Yes. You chose to work for them, under contract, and your inventions are theirs. They can choose to do whatever they want with your work with impunity -- they could build WMD from your idea if they wanted to, and you wouldn't be able to do a darn thing about it.
But if you truly are the innovator at your company then...
1) Dawdle on the patent app. 2) Get your finances together. 3) QUIT!!! -- and become a consultant.
Then, you get to make the rules.
Also, because your peers likely do not understand your invention as you do, they are likely to mess up the patent application. The patent/will/ happen, but it will be that much easier to contest, and overthrow.
People on this forum are not understanding what is being discussed. There are two issues -- licensing and Kernel tainting, and these actually are separate issues.
Licensing:
GPL only covers derived works. Making code that interfaces from a GPL'd software to a binary that is a windows derivative IS legal. Linus specifically made this point in his posts, and several times.
Tainting:
Tainting has two purposes... First, it tells the Kernel that a module is suspect. If someone reports a Kernel bug on a Tainted Kernel, then the Kernel maintainers have no visibility into the binary that may or may not causing an issue. Kernel maintainers then require removal of whatever is causing the tainting as a first step in tracking down a bug.
The second purpose of tainting is to indicate to the outside world that if they used certain calls in a module, that that module would definitely indicate that it was a "derived work."
Currently NDISWrapper taints the Kernel by itself if it loads a proprietary driver. All agree that this tainting is necessary -- especially for the first purpose. Linus wanted to know which symbols that NDISWrapper was using so that he could find out if those symbols really needed to be GPL_ONLY symbols.
Additionally, there seemed to be some confusion if NDISWrapper was simply acting as a pass-thru vehicle for avoidance of the GPL -- and we found through the posts, and through the lists of exports, that it clearly was not. There was also discussion on if the exports could be removed from NDISWrapper or the exports could be made non-GPL_ONLY -- presumably, so that it didn't/have/ to do the funky chicken with tainting, or to make more people happy & reduce the chance of NDISWrapper being bullied again...
The FCC is not talking about security in a way that most of the people in this thread are talking about. They are talking about REGULATORY security. For instance, they want to make sure that a radio cannot produce so many dBm spectral emission outside of it's band when it is operating in it's intended band. They want to make sure that your Linksys doesn't output more than so many dBm so that it doesn't blast out the neighbor's network. That is what they are talking about -- and they see these as the real hurdles in qualifying SW defined radios. They would rather have regulatory control at the developer's level than having to resort to investigation and bringing individuals to court.
The issue is that this ruling benefits Cisco that wants to defeat the likes of Linksys, Netgear and others that are beginning to deliver "decent" solutions with cheap radios and the help of hobbyists leveraging open source software. If you require that some of the SW is closed, you cannot leverage the benefits of the open source module on that bit you have closed. You also have to end up spending more time organizationally to support the effort, because you have to maintain two sets of documents -- one for the closed section, and another for the open section. You have to support binary compatibility, or some mechanism for the open source to integrate with the closed source firmware... it just becomes that much more of a burden for Cisco's competitors to develop and maintain their solutions.
So, please, don't flood the FCC with emails telling them that "Open source/is/ secure" -- from the standpoint of regulation, it's not! Flood them instead with messages that say, "This ruling is entirely prejudicial against many companies leveraging Open Source software for their solutions."
Why do I care if my bacteria end up on another planet or not? Does it make any difference? Is it that we might not be able to tell if "life" we found on some other planet is indeed "extra-terrestrial?" Quite honestly, I don't care. This is a big "whoop-de-do" over nothing.
Headline: "Guy trying to prove his intelligence, spouts semi-sophistry about Linux that descends into blather."
The truth is that the Linux OS, however it is defined, is a disruptive force to be reckoned with -- both technically and intellectually. Rob is just proving that he can't get his head around how the SW development process works, and how the Open Source development and distribution process relates to the business (read: "capitalist") and academic environment that supports it.
First off, I am filled with regret over this loss for Niki's family. I hope Hans is innocent -- and I hope even more that Niki is alive. It is such a tragic situation.
When it comes to his life's work -- the code, well, honestly, the prospect of Hans' silence might HELP reiser4. Much of the issue with inclusion of reiser4 into the Linux Kernel, from my vantage, has been personal conflicts between Hans and the kernel developers. Now, the code is there and visible -- it can speak for itself. If the code has value, then distributions and companies will pick it up and incorporate it into their distributions and systems.
The open source model is different from what many corporate folks are used to... If you wish to take advantage of the technology and use it in your infrastructure, you have several options -- from "winging it" & relying on support from the development community, to purchasing a support contract from a distributor, to hiring a consultant, to hiring a full time developer -- depending upon how dependent you are on the functionality for your core business needs and the maturity of the solution.
In the case of reiser4, it is not a "mature" universally accepted solution -- you are likely in a niche that requires some unique performance advantage that only reiser4 can provide -- you are officially on the cutting edge. In this case, I hope that you are fully invested in the development community and have hired someone to support/develop reiser on a full time basis.
Truly -- Nethack is one game that I go back to again and again. Even though I have a couple of consoles & now eschew them in favor of my WoW addiction... I will still from time to time rejoin my quest for the Amulet. I also smetimes find myself logging into one of the many telnet sites serving Nethack & watch others in one terminal while I code/work in another -- it's a great diversion & a great game (and also makes a great pseudo-screensaver).
I think this is a great idea in so many ways -- and it may actually be something that transforms the way your University teaches and researches. My advice is that you put ALL your lectures online & then see where it takes you.
Reasons:
1) Your students now have another venue to review presented information and prepare for tests and labs.
2) You now have a way of grading and improving lecture presentation through peer review.
3) Eventually your lectures could be refined, and prior viewing of lectures required your lectures being replaced with "forums" that include Q&A and labs. Your new forums could also use a socratic method to further cement concepts in the minds of your students.
4) Evenually your professor's can be freed from "wrote lecturing" to spending more time in interactive teaching, research, peer-review, and refining/augmenting/supplementing lectures.
On the whole, I really think that you have a winner of an idea that is far and away an improvement from the status quo. It's the wave of the future -- embrace it!
From one that has been on both sides of the fence
on
The Living Dilbert?
·
· Score: 1
Well, I have not served in the military, but have worked in civil service for the Navy. The best thing that I ever did, that led to the most rewarding experiences in my life, was to leave safety and venture out to into uncharted waters. Now, I'm not saying that you will not encounter beurocracy in the private sector, but companies with heavy beaurocracy go out of business. No company could survive for long in a free market economy with the burocracy that you have experienced working for the government.
My Advice: Don't ever look back or join Civil Service. Look for a smaller company -- maybe even a startup -- that will help you to deveop your interests beyond IT. Look first at the companies that were your vendors. When the company ceases to be nimble, or you have learned up to your abilty & are comfortable, LEAVE. Take an expat. if you can. Continue this pattern every 5-8 years.
None of the prominent desktop applications that can create and save documents in OpenDocument currently work well with screen readers, magnifiers and other assistive technologies.
Has anyone asked the obvious questions? Which screen readers, magnifiers, and other assistive technologies specifically, are we talking about? What does the author mean specifically by the words work well? What are the specific requirements to make OS applications supporting ODF as the native format work well for the disabled community?
This all sounds like just so much more FUD from an MS groupie. If the ODF plugin that we hear talk of "works well," then the disabled community is not impaired in the least! At the very least, they become that much further empowered with ODF to own the data that they create with their proprietary solution. The future with ODF for the disabled, is that they have a new ray of hope -- to have the promise of becoming fully freed from their expensive, proprietary solutions as the equivalent technology becoming available in the OS world is refined.
C is a high enough level language for the X server, TYVM. If the original programmer had actually paid attention to the warning his compiler gave him and bothered to take heed, his mistake would have been immediately apparent to him.
It is silly to just blame the language when C is "just fine" for large applications. For X, ISO C is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, because it has to port to so many platforms. I can't think of a platform that doesn't have C compiler and most have a modern standards complient ISO C compiler -- you can't say that for most HLL's.
I'm sorry -- backwards compatibility in itself is NOT the issue.
How long has "tar" been used on UNIX-like systems? How many UNIX/Linux systems support tar -- and can accept old binaries of tar (on/from the same HW platform). Now I realize that I'm not talking necessarily talking "binary" compatibility cross platform... But Unix philosophy of small simple algorithms patched together through a common communications mechanism has served it very well & provided an interface that, while daunting at first, has withstood the test of time. This system has enabled a platform for future innovation while retaining simplicity and "compatibility" with the past.
My opinion is that the real issue with Microsoft software is that they simply are stuck with a massive "sea++" of code upon which they have made poor design decisions driven from mismanaged requirements. The Obscene Mass of code that is involved along with the mentality of their management has led to this impasse.
Code should be grown honed, separated, refactored, simplified, documented and pier reviewed -- all for the sole purpose of maintainability. It is difficult to do this for 50M lines of schedule-driven code.
1) Better Presentations and Demos incorporating multimedia, data intensive simulations, and realtime remote control of systems.
2) Market Simulations.
3) Estimation tools.
4) Application prototyping.
5) Multimedia recording.
6) Some application that management and IT hasn't thought of.
In other words, faster tools enable your "innovative" business people to do better work faster than those in companies that believe that processes shouldn't deviate from the current norms.
Faster CPU's may not be necessary to run run widgets through your production line, and may not be necessary to keep your business hobbling along... (Heck, you probably are thinking of contracting those simple things that don't require innovation out to Elbonia or someplace -- and you would be an astute businessman to do so.) However, if you want to retain truly innovative people, and you want your business to stay ahead of the pack, then investing in the best technology for your people is a very small thing.
This sounds like a troll, but i'll bite -- because many people don't really understand what our environment really looks like in the RF domain and what the real concerns are.
We have cell phones that typically radiate power at ~836MHz Cell, ~1900MHz PCS, or 2.xGHz for GSM that can radiate close to the ear at 28dBm (or roughly 1 Watt). We have microwave towers that even though they are directional can leak energy. We have microwave ovens that leak energy at roughly 2.4GHz -- enough to easily jam 802.11b. You don't know it, but there is a lot of communication going on over power lines today as well. Wifi does not comparitively add enough energy into the environment to be a very significant contributor.
2.2x-ish MHz is a significant frequency because it is a resonant frequency of water. That's the reason that a microwave oven works -- electromagnetic energy supplied at this frequency causes the water molecules to get all excited and generate heat that cooks (steams) the surrounding food. Microwave ovens are shielded -- but imperfectly & some energy does escape. Our bodies can be affected by this energy, because we are mostly made of water. Even so, by and large, with the intensities that are in our environment (outside the oven), the heat that is generated doesn't really even warm the first layer of skin.
In cell phones, where the source is closer to the head and there is greater power, I have heard that the radiation can penetrate farther into the head and warm some of the brain close to the ear.
So, if you are really thinking of banning something due solely to electromagnetic radiation, look also at banning these:
1) GSM Band Cell phones.
2) PCS Band Cell Phones.
3) CELL Band cell phones.
4) Microwave ovens.
5) Nearby Cell Towers
6) Nearby Microwave communications antennas.
7) High voltage Power lines.
And let's not forget banning on-campus AM radio stations and secuity Walkie-talkies in the process... they likely put out more power to a limited portion of the student body than 802.11.
One further note -- if you are really paranoid about 802.11b and will not be asuaged -- later versions of 802.11 spec output power at 5.2GHz. This band is not one that is even closely related to a resonance frequency of water & may help to calm your paranoia with the standard wi-fi frequencies.
Sometimes pointer arithmatic can be safer than using an itterator. The assumption of this code is that the length of your input will fit into an integer -- this assumption may not be accurate. With the itterator/array code, you may have different results based upon the optimization settings.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. You chose to work for them, under contract, and your inventions are theirs. They can choose to do whatever they want with your work with impunity -- they could build WMD from your idea if they wanted to, and you wouldn't be able to do a darn thing about it.
/will/ happen, but it will be that much easier to contest, and overthrow.
But if you truly are the innovator at your company then...
1) Dawdle on the patent app.
2) Get your finances together.
3) QUIT!!! -- and become a consultant.
Then, you get to make the rules.
Also, because your peers likely do not understand your invention as you do, they are likely to mess up the patent application. The patent
$ svn checkout svn://YOUR_REPO/trunk; cd trunk
$ gvim your_file.txt &
ia simple change<RETURN><ESC>
:w
:!svn diff
:!svn commit
:new
:r !svn log your_file.txt
:qall!
People on this forum are not understanding what is being discussed. There are two issues -- licensing and Kernel tainting, and these actually are separate issues. Licensing: GPL only covers derived works. Making code that interfaces from a GPL'd software to a binary that is a windows derivative IS legal. Linus specifically made this point in his posts, and several times. Tainting: Tainting has two purposes... First, it tells the Kernel that a module is suspect. If someone reports a Kernel bug on a Tainted Kernel, then the Kernel maintainers have no visibility into the binary that may or may not causing an issue. Kernel maintainers then require removal of whatever is causing the tainting as a first step in tracking down a bug. The second purpose of tainting is to indicate to the outside world that if they used certain calls in a module, that that module would definitely indicate that it was a "derived work." Currently NDISWrapper taints the Kernel by itself if it loads a proprietary driver. All agree that this tainting is necessary -- especially for the first purpose. Linus wanted to know which symbols that NDISWrapper was using so that he could find out if those symbols really needed to be GPL_ONLY symbols. Additionally, there seemed to be some confusion if NDISWrapper was simply acting as a pass-thru vehicle for avoidance of the GPL -- and we found through the posts, and through the lists of exports, that it clearly was not. There was also discussion on if the exports could be removed from NDISWrapper or the exports could be made non-GPL_ONLY -- presumably, so that it didn't /have/ to do the funky chicken with tainting, or to make more people happy & reduce the chance of NDISWrapper being bullied again...
I'm running latest Ubuntu Gutsy on a T43, and "dmesg | grep hpet" yields me nothing.
The issue is that this ruling benefits Cisco that wants to defeat the likes of Linksys, Netgear and others that are beginning to deliver "decent" solutions with cheap radios and the help of hobbyists leveraging open source software. If you require that some of the SW is closed, you cannot leverage the benefits of the open source module on that bit you have closed. You also have to end up spending more time organizationally to support the effort, because you have to maintain two sets of documents -- one for the closed section, and another for the open section. You have to support binary compatibility, or some mechanism for the open source to integrate with the closed source firmware... it just becomes that much more of a burden for Cisco's competitors to develop and maintain their solutions.
So, please, don't flood the FCC with emails telling them that "Open source /is/ secure" -- from the standpoint of regulation, it's not! Flood them instead with messages that say, "This ruling is entirely prejudicial against many companies leveraging Open Source software for their solutions."
Why do I care if my bacteria end up on another planet or not? Does it make any difference? Is it that we might not be able to tell if "life" we found on some other planet is indeed "extra-terrestrial?" Quite honestly, I don't care. This is a big "whoop-de-do" over nothing.
Headline: "Guy trying to prove his intelligence, spouts semi-sophistry about Linux that descends into blather."
The truth is that the Linux OS, however it is defined, is a disruptive force to be reckoned with -- both technically and intellectually. Rob is just proving that he can't get his head around how the SW development process works, and how the Open Source development and distribution process relates to the business (read: "capitalist") and academic environment that supports it.
First off, I am filled with regret over this loss for Niki's family. I hope Hans is innocent -- and I hope even more that Niki is alive. It is such a tragic situation.
When it comes to his life's work -- the code, well, honestly, the prospect of Hans' silence might HELP reiser4. Much of the issue with inclusion of reiser4 into the Linux Kernel, from my vantage, has been personal conflicts between Hans and the kernel developers. Now, the code is there and visible -- it can speak for itself. If the code has value, then distributions and companies will pick it up and incorporate it into their distributions and systems.
The open source model is different from what many corporate folks are used to... If you wish to take advantage of the technology and use it in your infrastructure, you have several options -- from "winging it" & relying on support from the development community, to purchasing a support contract from a distributor, to hiring a consultant, to hiring a full time developer -- depending upon how dependent you are on the functionality for your core business needs and the maturity of the solution.
In the case of reiser4, it is not a "mature" universally accepted solution -- you are likely in a niche that requires some unique performance advantage that only reiser4 can provide -- you are officially on the cutting edge. In this case, I hope that you are fully invested in the development community and have hired someone to support/develop reiser on a full time basis.
m6ack
-- My sig used to be pretty cool.
There is a method to this "hjkl" madness. Nethack teaches you how to use the movement keys of "One True Editor" -- vi.
Truly -- Nethack is one game that I go back to again and again. Even though I have a couple of consoles & now eschew them in favor of my WoW addiction... I will still from time to time rejoin my quest for the Amulet. I also smetimes find myself logging into one of the many telnet sites serving Nethack & watch others in one terminal while I code/work in another -- it's a great diversion & a great game (and also makes a great pseudo-screensaver).
Reasons:
1) Your students now have another venue to review presented information and prepare for tests and labs.
2) You now have a way of grading and improving lecture presentation through peer review.
3) Eventually your lectures could be refined, and prior viewing of lectures required your lectures being replaced with "forums" that include Q&A and labs. Your new forums could also use a socratic method to further cement concepts in the minds of your students.
4) Evenually your professor's can be freed from "wrote lecturing" to spending more time in interactive teaching, research, peer-review, and refining/augmenting/supplementing lectures.
On the whole, I really think that you have a winner of an idea that is far and away an improvement from the status quo. It's the wave of the future -- embrace it!
My Advice: Don't ever look back or join Civil Service. Look for a smaller company -- maybe even a startup -- that will help you to deveop your interests beyond IT. Look first at the companies that were your vendors. When the company ceases to be nimble, or you have learned up to your abilty & are comfortable, LEAVE. Take an expat. if you can. Continue this pattern every 5-8 years.
Has anyone asked the obvious questions? Which screen readers, magnifiers, and other assistive technologies specifically, are we talking about? What does the author mean specifically by the words work well? What are the specific requirements to make OS applications supporting ODF as the native format work well for the disabled community?
This all sounds like just so much more FUD from an MS groupie. If the ODF plugin that we hear talk of "works well," then the disabled community is not impaired in the least! At the very least, they become that much further empowered with ODF to own the data that they create with their proprietary solution. The future with ODF for the disabled, is that they have a new ray of hope -- to have the promise of becoming fully freed from their expensive, proprietary solutions as the equivalent technology becoming available in the OS world is refined.
C is a high enough level language for the X server, TYVM. If the original programmer had actually paid attention to the warning his compiler gave him and bothered to take heed, his mistake would have been immediately apparent to him.
It is silly to just blame the language when C is "just fine" for large applications. For X, ISO C is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, because it has to port to so many platforms. I can't think of a platform that doesn't have C compiler and most have a modern standards complient ISO C compiler -- you can't say that for most HLL's.
How long has "tar" been used on UNIX-like systems? How many UNIX/Linux systems support tar -- and can accept old binaries of tar (on/from the same HW platform). Now I realize that I'm not talking necessarily talking "binary" compatibility cross platform... But Unix philosophy of small simple algorithms patched together through a common communications mechanism has served it very well & provided an interface that, while daunting at first, has withstood the test of time. This system has enabled a platform for future innovation while retaining simplicity and "compatibility" with the past.
My opinion is that the real issue with Microsoft software is that they simply are stuck with a massive "sea++" of code upon which they have made poor design decisions driven from mismanaged requirements. The Obscene Mass of code that is involved along with the mentality of their management has led to this impasse.
Code should be grown honed, separated, refactored, simplified, documented and pier reviewed -- all for the sole purpose of maintainability. It is difficult to do this for 50M lines of schedule-driven code.
So that's why your company is going south!
Better Processing power enables:
1) Better Presentations and Demos incorporating multimedia, data intensive simulations, and realtime remote control of systems. 2) Market Simulations. 3) Estimation tools. 4) Application prototyping. 5) Multimedia recording. 6) Some application that management and IT hasn't thought of.
In other words, faster tools enable your "innovative" business people to do better work faster than those in companies that believe that processes shouldn't deviate from the current norms.
Faster CPU's may not be necessary to run run widgets through your production line, and may not be necessary to keep your business hobbling along... (Heck, you probably are thinking of contracting those simple things that don't require innovation out to Elbonia or someplace -- and you would be an astute businessman to do so.) However, if you want to retain truly innovative people, and you want your business to stay ahead of the pack, then investing in the best technology for your people is a very small thing.
This sounds like a troll, but i'll bite -- because many people don't really understand what our environment really looks like in the RF domain and what the real concerns are. We have cell phones that typically radiate power at ~836MHz Cell, ~1900MHz PCS, or 2.xGHz for GSM that can radiate close to the ear at 28dBm (or roughly 1 Watt). We have microwave towers that even though they are directional can leak energy. We have microwave ovens that leak energy at roughly 2.4GHz -- enough to easily jam 802.11b. You don't know it, but there is a lot of communication going on over power lines today as well. Wifi does not comparitively add enough energy into the environment to be a very significant contributor. 2.2x-ish MHz is a significant frequency because it is a resonant frequency of water. That's the reason that a microwave oven works -- electromagnetic energy supplied at this frequency causes the water molecules to get all excited and generate heat that cooks (steams) the surrounding food. Microwave ovens are shielded -- but imperfectly & some energy does escape. Our bodies can be affected by this energy, because we are mostly made of water. Even so, by and large, with the intensities that are in our environment (outside the oven), the heat that is generated doesn't really even warm the first layer of skin. In cell phones, where the source is closer to the head and there is greater power, I have heard that the radiation can penetrate farther into the head and warm some of the brain close to the ear. So, if you are really thinking of banning something due solely to electromagnetic radiation, look also at banning these: 1) GSM Band Cell phones. 2) PCS Band Cell Phones. 3) CELL Band cell phones. 4) Microwave ovens. 5) Nearby Cell Towers 6) Nearby Microwave communications antennas. 7) High voltage Power lines. And let's not forget banning on-campus AM radio stations and secuity Walkie-talkies in the process... they likely put out more power to a limited portion of the student body than 802.11. One further note -- if you are really paranoid about 802.11b and will not be asuaged -- later versions of 802.11 spec output power at 5.2GHz. This band is not one that is even closely related to a resonance frequency of water & may help to calm your paranoia with the standard wi-fi frequencies.
Sometimes pointer arithmatic can be safer than using an itterator. The assumption of this code is that the length of your input will fit into an integer -- this assumption may not be accurate. With the itterator/array code, you may have different results based upon the optimization settings.