Wouldn't that be a brilliant example of what patents are meant for? When someone like Apple invents a successful computing paradigm (e.g. the desktop interface, or tablet computers), they can patent it and prevent Microsoft from ripping off their paradigm, profits, and market share?
RTFA. They are quitting and going somewhere else. The finance sector is going have to deal with this if they don't want to be massively outcompeted by their own ex-programmers.
Sounds like it's going to be Linux style releases, where they make a minor update every 6 weeks or so. In Linux, the 2.6 part of the version number has become almost meaningless (since we know it's going to stay 2.6), and the.34 part is what's important. So Linux is on version 34 after 6 years or so.
The whole community is misunderstanding the argument about Linux kernel modules. First off, Mark Jaquith's assertion that Linux doesn't allow non-GPL kernel modules is just plain wrong. In Linus' own emails, he presents several lines of reasoning why he feels binary-only kernel modules don't violate the GPL.
Essentially, the kernel module interface is a "library" interface to the kernel, and kernel modules are considered to be under the GNU Library license. In fact, due to the way kernel modules work, you automatically do it according to the LGPL, so this isn't explicitly stated anywhere, but that's the way you should think about this.
and (what appears to be a separate justification)
The reason I accept binary-only modules at all is that, in many cases, you have, for example, a device driver that is not written for Linux at all, but, for example, works on SCO Unix or other operating systems, and the manufacturer suddenly wakes up and notices that Linux has a larger audience than the other groups. And as a result he wants to port that driver to Linux.
But because that driver was obviously not derived from Linux (it had a life of its own regardless of any Linux development), I didn't feel that I had the moral right to require that it be put under the GPL, so the binary-only module interface allows those kinds of modules to exist and work with Linux.
(though in 2001, he says these modules are mainly historical.)
To clarify the ambiguous legal ground on which non-GPL (particularly proprietary) modules lie. A strict reading of the GPL prohibits loading proprietary modules into the kernel. While Linus has consistently stated that proprietary modules are allowed (i.e. he has granted an explicit exemption), it is not clear that he is able to speak for all developers who have contributed to the Linux kernel. While many think Linus' edict means that all contributed code falls under this exemption granted by Linus, not everyone agrees that this is a legally sound argument. The new EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL directive makes the licence conditions explicit, and thus removes the legal ambiguity.
But moreover, many kernel developers feel it's a waste of time to support code that interacts in such close quarters with binary-only modules that the kernel devs can't debug. Therefore, tainting serves a technical purpose as well as a legal purpose: letting developers refuse to support strange bugs caused by binary-only modules.
Linus does leave us with a final note, however:
Final note: the Linux interpretation is not a "normal" case. I wouldn't use it as a guide-line to anything else, especially not in user mode.
The final upshot really is that Linus's interpretation is what assures you he won't sue you. You'd need to look at relevant copyright case law to understand what would happen if you were sued about a derivative work such as a WordPress theme. That's a different ballgame entirely, and Linus' interpretations don't apply to that.
But I use my personal web server as part of my network-centric cloud storage system -- I ssh into my machine and move files I need into public_html, then I can download them from my web browser. You got a problem with that?
It's worthwhile to have someone point out that the protocol behind this service is CalDAV, because that lets us Evolution users know how to synchronize with it.
I think there's a big difference between what Berkeley's doing and what Stanford's doing.
At Stanford, seeing as how it's a graduate level class, the students understand that the purpose is to explore the implications of genetic testing for this kind of application (not unlike a graduate-level MIT class I read about some years ago about wearable computing where the purpose was to explore how wearable computing might affect our lives.) It doesn't bother me too much that they do this, so long as the institutional review board was consulted (if it was appropriate to do so.)
At Berkeley, on the other hand, the Freshman orientation program treats this as a more or less settled societal issue.
You might be interested in some speculation about the likely outcome of Bilski. It sounds like there's a good chance that Stevens is writing the opinion and that State Street will be overturned.
Hungarian notation in this case would add semantic value that's not already captured by the type checker, but maybe we should just modify the type system to cover the safety of strings.
As another objection, isn't forcing the programmer to use Hungarian notation for safety a more complicated option than just using parameter binding correctly in pretty much any language/framework that uses varargs for this purpose (Java/JDBC is the notable exception). Don't object-relational mapping systems in many frameworks also provide these benefits for much less effort?
Give me a list of all offshore oil well blowouts in the last 30 years (since Ixtoc 1) and how they were capped. Just comparing two incidents, we can't possibly know whether these two events were anomalies, and sombrero/top hat, and top kill are techniques that have worked on other wells in the interim, and that could generally be expected to work.
I've seen the clear URL button on Konqueror, Arora, in Epiphany's context menu for the URL bar, and in screenshots of Midori (but I don't actually run midori). I also have the Clear Fields extension installed in Firefox, to provide this functionality.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't that be a brilliant example of what patents are meant for? When someone like Apple invents a successful computing paradigm (e.g. the desktop interface, or tablet computers), they can patent it and prevent Microsoft from ripping off their paradigm, profits, and market share?
RTFA. They are quitting and going somewhere else. The finance sector is going have to deal with this if they don't want to be massively outcompeted by their own ex-programmers.
Isn't this a better question for StackOverflow.com?
Sounds like it's going to be Linux style releases, where they make a minor update every 6 weeks or so. In Linux, the 2.6 part of the version number has become almost meaningless (since we know it's going to stay 2.6), and the .34 part is what's important. So Linux is on version 34 after 6 years or so.
The whole community is misunderstanding the argument about Linux kernel modules. First off, Mark Jaquith's assertion that Linux doesn't allow non-GPL kernel modules is just plain wrong. In Linus' own emails, he presents several lines of reasoning why he feels binary-only kernel modules don't violate the GPL.
Essentially, the kernel module interface is a "library" interface to the kernel, and kernel modules are considered to be under the GNU Library license. In fact, due to the way kernel modules work, you automatically do it according to the LGPL, so this isn't explicitly stated anywhere, but that's the way you should think about this.
and (what appears to be a separate justification)
The reason I accept binary-only modules at all is that, in many cases, you have, for example, a device driver that is not written for Linux at all, but, for example, works on SCO Unix or other operating systems, and the manufacturer suddenly wakes up and notices that Linux has a larger audience than the other groups. And as a result he wants to port that driver to Linux.
But because that driver was obviously not derived from Linux (it had a life of its own regardless of any Linux development), I didn't feel that I had the moral right to require that it be put under the GPL, so the binary-only module interface allows those kinds of modules to exist and work with Linux.
(though in 2001, he says these modules are mainly historical.)
The kernel tainting feature has partially to do with licensing and partially not.
To clarify the ambiguous legal ground on which non-GPL (particularly proprietary) modules lie. A strict reading of the GPL prohibits loading proprietary modules into the kernel. While Linus has consistently stated that proprietary modules are allowed (i.e. he has granted an explicit exemption), it is not clear that he is able to speak for all developers who have contributed to the Linux kernel. While many think Linus' edict means that all contributed code falls under this exemption granted by Linus, not everyone agrees that this is a legally sound argument. The new EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL directive makes the licence conditions explicit, and thus removes the legal ambiguity.
But moreover, many kernel developers feel it's a waste of time to support code that interacts in such close quarters with binary-only modules that the kernel devs can't debug. Therefore, tainting serves a technical purpose as well as a legal purpose: letting developers refuse to support strange bugs caused by binary-only modules.
Linus does leave us with a final note, however:
Final note: the Linux interpretation is not a "normal" case. I wouldn't use it as a guide-line to anything else, especially not in user mode.
The final upshot really is that Linus's interpretation is what assures you he won't sue you. You'd need to look at relevant copyright case law to understand what would happen if you were sued about a derivative work such as a WordPress theme. That's a different ballgame entirely, and Linus' interpretations don't apply to that.
Why isn't Zuckerberg claiming the contract is a forgery?
That's enough time for an infant born at the time of patent filing to [legally] be a parent at its expiry...and that's a long time folks.
Giving new meaning to the term "generations" of technology.
But I use my personal web server as part of my network-centric cloud storage system -- I ssh into my machine and move files I need into public_html, then I can download them from my web browser. You got a problem with that?
It's worthwhile to have someone point out that the protocol behind this service is CalDAV, because that lets us Evolution users know how to synchronize with it.
I think there's a big difference between what Berkeley's doing and what Stanford's doing.
At Stanford, seeing as how it's a graduate level class, the students understand that the purpose is to explore the implications of genetic testing for this kind of application (not unlike a graduate-level MIT class I read about some years ago about wearable computing where the purpose was to explore how wearable computing might affect our lives.) It doesn't bother me too much that they do this, so long as the institutional review board was consulted (if it was appropriate to do so.)
At Berkeley, on the other hand, the Freshman orientation program treats this as a more or less settled societal issue.
Only works if the ! operator acts the same whether it's prepended to P or appended to P. (i.e. if P!=!P)
You might be interested in some speculation about the likely outcome of Bilski. It sounds like there's a good chance that Stevens is writing the opinion and that State Street will be overturned.
What's the article talking about when it says "the last N-series phone to feature Symbian is the N800?" I thought the N800 was a Maemo device.
Can we have our AMD64 Linux flash player back?
So who was peer-reviewing that Debian OpenSSL bug such that it existed for 2 years?
Who found it? A Debian developer doing peer review.
Hungarian notation in this case would add semantic value that's not already captured by the type checker, but maybe we should just modify the type system to cover the safety of strings.
As another objection, isn't forcing the programmer to use Hungarian notation for safety a more complicated option than just using parameter binding correctly in pretty much any language/framework that uses varargs for this purpose (Java/JDBC is the notable exception). Don't object-relational mapping systems in many frameworks also provide these benefits for much less effort?
Obviously, the GP was thinking terrorists who use car bombs to blow things up.
How is that possible? I thought that relativity specifically ruled out absolute time.
Give me a list of all offshore oil well blowouts in the last 30 years (since Ixtoc 1) and how they were capped. Just comparing two incidents, we can't possibly know whether these two events were anomalies, and sombrero/top hat, and top kill are techniques that have worked on other wells in the interim, and that could generally be expected to work.
Did "top kill" at least slow the leak?
That's why he thinks that a fly-repellant-light gene would fare better.
This sorta gotcha is why GPL developers prefer the GPL.
I've seen the clear URL button on Konqueror, Arora, in Epiphany's context menu for the URL bar, and in screenshots of Midori (but I don't actually run midori). I also have the Clear Fields extension installed in Firefox, to provide this functionality.
God forbid.
They just get the answers from Wolfram Alpha.