Well, not the Simpsons, but everyone except Microsoft has already been doing this for year. Hell, there are plenty of free VOIP programs that are freeware or open source, and have been since the '90s.
Hey Microsoft! 1997 called and they want their prior art back!
I vote that NASA gets out of the way and real engineers get to call the shots. Look at what Rutan accomplished with $20mil. Sure, you might argue that all he did was build a craft to go up and come right back down, but how much did that cost compared to the original Mercury missions, and what did it cost compared to the X-15 rocket plane? Only a tiny fraction of the cost of each, PLUS he did it very quickly and very efficiently, by picking the best engineers he could regardless of what political correctness or any other bureaucratic BS that a government agency has to contend with.
NTFS does support links, but as usual from Microsoft, it's half-baked and only the bare minimum required for POSIX compliance was implemented. From sysinternals (now a Microsoft site) you can download a utility for manipulating NTFS links, or you can install the free Services for Unix (again, from Microsoft's web site) to get the M$ version of ln.
FWIW, I run SuSE (retail) for most of my office machines and for my home machine. I also run CentOS and Ubuntu. Most of the machines are going to be upgraded to SuSE 10.2. Say what you will, but not everyone is going to dump SuSE until there is a good reason to. We might go OpenSUSE this time around rather than pay for the distribution, depending on what is tainted in SuSE Retail. Given the timing, I doubt SuSE 10.2 is tainted with anything from Microsoft at this point. That might change in SuSE 10.3 or SuSE 11. Given how slowly Microsoft tends to move, it's possible that even next autumn's release won't be tainted at all with their crud.
If you're running SuSE already (10.1 or earlier) there is little reason to dump what you have, but keep your options open and reevaluate the larger distributions periodically. Given the refinement of KDE in SuSE, I'm reluctant to dump it even for kubuntu.
Untrue. They can argue that in court that they are making an archival copy of each DVD they have in inventory, and then as Copyright requires they are transferring all backups along with the original in order to comply with Copyright. When the MPAA WAH!!!! about the DMCA, they can point to the interoperability exclusion contained in the DMCA.
If they actually read the DMCA they will see that they are in the clear - PROVIDING they get a judge who isn't on the take.
The best course, though, is for this to go to a jury trial and have the jury judge the law, and then the law can be nullified.
A VCR is going to ignore the broadcast flag and record off of the RF or S-video or composite output of your cable box, whereas Tivo will cheerfully refuse to record it per the broadcaster's request that your court-protected fair use rights (e.g., timeshifting) are illegally revoked. Not only that, Tivo will not record the component video outputs, so where is the advantage over VHS again, considering you can't ask a friend to record your shows and give you the tapes when you're on a trip?
Patents on prior art like double clicking, SMB (has been around since the mid-80s; an IBM invention), single clicking, the ribbon (e.g., graphical toolbars/menus, but now it's glassy and with bigger buttons so OMG let's patent it!), and the hyperlink? Sure, if Microsoft's patent portfolio consists of crap similar to those patents, I'd love to see them go against Redhat; it'll be a sure bet that if suits like this end up in the courts that not only will the DoJ be revisiting Microsoft with yet more antitrust suits, the courts can end up so backlogged that some judge will wake up, realize that software patents are generally OBVIOUS use of technology and invalidate the whole lot of them, and Microsoft's being shattered into tiny pieces when the antitrust sword comes down will be merely a side benefit.
There can be a silver lining to all of this bullcrap.
Didn't SCO already did that? Why can't Microsoft be original? What's next; are they going to try to erect a huge sunshade over Seattle? Steal the head off of a statue of George Washington? Come on now, Microsoft, you can do better than that! But then, I suppose this is so typical of your idea of "innovation."
Seriously though, if they claim Linux infringes on its IP, it's 99.999% likely that every other *nix variant out there does as well, since Linux is merely a clone of Unix. So, go after the likes of Sun, IBM, SCO (Yeah, I know SCO and Microsoft are lovers, but bear with me here), the BSDs, HP (HP/UX and Dec Unix), and so forth. I don't think even Microsoft has the resources to prove to the courts that an OS architecture which predates theirs by over a decade infringes on their so-called "intellectual property."
VHS won't die until the HTPC appliance fully matures, and a DRM-free medium is adapted en masse, and can record both NTSC and ATSC. DVD recordable is almost there, but is less flexible than an HTPC and won't record high-def, so why bother upgrading? Tivo almost has it, except tivo decides how long you can keep recordings (in some cases at least), NOT you, PLUS it requires a monthly subscription and either a land line or ethernet connection to phone home. Also, Tivo makes it FAR to difficult to record say, Smallville or Desperate Housewives or whatever it is you and your friends all want to watch, then take that recording over to a friend's house or simply lend it out. It's FAR to difficult for the average joe to record a show for you while you're on vacation and then give you the timeshifted content.
I think that VHS will be around until the HTPC is easy to use, DRM-free, HDTV capable, AND the public is made aware of it. Myth is so close, and yet so far, because it is a royal pain in the ass to set up, and the easy-to-configure distribution (Knoppmyth) is fully two generations behind when it comes to chipset and video card support.
I'm not kidding, either. Is AMD going to force ATI to open up its specs and its drivers so that we can FINALLY get stable and FULLY functional drivers for Linux, or are they still going to be partially-implemented limited-function binary blobs where support for older-yet-still-in-distribution-channels products will be phased out in order to "encourage" (read: force) customers to upgrade to new hardware, discarding still-current computers?
That is why I do not buy ATI products any more. They provide ZERO VIVO support in Linux, They phase out chip support in drivers even while they are actively distributed. They do not maintain compatibility of older drivers to ensure they can be linked to the latest kernels.
This is why I went Core 2 Duo for my new system and do not run AMD - their merger with ATI. My fear is that if ATI rubs off on AMD then support for AMD processors and chipsets will only get worse, not better.
If Commodore execs were less interested in embezzlement and instead gave both R&D and Marketing departments the funding the sorely needed, the Amiga would likely be dominating the market today. Would processor speed and networking capabilities have matured as quickly were that the case? I doubt it, but on the other hand, the HTPC would have truly arrived by the mid-90s, whereas with PC video technology multimedia was its Achilles heel, making the HTPC a low-performance curiousity until the turn of the century.
Re:Beyond publicity, is there a point?
on
Blu-ray Laser Gadget
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Apparently, pulling the laser from home theater equipment is the *cheap* way to get a blue laser diode these days.
No, because a click-through EULA attempts to strip you of your first sale and fair use rights after the fact, where your right to USE THE PRODUCT YOU PAID FOR can supposedly be revoked, whereas this case is about additional rights (distribution rights) which are subject to specific conditions.
Correct, but history shows (LinkSys, Motorola, Tivo, etc.) that the copyright holders must actively enforce the GPL, and aggressively at that, when a big company violates it. There are DVR manufacturers which embed Linux but which absolutely, positively refuse to release the source for even the kernel, let alone ffmpeg and other GPLed projects they are using.
They certainly can retract the rights, if Novell is in violation of the GPL. If they're not in violation they can't, obviously, but apparantly they think Novell is in violation and Novell really needs to come clean to show that there is nothing in their agreement with Darth Vader, er, Microsoft which would put them in violation, else the current villification of Novell in the eyes of Linux users and distributors won't stop.
The chickens are roosting with the fox right now, and it's clear that the fox has given no assurance that he won't eat the chickens.
(chronology and events altered slightly for creative license)
Microsoft introduced Xenix, spun it off and begat Santa Cruz Organization -- The Old SCO(tm) and it was good; an affordable x86 Unix environment.
Novell was a very proprietary company which improved their products v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y ('80s through mid '90s) so SCO a group of engineers and execs left Novell and begat Caldera. Caldera bought DR-DOS after the Windows incompatibility fiasco (deliberate sabotage by Microsoft), declared that "OSes want to be free" and opened up their DOS source for all to see. Caldera begat Free DOS, and it was good.
Novell saw their market declining due to interoperability problems introduced by Microsoft, and by utilities introduced by Microsoft which were promoted for use for bypassing Novell's per-seat restrictions. Novell examined their positions, saw that Unix had a strong future, so they bought the IP for Unix, assigned SCO as the license broker for Unix IP, and saw that it was good.
Caldera looked upon the Free DOS and their gaining a decent following, and declared that open source looked promising, so they introduced a Linux distribution that was a bit ahead of its time. They looked upon their package management and update download-equipped open-source Linux operating system and saw that it was good.
Santa Cruz Organization saw its Unix product's future shrinking, and even with their 5% comission on Unix licensing they could read the writing on the wall for their core product, so they sold the "SCO" name and Unix products and contracts to Caldera, and thought all was well. The New SCO renamed Caldera Linux to SCO OpenLinux and claimed that it was good, and all was well.
Enter the serpent who goes by the name Darl McBride; a sneaky if not clever demon who felt that he could tempt investors to take a bite from his fruit of profit. He declared that Linux Stole SCO Code and thart SCO in fact owns the IP to all Unix-like OSes. In doing this the serpent indeed deceived them and got them to take a nibble with his declaration that Linux infringed upon his Unix IP and that all Linux users must pay him $699/processor/Linux box. Linux users grumbled to the Lord.
The serpent bit AutoZone's and Daimler Chrysler's heels, took them to court, and the judge did stomp on the serpent's head, crushing it, and rendered its vemon harmless. Linux users rejoiced, singing "O where is SCO's sting?"
Serpent McBride of SCO, relentless in his evil, pursued Lord Novell and Lord IBM into court. The courts did chuckle, but granted the serpent access to the throne. McBride shouted "I will own Linux! I will own Unix! Users will bow down to me and I will be like the most high Novell!"
Linux users, seeing through the deception, grumbled to the Lord, and proclaimed "Woe unto SCO, for they are evil and their king Darl McBride shall surely perish." The Lord IBM and The Lord Novell heard their grumbling and took offense at SCOs actions. They dragged SCO back into court, presented their counterclaims, saw SCO's stock plummet, and it was good.
Can't they just inform Novell that they no longer have the right to distribute Samba under the GPL, but instead must either fork it or work out commercial licenses with the Samba code contributors (good luck with working out a deal with each copyright holder)? Other project teams could do the same, and Novell will have a hard choice to make:
1. Fork each project where distribution rights have been and choose to fork, becoming incompatible in the near-to-mid future
2. Reconsider the deal, pull out, and work with Redhat, Canonical, IBM, et al, ensuring compatibility, and create a strong front against Microsoft's monopoly. They could also form clean room reverse engineering teams where binaries are decompiled and notes are taken on the architecture, then hand those notes (but NO decompiled code examples) to the open source developers. This way. legal, clean-room implementations of Samba, wine, etc. can be created WITHOUT tainting of GPL and BSD code by Microsoft.
Your ISP is not giving you a certain amount of bandwidth that you can give away if you arent using it. I worked at a small ISP about 7 years ago, and we had about 4000 users but only about 8 actual T1s for their connectivity. There was only enough bandwidth for about 190 users at any one time to be using a full DS0 line. The reason that our users only had a pay a small price was because we could assume that the average user would not be using their connection more than 5% of the time.
The problem is that most broadband companies advertise "unlimited Internet access" and then go and bitchslap users who actually take advantage of the service, e.g., torrents and putting up personal web sites and whatnot.
What they really mean is "unlimited web access" (download only) but they redefine terms, much like how Microsoft redefines "downtime" and "uptime" so what they mean by those terms is completely different from what the rest of industry (indeed the rest of the world) means using those same terms.
It's scummy, and I look forward to the day where Google or some other company manages to break local monopolies and introduce real competition.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, not the Simpsons, but everyone except Microsoft has already been doing this for year. Hell, there are plenty of free VOIP programs that are freeware or open source, and have been since the '90s.
Hey Microsoft! 1997 called and they want their prior art back!
I vote that NASA gets out of the way and real engineers get to call the shots. Look at what Rutan accomplished with $20mil. Sure, you might argue that all he did was build a craft to go up and come right back down, but how much did that cost compared to the original Mercury missions, and what did it cost compared to the X-15 rocket plane? Only a tiny fraction of the cost of each, PLUS he did it very quickly and very efficiently, by picking the best engineers he could regardless of what political correctness or any other bureaucratic BS that a government agency has to contend with.
No, what is being discussed here is links, e.g., creating an additional filename referencing an inode.
4 1355
http://win32.mvps.org/ntfs/lnw.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=3
NTFS does support links, but as usual from Microsoft, it's half-baked and only the bare minimum required for POSIX compliance was implemented. From sysinternals (now a Microsoft site) you can download a utility for manipulating NTFS links, or you can install the free Services for Unix (again, from Microsoft's web site) to get the M$ version of ln.
That was a copyright issue, not a patent issue. Weak troll.
I use Nvidia video cards now, because even though they're proprietary, they support old-to-ancient chipsets and actively maintain older drivers.
I do not use SiS products as the failure rates I've seen for SiS are somewhere between horrible and abysmal.
FWIW, I run SuSE (retail) for most of my office machines and for my home machine. I also run CentOS and Ubuntu. Most of the machines are going to be upgraded to SuSE 10.2. Say what you will, but not everyone is going to dump SuSE until there is a good reason to. We might go OpenSUSE this time around rather than pay for the distribution, depending on what is tainted in SuSE Retail. Given the timing, I doubt SuSE 10.2 is tainted with anything from Microsoft at this point. That might change in SuSE 10.3 or SuSE 11. Given how slowly Microsoft tends to move, it's possible that even next autumn's release won't be tainted at all with their crud.
If you're running SuSE already (10.1 or earlier) there is little reason to dump what you have, but keep your options open and reevaluate the larger distributions periodically. Given the refinement of KDE in SuSE, I'm reluctant to dump it even for kubuntu.
Untrue. They can argue that in court that they are making an archival copy of each DVD they have in inventory, and then as Copyright requires they are transferring all backups along with the original in order to comply with Copyright. When the MPAA WAH!!!! about the DMCA, they can point to the interoperability exclusion contained in the DMCA.
If they actually read the DMCA they will see that they are in the clear - PROVIDING they get a judge who isn't on the take.
The best course, though, is for this to go to a jury trial and have the jury judge the law, and then the law can be nullified.
Why are the pictures so blurry?
A VCR is going to ignore the broadcast flag and record off of the RF or S-video or composite output of your cable box, whereas Tivo will cheerfully refuse to record it per the broadcaster's request that your court-protected fair use rights (e.g., timeshifting) are illegally revoked. Not only that, Tivo will not record the component video outputs, so where is the advantage over VHS again, considering you can't ask a friend to record your shows and give you the tapes when you're on a trip?
Patents on prior art like double clicking, SMB (has been around since the mid-80s; an IBM invention), single clicking, the ribbon (e.g., graphical toolbars/menus, but now it's glassy and with bigger buttons so OMG let's patent it!), and the hyperlink? Sure, if Microsoft's patent portfolio consists of crap similar to those patents, I'd love to see them go against Redhat; it'll be a sure bet that if suits like this end up in the courts that not only will the DoJ be revisiting Microsoft with yet more antitrust suits, the courts can end up so backlogged that some judge will wake up, realize that software patents are generally OBVIOUS use of technology and invalidate the whole lot of them, and Microsoft's being shattered into tiny pieces when the antitrust sword comes down will be merely a side benefit.
There can be a silver lining to all of this bullcrap.
I don't think IBM is going to be so respectful; more likely they'd leave the festering corpse for the buzzards and coyote to feed on.
Didn't SCO already did that? Why can't Microsoft be original? What's next; are they going to try to erect a huge sunshade over Seattle? Steal the head off of a statue of George Washington? Come on now, Microsoft, you can do better than that! But then, I suppose this is so typical of your idea of "innovation."
Seriously though, if they claim Linux infringes on its IP, it's 99.999% likely that every other *nix variant out there does as well, since Linux is merely a clone of Unix. So, go after the likes of Sun, IBM, SCO (Yeah, I know SCO and Microsoft are lovers, but bear with me here), the BSDs, HP (HP/UX and Dec Unix), and so forth. I don't think even Microsoft has the resources to prove to the courts that an OS architecture which predates theirs by over a decade infringes on their so-called "intellectual property."
VHS won't die until the HTPC appliance fully matures, and a DRM-free medium is adapted en masse, and can record both NTSC and ATSC. DVD recordable is almost there, but is less flexible than an HTPC and won't record high-def, so why bother upgrading? Tivo almost has it, except tivo decides how long you can keep recordings (in some cases at least), NOT you, PLUS it requires a monthly subscription and either a land line or ethernet connection to phone home. Also, Tivo makes it FAR to difficult to record say, Smallville or Desperate Housewives or whatever it is you and your friends all want to watch, then take that recording over to a friend's house or simply lend it out. It's FAR to difficult for the average joe to record a show for you while you're on vacation and then give you the timeshifted content.
I think that VHS will be around until the HTPC is easy to use, DRM-free, HDTV capable, AND the public is made aware of it. Myth is so close, and yet so far, because it is a royal pain in the ass to set up, and the easy-to-configure distribution (Knoppmyth) is fully two generations behind when it comes to chipset and video card support.
I'm going to ask:
That's great and all, but does it run Linux?
I'm not kidding, either. Is AMD going to force ATI to open up its specs and its drivers so that we can FINALLY get stable and FULLY functional drivers for Linux, or are they still going to be partially-implemented limited-function binary blobs where support for older-yet-still-in-distribution-channels products will be phased out in order to "encourage" (read: force) customers to upgrade to new hardware, discarding still-current computers?
That is why I do not buy ATI products any more. They provide ZERO VIVO support in Linux, They phase out chip support in drivers even while they are actively distributed. They do not maintain compatibility of older drivers to ensure they can be linked to the latest kernels.
This is why I went Core 2 Duo for my new system and do not run AMD - their merger with ATI. My fear is that if ATI rubs off on AMD then support for AMD processors and chipsets will only get worse, not better.
If Commodore execs were less interested in embezzlement and instead gave both R&D and Marketing departments the funding the sorely needed, the Amiga would likely be dominating the market today. Would processor speed and networking capabilities have matured as quickly were that the case? I doubt it, but on the other hand, the HTPC would have truly arrived by the mid-90s, whereas with PC video technology multimedia was its Achilles heel, making the HTPC a low-performance curiousity until the turn of the century.
Is it?
http://www.laserglow.com/bluepointer.html
No, because a click-through EULA attempts to strip you of your first sale and fair use rights after the fact, where your right to USE THE PRODUCT YOU PAID FOR can supposedly be revoked, whereas this case is about additional rights (distribution rights) which are subject to specific conditions.
BIG difference.
If it's not released for the Mac, it has little future in the graphic design and publishing fields.
Correct, but history shows (LinkSys, Motorola, Tivo, etc.) that the copyright holders must actively enforce the GPL, and aggressively at that, when a big company violates it. There are DVR manufacturers which embed Linux but which absolutely, positively refuse to release the source for even the kernel, let alone ffmpeg and other GPLed projects they are using.
They certainly can retract the rights, if Novell is in violation of the GPL. If they're not in violation they can't, obviously, but apparantly they think Novell is in violation and Novell really needs to come clean to show that there is nothing in their agreement with Darth Vader, er, Microsoft which would put them in violation, else the current villification of Novell in the eyes of Linux users and distributors won't stop.
The chickens are roosting with the fox right now, and it's clear that the fox has given no assurance that he won't eat the chickens.
(chronology and events altered slightly for creative license)
Microsoft introduced Xenix, spun it off and begat Santa Cruz Organization -- The Old SCO(tm) and it was good; an affordable x86 Unix environment.
Novell was a very proprietary company which improved their products v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y ('80s through mid '90s) so SCO a group of engineers and execs left Novell and begat Caldera. Caldera bought DR-DOS after the Windows incompatibility fiasco (deliberate sabotage by Microsoft), declared that "OSes want to be free" and opened up their DOS source for all to see. Caldera begat Free DOS, and it was good.
Novell saw their market declining due to interoperability problems introduced by Microsoft, and by utilities introduced by Microsoft which were promoted for use for bypassing Novell's per-seat restrictions. Novell examined their positions, saw that Unix had a strong future, so they bought the IP for Unix, assigned SCO as the license broker for Unix IP, and saw that it was good.
Caldera looked upon the Free DOS and their gaining a decent following, and declared that open source looked promising, so they introduced a Linux distribution that was a bit ahead of its time. They looked upon their package management and update download-equipped open-source Linux operating system and saw that it was good.
Santa Cruz Organization saw its Unix product's future shrinking, and even with their 5% comission on Unix licensing they could read the writing on the wall for their core product, so they sold the "SCO" name and Unix products and contracts to Caldera, and thought all was well. The New SCO renamed Caldera Linux to SCO OpenLinux and claimed that it was good, and all was well.
Enter the serpent who goes by the name Darl McBride; a sneaky if not clever demon who felt that he could tempt investors to take a bite from his fruit of profit. He declared that Linux Stole SCO Code and thart SCO in fact owns the IP to all Unix-like OSes. In doing this the serpent indeed deceived them and got them to take a nibble with his declaration that Linux infringed upon his Unix IP and that all Linux users must pay him $699/processor/Linux box. Linux users grumbled to the Lord.
The serpent bit AutoZone's and Daimler Chrysler's heels, took them to court, and the judge did stomp on the serpent's head, crushing it, and rendered its vemon harmless. Linux users rejoiced, singing "O where is SCO's sting?"
Serpent McBride of SCO, relentless in his evil, pursued Lord Novell and Lord IBM into court. The courts did chuckle, but granted the serpent access to the throne. McBride shouted "I will own Linux! I will own Unix! Users will bow down to me and I will be like the most high Novell!"
Linux users, seeing through the deception, grumbled to the Lord, and proclaimed "Woe unto SCO, for they are evil and their king Darl McBride shall surely perish." The Lord IBM and The Lord Novell heard their grumbling and took offense at SCOs actions. They dragged SCO back into court, presented their counterclaims, saw SCO's stock plummet, and it was good.
There may be problems introduced into navigation systems by setting the clocks wrong.
However: shouldn't they be able to test this in simulators?
Can't they just inform Novell that they no longer have the right to distribute Samba under the GPL, but instead must either fork it or work out commercial licenses with the Samba code contributors (good luck with working out a deal with each copyright holder)? Other project teams could do the same, and Novell will have a hard choice to make:
1. Fork each project where distribution rights have been and choose to fork, becoming incompatible in the near-to-mid future
2. Reconsider the deal, pull out, and work with Redhat, Canonical, IBM, et al, ensuring compatibility, and create a strong front against Microsoft's monopoly. They could also form clean room reverse engineering teams where binaries are decompiled and notes are taken on the architecture, then hand those notes (but NO decompiled code examples) to the open source developers. This way. legal, clean-room implementations of Samba, wine, etc. can be created WITHOUT tainting of GPL and BSD code by Microsoft.
The problem is that most broadband companies advertise "unlimited Internet access" and then go and bitchslap users who actually take advantage of the service, e.g., torrents and putting up personal web sites and whatnot.
What they really mean is "unlimited web access" (download only) but they redefine terms, much like how Microsoft redefines "downtime" and "uptime" so what they mean by those terms is completely different from what the rest of industry (indeed the rest of the world) means using those same terms.
It's scummy, and I look forward to the day where Google or some other company manages to break local monopolies and introduce real competition.
OMG!! R U 4 real? LOLOL!!!!111!!!!!
This is not good; how is lowering the bar possibly going to help kids learn?