Yeah, the issue is more likely to come up defensively. If MS really trips over this (i.e., gets called on any of its vouchers), then any GPLv3 user that MS sues for patent infringement can defend on the basis that MS has licensed all users, including them, under every patent that was licensed to Novell, regardless of where the user got its copy of the software. So MS will try to put the best face on this, but these are probably not waters that MS would want to wade into. Do you think any such user would have a hard time coming up with a legal defense if sued by MS for patent infringement? I doubt that. So that's the "enforceability" right there. If MS can't find and destroy every last voucher before it is too late, they will be in a bad spot on this and their entire portfolio of patents will likely be impotent as regards any GPLv3 software.
Yes I use Control-Z... But Ctl-Z doesn't tell you what you are about to undo. The little icons next to the Office button do that, but you have to recognize what they are. There are a mass of icons up there. It just wasn't that obvious to me. But you are right, they are there.
Insert footnote is there, as you say, but it is easy to miss, being on the left and below "Insert Endnote." For some reason, the infrequently used "endnote" option ended up getting elevated above the footnote option.
Alt-S-F is a new one on me. Used to be Alt-I-N, which doesn't work anymore. A lot of the old key sequences no longer work.
The Line Number style did NOT show up in the Palette after I added line numbers to the document. I had to change the options to show "All styles" first. Then it at least shows up in the drop-down list off the secondary pop-open menu - but still not on the Style Palette. But after some poking around I was able to change the font.
The Building Blocks feature looks useful. I will try it.
As I said, I am probably sticking with Office 2007, but I don't think these are all BS issues.
Insert-Footer-Blank is NOT a "footnote". It is a footer.
As for line numbers - It's still easy to insert line numbers. However, What I WROTE was try changing the STYLE (e.g., font) of the line numbers - try it, it ain't that easy.
Alt-E-U doesn't work reliably either. Yes, there are new icons for undo and redo next to the Office button, if you notice them and realize what they are. There are an AWFUL lot of icons up there.
You bet. As a Word user since 1986, who knows the program pretty well, I must agree that the ribbon is a jumbled mess with important stuff deeply hidden. It was a big disappointment. It took me quite a while to find even the undo command. Inserting a footnote now requires a whole series of mouse clicks as far as I can tell. Go try something relatively obscure like turning on line numbering in a document and changing the style of the line numbers. It took me 10 minutes to figure out how to get to that style - it used to be in the default style drop-down. But I still choose to use Office 2007 despite all these frustrations - maybe it's loyalty, maybe it's more interesting. Damned, though, if I can see any really new major features that make it worthwhile. On the other hand, when this stuff gets rolled out to secretaries who have been using Word for years, there will be hell to pay. People get pretty set in their ways.
This is (another) major opportunity for competitors to make inroads. Jeez, OpenOffice is (a lot) less of a leap from Word 2003 than this stuff.
Sure, if they can show they complied with it. I think that's the principal defense.
Lots of allegations, though, are directed at ripping out the foundations on which YouTube claims compliance (storing, embeding, forwarding, etc.), and at trying to establish that they went out of their way to induce people to infringe.
Is there a link here between waning interest in Vista and Office 2K7 and rising interest in desktop Linux? For all the hassle of "upgrading" the MS products, it may be easier in many respects to take the plunge and switch to another OS and office suite.
Both assumptions are incorrect. The second assumption was true as of 12 years ago. Problem was that people gamed the system in a big way by sitting on their applications, so the law was changed to (try to) cut that out.
You bet. I can't comprehend how any company that wanted its hardware to be used under Vista (got has GOT to be nearly everyone) would even entertain the thought of doing something like this, and risk having their hardware "revoked" worldwide. Someone then uses the FOSS driver to figure out enough to read the unencrypted content from the hardware when it is running under Vista. The explanation that, "uh, we HAD an NDA" is not likely to get a very sympathetic audience at MS after this particular cat is out of the bag. The only thing they have going for them is that actually revoking any widely used hardware will bite MS real bad as well. But I don't think any hardware manufacturer (except for maybe Intel) is big enough (or bad enough) to call MS's bluff on this.
Of course Microsoft, too, is taking huge risks with Vista and Office 2007. The problems with these pieces of software are very different of course, but the combination, hitting at the same time, could be very bad for them. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out in the coming one to two years.
There is no obligation (certainly not in the U.S.) to search for prior art before filing a patent. Maybe "is" is a typo and you meant "should be." It WOULD be a reform to require people to do a pre-filing search and report the results. There is a new program right now where you are required to perform and submit a search in order to (optionally) pursue accelerated handling in the patent office. They require you (in that case) to do a better search than they usually do themselves. If the program works out, it might be a good model for across-the-board adoption.
I just tried it. The client-side Java wanted to mess with all the security stuff in place in the corporate environment. It just wasn't going to fly. Maybe it will load at home. Anyway, gonna stick with Google docs & spreadsheets. As someone above said, a big feature is its integration with gmail.
So don't read it - the details are not that important. The slightly older Ubuntu-Dapper image you can get off VMTN is more than good enough to get going.
All you need to do is download VMWare Player from www.vmware.com, and download a Linux image of your choice, and should be good to go.
Xen is nice, but not at all Newbie-friendly, and last time I checked, wanted to run on a Linux host. VMWare Player does not (AFAIK) take advantage of hardware virtualization support (as provided in newer CPUs), but the performance hit is not too bad, if you have a recent machine with lots of RAM. And, it is trivial to install and use, and can be hosted on either Windows or Linux (Mac in the works).
Also, with VMWare Player (or Server, or whatever), you don't have to sweat whether your basic hardware will be supported. No, it won't run stuff like TV tuner cards, and things like that, but the basic video, disk drive, network, USB and sound setup is covered.
It is REALLY easy. The easiest thing to do is install VMWare Player under Windows - it is a little simpler to deal with than VMWare server (which is also a free - as in beer - download). Then go to http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/ and pick out any one of the many pre-packaged Linux VMs that they have up there. Just open the VM in VMWare Player and you're off to the races. You mayt want to play around with the screen resolution after you get into your VM, but otherwise, it should be good to go.
The easiest distro to play with is probably a Ubuntu Dapper (6.06) one from this month. After you start it up, you can upgrade it to the latest "Edgy" version of Ubuntu (by changing your repositories in the Synaptic upgrade tool from Dapper to Edgy). You can alos create VMs from scratch (go to www.easyvmx.com)
Other distros you'll find up there include Debian Etch (the latest, still-in-process one), various Fedora Core versions, Knoppix. It is pretty sweat-free (except for the download time and the disk space) to DL a bunch of these and see which one (or ones) you like best. In truth, they are all very similar, except for their upgrade mechanisms and the places they stash system files.
If you go to the Mono web site (a completely separate web site), they have a VM with a recent version of SUSE Linux. Though their version is slanted toward setting up Mono (.NET-style) services), it is very nice.
To do this stuff smoothly you should have at least 1 gig of memory (preferably 2 gigs or more), and a BIG hard drive. Be sure to delete VMs you are not going to use.
After you get used to this, you may indeed want to go to VMWare Server, because it has more opearation options and a very nice snapshotting capability that allows you to make wild experimental changes and easily revert to the last good running state of the server, if things go bad.
Me? - I go the other way, and run Linux on my real hardware, and Windows in a VM (using VMWare Server for Linux). I find I don't need Windows that much, and it runs fine from a VM (you do a full install from a CD, same as with a real machine).
Why not? They already have a UNIX-compatible shell of sorts, a deal with Novell, plus they are supporting Linux. Look at IBM, which makes a real nice business with Linux support. These guys could make something that REALLY was compatible with MS Office and all the rest. Look a Mono trying to build a bridge to them. Just think of what they could do starting from their end. Pretty scary, huh? But wouldn't it really make things interesting?
You betcha - their non-profit, tax-exempt foundation is Software in the Public Interest.
They should spread it out if possible. For example, you can earmark your donation for uncompensated developers. These folks deserve whatever money kindly comes their way. Debian is a GREAT.
Oh yeah, he just absolved Microsoft (hee hee). I think what the world needs is a free bullshit filter to overlay on all feeds from Slashdot. It might not let much through these days, though.
Well, that depends on whether you consider traversing a doubly-linked list in the reverse direction to constitute "a second sequence". A sensible interpretqtion could be that it does not, in which case the patent would neither be invalidated nor infringed by a doubly-linked list. It's a question of interpretation.
Maybe an ISAM file with two alternative hash tables would fill the bill, but I'm not sure that's really equivalent to a linked list.
Yeah, Microsoft files them, but design patents on visual screen elements are all limited to being used in conjunction with display hardware (meaning you the user may infringe but the software provider only "contributes" to the infringement which is a tougher case, and as widely discussed, it would be nuts for Microsoft to sue users). Furthermore, the scope of a design patent isn't very broad - i.e., where the "ornamental" impression is changed. It surely doesn't cover any ribbon interface, per se. The say they have utility patents pending as well -- well, let's see 'em , they may not be that broad either. As Apple proved, copyright won't get you too far on this. Nor will trade dress. In sum, this is not a very strong fence of protection. Another bluff that will be called and recede into distant memory.
You really want something a year or more before the earliest filing date. Otherwise you get into factual disputes regarding dates of invention.
If you care, you can look up the entire history of this patent in the U.S. Patent Office at portal.uspto.gov.
If you look at the file history, you will see that the "synchronous data link" limitation (and other limitations) were introduced into the principal claims of the patent after the initial set of claims (which did not have these limitations) were rejected by the Patent Office. The abstract (which has only bibliographic significance) was never amended. So Slashdot picked up on the abstract, without realizing that the broadest aspects of what is described in the abstract was completely amended out of the claims, early on in the patent process.
Maybe I'm missing something, but Ethernet is an asynchronous protocol.
So, while it might be valid, the patent might not be that broad.
For a community so up in arms about patents, the level of ignorance here about patents is astounding.
What a patent actually COVERS is what is in the CLAIMS. The abstract means NOTHING. Here is the text of the three principal claims of this patent:
1. An apparatus, comprising: an interface to connect to a synchronous digital link and to send and receive digital signals to and from a telephone switch over the synchronous digital link; a controller to generate graphical display information and events based on the digital signals received over the interface; and logic to communicate over an asynchronous digital link, to convert the digital signals to an asynchronous format, and to transmit the digital signals and the graphical display information and events over the asynchronous digital link, wherein the logic is arranged to receive key press and hook state commands over the asynchronous digital link.
3. A method, comprising: receiving digital data from a public branch exchange (PBX) over a synchronous digital communication link; generating graphical display information and events based on the received digital data; transmitting the graphical display information and events over an asynchronous Internet protocol (IP) link; receiving a key press and hook state command over the asynchronous Internet protocol (IP) link; translating the key press and hook state command to a different format; and transmitting the translated key press and hook state command to the PBX over the synchronous digital communication link.
6. A computer readable medium including instructions that, when executed, cause a computer to: convert received light events and display updates to a graphical format; cause a first display device to display a digital telephone including the light events and display updates; convert received input device data that is related to the displayed digital telephone into a packetized format, wherein the input device data includes a key press and hook state commands over asynchronous Internet protocol (IP) link; and transmit the packetized input device data over the asynchronous Internet protocol (IP) link.
Also, the patent was based on an earlier application filed on February 25, 1999. For most purposes, the date against which to shoot with any invalidating prior art would have to be Feb. 25, 1998 or earlier. Having to go back these two additional years makes it much harder to shoot down this patent than it would be if the relevant time frame was 2000, as implied by the lead post.
I don't know if the patent is valid or not, but it certainly has a lot more merit than suggested.
Plus, as has been pointed out above, the patent owner was Intel, not the hated Microsoft.
But, after all, this is Slashdot, so why be burdened by any actual facts?
Slashdot Mirror
Bowdlerized
Yeah, the issue is more likely to come up defensively. If MS really trips over this (i.e., gets called on any of its vouchers), then any GPLv3 user that MS sues for patent infringement can defend on the basis that MS has licensed all users, including them, under every patent that was licensed to Novell, regardless of where the user got its copy of the software. So MS will try to put the best face on this, but these are probably not waters that MS would want to wade into. Do you think any such user would have a hard time coming up with a legal defense if sued by MS for patent infringement? I doubt that. So that's the "enforceability" right there. If MS can't find and destroy every last voucher before it is too late, they will be in a bad spot on this and their entire portfolio of patents will likely be impotent as regards any GPLv3 software.
Yes I use Control-Z... But Ctl-Z doesn't tell you what you are about to undo. The little icons next to the Office button do that, but you have to recognize what they are. There are a mass of icons up there. It just wasn't that obvious to me. But you are right, they are there.
Insert footnote is there, as you say, but it is easy to miss, being on the left and below "Insert Endnote." For some reason, the infrequently used "endnote" option ended up getting elevated above the footnote option.
Alt-S-F is a new one on me. Used to be Alt-I-N, which doesn't work anymore. A lot of the old key sequences no longer work.
The Line Number style did NOT show up in the Palette after I added line numbers to the document. I had to change the options to show "All styles" first. Then it at least shows up in the drop-down list off the secondary pop-open menu - but still not on the Style Palette. But after some poking around I was able to change the font.
The Building Blocks feature looks useful. I will try it.
As I said, I am probably sticking with Office 2007, but I don't think these are all BS issues.
Insert-Footer-Blank is NOT a "footnote". It is a footer.
As for line numbers - It's still easy to insert line numbers. However, What I WROTE was try changing the STYLE (e.g., font) of the line numbers - try it, it ain't that easy.
Alt-E-U doesn't work reliably either. Yes, there are new icons for undo and redo next to the Office button, if you notice them and realize what they are. There are an AWFUL lot of icons up there.
You bet. As a Word user since 1986, who knows the program pretty well, I must agree that the ribbon is a jumbled mess with important stuff deeply hidden. It was a big disappointment. It took me quite a while to find even the undo command. Inserting a footnote now requires a whole series of mouse clicks as far as I can tell. Go try something relatively obscure like turning on line numbering in a document and changing the style of the line numbers. It took me 10 minutes to figure out how to get to that style - it used to be in the default style drop-down. But I still choose to use Office 2007 despite all these frustrations - maybe it's loyalty, maybe it's more interesting. Damned, though, if I can see any really new major features that make it worthwhile. On the other hand, when this stuff gets rolled out to secretaries who have been using Word for years, there will be hell to pay. People get pretty set in their ways.
This is (another) major opportunity for competitors to make inroads. Jeez, OpenOffice is (a lot) less of a leap from Word 2003 than this stuff.
Why bother with X2 when you know this will force a price cut on C2D?
I must presume, though, that this cut is just to clean up on the bottm end and make way for a new high-end line.
Sure, if they can show they complied with it. I think that's the principal defense.
Lots of allegations, though, are directed at ripping out the foundations on which YouTube claims compliance (storing, embeding, forwarding, etc.), and at trying to establish that they went out of their way to induce people to infringe.
Should be interesting.
Is there a link here between waning interest in Vista and Office 2K7 and rising interest in desktop Linux? For all the hassle of "upgrading" the MS products, it may be easier in many respects to take the plunge and switch to another OS and office suite.
Both assumptions are incorrect. The second assumption was true as of 12 years ago. Problem was that people gamed the system in a big way by sitting on their applications, so the law was changed to (try to) cut that out.
You bet. I can't comprehend how any company that wanted its hardware to be used under Vista (got has GOT to be nearly everyone) would even entertain the thought of doing something like this, and risk having their hardware "revoked" worldwide. Someone then uses the FOSS driver to figure out enough to read the unencrypted content from the hardware when it is running under Vista. The explanation that, "uh, we HAD an NDA" is not likely to get a very sympathetic audience at MS after this particular cat is out of the bag. The only thing they have going for them is that actually revoking any widely used hardware will bite MS real bad as well. But I don't think any hardware manufacturer (except for maybe Intel) is big enough (or bad enough) to call MS's bluff on this.
Of course Microsoft, too, is taking huge risks with Vista and Office 2007. The problems with these pieces of software are very different of course, but the combination, hitting at the same time, could be very bad for them. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out in the coming one to two years.
There is no obligation (certainly not in the U.S.) to search for prior art before filing a patent. Maybe "is" is a typo and you meant "should be." It WOULD be a reform to require people to do a pre-filing search and report the results. There is a new program right now where you are required to perform and submit a search in order to (optionally) pursue accelerated handling in the patent office. They require you (in that case) to do a better search than they usually do themselves. If the program works out, it might be a good model for across-the-board adoption.
I just tried it. The client-side Java wanted to mess with all the security stuff in place in the corporate environment. It just wasn't going to fly. Maybe it will load at home. Anyway, gonna stick with Google docs & spreadsheets. As someone above said, a big feature is its integration with gmail.
And a dishonest employee with the recovery key can compromise a large number of machines.
Note that in the requirements doc, one of the requirements is:
"Capable of secure escrow and recovery of the symetric [sic] encryption key"
So don't read it - the details are not that important. The slightly older Ubuntu-Dapper image you can get off VMTN is more than good enough to get going.
All you need to do is download VMWare Player from www.vmware.com, and download a Linux image of your choice, and should be good to go.
Xen is nice, but not at all Newbie-friendly, and last time I checked, wanted to run on a Linux host. VMWare Player does not (AFAIK) take advantage of hardware virtualization support (as provided in newer CPUs), but the performance hit is not too bad, if you have a recent machine with lots of RAM. And, it is trivial to install and use, and can be hosted on either Windows or Linux (Mac in the works).
Also, with VMWare Player (or Server, or whatever), you don't have to sweat whether your basic hardware will be supported. No, it won't run stuff like TV tuner cards, and things like that, but the basic video, disk drive, network, USB and sound setup is covered.
It is REALLY easy. The easiest thing to do is install VMWare Player under Windows - it is a little simpler to deal with than VMWare server (which is also a free - as in beer - download). Then go to http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/ and pick out any one of the many pre-packaged Linux VMs that they have up there. Just open the VM in VMWare Player and you're off to the races. You mayt want to play around with the screen resolution after you get into your VM, but otherwise, it should be good to go.
The easiest distro to play with is probably a Ubuntu Dapper (6.06) one from this month. After you start it up, you can upgrade it to the latest "Edgy" version of Ubuntu (by changing your repositories in the Synaptic upgrade tool from Dapper to Edgy). You can alos create VMs from scratch (go to www.easyvmx.com)
Other distros you'll find up there include Debian Etch (the latest, still-in-process one), various Fedora Core versions, Knoppix. It is pretty sweat-free (except for the download time and the disk space) to DL a bunch of these and see which one (or ones) you like best. In truth, they are all very similar, except for their upgrade mechanisms and the places they stash system files.
If you go to the Mono web site (a completely separate web site), they have a VM with a recent version of SUSE Linux. Though their version is slanted toward setting up Mono (.NET-style) services), it is very nice.
To do this stuff smoothly you should have at least 1 gig of memory (preferably 2 gigs or more), and a BIG hard drive. Be sure to delete VMs you are not going to use.
After you get used to this, you may indeed want to go to VMWare Server, because it has more opearation options and a very nice snapshotting capability that allows you to make wild experimental changes and easily revert to the last good running state of the server, if things go bad.
Me? - I go the other way, and run Linux on my real hardware, and Windows in a VM (using VMWare Server for Linux). I find I don't need Windows that much, and it runs fine from a VM (you do a full install from a CD, same as with a real machine).
Why not? They already have a UNIX-compatible shell of sorts, a deal with Novell, plus they are supporting Linux. Look at IBM, which makes a real nice business with Linux support. These guys could make something that REALLY was compatible with MS Office and all the rest. Look a Mono trying to build a bridge to them. Just think of what they could do starting from their end. Pretty scary, huh? But wouldn't it really make things interesting?
You betcha - their non-profit, tax-exempt foundation is Software in the Public Interest.
They should spread it out if possible. For example, you can earmark your donation for uncompensated developers. These folks deserve whatever money kindly comes their way. Debian is a GREAT.
Oh yeah, he just absolved Microsoft (hee hee). I think what the world needs is a free bullshit filter to overlay on all feeds from Slashdot. It might not let much through these days, though.
Replying to myself... The multiply-linked list mentioned below seems to hit the nail on the head.
Well, that depends on whether you consider traversing a doubly-linked list in the reverse direction to constitute "a second sequence". A sensible interpretqtion could be that it does not, in which case the patent would neither be invalidated nor infringed by a doubly-linked list. It's a question of interpretation.
Maybe an ISAM file with two alternative hash tables would fill the bill, but I'm not sure that's really equivalent to a linked list.
Yeah, Microsoft files them, but design patents on visual screen elements are all limited to being used in conjunction with display hardware (meaning you the user may infringe but the software provider only "contributes" to the infringement which is a tougher case, and as widely discussed, it would be nuts for Microsoft to sue users). Furthermore, the scope of a design patent isn't very broad - i.e., where the "ornamental" impression is changed. It surely doesn't cover any ribbon interface, per se. The say they have utility patents pending as well -- well, let's see 'em , they may not be that broad either. As Apple proved, copyright won't get you too far on this. Nor will trade dress. In sum, this is not a very strong fence of protection. Another bluff that will be called and recede into distant memory.
You really want something a year or more before the earliest filing date. Otherwise you get into factual disputes regarding dates of invention.
If you care, you can look up the entire history of this patent in the U.S. Patent Office at portal.uspto.gov.
If you look at the file history, you will see that the "synchronous data link" limitation (and other limitations) were introduced into the principal claims of the patent after the initial set of claims (which did not have these limitations) were rejected by the Patent Office. The abstract (which has only bibliographic significance) was never amended. So Slashdot picked up on the abstract, without realizing that the broadest aspects of what is described in the abstract was completely amended out of the claims, early on in the patent process.
Maybe I'm missing something, but Ethernet is an asynchronous protocol.
So, while it might be valid, the patent might not be that broad.
For a community so up in arms about patents, the level of ignorance here about patents is astounding.
What a patent actually COVERS is what is in the CLAIMS. The abstract means NOTHING. Here is the text of the three principal claims of this patent:
1. An apparatus, comprising: an interface to connect to a synchronous digital link and to send and receive digital signals to and from a telephone switch over the synchronous digital link; a controller to generate graphical display information and events based on the digital signals received over the interface; and logic to communicate over an asynchronous digital link, to convert the digital signals to an asynchronous format, and to transmit the digital signals and the graphical display information and events over the asynchronous digital link, wherein the logic is arranged to receive key press and hook state commands over the asynchronous digital link.
3. A method, comprising: receiving digital data from a public branch exchange (PBX) over a synchronous digital communication link; generating graphical display information and events based on the received digital data; transmitting the graphical display information and events over an asynchronous Internet protocol (IP) link; receiving a key press and hook state command over the asynchronous Internet protocol (IP) link; translating the key press and hook state command to a different format; and transmitting the translated key press and hook state command to the PBX over the synchronous digital communication link.
6. A computer readable medium including instructions that, when executed, cause a computer to: convert received light events and display updates to a graphical format; cause a first display device to display a digital telephone including the light events and display updates; convert received input device data that is related to the displayed digital telephone into a packetized format, wherein the input device data includes a key press and hook state commands over asynchronous Internet protocol (IP) link; and transmit the packetized input device data over the asynchronous Internet protocol (IP) link.
Also, the patent was based on an earlier application filed on February 25, 1999. For most purposes, the date against which to shoot with any invalidating prior art would have to be Feb. 25, 1998 or earlier. Having to go back these two additional years makes it much harder to shoot down this patent than it would be if the relevant time frame was 2000, as implied by the lead post.
I don't know if the patent is valid or not, but it certainly has a lot more merit than suggested.
Plus, as has been pointed out above, the patent owner was Intel, not the hated Microsoft.
But, after all, this is Slashdot, so why be burdened by any actual facts?