Code, content, physical layer. Those are the three layers that Larry Lessig uses to describe the Internet. His concern, as expressed in The Future of Ideas, is that our common global culture could be locked down if we don't work hard to keep the Internet open. So Free Software, Creative Commons, and now this Google initiative are going to start to move us away from our dependence on Microsoft, ATT, and Warner Brothers / Disney. Google isn't perfect, but I say this is a step in the right direction. Don't underestimate the importance of having devices with open code at the fringes of the Internet. Microsoft wants to force you to have non-Free software to access the Internet. This effort by Google is one step away from that kind of lock-down. You go, Googlers!
Miguel is not our enemy. GNOME is an incredible contribution to humanity, and is just one of Miguel's many contributions to FOSS. I have spent probably 5 hours talking with Miguel and interviewing him for the Digital Tipping Point film project, and I know that he is very passionate about freedom. I don't always agree with everything that Miguel says, but he is one of the brightest minds of the FOSS community, and people really need to stop saying mean things about him. The mere fact that we do not agree with everything that Miguel says or does is no reason to speak poorly of him like this.
Miguel is not our enemy. GNOME is an incredible contribution to humanity, and is just one of Miguel's many contributions to FOSS. I have spent probably 5 hours talking with Miguel and interviewing him for the Digital Tipping Point film project, and I know that he is very passionate about freedom. I don't always agree with everything that Miguel says, but he is one of the brightest minds of the FOSS community, and people really need to stop saying mean things about him. The mere fact that we do not agree with everything that Miguel says or does is no reason to speak poorly of him like this.
... in his book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, in which everyone has has neural hooks to the Internet, and everyone walks around with HUDdies (heads up displays) revealing their whuffie (think/. Karma points.) The only difference with Cory's world: he assumed that Free Open Source Software was everywhere, so there were no issues with patents.
Unfortunately for us all, we are not that far away from Cory Doctorow's vision, because HUDdies are already in wide-spread use, for example, in aviation, according to this Wikipedia article. So we won't be able to rely on the fact that Microsoft's patent clocks out before this technology might actually be relevant. We have all seen stories here on/. about the possibility of interacting with computers with our minds.
Coincidentally, Cory's idea of whuffie was influenced, in part, by reading/., according to Wikikpedia article. So thank you, Cmdr Taco!
...if you were planning on expanding an African-named Linux distro on the African continent. Ubuntu comes to mind. But Ubuntu could become a total non-starter in Africa due to the efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
So maybe the Nigerians were just trying to nip that IT monoculture in the bud.
I wonder if people really are so naive to believe that Microsoft is only bluffing. FYI, there are patents on things like GUI hyperlink, checkbox, double click, listview, you name it.
IMHO, if Microsoft was sure it had valid patents, it would have sued by now. Even small patent trolls like Acacia, which filed the recent patent infringement suits this week against Novell and Red Hat, exercise their "rights" if they believe they have them. I am convinced that Microsoft has not filed its lawsuits because it is not sure that they have valid patent claims.
Again, I am an attorney, and if my clients have valid claims, I urge them to press their claims, and the sooner the better. Few lawsuits get better with time.
(financialwire.net via COMTEX News Network) -- October 1, 2007 (FinancialWire) The Acacia Technologies group of Acacia Research Corp. (NASDAQ: ACTG) has named Brad Brunell as senior vice president. Brunell joins Acacia from Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), where during his 16 year career he held a number of management positions, including general manager of intellectual property licensing.
I wonder why he left Microsoft? I wonder if he left Microsoft?
Prior to his role as GM, Brunell served as a senior director, where he focused on digital media adoption. This included key deals with Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) and the Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS), leading the negotiating team for the settlement of the Intertrust patent litigation, and putting together the Content Guard ownership structure between Microsoft, Time Warner, and Thomson (NYSE: TOC). He also served on the board of Content Guard, a digital rights management patent licensing company.
In other words, this guy figures out how to make money from threatening lawsuits.
His earlier career responsibilities as a group manager included managing business groups responsible for Microsoft's digital rights management technologies in the Windows client product group and business development for core audio/video technologies within the Windows platform.
Acacia Research-Acacia Technologies is a segment of Acacia Research Corporation. The Company develops, acquires, licenses and enforces patented technologies. As of December 31, 2006, the Company owned or controlled the rights to 80 portfolios. It helps patent holders protect their patented inventions from unauthorized use and generate revenue from licensing and, if necessary, enforcing their patents. Its clients are primarily individual inventors and small companies with limited resources to deal with unauthorized users but include some large companies wanting to generate revenues from their patented technologies. In August 2007, Acacia Research-Acacia Technologies and CombiMatrix Corporation announced that CombiMatrix Corporation completed the split off from Acacia Research Corporation through the redemption of all outstanding shares of Acacia Research-CombiMatrix common stock.
Acacia Research Corp. - Acacia Technologies
500 Newport Center Drive, Seventh Floor
Newport Beach, CA 92660
Phone: 949-480-8300
So it doesn't look as it the company talks too much in its summary about actual businesses. Instead, the company does seem to derive most of its revenue from asserting IP claims, without actually building anything.
Right, except the OP's problem wasn't with you informing us of this, but instead of KDawson's side-note he added on. I was responding to the OP's problem with the sidenote.
There is a list of 1,573 people who have decided to call Microsoft's bluff by signing a list offering to be the first ones to be sued by Microsoft for supposedly "infringing" Microsoft's 235 patents. Although I am a lawyer, I don't practice Intellectual Property law, and so I am not rendering a legal opinion on this area. But as a practical matter, I can tell you that whenever I sue someone, I first send them a letter demanding payment, and then if they don't pay in short order, I do sue them. I am too busy on a day-to-day basis bluffing people, and those who think that real lawyers with real claims bluff people, they are dead wrong. Some day, someone is going to call your bluff, and maybe even sue you for falsely claiming that you have a right against them, so I advise my clients to think carefully about claiming in public that they can sue someone if, in fact, they have no true claims.
In this particular case, mere common sense would tell most practicing attorneys that if Microsoft had valid claims, it would simply start rolling out the lawsuits and collecting money. Think of all the copies of OpenOffice.org and GNU Linux that are drifting around the world!!! If Microsoft had valid claims against those the users or their distros, dontcha think that they would file suit against a really solid test case, and then trot out that case for everyone else in the world to see? Of course they would.
So I am not buying Microsoft's questionable claims, and I have signed up for the list. Let's put an end to this questionable puffery! Microsoft, if you have a claim against me, sue me now, or shut up! You can serve me with a lawsuit here:
Christian J. Einfeldt
Law Offices of Christian J. Einfeldt
580 California Street, Suite 1600
San Francisco, CA 94104
In your complaint, Microsoft, you will want to specify which programs I am using. I am using openSUSE GNU Linux 10.2; Edgy Kubuntu; OpenOffice.org is my only office productivity suite, and so when you file suite against me, you might really want to stick a finger in my asking for an order barring me from using OpenOffice.org to write my reply briefs, because that is the tool I use for all my court briefs. I am also using Firefox, which you have heavily borrowed from, so please be sure to throw that in.
Oh, and I have installed about 100 copies of GNU Linux, OpenOffice.org and Firefox on various different computers for a public middle school in San Francisco, and I have also given out about 16 computers with those programs installed on them. So be sure to add a couple of causes of action for that, Brad Smith.
Hey, don't forget the fact that I started the "Sue Me First, Microsoft" list, where I very publicly questioned the veracity of your claims, so you would do well to add a couple of counts of defamation, since I am publicly calling into question both the veracity of your claims and your motivation for merely making a public fuss, without proving your claims.
But of course, I have nothing to worry about, because your claims probably are defeated by 1) obviousness; 2) prior art; and 3) limitations on patenting math. After all, if Microsoft could have patented 1 + 1 = 2, you would have done so, wouldn't you?
I'm not criticizing you for publicizing your efforts (which deserve to be publicized). But please don't portray your work as part of a trend.
Thanks for the nice comment in that first sentence. With regard to portraying my work as a trend, I'm not sure that I did say anything that would say that such a trend existed. Please read the summary carefully. I said that getting a pre-installed FOSS box is now "straightforward." I said that
But now that Free Open Source Software is being commercialized by hardware vendors such as Dell, System76, EmperorLinux, Zareason.com, and TechCollective.com, acquiring computers powered by FOSS is straightforward. I'm a volunteer sysadmin at a northern California public charter school and in my Slashdot journal I detail the step-by-step process for using Microsoft's money to pay for the Linux purchases of your school's choice."
I think that you made a good point there about protecting our credibility:
you're following in the FOSS tradition of claiming your success before it's actually happened -- a tradition that is not good for your credibility.
Except that IMHO, I did not make any statement about a trend, other than the fact than, yes, there are now lots of vendors selling FOSS pre-installed. Since the number of FOSS vendors has increased, and the number of major vendors offering more than one product line with FOSS pre-installed, IMHO that *is* a trend.
So I appreciate the fact that you are trying to keep me honest. It is important that we in the FOSS community keep our standards of accuracy high. But IMHO, you are slightly off the mark here. I did not imply that the trend was in adoption per se, but I did state that there are more vendors. If you believe that where there is smoke there is fire, it might be reasonable to conclude either that 1) these FOSS vendors *are* selling more boxes, which is the cause for the proliferation of FOSS vendors and pre-installed product lines; or, 2) these FOSS vendors are *offering* FOSS boxes, but not *selling* them.
It is true that Dell has increased its offering of pre-installed Ubuntu. That was widely interpreted in the press as a sign that Dell was making sales on its initial product line offering. So, in this case, it seems as if there is sound empirical evidence to reasonably infer there were there is smoke (Dell's increased offerings) there must be fire (increased sales).
And yet your point is well-taken. We still have no publicly-available empirical evidence that sales are increasing.
In the final assessment, though, my point was that it is now possible for schools to use the California Microsoft Anti-trust Settlement Agreement (CMASA) to acquire free (as in beer) FOSS boxes. And I wanted to give people a few tips as to how to do that. And, most important, I wanted to gently urge people to spread the word about the availability of this program.
Why would anyone be trying to promote Linux here at Slashdot? Everyone is either converted or never will be.
This Microsoft Settlement Agreement is still in the early stages of disbursement. If Linux sys admins supporting schools don't know about the program, they can't take advantage of it. Of course, there is no budget in the settlement for advertising the settlement. So we, the FOSS community, need to do the public outreach ourselves. That's why I submitted this story to Slashdot./. is pretty good at getting the word out.
But his story is really a How To item, not news item about Microsoft being hoisted by its own petard.
This program is still early. There is still time for other schools to use this program. Many FOSS vendors and school administrators and FOSS advocates might not know that this program exists. That is why I submitted this story to Slashdot. We need to get the word out. Slashdot is good at that.;-)
Not to sound like a dick but this sounds pretty anecdotal. I'd be willing to bet 90%+ will still be going right back to Microsoft.
IMHO, the more school administrators who know that they can just buy an off-the-shelf Linux box from a commercial vendor like Zareason.com or System76 or EmperorLinux or TechCollective.com or Dell, the more likely they are too feel comfortable making a purchase of FOSS-based computers.
So, Selfbain, if you would like to help make sure that 90%+ do NOT go back to Microsoft-based products, please feel free to send them to send them to the California State Education website to find out how they might be able to get some free FOSS computers.
Equally important, send them to a FOSS vendor who has experience with the process of working under the Microsoft Anti-trust Settlement Agreement. I happen to know that Zareason.com has that experience, but System76 or TechCollective.com or EmperorLinux might also have serviced some California schools. Shop around.
Do you think there are people at Microsoft who go home and secretly work Linux by night?
In an article which recently appeared here on Slashdot, Pamela Jones posted to Groklaw a link to an MP3 (MP3 warning) of a panel discussion of the negotiators for the parties to the Novell - Microsoft deal. One really interesting quip from about three-fourths of the way through the 1.5 hour discussion is an off-hand remark by one of the Microsoft reps to the extent that Microsoft claims to have the largest server farm west of the Rockies.
I thought that was an odd statement to make. But maybe it's true. After all, Microsoft runs Hotmail on Linux. At least that is what a Microsoft employee told me during a cable car ride on the California cable car line in San Francisco, which runs from near the foot of Market Street (San Francisco's main street) up the hill toward Van Ness on California Street. Supposedly, he took that cable car line to and from work every day, because Microsoft apparently has an office near Spear and Market in San Francisco, according to this guy.
At any rate to answer your question, there are apparently lots of Microsoft sys admins who are paid to work on Linux during the day. Well, and I'm sure that there are also plenty who are paid to work on Linux during the night, too. After, Microsoft isn't going to trust its mission-critical operations to anything other than the best. snicker.
IIRC, your earlier post asserted that representations made on the Sue Me First, Microsoft list risked exposing all 1,571 people on that list (latest count) to criminal exposure for making misrepresentations to US federal officials. I'm sure that the representations from your personal experience to which you are referring where in the context of bids made to the US federal government, or in the context of other business transactions to the government.
I'm probably not sticking my neck out on a limb here by saying that statements made on the "Sue Me First, Microsoft" list are not representations made "to" federal officials. So I'm still not clear why you are going on about this issue. Exactly who is exposed to criminal penalty, and for doing what?
I wonder how many of those people might be officials of the federal government? This would make any material misrepresentations a felony punishable by fines and/or a prison sentence.
What do you mean by "those people"? Do you mean the 1,570 people who signed up for the "Sue Me First, Microsoft" list?
And what do you mean by "officials"? Are you talking about elected officials? Appointed officials? Mere employees?
And what do you mean my misrepresentation? Are you talking about negligent misrepresentations as well as intentional misrepresentations?
And what about the element of harm or detrimental reliance? Most criminal statutes require some type of harm to follow from a misrepresentation for criminal sanctions to apply.
I am a lawyer, and I have to say that I am extremely skeptical of the strength of your opinion. If you could provide us with a citation to even one criminal case that remotely supports your opinion, I would be grateful. In the meantime, I remain highly doubtful of the credibility of your opinion, and even more gravely in doubt of your motives for posting such a questionable, unsupported opinion here.
That of the global population you are talking about, very few people "get" tech issues. And, of those who "get" tech issues, many are too busy to be able to go to a website that has had no commercial advertising at all and sign up to be sued. And out of evey 100 people, how many are willing to put their names up *anywhere* on the Internet, let alone include their email addresses? IMHO, 1568, now 1570, is pretty impressive.
At the present time, 1568 people from all over the globe have called Microsoft's bluff by signing up to be sued for "infringing" Microsoft's supposed "Intellectual Property" which is impacted by various open source technologies. If Microsoft does have valid claims, let them come forward with those claims. Otherwise, their validity of their claims are left gravely in doubt.
I mean, think about it. Consider the number of businesses uses FOSS today. The numbers are massive, and represent a huge paycheck for Microsoft, if it has valid claims. But since it probably has no valid claims, it is not going to press those specious claims for fear of losing, as did its proxy, SCO.
In case we might have forgotten, this is from an earlier Slashdot post of 01 June 2001:
"In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says that Linux and the open source movement is "good competition" because it will "force [Microsoft] to be innovative," but calls Linux "a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." He also says that the inclusion of IE in Windows has been "great... for innovation in the software industry" (except for Netscape) and that MS's new copy protections are just "bumps in the road" to "help customers understand when they are crossing the line . . . so they can't do the wrong thing." And he says a few more amusing things, also."
I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.
A collection of other Ballmer quips about open source is here.
Microsoft in no way shape or form accepts the existence of sharing source code or open source or Free Software. Anyone who believes to the contrary simply is new to the industry and is naive.
I am producing a documentary about how Free Open Source Software is going to change world culture by shifting balance of trade between the developed and developing world and by teaching the power of collaboration as opposed to hoarding. The film is called the Digital Tipping Point. What tools did you use to do your funny horror movie linked in your sig line? We are looking for collaborators who use FOSS tools.
Semi-seriously, imagine the applications for this technology. Trained crows getting shots of places that only crows can go. Imagine video of Ballmer chair throwing events, and other clandestine Microsoft sporting events visible currently only to crows. We don't want that kind of footage locked down in Microsoft Windows Media formats. We want to be able to exchange our crow footage easily via the Internet Archive, so that we can incorporate our crow footage into community-based video projects, such as the Internet Archive's Digital Tipping Point Video Collection, which uses Ogg Theora formats.
Soon, YouTube soon will be hosting crow video feed competitions. We don't want that precious footage locked down, either.
Which raises the next question, of course, and it is more near and dear to/. readers' hearts: penguin video!
Just look at what Microsoft is planning to do with Office Live or whatever they are calling it. You need to have Microsoft Office installed locally on your HD. All you are storing is your data. GNU Linux OSes probably won't even be able to run WINE to access those Office Live files. So even if they don't actually charge to access the data, it extends their reach into your life.
James Burgett was featured on the front page of Digg.com, where he got 2906 diggs for his blog entry about his dispute with the government (spam warning: I dugg that story). James has subsequently told me that he and the government are working things out. He is not entirely satisfied with the government's approach, but at least he will be able to continue operating his excellent Ubuntu box giveaway program. So it seems as if the attention from the popular media (Digg in that case) has taught the government that James was doing something that was sufficiently meaningful to the community that the regulators should really try to work with him. His fans in the community will continue to watch his operation to make sure that if the government does exercise poor discretion in its oversight of his operation, at least we can give them an earful.
Full disclosure: I do not work with / for James or CNN. I do volunteer for a public middle school in San Francisco, California that benefited from a donation of 30 Ubuntu fat clients for our Linux chubby terminal lab.
Slashdot Mirror
Code, content, physical layer. Those are the three layers that Larry Lessig uses to describe the Internet. His concern, as expressed in The Future of Ideas, is that our common global culture could be locked down if we don't work hard to keep the Internet open. So Free Software, Creative Commons, and now this Google initiative are going to start to move us away from our dependence on Microsoft, ATT, and Warner Brothers / Disney. Google isn't perfect, but I say this is a step in the right direction. Don't underestimate the importance of having devices with open code at the fringes of the Internet. Microsoft wants to force you to have non-Free software to access the Internet. This effort by Google is one step away from that kind of lock-down. You go, Googlers!
Miguel is not our enemy. GNOME is an incredible contribution to humanity, and is just one of Miguel's many contributions to FOSS. I have spent probably 5 hours talking with Miguel and interviewing him for the Digital Tipping Point film project, and I know that he is very passionate about freedom. I don't always agree with everything that Miguel says, but he is one of the brightest minds of the FOSS community, and people really need to stop saying mean things about him. The mere fact that we do not agree with everything that Miguel says or does is no reason to speak poorly of him like this.
Miguel is not our enemy. GNOME is an incredible contribution to humanity, and is just one of Miguel's many contributions to FOSS. I have spent probably 5 hours talking with Miguel and interviewing him for the Digital Tipping Point film project, and I know that he is very passionate about freedom. I don't always agree with everything that Miguel says, but he is one of the brightest minds of the FOSS community, and people really need to stop saying mean things about him. The mere fact that we do not agree with everything that Miguel says or does is no reason to speak poorly of him like this.
... in his book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, in which everyone has has neural hooks to the Internet, and everyone walks around with HUDdies (heads up displays) revealing their whuffie (think /. Karma points.) The only difference with Cory's world: he assumed that Free Open Source Software was everywhere, so there were no issues with patents.
/. about the possibility of interacting with computers with our minds.
/., according to Wikikpedia article. So thank you, Cmdr Taco!
Unfortunately for us all, we are not that far away from Cory Doctorow's vision, because HUDdies are already in wide-spread use, for example, in aviation, according to this Wikipedia article. So we won't be able to rely on the fact that Microsoft's patent clocks out before this technology might actually be relevant. We have all seen stories here on
Coincidentally, Cory's idea of whuffie was influenced, in part, by reading
...if you were planning on expanding an African-named Linux distro on the African continent. Ubuntu comes to mind. But Ubuntu could become a total non-starter in Africa due to the efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
So maybe the Nigerians were just trying to nip that IT monoculture in the bud.
You wrote: IMHO, if Microsoft was sure it had valid patents, it would have sued by now. Even small patent trolls like Acacia, which filed the recent patent infringement suits this week against Novell and Red Hat, exercise their "rights" if they believe they have them. I am convinced that Microsoft has not filed its lawsuits because it is not sure that they have valid patent claims.
Again, I am an attorney, and if my clients have valid claims, I urge them to press their claims, and the sooner the better. Few lawsuits get better with time.
http://www.acaciaresearch.com/investors_contact.htm
Acacia Research Corp. - Acacia Technologies
500 Newport Center Drive, Seventh Floor
Newport Beach, CA 92660
Phone: 949-480-8300
So it doesn't look as it the company talks too much in its summary about actual businesses. Instead, the company does seem to derive most of its revenue from asserting IP claims, without actually building anything.
You wrote: k, thx!
There is a list of 1,573 people who have decided to call Microsoft's bluff by signing a list offering to be the first ones to be sued by Microsoft for supposedly "infringing" Microsoft's 235 patents. Although I am a lawyer, I don't practice Intellectual Property law, and so I am not rendering a legal opinion on this area. But as a practical matter, I can tell you that whenever I sue someone, I first send them a letter demanding payment, and then if they don't pay in short order, I do sue them. I am too busy on a day-to-day basis bluffing people, and those who think that real lawyers with real claims bluff people, they are dead wrong. Some day, someone is going to call your bluff, and maybe even sue you for falsely claiming that you have a right against them, so I advise my clients to think carefully about claiming in public that they can sue someone if, in fact, they have no true claims.
In this particular case, mere common sense would tell most practicing attorneys that if Microsoft had valid claims, it would simply start rolling out the lawsuits and collecting money. Think of all the copies of OpenOffice.org and GNU Linux that are drifting around the world!!! If Microsoft had valid claims against those the users or their distros, dontcha think that they would file suit against a really solid test case, and then trot out that case for everyone else in the world to see? Of course they would.
Here is a link to page 13 of the list:
http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php?title=SMFM_list_page_13
So I am not buying Microsoft's questionable claims, and I have signed up for the list. Let's put an end to this questionable puffery! Microsoft, if you have a claim against me, sue me now, or shut up! You can serve me with a lawsuit here:
Christian J. Einfeldt
Law Offices of Christian J. Einfeldt
580 California Street, Suite 1600
San Francisco, CA 94104
In your complaint, Microsoft, you will want to specify which programs I am using. I am using openSUSE GNU Linux 10.2; Edgy Kubuntu; OpenOffice.org is my only office productivity suite, and so when you file suite against me, you might really want to stick a finger in my asking for an order barring me from using OpenOffice.org to write my reply briefs, because that is the tool I use for all my court briefs. I am also using Firefox, which you have heavily borrowed from, so please be sure to throw that in.
Oh, and I have installed about 100 copies of GNU Linux, OpenOffice.org and Firefox on various different computers for a public middle school in San Francisco, and I have also given out about 16 computers with those programs installed on them. So be sure to add a couple of causes of action for that, Brad Smith.
Hey, don't forget the fact that I started the "Sue Me First, Microsoft" list, where I very publicly questioned the veracity of your claims, so you would do well to add a couple of counts of defamation, since I am publicly calling into question both the veracity of your claims and your motivation for merely making a public fuss, without proving your claims.
But of course, I have nothing to worry about, because your claims probably are defeated by 1) obviousness; 2) prior art; and 3) limitations on patenting math. After all, if Microsoft could have patented 1 + 1 = 2, you would have done so, wouldn't you?
You wrote: Thanks for the nice comment in that first sentence. With regard to portraying my work as a trend, I'm not sure that I did say anything that would say that such a trend existed. Please read the summary carefully. I said that getting a pre-installed FOSS box is now "straightforward." I said that I think that you made a good point there about protecting our credibility: Except that IMHO, I did not make any statement about a trend, other than the fact than, yes, there are now lots of vendors selling FOSS pre-installed. Since the number of FOSS vendors has increased, and the number of major vendors offering more than one product line with FOSS pre-installed, IMHO that *is* a trend.
So I appreciate the fact that you are trying to keep me honest. It is important that we in the FOSS community keep our standards of accuracy high. But IMHO, you are slightly off the mark here. I did not imply that the trend was in adoption per se, but I did state that there are more vendors. If you believe that where there is smoke there is fire, it might be reasonable to conclude either that 1) these FOSS vendors *are* selling more boxes, which is the cause for the proliferation of FOSS vendors and pre-installed product lines; or, 2) these FOSS vendors are *offering* FOSS boxes, but not *selling* them.
It is true that Dell has increased its offering of pre-installed Ubuntu. That was widely interpreted in the press as a sign that Dell was making sales on its initial product line offering. So, in this case, it seems as if there is sound empirical evidence to reasonably infer there were there is smoke (Dell's increased offerings) there must be fire (increased sales).
And yet your point is well-taken. We still have no publicly-available empirical evidence that sales are increasing.
In the final assessment, though, my point was that it is now possible for schools to use the California Microsoft Anti-trust Settlement Agreement (CMASA) to acquire free (as in beer) FOSS boxes. And I wanted to give people a few tips as to how to do that. And, most important, I wanted to gently urge people to spread the word about the availability of this program.
You wrote: This Microsoft Settlement Agreement is still in the early stages of disbursement. If Linux sys admins supporting schools don't know about the program, they can't take advantage of it. Of course, there is no budget in the settlement for advertising the settlement. So we, the FOSS community, need to do the public outreach ourselves. That's why I submitted this story to Slashdot.
You wrote: This program is still early. There is still time for other schools to use this program. Many FOSS vendors and school administrators and FOSS advocates might not know that this program exists. That is why I submitted this story to Slashdot. We need to get the word out. Slashdot is good at that.
So, Selfbain, if you would like to help make sure that 90%+ do NOT go back to Microsoft-based products, please feel free to send them to send them to the California State Education website to find out how they might be able to get some free FOSS computers.
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/et/st/etvfaq.asp
Equally important, send them to a FOSS vendor who has experience with the process of working under the Microsoft Anti-trust Settlement Agreement. I happen to know that Zareason.com has that experience, but System76 or TechCollective.com or EmperorLinux might also have serviced some California schools. Shop around.
You wrote: In an article which recently appeared here on Slashdot, Pamela Jones posted to Groklaw a link to an MP3 (MP3 warning) of a panel discussion of the negotiators for the parties to the Novell - Microsoft deal. One really interesting quip from about three-fourths of the way through the 1.5 hour discussion is an off-hand remark by one of the Microsoft reps to the extent that Microsoft claims to have the largest server farm west of the Rockies.
I thought that was an odd statement to make. But maybe it's true. After all, Microsoft runs Hotmail on Linux. At least that is what a Microsoft employee told me during a cable car ride on the California cable car line in San Francisco, which runs from near the foot of Market Street (San Francisco's main street) up the hill toward Van Ness on California Street. Supposedly, he took that cable car line to and from work every day, because Microsoft apparently has an office near Spear and Market in San Francisco, according to this guy.
At any rate to answer your question, there are apparently lots of Microsoft sys admins who are paid to work on Linux during the day. Well, and I'm sure that there are also plenty who are paid to work on Linux during the night, too. After, Microsoft isn't going to trust its mission-critical operations to anything other than the best. snicker.
@PPH
IIRC, your earlier post asserted that representations made on the Sue Me First, Microsoft list risked exposing all 1,571 people on that list (latest count) to criminal exposure for making misrepresentations to US federal officials. I'm sure that the representations from your personal experience to which you are referring where in the context of bids made to the US federal government, or in the context of other business transactions to the government.
I'm probably not sticking my neck out on a limb here by saying that statements made on the "Sue Me First, Microsoft" list are not representations made "to" federal officials. So I'm still not clear why you are going on about this issue. Exactly who is exposed to criminal penalty, and for doing what?
You said, What do you mean by "those people"? Do you mean the 1,570 people who signed up for the "Sue Me First, Microsoft" list?
And what do you mean by "officials"? Are you talking about elected officials? Appointed officials? Mere employees?
And what do you mean my misrepresentation? Are you talking about negligent misrepresentations as well as intentional misrepresentations?
And what about the element of harm or detrimental reliance? Most criminal statutes require some type of harm to follow from a misrepresentation for criminal sanctions to apply.
I am a lawyer, and I have to say that I am extremely skeptical of the strength of your opinion. If you could provide us with a citation to even one criminal case that remotely supports your opinion, I would be grateful. In the meantime, I remain highly doubtful of the credibility of your opinion, and even more gravely in doubt of your motives for posting such a questionable, unsupported opinion here.
That of the global population you are talking about, very few people "get" tech issues. And, of those who "get" tech issues, many are too busy to be able to go to a website that has had no commercial advertising at all and sign up to be sued. And out of evey 100 people, how many are willing to put their names up *anywhere* on the Internet, let alone include their email addresses? IMHO, 1568, now 1570, is pretty impressive.
At the present time, 1568 people from all over the globe have called Microsoft's bluff by signing up to be sued for "infringing" Microsoft's supposed "Intellectual Property" which is impacted by various open source technologies. If Microsoft does have valid claims, let them come forward with those claims. Otherwise, their validity of their claims are left gravely in doubt.
I mean, think about it. Consider the number of businesses uses FOSS today. The numbers are massive, and represent a huge paycheck for Microsoft, if it has valid claims. But since it probably has no valid claims, it is not going to press those specious claims for fear of losing, as did its proxy, SCO.
The URL is here:
http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php?title=SMFM_list_page_13
A collection of other Ballmer quips about open source is here.
Microsoft in no way shape or form accepts the existence of sharing source code or open source or Free Software. Anyone who believes to the contrary simply is new to the industry and is naive.
@circletimesquare:
I am producing a documentary about how Free Open Source Software is going to change world culture by shifting balance of trade between the developed and developing world and by teaching the power of collaboration as opposed to hoarding. The film is called the Digital Tipping Point. What tools did you use to do your funny horror movie linked in your sig line? We are looking for collaborators who use FOSS tools.
Sorry, I had to ask.
/. readers' hearts: penguin video!
Semi-seriously, imagine the applications for this technology. Trained crows getting shots of places that only crows can go. Imagine video of Ballmer chair throwing events, and other clandestine Microsoft sporting events visible currently only to crows. We don't want that kind of footage locked down in Microsoft Windows Media formats. We want to be able to exchange our crow footage easily via the Internet Archive, so that we can incorporate our crow footage into community-based video projects, such as the Internet Archive's Digital Tipping Point Video Collection, which uses Ogg Theora formats.
Soon, YouTube soon will be hosting crow video feed competitions. We don't want that precious footage locked down, either.
Which raises the next question, of course, and it is more near and dear to
and require Microsoft Windows to access it.
No thanks.
Just look at what Microsoft is planning to do with Office Live or whatever they are calling it. You need to have Microsoft Office installed locally on your HD. All you are storing is your data. GNU Linux OSes probably won't even be able to run WINE to access those Office Live files. So even if they don't actually charge to access the data, it extends their reach into your life.
James Burgett was featured on the front page of Digg.com, where he got 2906 diggs for his blog entry about his dispute with the government (spam warning: I dugg that story). James has subsequently told me that he and the government are working things out. He is not entirely satisfied with the government's approach, but at least he will be able to continue operating his excellent Ubuntu box giveaway program. So it seems as if the attention from the popular media (Digg in that case) has taught the government that James was doing something that was sufficiently meaningful to the community that the regulators should really try to work with him. His fans in the community will continue to watch his operation to make sure that if the government does exercise poor discretion in its oversight of his operation, at least we can give them an earful.
Full disclosure: I do not work with / for James or CNN. I do volunteer for a public middle school in San Francisco, California that benefited from a donation of 30 Ubuntu fat clients for our Linux chubby terminal lab.