From what I understand, intellectual property is the only US export that is making a reasonable profit at the moment, so it makes sense that the rules would be tightened to ensure the saleability of products with currently approved patents and discriminate against those that are in breach of those patents.
Like it or not, patents are a mainstay of the US economy. It may be several years before things in the computing industry start to stabilise and such controls become less necessary or seem less daft, but if they did nothing and let patents be flouted the situation would become untenable.
It would be nice perhaps, at least in thought experiment terms if patents weren't an issue, but that's nieve. Patents are here to stay, and the only way a business can currently ensure a profit from their research.
Scurrilous patent claims are another issue, one that needs a solution. I speculate that patents which are held purely to extort money will eventually become so easily invalidated that their use in this manner will become a thing of the past.
Sounds to me like it's the company with the patent that's asking for royalties, not Russia itself.
You may be right, but you have to realise that people are feeling mighty peeved at Putin right now, so anything that can be blamed on him, will be.
It's all very familier. The first stage of vilification starts with deciding that a group/cultural sector/country is evil|untrustworthy|taking our jobs/women whatever.
Next people associate patriotism with defense against these people. Then they decide killing them is morally|legally|religously justified.
And we're back to judging each other by how well we hate our enemies./sigh
wouldn't I love it if people did that. As it is my software remains obscure, of interest to such a specialist group that I'm on first name terms with people who make 'competing' products and more than a few end users.
In the history of my project no-one has ever managed to fork it succesfully, though there have been a few attempts. I even helped with some.
Just because it can happen, doesn't mean it will, so I am left struggling on with no-one substantially helping or contributing new code [fade out to sounds of violin music].
If they said 'no addins' for the free edition, and someone does one, surely they are in the right to get annoyed?
After all, it's not as if people are forced to use visual studio express, they could always use something else if they don't like the terms. If you want to use it, you use it the way they say, that seems obvious to me. I have an open source project, and I would get mighty pissed if someone broke my terms. Ok mine are the gpl, but it's the same thing.
They do hide bugs, as in they do not disclose them up front on release, unlike open source projects. Their advertising talks of problem free computing, and then they get hammered by vulnerabilities.
Probably no more or less then open source, but my point is that most of the time they don't talk about them till they are found out. That makes them seem worse then they likely are.
Microsoft products are released on beta these days, but most open source projects are released early bugs and all, specifically so those bugs can be revealed and fixed early on.
It's all a matter of approach.
Actually, (shock horror), while I do prefer open source for most things, I still use Microsoft Office, and office 2007 is great. I can't afford it though. I've tried openoffice, and its ok, but when I'm creating papers/reports and so on, I still use MSOffice. Perhaps in a year or so I'll move to openoffice completelly, but for now its relegated to book writing.
That's the trouble Open Source gets from being honest. Microsoft just hides the bugs and creates an illusion of problem free computer usage. Then they insist you keep windows update running all the time....
In this case I think the fast transition will cause grumbles, but then again, if they waited the MSN (Microsoft Sales Ninjas) would be inbound, and before they knew it everyone would be parrotting the microsoft literature and the switch would be forgotten.
America is creating these kinds of weapons, so why would it be surprising that China would too? Although, given the other things that the US has been convinced other powerful nations had in the past that have been wrong, 'undetectable subs', WMDs, and so on, I wonder if this isn't being made to sound more significant then it really is.
I liken this to the uproar about China developing space based weapons. Um, weren't the US doing it first?
I'd see this more as a sign that China is catching up with the US in terms of utilisation of computing technology. Possibly this is more of a threat because it might mean a chinese microsoft may not be far behind. I'd be willing to bet good money that this is the real thing that's got powerful people having pause for thought.
Personally I'm something of a fan of China. What I wouldn't give to be involved in their space program, even if only in a small way. Hopefully some research might crop up that's related and I can jump in.
I have friends who are involved with China, assisiting in their establishment of research institutions and suchlike, although its still early days. I think it's a good thing. Anything to reduce the neo-conservative dream of a world divided into the good and the evil, with everyone outside of US airspace being broadly defined as 'probably evil, unless we can sell them something'.
Well some people might buy one based on the adverts, but they likely wouldn't buy again.
Especially given microsofts constant habit of forcing uupgrades.
Apple do constant upgrades too, but my trusty old generation 3 iPod is still going strong in linux via Amarok. It works with the latest iTunes software too, but that's frankly not a very good peice of software, so I don't use it.
Bush isn't a dictator as such, more an empire builder, in fact exactly an empire builder.
Most effective empire builders have based their empires on economic control and diplomacy (it's worth your while to submit to us, trade in safety and be protected). England, the romans for example, there are more, but I can't think of them right now. Admitedly this is usually after land acquisition through wars, but ecomomic methods are usually far more effective.
India was an instance of economic control, they actually asked england to take over, and there was a fair bit of reluctance on the part of England. The US was also an empire member, but through benign control, England didn't actually want to help it succeed, or help out that would have cost too much, it was largely colonised initially by businessmen, and all England wanted was any money that might be available.
Mind you, it didn't especially want to drop the US or India from the empire when succesion was demanded. Not wanting to lose, in both cases, all that lovely money. We were right bastards back then...
England, although no longer an empire builder, still has the commonwealth, whereby lots of tiny independant nations, formally empire subjects need not have large armies because we are still obligated by treaty to help them. So does the US in the case of Japan, they still depend on the US for defense, having just a small military force.
The problem with Iraq is that the US government were thinking they could repeat the succes of Japan. That was a closed Island culture though, many people there didn't even think the americans were even human (peasants I mean, there were rather a lot of them). That was a different time though, and that event is unlikely to be repeated.
The paranioa after 9/11 was a neo conservatives dream. These measures do exactly what they want, they can try to 'fix' the US into a form they deem suitable. I don't think they caused 9/11, unless you count funding the guy who authorised it for years, but they certainly made use of it.
How exactly is Microsoft not a big player anymore? They control something like 90 to 95% of the desktop marketshare. They also have a decent share of the server market.
If you look at elective installs, that is, people choosing either to move to theirs rather than another product, they are nowhere near best. As for home users? If they had a choice, a real 'on the shelf in the shop, already installed' set of choices, fewer people would buy windows, because a great many people just don't need everything it does, or the expense of the purchase.
So Microsoft have their lead because
A: They have huge corporate contracts that automatically purchase the latest windows (how many are install Vista I wonder..). B: They have a stranglehold on the OEM PC market.
These are business methods which were great for them in the eighties, got less great towards the end of the nineties, and now are looking to be a very unstable future for Microsoft. A few major purchasers moving to another platform could well cripple them, and they know this. Not financially, they're wealthy as a company, but by removing their status as defacto best solution provider.
Unless they actually do something libellous in their campaign there's not a whole lot we can do about it.
However their threats are empty, and only likely to sway companies still entrenched in the 'threaten to use open source to secure discounts' camp.
The big problem for Microsoft is that they are no longer the big player they once were. They know this, and this is an ill judged attempt to say they are still in charge. It's only to be expected.
Unfortunately words don't mean much when money is at stake, even their most devout customers will start to become edgy if they see competition moving to open source solutions and saving money. There is no loyalty where money is concerned.
we have been known to watch a dvd together, but the loss of the brain suck device does mean that the old thing of everyone sat round at the same time all evening is gone for us.
When my son gets access to a tv elsewhere he doesn't tend to be interested anyway, unless they have some star trek dvds around or somesuch.
Not really, I use my pc to program mostly, mainly research related software, and usually hard work. It's the main user machine in my house, the rest being a heavily utilised cluster. Just because you use your computer as a media/games box doesn't mean I do. Mine is a workhorse machine that I also play dvds on from time to time, and listen to audio on, if again I have the time.
I have seen this thing of using a pc as a surrogate television, with people sat mesmerised by it for hours on end, that doesn't appeal to me at all. I can't usually manage for than an hour or two before I go do something else for a bit
Television is a waste of time for me, if my pc was only used for watching media and gaming then yes I'd likely stop using it, that would be too boring.
At the time mr gates and co were pushing that product and had paid a lot of money into its development. Therefore his not bigging it up is about as likely as Ford suggesting people use bicycles instead of their cars.
Also no-one had any idea, or could even conceive of the idea that spam would become such a big problem. Again though, if they had an inkling, he was hardly going to say 'well yes, in a few years most mail on the internet will be spam'. That's hardly going to help him sell Outlook now is it?
He wasn't talking as some kind of all knowing Oracle, he was talking as a powerful businessman with a definite agenda. Why do people keep dragging this up?
this is exactly what the media companies want you to do, watch stuff when you want, and within certain limits, with what you want.
*but* they want you to consider it a premium service that requires lots of money before you can partake. Free? Pah, that's for losers..
It's a flawed idea according to the consumer, but not according to the producers of that which is consumed, and they control the stage.
You could do what I did, give your tv away and refuse to let another one in the house. I watch dvds, listen to radio, read books, and use the bbc website for news, so I don't get bombarded with adverts and an endless stream of low budget high profit mush. I'm something of an SF series addict, so I buy the box sets and enjoy whole seasons advertisement free, it rocks.
It's amazing, after the first bit of adjusting, you start to see other people sitting in front of their brain sucking boxes and realising how worrying it is that they depend on them.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, I can't moderate that for you Dave...
I'm so proud! I'd just like to thank a few people......
From what I understand, intellectual property is the only US export that is making a reasonable profit at the moment, so it makes sense that the rules would be tightened to ensure the saleability of products with currently approved patents and discriminate against those that are in breach of those patents.
Like it or not, patents are a mainstay of the US economy. It may be several years before things in the computing industry start to stabilise and such controls become less necessary or seem less daft, but if they did nothing and let patents be flouted the situation would become untenable.
It would be nice perhaps, at least in thought experiment terms if patents weren't an issue, but that's nieve. Patents are here to stay, and the only way a business can currently ensure a profit from their research.
Scurrilous patent claims are another issue, one that needs a solution. I speculate that patents which are held purely to extort money will eventually become so easily invalidated that their use in this manner will become a thing of the past.
Thanks for the info, sounds like its more then I need on my normal use machine.
:-)
Never damn beer, I believe it positively enhances the slashdot experience
SElinux certainly sounds interesting. How relevant is it for the normal user?
Is it better for my personal linux box to have this or is Iptables enough?
Sounds to me like it's the company with the patent that's asking for royalties, not Russia itself.
/sigh
You may be right, but you have to realise that people are feeling mighty peeved at Putin right now, so anything that can be blamed on him, will be.
It's all very familier. The first stage of vilification starts with deciding that a group/cultural sector/country is evil|untrustworthy|taking our jobs/women whatever.
Next people associate patriotism with defense against these people. Then they decide killing them is morally|legally|religously justified.
And we're back to judging each other by how well we hate our enemies.
Its Linux MCE, which includes mythTV.
That aside, this is possibly the coolest thing I've seen coming out of the open source world for several years.
I'd welcome any feedback or assistance, it would be nice to have someone else doing something, even if only critiquing
wouldn't I love it if people did that. As it is my software remains obscure, of interest to such a specialist group that I'm on first name terms with people who make 'competing' products and more than a few end users.
In the history of my project no-one has ever managed to fork it succesfully, though there have been a few attempts. I even helped with some.
Just because it can happen, doesn't mean it will, so I am left struggling on with no-one substantially helping or contributing new code [fade out to sounds of violin music].
If they said 'no addins' for the free edition, and someone does one, surely they are in the right to get annoyed?
After all, it's not as if people are forced to use visual studio express, they could always use something else if they don't like the terms. If you want to use it, you use it the way they say, that seems obvious to me.
I have an open source project, and I would get mighty pissed if someone broke my terms. Ok mine are the gpl, but it's the same thing.
I prefer mingw studio anyway..
They do hide bugs, as in they do not disclose them up front on release, unlike open source projects. Their advertising talks of problem free computing, and then they get hammered by vulnerabilities.
Probably no more or less then open source, but my point is that most of the time they don't talk about them till they are found out. That makes them seem worse then they likely are.
Microsoft products are released on beta these days, but most open source projects are released early bugs and all, specifically so those bugs can be revealed and fixed early on.
It's all a matter of approach.
Actually, (shock horror), while I do prefer open source for most things, I still use Microsoft Office, and office 2007 is great. I can't afford it though. I've tried openoffice, and its ok, but when I'm creating papers/reports and so on, I still use MSOffice. Perhaps in a year or so I'll move to openoffice completelly, but for now its relegated to book writing.
That's the trouble Open Source gets from being honest. Microsoft just hides the bugs and creates an illusion of problem free computer usage. Then they insist you keep windows update running all the time....
In this case I think the fast transition will cause grumbles, but then again, if they waited the MSN (Microsoft Sales Ninjas) would be inbound, and before they knew it everyone would be parrotting the microsoft literature and the switch would be forgotten.
America is creating these kinds of weapons, so why would it be surprising that China would too? Although, given the other things that the US has been convinced other powerful nations had in the past that have been wrong, 'undetectable subs', WMDs, and so on, I wonder if this isn't being made to sound more significant then it really is.
I liken this to the uproar about China developing space based weapons. Um, weren't the US doing it first?
I'd see this more as a sign that China is catching up with the US in terms of utilisation of computing technology. Possibly this is more of a threat because it might mean a chinese microsoft may not be far behind. I'd be willing to bet good money that this is the real thing that's got powerful people having pause for thought.
Personally I'm something of a fan of China. What I wouldn't give to be involved in their space program, even if only in a small way. Hopefully some research might crop up that's related and I can jump in.
I have friends who are involved with China, assisiting in their establishment of research institutions and suchlike, although its still early days. I think it's a good thing. Anything to reduce the neo-conservative dream of a world divided into the good and the evil, with everyone outside of US airspace being broadly defined as 'probably evil, unless we can sell them something'.
Have you tried MediaMonkey to manage your iPod?
Or using linux - Amarok.
Amarok is just about perfect for the iPod, you can drag and drop individual files/albums oin or off it easily.
Well some people might buy one based on the adverts, but they likely wouldn't buy again.
Especially given microsofts constant habit of forcing uupgrades.
Apple do constant upgrades too, but my trusty old generation 3 iPod is still going strong in linux via Amarok. It works with the latest iTunes software too, but that's frankly not a very good peice of software, so I don't use it.
Yes it did, there was cake...
What kind of bullshit is that? When did India "ask" England to take over??
Read up on your history, especially the East India Company
Bush isn't a dictator as such, more an empire builder, in fact exactly an empire builder.
Most effective empire builders have based their empires on economic control and diplomacy (it's worth your while to submit to us, trade in safety and be protected). England, the romans for example, there are more, but I can't think of them right now. Admitedly this is usually after land acquisition through wars, but ecomomic methods are usually far more effective.
India was an instance of economic control, they actually asked england to take over, and there was a fair bit of reluctance on the part of England. The US was also an empire member, but through benign control, England didn't actually want to help it succeed, or help out that would have cost too much, it was largely colonised initially by businessmen, and all England wanted was any money that might be available.
Mind you, it didn't especially want to drop the US or India from the empire when succesion was demanded. Not wanting to lose, in both cases, all that lovely money. We were right bastards back then...
England, although no longer an empire builder, still has the commonwealth, whereby lots of tiny independant nations, formally empire subjects need not have large armies because we are still obligated by treaty to help them. So does the US in the case of Japan, they still depend on the US for defense, having just a small military force.
The problem with Iraq is that the US government were thinking they could repeat the succes of Japan. That was a closed Island culture though, many people there didn't even think the americans were even human (peasants I mean, there were rather a lot of them). That was a different time though, and that event is unlikely to be repeated.
The paranioa after 9/11 was a neo conservatives dream. These measures do exactly what they want, they can try to 'fix' the US into a form they deem suitable. I don't think they caused 9/11, unless you count funding the guy who authorised it for years, but they certainly made use of it.
How exactly is Microsoft not a big player anymore? They control something like 90 to 95% of the desktop marketshare. They also have a decent share of the server market.
If you look at elective installs, that is, people choosing either to move to theirs rather than another product, they are nowhere near best. As for home users? If they had a choice, a real 'on the shelf in the shop, already installed' set of choices, fewer people would buy windows, because a great many people just don't need everything it does, or the expense of the purchase.
So Microsoft have their lead because
A: They have huge corporate contracts that automatically purchase the latest windows (how many are install Vista I wonder..).
B: They have a stranglehold on the OEM PC market.
These are business methods which were great for them in the eighties, got less great towards the end of the nineties, and now are looking to be a very unstable future for Microsoft. A few major purchasers moving to another platform could well cripple them, and they know this. Not financially, they're wealthy as a company, but by removing their status as defacto best solution provider.
That would be a real disaster for them
Unless they actually do something libellous in their campaign there's not a whole lot we can do about it.
However their threats are empty, and only likely to sway companies still entrenched in the 'threaten to use open source to secure discounts' camp.
The big problem for Microsoft is that they are no longer the big player they once were. They know this, and this is an ill judged attempt to say they are still in charge. It's only to be expected.
Unfortunately words don't mean much when money is at stake, even their most devout customers will start to become edgy if they see competition moving to open source solutions and saving money. There is no loyalty where money is concerned.
we have been known to watch a dvd together, but the loss of the brain suck device does mean that the old thing of everyone sat round at the same time all evening is gone for us.
When my son gets access to a tv elsewhere he doesn't tend to be interested anyway, unless they have some star trek dvds around or somesuch.
Not really, I use my pc to program mostly, mainly research related software, and usually hard work. It's the main user machine in my house, the rest being a heavily utilised cluster. Just because you use your computer as a media/games box doesn't mean I do. Mine is a workhorse machine that I also play dvds on from time to time, and listen to audio on, if again I have the time.
I have seen this thing of using a pc as a surrogate television, with people sat mesmerised by it for hours on end, that doesn't appeal to me at all. I can't usually manage for than an hour or two before I go do something else for a bit
Television is a waste of time for me, if my pc was only used for watching media and gaming then yes I'd likely stop using it, that would be too boring.
At the time mr gates and co were pushing that product and had paid a lot of money into its development. Therefore his not bigging it up is about as likely as Ford suggesting people use bicycles instead of their cars.
Also no-one had any idea, or could even conceive of the idea that spam would become such a big problem. Again though, if they had an inkling, he was hardly going to say 'well yes, in a few years most mail on the internet will be spam'. That's hardly going to help him sell Outlook now is it?
He wasn't talking as some kind of all knowing Oracle, he was talking as a powerful businessman with a definite agenda. Why do people keep dragging this up?
this is exactly what the media companies want you to do, watch stuff when you want, and within certain limits, with what you want.
*but* they want you to consider it a premium service that requires lots of money before you can partake. Free? Pah, that's for losers..
It's a flawed idea according to the consumer, but not according to the producers of that which is consumed, and they control the stage.
You could do what I did, give your tv away and refuse to let another one in the house. I watch dvds, listen to radio, read books, and use the bbc website for news, so I don't get bombarded with adverts and an endless stream of low budget high profit mush. I'm something of an SF series addict, so I buy the box sets and enjoy whole seasons advertisement free, it rocks.
It's amazing, after the first bit of adjusting, you start to see other people sitting in front of their brain sucking boxes and realising how worrying it is that they depend on them.
I'm more for the idea of growing limbs on genetically altered pigs and grafting them, seems a lot more convenient.