... that "corporate America" takes so much bashing on/., and Linux (which is deified in these same boards) is so dependent on those same evil capitalist entities for its very survival. This brings to mind the old catch-phrase "biting the hand that feeds you", doesn't it?
First Computer City, now CompUSA. We have 2 CompUSA stores within a half hour so hopefully one will survive. I find CompUSA has always had a much wider selection of computer parts like video boards, drives, networking gear, etc. And their sale prices are often excellent. For example their hard drive sale prices are usually very competitive with the best mail order prices. Ditto for memory and video boards. I think their downfall was getting into home theatre gear like flat screen TVs and such. Every time I have checked out their TV offerings I have found them sorely lacking. They are over-priced and, worse, their displays are not properly configured. Most of their display TVs have poor picture adjustments and they almost always have incorrect aspect ratios. They are a tech store; they should know how to set these things up. It's pathetic. Hopefully they will get back to their roots, which is computers, computer accessories and software, and leave the home theatre, cell phones and digital camera gear to others.
... they'll reveal one patent violation (assuming there is at least 1) and then say "there's plenty more where that came from". That would validate their claims *and* allow them to continue the FUD compaign, perhaps with even more credibility. That outcome would clearly constitute a tactical error on the part of the Linux crowd. Of course if MS remains mum this could be considered a master stroke. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.
Ahhh, but yours is an example of one big company going after another big company because a) the "offender" is big enough to be a threat and b) they have a pile of money that could make it worth while. Large companies like Amazon simply do not go after small companies for patent violations because it is not worth their time. So when everyone decries how the patent system squashes innovation and favors the big companies over smaller companies, I think they are wrong. Now it may well be that the patent system is broken (I happen to think it is). But by far, the companies that are most hurt by that are the large companies who are constantly forced to defend themselves (by virtue of having piles of money) from (the usually trivial or obvious) patent holders who see them as a ripe target. So mostly big companies get patents for defensive purposes. It's true that occassionally (like in your example) they use those patents against other large competitors, but more often than not they simply use their portfolio as a shield, sort of like the mutual assured destruction doctrine of the cold war era.
Then, when Amazon goes after a small competitor, let the outrage begin. However, simply defending the patent which seems, at least to me, to be almost innocuous (there are always many ways around a patent), is not something about which to get all hot and bothered. There are a zillion sites out there that *seem* to be completely unaffected by this 1-click patent. I just think we should direct our outrage where it matters. Large companies get patents almost exclusively as a defensive measure... because what usually happens is the small-fries love to go after the big guys' money piles by patenting everything under the sun, especially including the obvious stuff. It is very unusual for a large company like Amazon to go after small companies for patent infringement. It's simply not worth their time or effort. Fred's Online Hotdog Boutique is not a threat to Amazon, so if Fred violates Amazon's 1-click patent, there won't be any reprisals. Correct me if I'm wrong, but do you really think Amazon's 1-click patent has hampered innovation in the internet shopping domain? Has it even mattered, to Amazon or to anyone else? This is all too much ado about nothing if you ask me.
I have to admit I don't really get this one. I don't get Amazon's insistance on defending this patent, and I don't get the venom spewed towards Amazon by/.ites regarding this patent. While I haven't done an exhaustive study, I don't detect any perceivable difference click-count-wise shopping at Amazon versus any other site. I click around tens or hundreds of times finding the item I want before deciding to buy. "1-click" certainly doesn't factor into where I will buy - my decision is based purely on price (including shipping and "handling") and availability. In my view Amazon is wasting a ton of money and time defending their patent(s). As regards/.ites, save the venom for something that matters. If Amazon wants to defend their silly patent, who cares? It simply has no effect on us at all (except for perhaps inflating Amazon's prices to cover their legal fees, which will only tend to make us shop elsewhere).
My kingdom for some mod points! Well said. I have lamented many times on these boards what a shame it is that an important issue like global warming is being exploited as a lever to shift the power structure. This is true both of individuals (you cited some of the usual suspects) as well as nations. Notice that I (like you) don't use capital letters when refering to global warming because I am refering to the phenomenon, not the *movement*. Capitalization is often one sure sign you are dealing with a religious fanatic rather than a rational person; you can almost hear them genuflecting when they talk about Global Warming.
If it's 10 mHz +/- 50%, you've got too much clock drift to be usable.
Ahhh, but that only matters if you want everyone to have the "correct" time. If, on the other hand, you only want to synchronize activities, it doesn't matter if the ticks are somewhat asynchronous. For example, all coordinated parties could agree on a certain tick count to perform some action. Of course the latency/prop delay argument you bring up would need to be handled - but that should be just a matter of calibration.
Maybe we could build a clock that used this hum as some sort of synchronization. Then every clock on the planet could be synchronized, since this signal is presumably detectable everywhere.
When I am out walking wearing headphones I find myself looking back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth multiple times when crossing a street because I am accustomed to relying upon hearing to augment sight. I almost feel blind when I can't also hear the traffic. Something tells me this law won't help. As a wise man once said, "you can't make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious".
I presume by "the administration" you are refering to the Hillary Clinton administration, because the article refers to construction *starting* in 2010. Unless you think Bush can somehow manage a 3rd term?
The home PC will be replaced by the XBox or equivalent. Some small portable device will replace the various portable electronic devices like cell phones, home phones, mp3 players, PDAs, watches, portable media/video players, radios, portable TVs, remote controls. And with Zune and XBox, Microsoft has a contender in both markets. Wouldn't that be wierd if in the end Microsoft became a hardware company.
As is so often the case, your strengths are your weaknesses. Having the ability to update open drivers (a strength) means that you first must *create* open drivers (a weakness). I might also offer the alternative viewpoint that if native Windows drivers were used, when the device manufacturer fixes defects or adds features to the driver, the wrapper-based implementations automatically get those improvements without having to do anything.
Interesting. Thanks for the pointer. Yes, that is a start, though it is only for wireless network cards. But the approach seems reasonable as it basically allows a Linux system to run Windows drivers natively. Of course this would need to be extended to the other hardware subsystems (graphics, sound, memory controllers, disk controllers, etc). I would think that might be a better way for the kernel driver guys to go than volunteering to write custom drivers for each unique piece of hardware.
I have never written drivers so I may be way out in left field here, but how close are we to being able to specify a standard driver model, with compatibility across operating systems? It seems to me that drivers are one of the biggest impediments to OS adoption. They are also a huge cost center for device manufacturers. Imagine if 99.9% of the driver code could be the same across platforms. Is this even remotely possible? Or perhaps the Linux Kernel driver developers could figure out a way to adapt Windows drivers to run, perhaps in an interpreted or emulated fashion, on Linux (ala Virtual PC). Just a thought.
Not only did I read his entire blog, but I also pulled up the patent and scanned the claims. So I did see where Michael expressed concern that MS *might* shut them down, and in fact I made reference to that in subsequent comments in this thread. That said, I do regret suggesting that BlueJ has some sort of profit motive. I do not believe that is the case at all. I'm afraid I resorted to the same type of "reasoning" people around here consistently use by assuming the worst - only I was applying it to someone other than Microsoft.
So, if I patent something that MS invented and told MS that "it is unlikely that I would sue you", would Microsoft just let it pass?
Almost certainly. That's because, as I explained, for large companies patents are defensive instruments only. If and when the time came to defend themselves against your invalid patent, they would do so. But it is a waste of time, money and energy to try and attack every bogus patent that comes along.
Your scenario suffers from one minor flaw. From the article:
BlueJ is an academic project, started in 1998, and the software is, and always has been, free.
The "original company" is a university. The product is already and always has been free. Why would this "company" go bust if Microsoft gives away Visual Studio Express containing similar functionality? In fact, the concern BlueJ raised was that Microsoft "might" exercize this patent and prevent them from distributing BlueJ. However, this has not happened and, in my opinion, is extremely unlikely to happen. And until such a time that this does occur, Microsoft's actions, while regrettable, certainly do not rise the level of *evil*.
I don't think this is a far fetched as it might seem. I know from experience that large companies with lots of money think of patents as defensive rather than offensive. They are constantly under siege with every Tom, Dick and Harry claiming to have invented something they now happen to sell. Patents are a huge cost for large businesses like Microsoft. Most companies resign themselves to trying to build a large portfolio of "IP" in order to assure mutual assured destruction to prevent other large or well-healed competitors from going after them. This in turn creates a bit of a patent-frenzy, with employees strongly encouraged to file patents. One of the end results is what we see here -- a patent that should not be filed, nor granted. I stand by my original closing sentence however in that I think *exercizing* this patent against the likes of BlueJ is indeed *evil*. Obtaining this patent, while not admirable, does not rise to the level of evil, though I agree with others in this thread that it is not ethical given the number of people within Microsoft that appear to have knowledge of BlueJ.
As someone who often finds himself defending MS on this forum, I find this particular transgression on Microsoft's part difficult to rationalize. I read the blog and find it, as presented, believable and condemning. But in keeping with my tendency to challenge/. group-think, I will comment on the following sentence from the article:
As a result, a product like BlueJ, developed for the education community, that has helped thousands of students to learn programming, may be muscled out of existence by corporate greed.
As it happens, Visual Studio Express is a free download from Microsoft. Having recently visited a college with my high school aged son I learned that the students in the Computer Science department all used Studio Express for their school projects. So I think ascribing this behavior to "corporate greed" may be reaching a bit. In fact, the author of the blog laments the fact that they (BlueJ) are only trying to educate, not make money. Given that, they should be happy that their ideas have been adopted and given much wider exposure via Visual Studio. Perhaps their motives are not so pure and they now see their chance at big bucks from the big, rich nasty corporation?
If it were Microsoft company policy to steal ideas that are plainly in the public domain and then patent them, a company with Microsoft's money pile would be the target of thousands of these types of accusations, and rightly so. Rather, I suspect this transgression is the result of some overzealous individuals, perhaps trying to meet patent quotas or gain some upward mobility in an enormously large corporation where it is hard to get noticed. Regardless, should Microsoft ever take the next step and go after BlueJ, I will have to eat these words, because that truly would be an unforgivable act.
Since the phone is not subsidized, there *should* be no 2 year contract requirement. That would really spur competition among the mobile carriers if people weren't forced to stick around for 2 years under penalty of paying full price for their phone. Of course the fact that some use CDMA and others use GSM complicates this a bit - we need phones that support both for true service portability. In fact, a *smart* carrier would offer either non-subsidized phones at a monthly service price of X, or subsidized phones at a monthly service price of X + Y (where Y basically recaptures the phone discount over the life of the contract).
Slashdot Mirror
I say "thank you" to the DOT. It's not often we catch a break.
... that "corporate America" takes so much bashing on /., and Linux (which is deified in these same boards) is so dependent on those same evil capitalist entities for its very survival. This brings to mind the old catch-phrase "biting the hand that feeds you", doesn't it?
First Computer City, now CompUSA. We have 2 CompUSA stores within a half hour so hopefully one will survive. I find CompUSA has always had a much wider selection of computer parts like video boards, drives, networking gear, etc. And their sale prices are often excellent. For example their hard drive sale prices are usually very competitive with the best mail order prices. Ditto for memory and video boards. I think their downfall was getting into home theatre gear like flat screen TVs and such. Every time I have checked out their TV offerings I have found them sorely lacking. They are over-priced and, worse, their displays are not properly configured. Most of their display TVs have poor picture adjustments and they almost always have incorrect aspect ratios. They are a tech store; they should know how to set these things up. It's pathetic. Hopefully they will get back to their roots, which is computers, computer accessories and software, and leave the home theatre, cell phones and digital camera gear to others.
... they'll reveal one patent violation (assuming there is at least 1) and then say "there's plenty more where that came from". That would validate their claims *and* allow them to continue the FUD compaign, perhaps with even more credibility. That outcome would clearly constitute a tactical error on the part of the Linux crowd. Of course if MS remains mum this could be considered a master stroke. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.
Ahhh, but yours is an example of one big company going after another big company because a) the "offender" is big enough to be a threat and b) they have a pile of money that could make it worth while. Large companies like Amazon simply do not go after small companies for patent violations because it is not worth their time. So when everyone decries how the patent system squashes innovation and favors the big companies over smaller companies, I think they are wrong. Now it may well be that the patent system is broken (I happen to think it is). But by far, the companies that are most hurt by that are the large companies who are constantly forced to defend themselves (by virtue of having piles of money) from (the usually trivial or obvious) patent holders who see them as a ripe target. So mostly big companies get patents for defensive purposes. It's true that occassionally (like in your example) they use those patents against other large competitors, but more often than not they simply use their portfolio as a shield, sort of like the mutual assured destruction doctrine of the cold war era.
Then, when Amazon goes after a small competitor, let the outrage begin. However, simply defending the patent which seems, at least to me, to be almost innocuous (there are always many ways around a patent), is not something about which to get all hot and bothered. There are a zillion sites out there that *seem* to be completely unaffected by this 1-click patent. I just think we should direct our outrage where it matters. Large companies get patents almost exclusively as a defensive measure ... because what usually happens is the small-fries love to go after the big guys' money piles by patenting everything under the sun, especially including the obvious stuff. It is very unusual for a large company like Amazon to go after small companies for patent infringement. It's simply not worth their time or effort. Fred's Online Hotdog Boutique is not a threat to Amazon, so if Fred violates Amazon's 1-click patent, there won't be any reprisals. Correct me if I'm wrong, but do you really think Amazon's 1-click patent has hampered innovation in the internet shopping domain? Has it even mattered, to Amazon or to anyone else? This is all too much ado about nothing if you ask me.
I have to admit I don't really get this one. I don't get Amazon's insistance on defending this patent, and I don't get the venom spewed towards Amazon by /.ites regarding this patent. While I haven't done an exhaustive study, I don't detect any perceivable difference click-count-wise shopping at Amazon versus any other site. I click around tens or hundreds of times finding the item I want before deciding to buy. "1-click" certainly doesn't factor into where I will buy - my decision is based purely on price (including shipping and "handling") and availability. In my view Amazon is wasting a ton of money and time defending their patent(s). As regards /.ites, save the venom for something that matters. If Amazon wants to defend their silly patent, who cares? It simply has no effect on us at all (except for perhaps inflating Amazon's prices to cover their legal fees, which will only tend to make us shop elsewhere).
My kingdom for some mod points! Well said. I have lamented many times on these boards what a shame it is that an important issue like global warming is being exploited as a lever to shift the power structure. This is true both of individuals (you cited some of the usual suspects) as well as nations. Notice that I (like you) don't use capital letters when refering to global warming because I am refering to the phenomenon, not the *movement*. Capitalization is often one sure sign you are dealing with a religious fanatic rather than a rational person; you can almost hear them genuflecting when they talk about Global Warming.
Funny, I read that headline the same way. It took me a couple of tries before it made sense to me.
Maybe we could build a clock that used this hum as some sort of synchronization. Then every clock on the planet could be synchronized, since this signal is presumably detectable everywhere.
:-)
OK, I didn't say it was a *good* idea
When I am out walking wearing headphones I find myself looking back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth multiple times when crossing a street because I am accustomed to relying upon hearing to augment sight. I almost feel blind when I can't also hear the traffic. Something tells me this law won't help. As a wise man once said, "you can't make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious".
I presume by "the administration" you are refering to the Hillary Clinton administration, because the article refers to construction *starting* in 2010. Unless you think Bush can somehow manage a 3rd term?
The home PC will be replaced by the XBox or equivalent. Some small portable device will replace the various portable electronic devices like cell phones, home phones, mp3 players, PDAs, watches, portable media/video players, radios, portable TVs, remote controls. And with Zune and XBox, Microsoft has a contender in both markets. Wouldn't that be wierd if in the end Microsoft became a hardware company.
As is so often the case, your strengths are your weaknesses. Having the ability to update open drivers (a strength) means that you first must *create* open drivers (a weakness). I might also offer the alternative viewpoint that if native Windows drivers were used, when the device manufacturer fixes defects or adds features to the driver, the wrapper-based implementations automatically get those improvements without having to do anything.
Interesting. Thanks for the pointer. Yes, that is a start, though it is only for wireless network cards. But the approach seems reasonable as it basically allows a Linux system to run Windows drivers natively. Of course this would need to be extended to the other hardware subsystems (graphics, sound, memory controllers, disk controllers, etc). I would think that might be a better way for the kernel driver guys to go than volunteering to write custom drivers for each unique piece of hardware.
I have never written drivers so I may be way out in left field here, but how close are we to being able to specify a standard driver model, with compatibility across operating systems? It seems to me that drivers are one of the biggest impediments to OS adoption. They are also a huge cost center for device manufacturers. Imagine if 99.9% of the driver code could be the same across platforms. Is this even remotely possible? Or perhaps the Linux Kernel driver developers could figure out a way to adapt Windows drivers to run, perhaps in an interpreted or emulated fashion, on Linux (ala Virtual PC). Just a thought.
Not only did I read his entire blog, but I also pulled up the patent and scanned the claims. So I did see where Michael expressed concern that MS *might* shut them down, and in fact I made reference to that in subsequent comments in this thread. That said, I do regret suggesting that BlueJ has some sort of profit motive. I do not believe that is the case at all. I'm afraid I resorted to the same type of "reasoning" people around here consistently use by assuming the worst - only I was applying it to someone other than Microsoft.
I don't think this is a far fetched as it might seem. I know from experience that large companies with lots of money think of patents as defensive rather than offensive. They are constantly under siege with every Tom, Dick and Harry claiming to have invented something they now happen to sell. Patents are a huge cost for large businesses like Microsoft. Most companies resign themselves to trying to build a large portfolio of "IP" in order to assure mutual assured destruction to prevent other large or well-healed competitors from going after them. This in turn creates a bit of a patent-frenzy, with employees strongly encouraged to file patents. One of the end results is what we see here -- a patent that should not be filed, nor granted. I stand by my original closing sentence however in that I think *exercizing* this patent against the likes of BlueJ is indeed *evil*. Obtaining this patent, while not admirable, does not rise to the level of evil, though I agree with others in this thread that it is not ethical given the number of people within Microsoft that appear to have knowledge of BlueJ.
As it happens, Visual Studio Express is a free download from Microsoft. Having recently visited a college with my high school aged son I learned that the students in the Computer Science department all used Studio Express for their school projects. So I think ascribing this behavior to "corporate greed" may be reaching a bit. In fact, the author of the blog laments the fact that they (BlueJ) are only trying to educate, not make money. Given that, they should be happy that their ideas have been adopted and given much wider exposure via Visual Studio. Perhaps their motives are not so pure and they now see their chance at big bucks from the big, rich nasty corporation?
If it were Microsoft company policy to steal ideas that are plainly in the public domain and then patent them, a company with Microsoft's money pile would be the target of thousands of these types of accusations, and rightly so. Rather, I suspect this transgression is the result of some overzealous individuals, perhaps trying to meet patent quotas or gain some upward mobility in an enormously large corporation where it is hard to get noticed. Regardless, should Microsoft ever take the next step and go after BlueJ, I will have to eat these words, because that truly would be an unforgivable act.
Since the phone is not subsidized, there *should* be no 2 year contract requirement. That would really spur competition among the mobile carriers if people weren't forced to stick around for 2 years under penalty of paying full price for their phone. Of course the fact that some use CDMA and others use GSM complicates this a bit - we need phones that support both for true service portability. In fact, a *smart* carrier would offer either non-subsidized phones at a monthly service price of X, or subsidized phones at a monthly service price of X + Y (where Y basically recaptures the phone discount over the life of the contract).