>> do you think nature has perfected certain tasks and that its engineering can not be surprassed [sic]?
My, yes. The human body!
The human body? Well, most any organism would be just as good an example. Engineering is no where near the efficiency and capabilities of, say, a housecat (in both perception and action).
Sorry, but isn't a little absurd, and likely judgmental, to mention TWICE in the abstract that the fire was started by a homeless person?
I agree that twice looks a little suspicious (and how do they even know how the fire started?), but my guess is that they are trying to make it perfectly clear that it wasn't one of their own that caused the failure. That is, it wasn't a fire started by someone using Internet2, so they aren't directly to blame (but might be to blame for inadequate preparations for such events, I really don't know).
$500 is only the price for the initial model at the initial launch. Cheaper models will appear later, and the price for all models will go down after time. The complaint that '$500 is too much' is meaningless in the long term.
I am of course only one person, but I voted on the Ideastorm website and I will definitely buy a Dell laptop with Ubuntu, once they become available (that is, assuming it doesn't cost significantly more than a Windows one). All I want is a decent laptop at a decent price to run Ubuntu on, with all the hardware configured and working. If Dell sells that, I'm buying.
As someone that lives in Israel, let me say, I am not surprised at all that it's on the list. What is ironic though is that there are so many IT companies here. This seems to show that you don't need strong IP laws to maintain a strong IT industry. Although, granted, most sales of Israeli IT companies are overseas; I don't know what proportion go to strong-IP-law countries, though.
So if I make a copy of, say, Linux that has a "patent-infringing" software in it, am I liable for violating the patent, or is the author of the software? Or are both of us, if we're in the US?
If (big if) I understand the ruling, then making a copy isn't infringement at all, for anyone. The point of the ruling was that software in itself is just information, not a 'component', and not patentable. However, if you install software on a computer, the final result - a working version of the software on a physical computer - may infringe on patents. So, Microsoft were ruled able to legally distribute copies of Windows which is patent-encumbered.
It would seem that mere distribution of software is therefore not liable to patent lawsuits. So ftping or bittorrenting patented code appears fine, which is, incidentally, not a bad thing for FOSS servers hosting such content.
However, reading the decision itself, things appear far trickier. For example it is critical that the copies installed are not those that are exported, i.e., Microsoft exports a single 'master' CD, which is then duplicated and installed on actual PCs. But this would be easy enough to do (create an intermediary copy) if necessary to avoid lawsuits.
Now I'm waiting for another research showing that the intake of vitamin D causes some other serious illness...
So typical.
You are wise to be skeptical of such reports, but unwise if you disregard them completely. Yes, medical history is full of contradictions to previously known nutritional 'facts', and this one may be falsified in time as well. Yet, each case should be considered on its merits, not by some blanket "other research will show the opposite, so let's ignore them all".
Specifically, this vitamin D hypothesis has data backing it up (60% is a startlingly high number, but this will have to be replicated), as well as making sense on other levels (vitamin D levels have been dropping for various reasons stated in TFA). So this hypothesis is certainly one to watch.
The news is that Microsoft couldn't get Windows to run on it without getting the OLPC project to increase their hardware specs, and instead of just telling Microsoft to go jump, they compromised and now the laptop is going to cost more.
I may be getting dyslexic in my old age, but I don't see that in any of TFAs. Can you supply a quote? Yes, the price is going up, but because of Microsoft?
This is not news, despite the Slashdot headline and the ZDNet blog saying otherwise. Quite a while back we already heard from Negroponte that they had given some OLPC hardware to Microsoft, and that Microsoft was working on getting Windows to work on it. So this is not news in the simplest possible sense. Did anyone doubt that Microsoft would succeed in getting Windows to work on an OLPC? Of course not.
The question is not whether the OLPC can run Windows. The question is what OS will actually be used, which depends on the nations buying OLPCs. Last I heard it was too soon to tell about such details.
I believe I experienced some of this breakage personally.
Yesterday the "bookmarks" area on my Google personalized homepage appeared blank, as if I lost all my bookmarks. I was a little concerned. Today it reappeared, with all my data intact. So, for me at least, just a temporary glitch.
Adobe is putting small pieces on Linux (and other OSS), just when they feel attacked by MS.
Reality isn't headlines on Slashdot (there goes my karma). Yes, we recently had a story about Microsoft's new supposed "Adobe-killer" technology. But it is extremely doubtful that this is related to Adobe's actions as mentioned in the current story. For one, actions such as this are planned far in advance. Also, ActionScript was already in the process of being open-sourced; Adobe simply see OSS as part of their overall strategy. So open-sourcing the Flex SDK is in all likelihood not a knee-jerk reaction to very recent actions of Microsoft.
There would be absolutely no reason for Microsoft to port Win32 on top of Linux. The NT kernel is more than capable as the OS.
The (current) NT kernel is quite reasonable, but that does not imply your conclusion, that Microsoft have no reason to replace it with the Linux kernel. Let's say that they are equally capable for sake of argument, still, Linux can be used by Microsoft at no cost. Maintaining the NT kernel all by themselves is expensive.
(Of course there are other factors here, I just mentioned one.)
First [you, the USA] export your manufacturing labour. Now you're exporting your brains. WTF do you think you're going to do for business in the future?
Easy question. There is one industry that is extremely successful and has no current risk of being outsourced. I am speaking of course of the entertainment industry, mainly hollywood (music has more overseas competition, for what hollywood produces, there isn't much). The Chinese may build the TVs, but US actors will be appearing on many of them.
Prior art is irrelevant to these people. In the Alcatel Lucent case MS believed they had legitimately licensed the patents they were later sued over
Umm, what? What is the connection between prior art and the supposed 'belief' Microsoft had that they did have a license?
Prior art can be used to invalidate a patent (or prevent it being issued in the first place). The Microsoft-Alacatel case wasn't about that. It was that Microsoft had a patent license from Fraunhofer, but the issue at hand - MP3s - consists of various functionalities (recording, playback, streaming, etc.), only a few of which were covered by Fraunhofer patents. Other functionalities were covered by Alcatel patents. Therefore Microsoft lost. It doesn't matter that Microsoft 'believed' they had a patent license, what matters is if they actually had a license to all relevant patents. The court ruled that they didn't.
Anyhow, regarding TFA, it is always good to see an article in a mainstream financial publication (Forbes) that is critical of patent trolling.
1. A license for the patent at $10 million.
2. A settlement, without admission of guilt, for $20 million.
Obviously the first is better for Apple and the litigating party (less cost for Apple, more chances to sue other people for the litigating party).
Actually I think things are even more complicated. You can't just 'settle' a patent infringement case. Say that you pay them $X to stop the current lawsuit. What is to stop them from suing you again tomorrow? The only thing would be an agreement for them not to sue you later on. Such an agreement - not to sue you for using a patent of theirs - is, in fact, a patent license agreement, in essence, I believe.
You've got the right idea. Yes, they can sue any modern desktop or web browser. Their strategy appears to be to get a small settlement (only several million) from Apple, who might prefer that to a lawsuit that might cost just as much (and in which they might lose). Then, given that settlement, they can go after bigger fish, like, say, Microsoft, and demand much larger sums of money, while saying that the industry (i.e. Apple, a prominent member in that industry) has already acknowledged their patent as being valid. Not that they need the industry's seal of approval, but it can be of help.
Quantum mechanics is an actual scientific theory based on empirical evidence, it's the interpretation of it that quickly gets into the whole area of "philosophy, but with complex equations".
You are 100% right that QM is a scientific theory. But, to say that only the 'interpretation' of QM brings us into the realm of philosophy is perhaps somewhat inaccurate. The distinction between a 'theory' and its 'interpretation' is not that clear.
In particular, theories are judged based on what you might call 'philosophical' notions. And in fact, the great physicists - Newton, etc. - all had very deep philosophical ideas about their theories (although those are perhaps less well-known).
As an example, we now consider Newton's law of gravity to be correct (up to relativistic considerations). Yet, at the time, many thought this to be philosophical nonsense. For what is gravity - it is 'action at a distance', with no mechanism! When a billiard ball hits another, the operation of force is clear, but why should some force exist between two billiard balls far apart? This is pretty much the same issue as the 'nonlocality' issue with QM. It took quite a lot of convincing to get the scientific world to agree with Newton's 'action at a distance', and the discussion was both practical (numbers, experiments) and 'philosophical' (how it fits into the rest of the current picture of 'reality' at the time).
Anyhow, just trying to point out that science and philosophy are not disconnected. As science gets more specialized, it may seem so, since scientists don't get any philosophical training these days (they used to, though!).
Israel is a US/UN holding in the middle east. Israel was formed for the exact purpose of the US and other allied nations to have a base of operations in the middle east. Israel was artificial established (they did not establish themselves but were rather set up by foreign powers).
What, what and what?
Israel did have some foreign backing - UN vote, some arms shipments - but it basically fought its way to existence in 1947-48. It formed itself, nobody 'formed it' for any purpose. Now, it might serve some purpose for other people, in their eyes, but that is true of any relationship between states. True, there are Western interests that are aided by the existence of Israel (and things against their interests, to be sure). But Israel - for better or for worse - was founded with (soon-to-be) Israeli blood (today, in fact, is the Israeli remembrance day for their fallen soldiers). Not 'artifically'. They certainly did establish themselves, no-one did it for them.
We signed a looong lease before the revolution. If we tried to buy land in Cuba now to build a base, Castro would say "no way." But he's bound to honor the old agreement.
Bound? Not in his own eyes. Castro has long claimed the lease was invalid. If he had a military option, he might take it - but of course he doesn't. So it remains in US hands.
No. If Microsoft buy them that will just motivate other small companies to do the same. This is just the same as the SCO-IBM lawsuit - IBM's best play is to sue SCO into the ground. Expect Microsoft to likewise fight in the courts to the best of their ability. They have plenty of money to waste.
Yup, smarter until they turn old, lonely and empty - seeking solace in finding the perfect toy for their cats, the best clothes for their dogs or some other trivial pursuit with utmost seriousness.
It is interesting to speculate about what those 'trivial pursuits' might be for the current generation (and next ones), when they get old enough. Perhaps the internet? For example, a blogging 13-year-old today may be tomorrow's blogging 90-year-old-spinster. That is, meaningless time spent on pets can be replaced with meaningless time spent on the internet.
What's better for lonely old people, pets or the internet? I don't know. But I hope they still have Slashdot in 30 years, when I am a retired lonely old person (I don't like cleaning litter boxes, and barring hell freezing over, I will be childless and unmarried).
I don't understand what the companies signing these deals are thinking. It seems like suicide to me. You sign the deal, and MS agrees not to sue you for awhile. But eventually you have to re-sign the deal, and MS can dictate whatever terms they want... because if you don't sign the deal, you won't be able to distribute Linux anymore?
If that is suicidal, then Microsoft is suicidal as well. Remember, the Microsoft-Novell deal is symmetrical (I am less sure about the Microsoft-Samsung deal) - the covenant is for patents on both sides. In 5 years (or whatever), the covenant expires. According to what you said above, Microsoft can dictate terms to Novell, or else they can't distribute Linux. But then the same goes in reverse; Novell can dictate terms or else Microsoft can't distribute Windows (Novell, remember has plenty of patents, and juicy ones). In fact Microsoft have more to lose, since they have more income.
This isn't Microsoft planning to eradicate Novell in 5 years, or anyone else. The plan is much simpler - Microsoft want to get money for Linux. If Linux is going to be a long-term, powerful force in computing, Microsoft want 'in'. They can make their own distro, and perhaps one day they will; meanwhile, they prefer to fight against Linux officially, but make money from it at the same time. In addition, by making Linux cost money (for patent licenses), Microsoft hope to remove some of its low-cost advantage over Windows.
It supports BOTH platforms. Windows AND Mac. How much better can it get?
;) Indeed.
This got me to thinking, though - they support Mac. Perhaps that could be leveraged into Linux support somehow? I mean, Macs have a BSD-like basis, and a neat set of well-documented Mac APIs on top of it (Cocoa, etc.). How hard would it be to take a Silverlight runtime and write a 'wrapper' (an emulation layer, perhaps like WINE but on a much smaller scale) to get it to work on Linux?
Something tells me the problems might not all be technical. The Silverlight's Mac version's EULA will probably say something like "You may only use this software on Apple Macintosh computers running OSX".
(But then, Novell have this 'interoperability' arrangement with Microsoft, don't they? They're already implementing Microsoft's.Net on Linux, perhaps they'll implement Silverlight as well? That might be amusing/interesting.)
Slashdot Mirror
I am of course only one person, but I voted on the Ideastorm website and I will definitely buy a Dell laptop with Ubuntu, once they become available (that is, assuming it doesn't cost significantly more than a Windows one). All I want is a decent laptop at a decent price to run Ubuntu on, with all the hardware configured and working. If Dell sells that, I'm buying.
As someone that lives in Israel, let me say, I am not surprised at all that it's on the list. What is ironic though is that there are so many IT companies here. This seems to show that you don't need strong IP laws to maintain a strong IT industry. Although, granted, most sales of Israeli IT companies are overseas; I don't know what proportion go to strong-IP-law countries, though.
It would seem that mere distribution of software is therefore not liable to patent lawsuits. So ftping or bittorrenting patented code appears fine, which is, incidentally, not a bad thing for FOSS servers hosting such content.
However, reading the decision itself, things appear far trickier. For example it is critical that the copies installed are not those that are exported, i.e., Microsoft exports a single 'master' CD, which is then duplicated and installed on actual PCs. But this would be easy enough to do (create an intermediary copy) if necessary to avoid lawsuits.
Specifically, this vitamin D hypothesis has data backing it up (60% is a startlingly high number, but this will have to be replicated), as well as making sense on other levels (vitamin D levels have been dropping for various reasons stated in TFA). So this hypothesis is certainly one to watch.
Thank you for that update. So in fact there is no real news in this item, good.
This is not news, despite the Slashdot headline and the ZDNet blog saying otherwise. Quite a while back we already heard from Negroponte that they had given some OLPC hardware to Microsoft, and that Microsoft was working on getting Windows to work on it. So this is not news in the simplest possible sense. Did anyone doubt that Microsoft would succeed in getting Windows to work on an OLPC? Of course not.
The question is not whether the OLPC can run Windows. The question is what OS will actually be used, which depends on the nations buying OLPCs. Last I heard it was too soon to tell about such details.
I believe I experienced some of this breakage personally.
Yesterday the "bookmarks" area on my Google personalized homepage appeared blank, as if I lost all my bookmarks. I was a little concerned. Today it reappeared, with all my data intact. So, for me at least, just a temporary glitch.
(Of course there are other factors here, I just mentioned one.)
Prior art can be used to invalidate a patent (or prevent it being issued in the first place). The Microsoft-Alacatel case wasn't about that. It was that Microsoft had a patent license from Fraunhofer, but the issue at hand - MP3s - consists of various functionalities (recording, playback, streaming, etc.), only a few of which were covered by Fraunhofer patents. Other functionalities were covered by Alcatel patents. Therefore Microsoft lost. It doesn't matter that Microsoft 'believed' they had a patent license, what matters is if they actually had a license to all relevant patents. The court ruled that they didn't.
Anyhow, regarding TFA, it is always good to see an article in a mainstream financial publication (Forbes) that is critical of patent trolling.
Apple may be given two options:
1. A license for the patent at $10 million.
2. A settlement, without admission of guilt, for $20 million.
Obviously the first is better for Apple and the litigating party (less cost for Apple, more chances to sue other people for the litigating party).
Actually I think things are even more complicated. You can't just 'settle' a patent infringement case. Say that you pay them $X to stop the current lawsuit. What is to stop them from suing you again tomorrow? The only thing would be an agreement for them not to sue you later on. Such an agreement - not to sue you for using a patent of theirs - is, in fact, a patent license agreement, in essence, I believe.
(IANAL)
You've got the right idea. Yes, they can sue any modern desktop or web browser. Their strategy appears to be to get a small settlement (only several million) from Apple, who might prefer that to a lawsuit that might cost just as much (and in which they might lose). Then, given that settlement, they can go after bigger fish, like, say, Microsoft, and demand much larger sums of money, while saying that the industry (i.e. Apple, a prominent member in that industry) has already acknowledged their patent as being valid. Not that they need the industry's seal of approval, but it can be of help.
In particular, theories are judged based on what you might call 'philosophical' notions. And in fact, the great physicists - Newton, etc. - all had very deep philosophical ideas about their theories (although those are perhaps less well-known).
As an example, we now consider Newton's law of gravity to be correct (up to relativistic considerations). Yet, at the time, many thought this to be philosophical nonsense. For what is gravity - it is 'action at a distance', with no mechanism! When a billiard ball hits another, the operation of force is clear, but why should some force exist between two billiard balls far apart? This is pretty much the same issue as the 'nonlocality' issue with QM. It took quite a lot of convincing to get the scientific world to agree with Newton's 'action at a distance', and the discussion was both practical (numbers, experiments) and 'philosophical' (how it fits into the rest of the current picture of 'reality' at the time).
Anyhow, just trying to point out that science and philosophy are not disconnected. As science gets more specialized, it may seem so, since scientists don't get any philosophical training these days (they used to, though!).
I mentioned the UN decision (there was also the Balfour statement as background). But it is meaningless if you are destroyed by force.
Israel is a US/UN holding in the middle east. Israel was formed for the exact purpose of the US and other allied nations to have a base of operations in the middle east. Israel was artificial established (they did not establish themselves but were rather set up by foreign powers).
What, what and what?
Israel did have some foreign backing - UN vote, some arms shipments - but it basically fought its way to existence in 1947-48. It formed itself, nobody 'formed it' for any purpose. Now, it might serve some purpose for other people, in their eyes, but that is true of any relationship between states. True, there are Western interests that are aided by the existence of Israel (and things against their interests, to be sure). But Israel - for better or for worse - was founded with (soon-to-be) Israeli blood (today, in fact, is the Israeli remembrance day for their fallen soldiers). Not 'artifically'. They certainly did establish themselves, no-one did it for them.
We signed a looong lease before the revolution. If we tried to buy land in Cuba now to build a base, Castro would say "no way." But he's bound to honor the old agreement.
Bound? Not in his own eyes. Castro has long claimed the lease was invalid. If he had a military option, he might take it - but of course he doesn't. So it remains in US hands.
No. If Microsoft buy them that will just motivate other small companies to do the same. This is just the same as the SCO-IBM lawsuit - IBM's best play is to sue SCO into the ground. Expect Microsoft to likewise fight in the courts to the best of their ability. They have plenty of money to waste.
What's better for lonely old people, pets or the internet? I don't know. But I hope they still have Slashdot in 30 years, when I am a retired lonely old person (I don't like cleaning litter boxes, and barring hell freezing over, I will be childless and unmarried).
If that is suicidal, then Microsoft is suicidal as well. Remember, the Microsoft-Novell deal is symmetrical (I am less sure about the Microsoft-Samsung deal) - the covenant is for patents on both sides. In 5 years (or whatever), the covenant expires. According to what you said above, Microsoft can dictate terms to Novell, or else they can't distribute Linux. But then the same goes in reverse; Novell can dictate terms or else Microsoft can't distribute Windows (Novell, remember has plenty of patents, and juicy ones). In fact Microsoft have more to lose, since they have more income.
This isn't Microsoft planning to eradicate Novell in 5 years, or anyone else. The plan is much simpler - Microsoft want to get money for Linux. If Linux is going to be a long-term, powerful force in computing, Microsoft want 'in'. They can make their own distro, and perhaps one day they will; meanwhile, they prefer to fight against Linux officially, but make money from it at the same time. In addition, by making Linux cost money (for patent licenses), Microsoft hope to remove some of its low-cost advantage over Windows.
This got me to thinking, though - they support Mac. Perhaps that could be leveraged into Linux support somehow? I mean, Macs have a BSD-like basis, and a neat set of well-documented Mac APIs on top of it (Cocoa, etc.). How hard would it be to take a Silverlight runtime and write a 'wrapper' (an emulation layer, perhaps like WINE but on a much smaller scale) to get it to work on Linux?
Something tells me the problems might not all be technical. The Silverlight's Mac version's EULA will probably say something like "You may only use this software on Apple Macintosh computers running OSX".
(But then, Novell have this 'interoperability' arrangement with Microsoft, don't they? They're already implementing Microsoft's