I'll say it again! Statute of Limitation!
on
More Microsoft Patents
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: We need a statute of limitation on patent infringement suits! They already do this in China!
One of the major problem with patents (in my mind) is the fact that patent holders are permitted to sit on their patents and do nothing, even when they are aware of infringing acts. Then, 10 years down the road, they spring out of nowhere with the infringement suit. This is what Unisys did with GIFs. Unisys allowed the web to become addicted to GIFs, without filing any suits. No, no... they bided their time! Wait until everyone is dependent on GIFs, THEN spring the trap; that's the key! I find this behavior to be underhanded and repugnant. UNISYS HAD TO KNOW! As if they were not aware that GIF was the image format of choice on the web. It's impossible.
An infringement statute of limitation would prevent possible future evils, too. For example, how long has Microsoft known about SAMBA, and not done anything about it? Might they not enforce their IP at some point in the future, when Linux is finally becoming accepted on the desktop? To kill SAMBA at that point would severely cripple Linux desktop adpotion. A statute of limitations would prevent this.
I'd even go so far as to suggest that a similar statute of limitation be applied to copyright violation suits. If a copyright holder IS AWARE of an IP violation, then they must file suit within a specified amount of time (2 years?), or lose the right to do so, in that instance. It's easy to see how this would benefit society: SCO.
In order for the invalid data to be maintained in the wiki, the "dishonest" person would have to actively maintain it! Are they likely to do so? Will they check back repeatedly to make sure the article continues to be invalid? I doubt that dishonest people would be as dedicated to their misinformation as honest people would be to their information.
And yes, one person can cause a lot of damage to the wiki, but I'm not sure if you're aware of the "rollback" function available to wiki administrators. It is quite simple, in fact, to roll-back all changes made from a specific IP address. Sure, this could be circumvented by switching IPs repeatedly, but I seriously doubt there are enough dedicated miscreants out there to make much of a dent.
I agree with you 100%, but that is an issue far larger than wikipedia... you're arguing the nature of truth, in the minds of the populace. "Conquerors write the history books, not the vanquished," and so on. Wikipedia is as susceptible to this phenomenon as are standard encyclopedias!
Why would unbiased people not care? I would care, simply because I care about the integrity of the wiki. If I didn't care about the integrity of the wiki, why would I be contributing to it in the first place?!
I would lump "honest, but incorrect" individuals in with the "dishonest" and still expect to have a higher number of "honest and correct" contributors to the wiki. Most people don't contribute if they are unsure!
But anyway, try this argument on for size: Individual wiki articles (and even the facts contained within them) evolve, just as organisms do. Good, factual data has a higher fitness quotient than do errrors and misinformation. Over long periods of time, the wiki content will tend towards truth.
Now, we could get into a whole other debate about what is "true", but I think that for the purposes of the wiki, truth can only be defined as that which a majority of editors agree upon.
I've contributed to a few wikis (including my own, of course), and I can tell you from experience that people who author pages tend to watch them like hawks for edits. That's why Mediawiki provides the "Watch Pages" feature, afterall.
But I agree with what you said... if the wiki is considered unauthoritative, then it is more likely that people will scrutinize and correct the content. But the problem is that eventually this behaviour will result in the belief that the wiki is authoritative. I guess the best thing to do is to continuously raise this issue in order to provoke people to be discerning with respect to the wiki content.
If you'll grant that there are more honest people than asshats in the world, then over long periods of time, the wiki will tend towards authoritativeness as intentional errors are weeded out. The majority of edits will be valuable.
Or perhaps you're more pessimistic than I am, with regard to human nature.
This guy made some subtle changes and left them for a relatively short period of time... I'm unsurprised they weren't picked up. But over the long haul, SOMEONE would eventually notice and repair the errors.
And the fact that only subtle errors can survive is a testament to the power of the wiki. Major errors will be noticed immediately and corrected, subtle errors may persist for a while, but really, by their very subtlety they are less damaging to wiki users.
Although, I run a wiki myself so perhaps I am biased:)
I've always imagined that the proliferation of wireless communications would eventually replace the need for having any sort of portable timing devices... I mean, my computer updates its clock from some atomic NTP server. A wifi clock could do the same.
Why carry an atomic clock, when you can talk to an even more accurate atomic clock, through the air? Although I guess the few ms of lag between the request and response might introduce too much error for some applications?
I wonder if this will have any impact on the proceedings? "Independent auditors" recommend Open Source, suggesting that California could save $32 billion.
Can't Microsoft point to reports like this and say, "Hey, look! There's competition!" These reports this might end up serving Microsoft, rather than OSS, in the end!
I tried this with a few friends of mine once... we knew a T/A in the CS department who had keys to the AV equipment (enough abbreviations FY?). We went to the largest lecture hall and played 20 foot Mario Kart 64 with the RGB projector.
It was fun... but damn, was it ever fuzzy. I don't think the N64 was meant to be blown up so large! Even on big screen TVs it gets a bit foggy-looking. Fish-doggy (Yoshi) was little more than a 6 foot blob.
Next time we'll have to try some PC gaming I think, to see if the higher res images fare better.
In Wednesday's demonstration at the company's Tokyo office, the Micro Flying Robot barely managed to get off the ground by a couple of metres and crashed off a table at one point.
The Globe article does have a picture of it hovering in front of some guy's face, however!
Yeah, it's somewhat distressing that we seem to be bent on perfecting fighting robots... but I think the "awesome" factor outweighs the "human extinction" risk factor.
We've all got die sometime... might as well be at the hands of the Decepticons.
Yep, you guys are right. I just deleted the cookie and I was able to view the page without registering. I used to read the Globe fairly frequently, until the registration hassle... now I just read it on Canada.com instead.
But you're right, this policy does make a hell of a lot more sense than most registration policies. Since I am a frequent reader, I'm already hooked, and more likely to spend the time to register.
It did (and still does) for me! Maybe it detects that I'm in Canada, from my IP address. Since the Globe and Mail is a Canadian paper, they probably don't mind letting non-Canadians read the articles without registration, but they probably want the demographic info on Canadians.
Since when was Slashdot a blog? Maybe I just don't know what a blog is...
Or maybe the whole "Submit Story" thing is a farce, and CmdrTaco just posts whatever he feels like! That would explain why all my submissions have been rejected! No other explanation could fit!
IBM plans to end the year with more than 330,000 employees, the largest number since 1991.
So it's impossible that they laid off 50,000 in the past 5 years... if it were true, then 1991 wouldn't be the highest with 330,000!
If adding these 18,800 jobs brings them to 330,000, then they must've been at ~311,000 before this announcement. Adding to that your 50,000 in layoffs would imply that IBM had ~360,000 employees at some point in the past 5 years, which isn't possible!
So, after Mickey Mouse and Sonny Bono have had their pokes, and the DMCA has been enacted... NOW they decide "no more changing the copyright legislation"?!
The future direction of the web is at stake... if Microsoft maintains their massive IE market share, then they can continue to dictate standards, rather than follow standards created by impartial third parties.
Why would they pass this up? They have 50+ billion dollars in the bank... I'm sure tossing a couple of million into IE development is no big deal. And if it allows them to maintain their stranglehold on the Internet, I'm sure they'd find it to be worthwhile.
Slashdot Mirror
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: We need a statute of limitation on patent infringement suits! They already do this in China!
One of the major problem with patents (in my mind) is the fact that patent holders are permitted to sit on their patents and do nothing, even when they are aware of infringing acts. Then, 10 years down the road, they spring out of nowhere with the infringement suit. This is what Unisys did with GIFs. Unisys allowed the web to become addicted to GIFs, without filing any suits. No, no... they bided their time! Wait until everyone is dependent on GIFs, THEN spring the trap; that's the key! I find this behavior to be underhanded and repugnant. UNISYS HAD TO KNOW! As if they were not aware that GIF was the image format of choice on the web. It's impossible.
An infringement statute of limitation would prevent possible future evils, too. For example, how long has Microsoft known about SAMBA, and not done anything about it? Might they not enforce their IP at some point in the future, when Linux is finally becoming accepted on the desktop? To kill SAMBA at that point would severely cripple Linux desktop adpotion. A statute of limitations would prevent this.
I'd even go so far as to suggest that a similar statute of limitation be applied to copyright violation suits. If a copyright holder IS AWARE of an IP violation, then they must file suit within a specified amount of time (2 years?), or lose the right to do so, in that instance. It's easy to see how this would benefit society: SCO.
In order for the invalid data to be maintained in the wiki, the "dishonest" person would have to actively maintain it! Are they likely to do so? Will they check back repeatedly to make sure the article continues to be invalid? I doubt that dishonest people would be as dedicated to their misinformation as honest people would be to their information.
And yes, one person can cause a lot of damage to the wiki, but I'm not sure if you're aware of the "rollback" function available to wiki administrators. It is quite simple, in fact, to roll-back all changes made from a specific IP address. Sure, this could be circumvented by switching IPs repeatedly, but I seriously doubt there are enough dedicated miscreants out there to make much of a dent.
I agree with you 100%, but that is an issue far larger than wikipedia... you're arguing the nature of truth, in the minds of the populace. "Conquerors write the history books, not the vanquished," and so on. Wikipedia is as susceptible to this phenomenon as are standard encyclopedias!
Why would unbiased people not care? I would care, simply because I care about the integrity of the wiki. If I didn't care about the integrity of the wiki, why would I be contributing to it in the first place?!
I would lump "honest, but incorrect" individuals in with the "dishonest" and still expect to have a higher number of "honest and correct" contributors to the wiki. Most people don't contribute if they are unsure!
But anyway, try this argument on for size: Individual wiki articles (and even the facts contained within them) evolve, just as organisms do. Good, factual data has a higher fitness quotient than do errrors and misinformation. Over long periods of time, the wiki content will tend towards truth.
Now, we could get into a whole other debate about what is "true", but I think that for the purposes of the wiki, truth can only be defined as that which a majority of editors agree upon.
I've contributed to a few wikis (including my own, of course), and I can tell you from experience that people who author pages tend to watch them like hawks for edits. That's why Mediawiki provides the "Watch Pages" feature, afterall.
But I agree with what you said... if the wiki is considered unauthoritative, then it is more likely that people will scrutinize and correct the content. But the problem is that eventually this behaviour will result in the belief that the wiki is authoritative. I guess the best thing to do is to continuously raise this issue in order to provoke people to be discerning with respect to the wiki content.
I'd say that the harm done by small, intentionally introduced errors is overshadowed by the gigabytes of valuable content Wikipedia has to offer.
If you'll grant that there are more honest people than asshats in the world, then over long periods of time, the wiki will tend towards authoritativeness as intentional errors are weeded out. The majority of edits will be valuable.
Or perhaps you're more pessimistic than I am, with regard to human nature.
This guy made some subtle changes and left them for a relatively short period of time... I'm unsurprised they weren't picked up. But over the long haul, SOMEONE would eventually notice and repair the errors.
:)
And the fact that only subtle errors can survive is a testament to the power of the wiki. Major errors will be noticed immediately and corrected, subtle errors may persist for a while, but really, by their very subtlety they are less damaging to wiki users.
Although, I run a wiki myself so perhaps I am biased
I've always imagined that the proliferation of wireless communications would eventually replace the need for having any sort of portable timing devices... I mean, my computer updates its clock from some atomic NTP server. A wifi clock could do the same.
Why carry an atomic clock, when you can talk to an even more accurate atomic clock, through the air? Although I guess the few ms of lag between the request and response might introduce too much error for some applications?
I wonder if this will have any impact on the proceedings? "Independent auditors" recommend Open Source, suggesting that California could save $32 billion.
Can't Microsoft point to reports like this and say, "Hey, look! There's competition!" These reports this might end up serving Microsoft, rather than OSS, in the end!
I tried this with a few friends of mine once... we knew a T/A in the CS department who had keys to the AV equipment (enough abbreviations FY?). We went to the largest lecture hall and played 20 foot Mario Kart 64 with the RGB projector.
It was fun... but damn, was it ever fuzzy. I don't think the N64 was meant to be blown up so large! Even on big screen TVs it gets a bit foggy-looking. Fish-doggy (Yoshi) was little more than a 6 foot blob.
Next time we'll have to try some PC gaming I think, to see if the higher res images fare better.
open source text books, perhaps developed wiki style.
Try this. Exactly what you mentioned. Hopefully the idea will catch on, and information hoarding will cease to cost students so much money.
In the Globe and Mail version of the story, they say:
In Wednesday's demonstration at the company's Tokyo office, the Micro Flying Robot barely managed to get off the ground by a couple of metres and crashed off a table at one point.
The Globe article does have a picture of it hovering in front of some guy's face, however!
Here's an in-flight picture, and another angle here.
Yeah, it's somewhat distressing that we seem to be bent on perfecting fighting robots... but I think the "awesome" factor outweighs the "human extinction" risk factor.
We've all got die sometime... might as well be at the hands of the Decepticons.
Yep, you guys are right. I just deleted the cookie and I was able to view the page without registering. I used to read the Globe fairly frequently, until the registration hassle... now I just read it on Canada.com instead.
But you're right, this policy does make a hell of a lot more sense than most registration policies. Since I am a frequent reader, I'm already hooked, and more likely to spend the time to register.
It did (and still does) for me! Maybe it detects that I'm in Canada, from my IP address. Since the Globe and Mail is a Canadian paper, they probably don't mind letting non-Canadians read the articles without registration, but they probably want the demographic info on Canadians.
Since when was Slashdot a blog? Maybe I just don't know what a blog is...
Or maybe the whole "Submit Story" thing is a farce, and CmdrTaco just posts whatever he feels like! That would explain why all my submissions have been rejected! No other explanation could fit!
Here's a version of the article with no registration required.
I've also been looking for someone to kick me in the nuts, for $10/hr. Any takers?
your children will be sold to the Soylent factory
Methinks you read too much Swift, and watch too much dodgy sci-fi.
So just keep your mouth shut and vote for Kerry...
If I were American, I would vote for Kodos...
IBM plans to end the year with more than 330,000 employees, the largest number since 1991.
So it's impossible that they laid off 50,000 in the past 5 years... if it were true, then 1991 wouldn't be the highest with 330,000!
If adding these 18,800 jobs brings them to 330,000, then they must've been at ~311,000 before this announcement. Adding to that your 50,000 in layoffs would imply that IBM had ~360,000 employees at some point in the past 5 years, which isn't possible!
So, after Mickey Mouse and Sonny Bono have had their pokes, and the DMCA has been enacted... NOW they decide "no more changing the copyright legislation"?!
Isn't this a little LATE?!
See the responses (above) to this post.
The future direction of the web is at stake... if Microsoft maintains their massive IE market share, then they can continue to dictate standards, rather than follow standards created by impartial third parties.
Why would they pass this up? They have 50+ billion dollars in the bank... I'm sure tossing a couple of million into IE development is no big deal. And if it allows them to maintain their stranglehold on the Internet, I'm sure they'd find it to be worthwhile.