I remember when I was 9 or 10 and the family computer could hold 10 gigs.
When I was nine, we had a computer with two 5.25" floppy drives (holding around 700 kb each) and no harddrive. When I was ten, we got a computer (a rebrand of the IBM PC/XT) with one 5.25" 360 kb floppy drive and a 20 MB harddrive. It had 640 kb of RAM, a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor and a monochrome (amber/black) screen.
They think that they are in a place that will not change it's laws (or the interpretation thereof) in response to international pressure.
Any administration that want to add harsher copyright laws would have to deal with public opinion. That may not be the simplest thing to do in a country with a quite lax popular view on copyright infringement, with maybe as much as 10% of the entire population regularly committing copyright infringement through filesharing. In addition, we have comparably short sentences even for serious violent crimes, and no tradition of exorbitant damages awarded through lawsuits. Good luck adding four-year prison sentences for copyright infringements when that is about what you get for rape or robbery.
Second, don't think for a second that if their country needed something from the US, Europe, etc that they wouldn't crack down on Pirate Bay like a swat team.
They tried, and raided the web hosting company that hosted The Pirate bay (and other unrelated companies) almost exactly one year ago, seizing all servers (including those of unrelated parties) and even network equipment such as routers. The Pirate Bay was up in three days, while many of the legitimate businesses had their equipment in lockup for several months after the raid. The MPAA claimed that it was big victory on the day of the raid, only to have The Pirate Bay up again in less than 72 hours. And now it may be more resilient, as TPB claim to have it mirrored in several countries. In addition, the raid was very good advertising for The Pirate Bay, as anyone who hadn't heard of the site before certainly knew about it afterwards.
I don't pirate stuff myself, but I appreciate their position as a thorn in the side of the big media companies. Their legal page is also fun to read (Warning: Somewhat offensive language there), where they mock any cease and desist letters they receive.
AllofMP3.com is legal, in Russia. That the RIAA tries to paint them as "illegal" just because it does not conform to US copyright laws is just silly. US law is only valid in the US, not in the entire world which many americans seem to think.
The problem is that there is absolutely no proof that file-sharing decreases revenue at all.
Of course it decreases revenue, for the big media giants and artists like Britney Spears.
I, for one, would not be such a huge Dream Theater fan if my friend hadn't of burned me a copy of Train of Thought to introduce me to the band. I downloaded a few songs off their CDs and now I am a proud owner of every single album and anxiously awaiting Systematic Chaos. There are tons of bands that people have introduced to me this way and I have spent tons of money on music and I'm sure I will continue to do so. And yes, I encourage people to buy music or attend concerts if they like the band.
See, I told you. By being introduced to independent bands, you are stealing from the big record companies and the Britneys of this world, since you don't buy their CDs. They have a right to your money, and by buying from indies you deprive them of their rightful income.
(The above contains significant amounts of sarcasm, if that isn't obvious)
I doubt that. The previous administration had to take quite a lot of flak for handing over two suspected terrorists to the CIA, which flew them to Egypt to be tortured. The current administration probably don't want to do the same mistake, as it might cost them their reelection.
Not exactly. I might be required to read and edit your documents, and using a format that isn't handled by both of our word processors makes that hard or impossible. You are hardly required to use my human-computer interface, so if we use different desktop environments, that is hardly a problem.
They were required to pass Estonian language and history exam. They were NOT granted citizenship automatically.
So? It does not seem to be wrong in the purportedly "Land of the Free" to require passing tests to acquire citizenship. Why would it be wrong for Estonia?
A high-performance transaction processing system is likely to require "esoteric" hardware. Like extreme processor counts, high-throughput I/O subsystems, TCP/IP offload, InfiniBand clustering interconnects, hot-swap memory and CPUs... the sort of things hardware vendors support only on Z/OS, AIX or Solaris (and maybe Windows).
You seem to have forgot one: Linux. If Linux weren't capable of using such "esoteric" hardware, why is it used on 75% of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers, that most certainly use such hardware? At my place of work, we run several quite large Linux clusters, which use, among others, the Infiniband and Myrinet high-performance cluster interconnects. I can assure you that our vendors support those technologies on Linux, including 2.6.
Sweden has a similar site, called Programverket. That does not stop the administration from favoring software patents. The previous social democratic administration were strongly in favor of software patents, and I would be surprised if the current right-wing administration isn't.
"We're not going to have a discussion publicly with that level of detail," he said.
This and other similar quotes were what turned on my FUD warning light. The fact that they don't want to be specific is quite telling. They just want a dark cloud to hang over Linux, so that people wouldn't look that way when they are disappointed by Microsoft's latest offering.
I know MS trolls and fanboys won't like this, but the fact remains: If Vista and Office 2007 were booming and replacing Linux and other F/OSS in the marketplace, why care about it at all? Why risk their in many circles very positive corporate image to FUD Linux and other F/OSS with patent threats? No, this probably means that the uptake of Microsoft's latest products is far below their expectations, almost to be considered a flop. Flops they spent many billions of dollars developing.
IIRC, none of SCO's cases were ever about patents. Do you have evidence that suggest otherwise? The only patent claims that I know of were in IBM's countersuit, although those claims were later dropped.
I'm pretty sure there were email clients before Outlook.
There were. According to Wikipedia, the first version of Outlook was released in 1997, and I remember using Pegasus Mail (on Windows 3.1) in high school before that. And before Pegasus Mail, I used Pine through a telnet session to the school mail server (incidentally running Linux 1.x).
How can you inflict more damage than through infringing someone's copyright? Can't you see that it is far worse to copy a song than to murder 1000 people?;)
It seems anyway good to me that a first try to introduce software patents in the UE has been formaly rejected: this sould be important in case Miscrosft (or someone else) is going to push again in this direction.
They will, you can be certain about that. They are just biding their time, waiting for the issue to become forgotten by most players in the industry. Then they will start inviting the decision makers to expensive dinners again and the process will be restarted. The US government might also provide a hand, since they are all in favor of software patents in Europe (most such patents are held by american corporations, so they sure would like to ensure the continued cash flow to US companies.
Someone also said that Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel will help introduce a new software patent directive.
Except that those FOSS users are not liable if they're merely using, and not selling or distributing, the tech MS talking about.
No? Are you really sure about this, or is it merely some conjecture about what would be "fair" that you just pulled out of your ass?
Hence them going after Novell earlier.
They didn't go after Novell. Novell came to Microsoft and wanted to work on interoperability and virtualization, and Microsoft conditioned this on signing the patent clauses so that they could start spreading FUD with increased credibility.
Slashdot Mirror
Or 320x200 GIF pictures (maybe pr0n)?
When I was nine, we had a computer with two 5.25" floppy drives (holding around 700 kb each) and no harddrive. When I was ten, we got a computer (a rebrand of the IBM PC/XT) with one 5.25" 360 kb floppy drive and a 20 MB harddrive. It had 640 kb of RAM, a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor and a monochrome (amber/black) screen.
Sorry, just being nostalgic.Yeah, me too. :)
That sounds reasonable. We got a high-end PC in late '98, and it had an 8.4 GB harddrive.
Any administration that want to add harsher copyright laws would have to deal with public opinion. That may not be the simplest thing to do in a country with a quite lax popular view on copyright infringement, with maybe as much as 10% of the entire population regularly committing copyright infringement through filesharing. In addition, we have comparably short sentences even for serious violent crimes, and no tradition of exorbitant damages awarded through lawsuits. Good luck adding four-year prison sentences for copyright infringements when that is about what you get for rape or robbery.
Second, don't think for a second that if their country needed something from the US, Europe, etc that they wouldn't crack down on Pirate Bay like a swat team.They tried, and raided the web hosting company that hosted The Pirate bay (and other unrelated companies) almost exactly one year ago, seizing all servers (including those of unrelated parties) and even network equipment such as routers. The Pirate Bay was up in three days, while many of the legitimate businesses had their equipment in lockup for several months after the raid. The MPAA claimed that it was big victory on the day of the raid, only to have The Pirate Bay up again in less than 72 hours. And now it may be more resilient, as TPB claim to have it mirrored in several countries. In addition, the raid was very good advertising for The Pirate Bay, as anyone who hadn't heard of the site before certainly knew about it afterwards.
I don't pirate stuff myself, but I appreciate their position as a thorn in the side of the big media companies. Their legal page is also fun to read (Warning: Somewhat offensive language there), where they mock any cease and desist letters they receive.
AllofMP3.com is legal, in Russia. That the RIAA tries to paint them as "illegal" just because it does not conform to US copyright laws is just silly. US law is only valid in the US, not in the entire world which many americans seem to think.
Of course it decreases revenue, for the big media giants and artists like Britney Spears.
I, for one, would not be such a huge Dream Theater fan if my friend hadn't of burned me a copy of Train of Thought to introduce me to the band. I downloaded a few songs off their CDs and now I am a proud owner of every single album and anxiously awaiting Systematic Chaos. There are tons of bands that people have introduced to me this way and I have spent tons of money on music and I'm sure I will continue to do so. And yes, I encourage people to buy music or attend concerts if they like the band.See, I told you. By being introduced to independent bands, you are stealing from the big record companies and the Britneys of this world, since you don't buy their CDs. They have a right to your money, and by buying from indies you deprive them of their rightful income.
(The above contains significant amounts of sarcasm, if that isn't obvious)
I doubt that. The previous administration had to take quite a lot of flak for handing over two suspected terrorists to the CIA, which flew them to Egypt to be tortured. The current administration probably don't want to do the same mistake, as it might cost them their reelection.
Not exactly. I might be required to read and edit your documents, and using a format that isn't handled by both of our word processors makes that hard or impossible. You are hardly required to use my human-computer interface, so if we use different desktop environments, that is hardly a problem.
Programverket has an English translation.
So? It does not seem to be wrong in the purportedly "Land of the Free" to require passing tests to acquire citizenship. Why would it be wrong for Estonia?
You seem to have forgot one: Linux. If Linux weren't capable of using such "esoteric" hardware, why is it used on 75% of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers, that most certainly use such hardware? At my place of work, we run several quite large Linux clusters, which use, among others, the Infiniband and Myrinet high-performance cluster interconnects. I can assure you that our vendors support those technologies on Linux, including 2.6.
Sweden has a similar site, called Programverket. That does not stop the administration from favoring software patents. The previous social democratic administration were strongly in favor of software patents, and I would be surprised if the current right-wing administration isn't.
Sarcasm isn't always obvious in writing, as you have no voice cues or other indications, unless you also include the proper smiley.
This and other similar quotes were what turned on my FUD warning light. The fact that they don't want to be specific is quite telling. They just want a dark cloud to hang over Linux, so that people wouldn't look that way when they are disappointed by Microsoft's latest offering.
I know MS trolls and fanboys won't like this, but the fact remains: If Vista and Office 2007 were booming and replacing Linux and other F/OSS in the marketplace, why care about it at all? Why risk their in many circles very positive corporate image to FUD Linux and other F/OSS with patent threats? No, this probably means that the uptake of Microsoft's latest products is far below their expectations, almost to be considered a flop. Flops they spent many billions of dollars developing.
IIRC, none of SCO's cases were ever about patents. Do you have evidence that suggest otherwise? The only patent claims that I know of were in IBM's countersuit, although those claims were later dropped.
There were. According to Wikipedia, the first version of Outlook was released in 1997, and I remember using Pegasus Mail (on Windows 3.1) in high school before that. And before Pegasus Mail, I used Pine through a telnet session to the school mail server (incidentally running Linux 1.x).
How can you inflict more damage than through infringing someone's copyright? Can't you see that it is far worse to copy a song than to murder 1000 people? ;)
We could have a new sticker to put on those computers: Evil Inside.
And I have to buy another - unused - OpenBSD cd.
After a couple of moths, they're back at behaving as jerks as they used to, being rude to their own users and every human being in general.
Who are you describing, Microsoft or Theo de Raadt? :)
I think the term you are looking for is rent-seeking.
They are almost certainly valid, as Japan is frequently listed (alongside the US) as one of the countries that allow software to be patented.
Who knows? It does not seem entirely impossible.
they might try to get the US to make sanctions and crap against them in the UNAny of the permanent members in the UN security council could veto such sanctions.
Successful campaigns? It's common knowledge that the US lost the Vietnam war. They (you?) pulled out with their tail between their legs.
They will, you can be certain about that. They are just biding their time, waiting for the issue to become forgotten by most players in the industry. Then they will start inviting the decision makers to expensive dinners again and the process will be restarted. The US government might also provide a hand, since they are all in favor of software patents in Europe (most such patents are held by american corporations, so they sure would like to ensure the continued cash flow to US companies.
Someone also said that Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel will help introduce a new software patent directive.
No? Are you really sure about this, or is it merely some conjecture about what would be "fair" that you just pulled out of your ass?
Hence them going after Novell earlier.They didn't go after Novell. Novell came to Microsoft and wanted to work on interoperability and virtualization, and Microsoft conditioned this on signing the patent clauses so that they could start spreading FUD with increased credibility.