It depends on who makes the decision as to what to use in a corporate environment.
If English-speaking non-technical executives decide to pick a Linux distro, I'd say they overwhelmingly seem to choose Red Hat, since that's the one they're most likely to know / Dell's most likely to pre-install.
If technical staff is allowed to make the decision, Debian makes a much better showing. In my experience, over half of these installations are Debian, Red Hat being second most popular.
The article claims that since Debian's technical advantages can (and to some extent have been) be "borrowed" by other distributions, and since Joe User doesn't care about the policy advantages of Debian, then Debian is doomed to be marginalized as the Linux market grows with unprecidented numbers of Joe Users. I strongly disagree.
Debian has always had a strong following with Systems Administrators who want a strong, stable, supportable platform for their GNU/Linux based services that can be centrally administered without waisting a lot of time. The same forces will make Debian significant as a corporate desktop. This is a huge market, and while Joe User might be on some of those computers, he's not the one making the decision.
Red Hat wins its share of this market through marketing, Debian wins its share through precisely the same policy superiority that the author discounts. Sure, Joe User doesn't understand the policy advantages, but Joe User doesn't play in this field. Sure, Red Hat and other corporate marketted distros will mean Debian will probably never even get a majority share of this field, as long as there are systems people who are allowed to make systems decisions, Debian will be a player here.
The other two markets are Small/Home Businesses, and Home Users. These are the fields Joe User plays. And no, he's not necessarily likely to gravitate towards Debian (actually, from my experience he is, but all my evidence is anecdotal, and it's irrelevant for my point). What the author misses is a key differentiation distros that borrow from Debian.
Some distros, like the example of Red Hat borrowing apt-rpm/apt-cacher, are alien distros borrowing a tool that was developed by Debian. While they probably will contribute to development of the tool, these don't do much for Debian as a whole.
Other distros are derivative of Debian. They put their own installation and look and feel, do their own marketing and often usability testing. They might not even mention their relation to Debian, but, at their core, they're Debian, and developers developing for these Distros are directly helping Debian development. Some significant distros in this category are: LindowsOS, Progeny and Libranet. They're not Red Hat, but they're growing, and growing strong.
I feel Debian's chances of being marginalized are slim.
Actually, by agreeing to use the system, the library receives extra funding. That's the whole point of the lawsuit.
No, by agreeing to use the system, the library avoids losing all their federal funding. There was no new allocation of funds for libraries in CIPA. In addition, by agreeing to use the system, the library is required to spend more money. More to get the filtering software, and more to manage their computers.
This decision makes it a lose-lose situation for a public library: either implement the filtering, tighten their belts and reduce the quality of their service to their patrons; or ignore the filtering and lose all federal funding, and reduce the quality of their service to their patrons.
The point of the lawsuit was an attempt to keep Congress from doing massive damage to our Public Libraries.
In the King County Library System, WA, it is up to the parent or guardian to request filtered or unfiltered access.
Not any more! Thanks to this decision, they are required to filter the parents and guardians by default, as well as the kids. The penalty if they don't comply: their remaining federal funding goes away.
Oh boy. Here we go with that "it's not a right, it's a priviledge" crap. Nonsense. Prove to me it's not a right.
Any government has the right to restrict usage of its property. For example, you have no right to walk into the Whitehouse and run off with all the President's pens. You have no right to drive a car through the lobby of City Hall.
A car is a large and heavy piece of metal and plastic that is prone to move very fast. It puts wear on any road it moves on, and it puts anyone else on that road in risk of physical harm. It is perfectly reasonable for the owner of a road to put restrictions on the use of cars on that road.
Most roads are owned by some government body or another, whether it's the municipality in which the road is located, the county or the state (if I recall correctly, US Route and Interstate roads are still owned by the State government, not the Federal, they just have more access to Federal funds).
Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable for the government to restrict and regulate the use of cars (driving) on its property (roads).
For more information, you might want to read the 1915 Supreme Court Decision in Hendrick v Maryland, and Hess v Pawloski. "The movement of motor vehicles over the highways is attended by constant and serious dangers to the public, and is also abnormally destructive to the ways themself...a state may rightfully prescribe uniform regulations necessary for public safty and order in respect to the operation upon its highways of all motor vehicles" (emphasis mine)
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above is not legal advice. Drive carefully and walk with reckless abandon.
You're not even allowed to record tv commercials to keep in library for your own personal enjoyment. If you can't do that, then there is no way that you are going to be able to do what you want for free.
I was going to correct you, but then I reviewed Sony v Universal and found that it looks like you are right. In that decision, the Supreme Court specifically looks at the distinction between "Time-Shifting" (recording to watch once and then reusing the tape) and "Librarying" (recording to watch multiple times). Apparently the distinction is important because "Time-Shifting" would be a fair use, but the Court appeared to consider "Librarying" not to be.
I wish it was politically feasable to bring back 14 year copyrights.:-(
I tired to look for an IBM S/360 or S/390 mainframe (will start mortgage to get it) but theyre too rare a commodity. Just needed something fancy to run Quake and impress the snottiest of geeks. I think I'll go with the AS/400.
Well, apparently there's an S/390 on eBay right now if you are interested. Don't know if it's complete, since I haven't played with S/390 hardware at all, but if I remember correctly, the drives would be in the next rack over, so you might have some more shopping to do. At a $5,000 starting bid, you can't beat the price tho.
When I purchase a DVD, I am purchasing a real product, and I have the right to do with it anything not expressly prohibited by law. I have the legal right to play it on a licensed player; I have the legal right to play it on an unlicensed player. I have the legal right to transfer it to video tape and archive it in my basement. I have the legal right to dust off the archive VHS copy, bring it to a friends house and the two of us quietly enjoy a private viewing of the content. I have the legal right to take an excerpt from that DVD and include it in a documentary I might be making. If I get sick of the DVD, I have the right to resell it to a complete stranger.
All of this is well established in United States law (the USA being the country I live in, and the country in which I purchased most of my DVDs). When I purchase copyrighted materials, I have right to fair use of those materials. The DMCA even explicitly says it is not to interfere with fair use.
I have no contract with the MPAA, the DVD Consortium, or any movie producers. They have no grounds or standing to tell me how I can or cannot use their content. The laws under which I live do offer some restrictions, for example I can't stand on a street corner selling unauthorized copies of my DVD, but they say nothing about me being required to abide by the DVD Consortium's region encoding, macrovision, or player licensing schemes.
The MPAA/DVD Consortium could scream until they're blue in the face, the public could even agree with them. It doesn't change the fact that they have no legal authority to restrict unlicensed use of CSS by anybody but people who have signed contracts requiring compliance.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above is not legal advice.
I find the claim of 2.2 million SCO servers unlikely. 2.2 million SCO OpenServer machines, sure, but a good portion of those are, IIRC, retail point of sale systems, and little more than smart terminals, not servers.
I am sorry I wasn't clear on the full details, I knew there were multiple vendors involved in the Brazilian voting system, but NatSemi/Unisys was the only one I was able to confirm quickly. I did not say that the NatSemi/Unisys machines were the first ones used, merely that Brazil has been using electronic voting since 1996.
Regarding paper trail, the original machines had a paper trail, the NatSemi/Unisys machines have a paper trail, and I recalled an article indicating that a paper trail was part of Brazil's specification for the machines. As you indicate, some of the machines don't have a paper trail, and I stand corrected. However, since some of the machines have a working paper trail, it still refutes the original article's point that those asking for a paper trail are "dreamers".
I am sorry to hear that you aren't happy with the machines, but I'm glad that you shared it. Most of the articles I've read on the Brazillian system are either neutral technical articles or positive "Electronic Voting is Great" articles. Of course, no system is perfect, and it's important to see what the imperfections are, so mistakes aren't repeated.
It sounds like the two of us would probably agree on what we want to see in such a system. Here's my list:
* Well audited (software, kernel, hardware, and instructions to election monitors/officials)
* Publically available source code and audits
* Tamper resistant paper trail for recounts and fraud protection
* Easy to use
Re:SCO has Dirty Hands. Will not be able to collec
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SCO To Show Copied Code
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anshil asked:
There is a trade secred [sic] law????
As far I understood the trade secred protecty you in one way, for an undefined time. It's by keeping it a secred and how long you can keep it secret, thats all folks! (As far I have understood)
Yes. I can't speak for other countries, but here in the United States most if not all states have some form of Trade Secret law. Most of them (including Utah, where the SCO suit was filed) have one based on the UTSA, a "Unified" law so that that there is minimal confusion in what the law is when you go from one state to the other.
These laws essentially boil down to: if you have a piece of information that is important to your business, and you take reasonable measures to keep that information secret, then you get the following protections for your secret:
If someone tries to distribute it without authorization, you can get the courts to stop them, and sue for damages
If someone gets it without authorization, you can get the courts to issue an injunction against them using or redistribuing the information
If a court case arises where this information is relevant, the court must take reasonable steps (eg. sealing the records) to protect the secrecy of the information
The problem of counting on Trade Secret law is what I described earlier, once it's no longer secret, it's no longer protected.
My theory on why SCO brought up the presence of Trade Secrets in this case is not stupidity (they have to know that they are unlikely to win a Trade Secret case here), but more because of Protection 3, above. By invoking Trade Secret law, SCO can play their cards close to their chest.
They're probably hoping to get through the lawsuit without publically disclosing which code they allege infringes on their copyrights. This would prevent Linux supporters from comparing notes and filing briefings telling the court how full of it SCO is. Keeping the particulars of the case out of the public eye can only help SCO and only hurt IBM, so I assume that IBM is going to push for the case to be as open to the public as they can get away with. Since keeping the particulars hidden can also hurt Linux (nobody can remove the alleged threat until they find out what it is), I hope IBM succeeds on this point.
I am not a lawyer. The above is not legal advice. If you have a trade secret to protect, I recommend you consult both a lawyer and an experienced security professional.
National Semiconductor and Unisys (two American companies) made a really good electronic voting system for Brazil, they've been using them since 1996. It has a tamper resistant paper trail, so it is completely auditable, unlike most of the systems described in the article. From what I've heard, the machines work quite well, and people are happy with them. (Please, if someone has actually voted with these, share your experiences)
I fail to see how having a paper trail with electronic voting is "dreaming", it strikes me more as "required", particularly if we want to consider our government democratic.
Re:SCO has Dirty Hands. Will not be able to collec
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SCO To Show Copied Code
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pe1rxq wrote:
The problem is that the owner of this ip (most unix patents will probably be outdated anyhow) has been distributing it under the gpl, and thus giving up al rights to enforce their patents. The LZH case was different, the owner of the ip never gave permission to use it in gpl programs, and thus the person who first distributed it under the gpl (not those persons who distributed it further) would be liable.
This isn't a Patent case, SCO is suing on Copyright Infringement and Trade Secret grounds. The rules are completely different.
Distributing under the GPL does not touch their copyrights over their own code. SCO still has copyright on any code they wrote that they didn't assign copyright to anyone else (eg. their extensions to Unix System V). They also still have copyright on any code that had copyright assigned to them that they didn't assign to anyone else (eg. the Xenix and Unix System V codebases). These copyrights aren't going anywhere for a while, but I seriously doubt that they have the relationship to the Linux code that SCO claims.
My understanding of Trade Secret law, on the other hand, tells me that distributing under the GPL completely destroys any Trade Secret case they may have. In order to claim that something is a Trade Secret, you need to maintain dilligence in keeping other people from finding out your information. Distribution under anything but a NDA strikes me as incompatible with a Trade Secret. Distributing your own Trade Secrets under the GPL is likely to get a judge to laugh at you.
I am not a lawyer. The above should not be considered legal advice. Mashed potatos can be your friend
[Disclaimer: For the purposes of this post, I am writing with the assumption that the New Testament is correct in its presentation of the events it portrays. This does not mean that I believe this, nor does this disclaimer mean that I don't believe this.]
What I think is also funny along those lines, is the people who consider the passages quoting Jesus in the New Testament to be his raw, unvarnished words. Even leaving English out of it, going to the Greek version that most denominations consider canon, it has all his quotes in Greek.
Now, Greek was a popular language in Roman Palestine. After the Roman empire split, the portion that contained Palestine had Greek as its official language. The chances are good that Jesus knew Greek, and spoke Greek when talking to Pontius Pilate. On the other hand, Aramaic was the common tongue which most natives of Palestine spoke at the time, and Hebrew was the language which Jesus, as a Jew, would have been used to for religious teachings. The chances of Jesus conversing privately with his disciples in Greek are slim. If he gave his sermons in Greek, the less educated of his listeners would be unable to understand him.
Therefore, some, probably most, of the canonical quotes of Jesus are actually translations, and not his unvarnished words.
one of the first things you learn is that you CANNOT say "the set of all sets." Sure I can, and you can too. In fact, you just did;-)
this leads to great paradoxes such as "the set of all sets that do not include itself." Yes, the "Set of All Sets" includes that one, too. The "Set of All Sets" wouldn't be included in that set however, because it also includes the "Set of All Sets", and thus doesn't meet the criteria.
if it includes it self, then it itself is not in it. but if it includes itself, it must NOT include itself. you get the idea... Yes, but this just means that while the "set of all sets that do not include itself" exists, its contents aren't well defined. Embrace Shrodinger's Element;-) There should just be a symbol for, "both is and isn't an element of".
This statement is False.
any universe in set theory is well defined and not just "all possible values." Except for the set of poorly defined Universes.
so, i think i agree with grandparent that in order for monkeys to type the works of shakespeare, they would need to type randomly (assuming they don't evolve into humans by that time), which they don't (necessarily) My grandparents weren't fond of monkeys.
Many Christian denominations teach that the Bible is the true and unvarnished word of God/Jesus. Some (not all, not even most) of the memebrs of these denominations are too clueless to realize that the English translation of the Bible that they read is not the original, that the Bible was not written in English. Some of these people combine their ignorance with zealotry, and make boneheaded statements like "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
I have encountered this twice already (once indirectly). Former Texas Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson has been quoted as saying something similar, "If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for the Children of Texas" when vetoing some legistlation (probably involving the Spanish language in some way).
I assume the sig line was included as a combination of frustration at that kind of person, humor that someone can be so stupid, and pointing out to others that people exist who think this way.
By basis for speculating that they only contacted RedHat out of the Linux vendors is quote from the overview that you seem to have dropped from my statement, namely that the Linux vendors only support their releases for two years. This is RedHat's new policy, but not the policy of most major Linux vendors; in fact it wasn't even RedHat's policy a year ago.
I don't know they didn't do a TCO study, but it's strongly implied because rather than saying that their TCO study supports or disagrees with the "myth", they merely say they don't "beleive" that the Linux world is enough different from the Linux world to make a difference here. Since it's something that they can check, and it's something that they ought to have checked, why didn't they check? Of course I don't expect them to give their TCO study for free, but I also think it's pointless to pay for a study that says that the price savings of Linux are mythological unless they give some evidence that they've actually looked at the real world examples in front of them.
I say this is poorly researched because the overview contains some glaring untruths like that one, and they strike me as the untruths that result from lack of research. I say this is poorly researched because the overview talks about belief when they could have talked real world figures (or at least advertised that real world figures were inside).
The fact that Gartner Group is more listned to than Bryan Consulting or Paul Murphy is a sad truth of modern times, but that doesn't change the fact that I wasn't linking to them because they are better, I was linking to the information they were discussing. Specifically, Bryan Consulting was discussing the Burlington Coat Factory enterprise migration to Linux and the cost savings associated with it, and Paul Murphy has done a comprehensive and detailed TCO study that comes up with a vastly different result than Gartner Group's "belief".
I don't care how many clients or employees or links Gartner Group has compared to Bryan Consulting or Paul Murphy (at least call the man by his name, not by his website). I was not recommending one over the other in terms of consulting services. I was just pointing out that there is real information out there while the Gartner Group sounds like they're guessing.
"The $95 is for the real report NOT this overview that you have read!" Wow! What a revelation! I never would have realized that, given the fact that I didn't spend $95 to read the overview.
"Are you trolling or are you serious? I really don't know?" I am quite serious, the Garter Group sounds like they are charging $95 for a report, and the overview of that report gives every indication that they didn't do their homework.
"but when I learnt about IT I was told it was Gartner who invented the Term TCO." Whether they coined the term it or not, of course Gartner knows what a TCO study is, it's one of the things that they sell as a business. The fact that they know what one is makes no difference if they haven't done one.
From the language of the overview (eg "we see little reason to believe"), it does not sound like they have looked. If they have looked, the answer might be "the evidence paints a less favorable picture", or "the evidence is inconclusive". The things they are saying are not a matter of belief, they are a matter of observing the world we live in.
"Linux vendors only support their consumer releases (and free distributions) for a maximum of two years, Silver noted."
Sounds like the only research the Gartner Group did for this report was to call Microsoft, call RedHat, and find out what they do.
They don't even bother to say what the TCO issues are between Linux and Windows, they just say "If [enterprise complications result in high TCO] is true with Windows, "we see little reason to believe that the cultural or political issues will change just because the enterprise is now using Linux," he observes. They didn't even check. They didn't do a study of their own, they didn't talk to people who have done TCO studies of this, or talk to Businesses who have already made the jump. They looked at Windows, and they guessed.
And they charge $95 per copy for their uneducated guess.
At least they can do some work before charging people for it.
I do not support... the way you say Mozilla can't display GIF due to the Terry Welch patent.
It's a statement of fact. The Welch LZW patent covers the display of LZW encripted files as well as the creation of them. Unisys currently does not enforce this, but it doesn't change the fact that they threatened to before, and they can start doing so at any point until the patent expires.
If Mozilla cannot license [LZW encoded GIF files] or defend its use, it should stop using them and perhaps drop support for GIF. People will either adopt this decision and stop using GIF, or reject it and stay with a popular browser which supports GIF.
The GIF file format is a defacto standard on the web. If a standard is subject to licensing fees, that closes out all the Free software projects and many small businesses are shut out of using that standard. There is nothing to prevent a patent holder from waiting until people a standard becomes popular before announcing and enforcing their patent on it.
We do not live in a communist society.
What does communism have to do with this, at all? Purportedly communist governments have patents too.
Reasonable IP which is registered as patent is done so because the author of such IP wants his work protected against commercial gain.
A patent is, and always has been, a government granted monopoly. The government shouldn't grant a monopoly because the recipient feels he has a right to a monopoly, there is no right to a monopoly. They are granted because government thinks it is good to do so. In the USA, this is represented by the paragraph in the constitution
The Congress shall have the power...To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
While I see how a case can be made that protecting an invention (eg. anti-skip mechanism for CD player) promotes the progress of the useful arts, I fail to see how protecting an idea (eg. buffered I/O) does so. Those ideas are the lifeblood of progress, "protecting" them cuts off progress, it doesn't promote them.
So what you're saying is software patents aren't bad, but mathematical patents are?
I fail to see any legally enforcable distinction, particularly if you look at the filings for the "software patents".
Software patents are bad, mathematical patents are bad, algorithm patents are bad, business process patents are bad. Functionally speaking, they're all the same thing, a patent on an abstract idea rather than a concrete invention.
Patents on ideas are bad.
A typical software patent protects the idea of using a particular algorhithm or formula to have a broad range of effects. It doesn't matter how you write the software, as long as you use that algorithm or formula, you must license the patent. If that algorithm or formula is incorporated in a standard, you must license the patent to use the standard.
This situation is an economic minefield, since you often can't find out who holds patents on what until you've already done the work and released your program, and the cease and decist letters start coming in. It's bad for Free Software, it's bad for Open Source software, it's bad for small proprietary software shops, it's bad for people who buy software, it's bad for the economy overall.
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It depends on who makes the decision as to what to use in a corporate environment.
If English-speaking non-technical executives decide to pick a Linux distro, I'd say they overwhelmingly seem to choose Red Hat, since that's the one they're most likely to know / Dell's most likely to pre-install.
If technical staff is allowed to make the decision, Debian makes a much better showing. In my experience, over half of these installations are Debian, Red Hat being second most popular.
The article claims that since Debian's technical advantages can (and to some extent have been) be "borrowed" by other distributions, and since Joe User doesn't care about the policy advantages of Debian, then Debian is doomed to be marginalized as the Linux market grows with unprecidented numbers of Joe Users. I strongly disagree.
Debian has always had a strong following with Systems Administrators who want a strong, stable, supportable platform for their GNU/Linux based services that can be centrally administered without waisting a lot of time. The same forces will make Debian significant as a corporate desktop. This is a huge market, and while Joe User might be on some of those computers, he's not the one making the decision.
Red Hat wins its share of this market through marketing, Debian wins its share through precisely the same policy superiority that the author discounts. Sure, Joe User doesn't understand the policy advantages, but Joe User doesn't play in this field. Sure, Red Hat and other corporate marketted distros will mean Debian will probably never even get a majority share of this field, as long as there are systems people who are allowed to make systems decisions, Debian will be a player here.
The other two markets are Small/Home Businesses, and Home Users. These are the fields Joe User plays. And no, he's not necessarily likely to gravitate towards Debian (actually, from my experience he is, but all my evidence is anecdotal, and it's irrelevant for my point). What the author misses is a key differentiation distros that borrow from Debian.
Some distros, like the example of Red Hat borrowing apt-rpm/apt-cacher, are alien distros borrowing a tool that was developed by Debian. While they probably will contribute to development of the tool, these don't do much for Debian as a whole.
Other distros are derivative of Debian. They put their own installation and look and feel, do their own marketing and often usability testing. They might not even mention their relation to Debian, but, at their core, they're Debian, and developers developing for these Distros are directly helping Debian development. Some significant distros in this category are: LindowsOS, Progeny and Libranet. They're not Red Hat, but they're growing, and growing strong.
I feel Debian's chances of being marginalized are slim.
anthony dipierro wrote:
Actually, by agreeing to use the system, the library receives extra funding. That's the whole point of the lawsuit.
No, by agreeing to use the system, the library avoids losing all their federal funding. There was no new allocation of funds for libraries in CIPA. In addition, by agreeing to use the system, the library is required to spend more money. More to get the filtering software, and more to manage their computers.
This decision makes it a lose-lose situation for a public library: either implement the filtering, tighten their belts and reduce the quality of their service to their patrons; or ignore the filtering and lose all federal funding, and reduce the quality of their service to their patrons.
The point of the lawsuit was an attempt to keep Congress from doing massive damage to our Public Libraries.
jpetts wrote:
In the King County Library System, WA, it is up to the parent or guardian to request filtered or unfiltered access.
Not any more! Thanks to this decision, they are required to filter the parents and guardians by default, as well as the kids. The penalty if they don't comply: their remaining federal funding goes away.
smyle wrote:
(Now, everyone who sang "happy birthday" as a class in school, please make your royalty check payable to...)
Summy Birchard, Inc., a subsidary of AOL/Time Warner. Here's the history of its copyright. Assuming Congress doesn't extend copyright yet again, it is due to enter the public domain in 2030.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
Oh boy. Here we go with that "it's not a right, it's a priviledge" crap. Nonsense. Prove to me it's not a right.
Any government has the right to restrict usage of its property. For example, you have no right to walk into the Whitehouse and run off with all the President's pens. You have no right to drive a car through the lobby of City Hall.
A car is a large and heavy piece of metal and plastic that is prone to move very fast. It puts wear on any road it moves on, and it puts anyone else on that road in risk of physical harm. It is perfectly reasonable for the owner of a road to put restrictions on the use of cars on that road.
Most roads are owned by some government body or another, whether it's the municipality in which the road is located, the county or the state (if I recall correctly, US Route and Interstate roads are still owned by the State government, not the Federal, they just have more access to Federal funds).
Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable for the government to restrict and regulate the use of cars (driving) on its property (roads).
For more information, you might want to read the 1915 Supreme Court Decision in Hendrick v Maryland, and Hess v Pawloski. "The movement of motor vehicles over the highways is attended by constant and serious dangers to the public, and is also abnormally destructive to the ways themself...a state may rightfully prescribe uniform regulations necessary for public safty and order in respect to the operation upon its highways of all motor vehicles" (emphasis mine)
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above is not legal advice. Drive carefully and walk with reckless abandon.
eugene is wong wrote:
:-(
You're not even allowed to record tv commercials to keep in library for your own personal enjoyment. If you can't do that, then there is no way that you are going to be able to do what you want for free.
I was going to correct you, but then I reviewed Sony v Universal and found that it looks like you are right. In that decision, the Supreme Court specifically looks at the distinction between "Time-Shifting" (recording to watch once and then reusing the tape) and "Librarying" (recording to watch multiple times). Apparently the distinction is important because "Time-Shifting" would be a fair use, but the Court appeared to consider "Librarying" not to be.
I wish it was politically feasable to bring back 14 year copyrights.
mnmn wrote:
I tired to look for an IBM S/360 or S/390 mainframe (will start mortgage to get it) but theyre too rare a commodity. Just needed something fancy to run Quake and impress the snottiest of geeks. I think I'll go with the AS/400.
Well, apparently there's an S/390 on eBay right now if you are interested. Don't know if it's complete, since I haven't played with S/390 hardware at all, but if I remember correctly, the drives would be in the next rack over, so you might have some more shopping to do. At a $5,000 starting bid, you can't beat the price tho.
When I purchase a DVD, I am purchasing a real product, and I have the right to do with it anything not expressly prohibited by law. I have the legal right to play it on a licensed player; I have the legal right to play it on an unlicensed player. I have the legal right to transfer it to video tape and archive it in my basement. I have the legal right to dust off the archive VHS copy, bring it to a friends house and the two of us quietly enjoy a private viewing of the content. I have the legal right to take an excerpt from that DVD and include it in a documentary I might be making. If I get sick of the DVD, I have the right to resell it to a complete stranger.
All of this is well established in United States law (the USA being the country I live in, and the country in which I purchased most of my DVDs). When I purchase copyrighted materials, I have right to fair use of those materials. The DMCA even explicitly says it is not to interfere with fair use.
I have no contract with the MPAA, the DVD Consortium, or any movie producers. They have no grounds or standing to tell me how I can or cannot use their content. The laws under which I live do offer some restrictions, for example I can't stand on a street corner selling unauthorized copies of my DVD, but they say nothing about me being required to abide by the DVD Consortium's region encoding, macrovision, or player licensing schemes.
The MPAA/DVD Consortium could scream until they're blue in the face, the public could even agree with them. It doesn't change the fact that they have no legal authority to restrict unlicensed use of CSS by anybody but people who have signed contracts requiring compliance.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, the above is not legal advice.
I find the claim of 2.2 million SCO servers unlikely. 2.2 million SCO OpenServer machines, sure, but a good portion of those are, IIRC, retail point of sale systems, and little more than smart terminals, not servers.
I am sorry I wasn't clear on the full details, I knew there were multiple vendors involved in the Brazilian voting system, but NatSemi/Unisys was the only one I was able to confirm quickly. I did not say that the NatSemi/Unisys machines were the first ones used, merely that Brazil has been using electronic voting since 1996.
Regarding paper trail, the original machines had a paper trail, the NatSemi/Unisys machines have a paper trail, and I recalled an article indicating that a paper trail was part of Brazil's specification for the machines. As you indicate, some of the machines don't have a paper trail, and I stand corrected. However, since some of the machines have a working paper trail, it still refutes the original article's point that those asking for a paper trail are "dreamers".
I am sorry to hear that you aren't happy with the machines, but I'm glad that you shared it. Most of the articles I've read on the Brazillian system are either neutral technical articles or positive "Electronic Voting is Great" articles. Of course, no system is perfect, and it's important to see what the imperfections are, so mistakes aren't repeated.
It sounds like the two of us would probably agree on what we want to see in such a system. Here's my list:
* Well audited (software, kernel, hardware, and instructions to election monitors/officials)
* Publically available source code and audits
* Tamper resistant paper trail for recounts and fraud protection
* Easy to use
There is a trade secred [sic] law????
As far I understood the trade secred protecty you in one way, for an undefined time. It's by keeping it a secred and how long you can keep it secret, thats all folks! (As far I have understood)
Yes. I can't speak for other countries, but here in the United States most if not all states have some form of Trade Secret law. Most of them (including Utah, where the SCO suit was filed) have one based on the UTSA, a "Unified" law so that that there is minimal confusion in what the law is when you go from one state to the other.
These laws essentially boil down to: if you have a piece of information that is important to your business, and you take reasonable measures to keep that information secret, then you get the following protections for your secret:
The problem of counting on Trade Secret law is what I described earlier, once it's no longer secret, it's no longer protected.
My theory on why SCO brought up the presence of Trade Secrets in this case is not stupidity (they have to know that they are unlikely to win a Trade Secret case here), but more because of Protection 3, above. By invoking Trade Secret law, SCO can play their cards close to their chest.
They're probably hoping to get through the lawsuit without publically disclosing which code they allege infringes on their copyrights. This would prevent Linux supporters from comparing notes and filing briefings telling the court how full of it SCO is. Keeping the particulars of the case out of the public eye can only help SCO and only hurt IBM, so I assume that IBM is going to push for the case to be as open to the public as they can get away with. Since keeping the particulars hidden can also hurt Linux (nobody can remove the alleged threat until they find out what it is), I hope IBM succeeds on this point.
I am not a lawyer. The above is not legal advice. If you have a trade secret to protect, I recommend you consult both a lawyer and an experienced security professional.
Old enough to remember them? Here in New York State, we still use them!
National Semiconductor and Unisys (two American companies) made a really good electronic voting system for Brazil, they've been using them since 1996. It has a tamper resistant paper trail, so it is completely auditable, unlike most of the systems described in the article. From what I've heard, the machines work quite well, and people are happy with them. (Please, if someone has actually voted with these, share your experiences)
I fail to see how having a paper trail with electronic voting is "dreaming", it strikes me more as "required", particularly if we want to consider our government democratic.
pe1rxq wrote:
The problem is that the owner of this ip (most unix patents will probably be outdated anyhow) has been distributing it under the gpl, and thus giving up al rights to enforce their patents. The LZH case was different, the owner of the ip never gave permission to use it in gpl programs, and thus the person who first distributed it under the gpl (not those persons who distributed it further) would be liable.
This isn't a Patent case, SCO is suing on Copyright Infringement and Trade Secret grounds. The rules are completely different.
Distributing under the GPL does not touch their copyrights over their own code. SCO still has copyright on any code they wrote that they didn't assign copyright to anyone else (eg. their extensions to Unix System V). They also still have copyright on any code that had copyright assigned to them that they didn't assign to anyone else (eg. the Xenix and Unix System V codebases). These copyrights aren't going anywhere for a while, but I seriously doubt that they have the relationship to the Linux code that SCO claims.
My understanding of Trade Secret law, on the other hand, tells me that distributing under the GPL completely destroys any Trade Secret case they may have. In order to claim that something is a Trade Secret, you need to maintain dilligence in keeping other people from finding out your information. Distribution under anything but a NDA strikes me as incompatible with a Trade Secret. Distributing your own Trade Secrets under the GPL is likely to get a judge to laugh at you.
I am not a lawyer. The above should not be considered legal advice. Mashed potatos can be your friend
[Disclaimer: For the purposes of this post, I am writing with the assumption that the New Testament is correct in its presentation of the events it portrays. This does not mean that I believe this, nor does this disclaimer mean that I don't believe this.]
What I think is also funny along those lines, is the people who consider the passages quoting Jesus in the New Testament to be his raw, unvarnished words. Even leaving English out of it, going to the Greek version that most denominations consider canon, it has all his quotes in Greek.
Now, Greek was a popular language in Roman Palestine. After the Roman empire split, the portion that contained Palestine had Greek as its official language. The chances are good that Jesus knew Greek, and spoke Greek when talking to Pontius Pilate. On the other hand, Aramaic was the common tongue which most natives of Palestine spoke at the time, and Hebrew was the language which Jesus, as a Jew, would have been used to for religious teachings. The chances of Jesus conversing privately with his disciples in Greek are slim. If he gave his sermons in Greek, the less educated of his listeners would be unable to understand him.
Therefore, some, probably most, of the canonical quotes of Jesus are actually translations, and not his unvarnished words.
dollargonzo wrote:
;-)
;-) There should just be a symbol for, "both is and isn't an element of".
one of the first things you learn is that you CANNOT say "the set of all sets."
Sure I can, and you can too. In fact, you just did
this leads to great paradoxes such as "the set of all sets that do not include itself."
Yes, the "Set of All Sets" includes that one, too. The "Set of All Sets" wouldn't be included in that set however, because it also includes the "Set of All Sets", and thus doesn't meet the criteria.
if it includes it self, then it itself is not in it. but if it includes itself, it must NOT include itself. you get the idea...
Yes, but this just means that while the "set of all sets that do not include itself" exists, its contents aren't well defined. Embrace Shrodinger's Element
This statement is False.
any universe in set theory is well defined and not just "all possible values."
Except for the set of poorly defined Universes.
so, i think i agree with grandparent that in order for monkeys to type the works of shakespeare, they would need to type randomly (assuming they don't evolve into humans by that time), which they don't (necessarily)
My grandparents weren't fond of monkeys.
dackroyd wrote:
England has weather that's quite unlikely to kill you.
Tell that to the hundreds of people who died from the "London Fog" of 1991, or the thousands from the one in 1952.
That's not the first wodden case I've seen, but it's by far the nicest, and most functional.
Many Christian denominations teach that the Bible is the true and unvarnished word of God/Jesus. Some (not all, not even most) of the memebrs of these denominations are too clueless to realize that the English translation of the Bible that they read is not the original, that the Bible was not written in English. Some of these people combine their ignorance with zealotry, and make boneheaded statements like "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
I have encountered this twice already (once indirectly). Former Texas Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson has been quoted as saying something similar, "If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for the Children of Texas" when vetoing some legistlation (probably involving the Spanish language in some way).
I assume the sig line was included as a combination of frustration at that kind of person, humor that someone can be so stupid, and pointing out to others that people exist who think this way.
By basis for speculating that they only contacted RedHat out of the Linux vendors is quote from the overview that you seem to have dropped from my statement, namely that the Linux vendors only support their releases for two years. This is RedHat's new policy, but not the policy of most major Linux vendors; in fact it wasn't even RedHat's policy a year ago.
I don't know they didn't do a TCO study, but it's strongly implied because rather than saying that their TCO study supports or disagrees with the "myth", they merely say they don't "beleive" that the Linux world is enough different from the Linux world to make a difference here. Since it's something that they can check, and it's something that they ought to have checked, why didn't they check? Of course I don't expect them to give their TCO study for free, but I also think it's pointless to pay for a study that says that the price savings of Linux are mythological unless they give some evidence that they've actually looked at the real world examples in front of them.
I say this is poorly researched because the overview contains some glaring untruths like that one, and they strike me as the untruths that result from lack of research. I say this is poorly researched because the overview talks about belief when they could have talked real world figures (or at least advertised that real world figures were inside).
The fact that Gartner Group is more listned to than Bryan Consulting or Paul Murphy is a sad truth of modern times, but that doesn't change the fact that I wasn't linking to them because they are better, I was linking to the information they were discussing. Specifically, Bryan Consulting was discussing the Burlington Coat Factory enterprise migration to Linux and the cost savings associated with it, and Paul Murphy has done a comprehensive and detailed TCO study that comes up with a vastly different result than Gartner Group's "belief".
I don't care how many clients or employees or links Gartner Group has compared to Bryan Consulting or Paul Murphy (at least call the man by his name, not by his website). I was not recommending one over the other in terms of consulting services. I was just pointing out that there is real information out there while the Gartner Group sounds like they're guessing.
"The $95 is for the real report NOT this overview that you have read!"
Wow! What a revelation! I never would have realized that, given the fact that I didn't spend $95 to read the overview.
"Are you trolling or are you serious? I really don't know?"
I am quite serious, the Garter Group sounds like they are charging $95 for a report, and the overview of that report gives every indication that they didn't do their homework.
"but when I learnt about IT I was told it was Gartner who invented the Term TCO."
Whether they coined the term it or not, of course Gartner knows what a TCO study is, it's one of the things that they sell as a business. The fact that they know what one is makes no difference if they haven't done one.
From the language of the overview (eg "we see little reason to believe"), it does not sound like they have looked. If they have looked, the answer might be "the evidence paints a less favorable picture", or "the evidence is inconclusive". The things they are saying are not a matter of belief, they are a matter of observing the world we live in.
"Linux vendors only support their consumer releases (and free distributions) for a maximum of two years, Silver noted."
Sounds like the only research the Gartner Group did for this report was to call Microsoft, call RedHat, and find out what they do.
They don't even bother to say what the TCO issues are between Linux and Windows, they just say "If [enterprise complications result in high TCO] is true with Windows, "we see little reason to believe that the cultural or political issues will change just because the enterprise is now using Linux," he observes. They didn't even check. They didn't do a study of their own, they didn't talk to people who have done TCO studies of this, or talk to Businesses who have already made the jump. They looked at Windows, and they guessed.
And they charge $95 per copy for their uneducated guess.
At least they can do some work before charging people for it.
I do not support
It's a statement of fact. The Welch LZW patent covers the display of LZW encripted files as well as the creation of them. Unisys currently does not enforce this, but it doesn't change the fact that they threatened to before, and they can start doing so at any point until the patent expires.
If Mozilla cannot license [LZW encoded GIF files] or defend its use, it should stop using them and perhaps drop support for GIF. People will either adopt this decision and stop using GIF, or reject it and stay with a popular browser which supports GIF.
The GIF file format is a defacto standard on the web. If a standard is subject to licensing fees, that closes out all the Free software projects and many small businesses are shut out of using that standard. There is nothing to prevent a patent holder from waiting until people a standard becomes popular before announcing and enforcing their patent on it.
We do not live in a communist society.
What does communism have to do with this, at all?
Purportedly communist governments have patents too.
Reasonable IP which is registered as patent is done so because the author of such IP wants his work protected against commercial gain.
A patent is, and always has been, a government granted monopoly. The government shouldn't grant a monopoly because the recipient feels he has a right to a monopoly, there is no right to a monopoly. They are granted because government thinks it is good to do so. In the USA, this is represented by the paragraph in the constitution
While I see how a case can be made that protecting an invention (eg. anti-skip mechanism for CD player) promotes the progress of the useful arts, I fail to see how protecting an idea (eg. buffered I/O) does so. Those ideas are the lifeblood of progress, "protecting" them cuts off progress, it doesn't promote them.
Enry asserts:
So what you're saying is software patents aren't bad, but mathematical patents are?
I fail to see any legally enforcable distinction, particularly if you look at the filings for the "software patents".
Software patents are bad, mathematical patents are bad, algorithm patents are bad, business process patents are bad. Functionally speaking, they're all the same thing, a patent on an abstract idea rather than a concrete invention.
Patents on ideas are bad.
A typical software patent protects the idea of using a particular algorhithm or formula to have a broad range of effects. It doesn't matter how you write the software, as long as you use that algorithm or formula, you must license the patent. If that algorithm or formula is incorporated in a standard, you must license the patent to use the standard.
This situation is an economic minefield, since you often can't find out who holds patents on what until you've already done the work and released your program, and the cease and decist letters start coming in. It's bad for Free Software, it's bad for Open Source software, it's bad for small proprietary software shops, it's bad for people who buy software, it's bad for the economy overall.