It was a good run. Seriously-- once MS decides to push you out of the market, you're as good as dead.
[5 excellent examples]
True, but the world has changed since most of those examples. For example, Microsoft is losing (quite dramatically) to Apple in the mp3player market. Also, Microsoft is losing market share to Firefox (but not fatally so, not yet at least).
What does this have to do with VMWare? Well, they should learn that competing on Microsoft's turf is doomed to fail; that is what happened in your 5 examples. That turf is 'proprietary commodity software'. Facing Microsoft there is virtual suicide. But, change the scenery, and the rules are different: VMWare can open-source their product, making it free (similary to Xen and VirtualBox); that is what allows Firefox to survive. Or, VMWare can provide something that Microsoft simply cannot, which is what (arguably) Apple are doing with the iPod (usability, style). In the virtualization world, 'something that Microsoft cannot supply' might be good performance with Linux; many environments are mixed Linux and Windows, yet Microsoft might not want to let their own virtualization offering work well with Linux. Recent deals with Xen and Novell indicate *possibly* otherwise, however, which is bad news for VMWare.
But it just so happens that Iran is *in fact* on the verge of developing nuclear weapons.
Well, that isn't a proven fact, it is a claim made by various intelligence agencies. Iran denies it. Now, it might be true, but we are in 2007 now, and I recall being told Iran would be a nuclear power 'by 2000', then basically every year it was 'a year away' or so. After all that, I am somewhat skeptical.
Not that efforts shouldn't be made to ascertain whether they are close to developing nuclear weapons - they should. And actions should be done to prevent them from developing said weapons. But we shouldn't take for granted that it is a *fact* that they have such a program, nor that that program is nearly complete.
I agree that bringing a libel suit to completion would be nearly impossible. But it could hit Microsoft with some court orders and would probably be a good opportunity for exposing some embarrasing evidence (TCO studies, anyone?)
You make a good point, I didn't consider that. Also, with Microsoft representatives on the stand, they would have to answer questions under oath - such as "what patents do you believe Linux infringes on?", and so forth. So I agree, even if such a lawsuit goes nowhere, good could come out of it.
Well, actually yes, you can sue a car rental agency for using cars that infringe on your patents. If the car is infringing, then both people that sell it and people that use it are in violation. (IANAL, but that is my understanding from all I have read.)
This is the reason for 'indemnification', such as e.g. Red Hat and Oracle offer. If an end-user is sued for patent infringement, then the vendor steps in.
The thing I find odd is that most of the advanced civilizations were in Mexico and S. America, rather than from the North.
From what I have read, the North was less suitable for large, settled-down civilizations, in terms of food sources and climate. This led to the nomadic lifestyle of the population in the North. Since in general nomadic cultures produce less in the way of technological advances (less free time, basically), this would account for much of the difference.
There were also simply less people in the North than the rest of the Americas, I seem to recall reading (again related to less viable crops and such), but I am not 100% sure. Perhaps someone knows about this?
It's not a cervical cancer vaccine. It's an HPV vaccine. Notably, it protects men from contracting and spreading HPV -- so calling it a cancer vaccine is more than passively dishonest, it's actively evil if it fools men into thinking that the vaccine is just for women.
Well, the same strains of HPV that cause cervical cancer in women can cause penile cancer in men - albeit far more rarely. Also, there is growing evidence that they can also cause oral cancer in both sexes, although again, this is far more rare than cervical cancer. And HPV can cause other things than cancer (but generally not the cancer-causing strains, though).
So on the one hand I agree with you that "cervical cancer vaccine" isn't accurate; it annoyed me when I read TFA. Yet, the prime purpose of the vaccine (even though as you and I say it has other purposes) is to fight cervical cancer, hence perhaps this is a more convenient name. I could go either way. In any case, the important thing would be to educate the public about these matters, so that as you say men won't be mistaken in thinking they have nothing to do with this vaccine.
Trademarks can suffer from abandonment, but copyrighted and patented code cannot. However, if Microsoft keeps talking publicly about the existence of infringing code without revealing what it is, they are very vulnerable to libel suits. A big libel suit between Microsoft and FSF of EFF could be interesting, anc could be very costly for Microsoft.
I think libel suits are very unlikely - the libel here is debatable, and going up against Ballmer's lawyers for such a reason is probably a waste of resources. Yet, by publicly demanding that Microsoft reveal the infringed-upon patents (not necessarily the code, which the website focuses on), at least one thing is gained: should a lawsuit occur, the defendant will be able to prove that the infringement, should any be discovered, was most certainly not willful, i.e., that they made every possible effort to ensure that they were operating legally. This would at least significantly reduce the potential monetary loss.
What keeps companies from Eolas out of suing Linux vendors is there's no money.
There is plenty of money in Linux. Novell and Red Hat have plenty of money. So does IBM, which does lots of Linux-related business. Oracle is now also into Linux. Any of these could be sued.
There are other reasons why they aren't sued: (1) there is less money than that gained by suing Microsoft, and (2) any such lawsuit has costs and risks, in particular of opening up the patent to further scrutiny. After striking gold with Microsoft, why risk that by being greedy? (This is one reason why Alcatel-Lucent may stop after winning their $1.5 billion this week, but time will tell.)
Everybody seems to be overlooking the 'we can rip this service out from under you at anytime we feel like it' and the 'we can impose arbitrary restrictions on your use at anytime we choose'.
Actually the same goes for people using MS Office. Microsoft can decide not to patch some flaw that essentially makes MS Office unusable for certain people (due to security reasons, for example). Microsoft can also raise the prices for updates to where it isn't cost-effective for many of their clients. They can 'push' updates that reduce functionality. In theory.
In practice, both Google and Microsoft won't do such things, because (1) 'ripping the service out from under clients' (as you well put it) just isn't good business, and (2) contracts. A contract with Google will ensure a certain service for some-odd years, just like a contract with Microsoft. No more, and no less.
However, you are 100% right about both of them - even if it is unlikely that these doomsday scenarios occur, they are possible. Entrusting your IT over to Google (by hosting it on their servers) or to Microsoft (by running their closed-source programs, and in addition being locked-in to them) is somewhat a 'leap of faith'. For those that value their personal autonomy, there are really only two options: in-house development, which is completely impractical for 99% of organizations, or using open-source software (as people reading this know already).
Yet, the Microsoft and Google solutions will, I predict, continue to draw the vast majority of businesses: Microsoft are already entrenched, and Google are so ridiculously cheap it seems a crime not to use their service.
Returning to the original point, however, I still don't see what the GP post was referring to. Perhaps Europeans demolished Spanish Islam, but the vast majority of Islam was not in Spain. Therefore I don't see how Europe can be blamed for the decline of Islam. What I am really curious about are the reasons for that decline, and I have never really read a good explanation.
Yes, that is true (indeed 1492 was an eventful year for that area...). But it only relates to Islam in Spain, not in general. Are there other examples of this?
Unfortunately their civilisation was destroyed by a European power under the aegis of the Catholic Church.
(Honest question, not trolling:) I am curious, where in history do you see this occurring? Enlightenment times? By the British Empire (but they weren't Catholic)? Or later during the 20th century?
Making a weapon requires foresight into the possible effects they may have. I seriously doubt chimps have such cognitive skills. I'm willing to be it was learned behavior from another chimp, where the original chimp was a pet that learned it from a tribe's man.
I think you are suffering from the common mistake that 'intelligent' outcomes require intelligent thought processes. However, this is not necessarily so. For example, one bored chimp could have been just playing around, wasting his time, when by chance he skewered a bush baby with a stick. Then others might copy him.
As pointed out by cognitive researchers, the crucial issue is not necessarily the ability to generate the rare useful behavior; rather, the crucial issue is to repeat it. Chimpanzees certainly have that basic capacity, to repeat behavior they see in other chimpanzees. "Money see, monkey do" - that may in fact be the basis for intelligent cultural knowledge.
For another example of such things, see e.g. Genetic Algorithms in machine learning.
What we have learned to date is that Microsoft will never have to pay anything like this kind of penalty. Even if they are guilty, they have already demonstrated their ability to heap appeal on top of appeal until many years from now, technology advancements will have moved the goal posts, effectively rendering the original claim irrelevant.
They have payed fines in the past.
Even if they do manage to avoid paying a particular fine by years of lawyering, that costs a lot of money as well, so this only mitigates the cost - it doesn't eliminate it. Although, granted, compared to $1.5 billion the lawyer's fees are going to seem paltry.
Microsoft stockholders read the news of "$1.5B fine" and are dismayed. This can cause an effective loss if the stock goes down.
The cost savings isn't what its cracked up to be either, since the cost is $50 per employee, per year. It seems like Microsoft is about 4-5 years between major releases, so your cost is $200-$250 per seat for 4-5 years.
The costs mentioned in TFA(s) are estimates. No one really knows what the average cost is to enterprises, since the deals with Microsoft aren't usually public. These are the best figures that analysts have. They were per-year, though, not per-release, so your objection isn't valid in that respect (but you can of course question the analyst's estimates, since as I said no one really knows).
Thing is, that is precisely what the three parties (MS, AT&T and the court) agree on. Software is not patentable. Actually TFA is a fascinating read, with all the details of the intricacies of the argument.
If I understood it right, no-one is claiming software is patentable. The judges explicitly state that fact, and the lawyers agree. What they are saying, is the far more delicate argument that certain things are patentable, and those things may have software as part of them. For example, you cannot patent a picture compression algorithm. But, you can patent a 'type of camera', which would use the algorithm. Using the algorithm by itself in a completely different type of application area might not be patent infringement; using the algorithm in a competing camera would. But it would be infringing on the patent consisting of a 'type of camera', not a software patent.
At least that is what I understand from TFA. Actually it made me wonder if the layperson understanding (including my own, until TFA) of 'software patents' is similar to the layperson understanding of neurosurgery, i.e., perhaps us non-lawyers simply have no idea whatsoever.
My conclusion: I should read more in-depth reports that include direct quotes from supreme court sessions, and less one-paragraph summaries on tech sites.
-- As an alternative to viewing the pictures, he could have just read emails, diary entries, etc.
You don't find the thought that that alone would be enough for a warrant disturbing in and of itself?
Yes, that is disturbing (actually several things are disturbing about this entire case). Just to clarify, if I wasn't clear, when I wrote "he could have just read emails", I didn't mean to trivialize the matter. Perhaps poor wording on my part; I just meant that it was less than looking at both emails AND pictures.
Actually the amazing thing is that the computer guy was identified. The convicted judge can now bring a civil suit against him (for invading his privacy, breaking into his computer, and such)... and I'm not sure how that would turn out, nor how I would want it to turn out.
Yes you are missing something. How did the kid know that the pictures were child-porn? From the names? By just taking a flying guess that they were? Unlikely. Chances are he viewed them. Obviously, he didn't break into people's homes and sit at their machines. He did this remotely. This means the data streamed across the net and landed in his computer and then was displayed on his screen. So yes, vigilante also possessed the child-porn, at least for a moment or two.
As you say, 'chances are he viewed them' - we cannot know for sure (TFA doesn't explicitly say, unless I missed it). As an alternative to viewing the pictures, he could have just read emails, diary entries, etc. - which TFA does explicitly say he did. After all, he knew these people downloaded his trojan from a kiddie porn site - so he knew they were, in all likelihood, people with kiddie porn on their computers. Anyhow it seems he was mostly interested in seeing whether they intended to hurt children, not just view pictures (hence reading all their email, and their diaries).
Even if he did view a few images to see if they were indeed kiddie porn, this might not be the same - legally - as storing hundreds of images permanently on his hard drive. I say 'might' because IANAL.
First, sorry if I sounded abrasive in any way (that wasn't my intent).
Yes, I think that all of the issues you mentioned just now are relevant. But mainly, it seems clear that 99% of applications were not submitted - if only because the owners are either (1) unaware or uninterested in Mono, or (2) they are not willing to submit their source code to an outside body. So, this data cannot be taken to represent the 'truth'.
However, I think that Miguel was right for presenting the data, because it does mean *something*. In particular, that among people interested enough to use the migration tool, such-and-such percentages were found. Personally I interpret the results to indicate that (as a reasonable initial guess) this tool will be useful in a nontrivial number of cases. Suggestive enough to justify continued work on the project, assuming that you see this sort of migration as a good thing (a completely separate issue, and I am not saying my own opinion here either way).
Is he going to sue anyone who uses this?
Is he going to sue those who hoste the code?
Is he? Who says he isn't already doing this? Perhaps he gets paid, therefore it never goes to court, and we never hear about it - like this Slashdot story implies, based on a comment by Jeremy Allison?
How much more evidence of trans-fat induced mental illness can you provide than currently exists showing that mercury is a known, proven poison for developing brains?
The grandparent post mentioned 2 possibilities. You tear down one, but ignore the other, where your objection is not valid. Herpes has become far more common in recent generations; the majority of the adult population have an immune response to HSV-1 (Herpes Simplex Virus, type 1; generally acquired during childhood), and a sizable minority (20% or so) respond to HSV-2. Furthermore, herpes is known to be able to cause serious neurological damage - when it attacks the brain (amusingly there was even an episode on House mentioning that). Other viruses in the same family can cause lasting neurological damage as well (postherpatic neuralgia).
I am not claiming that herpes is in any way a likely explanation for the rise in autism. But, on the face of it, it is about as plausible as mercury in vaccinations - both are known to potentially cause brain damage, and both have risen in prevalence in recent generations. So, the grandparent post had a valid point. The conclusion should be to investigate such suspicions (it would not be hard to e.g. check for immune responses to herpes among autistic and normal children). So far tests regarding mercury seem to indicate it is not the culprit, according to the research I have read, at least.
The package formats are easy. The real bastard is that each distro has subtle differences in how the packages and the dependencies are organized. The only way that I can see to fix that is to design a universal package tree, and convince all the major distros to conform to it. Which is not impossible, but it aint easy, either. And it might cause other problems.
Regarding the issue of dependencies, they might just be ignored completely for desktop applications (the focus of TFA). For server apps, you want to rely on shared libraries in your distro's repositories, but for the odd desktop app, the simplest solution may be to just include all dependencies inside it. Yes, this creates some security issues (patching the included dependences), so it isn't a perfect solution. Also it can waste some RAM. Still, if a new user has to have some brand-new desktop app, this might be the easy way to do that.
Other related issues of installing in various distros with various directory setups can be solved (partially, at least) with app virtualization. I believe Klik is doing something along those lines.
I'll bet that the MS PR team is practically salivating over this little tidbit.
Hmm, given the recent Microsoft-Novell deal, this doesn't seem too likely; perhaps some minor spin, but nothing major. After all, if Linux is a 'commie' OS, then why did Microsoft sign a major agreement with said 'commie' OS? (including distributing vouchers for it, even)
(There is certainly a lot wrong with the Microsoft-Novell deal, but we shouldn't ignore the upsides...)
Slashdot Mirror
True, but the world has changed since most of those examples. For example, Microsoft is losing (quite dramatically) to Apple in the mp3player market. Also, Microsoft is losing market share to Firefox (but not fatally so, not yet at least).
What does this have to do with VMWare? Well, they should learn that competing on Microsoft's turf is doomed to fail; that is what happened in your 5 examples. That turf is 'proprietary commodity software'. Facing Microsoft there is virtual suicide. But, change the scenery, and the rules are different: VMWare can open-source their product, making it free (similary to Xen and VirtualBox); that is what allows Firefox to survive. Or, VMWare can provide something that Microsoft simply cannot, which is what (arguably) Apple are doing with the iPod (usability, style). In the virtualization world, 'something that Microsoft cannot supply' might be good performance with Linux; many environments are mixed Linux and Windows, yet Microsoft might not want to let their own virtualization offering work well with Linux. Recent deals with Xen and Novell indicate *possibly* otherwise, however, which is bad news for VMWare.
Not that efforts shouldn't be made to ascertain whether they are close to developing nuclear weapons - they should. And actions should be done to prevent them from developing said weapons. But we shouldn't take for granted that it is a *fact* that they have such a program, nor that that program is nearly complete.
Well, actually yes, you can sue a car rental agency for using cars that infringe on your patents. If the car is infringing, then both people that sell it and people that use it are in violation. (IANAL, but that is my understanding from all I have read.)
This is the reason for 'indemnification', such as e.g. Red Hat and Oracle offer. If an end-user is sued for patent infringement, then the vendor steps in.
From what I have read, the North was less suitable for large, settled-down civilizations, in terms of food sources and climate. This led to the nomadic lifestyle of the population in the North. Since in general nomadic cultures produce less in the way of technological advances (less free time, basically), this would account for much of the difference.
There were also simply less people in the North than the rest of the Americas, I seem to recall reading (again related to less viable crops and such), but I am not 100% sure. Perhaps someone knows about this?
Well, the same strains of HPV that cause cervical cancer in women can cause penile cancer in men - albeit far more rarely. Also, there is growing evidence that they can also cause oral cancer in both sexes, although again, this is far more rare than cervical cancer. And HPV can cause other things than cancer (but generally not the cancer-causing strains, though).
So on the one hand I agree with you that "cervical cancer vaccine" isn't accurate; it annoyed me when I read TFA. Yet, the prime purpose of the vaccine (even though as you and I say it has other purposes) is to fight cervical cancer, hence perhaps this is a more convenient name. I could go either way. In any case, the important thing would be to educate the public about these matters, so that as you say men won't be mistaken in thinking they have nothing to do with this vaccine.
I think libel suits are very unlikely - the libel here is debatable, and going up against Ballmer's lawyers for such a reason is probably a waste of resources. Yet, by publicly demanding that Microsoft reveal the infringed-upon patents (not necessarily the code, which the website focuses on), at least one thing is gained: should a lawsuit occur, the defendant will be able to prove that the infringement, should any be discovered, was most certainly not willful, i.e., that they made every possible effort to ensure that they were operating legally. This would at least significantly reduce the potential monetary loss.
What keeps companies from Eolas out of suing Linux vendors is there's no money.
There is plenty of money in Linux. Novell and Red Hat have plenty of money. So does IBM, which does lots of Linux-related business. Oracle is now also into Linux. Any of these could be sued.
There are other reasons why they aren't sued: (1) there is less money than that gained by suing Microsoft, and (2) any such lawsuit has costs and risks, in particular of opening up the patent to further scrutiny. After striking gold with Microsoft, why risk that by being greedy? (This is one reason why Alcatel-Lucent may stop after winning their $1.5 billion this week, but time will tell.)
Interesting stuff. I think I understand what you're saying now.
Thanks for taking the time to write it!
In practice, both Google and Microsoft won't do such things, because (1) 'ripping the service out from under clients' (as you well put it) just isn't good business, and (2) contracts. A contract with Google will ensure a certain service for some-odd years, just like a contract with Microsoft. No more, and no less.
However, you are 100% right about both of them - even if it is unlikely that these doomsday scenarios occur, they are possible. Entrusting your IT over to Google (by hosting it on their servers) or to Microsoft (by running their closed-source programs, and in addition being locked-in to them) is somewhat a 'leap of faith'. For those that value their personal autonomy, there are really only two options: in-house development, which is completely impractical for 99% of organizations, or using open-source software (as people reading this know already).
Yet, the Microsoft and Google solutions will, I predict, continue to draw the vast majority of businesses: Microsoft are already entrenched, and Google are so ridiculously cheap it seems a crime not to use their service.
Thanks for the summary. A good read.
Returning to the original point, however, I still don't see what the GP post was referring to. Perhaps Europeans demolished Spanish Islam, but the vast majority of Islam was not in Spain. Therefore I don't see how Europe can be blamed for the decline of Islam. What I am really curious about are the reasons for that decline, and I have never really read a good explanation.
Yes, that is true (indeed 1492 was an eventful year for that area...). But it only relates to Islam in Spain, not in general. Are there other examples of this?
As pointed out by cognitive researchers, the crucial issue is not necessarily the ability to generate the rare useful behavior; rather, the crucial issue is to repeat it. Chimpanzees certainly have that basic capacity, to repeat behavior they see in other chimpanzees. "Money see, monkey do" - that may in fact be the basis for intelligent cultural knowledge.
For another example of such things, see e.g. Genetic Algorithms in machine learning.
The costs mentioned in TFA(s) are estimates. No one really knows what the average cost is to enterprises, since the deals with Microsoft aren't usually public. These are the best figures that analysts have. They were per-year, though, not per-release, so your objection isn't valid in that respect (but you can of course question the analyst's estimates, since as I said no one really knows).
If I understood it right, no-one is claiming software is patentable. The judges explicitly state that fact, and the lawyers agree. What they are saying, is the far more delicate argument that certain things are patentable, and those things may have software as part of them. For example, you cannot patent a picture compression algorithm. But, you can patent a 'type of camera', which would use the algorithm. Using the algorithm by itself in a completely different type of application area might not be patent infringement; using the algorithm in a competing camera would. But it would be infringing on the patent consisting of a 'type of camera', not a software patent.
At least that is what I understand from TFA. Actually it made me wonder if the layperson understanding (including my own, until TFA) of 'software patents' is similar to the layperson understanding of neurosurgery, i.e., perhaps us non-lawyers simply have no idea whatsoever.
My conclusion: I should read more in-depth reports that include direct quotes from supreme court sessions, and less one-paragraph summaries on tech sites.
Yes, that is disturbing (actually several things are disturbing about this entire case). Just to clarify, if I wasn't clear, when I wrote "he could have just read emails", I didn't mean to trivialize the matter. Perhaps poor wording on my part; I just meant that it was less than looking at both emails AND pictures.
Actually the amazing thing is that the computer guy was identified. The convicted judge can now bring a civil suit against him (for invading his privacy, breaking into his computer, and such)... and I'm not sure how that would turn out, nor how I would want it to turn out.
First, sorry if I sounded abrasive in any way (that wasn't my intent).
Yes, I think that all of the issues you mentioned just now are relevant. But mainly, it seems clear that 99% of applications were not submitted - if only because the owners are either (1) unaware or uninterested in Mono, or (2) they are not willing to submit their source code to an outside body. So, this data cannot be taken to represent the 'truth'.
However, I think that Miguel was right for presenting the data, because it does mean *something*. In particular, that among people interested enough to use the migration tool, such-and-such percentages were found. Personally I interpret the results to indicate that (as a reasonable initial guess) this tool will be useful in a nontrivial number of cases. Suggestive enough to justify continued work on the project, assuming that you see this sort of migration as a good thing (a completely separate issue, and I am not saying my own opinion here either way).
Of course they aren't. How could they be? (And of course Miguel didn't say they were.)
Is he? Who says he isn't already doing this? Perhaps he gets paid, therefore it never goes to court, and we never hear about it - like this Slashdot story implies, based on a comment by Jeremy Allison?
How much more evidence of trans-fat induced mental illness can you provide than currently exists showing that mercury is a known, proven poison for developing brains?
The grandparent post mentioned 2 possibilities. You tear down one, but ignore the other, where your objection is not valid. Herpes has become far more common in recent generations; the majority of the adult population have an immune response to HSV-1 (Herpes Simplex Virus, type 1; generally acquired during childhood), and a sizable minority (20% or so) respond to HSV-2. Furthermore, herpes is known to be able to cause serious neurological damage - when it attacks the brain (amusingly there was even an episode on House mentioning that). Other viruses in the same family can cause lasting neurological damage as well (postherpatic neuralgia).
I am not claiming that herpes is in any way a likely explanation for the rise in autism. But, on the face of it, it is about as plausible as mercury in vaccinations - both are known to potentially cause brain damage, and both have risen in prevalence in recent generations. So, the grandparent post had a valid point. The conclusion should be to investigate such suspicions (it would not be hard to e.g. check for immune responses to herpes among autistic and normal children). So far tests regarding mercury seem to indicate it is not the culprit, according to the research I have read, at least.
Other related issues of installing in various distros with various directory setups can be solved (partially, at least) with app virtualization. I believe Klik is doing something along those lines.
I'll bet that the MS PR team is practically salivating over this little tidbit.
Hmm, given the recent Microsoft-Novell deal, this doesn't seem too likely; perhaps some minor spin, but nothing major. After all, if Linux is a 'commie' OS, then why did Microsoft sign a major agreement with said 'commie' OS? (including distributing vouchers for it, even)
(There is certainly a lot wrong with the Microsoft-Novell deal, but we shouldn't ignore the upsides...)