In a word: accessibility. Blind readers can't see graphic-based captchas and screen readers won't read them. Audio-based captchas have been used, but they can be difficult for some people with disabilities as well, are often difficult even for abled people and may be easier to process by bots in many cases.
As scary as a 'Microsoft Linux' sounds, there'd actually be some significant advantages to Microsoft apps being able to run on Linux (as pointed out to me by another/. reader yesterday).
There is absolutely no reason why Microsoft can't write code that runs on Linux and still have it be proprietary.
Absolutely no reason at all.
The kernel is GPL, yes, but Linus' license modification clearly states that closed source code can run on the Linux kernel and shall not be considered a 'derivative work'.
Tons of proprietary code runs on Linux with absolutely no GPL issues: Oracle, Veritas Netbackup, WordPerfect, StarOffice (pieces are proprietary), etc.
As for toolkits, GTK+ is LGPL. Meaning Microsoft could target closed source GUI applications for GTK+ with no issues. QT is GPL unless you make arrangement$$$ with TrollTech.
As for desktops, some parts of GNOME are GPL, others are LGPL. Gotta be careful there, but if you just link against GTK+ and not GNOME libraries, Microsoft should be okay.
Publish every Idea you get on the internet. if everyone did that. the foundation for Idea patents would erode even further.
For someone who professes to study patents and IP, it doesn't seem like you know very much about patent law.
A published idea != prior art. For there to be prior art, the idea actually has to be implemented. If I say, "I've got this idea for a device that would transport material through space/time. It would work like this... yada yada," that's not necessarily prior art. Now if I actually built such a device, and showed others skilled in the field how to build the device, whether via the Internet or through some other medium, then yes, I've got prior art. But the definition of 'prior art' is that it's an idea that was already implemented by someone else, whether patented or not.
My polling place is at a very nice country club. I've never had to wait in a line of any sort, and we don't use those Diebold touchscreen voting contraptions. We fill in little ovals. It's been that way since I moved here 4 years ago.
Well, I live in a place that's fairly affluent, or at least becoming fairly affluent -- we have a Panera Bread, an Applebees, etc, though a few years ago it was farm country - - but our polling place, like all in my home state of Michigan, is in a local public school building.
We also fill in the ovals. But I've heard that there have been problems with those. In Detroit polling place they use the same ballots and there were news stories in 2004 of some of those machines freezing up and the voters were having to hand the ballots to elections officials to be inserted into the machines later. Didn't sound so good at all.
Yes. See the next (anonymous) post below yours. Whoever it is is right: it's not whether or not you have a case, it's whether or not you can use the case to extort money out of your victims, which is exactly what NTP has done.
Yeah...and now there's an unfortunate precedent in NTPs favour showing they can be successful at it.
Actually not. While they did settle with Blackberry for a healthy sum, shortly after the settlement agreement, all 7 of NTP's patents were found to be invalid by the USPTO.
your idea of rock solid and their idea is little different. they have probably one of the most bug-free pieces of software in existence. it's tailored to do what it needs to do, nothing more, nothing less and it does it perfectly.
Actually, that's not entirely true. The space shuttle's main computer is called the GPC -- General Purpose Computer. Among other things it controls avionics and a whole bunch of ther systems -- it's not really a dedicated-purpose computer as one might think.
How can exercise of First Amendment rights (in the form of amateur journalism) be equated with amateur police
The analogy actually isn't too far off the mark. One of the points of having a free press is to 'police' the government -- making sure that people know about the goings on in government. Without the press, we wouldn't have known about things about Mark Foley hitting on his male interns via IM and we wouldn't know about the scandals involving many others in power, such as Tom Delay.
Knowledge of these scandals has direct impacts on elections -- our process for punishing those who abuse the power that we entrust to them and rewarding those who use that trust to do good things for our country, our citizenry and the world.
No. We're no safer, and probably we are less safe from terrorists than we were before the existence of DHS and TSA. In the meantime, if you read the linked articles you'll find that not only are we less safe from terrorists, at the same time, we're less safe from our own government.
And that is what Ben Franklin (or possibly Richard Jackson) meant when he said that "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety ".
He says he didn't even read the terms of the deal - "depends on precise terms of the agreement that Moglen hasn't seen" -... he has no idea what he is talking about. Patent protection != Royalty.
No, but patent protection may put you in a position where you can't distribute under the GPL, even if there's no money involved.
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
Read the above very carefully. What is says is that if you sign an agreement that puts any restrictions on your distribution or on subsequent redistribution of a program licensed under the GPL, then you cannot distribute the program at all (because you can't place additional restrictions on redistribution or derived works of GPLed code).
As for your suggestion of charging $5 for the restroom -- pay toilets went out with 80s. Laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act and sometimes even local ordinances often prevent a public venue like an airport from charging to use the restroom.
There's no easy solution to the problem. Some airports charge (sometimes exorbitant) rates for parking. Some airports get a cut of all the restaurant and gift shop revenues. Maybe there's some revenue to be had in these areas. Thing is that our local airport, DTW, is owned and operated by Wayne County and is therefore supported -- in part-- by property and other taxes.
I'm not sure what Microsoft had to do with bad data entry.
Well, really bad data entry validation. Which would be the fault of the author of the database front-end. Whether that was Microsoft or a U.S. Navy software development team is unknown based on that article.
Very good. But not quite. From the article you quoted:
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. [...] With the information thus far available the issue of authorship of the statement is not yet definitely resolved, but the evidence indicates it was very likely Franklin, who in the Poor Richard's Almanack of 1738 is known to have written a similar proverb: "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."
So what I wrote is very probably a misquote, but the spirit of the statement very likely originated with Franklin.
Meanwhile, we're talking about using binary codecs, which MPlayer does without Wine's interference.
1. MPlayer makes use of Windows codecs through the use of Winelib. 2. If you read TFA, you'd know that some of the malware came in the codec, while others came in the installer (i.e., a secondary program installed at the same time as the codec) 3. Yes, the codec does have a way of knowing it's running under Linux if the writer of the codec designed it. 4. Grabbing on to/dev/tty* is of limited use in a system that's running X or if all logins are via sshd.
Slashdot Mirror
Nautilus/libnautilus for one. libgnomeprint for another. libgnome-menus, libgnome-pilot.
libgnome2 itself is LGPL, though.
Anyone who misses the fact that this one is a trap deserves what they get.
In a word: accessibility. Blind readers can't see graphic-based captchas and screen readers won't read them. Audio-based captchas have been used, but they can be difficult for some people with disabilities as well, are often difficult even for abled people and may be easier to process by bots in many cases.
There is absolutely no reason why Microsoft can't write code that runs on Linux and still have it be proprietary.
Absolutely no reason at all.
The kernel is GPL, yes, but Linus' license modification clearly states that closed source code can run on the Linux kernel and shall not be considered a 'derivative work'.
Tons of proprietary code runs on Linux with absolutely no GPL issues: Oracle, Veritas Netbackup, WordPerfect, StarOffice (pieces are proprietary), etc.
As for toolkits, GTK+ is LGPL. Meaning Microsoft could target closed source GUI applications for GTK+ with no issues. QT is GPL unless you make arrangement$$$ with TrollTech.
As for desktops, some parts of GNOME are GPL, others are LGPL. Gotta be careful there, but if you just link against GTK+ and not GNOME libraries, Microsoft should be okay.
For someone who professes to study patents and IP, it doesn't seem like you know very much about patent law.
A published idea != prior art. For there to be prior art, the idea actually has to be implemented. If I say, "I've got this idea for a device that would transport material through space/time. It would work like this
Well, I live in a place that's fairly affluent, or at least becoming fairly affluent -- we have a Panera Bread, an Applebees, etc, though a few years ago it was farm country - - but our polling place, like all in my home state of Michigan, is in a local public school building.
We also fill in the ovals. But I've heard that there have been problems with those. In Detroit polling place they use the same ballots and there were news stories in 2004 of some of those machines freezing up and the voters were having to hand the ballots to elections officials to be inserted into the machines later. Didn't sound so good at all.
Yes. See the next (anonymous) post below yours. Whoever it is is right: it's not whether or not you have a case, it's whether or not you can use the case to extort money out of your victims, which is exactly what NTP has done.
Actually not. While they did settle with Blackberry for a healthy sum, shortly after the settlement agreement, all 7 of NTP's patents were found to be invalid by the USPTO.
You got it! They looked at their competitors in the lawsuit-as-business-model industry, saw how well they were doing in their lawsuit with a truly deep-pockets company and opted for a much smaller target.
Microsoft may not have quite the nazgul that IBM has, but they definitely have the pockets and know where to find them.
Actually, that's not entirely true. The space shuttle's main computer is called the GPC -- General Purpose Computer. Among other things it controls avionics and a whole bunch of ther systems -- it's not really a dedicated-purpose computer as one might think.
Oh, shit! You mean we're not supposed to be following intergalactic star dates?? No wonder those programs I wrote have so many date bugs...
The analogy actually isn't too far off the mark. One of the points of having a free press is to 'police' the government -- making sure that people know about the goings on in government. Without the press, we wouldn't have known about things about Mark Foley hitting on his male interns via IM and we wouldn't know about the scandals involving many others in power, such as Tom Delay.
Knowledge of these scandals has direct impacts on elections -- our process for punishing those who abuse the power that we entrust to them and rewarding those who use that trust to do good things for our country, our citizenry and the world.
Really? Do you really think we are safer from terrorists?
No. We're no safer, and probably we are less safe from terrorists than we were before the existence of DHS and TSA. In the meantime, if you read the linked articles you'll find that not only are we less safe from terrorists, at the same time, we're less safe from our own government.
And that is what Ben Franklin (or possibly Richard Jackson) meant when he said that "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety ".
No, but patent protection may put you in a position where you can't distribute under the GPL, even if there's no money involved.
Read the above very carefully. What is says is that if you sign an agreement that puts any restrictions on your distribution or on subsequent redistribution of a program licensed under the GPL, then you cannot distribute the program at all (because you can't place additional restrictions on redistribution or derived works of GPLed code).
Maybe you could ask Steve Jobs. I think he might know.
- Duke Nukem Forever was released today.
- Hell froze over.
- SCO v. IBM trial over.
- Apple uses Intel Processors.
oh wait, that last one is true...Spyware, DRM, an OS that requires 1GB of RAM and high-end accelerated 3D graphics, DRM, Trusted Computing, DRM, and plenty of 0-day exploits.
So, in summary, I'd say mostly DRM.
Maybe not. But airlines probably won't keep offering free wireless forever, either.
As for your suggestion of charging $5 for the restroom -- pay toilets went out with 80s. Laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act and sometimes even local ordinances often prevent a public venue like an airport from charging to use the restroom.
There's no easy solution to the problem. Some airports charge (sometimes exorbitant) rates for parking. Some airports get a cut of all the restaurant and gift shop revenues. Maybe there's some revenue to be had in these areas. Thing is that our local airport, DTW, is owned and operated by Wayne County and is therefore supported -- in part-- by property and other taxes.
Well, really bad data entry validation. Which would be the fault of the author of the database front-end. Whether that was Microsoft or a U.S. Navy software development team is unknown based on that article.
So what I wrote is very probably a misquote, but the spirit of the statement very likely originated with Franklin.
...and the US is near the bottom?
Hello, America! Talk about Britain sleep walking into a surveillance society, the U.S. seems to have already done it.
Time to get on the ball now that the elections are up. Vote out the incuments!
"They that would trade essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither." -- Benjamin Franklin
You missed a word in that sentence. s/geeks/geeks on Slashdot/
1. MPlayer makes use of Windows codecs through the use of Winelib.
2. If you read TFA, you'd know that some of the malware came in the codec, while others came in the installer (i.e., a secondary program installed at the same time as the codec)
3. Yes, the codec does have a way of knowing it's running under Linux if the writer of the codec designed it.
4. Grabbing on to