don't just mean binary logic, I also mean things like HCI, data representation etc) have been around for many years, and have no patents surrounding them because they're not inventions, they're established concepts which are too abstract to patent.
Copyright already protects software, as does the inherent difficulty in reverse-engineering any significant program. Therefore, the things which get patented are simply more (generally fairly abstract) concepts - and frequently such basic ones as to make anyone versed in IT laugh out loud.
It may be that I am incorrect, and that there is some truly innovative software out there. Software which does what nobody in the history of IT ever even thought of doing before. It may also be that such software is patented. I've yet to see any evidence of this, but absence of evidence is not proof.
It is my belief that the patent system as it currently stands is fundamentally unsuited to IT. So much so that the necessary changes would make software patents so different that they really should be called something else. Specifically:
Patent offices clearly cannot afford experienced IT staff to examine patents. This problem's easy: throw enough money at it.
There is no clear definition of "novel, nonobvious" largely because there's little case law - the thought of a patent battle with IBM is enough to put most executives in a negotiating mood.
The barrier to entry in developing software is much lower than with most professions - all you need is a computer, a text editor and a compiler. It is precisely because of this low barrier to entry that so much libre/gratis software exists today, and how much richer is the IT world for it?
And finally, 25 years may be acceptable for ideas in fields such as engineering, but in software it's absolutely crazy. The whole point of patents is that they grant a LIMITED monopoly - enough time for them to be exploited to make the inventor a reasonable sum of money - before eventually allowing everyone a crack at the whip. This may take many years in most fields, it can happen in a much shorter timeframe with software.
One last point: This post is so huge, and the words so long, that it is almost guaranteed to be modded down. Further, you've stopped reading by now so I may as well say what I like. Wibble.
I know I'm feeding the trolls, but this is a fundamental concept that few people can understand. However, I'm going to give it a go. Repeat slowly after me...
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS INNOVATIVE SOFTWARE.
And there hasn't been in years. Modern software builds so much on previous work (much of it from before the days of software patents) that the amount of prior art renders the very idea of patenting it laughable. At a very high level, all software is is a means of making an existing job easier by automating that which lends itself to automation.
As computers progress, it becomes easier to automate more things. But ultimately, taking an existing business practise and appending the phrase "... on a computer" doesn't make it innovative.
I found it far pickier over the hardware than Linux (it doesn't seem to like AMD based systems much) - frankly, Solaris IMO is best suited to the architecture for which it was intended.
They don't need to hold every bit of porn out there. Just enough of it. Maybe your ISP could provide a pr0n search engine covering just the locally cached porn to save customers from using backbone bandwidth.
Slashdot Mirror
Run Duke Nukem 3D on Longhorn?
can always stand to throw enough .... lawyers
Now there's a thought. If you throw a lawyer at someone and miss, does the lawyer bounce? Or just make a nasty squelching noise?
Yes, but the hardware only costs $5. The rest is licensing - SCO offered them a special deal.
I'd say it's a vulnerability in the exact same sense - naive or non-techie people are the most likely to fall for it.
Unfortunately it's exactly that type of person who is targeted by and falls for every other vulnerability. It may help if the window title of the dialogue box made it clear what site had thrown the window up. However, I'm not sure it could be completely eliminated without significantly reducing javascript support.
For those who can't be bothered to RTFA, the Mozilla vulnerability is essentially a standard link with an "onMouseOver" bit which runs a little piece of JavaScript.
The JavaScript pauses for a few seconds (while you presumably get distracted by another page) then flashes up a "Please enter some text" dialogue box.
A similar effect could be achieved by calling the JavaScript on pretty much any event; the vulnerability relies on it being unclear which site caused the dialogue box to pop up. I can see how it could be classed a vulnerability, but it's hardly earth shattering.
There is also evidence to suggest that Microsoft were following similar practices many years before the DoJ case. See also "The Microsoft File: The Secret Case against Bill Gates"
RTFA. It's not particularly damaging. In a nutshell, the article says:
"Echelon exists"
This has been public domain knowledge for some time.
"It uses computer technology to snoop communications"
Well, that makes sense. Unless you want to go through all the millions of calls made on this planet by hand.
"It uses custom hardware in order to do so"
No kidding. I always assumed they had a handful of servers running Windows 2000 running the whole thing. </sarcasm>
"It probably handles encrypted communications as well"
More than likely. The only thing open to question is "exactly what level of encryption can it break easily?"
50 million British Internet users? That's impressive, there's only 60 million people in the whole country.
In fact, the cost will rise _quadratically_ with the number of patented features you want to include. If a player had MPEG2, MPEG4, WMV, WMA, MP3, WTF and FOOBAR support, each licensed at 5%, I'd have to put the price up by another $75 just
And you can say goodbye to those DVD players which handle just about everything, including JPEG, MP3, DivX, Xvid, Video CD, audio CDs etc. The patent licensing would work out at 110% of the purchase price.
I recall hearing something similar. My understanding was that if the World Health Organisation deems a drug sufficiently important, they put it on a list. Medicines on that list have to be made available at sensible prices (and you can't sue people making generics in third world countries, regardless of the patent issues). Great for PR (Our company has 8 different products on the list! Aren't we great!) but lousy for the bottom line - you'll spend millions on research only to find you can't sell it at £500 a dose worldwide.
However, that's for medicines already in production. I doubt it covers stuff still in research.
Wonderful, wonderful. So now only one company in most of the developed world can research this promising avenue, rather than pooling the resources of charities, drugs companies and other researchers worldwide?
The human race is going to be the first race in history to litigate itself into oblivion.
Every time a lab does something with the caucasian mutation this lab send out a cease and desist.
Cite?
(Yes, I know not believing everything you read is genereally bad for the karma. So mod me down).
http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/
You must understand a corporate IT environment:
My guess is AT&T's license is due to expire in around 2006-2008.
I admit this one's completely illogical, but anyhow:
Don't ask me why it's there, I accept it's stupid.
I installed X-CD-Roaster
That's your first mistake. Try k3b.
Please define "huge document". My degree dissertation was 17,000 words, 105 pages, several screenshots, automatically generated table of contents and works beautifully.
I migrated to a late OpenOffice beta part way through producing it partly because StarOffice 5.2 (which it started life on) was too unstable.
I'm wondering if the creation of greenhouse gasses used in fuelling your aircraft is going to negate any benefit in reducing the hole by 1%.
Taking an active role in a club where you'll be surrounded by fit, flexible, good-looking 19 year old girls on a regular basis?
Don't know about you but I wouldn't describe that as evidence of homosexuality...
Thank you for installing Microsoft Windows XP (EU Edition).
Windows is now checking Microsoft's website for updates and new features.........
New Features Available! Please choose what you want to download:
1. Windows Media Player. This is required if you want to play MP3s, watch videos or DVDs.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the RIP act one of Jack Straw's babies?
What exactly are you firewalling against when the system doesn't support networking?
Clearly in this instance, my argument was poor. Let me try and rephrase it.
It is my opinion, based upon the current state of IT, that there is no software in existence which demonstrates novel, nonobvious ideas. I am not convinced that such software is even possible.
You are welcome to disagree with this opinion, however, I would appreciate you understanding how I reach it.
Firstly, I wish to discard the typical Slashdot approach "it's all numbers, how can you patent numbers?". While technically correct, you could apply the same argument to any tangible object in existence, viz: "It's all atoms, how can you patent atoms?". The clever (and, in theory, patentable) bit is what you do with the numbers.
My argument is therefore:
The concepts of IT (by which I don't just mean binary logic, I also mean things like HCI, data representation etc) have been around for many years, and have no patents surrounding them because they're not inventions, they're established concepts which are too abstract to patent.
Copyright already protects software, as does the inherent difficulty in reverse-engineering any significant program. Therefore, the things which get patented are simply more (generally fairly abstract) concepts - and frequently such basic ones as to make anyone versed in IT laugh out loud.
It may be that I am incorrect, and that there is some truly innovative software out there. Software which does what nobody in the history of IT ever even thought of doing before. It may also be that such software is patented. I've yet to see any evidence of this, but absence of evidence is not proof.
It is my belief that the patent system as it currently stands is fundamentally unsuited to IT. So much so that the necessary changes would make software patents so different that they really should be called something else. Specifically:
I know I'm feeding the trolls, but this is a fundamental concept that few people can understand. However, I'm going to give it a go. Repeat slowly after me...
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS INNOVATIVE SOFTWARE.
And there hasn't been in years. Modern software builds so much on previous work (much of it from before the days of software patents) that the amount of prior art renders the very idea of patenting it laughable. At a very high level, all software is is a means of making an existing job easier by automating that which lends itself to automation.
As computers progress, it becomes easier to automate more things. But ultimately, taking an existing business practise and appending the phrase "... on a computer" doesn't make it innovative.
You ever used Solaris on x86?
I found it far pickier over the hardware than Linux (it doesn't seem to like AMD based systems much) - frankly, Solaris IMO is best suited to the architecture for which it was intended.
They don't need to hold every bit of porn out there. Just enough of it. Maybe your ISP could provide a pr0n search engine covering just the locally cached porn to save customers from using backbone bandwidth.