I've got loads of GPL'ed stuff I've not given away to anyone. You don't have to give it away even if you're a developer - you're perfectly entitled to keep it in-house. However, if you *do* give it away, you have to make the source available.
Apart from that, the GPL only addresses copyright. If there are patent issues, you have to take care of those separately before you can use the code.
Yes, but there have been 150 *human* deaths (so far) from vCJD due to the BSE outbreak here in Britain. Of course, the reason it spread through cattle here is because we put the remains of dead cows in their feed as a protein supplement. As long as they don't do that in the US then there won't be any problem.
Criminal masterminds with access to a duplication unit capable of running off millions of DVDs do not sit in cinemas with camcorders. They hand that job off to an underling.
Not necessarily. Humans are pretty weak anyway - chimps are up to 8x stronger than us, IIRC. The reason we've lost all that strength is so that we can run after gazelles for hours on end (think skinny marathon runners) instead of swinging through trees.
What Microsoft should be doing is porting the Windows API to the Linux kernel - a sort of official MS version of Wine. They won't have to GPL this as you're explicitly allowed to run proprietary apps on top of the Linux kernel. They'd keep control over the lucrative win32 API, while farming off the production of the underlying OS to a raft of unpaid hackers.
You appear to believe that the melting ice caps will cause global extinction. They won't. Simply move your children further inland, and they'll be quite safe.
The thing that worries me about the Kyoto treaty is this graph. We spend billions and billions implementing it, and we get an extra 5-10 years before the ice caps melt. Why bother?
According to Yahoo!, the Sahara Desert is in 'spectacular' retreat. This is manifestly a Good Thing, and therefore can't have anything to do with human induced Global Warming, which only causes Bad Things.
It's entirely relevant to OpenBSD security. If they don't know how the attack happened, it could happen again, leading to an awful lot of insecure OpenBSD boxes out there.
Looks like I forgot there are 8 bits in a byte. Grr.
By the way, a lawyer might use the following argument. Consider somebody sitting down and clicking on the "next" button 100 times a second for a whole year. That's 100*3600*24*365 = 3153600000 algorithms. Log 3153600000 / log 256 = 3.94, so that's pretty much all algorithms up to four bytes long. Our lawyer would probably claim that, even given this unrealistic scenario, your site couldn't ever have generated any algorithm more than four bytes long.
Of course, this assumes that the only way to generate the algorithms is sequentially, so you could put in a facility to go directly to the n'th algorithm (if you haven't already.)
Found this little gem
here. As a US patent attourney, I was wondering what you thought of it.
Stephan Kinsella is a registered patent attorney and earns his living by helping people obtain patents. Yet he is highly critical of the system and of fellow patent lawyers. When one of these colleagues attacked Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig as a "pompous pedagogue pronouncing patent policies", Kinsella commented:
In fact, in my view, most patent lawyers -- most lawyers in general -- fit into the category "Pompous Pedagogues Pronouncing Patent Policies", to the extent they themselves unthinkingly spout pro-patent slogans. That is because most patent and IP and even other attorneys with an opinion on this issue mindlessly parrot the simpleminded economics with which they were propagandized in law school. Virtually every patent lawyer will reiterate the mantra that "we need patents to stimulate innovation," as if they have given deep and careful thought to this. Of course, virtually none of them have. They repeat what they have read in Supreme Court and CAFC (Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the primary federal appellate court dealing with patent law issues) opinions as if the positive law enunciated by government functionaries is some Holy Writ. It does not take a genius to figure out why most patent lawyers are in favor of the patent system; and it is not because they have really studied the matter and dispassionately concluded that society is better off with a patent system -- it is because they don't want to see the system that pays the mortgage for them eroded or abolished.
In theory, you can't patent an algorithm in Europe. In practice, you can get around that restriction by phrasing your patent as "a computer system that features this algorithm".
The EPO is currently lobbying for this restriction to be removed altogether. I'm not convinced that the EPO should be allowed to do any aggressive lobbying, as there's clearly a conflict of interests. Nobody at the European Parliament seems to have noticed, though, so they've got away with it so far.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's somebody who's succumbed to the dark side.
I've got loads of GPL'ed stuff I've not given away to anyone. You don't have to give it away even if you're a developer - you're perfectly entitled to keep it in-house. However, if you *do* give it away, you have to make the source available.
Apart from that, the GPL only addresses copyright. If there are patent issues, you have to take care of those separately before you can use the code.
Yes, but there have been 150 *human* deaths (so far) from vCJD due to the BSE outbreak here in Britain. Of course, the reason it spread through cattle here is because we put the remains of dead cows in their feed as a protein supplement. As long as they don't do that in the US then there won't be any problem.
...also Bytemark and Memset in the UK.
They've got TextMaker for word processing.
Criminal masterminds with access to a duplication unit capable of running off millions of DVDs do not sit in cinemas with camcorders. They hand that job off to an underling.
Not necessarily. Humans are pretty weak anyway - chimps are up to 8x stronger than us, IIRC. The reason we've lost all that strength is so that we can run after gazelles for hours on end (think skinny marathon runners) instead of swinging through trees.
If he's been bitten by Vampire Attack Penguins, webbed feet shouldn't be a problem.
That's a point. Just think of the DoS if we all type ping www.kjhgikdsgljk.com.
What Microsoft should be doing is porting the Windows API to the Linux kernel - a sort of official MS version of Wine. They won't have to GPL this as you're explicitly allowed to run proprietary apps on top of the Linux kernel. They'd keep control over the lucrative win32 API, while farming off the production of the underlying OS to a raft of unpaid hackers.
The US didn't just get involved with this one, they started it. Whole different kettle of fish.
Expect a patent on that shortly.
Isn't that what SAX parsers are for?
1. Is this going to be in the new 3.2 release in November?
2. Do programs have to be re-written to take advantage of this feature?
You appear to believe that the melting ice caps will cause global extinction. They won't. Simply move your children further inland, and they'll be quite safe.
PS I walk to work. Is that OK?
The thing that worries me about the Kyoto treaty is this graph. We spend billions and billions implementing it, and we get an extra 5-10 years before the ice caps melt. Why bother?
Oops! Meant to post a link.
According to Yahoo!, the Sahara Desert is in 'spectacular' retreat. This is manifestly a Good Thing, and therefore can't have anything to do with human induced Global Warming, which only causes Bad Things.
Funny you should mention that. There was an example of just that yesterday.
It's entirely relevant to OpenBSD security. If they don't know how the attack happened, it could happen again, leading to an awful lot of insecure OpenBSD boxes out there.
The corporate world should lighten up a little. Deface a few pavements, or something. Oh wait, they've done that...
The 2.0 kernels are pretty stable by now and, sometimes, they're all you need.
By the way, a lawyer might use the following argument. Consider somebody sitting down and clicking on the "next" button 100 times a second for a whole year. That's 100*3600*24*365 = 3153600000 algorithms. Log 3153600000 / log 256 = 3.94, so that's pretty much all algorithms up to four bytes long. Our lawyer would probably claim that, even given this unrealistic scenario, your site couldn't ever have generated any algorithm more than four bytes long.
Of course, this assumes that the only way to generate the algorithms is sequentially, so you could put in a facility to go directly to the n'th algorithm (if you haven't already.)
Stephan Kinsella is a registered patent attorney and earns his living by helping people obtain patents. Yet he is highly critical of the system and of fellow patent lawyers. When one of these colleagues attacked Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig as a "pompous pedagogue pronouncing patent policies", Kinsella commented:
In fact, in my view, most patent lawyers -- most lawyers in general -- fit into the category "Pompous Pedagogues Pronouncing Patent Policies", to the extent they themselves unthinkingly spout pro-patent slogans. That is because most patent and IP and even other attorneys with an opinion on this issue mindlessly parrot the simpleminded economics with which they were propagandized in law school. Virtually every patent lawyer will reiterate the mantra that "we need patents to stimulate innovation," as if they have given deep and careful thought to this. Of course, virtually none of them have. They repeat what they have read in Supreme Court and CAFC (Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the primary federal appellate court dealing with patent law issues) opinions as if the positive law enunciated by government functionaries is some Holy Writ. It does not take a genius to figure out why most patent lawyers are in favor of the patent system; and it is not because they have really studied the matter and dispassionately concluded that society is better off with a patent system -- it is because they don't want to see the system that pays the mortgage for them eroded or abolished.
The EPO is currently lobbying for this restriction to be removed altogether. I'm not convinced that the EPO should be allowed to do any aggressive lobbying, as there's clearly a conflict of interests. Nobody at the European Parliament seems to have noticed, though, so they've got away with it so far.