Does anyone still believe MS really has a patent that can affect Linux that hard? There should be tons of Unix and similar O.S. from the 70's to nuke any patent. Every supposed patent MS tries to show will get scrutinized and destroyed in no time. As long as we can see them, of course. How can your judicial system allow for a patent based suit, which includes a government granted monopoly, with the option for the plaintiff NOT disclosing the exact terms supposedly being infringed? If the company received a monopoly grant if also receives some obligations, not only rights.
The reason companies are signing patent agreements with MS is that it's painfully expensive to defend from a patent infringement suit and even more to invalidate a patent. So the cost to pay for each product is relatively small comparing to the millions spent on a trial. Look at the bill of costs from Google in Oracle vs Google: 4 million dollars on only DIRECT expenses, not counting time, bad image and so on.
This system cannot survive as it is, no new tech will ever be developed at USA (which is almost the case now), leaving USA as only leeches of other countries technology advances. If that happens, somewhere in time the other countries will stop paying USA for doing nothing, ACTA like treaties will be declared void and USA will reach a new low. No one will keep paying for rectangular shaped with round corners patents forever.
My hope is that the sanity prevails in short-to-medium time, cause it's already affecting all the economy, not only the USA. Can't you see the storm coming? This system is only making lawyers rich, the cost is growing for every one.
Why would we accept a monopoly on some natural thing just because someone spent some money on something?
Patents should never be allowed to genes, even if someone spent the whole stock of money of the plant.
Just to begin, it's not an INVENTION, so a patent should not be allowed at all.
I'm not against all patents, but patents on genes, software and business process are ridiculous. This demonstration of greed without limits should not be rewarded.
Someone really understand what a patent is for even with all this media lobby-paid propaganda trying to blur the real intent of patents.
It's taking the less of two evils (monopoly vs not advancing the science), with some action from the State in conceding a monopoly (temporary), against all indications that a monopoly is bad for the society, in exchange for the precise explanation of a meaningful advance of the science, so all the society will benefit from that technology later, which would not be the case without the disclosure.
Congratulations for a concise, clear, dispassionate and correct view of patents.
I think this kids' parents will soon face a mass lawsuit of some kind for a bogus patent on "making things on your own - with a computer" and have the choice of paying the college fund to an Intellectual Ventures-like patent troll or be processed at the cost of the all the family have and only them they'll understand that their country is so rotten.
If USA can't understand they are going to destroy themselves, better do it fast, so it can't spread too much to the rest of the world. Time for big corporations push the M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction) patent war so we can all watch the decline of science and innovation on USA (and soon EU) for the bad of the world. When you are spending more very hard earned money on lawyers instead of R&D, something is so twisted that is almost beyond repair.
What a destiny to an once admired country for its freedom, incentive to creativity and innovation. Now you can't even create a web site without stepping on 1-click-like patents.
Seriously, are you really suggesting we believe in Florian Muller? My head is spinning so hard now...
He is always wrong, his predictions always fail, his doom day alerts never ever got close to happening but you still suggest we hear from him?
F/RAND is not for agressors and they are not law, just some community/gentlemen deal. You sue me, I'll be no gentlemen to you.
As a rule, if Florian Muller puts his name on something, it's fake, outright lie or simple PR regurgitated, never the truth. As long as I've seen his comments and articles, he never got it right and he is not starting now.
That said, Apple is the AGRESSOR, others are just fighting back. Apple patents are as new and innovative as the act of moving forward using the legs.
Apple has the best overall product when you consider all factors like usability, design and so on, but nothing "NEW" on the sense that it carries a revolution. All the technology they used where developed a long time ago, they just rehashed them (very well) to a well rounded solution that achieved mass penetration. Point to Apple. But that's all. 100% of their "innovation" is combining other ones technologies and making a reasonably good product and marketing it as the best thing under the sun. Some believe and buy, as long as it's not my money, I'm ok with it. But point me to a single technology DEVELOPED at Apple that impacted the tech world like the mouse did or like graphic interface did (both from Xerox PARC), other than their first Apple computers (I owned an Apple II and it was great).
Apple fear competition as much as a vampire (classic one) fears the sun. When exposed to competition, they freak out and sue. They always did it and they will not learn unless someone makes them learn the hard way.
So, yes, Apple deserves to taste it's own medicine so someone can teach them a lesson on competition based on merits, not on beligerance.
I did not know Mr. Mick but I've read the text and the comments and they are not much different from slashdot's post and comments.
Google now can spend 1 or 2 billion buying some anti-patent legislation (like MS bought a law months ago) and destroy 4.5 billion of his enemies (and even regain some "Don't be evil" karma), all with one smart move. This could even protect them from other expensive and baseless suits in the future and, as a bonus, mock at Apple and MS for their futile expenditure. Talk about money well spent.
Can someone please stop this patent madness and resume innovation? Please? Can't USA see that it's hurting so much more than helping (if it helps)? If it would affect only USA, I would be the first to say "go on" but it hurts all the world, even if indirectly.
That's what the 1:100 or 1:1000 (or whatever ratio) ratio for the deposit should be for. US$ 10000.00 for a possible income of 10,000,000 seems acceptable to me. Since actual court system is already a casino, why not take it literally and transform it on a bet?
And it can be temporary, until someone figure how to fix the laws to not allow this abuse.
How can you ever allow this to happen? The least a court can do is to disbar the lawyers, followed by a class action from all the offended to the amount of 10X the amount demanded by RightRaven. It would even be in the interest of the justice since a LOT less "adventurers of the new judicial business model" (MAFIA?) would be interested in losing all their possesions, including the underwear.
There has to have a way to rebalance the court system in USA or else there will be all kind of problems. Justice can't be a weapon against competition, even less against potential customers.
I made a proposition once that the plaintiff should have to make a deposit of at least half the value demanded and if they lose, that money would go the defendant to pay defense costs and if something is left, half would be donated to charity, half back to the plaintiff. I foresee that only very meritful claims would ever arrive at civil court because the risk of losing. Seems crazy, but less crazier than actual system that only tilts to big corporations or the bullies. The judge would need to make some factor to preserve the little guy (like a 1:100 or 1:1000 deposit proportion) so the big one loses more.
The other alternatives are: troll lawyers hunting season; civil disobedience (thousands of sites doing similar things hosted on russia servers, better yet with disposable domain names and/or some very sarcastic ones); voting right next time. Every one of this has some drawbacks, but alternative 1 would be the funniest if made legal. The most effective (and harder) is the last one.
Flávio CNOPEBR21
PS: If the hunting season gets approved I expect to be invited to the party as an observer:)
We need a volunteer from those shouting out loud "chicken" for an easy solution: do something to attract the wrath of Sony, publish it and wait for Sony to sue. Than ask Hotz to send whatever was left of the defense fund to this volunteer and get the train rolling again. You can even ask for more defense fund, noone will refrain to help you.
This volunteer can then sacrifice himself for the cause. Reward for that will be constant travelling to California, endless depositions, subpoenas, investigations, motions, being named as a criminal on the entire press, losing all your money, including your house, car, computers, videogames, all that to face a judge that already judged for an enterprise in a similar case, in a state that has one of the most unbalanced laws (favoring enterprises, of course) to criminalize hacking (the good word). WOW!! What a vision of the new life!
We promise to pray for you when Big Third Leg Joe calls you in his jail cell for a more intimate talk late of the night. You'll be a hero for the next 2 months after conviction, after then all attention shifts to the next freaking cool videogame or new line of processors or even some crazy youtube video of the day (you can't expect us to remember you forever).
(Or at least do as Florian, get paid for doing it)
Guys, can't you see a bogus claim whenerver you see it? Using header files for developing userland software IS allowed by GPL without being necessary to license the application code as GPL. EXPLICITLY!!!!
Please stop spreading FUD or igniting another BSD x GPL x Proprietary flame war. It is a disservice to us all and a service to the puppet master: Microsoft.
Please read Groklaw (www.groklaw.net) for much more deep and accurate analysis and trust yourself to decide what is wrong or not but AFTER reading about it, not just a comment from a MS paid apologist. Or at least wait for Eben Moglen to talk about it, HE knows GPL more than almost all other living beings.
So please calm down. Just because some stooge screamed FIRE on the theather, look to see if some smoke really appears before creating more havoc than the first stooge started.
If you do want to continue spreading this stuff, at least try to get a job from MS for doing it, make it at least cost them a lot instead of doing their job for free.
So what? Linux vendors would do exactly the same thing. Who is to say which OS is safer for example? It entirely depends on what metric you use to measure it.
No, Linux vendors would claim theirs OS is safer but they would not bribe (or "give outrageous discounts just get close to almost zero price") another company on spreading it's point of view. MS is free to claim Windows is safer/better/the best thing since sliced bread. Like you said, it can be a point of view but they should at least try to present their case as why they think their software is safer/better/the best thing since sliced bread.
I don't blame Microsoft for selling their products. That is what a software company SHOULD do. The only reason these are "stories" is because people [incorrectly] feel Linux is a community effort and that any attack on Linux is an attack on this community. But when you look at the people who donate MOST Linux code you'll quickly discover that Linux is about as community as Windows is...
So really this is just a slam at the Linux Vendors who have the cash to answer it...
I think this is a lesson on "How to distort the reality". No one cares where the Linux code comes from as long as the code abides to the license and do not try to bend the license terms out of context. This is not what this is all about. People will blame MS not for trying to sell their software (they are encouraged to sell their software) but to have to bribe, lie or tell half-truths to be able to undermine their competition, leaving only their software to be bought/acquired. More precisely (being less polite) abusing it's monopolist position. Why they can't just compete like anyone else, promoting what their software is good for and not trying to get competition out of business with questionable tactics. Only MS gains from it: consumer/user gets screwed (no competition = higher prices and less innovation) and the competition obviously gets screwed.
USA should stop citing "it's all capitalism as it should be" cause it's not. Capitalism says monopolies are bad cause they distort the market. And no bad action can use the excuse of "business as usual", as the companies with better governance and ethics are always the ones that resist more time on market.
But do not forget the 945 chipset eats energy like there is no tomorrow, so combine Atom (~4W)+ 945 (~24W) and then compare to AMD + AMD Chipset and they end like almost same (even favoring AMD a bit) power envelope but AMD will be much more powerful. 945GC eats a little less but only because better idle control.
Even Intel acknowledges it and is using a new chipset will far less consumption, but still with very weak video.
ION plataform is powerful with video but eats almost same power than 945 chipset.
Ok, let me explain some things: yes, I used genius word wrongly, should be "genie" (in portuguese they are translated to the same word, sorry).
Second: about USA position as being the bigger influencer and/or attacker since WWII. Can you just count WWI as 1 conflict and count all big conflicts that happened from WWII up to today? I was trying to say that almost every conflict from 1945 to now has USA deeply entrenched or playing behind curtains. Say Vietnan, Korea, Iraq (2 times), Israel, Lebanon (helping Israel), Afghanistan (2 times), Cold War (ok, not a conflict, just almost one, god bless), and whatever conflict you choose (with exception to some tribe conflicts on Africa). Are you sure any other nation, even old Soviet Union or new Russia or Israel can stand above USA in this infamous dispute?
Ok, let's see: Vietnan started as a French conflict, but USA got there (objective: get mineral resources); Afghanistan started with Russia but USA got there to counter all the influence from Russia (Cold War) and got there again after some towers got down; Kuwait (I was forgetting it) got invaded by Iraq and USA (wanting to ensure oil would not get too expensive and to keep it available) got there; then, after some towers got down, USA decide it was time to fake some reports and go after Iraq again (to get all oil this time); Nicaragua, Panama and Grenada was there just to counter URSS. See, not even the Soviets could ever get close to USA. And I did not count all Israel backing on every conflict they got involved. Like I said, every major conflict known to us has USA in some "privileged" position or playing "World Police" (see North Korea, Libia and a lot of others).
My intention was to show that a paranoid state is not a good response but an expected one from a country that made a lot of enemies and consider eveyone as potential enemy. The better response should not be "every stranger is a potential terrorist" but "let's try to smooth things out" with everyone you can. Good faith and a real demonstration of change can make wonders in destroying terrorist arguments that USA is the representative of Satan on earth (an argument used a lot by terrorists). People all over the world got on USA side cause they were the victims on 09/11 events. The terrorists got arguments of being victims (at least for the population they wanted to influence) when Iraq got attacked for nothing more than oil greed, for example.
I'm not on the side of the terrorists in any way, they are wrong on every aspect, in my opinion. What I'm trying to show is that excluding all the world and making everyone suspicious of trying to destroy USA is not the answer. You can get your wish granted (by a GENIE or by everyone else) and people just exclude USA too. Bad for everyone, worse for USA.
Sorry for any other language or expression error I did, english is NOT my main language (brazilian portuguese is, for reference).
Brazil and Argentina have historical disputes over who is the "best" on South America. Obviously it leads to some funny jokes on either side.
One closely related to USA auto induced paranioa state of mind says that an "argentino" and a "brasileiro" found a lamp. The argentino rubbed the lamp first but the brasileiro hold the lamp for him to do it. A genius emerged and saw the problem immediately: he could not grant 3 wishes, one of them would get 2 wishes and other 1. So he granted 2 wishes, one for each of them. Since the argentino rubbed the lamp first, he wished a great wall would appear on all Argentina frontiers so they could be isolated from the bad interference of their neighbors, being Argentina the greatest nation of all. Wish granted, the genius made a wall one mile high around all Argentina. Next the genius asked the brazilian what was his wish. He asked the genius before anything if the Argentina's wall was really high and resistant. The genius answered that nothing could break that wall. The brasileiro asked immediately: fill it with water.
USA is almost asking for problems when they think all the world want to attck them when USA is the most common attacker or influencer on all wars from World War II and later. They must take care with what they wish: it can be granted.
I think I've read something similar but I can't remember where or when so it's not all my idea:
Any patent infringement suit should be accompained with a deposit of 1/3 of the value you seek. Only then the suit would go on. If you win, you receive your money back plus the value the judge stipulates (at maximum the value you proposed initially) and accused party need to stop selling or license the patent; if you loose, your money goes to the accused party and you still need to indemnify the court and lawyers of the accused party.
This way it's like a poker bet: you may even bluff but someone can call your bluff and you'll pay. The 1/3 part is to protect the little guy that had a real patent violated by a big guy. But It will make patent trolls really worried cause they will now have to limit their bluffs or risk losing all their money.
I bet no patent troll could survive this troll hostile environment. If their patent is so good, they would win a first trial for a lesser value, accuse a second one for more money and go on. Any violating party would have an incentive to settle off-court. But a bad patent would mean a high cost upfront to their extortion schema. And a loss would really impact them.
FWKnop can use signed GPG keys to authenticate both sides (if one side does not match, no open ports). It can pass parameters inside the one package it uses (and it's just one package). Seems more productive and safer. And it only opens the port to service (SSH) which still has it's own security.
To the critics: it's not STO (security through obscurity) as it's not the only form of security. It's called Concealment, it hides the service that have it's own security, it's another layer of protection (much better than password only). FWknop can be time based so it also can suffer from problems with sync but it's an option, not imposed.
The solution proposed in the article is not STO also. The security relies on the password/certificates/whatever authentication SSH uses. It's somethink like One-Time access Port, to compare to One-Time Password.
The proposed solution has some troubles to account for (time) but can also be a promising kind of concealment solution.
Everyone here talks about comparing an aging mainframe with lots of new Dells. Surely enough the Dells tend to beat the old mainframe hands down. It's not only about performance it's cost/benefit relation that is interesting.
What is wrong is saying that a new model "9999 PLUS HYPER SUPER" could beat those 120 Dells to the floor anytime. Sure they can but they cost like 1200 Dells during the same period. That's what we need to calculate before doing anything. The article says that to go to a NEW mainframe would cost so much more than the grid AND would still keep is less flexible. I'm OK with that wording, it's the reality I see.
I've seen grids like this (100+ blade PCs) swipe the floor with some very new models of the mainframes costing ridiculosuly more. I'm talking 5 to 10 times less price for the PCs to do the same job. It all depends on what you want to do but a well designed application can take a grid to the stars. A bad designed one (Polk one really looks very bad) may just work or be slower than an aging mainframe. And a 120 node grid surely can beat that aging mainframe orders of magnitude more than a 70% improvement.
That said, mainframes have their place. For big batch like jobs it's the winner hands down. It was created to be like that. I believe online/realtime processing is not their primary job but in some cases can be too. Reliability? Wins hands down too, for each processor you have a mirror one that calculates the same thing and compares the results to map out faulty processors. It's desinged to run 24/7/365 and normally suceeds doing that.
But you can achieve a similar kind of reliability with grids because of redundancy of the nodes. There is no problem that one of those nodes breaks, you always have more than one doing the same job. Performance may suffer for a while when it's a small number of nodes doing that job but you can eventually replace it and everything keeps going. A grid CAN run 24/7/365 easier than a mainframe cause you can selectively stop some nodes, replace or repair it and restart it without affecting the entire system. Using this strategy you can even replace everything from the hardware to the software without stop (stop half of the nodes, change everythind needed, restart them, stop other half and do the same). It's more difficult to do that on a mainframe.
I still need to be show that the cost/benefit of a mainframe surpasses a grid except in very limited cases. Maybe I'm just misinformed. I would like to learn more.
Just for extending your knowledge of Brazil, PSDB (Social Democrats) is NOT the elected federal government party. PT (Workers Party) is (reelected). So it's not a government project, it's from the oposition. Not that the government would dislike this kind of new power.
Eduardo Azeredo has been involved in a corruption scandal that involves a lot of parties (also PT is involved). And the last of all, an election just ended and is very unprobable that this kind of project gets voted before next march, if it ever gets voted. This is just to show the political scenario.
All said, I don't think this project can withstand even a little pressure so it's better to start pressuring your reelected and newly elected brazilian representatives. Just to be sure.
Nope. Imagine a voting machine. Would you like to have someone to know the votes casted in that machine cause someone stole or messed or just had access to the machine? I would not like it, for sure.
Or would you love to have a ATM easily hackable to someone put a keylogger/trojan there so he can have all your banking passwords along with complete card data enough for an atacker rebuild a fake card with everything working perfectly (and your bank account going down real fast)?
I could continue on that for an enormous amount of time but I would really love that your comment would be just a joke. If USA was not so important (in military terms) and without crazy enough people in command to really think they are the blessed ones that need to conquer the world to impose their (lack of) vision, I would say that the rest of the world just encrypted anything with an algorithm that USA would not be allowed to use and we would really see if encryption was not usefull. But half the USA citizens blindly believe on these lies and the other half doesn't care even to know about it and I don't know which is worse.
I don't want a government saying what I can do with MY files. They are mine. It's not government business if I'm storing all the emails I wrote to some women I may be seeing in parallel of my wedding (just joking, hope wife does not believe in it, it's a joke), it's not their business also if someone store the medical receipts of their anti-AIDS cocktail in an easily searchable file for reference, it's not their business to access any private file we have. Sure, crime can be registered in these files and we would never have access to it and ease a prosecution but crime is just a very SMALL percentage of the activities that happens in the world, not the norm. The exception cannot govern the norm, it's basic as that.
Man, that kind of comment about hoping government access people files is creeping, too much orwellian for my taste.
I remember lots of protests against globalisation and the same organizations and govenments saying it was the next best thing after sliced bread, innevitable and lots of nice adjectives. Now that they have to compete they arrange schemes to screw^H^H^H^H^H "differentiate" the markets? "Do what we say, not what we do" anyone?
Not running as admin is all that matters? Not so.
on
XP2 Spotted In The Wild
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
People just conveniently forgot that running as a common user does NOT guarantee that a malicious app does not runs as admin (or SYSTEM, more precisely). IIS, RPC, Messenger, lots of others run as a service with SYSTEM privileges. If you do attack it and find any vulnerability then you can run your malicious code as SYSTEM as well.
Sure, running as ADMIN is almost stupid and multiplies your chances of being 0wned by large. But its not the only source of being 0wned as people said above. As long as I remember, IIS (along with Sendmail, Bind, IE and some others) where considered the worst software in terms of security in the SANS Institute list. Break-ins are common in these softwares and would grant you good priviledges for doing some nasty things.
Just to be fair the same can happen in Linux/Unix but it's a bit less easy to do it. And you can always run an UserMode Linux, for example, and host the application inside it which would turn the host system almost invunerable and this is quite difficult to do in Windows (I can only think of VMWARE). Normally people are a little better educated to not use root in daily use and every installation program of recent distros explicit says it.
Come on people, are we so paranoid that we cannot understand a parody anymore? Don't get so serious, it was one of the most fun thing I've read in a long time. And we get angry when they call us "zealots". Our advantage over the rest is that we are FREE to mock up ourselves (and mock with others, for sure) and this "paper" was amazingly competent in doing that.
Good job! I do expect people realize it's unique "point of view".
I really doubt anyone can say right now that USA is the Land of Freedom anymore. How can it be that people don't understand that giving away rights for security doesn't work. You loose rights AND security, with freedom also in the pack. Creepy vision of the future, the nation that says it will "defend freedom anywhere" is not free, how can it "save" the other nations from not beeing free? Really weird.
I know it's been mentioned lots of times. But I can't resist:
Brazil voting system Just Works (TM). Ask Mexico, they used it last elections. Ask Paraguai. Ask here in Brazil. We have more than 100 million voters and still can give results in a matter of hours. And the system is highly secure. Not that I endorse the multitude of problems our political system has, only the voting system (technologically) is very well done.
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone still believe MS really has a patent that can affect Linux that hard? There should be tons of Unix and similar O.S. from the 70's to nuke any patent. Every supposed patent MS tries to show will get scrutinized and destroyed in no time. As long as we can see them, of course. How can your judicial system allow for a patent based suit, which includes a government granted monopoly, with the option for the plaintiff NOT disclosing the exact terms supposedly being infringed? If the company received a monopoly grant if also receives some obligations, not only rights.
The reason companies are signing patent agreements with MS is that it's painfully expensive to defend from a patent infringement suit and even more to invalidate a patent. So the cost to pay for each product is relatively small comparing to the millions spent on a trial. Look at the bill of costs from Google in Oracle vs Google: 4 million dollars on only DIRECT expenses, not counting time, bad image and so on.
This system cannot survive as it is, no new tech will ever be developed at USA (which is almost the case now), leaving USA as only leeches of other countries technology advances. If that happens, somewhere in time the other countries will stop paying USA for doing nothing, ACTA like treaties will be declared void and USA will reach a new low. No one will keep paying for rectangular shaped with round corners patents forever.
My hope is that the sanity prevails in short-to-medium time, cause it's already affecting all the economy, not only the USA. Can't you see the storm coming? This system is only making lawyers rich, the cost is growing for every one.
Flavio
Why would we accept a monopoly on some natural thing just because someone spent some money on something?
Patents should never be allowed to genes, even if someone spent the whole stock of money of the plant.
Just to begin, it's not an INVENTION, so a patent should not be allowed at all.
I'm not against all patents, but patents on genes, software and business process are ridiculous. This demonstration of greed without limits should not be rewarded.
Flavio
FreeNAS can use ZFS for aggregating multiples drives, independent of size, technology etc, all with varying degrees of protection.
It's by far the best solution to your case.
Flavio
I'm shocked!
Someone really understand what a patent is for even with all this media lobby-paid propaganda trying to blur the real intent of patents.
It's taking the less of two evils (monopoly vs not advancing the science), with some action from the State in conceding a monopoly (temporary), against all indications that a monopoly is bad for the society, in exchange for the precise explanation of a meaningful advance of the science, so all the society will benefit from that technology later, which would not be the case without the disclosure.
Congratulations for a concise, clear, dispassionate and correct view of patents.
Flavio
I think this kids' parents will soon face a mass lawsuit of some kind for a bogus patent on "making things on your own - with a computer" and have the choice of paying the college fund to an Intellectual Ventures-like patent troll or be processed at the cost of the all the family have and only them they'll understand that their country is so rotten.
If USA can't understand they are going to destroy themselves, better do it fast, so it can't spread too much to the rest of the world. Time for big corporations push the M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction) patent war so we can all watch the decline of science and innovation on USA (and soon EU) for the bad of the world. When you are spending more very hard earned money on lawyers instead of R&D, something is so twisted that is almost beyond repair.
What a destiny to an once admired country for its freedom, incentive to creativity and innovation. Now you can't even create a web site without stepping on 1-click-like patents.
On the the Halloween theme, R.I.P. USA.
Seriously, are you really suggesting we believe in Florian Muller? My head is spinning so hard now ...
He is always wrong, his predictions always fail, his doom day alerts never ever got close to happening but you still suggest we hear from him?
F/RAND is not for agressors and they are not law, just some community/gentlemen deal. You sue me, I'll be no gentlemen to you.
As a rule, if Florian Muller puts his name on something, it's fake, outright lie or simple PR regurgitated, never the truth. As long as I've seen his comments and articles, he never got it right and he is not starting now.
That said, Apple is the AGRESSOR, others are just fighting back. Apple patents are as new and innovative as the act of moving forward using the legs.
Apple has the best overall product when you consider all factors like usability, design and so on, but nothing "NEW" on the sense that it carries a revolution. All the technology they used where developed a long time ago, they just rehashed them (very well) to a well rounded solution that achieved mass penetration. Point to Apple. But that's all. 100% of their "innovation" is combining other ones technologies and making a reasonably good product and marketing it as the best thing under the sun. Some believe and buy, as long as it's not my money, I'm ok with it. But point me to a single technology DEVELOPED at Apple that impacted the tech world like the mouse did or like graphic interface did (both from Xerox PARC), other than their first Apple computers (I owned an Apple II and it was great).
Apple fear competition as much as a vampire (classic one) fears the sun. When exposed to competition, they freak out and sue. They always did it and they will not learn unless someone makes them learn the hard way.
So, yes, Apple deserves to taste it's own medicine so someone can teach them a lesson on competition based on merits, not on beligerance.
I did not know Mr. Mick but I've read the text and the comments and they are not much different from slashdot's post and comments.
Flavio
Google now can spend 1 or 2 billion buying some anti-patent legislation (like MS bought a law months ago) and destroy 4.5 billion of his enemies (and even regain some "Don't be evil" karma), all with one smart move. This could even protect them from other expensive and baseless suits in the future and, as a bonus, mock at Apple and MS for their futile expenditure. Talk about money well spent.
Can someone please stop this patent madness and resume innovation? Please? Can't USA see that it's hurting so much more than helping (if it helps)? If it would affect only USA, I would be the first to say "go on" but it hurts all the world, even if indirectly.
That's what the 1:100 or 1:1000 (or whatever ratio) ratio for the deposit should be for. US$ 10000.00 for a possible income of 10,000,000 seems acceptable to me. Since actual court system is already a casino, why not take it literally and transform it on a bet?
And it can be temporary, until someone figure how to fix the laws to not allow this abuse.
Fellow North Americans,
How can you ever allow this to happen? The least a court can do is to disbar the lawyers, followed by a class action from all the offended to the amount of 10X the amount demanded by RightRaven. It would even be in the interest of the justice since a LOT less "adventurers of the new judicial business model" (MAFIA?) would be interested in losing all their possesions, including the underwear.
There has to have a way to rebalance the court system in USA or else there will be all kind of problems. Justice can't be a weapon against competition, even less against potential customers.
I made a proposition once that the plaintiff should have to make a deposit of at least half the value demanded and if they lose, that money would go the defendant to pay defense costs and if something is left, half would be donated to charity, half back to the plaintiff. I foresee that only very meritful claims would ever arrive at civil court because the risk of losing. Seems crazy, but less crazier than actual system that only tilts to big corporations or the bullies. The judge would need to make some factor to preserve the little guy (like a 1:100 or 1:1000 deposit proportion) so the big one loses more.
The other alternatives are: troll lawyers hunting season; civil disobedience (thousands of sites doing similar things hosted on russia servers, better yet with disposable domain names and/or some very sarcastic ones); voting right next time. Every one of this has some drawbacks, but alternative 1 would be the funniest if made legal. The most effective (and harder) is the last one.
Flávio
CNOPEBR21
PS: If the hunting season gets approved I expect to be invited to the party as an observer :)
We need a volunteer from those shouting out loud "chicken" for an easy solution: do something to attract the wrath of Sony, publish it and wait for Sony to sue. Than ask Hotz to send whatever was left of the defense fund to this volunteer and get the train rolling again. You can even ask for more defense fund, noone will refrain to help you.
This volunteer can then sacrifice himself for the cause. Reward for that will be constant travelling to California, endless depositions, subpoenas, investigations, motions, being named as a criminal on the entire press, losing all your money, including your house, car, computers, videogames, all that to face a judge that already judged for an enterprise in a similar case, in a state that has one of the most unbalanced laws (favoring enterprises, of course) to criminalize hacking (the good word). WOW!! What a vision of the new life!
We promise to pray for you when Big Third Leg Joe calls you in his jail cell for a more intimate talk late of the night. You'll be a hero for the next 2 months after conviction, after then all attention shifts to the next freaking cool videogame or new line of processors or even some crazy youtube video of the day (you can't expect us to remember you forever).
Volunteers? No? Anyone ...
If you desire, use SARCASM tag as you wish.
Flavio
(Or at least do as Florian, get paid for doing it)
Guys, can't you see a bogus claim whenerver you see it? Using header files for developing userland software IS allowed by GPL without being necessary to license the application code as GPL. EXPLICITLY!!!!
Please stop spreading FUD or igniting another BSD x GPL x Proprietary flame war. It is a disservice to us all and a service to the puppet master: Microsoft.
Please read Groklaw (www.groklaw.net) for much more deep and accurate analysis and trust yourself to decide what is wrong or not but AFTER reading about it, not just a comment from a MS paid apologist. Or at least wait for Eben Moglen to talk about it, HE knows GPL more than almost all other living beings.
So please calm down. Just because some stooge screamed FIRE on the theather, look to see if some smoke really appears before creating more havoc than the first stooge started.
If you do want to continue spreading this stuff, at least try to get a job from MS for doing it, make it at least cost them a lot instead of doing their job for free.
So what?
Linux vendors would do exactly the same thing. Who is to say which OS is safer for example? It entirely depends on what metric you use to measure it.
No, Linux vendors would claim theirs OS is safer but they would not bribe (or "give outrageous discounts just get close to almost zero price") another company on spreading it's point of view. MS is free to claim Windows is safer/better/the best thing since sliced bread. Like you said, it can be a point of view but they should at least try to present their case as why they think their software is safer/better/the best thing since sliced bread.
I don't blame Microsoft for selling their products. That is what a software company SHOULD do. The only reason these are "stories" is because people [incorrectly] feel Linux is a community effort and that any attack on Linux is an attack on this community. But when you look at the people who donate MOST Linux code you'll quickly discover that Linux is about as community as Windows is...
So really this is just a slam at the Linux Vendors who have the cash to answer it...
I think this is a lesson on "How to distort the reality". No one cares where the Linux code comes from as long as the code abides to the license and do not try to bend the license terms out of context. This is not what this is all about. People will blame MS not for trying to sell their software (they are encouraged to sell their software) but to have to bribe, lie or tell half-truths to be able to undermine their competition, leaving only their software to be bought/acquired. More precisely (being less polite) abusing it's monopolist position. Why they can't just compete like anyone else, promoting what their software is good for and not trying to get competition out of business with questionable tactics. Only MS gains from it: consumer/user gets screwed (no competition = higher prices and less innovation) and the competition obviously gets screwed.
USA should stop citing "it's all capitalism as it should be" cause it's not. Capitalism says monopolies are bad cause they distort the market. And no bad action can use the excuse of "business as usual", as the companies with better governance and ethics are always the ones that resist more time on market.
But do not forget the 945 chipset eats energy like there is no tomorrow, so combine Atom (~4W)+ 945 (~24W) and then compare to AMD + AMD Chipset and they end like almost same (even favoring AMD a bit) power envelope but AMD will be much more powerful. 945GC eats a little less but only because better idle control.
Even Intel acknowledges it and is using a new chipset will far less consumption, but still with very weak video.
ION plataform is powerful with video but eats almost same power than 945 chipset.
Ok, let me explain some things: yes, I used genius word wrongly, should be "genie" (in portuguese they are translated to the same word, sorry).
Second: about USA position as being the bigger influencer and/or attacker since WWII. Can you just count WWI as 1 conflict and count all big conflicts that happened from WWII up to today? I was trying to say that almost every conflict from 1945 to now has USA deeply entrenched or playing behind curtains. Say Vietnan, Korea, Iraq (2 times), Israel, Lebanon (helping Israel), Afghanistan (2 times), Cold War (ok, not a conflict, just almost one, god bless), and whatever conflict you choose (with exception to some tribe conflicts on Africa). Are you sure any other nation, even old Soviet Union or new Russia or Israel can stand above USA in this infamous dispute?
Ok, let's see: Vietnan started as a French conflict, but USA got there (objective: get mineral resources); Afghanistan started with Russia but USA got there to counter all the influence from Russia (Cold War) and got there again after some towers got down; Kuwait (I was forgetting it) got invaded by Iraq and USA (wanting to ensure oil would not get too expensive and to keep it available) got there; then, after some towers got down, USA decide it was time to fake some reports and go after Iraq again (to get all oil this time); Nicaragua, Panama and Grenada was there just to counter URSS. See, not even the Soviets could ever get close to USA. And I did not count all Israel backing on every conflict they got involved. Like I said, every major conflict known to us has USA in some "privileged" position or playing "World Police" (see North Korea, Libia and a lot of others).
My intention was to show that a paranoid state is not a good response but an expected one from a country that made a lot of enemies and consider eveyone as potential enemy. The better response should not be "every stranger is a potential terrorist" but "let's try to smooth things out" with everyone you can. Good faith and a real demonstration of change can make wonders in destroying terrorist arguments that USA is the representative of Satan on earth (an argument used a lot by terrorists). People all over the world got on USA side cause they were the victims on 09/11 events. The terrorists got arguments of being victims (at least for the population they wanted to influence) when Iraq got attacked for nothing more than oil greed, for example.
I'm not on the side of the terrorists in any way, they are wrong on every aspect, in my opinion. What I'm trying to show is that excluding all the world and making everyone suspicious of trying to destroy USA is not the answer. You can get your wish granted (by a GENIE or by everyone else) and people just exclude USA too. Bad for everyone, worse for USA.
Sorry for any other language or expression error I did, english is NOT my main language (brazilian portuguese is, for reference).
Brazil and Argentina have historical disputes over who is the "best" on South America. Obviously it leads to some funny jokes on either side.
One closely related to USA auto induced paranioa state of mind says that an "argentino" and a "brasileiro" found a lamp. The argentino rubbed the lamp first but the brasileiro hold the lamp for him to do it. A genius emerged and saw the problem immediately: he could not grant 3 wishes, one of them would get 2 wishes and other 1. So he granted 2 wishes, one for each of them. Since the argentino rubbed the lamp first, he wished a great wall would appear on all Argentina frontiers so they could be isolated from the bad interference of their neighbors, being Argentina the greatest nation of all. Wish granted, the genius made a wall one mile high around all Argentina. Next the genius asked the brazilian what was his wish. He asked the genius before anything if the Argentina's wall was really high and resistant. The genius answered that nothing could break that wall. The brasileiro asked immediately: fill it with water.
USA is almost asking for problems when they think all the world want to attck them when USA is the most common attacker or influencer on all wars from World War II and later. They must take care with what they wish: it can be granted.
Disclaimer: I'm brazilian, so the joke is biased.
I think I've read something similar but I can't remember where or when so it's not all my idea:
Any patent infringement suit should be accompained with a deposit of 1/3 of the value you seek. Only then the suit would go on. If you win, you receive your money back plus the value the judge stipulates (at maximum the value you proposed initially) and accused party need to stop selling or license the patent; if you loose, your money goes to the accused party and you still need to indemnify the court and lawyers of the accused party.
This way it's like a poker bet: you may even bluff but someone can call your bluff and you'll pay. The 1/3 part is to protect the little guy that had a real patent violated by a big guy. But It will make patent trolls really worried cause they will now have to limit their bluffs or risk losing all their money.
I bet no patent troll could survive this troll hostile environment. If their patent is so good, they would win a first trial for a lesser value, accuse a second one for more money and go on. Any violating party would have an incentive to settle off-court. But a bad patent would mean a high cost upfront to their extortion schema. And a loss would really impact them.
Just my humble suggestion.
FWKnop can use signed GPG keys to authenticate both sides (if one side does not match, no open ports). It can pass parameters inside the one package it uses (and it's just one package). Seems more productive and safer. And it only opens the port to service (SSH) which still has it's own security.
To the critics: it's not STO (security through obscurity) as it's not the only form of security. It's called Concealment, it hides the service that have it's own security, it's another layer of protection (much better than password only). FWknop can be time based so it also can suffer from problems with sync but it's an option, not imposed.
The solution proposed in the article is not STO also. The security relies on the password/certificates/whatever authentication SSH uses. It's somethink like One-Time access Port, to compare to One-Time Password.
The proposed solution has some troubles to account for (time) but can also be a promising kind of concealment solution.
Everyone here talks about comparing an aging mainframe with lots of new Dells. Surely enough the Dells tend to beat the old mainframe hands down. It's not only about performance it's cost/benefit relation that is interesting.
What is wrong is saying that a new model "9999 PLUS HYPER SUPER" could beat those 120 Dells to the floor anytime. Sure they can but they cost like 1200 Dells during the same period. That's what we need to calculate before doing anything. The article says that to go to a NEW mainframe would cost so much more than the grid AND would still keep is less flexible. I'm OK with that wording, it's the reality I see.
I've seen grids like this (100+ blade PCs) swipe the floor with some very new models of the mainframes costing ridiculosuly more. I'm talking 5 to 10 times less price for the PCs to do the same job. It all depends on what you want to do but a well designed application can take a grid to the stars. A bad designed one (Polk one really looks very bad) may just work or be slower than an aging mainframe. And a 120 node grid surely can beat that aging mainframe orders of magnitude more than a 70% improvement.
That said, mainframes have their place. For big batch like jobs it's the winner hands down. It was created to be like that. I believe online/realtime processing is not their primary job but in some cases can be too. Reliability? Wins hands down too, for each processor you have a mirror one that calculates the same thing and compares the results to map out faulty processors. It's desinged to run 24/7/365 and normally suceeds doing that.
But you can achieve a similar kind of reliability with grids because of redundancy of the nodes. There is no problem that one of those nodes breaks, you always have more than one doing the same job. Performance may suffer for a while when it's a small number of nodes doing that job but you can eventually replace it and everything keeps going. A grid CAN run 24/7/365 easier than a mainframe cause you can selectively stop some nodes, replace or repair it and restart it without affecting the entire system. Using this strategy you can even replace everything from the hardware to the software without stop (stop half of the nodes, change everythind needed, restart them, stop other half and do the same). It's more difficult to do that on a mainframe.
I still need to be show that the cost/benefit of a mainframe surpasses a grid except in very limited cases. Maybe I'm just misinformed. I would like to learn more.
Just for extending your knowledge of Brazil, PSDB (Social Democrats) is NOT the elected federal government party. PT (Workers Party) is (reelected). So it's not a government project, it's from the oposition. Not that the government would dislike this kind of new power.
Eduardo Azeredo has been involved in a corruption scandal that involves a lot of parties (also PT is involved). And the last of all, an election just ended and is very unprobable that this kind of project gets voted before next march, if it ever gets voted. This is just to show the political scenario.
All said, I don't think this project can withstand even a little pressure so it's better to start pressuring your reelected and newly elected brazilian representatives. Just to be sure.
Nope. Imagine a voting machine. Would you like to have someone to know the votes casted in that machine cause someone stole or messed or just had access to the machine? I would not like it, for sure.
Or would you love to have a ATM easily hackable to someone put a keylogger/trojan there so he can have all your banking passwords along with complete card data enough for an atacker rebuild a fake card with everything working perfectly (and your bank account going down real fast)?
I could continue on that for an enormous amount of time but I would really love that your comment would be just a joke. If USA was not so important (in military terms) and without crazy enough people in command to really think they are the blessed ones that need to conquer the world to impose their (lack of) vision, I would say that the rest of the world just encrypted anything with an algorithm that USA would not be allowed to use and we would really see if encryption was not usefull. But half the USA citizens blindly believe on these lies and the other half doesn't care even to know about it and I don't know which is worse.
I don't want a government saying what I can do with MY files. They are mine. It's not government business if I'm storing all the emails I wrote to some women I may be seeing in parallel of my wedding (just joking, hope wife does not believe in it, it's a joke), it's not their business also if someone store the medical receipts of their anti-AIDS cocktail in an easily searchable file for reference, it's not their business to access any private file we have. Sure, crime can be registered in these files and we would never have access to it and ease a prosecution but crime is just a very SMALL percentage of the activities that happens in the world, not the norm. The exception cannot govern the norm, it's basic as that.
Man, that kind of comment about hoping government access people files is creeping, too much orwellian for my taste.
I remember lots of protests against globalisation and the same organizations and govenments saying it was the next best thing after sliced bread, innevitable and lots of nice adjectives. Now that they have to compete they arrange schemes to screw^H^H^H^H^H "differentiate" the markets? "Do what we say, not what we do" anyone?
People just conveniently forgot that running as a common user does NOT guarantee that a malicious app does not runs as admin (or SYSTEM, more precisely). IIS, RPC, Messenger, lots of others run as a service with SYSTEM privileges. If you do attack it and find any vulnerability then you can run your malicious code as SYSTEM as well.
Sure, running as ADMIN is almost stupid and multiplies your chances of being 0wned by large. But its not the only source of being 0wned as people said above. As long as I remember, IIS (along with Sendmail, Bind, IE and some others) where considered the worst software in terms of security in the SANS Institute list. Break-ins are common in these softwares and would grant you good priviledges for doing some nasty things.
Just to be fair the same can happen in Linux/Unix but it's a bit less easy to do it. And you can always run an UserMode Linux, for example, and host the application inside it which would turn the host system almost invunerable and this is quite difficult to do in Windows (I can only think of VMWARE). Normally people are a little better educated to not use root in daily use and every installation program of recent distros explicit says it.
Come on people, are we so paranoid that we cannot understand a parody anymore? Don't get so serious, it was one of the most fun thing I've read in a long time. And we get angry when they call us "zealots". Our advantage over the rest is that we are FREE to mock up ourselves (and mock with others, for sure) and this "paper" was amazingly competent in doing that.
Good job! I do expect people realize it's unique "point of view".
I really doubt anyone can say right now that USA is the Land of Freedom anymore. How can it be that people don't understand that giving away rights for security doesn't work. You loose rights AND security, with freedom also in the pack.
Creepy vision of the future, the nation that says it will "defend freedom anywhere" is not free, how can it "save" the other nations from not beeing free? Really weird.
I know it's been mentioned lots of times. But I can't resist:
Brazil voting system Just Works (TM). Ask Mexico, they used it last elections. Ask Paraguai. Ask here in Brazil. We have more than 100 million voters and still can give results in a matter of hours. And the system is highly secure. Not that I endorse the multitude of problems our political system has, only the voting system (technologically) is very well done.
Flávio Machado