While SGI might hold a patent, in general if one can prove that their implimentation was developed without knowledge of the or assitance from the patented stuff...its OK.
It's not okay, since the person who annouced the proposed change to the kernel mentioned that he got the information directly from an SGI whitepaper... whose purpose was to describe an algorithm that SGI had patented.
Bonus question: if I attempt to enforce a patent used in GPLed code, what happens? Do I lose my rights to use/distribute that GPL code? Is the copyright and GPL on that code unenforcable?
The way you worded this makes it a little fuzzy. Who owns the patent? If it's someone else then you merely pay up the license fee or remove the afflicted code that infringes on the patent.
If you own the patent, then everything proceeds as normal: you keep your patent, your copyright, and your GPL license.[1] Even though having your patent-covered code licensed under the GPL removes certain provisions that patents are meant to provide, other programmers can not use the idea illustrated in your patent unless they cut-n-paste your GPL code into their similarly GPL'ed project. Where patent law and the GPL directly contradict, I would expect patent law to win out in a court.
1. Note that anyone doing anything as blatantly idiotic as this would probably one day find a seething, red-eyed crazed Richard Stallman weilding an ax on their front doorstep.
That's a pretty good question. I would imagine that if you tried to report it M$ would whip you into court faster than you can say NDA. Even though they are probably in the wrong (I would think copyright / trademark / patent infringment takes precedence over an NDA), you could never afford to defend yourself and M$ knows that. They just want you to shut up and they'll do it any way possible.
Well I guess that puts to bed most of the retard patent arguments presented here on slashdot.
It quite clearly states that just making something that's covered under a patent is illegal. It does not matter much whether you sell it, try to sell it, give it away for free, just show it off, or keep it hoarded away in your basement in a chest with 15 locks. If you have developed something that violates a patent, you can be prosecuted in full accordance with the law.
More chillingly, note that it also states that using an unauthorized patented invention (device, idea, algorithm, etc) makes you just as liable for patent infringement as it does the creator of said unauthorized invention.
And, perhaps of lesser importance, it also makes wholesalers and resellers liable for damages if they unknowingly sell something that infringes on a patent.
Kinda puts into perspective how the phrase "a free country" really ought to be "a country for businesses to freely exploit via the government."
I don't understand what quoting the ebay page proves. I'm fully aware that most people will never get a chance to fly a space shuttle. But I'm also aware of the fact that just one experience like this for the right kind of kid could start him onto the path to becoming the next Neil Armstrong. Your original post had the pessimistic tone of, "boy, what a loser this guy is building a shuttle sim for no good reason then selling it off on ebay." My point was merely that there certainly was a good reason, one that you seemingly didn't even bother looking into before jumping into bitch mode.
Seems like he got a government grant to build a fantasy toy for himself (see quote from ebay) that the students also used and he's now trying to sell it for $15K.
How do you reason that he built it all for himself and got the government to pay for it? A project like this is a labour of love no matter how much money is involved. If I ever had the opportunity to do something this cool (and then share it with others) I'd jump at it in a second.
Granted, I'd never pay $15k for the thing (would much rather enjoy building one myself, actually) and it would be awful nice of him to donate it to another school, but it is well within his right to sell it to someone else who could do something useful with it. It would be a waste of my time to complain about his ethical standards.
FWIW, working in the underpaid, underappreciated public school system and undertaking the huge task of constructing something of this magnitude, $15k is barely a door prize. I'd wager that over the last 9 years, he's spent a fair chunk of his own money and time maintaining and upgrading the sim but there's no proof of that either way.
The auction page quite clearly states that he recieved a grant to build it for a public school that he teaches at. He did not just throw it together in his garage so he could play "make-believe." This simulator was used for 6 years in the school where the students ran 3-hour long missions and learned a thing or two about the space shuttle and space in general.
If I were a student at this school when I was a kid I would have been grateful in the extreme to be able to play around with a simulator of this quality. Who knows how many kids got to experience this sim along with a knowledgeable teacher and decided that they might be interested in persuing a space-related career?
Seems to me that the creator of this thing, a public school teacher, set out to influence the lives of his students in a positive way. Odds are very good that he succeeded. With the kind of attitude that you display, you will never be that lucky.
Even though this is an obvious troll, I know that there are probably other people at least thinking the same thing, so I wish to spell out a few easily observable facts that would prevent stupid laments such as this.
I'm here to tell you that I have an answer to all of the problems that you listed above and I hope others that share your opinion take this advice to heart:
There are a fuckin' billion other web sites in existance, if you don't like this one then please leave and find another. And ESPECIALLY please do not bitch about it in the comments. It only makes you look like a complete and utter moron when you complain about how much a particular web site sucks yet can't seem to resist reading the stories or posting comments anyway.
And finally, Rob Malda, founder of Slashdot, has stated explicitly and repeatedly that Slashdot carries the stories that interest him and the editors that work for him. He does not cater to the interests of the readers other than providing a comment system, which was initially an added afterthought that happened to take off. You're perfectly free to go out and make your own Slashdot if you don't like this one. But you won't because you are yet another slashbot who by far prefers complaining to action.
In fact, nearly 50% of the population is going to have below average intelligence.
That much is entirely true. But you're forgetting that to many people who have a clue, that average is at a far lower point on the overall scale than it has to be. You're also forgetting that most of these people, both above average and below the average, are cranked through an indifferent public school system which have the blessing of similarly indifferent parents.
But what happens when a parent actually starts to give a crap about their child's education? I'm not talking about the, "You had better get all A's this semester, young man," crowd. I'm talking about the parents who take an active part on their child's education by inspiring the child to learn and giving them opportunities to experience the benefits of gently pushing them beyond the norm.
Unless said child has a mental disability, there is simply no logical way that the child who has been actively and positively encouraged to learn could possibly fall behind the average if compared to their peers in a modern public school system. Period.
I think the social interaction issue is a false argument.
I readily agree. I spent around 99% of my time in public school sitting around brooding about the fact that I had to attend that dictatorship they called a "high school" on a daily basis when I would have much rather been at home paging through my programming manuals. (And, regretfully, my grades reflected that...)
I had one, maybe two good friends in my school. Everyone else, well, I wouldn't have minded if the whole school happened to burn down with all of them inside it. For a long time I cursed my parents for not being able or willing to raise me in an environment that provided any sort of actual intellectual stimulation. Luckily, I was just barely able to get by on what I provided for myself in order to avoid being yet another "docile factory worker" as the parent post so accurately puts it.:)
Personally, I would rather have seen the intrinsic logic and beauty first, and the "real-world" applications later.
Noble, but schools exist for the purpose of educating students in an attempt to prepare them for their lives among the rest of "civilized" society. Perhaps with the exceptions of music and art appreciation classes, nearly every single class that the average person will take in their lifetime serves to give that person some form of knowledge or skill in the hope that it will be useful at some point in their lives.
Second, math is always presented as primarily being a useful tool for other areas of discipline is simply because that's exactly what it is. Math, at its lowest level, is merely a language to describe things. (Albiet a very universal one.) Exactly the same way that a programming language describes the actions that a program performs. And the same way spoken/written languages describe ideas. There can certainly be beauty in all of these kinds of languages, but most of the time that beauty is purely of recreational value. The primary purpose of any language is to be useful in some way.
Finally, how can one experience the "intrinsic logic and beauty" of any kind of language without having a solid, practical knowledge of said language beforehand? You'd be hard-pressed to find any intrinsic beauty in a Chinese poem if you had no idea how to read Chinese.
I'm not about to cite it as fact, but one of the recent safety campaigns where I work was urging employees not to talk on the phone while driving unless a speakerphone is used. Supposedly, there was a study about how talking on the phone was as dangerous as driving while intoxicated with a blood/alcohol level 3x the legal limit.
I take every "statistic" with a large lump of salt and the same would be true of this particular instance if it weren't for the fact that just about every other day I see some idoit talking on his or her cell phone while at the same time running red lights, cutting off semis, or otherwise conducting all manner of moving violations possible.
It is my opinion that in this country, cell phones have only enabled the stupid to act stupider, but this time with a tinny piezo-produced rendition of The Entertainer as an excuse.
Only occasionally is my movie experience disrupted by a ringing cellphone and/or a fellow patron talking on it, however it is still obnoxious in the extreme. All of the theatres I've been to recently have had a little note on the screen (and sometimes in the dialogue) that politely asks the audience to turn off their cell phones before the movie starts. A few even had signs in the lobby that said talking on cellphones during a movie was prohibited.
However, I don't think more laws is necessarily the answer. What I would like to see is all movie theatres install a little piece of equipment[1] that broadcasts noise on the common frequencies that cell phones use. They can't be all that expensive. This way, observing the common courtesy of not talking on a friggen phone in the middle of a movie is not merely optional.
1. Yes, this has been the topic of at least one slashdot article so far.
Good point, but I was thinking that if they were to at least bundle, not pre-install, Linux or FreeBSD (or ideally, both) then they could capitalize on the small but significant portion of open-source zealots who'd likely buy the system on that feature alone.
Only catch is that they'd probably have to make sure each OS can install on those machines without a hitch which even IBM couldn't even seem to do correctly with their short-lived Linux line of notebooks.
Ha! Of all the systems they could have shipped, especially to include Linux and the *BSDs they picked FreeDOS. That's just funny. Okay, the dumb little Dell kid just got a slight bit more tolerable in my mind.
First there is the question of speed. Layering browser type apps on top of Mozilla, on top of Red Hat is surely going to mean a performance hit.
I admittedly have yet to try this out, but one of the things that makes Mozilla slow is the fact that it uses *all* of the Mozilla-developed technologies and they all get loaded into the application at start time. Until it is actually tested, I say give them the benefit of the doubt... perhaps they aren't using all of the Mozilla tecnologies and/or perhaps they have widened up some of the bottlenecks.
How long will it take developers to realize that.doc *is* the standard
Wrong. It can only be considered a standard, in my opinion, if there were more than one program that could read or write DOC files reliably. Oh yes, Microsoft would love to make the DOC format a real standard, if they could only think of how to do so without actually telling anyone how it works.
The only real standard is 7-bit ASCII without newlines or carriage returns.:P
There is also the question, a *major* one in my mind, of why a Linux based company builds their website targeting IE and Netscape base browsers.
A) More than likely, they did what most every other company does when they need a decent web presence: they contract their web development out. I'd bet the farm that most web delopment companies out there do most or all of their work in a Microsoft environment targeted towards Microsoft platforms. No, I don't agree with it but that's the way it is and it won't change if or until Mozilla gets more market share.
B) Their site worked just fine for me in Linux + Mozilla.
They aren't necessarily trying to come up with a completely new general purpose desktop system
Uh, I believe the CEO of the company actually said that's exactly what they were trying to do. He went out of his way to mention, however, that they are not claiming to have invented the interface paradigm that Homebase uses. The CEO said that's just the way he saw home technology moving and wanted to take advantage of it early.
I personally would not think any Mozilla-developed technology would be suitable for embedded applications where factors like speed, simplicity, and size rule the roost.
To clarify the parent post for those who can't read between the lines:
1. Content of ratings and comments become the sole property of CNET.
2. But if you post a comment, you are solely responsible for the content, not CNET.
Now those are two ridiculous and contrary statements. My interpretation of ownership and/or copyright law (whichever apply here if now both) was that if you were the sole owner of a piece of intellectual property it was also explicity implied that you were the one responsible for it as well.
I wonder if there's a good way to challenge that. Maybe sue CNET for slander/libel/IP copyright infringement, etc AFTER you've had a friend (with stealthy anon skillz) post an objectionable comment on their comment boards?
Or maybe post a comment or 500 to the effect of "The poster of this comment does not agree to the CNET comment posting disclaimer and as such, CNET holds only 50% ownership of this comment and CNET is the party solely responsible for its content."
At least, not my opinion. I define piracy as the copying of a copyrighted work for monetary profit. Since trading does not fit this description, I think the law should make some sort of distinction between the two terms.
That's not an altogether bad idea, but I think the kernel patches provide for most people's needs in this area.
I myself just keep one recent "pure" linus tarball and whatever patches I might want to apply. A few months ago, I was testing out various versions of the 2.4 series and ended up downloading every kernel with a patchlevel divisible by 5. I then proceeded to download whichever version patches I needed to get the kernel version that I was looking for. Saved myself a ton of time doing this.
I think it would be great if support for architectures other than x86 were provided as patches instead of the main tree, but I suspect doing this would be a huge pain initially (going through dozens of megs of code to figure out what's x86 and what's not) and only add additional overhead to development of the kernel.
The KISS principle applies pretty strongly to OS kernel development and even stronger to the largest OS kernel in existance. (Yes, that'd be Linux for the humour-impared):P
Slashdot Mirror
While SGI might hold a patent, in general if one can prove that their implimentation was developed without knowledge of the or assitance from the patented stuff...its OK.
It's not okay, since the person who annouced the proposed change to the kernel mentioned that he got the information directly from an SGI whitepaper... whose purpose was to describe an algorithm that SGI had patented.
Bonus question: if I attempt to enforce a patent used in GPLed code, what happens? Do I lose my rights to use/distribute that GPL code? Is the copyright and GPL on that code unenforcable?
The way you worded this makes it a little fuzzy. Who owns the patent? If it's someone else then you merely pay up the license fee or remove the afflicted code that infringes on the patent.
If you own the patent, then everything proceeds as normal: you keep your patent, your copyright, and your GPL license.[1] Even though having your patent-covered code licensed under the GPL removes certain provisions that patents are meant to provide, other programmers can not use the idea illustrated in your patent unless they cut-n-paste your GPL code into their similarly GPL'ed project. Where patent law and the GPL directly contradict, I would expect patent law to win out in a court.
1. Note that anyone doing anything as blatantly idiotic as this would probably one day find a seething, red-eyed crazed Richard Stallman weilding an ax on their front doorstep.
That's a pretty good question. I would imagine that if you tried to report it M$ would whip you into court faster than you can say NDA. Even though they are probably in the wrong (I would think copyright / trademark / patent infringment takes precedence over an NDA), you could never afford to defend yourself and M$ knows that. They just want you to shut up and they'll do it any way possible.
It certainly doesn't do anything to make me respect Linus.
I highly doubt Linus ever asked for your respect.
Thank you.
Well I guess that puts to bed most of the retard patent arguments presented here on slashdot.
It quite clearly states that just making something that's covered under a patent is illegal. It does not matter much whether you sell it, try to sell it, give it away for free, just show it off, or keep it hoarded away in your basement in a chest with 15 locks. If you have developed something that violates a patent, you can be prosecuted in full accordance with the law.
More chillingly, note that it also states that using an unauthorized patented invention (device, idea, algorithm, etc) makes you just as liable for patent infringement as it does the creator of said unauthorized invention.
And, perhaps of lesser importance, it also makes wholesalers and resellers liable for damages if they unknowingly sell something that infringes on a patent.
Kinda puts into perspective how the phrase "a free country" really ought to be "a country for businesses to freely exploit via the government."
I do believe he missed the bleeding sarcasm.
I don't understand what quoting the ebay page proves. I'm fully aware that most people will never get a chance to fly a space shuttle. But I'm also aware of the fact that just one experience like this for the right kind of kid could start him onto the path to becoming the next Neil Armstrong. Your original post had the pessimistic tone of, "boy, what a loser this guy is building a shuttle sim for no good reason then selling it off on ebay." My point was merely that there certainly was a good reason, one that you seemingly didn't even bother looking into before jumping into bitch mode.
Seems like he got a government grant to build a fantasy toy for himself (see quote from ebay) that the students also used and he's now trying to sell it for $15K.
How do you reason that he built it all for himself and got the government to pay for it? A project like this is a labour of love no matter how much money is involved. If I ever had the opportunity to do something this cool (and then share it with others) I'd jump at it in a second.
Granted, I'd never pay $15k for the thing (would much rather enjoy building one myself, actually) and it would be awful nice of him to donate it to another school, but it is well within his right to sell it to someone else who could do something useful with it. It would be a waste of my time to complain about his ethical standards.
FWIW, working in the underpaid, underappreciated public school system and undertaking the huge task of constructing something of this magnitude, $15k is barely a door prize. I'd wager that over the last 9 years, he's spent a fair chunk of his own money and time maintaining and upgrading the sim but there's no proof of that either way.
Way to follow a link or two there, tough guy.
The auction page quite clearly states that he recieved a grant to build it for a public school that he teaches at. He did not just throw it together in his garage so he could play "make-believe." This simulator was used for 6 years in the school where the students ran 3-hour long missions and learned a thing or two about the space shuttle and space in general.
If I were a student at this school when I was a kid I would have been grateful in the extreme to be able to play around with a simulator of this quality. Who knows how many kids got to experience this sim along with a knowledgeable teacher and decided that they might be interested in persuing a space-related career?
Seems to me that the creator of this thing, a public school teacher, set out to influence the lives of his students in a positive way. Odds are very good that he succeeded. With the kind of attitude that you display, you will never be that lucky.
Even though this is an obvious troll, I know that there are probably other people at least thinking the same thing, so I wish to spell out a few easily observable facts that would prevent stupid laments such as this.
I'm here to tell you that I have an answer to all of the problems that you listed above and I hope others that share your opinion take this advice to heart:
There are a fuckin' billion other web sites in existance, if you don't like this one then please leave and find another. And ESPECIALLY please do not bitch about it in the comments. It only makes you look like a complete and utter moron when you complain about how much a particular web site sucks yet can't seem to resist reading the stories or posting comments anyway.
And finally, Rob Malda, founder of Slashdot, has stated explicitly and repeatedly that Slashdot carries the stories that interest him and the editors that work for him. He does not cater to the interests of the readers other than providing a comment system, which was initially an added afterthought that happened to take off. You're perfectly free to go out and make your own Slashdot if you don't like this one. But you won't because you are yet another slashbot who by far prefers complaining to action.
In fact, nearly 50% of the population is going to have below average intelligence.
That much is entirely true. But you're forgetting that to many people who have a clue, that average is at a far lower point on the overall scale than it has to be. You're also forgetting that most of these people, both above average and below the average, are cranked through an indifferent public school system which have the blessing of similarly indifferent parents.
But what happens when a parent actually starts to give a crap about their child's education? I'm not talking about the, "You had better get all A's this semester, young man," crowd. I'm talking about the parents who take an active part on their child's education by inspiring the child to learn and giving them opportunities to experience the benefits of gently pushing them beyond the norm.
Unless said child has a mental disability, there is simply no logical way that the child who has been actively and positively encouraged to learn could possibly fall behind the average if compared to their peers in a modern public school system. Period.
I think the social interaction issue is a false argument.
I readily agree. I spent around 99% of my time in public school sitting around brooding about the fact that I had to attend that dictatorship they called a "high school" on a daily basis when I would have much rather been at home paging through my programming manuals. (And, regretfully, my grades reflected that...)
I had one, maybe two good friends in my school. Everyone else, well, I wouldn't have minded if the whole school happened to burn down with all of them inside it. For a long time I cursed my parents for not being able or willing to raise me in an environment that provided any sort of actual intellectual stimulation. Luckily, I was just barely able to get by on what I provided for myself in order to avoid being yet another "docile factory worker" as the parent post so accurately puts it.
Personally, I would rather have seen the intrinsic logic and beauty first, and the "real-world" applications later.
Noble, but schools exist for the purpose of educating students in an attempt to prepare them for their lives among the rest of "civilized" society. Perhaps with the exceptions of music and art appreciation classes, nearly every single class that the average person will take in their lifetime serves to give that person some form of knowledge or skill in the hope that it will be useful at some point in their lives.
Second, math is always presented as primarily being a useful tool for other areas of discipline is simply because that's exactly what it is. Math, at its lowest level, is merely a language to describe things. (Albiet a very universal one.) Exactly the same way that a programming language describes the actions that a program performs. And the same way spoken/written languages describe ideas. There can certainly be beauty in all of these kinds of languages, but most of the time that beauty is purely of recreational value. The primary purpose of any language is to be useful in some way.
Finally, how can one experience the "intrinsic logic and beauty" of any kind of language without having a solid, practical knowledge of said language beforehand? You'd be hard-pressed to find any intrinsic beauty in a Chinese poem if you had no idea how to read Chinese.
Banning cell phone use in cars is just stupid.
I'm not about to cite it as fact, but one of the recent safety campaigns where I work was urging employees not to talk on the phone while driving unless a speakerphone is used. Supposedly, there was a study about how talking on the phone was as dangerous as driving while intoxicated with a blood/alcohol level 3x the legal limit.
I take every "statistic" with a large lump of salt and the same would be true of this particular instance if it weren't for the fact that just about every other day I see some idoit talking on his or her cell phone while at the same time running red lights, cutting off semis, or otherwise conducting all manner of moving violations possible.
It is my opinion that in this country, cell phones have only enabled the stupid to act stupider, but this time with a tinny piezo-produced rendition of The Entertainer as an excuse.
Only occasionally is my movie experience disrupted by a ringing cellphone and/or a fellow patron talking on it, however it is still obnoxious in the extreme. All of the theatres I've been to recently have had a little note on the screen (and sometimes in the dialogue) that politely asks the audience to turn off their cell phones before the movie starts. A few even had signs in the lobby that said talking on cellphones during a movie was prohibited.
However, I don't think more laws is necessarily the answer. What I would like to see is all movie theatres install a little piece of equipment[1] that broadcasts noise on the common frequencies that cell phones use. They can't be all that expensive. This way, observing the common courtesy of not talking on a friggen phone in the middle of a movie is not merely optional.
1. Yes, this has been the topic of at least one slashdot article so far.
This ought to have been from "no-shit-sherlock" department.
You'd think most people 'round here would have at least heard of the theory of evolution already.
Good point, but I was thinking that if they were to at least bundle, not pre-install, Linux or FreeBSD (or ideally, both) then they could capitalize on the small but significant portion of open-source zealots who'd likely buy the system on that feature alone.
Only catch is that they'd probably have to make sure each OS can install on those machines without a hitch which even IBM couldn't even seem to do correctly with their short-lived Linux line of notebooks.
Ha! Of all the systems they could have shipped, especially to include Linux and the *BSDs they picked FreeDOS. That's just funny. Okay, the dumb little Dell kid just got a slight bit more tolerable in my mind.
First there is the question of speed. Layering browser type apps on top of Mozilla, on top of Red Hat is surely going to mean a performance hit.
I admittedly have yet to try this out, but one of the things that makes Mozilla slow is the fact that it uses *all* of the Mozilla-developed technologies and they all get loaded into the application at start time. Until it is actually tested, I say give them the benefit of the doubt... perhaps they aren't using all of the Mozilla tecnologies and/or perhaps they have widened up some of the bottlenecks.
How long will it take developers to realize that
Wrong. It can only be considered a standard, in my opinion, if there were more than one program that could read or write DOC files reliably. Oh yes, Microsoft would love to make the DOC format a real standard, if they could only think of how to do so without actually telling anyone how it works.
The only real standard is 7-bit ASCII without newlines or carriage returns.
There is also the question, a *major* one in my mind, of why a Linux based company builds their website targeting IE and Netscape base browsers.
A) More than likely, they did what most every other company does when they need a decent web presence: they contract their web development out. I'd bet the farm that most web delopment companies out there do most or all of their work in a Microsoft environment targeted towards Microsoft platforms. No, I don't agree with it but that's the way it is and it won't change if or until Mozilla gets more market share.
B) Their site worked just fine for me in Linux + Mozilla.
Score: -1, Wrong
Worked for me in Mozilla 1.0RC1. Maybe you should try upgrading your browser.
They aren't necessarily trying to come up with a completely new general purpose desktop system
Uh, I believe the CEO of the company actually said that's exactly what they were trying to do. He went out of his way to mention, however, that they are not claiming to have invented the interface paradigm that Homebase uses. The CEO said that's just the way he saw home technology moving and wanted to take advantage of it early.
I personally would not think any Mozilla-developed technology would be suitable for embedded applications where factors like speed, simplicity, and size rule the roost.
Can someone post a list of these 19 lawmakers and their states so that we can give them our "opinions" on this matter?
I would do it myself but I'm just about to go somewhere. If there's no replies, I'll post it myself. Watch this space.
I just went to the VideoLAN page (this is the first I've heard of it) and noticed this in the ChangeLog:
"This release fixes a bug preventing to read DVDs when the disc's region didn't match the drive's."
Now, I happen to know of one media cartel^H^H^H^H^H^H association that would insist that that was a feature, not a bug.
To clarify the parent post for those who can't read between the lines:
1. Content of ratings and comments become the sole property of CNET.
2. But if you post a comment, you are solely responsible for the content, not CNET.
Now those are two ridiculous and contrary statements. My interpretation of ownership and/or copyright law (whichever apply here if now both) was that if you were the sole owner of a piece of intellectual property it was also explicity implied that you were the one responsible for it as well.
I wonder if there's a good way to challenge that. Maybe sue CNET for slander/libel/IP copyright infringement, etc AFTER you've had a friend (with stealthy anon skillz) post an objectionable comment on their comment boards?
Or maybe post a comment or 500 to the effect of "The poster of this comment does not agree to the CNET comment posting disclaimer and as such, CNET holds only 50% ownership of this comment and CNET is the party solely responsible for its content."
Trading != piracy.
At least, not my opinion. I define piracy as the copying of a copyrighted work for monetary profit. Since trading does not fit this description, I think the law should make some sort of distinction between the two terms.
That's not an altogether bad idea, but I think the kernel patches provide for most people's needs in this area.
I myself just keep one recent "pure" linus tarball and whatever patches I might want to apply. A few months ago, I was testing out various versions of the 2.4 series and ended up downloading every kernel with a patchlevel divisible by 5. I then proceeded to download whichever version patches I needed to get the kernel version that I was looking for. Saved myself a ton of time doing this.
I think it would be great if support for architectures other than x86 were provided as patches instead of the main tree, but I suspect doing this would be a huge pain initially (going through dozens of megs of code to figure out what's x86 and what's not) and only add additional overhead to development of the kernel.
The KISS principle applies pretty strongly to OS kernel development and even stronger to the largest OS kernel in existance. (Yes, that'd be Linux for the humour-impared)