Oracle is small potatos? Now I've heard everything!
You've obviously spent zero time in an average Global 1000 IT department. Oracle is just as entrenched--if not more so--than Microsoft on most of them.
At those levels patents don't matter. Oracle isn't going to crush MSFT or IBM with software patents, or vice-versa. For these guys they are an annoyance at best. MSFT has paid out millions in patent license fees, but there's no way billg has ever said, "we can't do that because its patented". It's more like, "we've got to pay off that small company that owns that technology". Microsoft, IBM and Oracle are going to do what they want; the only difference is whether they get to do it for free by stealing stuff or whether they will need to share some of their $gigaprofits with the people that actually invented the technology.
I don't think this is a "duh" issue at all. The issue is complicated. For instance, let's take the following test:
Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle) is against software patents because:
a) He is a really nice guy, a humanitarian, and wants to do the right thing for The Children.
b) He wants to foster innovation that could potentially allow smaller competitors challenge Oracle's dominance because industry-wide innovation is more important than Oracle's stock price.
c) He knows Oracle, being the second largest software company in the world and having the deepest inroads into corporate IT departments, can steal the ideas of smaller competitors and wipe them out easier when those pesky software patents are out of the way.
Surely the patent system is flawed, and it has problems, and it needs to be fixed, not eliminated altogether.
Before we call this a "duh" issue, can people please exercise their brain just a little to ponder why Larry Ellison, one of the most ruthless businessmen the world has ever seen, is against software patents?
Making a worm like Sasser does NOT require a lot of "smarts". It's simple scripting, and the kid probably learned all of it by hanging out at a few chat rooms. He probably wouldn't know how to write a script to add two numbers together without copying code from somebody.
It's like saying that a criminal that breaks into a car with a SlimJim is some kind of genius. Most people don't know how to break into a car, but any idiot can get one of these learn how pretty easily.
This kid is just a criminal, and a stupid one at that.
Been there, done that. There are only so many anonymous proxy services out there, and it's easy enough to block those IPs too. And then there's a few strategies we employ for unknown IPs...
As an e-commerce player here on the Internet I'm ready to blacklist countries that do not adquately go after criminals, pure and simple.
Sure, the USA might account for a lot of fraud because of the sheer Internet population here, but at least criminals here have at least some fear of getting prosecuted and thrown in jail. If a country doesn't enforce the law (or there isn't one there to enforce), then the entire country might as well be waging war on my servers.
Has anybody here EVEN SEEN other sites like Yahoo Search (search.yahoo.com), or are we just supposed to assume, on faith, that Google will be the best no matter what, no matter what anybody else comes up with, etc. etc.
For my own part, I like Yahoo Search because it has the Yellow Pages and Maps functions built in (which I use all of the time). As for web search results, they all suck these days anyhow since all of the spammers have figured out how the engine algorithms work..
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You've obviously spent zero time in an average Global 1000 IT department. Oracle is just as entrenched--if not more so--than Microsoft on most of them.
At those levels patents don't matter. Oracle isn't going to crush MSFT or IBM with software patents, or vice-versa. For these guys they are an annoyance at best. MSFT has paid out millions in patent license fees, but there's no way billg has ever said, "we can't do that because its patented". It's more like, "we've got to pay off that small company that owns that technology". Microsoft, IBM and Oracle are going to do what they want; the only difference is whether they get to do it for free by stealing stuff or whether they will need to share some of their $gigaprofits with the people that actually invented the technology.
Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle) is against software patents because:
a) He is a really nice guy, a humanitarian, and wants to do the right thing for The Children.
b) He wants to foster innovation that could potentially allow smaller competitors challenge Oracle's dominance because industry-wide innovation is more important than Oracle's stock price.
c) He knows Oracle, being the second largest software company in the world and having the deepest inroads into corporate IT departments, can steal the ideas of smaller competitors and wipe them out easier when those pesky software patents are out of the way.
Surely the patent system is flawed, and it has problems, and it needs to be fixed, not eliminated altogether.
Before we call this a "duh" issue, can people please exercise their brain just a little to ponder why Larry Ellison, one of the most ruthless businessmen the world has ever seen, is against software patents?
It's like saying that a criminal that breaks into a car with a SlimJim is some kind of genius. Most people don't know how to break into a car, but any idiot can get one of these learn how pretty easily.
This kid is just a criminal, and a stupid one at that.
Been there, done that. There are only so many anonymous proxy services out there, and it's easy enough to block those IPs too. And then there's a few strategies we employ for unknown IPs...
Sure, the USA might account for a lot of fraud because of the sheer Internet population here, but at least criminals here have at least some fear of getting prosecuted and thrown in jail. If a country doesn't enforce the law (or there isn't one there to enforce), then the entire country might as well be waging war on my servers.
For my own part, I like Yahoo Search because it has the Yellow Pages and Maps functions built in (which I use all of the time). As for web search results, they all suck these days anyhow since all of the spammers have figured out how the engine algorithms work..
In other news, recent market studies have a massive decline in the demand for porn on the Internet, and...
...and other "small" companies from folks like Microsoft. Patents may the be the only thing that will stop them from "Netscaping" Google.