Not so. The 521 million covers past use only, if MS doesn't license the patent and continues to use it, it is really easy to get an injunction from court preventing MS from shipping anything that violates the patent. Since IE is now a part of Windows, that means that no computers can be bought or sold until Microsoft either removed IE from windows, or removed the infrining parts from IE.
It could be worse though. In some patent cases the company has been forced to recall and refund all past customers. When I was a kid Kodak bought back all their Instant cameras after losing a patent case.
For all the criticisms, MS appears to have never used a software patent against any other company or developer. They do collect software patents in the US, but the only use seems to be protection "don't sue us, cause we got enough to get back at you, and in the end we both lose and the lawyers win".
I know nothing about their patent collection, but I wouldn't be surprized at all if they had something that could be used against most of Linux/KDE/GNOME/GNUsomething/*BSD/apache/Samba. some of the above is protected by other companies, or prior art, but they could still cause a lot of problems if they tried.
Don't forget that appeals cannot appeal a result directly. They can appeal that something was done wrong by the court, new evidence (which must be very restricted), or invalid laws, but the result stands unless one of the above changes is. Thus MS does not want to lose since they cannot appeal the decision. No appeals court is required to take an appeal, it is standard practice to appeal something, but standard practice is for the appeals court to reject the appeal - MS does not want to take the chance that they wouldn't be granted the appeal, or they would lose.
Maybe. I don't know how the people behind Mozilla are, but many open source developers are against this and would refuse the offer. OpenBSD for an extreem example has a history of refusing anything that can't be used by others thus if OpenBSD took the license they would only do it in a form that would make it really easy for Microsoft to copy the OpenBSD code into IE and be fully legal. (Of course this example makes no sense, OpenBSD would never allow a browser to become part of their OS) The Mozilla licesnse implys they are not that extreem, it doesn't give you the right to copy arbitary code into your own for instance.
Of course there is also Konqueror that would need a license, and Apple has enough hooks into Konqueror that there is a good chance KDE would be very careful about how others could use the license.
I'm not even going to consider all the other open source browsers out there that may or may not be covered under any given license.
Venus would still be inhabitable except the feel good Democrats and their big labor allies destroyed the enviorment. They are doing the same to Earth: beware!
I know it is all the rage the pick on republicans for destroying the environment, but the democrats only say they are better. Look at their actions, and you will find (just like the rebpulicans) that they don't match their words. Often the desire to fight with the repblicans (who in turn desire to fight back) means that if the other wants to do something the other promised to do, they vote it down just because the other party started it.
I would, but I have far too many right hand only mice. Worse yet, I'm left handed, so all those problems the rightys are pointing out with this: I have them with most mice.
Fortunatly I'm not very dominate left handed, I write with my right hand mostly cause I was taught that way. (not forced like the old days, but if you didn't know you were left handed they assumed you were right handed) I like to switch my mice around. They hurt my wrist, so I try to not abuse either arm too much with one. See my first point though.
I drove one car for over a year without a working speedometer/odometer, and I never missed it. I never got a ticket either. (I still get the finger from other drivers as they pass, and now I know I'm doing the speed limit or slightly more, so it is hard to say for sure I was going less than the limit) Not uncommon either, at the time I knew 3 other people in a simielar situation - the joys of college transportation.
mechanical failure is not uncommon, and you would be surprized how many gadgets you can live without. The only thing I won't compromise is good brakes. I used to panic stop for yellow lights just to prove something worked on that car.
Fat people don't nessicarly overeat. I personally eat more in any given day than just about everyone, yet my mass is well under control. It isn't even exercise (that helps). My body uses more energy. Thyroid problems do run in the family, and I'm a borderline case. My aunt went from 98lbs to 96lbs in one month eating 5000 calories a day. (Soon after doctors removed her thyroid, it was causing serious problems)
Tarditionally the biggest eaters are teenage boys, who due to their growth can eat a lot more than a normal person without seeing weight gain. Even in latter years, skinny people tend to out eat fat people (after you remove the fat people who through diet reduced their weight). Fat people are more aware of what they eat, and tend to be careful, skinny people don't have a problem so they ignore diet.
Remember all generalizations are false taken to the extreem. I'm not a medical doctor.
You need to seperate the religion from those who claim to practce it. Most people in the US will claim to be Christian, about half attend church regularly, and an even smaller amount live the christian life day to day. (I don't have any way to back the above up, but they are reasonable estimates)
Do you base christianity on the one guy I know who didn't attend church at all last year (not even christmas/easter), but did eat only fish on lent fridays? Do you base christianity on one of the churches that burned witches? Do you judge all priests on the couple [catholic] that turned out to abuse children? Or any of the thousands of other things done in the name of christianity that do not represent what God wanted? I hope not. Somehow you need to look past all the evil done in the name of christianity to find what christianity is.
The commandment: Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain. Refers to situations where someone claims the name of God for something evil, and it is commonoly violated. Contary to popular belief it does not refer to swearing! (which isn't to say swearing is right, only that it isn't important enough to be in the 10 commandments)
Nothing against the bluecat product, which seems very good, but why would you use it? Linux is free, and since their goal is embedded systems, I would assume the company has engineers on staff that can handle all the support issues, and configuring the system. With an embedded system you normally have a lot of work to do yourself to fit the system into your own hardware anyway, so roll you own seems like a no brainer decision.
Blue Cat has been around for a while, so appearently somebody is buying this. I'd just like to know what makes it worth it?
My ISP blocks egress on port 25, and I run my own mail server. It is no big deal to put a little line in my sendmail.cf (through m4) that tells sendmail to always forward mail though a different server. All it means is my ISP can put a recieved line in the headers, and get complaints if I SPAM. (Which I don't, so who cares?)
When I want to use the work email server I'm in on the VPN anyway, so there is no problem.
I've had to work with some firmware where a ip address in the 10.x.x.x range was burned into firmware for the out-of-band port. (that is a ehternet port intended only for use with a crossover cable direct to a laptop for techs to debug with) Using that device on a 10.x.x.x network didn't always work. We did burn firmware for large customers who used the 10.x.x.x networks, but we didn't like it.
Ok, start with yourself. Today I can buy a new car that runs on E-85, which is renewable, and now energy positive. (Early ethanol fuels were energy negative as in for every 8 gallons output you needed 10 gallons) Why don't you have one? (I'm looking at them, I don't buy new cars, but I'll be looking for it in my next car)
Diesel has been around forever, and a lot of the problems that gave it a bad reputation have been solved. Do you have one in your car? (if not the E-85 engine) Prepare to run Bio-diesel, which isn't quite ready for prime time, but coming up quickly.
For that matter how do you drive? Fancy v-8 sports car and burn rubber off the line, or nice and easy acceleration from a tiny 4 banger?
Thats just cars, you can do a lot at home. I've replaced several of my light bulbs with compact flourescents.
I don't know what you are doing, but very few people can't do more.
I hate eating. Seriously, I get no pleasure from most meals, and would like to get them overwith ASAP. A pill I can swallow would save me a lot of time for things I like to do.
I've been in Spain where the meals are two hours long. They go though a lot of effort to make them enjoyable, but in the end I wasted four hours a day eating, just to get some pleasure. I have better things to do with my time.
I lasted one day at my new job without having a printer set up. Then I reached the point where I could not understand the code I was working on in the limited space of a couple gvim windows on my monitor.
If I understood the artical correctly, the 300 or so obtained was a sample. Presumably the ISP was working on getting them the rest when the court steped in. No mention of how many total emails could have been obtained.
No details are given on how they were selected, so I don't know if they are emails between 1:00pm and 1:10pm, or all emails for an entire month. Or just a random sample from the backup tapes.
I'd need to compare the cost of making a CD with the cost of making paper and ink, and printing them. Many newspapers (I don't know about NYT, there are a lot of different presses) are printed with a photographic mythod, where the paper is printed from a film negative, and that requires a darkroom and all that chemicals, plus the energy to run the press, plus the energy and polution in making paper, plus the energy and polution in making ink.
I have no idea what the values for any of the above is, much less how you would add them up.
Robots are already general purpose enough for our purposes. We don't need one that stands on two legs, six will do just as well for the few times wheels won't work. A robot factory built by robots would be designed for roboth maintance, and wouldn't have ladders that are hard for a robot to climb.
Don't assume that one robot would build the factory. In reality several different earth moving robots would prepare the ground. Then cement robots would take cement from a robot cement truck to prepare the floor. Then steel cutting robots wouild work with steal lifting robots (cranes) and welding robots to build the structure. Sure some of those tasks might be conbinded into several, but don't assume that either the robot works alone or with human, or human replacement robots. There is no need to assume human type robot to build something.
Would it help to spend all efforts on that task? Eventially you reach a point where adding more bodies to a project doesn't make it faster. A common problem in programing, but I suspect it will apply here too. Adding more people just means more people covering the same ground.
No lines. Sure it was a surprize the first time he saw a light on with no line, so he went to the automated checkout. Once he figgured out how to use it (not hard) he prefers it. No cashier slowly scanning something when he is in a hurry. No waiting for someone else to find her checkbook after the order is rung up.
Human interact is lost, which depending on the checkout person might or might not be a loss. (many times they don't have good looking girls working, and I have found no other reason to choose one checkout over another)
There is a problem with this vision of the future.
Someone brought your change to the table. Having worked in fast food I think that is the first that should go. We already have change machines (ATMs do cash, others do coins), and counting cash is not only the easist way to steal, it is the easiest place for someone to make a mistake. The machines that dispense change rarely make a mistake. Even over a short two hour shift almost nobody ended up with a perfect till.
Having worked in fact food, I suspect that someone will always bring your order to you, though that would be easy to automate. (If you had gone to drive though it would be automated) People are wanted inside to make sure you are happy, even though they serve no purpose that couldn't be replaced.
You are assuming specialized robots. That is Robot A will build only machine B. Robot C would only build robot A, to make machine B. In the real world robots don't have to be that spealized. Instead Robot A will build many machines, some of which produce goods, and some of which are robots like itself.
A metal lathe cannot be made without a metal lathe, but if you study lathe construction (history) you will realize that you can always build the next step of the lathe with the step you just completed. In modern construction lathes are built with completed lathes (and a lot of other machines), but the end result is a lathe that either is general purpose and can do anything a lathe [of that size] can do, or a special purpose lathe that builds one thing really well. Depending on what you need. Once you have a metal lathe you can build any tool. Likewise, once you have a robot factory you can build any robot, including a robot factory. (which would include the robots to build the factory, as well as the machine inside, all done without human intervention.)
Making this all work, and solving a lot of details that I used some handwaving to get around is a serious undertaking. When technology reaches the point where we can do this is something I decline to speculate on.
Look at vietanam and Afganaston before you say that too loudly. Sure there was a lot of external assistance, but then the American revolution got a lot of assistance too. (Mostly from France, which was at war with England)
Civil wars are very hard to win because you don't know who will stay on your side. General Robert E. Lee of American Cival war fame was offered the job of commander of the Yankee forces, but instead took the job of the confederate forces because he liked that side better, and suddenly the rebels had one of the best generals of the war on their side.
There are a lot of guns out there. I don't know how Europe would do, but in the US there are at least as many guns as people, and most are in fireable shape, with amunition. Hard to win a war when you are not sure who is the other side. Nukeing your own people isn't a good idea. Local forces can still win a revolution or civil war, but because local forces don't need your fancy supply lines and communications, they are honest supportive citicians until you come to town. With modern transportation a rebel can attack miles from home and still be at work the next morning. One crossover general can run the whole thing from his secert internet connected bunker, using pgp to make sure communication goes works. Of course the other side has plenty of advantages, but if they will help is debatable, and really depends on the actual situation.
Anymore? Historicly Sci-fi did include fantasy, just look at all the old Andre Norton works that were more fantasy than sci-fi. For that matter anything fantasy was sci-fi.
Good authors write, bad authors worry about what catagory their books will be clasified in before they start. Start with an idea, and make it work. If it is hard science fiction, good, if it isn't, good. It might appeal more to someone if it fits a catagory, but only after a good book is written do you decide if you like it.
Slashdot Mirror
Not so. The 521 million covers past use only, if MS doesn't license the patent and continues to use it, it is really easy to get an injunction from court preventing MS from shipping anything that violates the patent. Since IE is now a part of Windows, that means that no computers can be bought or sold until Microsoft either removed IE from windows, or removed the infrining parts from IE.
It could be worse though. In some patent cases the company has been forced to recall and refund all past customers. When I was a kid Kodak bought back all their Instant cameras after losing a patent case.
For all the criticisms, MS appears to have never used a software patent against any other company or developer. They do collect software patents in the US, but the only use seems to be protection "don't sue us, cause we got enough to get back at you, and in the end we both lose and the lawyers win".
I know nothing about their patent collection, but I wouldn't be surprized at all if they had something that could be used against most of Linux/KDE/GNOME/GNUsomething/*BSD/apache/Samba. some of the above is protected by other companies, or prior art, but they could still cause a lot of problems if they tried.
Don't forget that appeals cannot appeal a result directly. They can appeal that something was done wrong by the court, new evidence (which must be very restricted), or invalid laws, but the result stands unless one of the above changes is. Thus MS does not want to lose since they cannot appeal the decision. No appeals court is required to take an appeal, it is standard practice to appeal something, but standard practice is for the appeals court to reject the appeal - MS does not want to take the chance that they wouldn't be granted the appeal, or they would lose.
Maybe. I don't know how the people behind Mozilla are, but many open source developers are against this and would refuse the offer. OpenBSD for an extreem example has a history of refusing anything that can't be used by others thus if OpenBSD took the license they would only do it in a form that would make it really easy for Microsoft to copy the OpenBSD code into IE and be fully legal. (Of course this example makes no sense, OpenBSD would never allow a browser to become part of their OS) The Mozilla licesnse implys they are not that extreem, it doesn't give you the right to copy arbitary code into your own for instance.
Of course there is also Konqueror that would need a license, and Apple has enough hooks into Konqueror that there is a good chance KDE would be very careful about how others could use the license.
I'm not even going to consider all the other open source browsers out there that may or may not be covered under any given license.
Venus would still be inhabitable except the feel good Democrats and their big labor allies destroyed the enviorment. They are doing the same to Earth: beware!
I know it is all the rage the pick on republicans for destroying the environment, but the democrats only say they are better. Look at their actions, and you will find (just like the rebpulicans) that they don't match their words. Often the desire to fight with the repblicans (who in turn desire to fight back) means that if the other wants to do something the other promised to do, they vote it down just because the other party started it.
Which is why I prefer to vote for a third party.
Start here.
I would, but I have far too many right hand only mice. Worse yet, I'm left handed, so all those problems the rightys are pointing out with this: I have them with most mice.
Fortunatly I'm not very dominate left handed, I write with my right hand mostly cause I was taught that way. (not forced like the old days, but if you didn't know you were left handed they assumed you were right handed) I like to switch my mice around. They hurt my wrist, so I try to not abuse either arm too much with one. See my first point though.
I drove one car for over a year without a working speedometer/odometer, and I never missed it. I never got a ticket either. (I still get the finger from other drivers as they pass, and now I know I'm doing the speed limit or slightly more, so it is hard to say for sure I was going less than the limit) Not uncommon either, at the time I knew 3 other people in a simielar situation - the joys of college transportation.
mechanical failure is not uncommon, and you would be surprized how many gadgets you can live without. The only thing I won't compromise is good brakes. I used to panic stop for yellow lights just to prove something worked on that car.
Fat people don't nessicarly overeat. I personally eat more in any given day than just about everyone, yet my mass is well under control. It isn't even exercise (that helps). My body uses more energy. Thyroid problems do run in the family, and I'm a borderline case. My aunt went from 98lbs to 96lbs in one month eating 5000 calories a day. (Soon after doctors removed her thyroid, it was causing serious problems)
Tarditionally the biggest eaters are teenage boys, who due to their growth can eat a lot more than a normal person without seeing weight gain. Even in latter years, skinny people tend to out eat fat people (after you remove the fat people who through diet reduced their weight). Fat people are more aware of what they eat, and tend to be careful, skinny people don't have a problem so they ignore diet.
Remember all generalizations are false taken to the extreem. I'm not a medical doctor.
You need to seperate the religion from those who claim to practce it. Most people in the US will claim to be Christian, about half attend church regularly, and an even smaller amount live the christian life day to day. (I don't have any way to back the above up, but they are reasonable estimates)
Do you base christianity on the one guy I know who didn't attend church at all last year (not even christmas/easter), but did eat only fish on lent fridays? Do you base christianity on one of the churches that burned witches? Do you judge all priests on the couple [catholic] that turned out to abuse children? Or any of the thousands of other things done in the name of christianity that do not represent what God wanted? I hope not. Somehow you need to look past all the evil done in the name of christianity to find what christianity is.
The commandment: Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain. Refers to situations where someone claims the name of God for something evil, and it is commonoly violated. Contary to popular belief it does not refer to swearing! (which isn't to say swearing is right, only that it isn't important enough to be in the 10 commandments)
Nothing against the bluecat product, which seems very good, but why would you use it? Linux is free, and since their goal is embedded systems, I would assume the company has engineers on staff that can handle all the support issues, and configuring the system. With an embedded system you normally have a lot of work to do yourself to fit the system into your own hardware anyway, so roll you own seems like a no brainer decision.
Blue Cat has been around for a while, so appearently somebody is buying this. I'd just like to know what makes it worth it?
My ISP blocks egress on port 25, and I run my own mail server. It is no big deal to put a little line in my sendmail.cf (through m4) that tells sendmail to always forward mail though a different server. All it means is my ISP can put a recieved line in the headers, and get complaints if I SPAM. (Which I don't, so who cares?)
When I want to use the work email server I'm in on the VPN anyway, so there is no problem.
I've had to work with some firmware where a ip address in the 10.x.x.x range was burned into firmware for the out-of-band port. (that is a ehternet port intended only for use with a crossover cable direct to a laptop for techs to debug with) Using that device on a 10.x.x.x network didn't always work. We did burn firmware for large customers who used the 10.x.x.x networks, but we didn't like it.
Ok, start with yourself. Today I can buy a new car that runs on E-85, which is renewable, and now energy positive. (Early ethanol fuels were energy negative as in for every 8 gallons output you needed 10 gallons) Why don't you have one? (I'm looking at them, I don't buy new cars, but I'll be looking for it in my next car)
Diesel has been around forever, and a lot of the problems that gave it a bad reputation have been solved. Do you have one in your car? (if not the E-85 engine) Prepare to run Bio-diesel, which isn't quite ready for prime time, but coming up quickly.
For that matter how do you drive? Fancy v-8 sports car and burn rubber off the line, or nice and easy acceleration from a tiny 4 banger?
Thats just cars, you can do a lot at home. I've replaced several of my light bulbs with compact flourescents.
I don't know what you are doing, but very few people can't do more.
I hate eating. Seriously, I get no pleasure from most meals, and would like to get them overwith ASAP. A pill I can swallow would save me a lot of time for things I like to do.
I've been in Spain where the meals are two hours long. They go though a lot of effort to make them enjoyable, but in the end I wasted four hours a day eating, just to get some pleasure. I have better things to do with my time.
I lasted one day at my new job without having a printer set up. Then I reached the point where I could not understand the code I was working on in the limited space of a couple gvim windows on my monitor.
If I understood the artical correctly, the 300 or so obtained was a sample. Presumably the ISP was working on getting them the rest when the court steped in. No mention of how many total emails could have been obtained.
No details are given on how they were selected, so I don't know if they are emails between 1:00pm and 1:10pm, or all emails for an entire month. Or just a random sample from the backup tapes.
Well yeah, except that publishers called is science fiction.
I'd need to compare the cost of making a CD with the cost of making paper and ink, and printing them. Many newspapers (I don't know about NYT, there are a lot of different presses) are printed with a photographic mythod, where the paper is printed from a film negative, and that requires a darkroom and all that chemicals, plus the energy to run the press, plus the energy and polution in making paper, plus the energy and polution in making ink.
I have no idea what the values for any of the above is, much less how you would add them up.
Robots are already general purpose enough for our purposes. We don't need one that stands on two legs, six will do just as well for the few times wheels won't work. A robot factory built by robots would be designed for roboth maintance, and wouldn't have ladders that are hard for a robot to climb.
Don't assume that one robot would build the factory. In reality several different earth moving robots would prepare the ground. Then cement robots would take cement from a robot cement truck to prepare the floor. Then steel cutting robots wouild work with steal lifting robots (cranes) and welding robots to build the structure. Sure some of those tasks might be conbinded into several, but don't assume that either the robot works alone or with human, or human replacement robots. There is no need to assume human type robot to build something.
Would it help to spend all efforts on that task? Eventially you reach a point where adding more bodies to a project doesn't make it faster. A common problem in programing, but I suspect it will apply here too. Adding more people just means more people covering the same ground.
No lines. Sure it was a surprize the first time he saw a light on with no line, so he went to the automated checkout. Once he figgured out how to use it (not hard) he prefers it. No cashier slowly scanning something when he is in a hurry. No waiting for someone else to find her checkbook after the order is rung up.
Human interact is lost, which depending on the checkout person might or might not be a loss. (many times they don't have good looking girls working, and I have found no other reason to choose one checkout over another)
There is a problem with this vision of the future.
Someone brought your change to the table. Having worked in fast food I think that is the first that should go. We already have change machines (ATMs do cash, others do coins), and counting cash is not only the easist way to steal, it is the easiest place for someone to make a mistake. The machines that dispense change rarely make a mistake. Even over a short two hour shift almost nobody ended up with a perfect till.
Having worked in fact food, I suspect that someone will always bring your order to you, though that would be easy to automate. (If you had gone to drive though it would be automated) People are wanted inside to make sure you are happy, even though they serve no purpose that couldn't be replaced.
You are assuming specialized robots. That is Robot A will build only machine B. Robot C would only build robot A, to make machine B. In the real world robots don't have to be that spealized. Instead Robot A will build many machines, some of which produce goods, and some of which are robots like itself.
A metal lathe cannot be made without a metal lathe, but if you study lathe construction (history) you will realize that you can always build the next step of the lathe with the step you just completed. In modern construction lathes are built with completed lathes (and a lot of other machines), but the end result is a lathe that either is general purpose and can do anything a lathe [of that size] can do, or a special purpose lathe that builds one thing really well. Depending on what you need. Once you have a metal lathe you can build any tool. Likewise, once you have a robot factory you can build any robot, including a robot factory. (which would include the robots to build the factory, as well as the machine inside, all done without human intervention.)
Making this all work, and solving a lot of details that I used some handwaving to get around is a serious undertaking. When technology reaches the point where we can do this is something I decline to speculate on.
Look at vietanam and Afganaston before you say that too loudly. Sure there was a lot of external assistance, but then the American revolution got a lot of assistance too. (Mostly from France, which was at war with England)
Civil wars are very hard to win because you don't know who will stay on your side. General Robert E. Lee of American Cival war fame was offered the job of commander of the Yankee forces, but instead took the job of the confederate forces because he liked that side better, and suddenly the rebels had one of the best generals of the war on their side.
There are a lot of guns out there. I don't know how Europe would do, but in the US there are at least as many guns as people, and most are in fireable shape, with amunition. Hard to win a war when you are not sure who is the other side. Nukeing your own people isn't a good idea. Local forces can still win a revolution or civil war, but because local forces don't need your fancy supply lines and communications, they are honest supportive citicians until you come to town. With modern transportation a rebel can attack miles from home and still be at work the next morning. One crossover general can run the whole thing from his secert internet connected bunker, using pgp to make sure communication goes works. Of course the other side has plenty of advantages, but if they will help is debatable, and really depends on the actual situation.
Anymore? Historicly Sci-fi did include fantasy, just look at all the old Andre Norton works that were more fantasy than sci-fi. For that matter anything fantasy was sci-fi.
Good authors write, bad authors worry about what catagory their books will be clasified in before they start. Start with an idea, and make it work. If it is hard science fiction, good, if it isn't, good. It might appeal more to someone if it fits a catagory, but only after a good book is written do you decide if you like it.