I think we need to focus on the word standard here. From my point of view there are two standards: - the stuff that w3c poors out: the formal standard - that what people actually use: the practical standard. Agreed so far.
Right now the practical standard is a mixture of HTML 3.0 and HTML 4.0 with lots of propietary extensions. Mozilla will be fully HTML 4.0 compliant, that's different from the current practical standard. First off, proprietary extensions are not in the practical standard. The practical standard currently is what can be reasonably expected to look good on Netscape 4.x, IE4 and IE5 (ambitious developers include Netscape 3.x, IE3 and Opera). Proprietary extensions don't fit that criteria, it's just HTML 3.0 with some of the new stuff from 4.0. Mozilla will be fully 4.0 compliant, which works just fine with HTML 3.0 and earlier sites.
So that means more work for web developers. How? If they've been developing their sites right, leaving them alone will work just fine with Mozilla. All that should happen is that Mozilla will get added to the list of browsers that define the defacto standard, and eventually Netscape 4.x and IE4 will join Nescape 3.x and IE3.
If it's backward compatible with some extensions, that means even less motivation to abandon them. Which extensions are you talking about here?
I think the HTML spec is fundamentally flawed and should be abandoned as soon as possible. For me that would be when I could use XML, XSL and stylesheets. Agreed, but "XSL and stylesheets" is redundant, unless you meant XSL and CSS. Gecko probably won't support XSL out of the box, since there are still wrinkles in the XSL specification. I'd expect XSL support to come soon though.
Then I could use XSL to provide backwards compatibility. XSL does nothing to provide backwards compatibility, unless you're talking about server side XSL (i.e. the server takes an XML document, an XSL style, and renders it into HTML, which it feeds to the browser client). This is very server and bandwidth intensive, I'd rather see good XSL support in all major browsers and the clients doing the processing.
Unfortunately MS is doing everything to let XML, XSL and stylesheets go the same way as HTML: they are providing propietary extensions. So again the practical standard will deviate from the formal standard. No, because using any MS-proprietary XSL tricks wouldn't work on any of the "standard" browsers other than IE5, so it won't be in the practical standard.
The only hope for preventing this is a quick (within months) acceptation of mozilla by a large share of the web community (I'm thinking 40% or more of the web users here). Just looking at the figures of usage of the latest generation of browsers will show you that that is not going to happen (sorry don't have those figures readily available so please post them if you have them). It's not the only hope, and yes 40% in the first few months isn't likely, but I suspect that Mozilla based browsers will spread faster than you think. I think people other than Netscape are planning to distribute based on M11 or later pre-release versions. The Gecko engine (which is the important part, standards-wize) will have a noticable percentage of the market before Communicator 5.0 is released.
I wonder if a program like this, combined with a phone like the Qualcomm pdQ Smartphone could make a fully portable secure wireless phone?
If the pdQ doesn't have the right hardware connections to do that, is there another phone out there that does (preferably one that can run Linux or an OS of similar power).
OK, I understand pretty much everything on the exam except that. How would an agent to make arbitrage transactions (a buy followed immediately by a sell, or a sell followed immediately by a buy, used to play with rounding errors in currency exchanges) do anything for any of these questions?
Is the professor using some definition of the term I'm not aware of (and apparently few outside the class are too)?
The few true hospitals I know of who have done the wireless tablet thing set up a base tranmitter network, similar in operation to a mini cellular network in operation. Should work pretty well.
1. Do you agree with the judge's findings of fact in the Microsoft case? 25.64% disagree
2. Does Microsoft, in your opinion, have illegal monopoly power in the software operating systems for personal computers? 28.78% disagree
3. What action should the judge take to punish Microsoft? 19.39% No Action
Interpretation: almost 1/3 of the people who still think Microsoft was legal and right in their actions want blood anyway. Probably more, since I'm sure there were people who agree with Judge Jackson that Microsoft has done wrong, but don't want to see action taken for other reasons.
If Andover.net didn't realize it would get involved in risks like this when it decided to fund/., they didn't do enough research.
Andover.net has always been a vocal supporter of freedom of the press. Personally, I think they're itching for the chance to get into just that sort of fight, especially since they know they will: A) Win; and B) Get all sorts of useful publicity from it
Cygnus makes: * The GNUPro development toolkit * ECOS, an embedded operating system (designed to work with GNUPro) * The Cygwin Posix-compatibilty environment for Windows * Other development tools (eg. Code Fusion, Source Navigator)
AFAIK, their real revenue stream is in consulting, particularly for embedded systems developers. Check out their website: http://www.cygnus.com.
Melissa made it so that we couldn't just tell our less tech-minded brethren/co-workers, "for the last time, you'll be ok if you just don't open any frickin' attachments from people you don't frickin' know!" This one means we can't even tell them "you'll be ok if you don't open any attechments."
What this worm does allow us to do is say, however, is "Outlook and Outlook Express are not allowed on supported systems due to excessive security problems, please use a mail reader that doesn't run untrusted code automatically, such as Netscape, Eudora, Pine, Elm, Mutt, etc.". It's not as if there aren't other, better options out there than Outlook, and such a virus is impossible on those systems AFAIK.
Microsoft should NOT be forced to reveal its source code.
Agreed, unless Microsoft is forced to put the source code into the Public Domain. Then any copyright questions become moot. I don't think it's likely tho.
That bit of damage has already been done. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure the Findings of Fact indicating that Microsoft is a monopoly that abuses their monopoy power is now a matter of public record that can be used in other relevant suits. I'm sure that Caldera will be incorporating it into evidence for their suit.
So let me get this straight. I'm supposed to gather evidence to support my suppositions, yet you are allowed to postulate as to what Judge Jackson is going to do?
No, you were postulating about what the appeals court would do, and I asked for some evidence for your postulations. I too was postulating, and in spite of your sarcastic tone, I will take your statements as a request for evidence on my part.
You seem to be questioning two points of mine: I expect the findings of fact will probably declare Microsoft to be a monopoly, and not suggest anything as to remidies, which is really two points: I expect the findings will declare monopoly, and I expect they won't suggest remedies at this point. The other point is A slap on the wrist would hasten the death of the proprietary software industry, because Microsoft would continue to kill it.
First, I expect the findings of fact to declare Microsoft a monopoly because that is far from controvertial. The rule of thumb is a company is a monopoly if it has more than a 70% market share, Microsoft has a 90% market share. The controversy is over whether or not Microsoft used its Monopoly powers illegally, and I did not speculate on what Jackson would find there.
I expect the findings of fact to suggest no remedies because there is no other reason for Judge Jackson to split the findings of fact from the Judgement. Microsoft asserted that they will appeal any negative judgement very early in the trial. The purpose of separating the judgement from the findings of fact is to shield the facts of the case (which are harder to appeal) from being dragged through the mud during the appeal of the judgement. Suggesting remedies during the findings of fact would defeat the purpose.
Lastly, as for Microsoft killing the proprietary software industry, here is some good material to support my opinion: Caldera v Microsoft Complaint Reiser v Microsoft on allegedly illegal product tying A Rutgers University analysis of Microsoft's use of predatory pricing to destroy competitors A Reuters Article describing Microsoft's pressure on Acer to not sell competitors applications
In all, Microsoft is clearly trying to encompass as much of the industry as they can get away with, and kill any competitors that stand in their way. If they're the only provider of proprietary software, it's no longer an industry, hence they would have killed the industry. Personally, I don't think it's a great loss, since Microsoft is a big fish, eating all the little fishes (other proprietary vendors), while the rest of us are learning to farm kelp (Free software).
Hmm...I guess since you're saying it, "evidence" isn't needed to prove your point? No, I was saying evidence was needed to prove your point. As you can see above, there's lots of evidence to support my point.
PS: I was completely baffled by your talk of movies and heads. What were you trying to say there?
Here's What the Judge Should Do... Nothing. No, he should release his findings of fact as promised, followed by his judgement a while later as promised. Luckily, he listens to his own guide rather than to you, so he is likely to do something rather than nothing.
That is, in his fact of finding, his conclusion should be that a breakup of Microsoft should not happen. First off, it is a "Finding of Fact", not a fact of finding (sword of slaying +2?). Secondly, his conclusion of a fact of finding should say nothing of the sort. Possible remidies should be given in the judgement, not in the finding of fact. The finding of fact is just that, a determination of which facts are "Truth" as far as determining the judgement is concerned. I expect the findings of fact will probably declare Microsoft to be a monopoly, and not suggest anything as to remidies. This way, there is no easy way to appeal the finding of fact. The judgement, to be given later, will certainly be appealed if it is anything more than a slap on the wrist for Microsoft.
The only thing I can see the judge doing, which would have any chance of passing appellate muster, is putting in a provision that would mandate some kind of oversight of Microsoft's business dealings for something like the next 5 years. Again, you have to wait for the judgement for that. What evidence do you have that such a remedy would pass appellate muster? What evidence do you have that more would not? The court of appeals that would hear any appeals in this case is very pro-corporate, but I certainly don't know enough about their legal opinions to make a guess here.
The computing landscape has changed significanty since this case was brought to trial. I don't think breaking up Microsoft would be good for the industry in general. The computing landscape always changes, such is life. Since the case was filed, Microsoft has picked up a few more percent desktop market share, so they're now more of a monopoly. Something substantial has to be done to Microsoft if the industry is to recover, whether a breakup or strict regulation is best I don't know.
A slap on the wrist would hasten the death of the proprietary software industry, because Microsoft would continue to kill it. This would be ugly but not a disaster since the Free Software community will get stronger no matter what happens to the guys with the plastic wrap.
Part of the reason that the landscape has changed is that MS's actions have been under the spotlight. Putting them under an extended spotlight might allow further change. Any changes due to the trial have been trivial. A few OEM's have bent their license agreements a little bit. Nothing major has changed to make legal action against Microsoft any less important. If anything, the tying of IE with Windows 98 makes the complaint more pressing.
Well, Creative's Linux development page references both kernel issues and Alsa issues, so I suspect they will directly support both. If they don't, the source will be GPL, so it's not a big deal.
Aureal, I don't know about. Currently they just refer Linux users to OpenSound.
The ABM treaty allows origionally 2 ABM Defense Zones each nation with 100 Interceptors [ABM Missiles] which was reduced to 100 Interceptors at 1 Defense Zone [At this point I belive USSR picked Moscow and the USA picked a missile range but not sure which one].
The sites weren't all that high security. Oooh, the "US Army Dental Care System" computer was compromized, while it is in the.mil hierarchy, I doubt that much effort went into securing it.
I'd say flipz is probably a very busy script kiddie. The cracked sites certainly don't show much imagination.
A discovery can reasobaly considered IP in some situations, and so can a description.
Yes, but there are three legal forms of IP: patents, trademarks and copyrights. You just can't say "it's valid IP, therefore they can patent it". Trademarks are just plain offtopic here, so I'll talk about the other two.
They could easily justify copyrighting their information packages (and probably are doing so). They charge for the information, and the copyright keeps the people they send it to from redistributing it legally, except for fair use.
They're talking about patenting it. Patenting genes has gone on for a while, particularly in agricultural circles. If you patent a gene, nobody can USE the gene without a license. You buy a bag of genetically altered seed, part of what you are paying for is the license to use the patent on those genes. Here, they are making two big jumps from "mainstream" genetic patents: * it's human genes now * it's naturally occuring genes now
People are hopefully going to be more outraged now that we are messing with human genes. On the other hand, it's the second part that makes it more legally outraged. You should never be able to patent a discovery. Patents are for inventions, for novel ways of applying things. I might as well patent the oak tree outside my window, there's a lot of information there, it must be IP.
There's numerous advantages you can tout with the Athlon: Speed (in MHz - up until today), Price, sheer Performance, but let's please hold off on scalability until AMD can point us to a supplier of 2-4 slot motherboards.
Well, considering the anti-competitive pressure Intel is putting on motherboard manufacturers to avoid distributing the single processor Slot A boards they've already designed and tested, I think AMD has an uphill battle to coax motherboard makers to design an SMP board.
If I recall, the chipset designer that is working on a two-way Athlon chipset was talking about first quater of 2000 for release.
It seems to me that, if Sun truly "gets it", all their stated goals could be handled by BSD-style (old or new) licensing and strict trademark enforcement. That would allow developers to do what they need to with the code, and allow Sun to squelch forking by preventing incompatible forks from using the trademarks. Any forks that don't use the trademarks won't be an "embrace and extinguish" attempt like Joy fears, just like changes to Mesa can't possibly hurt OpenGL.
We all know that Bill Joy is very familiar with BSD licensing issues. It's clear, at least to me, that his only real objection to Free/Open Source software can be better solved by Trademark Law instead of Copyright Law. Therefore, there must be an unstated objection. Personally, I suspect the unstated objection is that Sun management is fearful of the Free Software Movement and wants to get some of the publicity benefit of being "Open" and "Free" without actually helping the movement.
We need both the court ruling and the relaxation of regulations. The relaxation of regulations might very well not cover source code by the time it actually appears. On the flip side, the court ruling definately will not cover binaries, it would only open source code as speech.
As closed-minded as Cringley's article was on this issue, he did have one good point. By making the original article avalable to/. readers, Jane's was publishing the article. Of course he went on to make the incorrect conclusion that it required the full editorial treatment before/. publication.
The internet has encouraged a split in publishing (surely there before the internet, but not common). I'll call it "Raw Publishing" and "Editorial Publishing". Editorial publishing is when an article/story/book/whatever has been through all of its research, drafts, editors, etc. before being viewed by the reader. This is what most paper publications do, some online mags (eg. Salon) and what Cringely was saying Jane's should have done.
Then there's raw publishing. It's still publishing, since you are producing content for strangers to read, but both the publisher and the reader know full well it hasn't gone through all the mechanics of exhaustive fact checking and polishing that editorial publications do. They need some research and polish, to avoid looking like a moron, but not to the same degree as editorial publications.
This is what Jane's did here; it is what many online magazines do, such as/., The Register, and, to an increasing extent, http://www.zdnet.com do. All of us (including the Anonymous Cowards) are publishers now. Raw publishing has the advantage of speed over editorial publishing. Many raw publications (such as this one) offer more feedback as well.
People hold the editorial publications to a higher standard than raw ones, for obvious reasons. Jane's readers hold them to a particularly high standard. By publishing raw, and collecting feedback, Jane's was able to boost the quality of an article in its editorial publication in a very short amount of time. Other publications could learn a powerful lesson from this.
They make no conclusions, but offer opinions on both sides of the issue. A good article, except for one glaring error. Free Software does not equal public domain! They really need to put an accurate Free Software entry into their style guide.
OK, the first issue is knowledge. Most screenwriters today have at least used a computer, many of them use them regularly. Directors are likely to be less computer literate. Neither screenwriters nor directors are likely to be truly knowledgable about computers, they just have their focus in a different direction. The good ones will find a technical advisor that can help.
The second issue is screen presence. Any computer that is used for something real will have more information on the screen than is good for dramatic impact. The viewer needs to be able to quickly find and interpret the information displayed, and an 80x25 screen would just have too much text displayed too small for that (not to mention the 80x50 or 132x60 screens that some of us use). It always looks goofy when they make a computer display have huge characters in a proportionally spaced font, but that's something we're always going to have to live with.
The third issue is time. The director needs to have some things quick, so they don't get in the way, and some things slowly, to build suspense. This may contradict how long things really should take. For example, in the X-Files, they often will bring a photo to the FBI Imaging Lab; the viewer doesn't want to spend 45 minutes watching the technician line up the right region of the image and trying a few hundred filters on it to extract a good image; they bring in the photo, give the guy a few directions on where to look, and bingo, a clear zoom of a poorly developed area of the photo. On the other hand, in Wargames, when Joshua was trying to crack the code to launch the missles, it took a long time as it solved the problem digit by digit; nevermind that any code that you can solve that way is inherently weak; the ticking down of the digits were used to build the suspense, the climax of the movie just wouldn't have worked if Joshua used standard cryptographic procedures on a strong code.
The fourth is capability. Look at Max Headroom; they managed to encode an entire human personality, including emotions, into a (presumably digital) computer. If they have that level of computing power, they surely would be able to do other magnificent things with computers, but they generally can't.
Basically, computer use in movies has been (IMHO) steadily improving, but they will never be perfect. Most movies, even by the most knowlegable moviemakers, will run into a point where they have to decide between art and reality. I don't think I need to tell you that art generally wins, and for a very good reason, it's just more entertaining that way.
Slashdot Mirror
jiles wrote:
I think we need to focus on the word standard here. From my point of view there are two standards:
- the stuff that w3c poors out: the formal standard
- that what people actually use: the practical standard.
Agreed so far.
Right now the practical standard is a mixture of HTML 3.0 and HTML 4.0 with lots of propietary extensions. Mozilla will be fully HTML 4.0 compliant, that's different from the current practical standard.
First off, proprietary extensions are not in the practical standard. The practical standard currently is what can be reasonably expected to look good on Netscape 4.x, IE4 and IE5 (ambitious developers include Netscape 3.x, IE3 and Opera). Proprietary extensions don't fit that criteria, it's just HTML 3.0 with some of the new stuff from 4.0. Mozilla will be fully 4.0 compliant, which works just fine with HTML 3.0 and earlier sites.
So that means more work for web developers.
How? If they've been developing their sites right, leaving them alone will work just fine with Mozilla. All that should happen is that Mozilla will get added to the list of browsers that define the defacto standard, and eventually Netscape 4.x and IE4 will join Nescape 3.x and IE3.
If it's backward compatible with some extensions, that means even less motivation to abandon them.
Which extensions are you talking about here?
I think the HTML spec is fundamentally flawed and should be abandoned as soon as possible. For me that would be when I could use XML, XSL and stylesheets.
Agreed, but "XSL and stylesheets" is redundant, unless you meant XSL and CSS. Gecko probably won't support XSL out of the box, since there are still wrinkles in the XSL specification. I'd expect XSL support to come soon though.
Then I could use XSL to provide backwards compatibility.
XSL does nothing to provide backwards compatibility, unless you're talking about server side XSL (i.e. the server takes an XML document, an XSL style, and renders it into HTML, which it feeds to the browser client). This is very server and bandwidth intensive, I'd rather see good XSL support in all major browsers and the clients doing the processing.
Unfortunately MS is doing everything to let XML, XSL and stylesheets go the same way as HTML: they are providing propietary extensions. So again the practical standard will deviate from the formal standard.
No, because using any MS-proprietary XSL tricks wouldn't work on any of the "standard" browsers other than IE5, so it won't be in the practical standard.
The only hope for preventing this is a quick (within months) acceptation of mozilla by a large share of the web community (I'm thinking 40% or more of the web users here). Just looking at the figures of usage of the latest generation of browsers will show you that that is not going to happen (sorry don't have those figures readily available so please post them if you have them).
It's not the only hope, and yes 40% in the first few months isn't likely, but I suspect that Mozilla based browsers will spread faster than you think. I think people other than Netscape are planning to distribute based on M11 or later pre-release versions. The Gecko engine (which is the important part, standards-wize) will have a noticable percentage of the market before Communicator 5.0 is released.
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I wonder if a program like this, combined with a phone like the Qualcomm pdQ Smartphone could make a fully portable secure wireless phone?
If the pdQ doesn't have the right hardware connections to do that, is there another phone out there that does (preferably one that can run Linux or an OS of similar power).
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OK, I understand pretty much everything on the exam except that. How would an agent to make arbitrage transactions (a buy followed immediately by a sell, or a sell followed immediately by a buy, used to play with rounding errors in currency exchanges) do anything for any of these questions?
Is the professor using some definition of the term I'm not aware of (and apparently few outside the class are too)?
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Yes, but he was an examiner for the Swiss PTO, not the USPTO. The Swiss PTO would never let patents like these through.
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The few true hospitals I know of who have done the wireless tablet thing set up a base tranmitter network, similar in operation to a mini cellular network in operation. Should work pretty well.
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Some cute stuff in the CNN poll too:
1. Do you agree with the judge's findings of fact in the Microsoft case? 25.64% disagree
2. Does Microsoft, in your opinion, have illegal monopoly power in the software operating systems for personal computers? 28.78% disagree
3. What action should the judge take to punish Microsoft? 19.39% No Action
Interpretation: almost 1/3 of the people who still think Microsoft was legal and right in their actions want blood anyway. Probably more, since I'm sure there were people who agree with Judge Jackson that Microsoft has done wrong, but don't want to see action taken for other reasons.
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If Andover.net didn't realize it would get involved in risks like this when it decided to fund /., they didn't do enough research.
Andover.net has always been a vocal supporter of freedom of the press. Personally, I think they're itching for the chance to get into just that sort of fight, especially since they know they will:
A) Win; and
B) Get all sorts of useful publicity from it
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They are very strong supporters of many Free Software development projects, most notably gcc, GNOME and Docbook.
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Cygnus makes:
* The GNUPro development toolkit
* ECOS, an embedded operating system (designed to work with GNUPro)
* The Cygwin Posix-compatibilty environment for Windows
* Other development tools (eg. Code Fusion, Source Navigator)
AFAIK, their real revenue stream is in consulting, particularly for embedded systems developers. Check out their website: http://www.cygnus.com.
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ToLu the Happy Furby wrote:
Melissa made it so that we couldn't just tell our less tech-minded brethren/co-workers, "for the last time, you'll be ok if you just don't open any frickin' attachments from people you don't frickin' know!" This one means we can't even tell them "you'll be ok if you don't open any attechments."
What this worm does allow us to do is say, however, is "Outlook and Outlook Express are not allowed on supported systems due to excessive security problems, please use a mail reader that doesn't run untrusted code automatically, such as Netscape, Eudora, Pine, Elm, Mutt, etc.". It's not as if there aren't other, better options out there than Outlook, and such a virus is impossible on those systems AFAIK.
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jms wrote:
Microsoft should NOT be forced to reveal its source code.
Agreed, unless Microsoft is forced to put the source code into the Public Domain. Then any copyright questions become moot. I don't think it's likely tho.
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That bit of damage has already been done. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure the Findings of Fact indicating that Microsoft is a monopoly that abuses their monopoy power is now a matter of public record that can be used in other relevant suits. I'm sure that Caldera will be incorporating it into evidence for their suit.
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mochaone wrote:
So let me get this straight. I'm supposed to gather evidence to support my suppositions, yet you are allowed to postulate as to what Judge Jackson is going to do?
No, you were postulating about what the appeals court would do, and I asked for some evidence for your postulations. I too was postulating, and in spite of your sarcastic tone, I will take your statements as a request for evidence on my part.
You seem to be questioning two points of mine: I expect the findings of fact will probably declare Microsoft to be a monopoly, and not suggest anything as to remidies, which is really two points: I expect the findings will declare monopoly, and I expect they won't suggest remedies at this point. The other point is A slap on the wrist would hasten the death of the proprietary software industry, because Microsoft would continue to kill it.
First, I expect the findings of fact to declare Microsoft a monopoly because that is far from controvertial. The rule of thumb is a company is a monopoly if it has more than a 70% market share, Microsoft has a 90% market share. The controversy is over whether or not Microsoft used its Monopoly powers illegally, and I did not speculate on what Jackson would find there.
I expect the findings of fact to suggest no remedies because there is no other reason for Judge Jackson to split the findings of fact from the Judgement. Microsoft asserted that they will appeal any negative judgement very early in the trial. The purpose of separating the judgement from the findings of fact is to shield the facts of the case (which are harder to appeal) from being dragged through the mud during the appeal of the judgement. Suggesting remedies during the findings of fact would defeat the purpose.
Lastly, as for Microsoft killing the proprietary software industry, here is some good material to support my opinion:
Caldera v Microsoft Complaint
Reiser v Microsoft on allegedly illegal product tying
A Rutgers University analysis of Microsoft's use of predatory pricing to destroy competitors
A Reuters Article describing Microsoft's pressure on Acer to not sell competitors applications
In all, Microsoft is clearly trying to encompass as much of the industry as they can get away with, and kill any competitors that stand in their way. If they're the only provider of proprietary software, it's no longer an industry, hence they would have killed the industry. Personally, I don't think it's a great loss, since Microsoft is a big fish, eating all the little fishes (other proprietary vendors), while the rest of us are learning to farm kelp (Free software).
Hmm...I guess since you're saying it, "evidence" isn't needed to prove your point?
No, I was saying evidence was needed to prove your point. As you can see above, there's lots of evidence to support my point.
PS: I was completely baffled by your talk of movies and heads. What were you trying to say there?
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mochaone trolled:
Here's What the Judge Should Do...
Nothing.
No, he should release his findings of fact as promised, followed by his judgement a while later as promised. Luckily, he listens to his own guide rather than to you, so he is likely to do something rather than nothing.
That is, in his fact of finding, his conclusion should be that a breakup of Microsoft should not happen.
First off, it is a "Finding of Fact", not a fact of finding (sword of slaying +2?). Secondly, his conclusion of a fact of finding should say nothing of the sort. Possible remidies should be given in the judgement, not in the finding of fact. The finding of fact is just that, a determination of which facts are "Truth" as far as determining the judgement is concerned. I expect the findings of fact will probably declare Microsoft to be a monopoly, and not suggest anything as to remidies. This way, there is no easy way to appeal the finding of fact. The judgement, to be given later, will certainly be appealed if it is anything more than a slap on the wrist for Microsoft.
The only thing I can see the judge doing, which would have any chance of passing appellate muster, is putting in a provision that would mandate some kind of oversight of Microsoft's business dealings for something like the next 5 years.
Again, you have to wait for the judgement for that. What evidence do you have that such a remedy would pass appellate muster? What evidence do you have that more would not? The court of appeals that would hear any appeals in this case is very pro-corporate, but I certainly don't know enough about their legal opinions to make a guess here.
The computing landscape has changed significanty since this case was brought to trial. I don't think breaking up Microsoft would be good for the industry in general.
The computing landscape always changes, such is life. Since the case was filed, Microsoft has picked up a few more percent desktop market share, so they're now more of a monopoly. Something substantial has to be done to Microsoft if the industry is to recover, whether a breakup or strict regulation is best I don't know.
A slap on the wrist would hasten the death of the proprietary software industry, because Microsoft would continue to kill it. This would be ugly but not a disaster since the Free Software community will get stronger no matter what happens to the guys with the plastic wrap.
Part of the reason that the landscape has changed is that MS's actions have been under the spotlight. Putting them under an extended spotlight might allow further change.
Any changes due to the trial have been trivial. A few OEM's have bent their license agreements a little bit. Nothing major has changed to make legal action against Microsoft any less important. If anything, the tying of IE with Windows 98 makes the complaint more pressing.
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Well, Creative's Linux development page references both kernel issues and Alsa issues, so I suspect they will directly support both. If they don't, the source will be GPL, so it's not a big deal.
Aureal, I don't know about. Currently they just refer Linux users to OpenSound.
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BWS Wrote:
The ABM treaty allows origionally 2 ABM Defense Zones each nation with 100 Interceptors [ABM Missiles] which was reduced to 100 Interceptors at 1 Defense Zone [At this point I belive USSR picked Moscow and the USA picked a missile range but not sure which one].
That would be White Sands.
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The sites weren't all that high security. Oooh, the "US Army Dental Care System" computer was compromized, while it is in the .mil hierarchy, I doubt that much effort went into securing it.
I'd say flipz is probably a very busy script kiddie. The cracked sites certainly don't show much imagination.
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They're auctioning off the genetic material of "beautiful people". Ron Harris has arranged for an auction of eggs from eight models. You can read more about it from here:
http://abcnews.go. com/sections/us/DailyNews/modelseggs991023.html
Or, you can go straight to the website here: http://ronsangels.com
Next up from the site, a sperm auction.
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Jon Peterson wrote:
A discovery can reasobaly considered IP in some situations, and so can a description.
Yes, but there are three legal forms of IP: patents, trademarks and copyrights. You just can't say "it's valid IP, therefore they can patent it". Trademarks are just plain offtopic here, so I'll talk about the other two.
They could easily justify copyrighting their information packages (and probably are doing so). They charge for the information, and the copyright keeps the people they send it to from redistributing it legally, except for fair use.
They're talking about patenting it. Patenting genes has gone on for a while, particularly in agricultural circles. If you patent a gene, nobody can USE the gene without a license. You buy a bag of genetically altered seed, part of what you are paying for is the license to use the patent on those genes. Here, they are making two big jumps from "mainstream" genetic patents:
* it's human genes now
* it's naturally occuring genes now
People are hopefully going to be more outraged now that we are messing with human genes. On the other hand, it's the second part that makes it more legally outraged. You should never be able to patent a discovery. Patents are for inventions, for novel ways of applying things. I might as well patent the oak tree outside my window, there's a lot of information there, it must be IP.
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There's numerous advantages you can tout with the Athlon: Speed (in MHz - up until today), Price, sheer Performance, but let's please hold off on scalability until AMD can point us to a supplier of 2-4 slot motherboards.
Well, considering the anti-competitive pressure Intel is putting on motherboard manufacturers to avoid distributing the single processor Slot A boards they've already designed and tested, I think AMD has an uphill battle to coax motherboard makers to design an SMP board.
If I recall, the chipset designer that is working on a two-way Athlon chipset was talking about first quater of 2000 for release.
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It seems to me that, if Sun truly "gets it", all their stated goals could be handled by BSD-style (old or new) licensing and strict trademark enforcement. That would allow developers to do what they need to with the code, and allow Sun to squelch forking by preventing incompatible forks from using the trademarks. Any forks that don't use the trademarks won't be an "embrace and extinguish" attempt like Joy fears, just like changes to Mesa can't possibly hurt OpenGL.
We all know that Bill Joy is very familiar with BSD licensing issues. It's clear, at least to me, that his only real objection to Free/Open Source software can be better solved by Trademark Law instead of Copyright Law. Therefore, there must be an unstated objection. Personally, I suspect the unstated objection is that Sun management is fearful of the Free Software Movement and wants to get some of the publicity benefit of being "Open" and "Free" without actually helping the movement.
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We need both the court ruling and the relaxation of regulations. The relaxation of regulations might very well not cover source code by the time it actually appears. On the flip side, the court ruling definately will not cover binaries, it would only open source code as speech.
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As closed-minded as Cringley's article was on this issue, he did have one good point. By making the original article avalable to /. readers, Jane's was publishing the article. Of course he went on to make the incorrect conclusion that it required the full editorial treatment before /. publication.
/., The Register, and, to an increasing extent, http://www.zdnet.com do. All of us (including the Anonymous Cowards) are publishers now. Raw publishing has the advantage of speed over editorial publishing. Many raw publications (such as this one) offer more feedback as well.
The internet has encouraged a split in publishing (surely there before the internet, but not common). I'll call it "Raw Publishing" and "Editorial Publishing". Editorial publishing is when an article/story/book/whatever has been through all of its research, drafts, editors, etc. before being viewed by the reader. This is what most paper publications do, some online mags (eg. Salon) and what Cringely was saying Jane's should have done.
Then there's raw publishing. It's still publishing, since you are producing content for strangers to read, but both the publisher and the reader know full well it hasn't gone through all the mechanics of exhaustive fact checking and polishing that editorial publications do. They need some research and polish, to avoid looking like a moron, but not to the same degree as editorial publications.
This is what Jane's did here; it is what many online magazines do, such as
People hold the editorial publications to a higher standard than raw ones, for obvious reasons. Jane's readers hold them to a particularly high standard. By publishing raw, and collecting feedback, Jane's was able to boost the quality of an article in its editorial publication in a very short amount of time. Other publications could learn a powerful lesson from this.
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They make no conclusions, but offer opinions on both sides of the issue. A good article, except for one glaring error. Free Software does not equal public domain! They really need to put an accurate Free Software entry into their style guide.
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OK, the first issue is knowledge. Most screenwriters today have at least used a computer, many of them use them regularly. Directors are likely to be less computer literate. Neither screenwriters nor directors are likely to be truly knowledgable about computers, they just have their focus in a different direction. The good ones will find a technical advisor that can help.
The second issue is screen presence. Any computer that is used for something real will have more information on the screen than is good for dramatic impact. The viewer needs to be able to quickly find and interpret the information displayed, and an 80x25 screen would just have too much text displayed too small for that (not to mention the 80x50 or 132x60 screens that some of us use). It always looks goofy when they make a computer display have huge characters in a proportionally spaced font, but that's something we're always going to have to live with.
The third issue is time. The director needs to have some things quick, so they don't get in the way, and some things slowly, to build suspense. This may contradict how long things really should take. For example, in the X-Files, they often will bring a photo to the FBI Imaging Lab; the viewer doesn't want to spend 45 minutes watching the technician line up the right region of the image and trying a few hundred filters on it to extract a good image; they bring in the photo, give the guy a few directions on where to look, and bingo, a clear zoom of a poorly developed area of the photo. On the other hand, in Wargames, when Joshua was trying to crack the code to launch the missles, it took a long time as it solved the problem digit by digit; nevermind that any code that you can solve that way is inherently weak; the ticking down of the digits were used to build the suspense, the climax of the movie just wouldn't have worked if Joshua used standard cryptographic procedures on a strong code.
The fourth is capability. Look at Max Headroom; they managed to encode an entire human personality, including emotions, into a (presumably digital) computer. If they have that level of computing power, they surely would be able to do other magnificent things with computers, but they generally can't.
Basically, computer use in movies has been (IMHO) steadily improving, but they will never be perfect. Most movies, even by the most knowlegable moviemakers, will run into a point where they have to decide between art and reality. I don't think I need to tell you that art generally wins, and for a very good reason, it's just more entertaining that way.
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