I watched their flash demo, with some interest. It doesn't do anything the GroupWise does not do now or will not do in the next ( no not a future release ) scheduled release.
GW has had 95% of what they have now, for the last 5 years and will have everything they have and more in the next few months.
When you can put 5000 users ( Cache-Mode ) or 1000 users in full on-line mode and hitting it heavy with say on average a 300MB to 500MB mail box, on a dedicated server with only 2 gigs of ram, come talk to me.
When you can put 100,000 users in at most 50 post offices, around the world, in one domain and have all the schedules, tasks, e-mail, document libraies, address books ( shared and otherwise ), complete rule based deligation of Calandars, Tasks, E-mail, etc. etc. all visable to each other, or not DOWN TO THE INDIVIDUAL USER LEVEL with complete class of service control, again come and talk to me.
The GroupWise clients support damn near every popular ( and unpopular ) messaging protocol including accessing your favorite news groups. Full RSS reader support is in the next version along with lots and lots of other goodies.
Have a look at what your saying is going to get "killed" and do a real feature by feature comparison with GroupWise before you start shooting your mouth off.
I am not taking away from anything the Zimbra folks have accomplished. Their hosted demo semed smooth and didn't explode on contact so even as die hard a GroupWise fan boy that I am, I give em props for their effort and it might even one day take over the world. But a GroupWise Killer? Not today it aint, and in my estimation, not tomorrow.
Come on man, don't you see, they can't stop it, it cant happen! They have been trying to stop it, but they are failing at every turn. They might think they are setting up Novell or Dell, but it just does not matter! Why, because everything Novell does, with the exeption of their own propriatery add-in products like NDS or ZenWorks, goes right back to OpenSuse.
Look how far Novell has pushed OpenOffice! They arguably have the best fork out there and they push everything back to OpenOffice.org. You have some of the best coders in the business working at Novell, working on OpenOffice, Kernel fixes, NSF fixes, File System Fixes, TCP/IP stack fixes, Security Fixes and it ALL gets pushed into OpenSuse and its all GPL so it can be flowed into Unbunto, Debian, RedHat, SlackWare pick any of them, they can all benefit when the kind of money Novell is spending and dragging out of Microsoft.
Dell will make Suse Better with better Driver Support, all kinds of things.
Microsoft does not understand that THEY are the pawn in this game, not the king.
If YOU push code into SUSE and its GPL they can't take and then not re-contribute. If its truly killer code that say makes IPV6 a cakewalk or makes EXCHANGE look even more pathetic then it is or makes GIMP completely overshadow anything that Adobe is doing or MicroSoft or even Novell for that matter, its going to win.
Use your mind, not your emotions and we CAN win.
You CAN download SLED and SLES for FREE ( as in beer and speech ) INCLUDING everything that Novell adds into it. grab a copy, load it up, see whats happenign with it. If you dont like then keep using which ever disto you like, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Patent reform is comming, Copyright reform is comming, its only a matter of time. We CAN and WILL win.
Microsoft IS the dominent player in Desktops and General Purpose Servers, for now.
Novell ISlegitimizing a Linux distro to Corporate America, and thats a good thing.
Dell IS the dominent player in general purpose hardware, for now.
So its time to stop whining and crying because your favorite distro is not the one being pushed. Be thankfull that at least one major distro is being very heavily funded to the tune of millions of dollars a month to make it the best it can possibly be.
I am not for a moment suggesting that you abandon the distro you know and love, nor am I suggesting you abandon coding ( if you are a coder ) for the distro you know and love, but for crying out loud, stop pitching a bitch about this! This is GOOD for Linux and FSF & OSS. You have a distro in SUSE that has a definitive road map and has massive amounts of push behind it.
As for the news of "key people" quiting Novell, you know what? They will be replaced by people that are at least as smart, if not smarter. Novell has bet their corporate ass on making SUSE attractive and palitable to the Corporate IT Managers and decision makers and they are doing a damn decent job of it too!
You want to help the Linux cause? Start writing or porting your BEST ideas to SUSE! Make it SO attractive the Corporate IT Managers and decision makers that they cannot afford to ignore it. Make YOUR software as attractive and accessable to the average user that they will begin to demand it!
Pick a Microsoft program that is decent, that people use, and do it 10 times better! 10 times better in usability, in form, in function, in Interface. Support interface standards. Do YOUR part to make Linux so utterly usuable to the average user that it simply cannot be ignored.
THAT is how you will win this war, not by bitching about it, having tin hat collusion theories, but by beating them at their own game and doing it like we all want to, with FSF and OSS.
I tell you what I will give you an M16A2 and I will stand behind a sinderblock wall and let you shoot first. The I will take the AK-47, let you stand behind the exact same wall, an undamaged portion of it even, and I will then kill you.
I might point you to the The Box of Truth for a little perspective.
I think just MAYBE IBM knows what its doing hardware-wise. There are a handfull of manufacuters of main frame computers that you can plunk into a room and hook 100,000 users up a single machine and have them all banging the same DB2 or Oracle database without the thing even blinking an eye and IBM is if not THE best at it then they are certainly in the top 2.
Your thinking in PC terms. These guys invented the notion of throughput.
It would be something to see a Z series loaded up with cell processors though.
I think we are in agreement, with a caviat or 2...
This is why inventions used to require an actual prototype.... (i.e. if you cant build it, you cant patent the ability for someone else to build it either).
I think they should again, regardless of what it is. If its a software patent, you have to provide a fully functional prototype ( again peer reviewed ) to get the patent grant, just like Phillip Kahn patented the Camera Phone way back when. He had a working prototype, it was large, klunky and ugly but it worked as described in the patent application and was therefor patented.
I think we could give a little space given the cost of development and give the applicant say 6 months to 1 year to present the examiners with a working model that functions exactly as stated in the application, but not a day more, no extensions, no slack. This would give the inventor time to shop it around for investors with full protection of patent law. If you can't raise the capitol in that amount of time and produce a prototype then you are free to re-apply within some pre-determined amount of time.
I think you are skirting the issue. To say that you cannot patent an idea is surely ( or should be ) true. But everything flows from an idea, inspiration, experimentation, that AH-HA moment, whether its a mechanical device for say harvesting potato's or a particualr algorithm that contains a set of deta structures and methods ( say for calculating the value of Pi to a billion places very very efficiently) by which that idea is transformed into a product.
So how do we give the inventive person some protection? Some reward for all his or her hard work in developing this thing? The patent system used to do that. If a person invented something that was truly novel and had never been done before, then that person deserved legal protection in the form of a patent, by which said person had control over the manufacture and distribution of the invention. The idea was that this would lead to yet another invention by those crafty and smart folk, because they could gain from their hard work.
Is something built of steel that performs a task such as harvesting potatos that different from something made of complex mathematical formula's strung together to perform a given task such as calculate Pi or as in my hypothetical example, perform extraordinary data compression? I would argue that they are identical in that they both perfom work that surely a human could do since we have the capability of both harvesting potatos and calculating Pi.
So now lets tak this a little further. Lets say the patent works the way I think it should. My patent covers using a particular method, a mega dictionary and I use the methematical properties of a particual geometric shape to perform the requisit analysis, to perform my task. This is shown never to have been done before and it is indeed novel. My structure is unique as is my method. Now someone else could come up with a different structure and a different method to come to the same end result and thats fine as long as they are not using my structure and my method, because their method and structures would be novel.
But I think it has some fairly obvious drawbacks, like bandwidth.
Perhaps a better idea would be to rent them a server with an encrypted file system that only delivers the work across ethernet. Even then I think it would still be a bandwidth issue, even on gigabit ethernet truly monsterous files take a long time to move around.
But I really think all this is beside the point. What I am looking for are ideas about how to protect your/mine/someone elses intelectual property. I can see you scenario working for a lot of things. Google apps such as the Word Processor & the Spreadsheet seem to work well over the net and this can apply to other applications, but when you get to something like photoshop in which even just the screen image that is drawn requires a HUGE amount of data to be fed to the graphics engine, I think it would break down.
I think it has to be a legal mechanism. Perhaps the patent systen could be reformed to say something like:
You get a patent for 5 years unless you produce and sell x number of wigets, then its extended another n years.
You cannot patent an idea. Your patent must be specific to a working model. The patent can cover the working model and its internal mechanisms ( in a fairly broad way ) so that my theoretical compression method cannot simply be duplicated with some minor code changes.
Drugs can cover a particualr formula, but thats all that is covered and lets say we limit the lifetime of the patent to 10 years.
Patent examination is performed by a peer comittee that has been in the industry for n number of years. The committee would be suitably large enough to prevent a given group from tilting the table. Each reviewer would not know whom the others were and they would be picked randomly from a pool of examiners and would be compensated accordingly.
This is a pure hypothetical. What I am trying to illicit from the/. folks is an alternative or modification to the current system.
In principle I agree that most every software patent issued in the last 20 years is more then likely just trash. So the question is, How or What is a more appropriate method, device etc. to protect truly novel and unique work?
For example. Lets say I were a really damn good Theoretical Mathematician.
Lets say I come up with a Compression Algorithm that just screams. I mean its blazingly fast and can compress a 10 gig JPEG file down to say 10K in about 1 minute and on top of all that its lossless. Hand it an Oracle or MS SQL database and it can achieve 99% compression in mere seconds.
Now I have spent the last 10 years perfecting it, in utter and complete secrecy. My wife and kids barely see me because I am devoted every spare waking hour to this monumental achievement.
Now I can copyright the code that I have written, lets say its 10K lines of really solid C code. But as we all know there is more then one way write a given algorithm, and there are over a dozen languages to write it in. So anyone that has reverse engineered my binary, can re-create my program in another language, using different techniques, would be pretty much free of my copyright protection.
So now what am I to do? I have invested 10 years of my life to come up with this. I want some return on my investment. How can I achieve that when someone else will simply re-engineer my code to circumvent copyright? If I cannot protect the methods and structures I have created, what am I to do? What is my recourse to own my own work and control its distribution? What would be my incentive to make it better? What would be my incentive to work another 10 years creating something like say, the hottest gaming engine ever?
YOU, yes you are whats wrong today. You and your attitude is what drives companies out of business, which FAR to many people have. You want immediate gratification for you stock value. Back in the old days companies were invested in, not bet upon, by people who viewed investments in increments of 5,10 or even 20 years. They looked for dividends, not windfall profits. Back when companies actualy paid dividends people made a good return on their investments. These days with every pencil pushing asshole in NYC screaming SELL SELL SELL at the top of their lungs if a company misses "The Streets" target by even a few pennies, its surprising that a publicly traded company even stays in business.
Haven't used the internet much have you. The military uses an M-16. That fires a 5.56mm round, 55 grains, give or take. Most hunting rifles have twice the range and twice the stopping power and twice the accuracy. The military uses a 9mm round as a side arm. Most people who own handguns fire a 9mm or better, more then likely a.40 or a.45 caliber handgun with the same magazine capacity. The military uses the.308 as a sniper rifle. Most hunting rifles are just as accurate and come in larger calibers.
You think the Iraq gorilla fighters are resourcefull? Let me tell ya somthing pal, you haven't seen anything yet. Try going up agains a 10 million very well educated ( by comparison ) Americans, who know how to make explosives, who own guns, who know where the ammunition is to be had, who have secure communication lines, who are very mobile and the US Army doesn't stand a chance.
On top of all that, the US Army is US, the very same people who blog, write on/., go to football games, see their rights trampled on, get screwed when they give up parts of their bodies and come home to 2nd class care. You really think these are the same people who will turn the weapons against their fellow citizens? Think again.
Oh come on. I have dealt with the police and feds several times in my life in situations even worse than this.
Ohhh really? Have you ever threatened the President of the United States? Even threatening the presdeint is a 5 year prison sentance in this country.
None of the nonsense you are spouting makes any sense. The police are reasonable if you are. If you are friendly and comply with everything the request, within the leter of the law, it works out fine. Lawyers are always granted, because even if your actually a terrorist, if they fuck off your right to a lawyer you might get off on a technicality. All the law enforcment know this, and will gladly comply with miranda rights to avoid giving you a free ride to do anything without a conviction.
You are either naive, stupid or both. Ask any lawyer, Police Officer, FBI Agent or Secret Service Agent what might happen then talk to me. That is one of the only things the movies get right. If the Secret Service comes for you, especialy if they think you are threatening the President of the United States, they are just going to show up and drag your ass into a black unmarked SUV and take you to a Federal Building in which they will have a very intense conversation with you.
I strongly suggest you take a few steps outside, away from your conspiracy theories on the internet. You'll find the FBI and police are quite considerate. The media, while discraceful, does generally try to avoid getting sued. When they get letters from your lawyers they tend to clean up their act.
Dude this is not tinfoil hat talk. The Secret Service can just come and take you, legaly. You will eventualy get a lawyer, but that will be after they have grilled your ass for a serious number of hours.
Someone is crusing for un-secured wireless conections and finds yours. That person then sends the following e-mail:
+-+-+-+-+-+-+- EXAMPLE ONLY +-+-+-+-+-+-+-
To:Info@whitehouse.gov
Subj:I am going to kill the president
I am going to kill the president ( add in something even remotely plausable, such as a campaign appearance, fundraiser, speach etc.) +-+-+-+-+-+-+- EXAMPLE ONLY +-+-+-+-+-+-+-
You will be arrested, have every last bit of electronic equipment that is computer related seized and your house turned upside down and inside out. The fact that you did not personaly send this will not matter for quite a while. The Secret Service will simply kick your door down, snatch your dumb ass, and all your gear up and no one will see you for a while.
It wont matter what you say for at least the 1st 36 hours or so. Your ISP will rat you out in a nanosecond and they will confirm this came from YOUR connection that you are responsible for.
The Secret Service has has even less of a sense of humor then the FBI does, if thats possible. After they have disected every bit on your hard drive(s), every scrap of paper in your house, spoken with everyone you know, have ever known, or have ever made a phone call to or sent an e-mail to, you will be feeling mighty sheepesh.
You will have ZERO recourse as the Secret Service is protecting POTUS. No court in the land will give you standing to redress any wrong or indignity you feel has been leveled at or on you. You will have a brandy new file in the Secret Service, FBI, State & local police files and you damn well might find yourself on terrorism watch lists.
I am no BIOS expert or anything like that, but it seems to me from a logical POV that Windows, *nix, or any other OS would have to rely on the state of the machine when comming back from hibernation. If the BIOS allowed you to boot into another OS while a different OS was in a hibernated state, when you attempt to bring the hibernated OS back in, then the machine state would be quite different then when it went into hibernation. It would seem to me that this could cause any number of problems and a significant amount of chaos.
It also seems that the machine does not completely power down on hibernation. Try an experiment. Hibernate windows then disconect the power cord and pull the battery out and leave it out for say 5 minutes. Then pop the battery back in and see if Windows restores to its correct state. If it does, then perhaps there is something to be said for your asertion that this could be something evil. If it fails to come back to life properly then its all about preserving the machine state.
I will give you one simple example ( even though I think you are a troll ) and let you take it from there.
MAPI ( the Mail API ) - This was a specified API to allow different programs to interact with e-mail. It was supposed to allow any program to send whatever their work prodcut was, along as an attachement to an e-mail, and to generaly interact with any e-mail system installed on the computer.
When MAPI was 1st published it had a well defined set of interfaces and API calls that were documented and reliable. This was all well and good until well the competition started writing better e-mail systems. These were all fully MAPI complient and worked very well.
As we all know by now, MicroSoft cannot handle competition. So what did Microsoft do? What they always do, they changed the API and then didn't tell anyone. So now all kinds of MAPI complient applications started breaking, well except theirs of course, since they had all the documentation and the rest of the word didn't.
This is the basic Microsoft pattern. If someone comes up with something better then they have and it relies on an API controlled by them, they simply change it and then dont tell anyone they did so, thus stopping the competitions product from looking so good or even working at all
That, by defintion, is anti-competative behaviour.
NetWare walks into the room, looks at them flagelating themselves and proclaiming. Scratches its head, shakes it in dismay and walks out the door. Walks back to its happy server, happily serving its users needs and will run that way for the next 10 years, without a service pack.
As I ponder life as I know it, I wonder why people do not see the simplicity and the power of NetWare. It does what it is designed to do, it does it very well and it does it very very fast.
NetWare has never let me down, its never been hacked from the outside world, no one has ever stolen its password file or its data. It swims through the Internet sleek and shiny with barely a worry about being hacked. It's secure by design, it's secure by default, it's just secure.
Idiots who couldn't find their ass with both hands if they didn't have a pretty picture of it and a mouse, is what were are reduced to deal with.
I think its time to be a plumber, I will make more money and work less hours.
Co2 ( carbon dioxide ) is not a poison, it simply does not support life. It is heavier then O2 and displaces it.
Now I know that sounds really bad, and it is, but it is not a toxin.
Co ( carbon monoxide ) on the other hand IS a toxin. It will kill you in the presence of O2 ( oxygene ) at standard sea level pressures and saturations. Its a tricky bit of chemistry what, carbon with 2 oxygen molecules not a toxin, take one of the molecules of oxygen away and its deadly poison.
Here I am with mod points and yet I am replying instead of MODing you down, WAY down
What the artist gets is completely and totaly irrelivent to this entire discussion. The Artist made the deal with the media company. It does matter if its Sony, BMG, Motown, Capitol Records, Apple Records or even Apple iTunes. The Artist was given a contract to sign, with certain terms and conditions. If they didn't like those terms and conditions, they didn't have to sign it.
I can sum up EVERYTHING you have said quite simply, "Its OK to steal from the BIG companies 'cause the fuck everyone over anyway"
That attitude was wrong before you said it, its wrong as you say it and will remain WRONG no matter how many times you say it in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
I watched their flash demo, with some interest. It doesn't do anything the GroupWise does not do now or will not do in the next ( no not a future release ) scheduled release.
GW has had 95% of what they have now, for the last 5 years and will have everything they have and more in the next few months.
When you can put 5000 users ( Cache-Mode ) or 1000 users in full on-line mode and hitting it heavy with say on average a 300MB to 500MB mail box, on a dedicated server with only 2 gigs of ram, come talk to me.
When you can put 100,000 users in at most 50 post offices, around the world, in one domain and have all the schedules, tasks, e-mail, document libraies, address books ( shared and otherwise ), complete rule based deligation of Calandars, Tasks, E-mail, etc. etc. all visable to each other, or not DOWN TO THE INDIVIDUAL USER LEVEL with complete class of service control, again come and talk to me.
The GroupWise clients support damn near every popular ( and unpopular ) messaging protocol including accessing your favorite news groups. Full RSS reader support is in the next version along with lots and lots of other goodies.
Have a look at what your saying is going to get "killed" and do a real feature by feature comparison with GroupWise before you start shooting your mouth off.
I am not taking away from anything the Zimbra folks have accomplished. Their hosted demo semed smooth and didn't explode on contact so even as die hard a GroupWise fan boy that I am, I give em props for their effort and it might even one day take over the world. But a GroupWise Killer? Not today it aint, and in my estimation, not tomorrow.GroupWise Killer? Only in your dreams.
If I had a dollar for everytime someone said, "Novell is Dead" I would be richer then Bill gates.
They have a Market Cap of 2.4 BILLION
Yep they are gonna be broke by the end of the year. Microsoft will own SUSE & DELL too!
Any other stupid predictions??
Come on man, don't you see, they can't stop it, it cant happen! They have been trying to stop it, but they are failing at every turn. They might think they are setting up Novell or Dell, but it just does not matter! Why, because everything Novell does, with the exeption of their own propriatery add-in products like NDS or ZenWorks, goes right back to OpenSuse.
Look how far Novell has pushed OpenOffice! They arguably have the best fork out there and they push everything back to OpenOffice.org. You have some of the best coders in the business working at Novell, working on OpenOffice, Kernel fixes, NSF fixes, File System Fixes, TCP/IP stack fixes, Security Fixes and it ALL gets pushed into OpenSuse and its all GPL so it can be flowed into Unbunto, Debian, RedHat, SlackWare pick any of them, they can all benefit when the kind of money Novell is spending and dragging out of Microsoft.
Dell will make Suse Better with better Driver Support, all kinds of things.
Microsoft does not understand that THEY are the pawn in this game, not the king.
If YOU push code into SUSE and its GPL they can't take and then not re-contribute. If its truly killer code that say makes IPV6 a cakewalk or makes EXCHANGE look even more pathetic then it is or makes GIMP completely overshadow anything that Adobe is doing or MicroSoft or even Novell for that matter, its going to win.
Use your mind, not your emotions and we CAN win.
You CAN download SLED and SLES for FREE ( as in beer and speech ) INCLUDING everything that Novell adds into it. grab a copy, load it up, see whats happenign with it. If you dont like then keep using which ever disto you like, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Patent reform is comming, Copyright reform is comming, its only a matter of time. We CAN and WILL win.
Kids it is time to Get over it!
Facts on the Ground...
So its time to stop whining and crying because your favorite distro is not the one being pushed. Be thankfull that at least one major distro is being very heavily funded to the tune of millions of dollars a month to make it the best it can possibly be.
I am not for a moment suggesting that you abandon the distro you know and love, nor am I suggesting you abandon coding ( if you are a coder ) for the distro you know and love, but for crying out loud, stop pitching a bitch about this! This is GOOD for Linux and FSF & OSS. You have a distro in SUSE that has a definitive road map and has massive amounts of push behind it.
As for the news of "key people" quiting Novell, you know what? They will be replaced by people that are at least as smart, if not smarter. Novell has bet their corporate ass on making SUSE attractive and palitable to the Corporate IT Managers and decision makers and they are doing a damn decent job of it too!
You want to help the Linux cause? Start writing or porting your BEST ideas to SUSE! Make it SO attractive the Corporate IT Managers and decision makers that they cannot afford to ignore it. Make YOUR software as attractive and accessable to the average user that they will begin to demand it!
Pick a Microsoft program that is decent, that people use, and do it 10 times better! 10 times better in usability, in form, in function, in Interface. Support interface standards. Do YOUR part to make Linux so utterly usuable to the average user that it simply cannot be ignored.
THAT is how you will win this war, not by bitching about it, having tin hat collusion theories, but by beating them at their own game and doing it like we all want to, with FSF and OSS.
Don't forget Jello!
Your an idiot.
I tell you what I will give you an M16A2 and I will stand behind a sinderblock wall and let you shoot first. The I will take the AK-47, let you stand behind the exact same wall, an undamaged portion of it even, and I will then kill you.
I might point you to the The Box of Truth for a little perspective.
Dude!
I think just MAYBE IBM knows what its doing hardware-wise. There are a handfull of manufacuters of main frame computers that you can plunk into a room and hook 100,000 users up a single machine and have them all banging the same DB2 or Oracle database without the thing even blinking an eye and IBM is if not THE best at it then they are certainly in the top 2.
Your thinking in PC terms. These guys invented the notion of throughput.
It would be something to see a Z series loaded up with cell processors though.
And I am pretty darn sure it runs Linux.
I think we are in agreement, with a caviat or 2...
This is why inventions used to require an actual prototype.... (i.e. if you cant build it, you cant patent the ability for someone else to build it either).I think they should again, regardless of what it is. If its a software patent, you have to provide a fully functional prototype ( again peer reviewed ) to get the patent grant, just like Phillip Kahn patented the Camera Phone way back when. He had a working prototype, it was large, klunky and ugly but it worked as described in the patent application and was therefor patented.
I think we could give a little space given the cost of development and give the applicant say 6 months to 1 year to present the examiners with a working model that functions exactly as stated in the application, but not a day more, no extensions, no slack. This would give the inventor time to shop it around for investors with full protection of patent law. If you can't raise the capitol in that amount of time and produce a prototype then you are free to re-apply within some pre-determined amount of time.
I think you are skirting the issue. To say that you cannot patent an idea is surely ( or should be ) true. But everything flows from an idea, inspiration, experimentation, that AH-HA moment, whether its a mechanical device for say harvesting potato's or a particualr algorithm that contains a set of deta structures and methods ( say for calculating the value of Pi to a billion places very very efficiently) by which that idea is transformed into a product.
So how do we give the inventive person some protection? Some reward for all his or her hard work in developing this thing? The patent system used to do that. If a person invented something that was truly novel and had never been done before, then that person deserved legal protection in the form of a patent, by which said person had control over the manufacture and distribution of the invention. The idea was that this would lead to yet another invention by those crafty and smart folk, because they could gain from their hard work.
Is something built of steel that performs a task such as harvesting potatos that different from something made of complex mathematical formula's strung together to perform a given task such as calculate Pi or as in my hypothetical example, perform extraordinary data compression? I would argue that they are identical in that they both perfom work that surely a human could do since we have the capability of both harvesting potatos and calculating Pi.
So now lets tak this a little further. Lets say the patent works the way I think it should. My patent covers using a particular method, a mega dictionary and I use the methematical properties of a particual geometric shape to perform the requisit analysis, to perform my task. This is shown never to have been done before and it is indeed novel. My structure is unique as is my method. Now someone else could come up with a different structure and a different method to come to the same end result and thats fine as long as they are not using my structure and my method, because their method and structures would be novel.
Nifty idea!
But I think it has some fairly obvious drawbacks, like bandwidth.
Perhaps a better idea would be to rent them a server with an encrypted file system that only delivers the work across ethernet. Even then I think it would still be a bandwidth issue, even on gigabit ethernet truly monsterous files take a long time to move around.
But I really think all this is beside the point. What I am looking for are ideas about how to protect your/mine/someone elses intelectual property. I can see you scenario working for a lot of things. Google apps such as the Word Processor & the Spreadsheet seem to work well over the net and this can apply to other applications, but when you get to something like photoshop in which even just the screen image that is drawn requires a HUGE amount of data to be fed to the graphics engine, I think it would break down.
I think it has to be a legal mechanism. Perhaps the patent systen could be reformed to say something like:
Any ideas?
Nope no algorithm here.
This is a pure hypothetical. What I am trying to illicit from the /. folks is an alternative or modification to the current system.
In principle I agree that most every software patent issued in the last 20 years is more then likely just trash. So the question is, How or What is a more appropriate method, device etc. to protect truly novel and unique work?
For example. Lets say I were a really damn good Theoretical Mathematician.
Lets say I come up with a Compression Algorithm that just screams. I mean its blazingly fast and can compress a 10 gig JPEG file down to say 10K in about 1 minute and on top of all that its lossless. Hand it an Oracle or MS SQL database and it can achieve 99% compression in mere seconds.
Now I have spent the last 10 years perfecting it, in utter and complete secrecy. My wife and kids barely see me because I am devoted every spare waking hour to this monumental achievement.
Now I can copyright the code that I have written, lets say its 10K lines of really solid C code. But as we all know there is more then one way write a given algorithm, and there are over a dozen languages to write it in. So anyone that has reverse engineered my binary, can re-create my program in another language, using different techniques, would be pretty much free of my copyright protection.
So now what am I to do? I have invested 10 years of my life to come up with this. I want some return on my investment. How can I achieve that when someone else will simply re-engineer my code to circumvent copyright? If I cannot protect the methods and structures I have created, what am I to do? What is my recourse to own my own work and control its distribution? What would be my incentive to make it better? What would be my incentive to work another 10 years creating something like say, the hottest gaming engine ever?
YOU, yes you are whats wrong today. You and your attitude is what drives companies out of business, which FAR to many people have. You want immediate gratification for you stock value. Back in the old days companies were invested in, not bet upon, by people who viewed investments in increments of 5,10 or even 20 years. They looked for dividends, not windfall profits. Back when companies actualy paid dividends people made a good return on their investments. These days with every pencil pushing asshole in NYC screaming SELL SELL SELL at the top of their lungs if a company misses "The Streets" target by even a few pennies, its surprising that a publicly traded company even stays in business.
Hmmmm popguns you say?
Haven't used the internet much have you. The military uses an M-16. That fires a 5.56mm round, 55 grains, give or take. Most hunting rifles have twice the range and twice the stopping power and twice the accuracy. The military uses a 9mm round as a side arm. Most people who own handguns fire a 9mm or better, more then likely a .40 or a .45 caliber handgun with the same magazine capacity. The military uses the .308 as a sniper rifle. Most hunting rifles are just as accurate and come in larger calibers.
You think the Iraq gorilla fighters are resourcefull? Let me tell ya somthing pal, you haven't seen anything yet. Try going up agains a 10 million very well educated ( by comparison ) Americans, who know how to make explosives, who own guns, who know where the ammunition is to be had, who have secure communication lines, who are very mobile and the US Army doesn't stand a chance.
On top of all that, the US Army is US, the very same people who blog, write on /., go to football games, see their rights trampled on, get screwed when they give up parts of their bodies and come home to 2nd class care. You really think these are the same people who will turn the weapons against their fellow citizens? Think again.
Ohhh really? Have you ever threatened the President of the United States? Even threatening the presdeint is a 5 year prison sentance in this country.
None of the nonsense you are spouting makes any sense. The police are reasonable if you are. If you are friendly and comply with everything the request, within the leter of the law, it works out fine. Lawyers are always granted, because even if your actually a terrorist, if they fuck off your right to a lawyer you might get off on a technicality. All the law enforcment know this, and will gladly comply with miranda rights to avoid giving you a free ride to do anything without a conviction.You are either naive, stupid or both. Ask any lawyer, Police Officer, FBI Agent or Secret Service Agent what might happen then talk to me. That is one of the only things the movies get right. If the Secret Service comes for you, especialy if they think you are threatening the President of the United States, they are just going to show up and drag your ass into a black unmarked SUV and take you to a Federal Building in which they will have a very intense conversation with you.
I strongly suggest you take a few steps outside, away from your conspiracy theories on the internet. You'll find the FBI and police are quite considerate. The media, while discraceful, does generally try to avoid getting sued. When they get letters from your lawyers they tend to clean up their act.Dude this is not tinfoil hat talk. The Secret Service can just come and take you, legaly. You will eventualy get a lawyer, but that will be after they have grilled your ass for a serious number of hours.
As someone else said, "very utpoian of you"!
Sorry, but I have to say "very stupid of you"!
Imagine, for a moment, this little scenario.
Someone is crusing for un-secured wireless conections and finds yours. That person then sends the following e-mail:
+-+-+-+-+-+-+- EXAMPLE ONLY +-+-+-+-+-+-+-
To:Info@whitehouse.gov
Subj:I am going to kill the president
I am going to kill the president ( add in something even remotely plausable, such as a campaign appearance, fundraiser, speach etc.)
+-+-+-+-+-+-+- EXAMPLE ONLY +-+-+-+-+-+-+-
You will be arrested, have every last bit of electronic equipment that is computer related seized and your house turned upside down and inside out. The fact that you did not personaly send this will not matter for quite a while. The Secret Service will simply kick your door down, snatch your dumb ass, and all your gear up and no one will see you for a while.
It wont matter what you say for at least the 1st 36 hours or so. Your ISP will rat you out in a nanosecond and they will confirm this came from YOUR connection that you are responsible for.
The Secret Service has has even less of a sense of humor then the FBI does, if thats possible. After they have disected every bit on your hard drive(s), every scrap of paper in your house, spoken with everyone you know, have ever known, or have ever made a phone call to or sent an e-mail to, you will be feeling mighty sheepesh.
You will have ZERO recourse as the Secret Service is protecting POTUS. No court in the land will give you standing to redress any wrong or indignity you feel has been leveled at or on you. You will have a brandy new file in the Secret Service, FBI, State & local police files and you damn well might find yourself on terrorism watch lists.
Hmmm, well there could just be a reason for that.
I am no BIOS expert or anything like that, but it seems to me from a logical POV that Windows, *nix, or any other OS would have to rely on the state of the machine when comming back from hibernation. If the BIOS allowed you to boot into another OS while a different OS was in a hibernated state, when you attempt to bring the hibernated OS back in, then the machine state would be quite different then when it went into hibernation. It would seem to me that this could cause any number of problems and a significant amount of chaos.
It also seems that the machine does not completely power down on hibernation. Try an experiment. Hibernate windows then disconect the power cord and pull the battery out and leave it out for say 5 minutes. Then pop the battery back in and see if Windows restores to its correct state. If it does, then perhaps there is something to be said for your asertion that this could be something evil. If it fails to come back to life properly then its all about preserving the machine state.
Can you really be that naive?
I will give you one simple example ( even though I think you are a troll ) and let you take it from there.
MAPI ( the Mail API ) - This was a specified API to allow different programs to interact with e-mail. It was supposed to allow any program to send whatever their work prodcut was, along as an attachement to an e-mail, and to generaly interact with any e-mail system installed on the computer.
When MAPI was 1st published it had a well defined set of interfaces and API calls that were documented and reliable. This was all well and good until well the competition started writing better e-mail systems. These were all fully MAPI complient and worked very well.
As we all know by now, MicroSoft cannot handle competition. So what did Microsoft do? What they always do, they changed the API and then didn't tell anyone. So now all kinds of MAPI complient applications started breaking, well except theirs of course, since they had all the documentation and the rest of the word didn't.
This is the basic Microsoft pattern. If someone comes up with something better then they have and it relies on an API controlled by them, they simply change it and then dont tell anyone they did so, thus stopping the competitions product from looking so good or even working at all
That, by defintion, is anti-competative behaviour.
I am thinking your somewhat young, NetWare was born long before FLOSS.
NetWare walks into the room, looks at them flagelating themselves and proclaiming. Scratches its head, shakes it in dismay and walks out the door. Walks back to its happy server, happily serving its users needs and will run that way for the next 10 years, without a service pack.
As I ponder life as I know it, I wonder why people do not see the simplicity and the power of NetWare. It does what it is designed to do, it does it very well and it does it very very fast.
NetWare has never let me down, its never been hacked from the outside world, no one has ever stolen its password file or its data. It swims through the Internet sleek and shiny with barely a worry about being hacked. It's secure by design, it's secure by default, it's just secure.
Idiots who couldn't find their ass with both hands if they didn't have a pretty picture of it and a mouse, is what were are reduced to deal with.
I think its time to be a plumber, I will make more money and work less hours.
Uhmmm, no thats 77 Euro's, or about $102.00 dollars
Some people! Sheesh. Read up!
CO Toxicity
CO2 Polution and Toxicity
Co2 ( carbon dioxide ) is not a poison, it simply does not support life. It is heavier then O2 and displaces it.
Now I know that sounds really bad, and it is, but it is not a toxin.
Co ( carbon monoxide ) on the other hand IS a toxin. It will kill you in the presence of O2 ( oxygene ) at standard sea level pressures and saturations. Its a tricky bit of chemistry what, carbon with 2 oxygen molecules not a toxin, take one of the molecules of oxygen away and its deadly poison.Here I am with mod points and yet I am replying instead of MODing you down, WAY down
What the artist gets is completely and totaly irrelivent to this entire discussion. The Artist made the deal with the media company. It does matter if its Sony, BMG, Motown, Capitol Records, Apple Records or even Apple iTunes. The Artist was given a contract to sign, with certain terms and conditions. If they didn't like those terms and conditions, they didn't have to sign it.
I can sum up EVERYTHING you have said quite simply, "Its OK to steal from the BIG companies 'cause the fuck everyone over anyway"
That attitude was wrong before you said it, its wrong as you say it and will remain WRONG no matter how many times you say it in the future.