Copyrights are one thing, but the words "patent pending" are a totally different world. Depending on which parts of this system they're shooting for patents on, the idea of reverse engineering could be totally moot.
If the mechanism for storing the infomation on disk is patented, reversing the data on the disk could or could not be against patent. There won't be any DMCA violation, but they could sue you for licensing at any price they felt agreeable.
The problem with current patents is this: A patent, if not reverse engineered properly, can end up being reengineered too closely to the original patent. And these days, the application process for patents has fallen into disrepair so far that patents can be quite vague intentionally, which makes things even worse for a reverser.
Be careful, and good luck. Best case, you're dealing with something that the company doesn't really even care about. Worst case, they've patented a specific PLC that encodes the data some special way and then bursts it to the disk. Hopefully, it's best case, but we wary of the worst.
Yes, I live in Aurora, and spend approximately two weeks during the year at a family cabin in Strawberry Park just north of Steamboat Springs hunting. I remember times when Steamboat was exactly as small as you refer to, but it's spread out into the valley quite a bit now. Some close friends sold about 10 acres there a few years back, it went for almost 3 mil. I turned green when I heard that.
""what!?!? you don't want to learn this new stuff? I'm sure the next guy to apply for a job will have no problems with this""
I don't know where you come from, but we tend to respect our employees and their associated talents. (Like spelling and punctuation, for example. You just sound like some idiot spouting off inane nonsense. Seriously, have some freakin' self respect and start acting like something other than a pimply faced, sittn' in the dark moron who does nothing but stare at porno in his operation center all day.) You're the exact kind of eastern shore asshole that no on west of the Mississippi would work for. What you're basically saying is that if the CEO of a company you worked for came in and said, "We're changing the company direction, everyone who's not on the board is going to flip hamburgers to compete with McDonald's." You'd either flip hamburgers like the rest of you east coast white sheep, or be the black sheep and leave.
"I've successfully migrated people from Windows to Mac, Mac to Windows, Mac to BSD, Windows to IRIX, et al."
Wah. Wah. We all have our conversion war stories, spare me your boring diatribe of your sister's uncle's father's best friend's . . . Need I go on?
"Give them cheat sheets for what they need to do and you'll never get a call unless something BAAAAAD happens."
Ok, I've just gotta call bullshit on this one. I personally have customers that call because there's a little red light (I.E. the message waiting light, hint, hint.) flashing on their phone. After explaining this to them, and referring them to their manufacturer printed User's Manual, and/or their "cheat sheet" I get a call two weeks later from the SAME person, about the SAME damned light. Like our money minting ReMax customer. She practically prints her own cash because she does so much business, and sells lots of expensive mountain property (The recent 7 million dollar home in Aspen was one of her sales.) But, even after 6 months of using her new PBX, she still can't grasp the concept of a message waiting indicator on a damn phone.
Why don't you go fix your broken website, and let the rest of us have an intelligent debate here?
"There may be 10,000 people living in the Steamboat Springs area (give or take a few thousand), but they certainly aren't all working for the local government!"
There are over 6 million people in Colorado, about 35,000 of those live in Steamboat Springs. There are around 700 people working for the local government. Even if the move to a Linux Desktop for a computerized timeclock were implemented, you still have to take time out of YOUR day to train all of them, that's a lot of time.
"If my little sister can handle e17, I think professionals working for the government should be expected to..."
Just because your little sister is your Linux brainchild, doesn't mean that ANYONE should be forced to use something they're not comfortable with.
"(not that any of the nature-lovers in Colorado care about fiscal responsibility)"
1. Try managing a multi-billion dollar budget, and then say that. 2. You obviously live somewhere like New York, where grass doesn't even grow in the cracks of the concrete because there's so much oil in the dirt, don't you? 3. Don't ever bring your beloved flea infested, plastic plant into my state, I'll beat the ever lovin' shit out of it with one of our bonafied "Boulder Hippies."
Steamboat is a resort town. It's rather large, and the majority of the people that come to Colorado go there to Ski. Not to mentions the Hot Springs, and the freakin' year round buttholes that cruise through my fair mountain roads at 90+ to get there!
Just because you two can sit in some air conditioned room and have as many systems as you like, doesn't mean that we all have that luxury...
I own an IT Consulting business, and manufacture IP PBX systems on the side, and I'd like to explain something to you.
1. Try selling a Linux based server to someone. Peole are creatures of habit, they don't like (and in some cases hate) change. Even if Linux "looks like" Windows, they'll know. I've got a customer now that I finally (after a year and a half) coaxed into purchasing their first Linux system. I get calls all the time because their IT guy is a Windows Mook, and wants to know what to do with this, or what to do with that, or what can this little program do? It's a headache. The minute the software he's looking for comes out on Windows, I'm switching his 20 questions a$$ back!
2. I have 3 crusty old telecomm techs that couldn't find their butts with two hands, a flashlight and a 1:1 scale map. They have Windows PCs at home. Now lets ponder a couple things here, I run my boxen straight CLI, no X, and a simple Webmin interface. How much fun do you think it is for me to walk them through anything to do with the CLI? Which has to be done semi-often since we have a lot of customers. I've been lucky enough to grow up with the availability of Linux most of my adult life, I understand Linux, and before that, I still preferred to have some sort of a semblant CLI. The two other owners? Never in their lives had they even seen a command prompt before meeting me. It's taken me 6 years to break them of old "Windows" habits.
3. Linux cannot handle "anything you can throw at it." I happen to have purchased a laptop for working on routers, switching equipment, packeteers and so on for one of our international clients, and guess what, I tried Linux on it. It lasted 2 minutes until I grabbed for my XP Pro CD. The wireless card was totally useless to me in Linux. Why, you ask? Because the only support for it was an NDISWrapper. I can't use that. Our international client requires me to use Netstumbler (or equivalent) software to trace wireless networks at the nice hotels you visit. The problem here is that there is no Linux wireless sniffing software available to me that works with an NDISWrapper driven card. Why again, you ask? Because the NDISWrapper drivers don't support any of the low level commands that are needed by wireless sniffing tools.
4. I own 6 Linux boxen, 2 Sparcs(Yes, yes, of course I'm not count the Solaris as Linux), an Alpha, and a Lucent Springtide IP 7000 at home. I also have an OSX G5, and two Windows PC machines (The aformentioned laptop is one) for good reason. Linux simply won't run the applicaitons that I need in order for my business to function, and there is no ADEQUATE Linux equivalent (Yet.) But I remain hopeful that some day, yes, I will be able to do away entirely with Windows.
All in all, you jokers are simply acting like irrational two year olds. Some people simply don't want to use something other than Windows. It's what they know. Hell, it's what they LIKE. And a systems administrator has to take that into account. It's not that Linux can simply LOOK and ACT similar to Windows that is the decision maker for this guy. He's got to make sure it acts EXACTLY like Windows, or he takes the heat. I count my lucky stars every time one of our customers with a Linux box calls and doesn't tell me that it's crapped itself. I thank my lucky stars that we have a sub 20 minute recovery plan for any Linux system we sell. Because without it, I'd go Quake III some days...
I don't think that there's any issue with someone who likes the idea of commercially produced software being built for an open source operating system.
So this makes someone more interested in converting his pee-cee to Linux, you don't have to support him. If he can't figure it out, he's already paid his big bucks to them anyways...
I agree with you that Linux has had a hard struggle, hell I've been using it since around '94 and it's come a long way. Just because people charge money for software that runs on it, doesn't mean that we're going to just drop our current projects of the same scope.
I have no intention of using NeroLinux simply because I'm already set in my way with XCDRoast/cdrecord. It's simple, it does everything I need, and it hasn't toasted on disc yet.
As for whether I like your opinion or not, well, that really is moot, as I simply disagree with it... Personally, I think you're quite zealous, and could use a little alcohol treatment (in moderation) to keep your moods a bit more leve, instead of going off the deep end about something so ridiculous.
Several U.S. Companies now provide solar shingles, in fact, my company has two vendors that carry them, they're just not quite popular yet because they're still a tad pricey.
I think the thing that we have to remember here is that; first, Microsoft continually does things to shoot themselves in the foot. From what the license agreement says, this license is only to cover people who use or communicate with Microsoft products... Secondly, my opinion of this whole situation is that the UNIX community should respond with, "Fine, you don't want to play with us, we don't want to play with you." This could really hurt M$'s position...
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Copyrights are one thing, but the words "patent pending" are a totally different world. Depending on which parts of this system they're shooting for patents on, the idea of reverse engineering could be totally moot.
If the mechanism for storing the infomation on disk is patented, reversing the data on the disk could or could not be against patent. There won't be any DMCA violation, but they could sue you for licensing at any price they felt agreeable.
The problem with current patents is this: A patent, if not reverse engineered properly, can end up being reengineered too closely to the original patent. And these days, the application process for patents has fallen into disrepair so far that patents can be quite vague intentionally, which makes things even worse for a reverser.
Be careful, and good luck. Best case, you're dealing with something that the company doesn't really even care about. Worst case, they've patented a specific PLC that encodes the data some special way and then bursts it to the disk. Hopefully, it's best case, but we wary of the worst.
Yes, I live in Aurora, and spend approximately two weeks during the year at a family cabin in Strawberry Park just north of Steamboat Springs hunting. I remember times when Steamboat was exactly as small as you refer to, but it's spread out into the valley quite a bit now. Some close friends sold about 10 acres there a few years back, it went for almost 3 mil. I turned green when I heard that.
""what!?!? you don't want to learn this new stuff? I'm sure the next guy to apply for a job will have no problems with this""
I don't know where you come from, but we tend to respect our employees and their associated talents. (Like spelling and punctuation, for example. You just sound like some idiot spouting off inane nonsense. Seriously, have some freakin' self respect and start acting like something other than a pimply faced, sittn' in the dark moron who does nothing but stare at porno in his operation center all day.) You're the exact kind of eastern shore asshole that no on west of the Mississippi would work for. What you're basically saying is that if the CEO of a company you worked for came in and said, "We're changing the company direction, everyone who's not on the board is going to flip hamburgers to compete with McDonald's." You'd either flip hamburgers like the rest of you east coast white sheep, or be the black sheep and leave.
"I've successfully migrated people from Windows to Mac, Mac to Windows, Mac to BSD, Windows to IRIX, et al."
Wah. Wah. We all have our conversion war stories, spare me your boring diatribe of your sister's uncle's father's best friend's . . . Need I go on?
"Give them cheat sheets for what they need to do and you'll never get a call unless something BAAAAAD happens."
Ok, I've just gotta call bullshit on this one. I personally have customers that call because there's a little red light (I.E. the message waiting light, hint, hint.) flashing on their phone. After explaining this to them, and referring them to their manufacturer printed User's Manual, and/or their "cheat sheet" I get a call two weeks later from the SAME person, about the SAME damned light. Like our money minting ReMax customer. She practically prints her own cash because she does so much business, and sells lots of expensive mountain property (The recent 7 million dollar home in Aspen was one of her sales.) But, even after 6 months of using her new PBX, she still can't grasp the concept of a message waiting indicator on a damn phone.
Why don't you go fix your broken website, and let the rest of us have an intelligent debate here?
Here! Here! I'll drink to that!
"There may be 10,000 people living in the Steamboat Springs area (give or take a few thousand), but they certainly aren't all working for the local government!"
There are over 6 million people in Colorado, about 35,000 of those live in Steamboat Springs. There are around 700 people working for the local government. Even if the move to a Linux Desktop for a computerized timeclock were implemented, you still have to take time out of YOUR day to train all of them, that's a lot of time.
"If my little sister can handle e17, I think professionals working for the government should be expected to..."
Just because your little sister is your Linux brainchild, doesn't mean that ANYONE should be forced to use something they're not comfortable with.
"(not that any of the nature-lovers in Colorado care about fiscal responsibility)"
1. Try managing a multi-billion dollar budget, and then say that. 2. You obviously live somewhere like New York, where grass doesn't even grow in the cracks of the concrete because there's so much oil in the dirt, don't you? 3. Don't ever bring your beloved flea infested, plastic plant into my state, I'll beat the ever lovin' shit out of it with one of our bonafied "Boulder Hippies."
"As long as they let a consultant keep them informed about enhancements and changes in the OSS landscape..."
Or at least an internal person who can do the same...
6 of one, half dozen of the other, I guess...
Steamboat is a resort town. It's rather large, and the majority of the people that come to Colorado go there to Ski. Not to mentions the Hot Springs, and the freakin' year round buttholes that cruise through my fair mountain roads at 90+ to get there!
Look, dopes.
Just because you two can sit in some air conditioned room and have as many systems as you like, doesn't mean that we all have that luxury...
I own an IT Consulting business, and manufacture IP PBX systems on the side, and I'd like to explain something to you.
All in all, you jokers are simply acting like irrational two year olds. Some people simply don't want to use something other than Windows. It's what they know. Hell, it's what they LIKE. And a systems administrator has to take that into account. It's not that Linux can simply LOOK and ACT similar to Windows that is the decision maker for this guy. He's got to make sure it acts EXACTLY like Windows, or he takes the heat. I count my lucky stars every time one of our customers with a Linux box calls and doesn't tell me that it's crapped itself. I thank my lucky stars that we have a sub 20 minute recovery plan for any Linux system we sell. Because without it, I'd go Quake III some days...
Yeah, too many people are still addicted to Rox-i-o.
...Or at least the sense of trying something new that could possibly give them a better [computer] working environment...
But that's really the same diff, ain't it? :-P
Wow man! Slow ya roll...
I don't think that there's any issue with someone who likes the idea of commercially produced software being built for an open source operating system.
So this makes someone more interested in converting his pee-cee to Linux, you don't have to support him. If he can't figure it out, he's already paid his big bucks to them anyways...
I agree with you that Linux has had a hard struggle, hell I've been using it since around '94 and it's come a long way. Just because people charge money for software that runs on it, doesn't mean that we're going to just drop our current projects of the same scope.
I have no intention of using NeroLinux simply because I'm already set in my way with XCDRoast/cdrecord. It's simple, it does everything I need, and it hasn't toasted on disc yet.
As for whether I like your opinion or not, well, that really is moot, as I simply disagree with it... Personally, I think you're quite zealous, and could use a little alcohol treatment (in moderation) to keep your moods a bit more leve, instead of going off the deep end about something so ridiculous.
It's more fun to tear your hair out trying to figure out what went wrong! :-P
Several U.S. Companies now provide solar shingles, in fact, my company has two vendors that carry them, they're just not quite popular yet because they're still a tad pricey.
I think the thing that we have to remember here is that; first, Microsoft continually does things to shoot themselves in the foot. From what the license agreement says, this license is only to cover people who use or communicate with Microsoft products... Secondly, my opinion of this whole situation is that the UNIX community should respond with, "Fine, you don't want to play with us, we don't want to play with you." This could really hurt M$'s position...