99% of the posts here concentrated on the fact the Police "doesn't get the license". If the license says "I can bend over and you just do your thing" is it good to leave things like that?
When individuals sell free software, the people who buy it give from their hard earned salaries to buy something that is free because of lack of information, and the money go directly to the scammers, all of it, as a result damaging the reputation of Mozilla Corp. and preventing the unencumbered spread of that free software.
The fact the license allows it doesn't mean it's doing any good. This *IS* a hole in the license that scammers abuse a *LOT*.
And when the police calls and says "these guys are abusing your product to perform legal robbery on random folks" and Mozilla replies "yea that's ok", you know something is totally wrong here.
Apparently they tried few times but proved unsuccessful, but I couldn't find Creative having such a patent. Doesn't make the situation less ridiculous:)
The patent covers content created online, i.e. if FrontPage was running from Internet Explorer as a Flash or Avalon+XML or HTML/JS, then it'd probably have pieces affected by the patent.
This is one more case of "same stuff but in a new medium" patents, just like Apple patenting their "unique" menu system (used on iPod) for use on mobile devices, as if we never used tree menus before.
When he says it covers all "rich media" he really means it covers rich media GENERATOR/EDITOR applications in said rich media, not all apps or the technology itself.
The patent describes a system for creating what basically is a Flash IDE with clipart online. That said the patent affects all sorts of CMS (content management systems), editors, template-based sites and so on and so on that fall under it.
The prior art for that patent is devastating. A lot of the claims are ridiculous and include the "revolutionarty" inventions of.. rotating, scaling and moving objects.
I'm still mightily pissed by this silly patent, but I'll just ignore it, should they try to enforce it, they'll have to face the prior art.
26 USD for dial up:)?! Great, over here broadband providers offer dial-up as a free advertisement for their companies.
But anyways: we've had our telecom do a similar thing to us year or two ago. We have an aging analog phone system and part of it is replaced by digital gradually. At the time they didn't manage to raise the phone prices overall since they were regulated by the government.
So instead they introduced higher prices for the digital lines only instead, because of "investment costs and increased quality service" and so on. So far so good.
Now that most casual folks don't need any of the "great digital service" crap, they shied away from applying to convert their phone lines from analog to digital, which slowed the analog-digital conversion rate last few years.
So the telecom thought, thought, and thought out - "hey we'll raise the prices of the analog lines and make them the same as the digital lines, this will make people switch".
And what happened? A huge amount of people just gave up on their phones - most of them on small villages and rural areas, farms, where they rarely need a phone and can't afford it.
And a lot of them did it.. because they already had (one or more) cellphones.
The rest however, some of them converted, some of them not, but they started making less calls, resulting in significant loss for the telecom last two or so years.
Curious to see how the tactic will turn out on AOL.
So they basically put this number out of their *ss, and whip it out every time things get rough for them:) This is so amazing!
Samsung: That's it, we're releasing the DVD-s as is.
MPAA: No! You can't!
Samsung: WTF?
MPAA: "The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost $5.4 billion last year due to piracy."
Samsung: What are those estimates based on, not on Samusng DVD players right?
MPAA: Can't you read man, come on, SHOCK! See: "The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost $5.4 billion last year due to piracy."
People: MPAA you're suing your users and manifacturers and keep pulling those numbers out of your *ss and applying silly DRM restriction so people don't buy your production, what did you expect?
MPAA: And you'll all be sued!!! You know why!? "The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost friggin $5.4 billion last year due to friggin piracy."!!! Estimate=Fact! Estimate=fact!! Don't question us or you be sued!!! Arghh..
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99% of the posts here concentrated on the fact the Police "doesn't get the license". If the license says "I can bend over and you just do your thing" is it good to leave things like that?
When individuals sell free software, the people who buy it give from their hard earned salaries to buy something that is free because of lack of information, and the money go directly to the scammers, all of it, as a result damaging the reputation of Mozilla Corp. and preventing the unencumbered spread of that free software.
The fact the license allows it doesn't mean it's doing any good. This *IS* a hole in the license that scammers abuse a *LOT*.
And when the police calls and says "these guys are abusing your product to perform legal robbery on random folks" and Mozilla replies "yea that's ok", you know something is totally wrong here.
You could be right: http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1226
:)
Apparently they tried few times but proved unsuccessful, but I couldn't find Creative having such a patent. Doesn't make the situation less ridiculous
"Balthaser's own website is built using Flash, one of the technologies for which it claims a patent."
It's not ironic since the patent describes precisely this site.
The patent covers content created online, i.e. if FrontPage was running from Internet Explorer as a Flash or Avalon+XML or HTML/JS, then it'd probably have pieces affected by the patent.
This is one more case of "same stuff but in a new medium" patents, just like Apple patenting their "unique" menu system (used on iPod) for use on mobile devices, as if we never used tree menus before.
When he says it covers all "rich media" he really means it covers rich media GENERATOR/EDITOR applications in said rich media, not all apps or the technology itself.
The patent describes a system for creating what basically is a Flash IDE with clipart online. That said the patent affects all sorts of CMS (content management systems), editors, template-based sites and so on and so on that fall under it.
The prior art for that patent is devastating. A lot of the claims are ridiculous and include the "revolutionarty" inventions of.. rotating, scaling and moving objects.
I'm still mightily pissed by this silly patent, but I'll just ignore it, should they try to enforce it, they'll have to face the prior art.
26 USD for dial up :)?! Great, over here broadband providers offer dial-up as a free advertisement for their companies.
But anyways: we've had our telecom do a similar thing to us year or two ago. We have an aging analog phone system and part of it is replaced by digital gradually. At the time they didn't manage to raise the phone prices overall since they were regulated by the government.
So instead they introduced higher prices for the digital lines only instead, because of "investment costs and increased quality service" and so on. So far so good.
Now that most casual folks don't need any of the "great digital service" crap, they shied away from applying to convert their phone lines from analog to digital, which slowed the analog-digital conversion rate last few years.
So the telecom thought, thought, and thought out - "hey we'll raise the prices of the analog lines and make them the same as the digital lines, this will make people switch".
And what happened? A huge amount of people just gave up on their phones - most of them on small villages and rural areas, farms, where they rarely need a phone and can't afford it.
And a lot of them did it.. because they already had (one or more) cellphones.
The rest however, some of them converted, some of them not, but they started making less calls, resulting in significant loss for the telecom last two or so years.
Curious to see how the tactic will turn out on AOL.
I paid $0 for my Linux server and didn't "log" my installing of Linux anywhere. What are those stats showing? Nothing.
Plus what has sold lately is totally not telling for the whole picture (ratio of *nix to Windows servers).
While I'm not giving up Windows as my desktop OS, it's simply not making a good server OS for the moment.
So they basically put this number out of their *ss, and whip it out every time things get rough for them :) This is so amazing!
Samsung: That's it, we're releasing the DVD-s as is.
MPAA: No! You can't!
Samsung: WTF?
MPAA: "The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost $5.4 billion last year due to piracy."
Samsung: What are those estimates based on, not on Samusng DVD players right?
MPAA: Can't you read man, come on, SHOCK! See: "The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost $5.4 billion last year due to piracy."
People: MPAA you're suing your users and manifacturers and keep pulling those numbers out of your *ss and applying silly DRM restriction so people don't buy your production, what did you expect?
MPAA: And you'll all be sued!!! You know why!? "The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost friggin $5.4 billion last year due to friggin piracy."!!! Estimate=Fact! Estimate=fact!! Don't question us or you be sued!!! Arghh..