My assumption now is that IBM will wait till they win one way or the other, and then offer some unreasonably low price for the IP that SCO actually does own. What happens after that is probably too nebulous to think about. IBM did the right thing though when they decided to fight this and not buy out. It's almost certain that this was the original plan out of SCO. Buy us and give us a big paycheck and we can do it again with another company. Darl seems very good at becoming CEO and suing.
This may be true, but I would bet on market forces here. If company X decides it can get away with binary modules, and that module has serious issues, who's gonna by the hardware? With a video card, at least there's the fallback option, but with a northbridge driver, or with an ATA driver, you won't be able to boot your PC.
Some products, such as video, possibly wireless, or whatnot, can probably get away with binary only drivers and survive in the Linux space. Other hardware will just fail. Until Linux on the desktop is a little more popular, it's not going to be an issue though. I do expect some companies to do whatever they can to scam the community. I don't think this is what ATI and Nvidia are doing.
I could be wrong, but I believe that if you are running a 64 bit compiled kernel, you _can't_ use the 32bit drivers. While the CPU would support running 32bit applications, the kernel would be running in 64 bit mode, and you won't be able to load the driver. If you're running a normal distro (32 bit), then yeah, you could use the driver. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong though, as I'd love to hear that. Then I could load the ATI driver into FC1 for X86_64.
I know it's still really new, but I would love to see some token support from ATI or Nvidia for X86_64! The X driver for ATI is a little flaky in FC1 for X86_64, and I would love to have a native driver from ATI or Nvidia. My next Vid card is the one supported best for this platform running Linux.
The FCC, in long standing tradition, defines the Communication moniker of FCC to mean all things communicated, and has implemented a broadcast flag requirement on all forms of communication. Diebold, in an attempt to protect itself from destructive free speech, retroactively implemented the flag on the words Diebod, vote, poll, and all derivates of those words. The are currently asking the FBI to trace and prosecute any American who unfarily abuses the new Deibold flag by uttering of those words in any sentence Diebold disagrees with.
If you think this is funny or conspirist, catch up with the RIAA and MPAA.
You're first statement is correct, but from there on out, it sort of fizzles. There is a very specific definition of what 3G is, and what it takes to be able to call your network 3g. There's even a public website (which unfortunately I have at home, not at work, ironically) which explains this. 4G is really only the addition of more bandwidth and hasn't been classfied yet as 4G or any other such thing.
As for cooperation, why would they? When has it been good for business to allow a user to seemlessly switch? Might be good for the user, but the user really only matters one day a month. And there are other technical challenges with migrating seemlessly in that the way your digital cell phone figures out what to do with the network is based on knowing a specific frequency to listen for when it starts up. That's why phones are built for specific operators, it's cheap and easy to just set the frequency band your phone can listen to rather than have to dynamically deal with it and then worry about multiple tuners and whatnot.
Ok, while Wi-Fi is a mobile possibility, it's not likely to be on a phone you hold any time soon. There's a lot of weird challenges to solve there, and really, there are other more interesting challenges to solve, such as how to make high speed data access possible using radio over long distances with obstacles. Making antenna's and amplifiers better and find a way to make the software on the provider side better are some such problems. But mostly, the issue is that no one is paying the billions that the providers paid for airwaves to do this stuff. There is no killer app. Until the Windows type app bloat that everyone must have is vogue, then 3G/4G/whatever will just be another who care's in the annals of failed business plans.
Finally, UMTS and GPRS don't work that way really. In fact, they are two different types of cell networks and you wouldn't switch from one to the other. GPRS is the data service high bandwidth add on for GSM networks, and UMTS is the same thing for CDMA networks. When you get 10Mb + speeds in a building, you'll use the same system network as you move away from the tower or receiver and the network will slow you connection down as the distance or interference grows, just like it works today.
Eh, it will probably be Jenna Bush, she seems to be the one who would most likely be the next Bush in the White House. She will continue in the Bush tradition of invading Iraq a year or two after the innaguration party in which Ashton Kutcher proves he's not an idiot by dancing shirtless on the second stage. She will also claim that her administration invented cellular technology, and then give a contract to rebuild the Iraq cellular infrastructure to a bankrupt company with NO experience in building cellular networks. Should be fun. I'm waiting for the Bush twins in Stuff or Maxim.
Tehcnically, what you posted isn't a letter. It's more of a note or thought. In that vein, you did not type the letter, and since everyone is not dead, then you are proven wrong regarding your assertion.
Or, you did type this letter (which particular letter in your thought did you mean, BTW), and we are left with no way to prove you right or wrong. You're philosophy argument stands.
Pick one, but in another universe, realize you picked the other option and then potentially ate a donut.
No, I think this has more to do with George Lucas being extremly narcissitic. Basically, I believe that he does things (no Star Wars trilogy on DVD, not DTS or commentary in the new Indy trilogy) simply because he can, not because they make more money or make sense. Seriously, look back over the last 10 years, and pick one good thing George Lucas has done. I dare you. You can't! Ok, that's horribly subjective, but still...
Anyway, I suspect that Spielberg takes a back seat when Lucas is involved. Spielberg has done other DVD releases of his films that are quite good, and include lots of intelligent and interesting extras. Lucas has none of those credits. If I didn't enjoy all three movies so much, I would boycott this release (ok, subjective again, but if you don't like it, just kiss off and keep the flames to yourself). I count on being dissapointed by Lucas no matter what he does from here on out. And check out the commentary on the digital bits for some higher level perspective.
Basically. I mean, what they hell happened to innovation that all these companies complain that other types of legislation will stomp out? Why not take all the brain power these companies have and fix the problem so that we DON'T need legislation. I mean, who really trusts these companies to do what's in the best interests of the public? I certainly don't. I never will. We only serve to give them money (and grief complaining when something doesn't work, but mostly money). Why would they have any reason to be altruistic regarding the consumers view of spam? NONE! By going the route of legistlation, they are offsetting the costs into public taxes and the legal domain, and they are effectively wiping out the legal protection and legal benefits that the consumer (this is a bad thing) and the spammer (one could go either way with the spammer) have. This is not a good thing.
C'mon, slashdot used to sniff this crap out quickly. Please tell me we are not being desensitized to shady legal maneuvers.
Well, GSM is making inroads into the states, particularly in the midwest. CDMA is expensive due to paying Qualcomm licenses, and GSM is quite good and making inroads everywhere. Especially with the new 3G services taking advantage of existing GSM infrastructure.
Obviously wasn't an IBM 75 Gig IDE drive. I've had 3 now that went about 6 months a piece in an Ultra 10. This machine never even so much as vibrated. I tossed one of them across a room into a brick wall, but never plugged it in to see if that may have fixed it.
A friend had a really old IDE drive from a laptop that died. He had a bunch of data on it that he wanted to get off. Problem was that it wouldn't spin up. It had sat for a while, and that seemed to have stuck the spindle. The solution, power it up, and then by hand rotate the entire drive really fast to try and free the spindle. Magically, it spun up, he copied stuff off, and life was grand. Unsure of what happened to the drive.
As I read it, the lawsuit claims that manufacturers (e.g. Microsoft) conspired with retailers (e.g. CompUSA) to create the EULA mess. It will be nearly impossible to prove this short of leaked memos.
I think these are the same ideas. The conspiracy is mostly not proveable, but the circumventing of contract law is definately proveable, fault to be determined later. Here is where the lawsuit should stay. The courts would be very interested in maintaining contract law very strictly to avoid very difficult issues in the future. Anyway, that's the way I see it.
A lot of posts are missing the point. The article states that the lawsuit is to argue that software vendors have exercised a loophole in sales practices that makes it possible to enforce a contract never agreed upon by the consumer. This isn't about getting money back for windows, or really even about how legal EULA's are. It's about whether the vendors are breaking the law by using the loophole. If so, they are liable, if not, consumers continue to be screwed.
However, this case will most likely also touch on the legality of EULA's in some aspect. You can't argue that I had to agree to a contract I have never seen without arguing that the contract itself is flawed. CompUSA et. al. don't care about piracy really, they care about selling software. Granted, piracy cuts their profits as well, but not as radically or in as unique a way as it does vendors. If dumping EULA's altogether strengthens the retail position, retailers will stand behind this lawsuit (not likely, I realize). It's the software vendors who don't want their software to be copied. They even have a powerful trade group in the BSA. So, to avoid copying, you can't open and return software. This is reasonable. It doesn't take a software engineer to realize that you can avoid ever having to refund ANY money if you put the EULA in a place where it can't be agreed upon until after the vendors first concern is violated (opened box). Wow, a perfect system.
And this is the actual issue on which the lawsuit is based. You can't agree to the EULA until you actually pay for the obligated items, effectively binding you to the contract (EULA) prematurely. It essentially undercuts everything that US contract law is founded on. I assume if the lawyers can build an adequate case on this fact alone, that there will be at least monetary success (read settlement). Realistically, the consumer can only hope that there is legal and precendent setting success as well, where either the software sale practice in question is deemed illegal, or the EULA system is deemed illegal. A settlement in this case will be a severe detriment for consumers of software in that it doesn't touch on the legality of any of the lawsuit items.
No, in this case, the best thing the consumers get is either a very consumer friendly ruling on returning software to vendor/retailer, or a very non-consumer friendly ruling. In this case, a non-ruling would be detrimental in that the issue remains untouched by law and precedent and the consumer continues to get the shaft. Obviously, the money will most likely be incomprehensible to mere mortals, but the real benifit will be if/when a judge (and subsequent appeals) sees that the means of selling software is explicitly anti-consumer and says "Stop". A ruling like that will force companies/retailers (much to their chagrin) to reinvent the wheel so to speak, but in the meantime, it will provide us with the means to return copies of the crap we just don't want to be contracted to.
Acutally, the best case scenario would be that the judge and subsequent appeals determine that EULA's are unfair contractural obligations damaging to the consumer. Not likely, there's a lot of money and lobby power in the software industry, but it would be nice. I would look for a quiet and quick settlment that pays the lawyers handsomely, and provides the consumer with a website that asks if we bought software we didn't like in the last 20 years and what our address is so they can send a check to some charity because the cost of mailing the checks is prohibitive. Oh, and none have to admit that the practice is wrong or bad.
I didn't get rid of my landline, but did limit it's usefullness (unlisted, no answering machine, no extras) and use my cell phone for EVERYTHING. This has worked for about 2 years now. I never use my house phone, and will only answer it once in a blue moon. SBC actually disconnected me accidentally for two weeks and I didn't notice until TIVO complained (so I bought the ethernet card). Now if it's gone, I doubt I would notice ever to be honest. I only really keep it for emergencies anyway, cells are good, but less reliable than I'm willing to cope with in an emergency.
Now to the point. I have gotten several telemarketing calls on my cell. For everyone, I ask if the DM will reimburse me for the call as it's my cell phone and I have to pay for the minutes used to sell me something. In all but one case the individual on the other end made some comment about not calling cell phones and dropped me from their call list. The isolated case was the guy who tried to convince me that I don't pay incoming calls against my minutes. That went on for a little while, but I haven't heard back from that company either. I get the feeling that DM's don't want to deal with calling cell phones plus the hassles of charging people to advertise and therefore just leave those numbers alone (although how they would know which is which is beyond me).
Realistically speaking, it is still very early in the computer age. We haven't even begun to sort out some of the basic issues about what is really important to society just yet. Sure, we have great business tools, and we have cheap PC's, and we have diversity (Mac, Linux, Windows, Big Iron, embedded,...), but the industry is so very young. It's still dealing with how to sort out what distribution methods work the best (free v not free?), what development paradigms work the best, and what situations or business models deserve what type of development.
This is where I think future Sci-Fi gets it right. You never see anyone there fighting to understand the newest user interface, or wondering when the bridge computer is gonna crash and reboot. No one ever talks about a 5 computer redundancy in the flight controls. Those are the ideas that all of the current work is moving towards. All of the books, all of the failures, all of the fighting, and all of the fast paced development will move us towards a happy equilibrium at some point.
Where is software development now? It's growing up. Slowly, but this isn't easy. It may never be, but sooner or later, it will be done in some correct way. That's the day you don't see a Mac switch add talking about how easy it is to use a Mac vs. a PC in my opinion. Or you don't read about how the newest US fighter jet may reboot a flight control computer in flight. And your mobile phone rings every time you expect it to ring. It's all about evolution here.
In SAG, I believe that it is unique in the SAG listings, and not unique across the board. They (SAG) just want to prevent the same name happening more than once in relevant media credits. This to avoid mistaken identity problems. My brother investigated this and discovered some older actor with the same name as his. He then would have had to use the three name hack or come up with a new name and have it legally changed. There are about 2 dozen individuals in this country with the same first/last name as his though. I'm not sure about Equity, but I would suspect the rules are the same or similar.
After last night's episode of 24, I suspect you won't see any sort of nuclear fuel powered battery in the near future. I mean, put a few in a an old storage site, have someone alert homeland defense, and sentence an anti-terrorisim agent to death in a very likely shootout in that same storage site. What government would allow this to happen? No, it's more likely that they outlaw this and any other nuclear source to keep certain sketchy individuals from creating a nuclear bomb to blow up Los Angeles.
Exactly, this is a little weird, especially given today's IP driven technology infrastructre. Everyone else is just licensing and reaping the windfall, so why is Tivo/Sonic Blue going it alone? I suspect that either the patents involved are not strong enough to manage this, or are to narrowly written to hold off another company from doing something similar. I guess it's also possible that these guys think that their business model is the more correct one and don't want to compromise.
But to be perfectly honest, while I love my Tivo and have hacked away, it doesn't provide me a compelling reason not to buy a combo DirecTV unit. Anytime you suggest that I pay a monthly fee over a non monthly fee, I will pick the non monthly fee every time. Makes sense. All Tivo gives me for the monthly fee is a really nice OSD. DirecTV gives me a really nice OSD as well, and that's bundled with the service, so what do I gain by paying Tivo? Couple that witht the up front cost of a Tivo versus the upfront cost of a subsidized piece of no name hardware and you have no contest. Finally, that one less remote, one less device sucking electricity, one less thing to break is definately a consideration. Really, the combo units will win hands down as the majority of the buying public will weigh the same arguments I just did. I'm all for Tivo succeeding, but they don't provide an irreplacable service here, or much less a convience even.
This guy wants to avoid any chance of someone actually fighting the patent for as long as possible. He is suing in CA courts, but not suing anyone in CA. Why? Paying a lawyer to go to California from Vermont or Indiana is gonna be really expensive. Make the cost of fighting greater than settling and the little guy will settle. Walla, a money making venture.
True, but it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend against a lawsuit. Small business doesn't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to throw at defending against a lawsuit. Especially considering settling only costs thousands which, unfortunately, is affordable in many cases.
If you followed the story, more information regarding PanIP comes up, as well as lawyer attitudes, how PanIP found it's targets (small businesses with an online presence in good financial health), and the reasoning for the strategy. The lawyer in charge, I forget her name has even said it may not be nice or even not reprehensible, but it is legal. And the simple reason for the targets is the knowledge that PanIP may never be challenged but rather accumulate settlements. And with settlements, it builds up precedent. Then, it takes precendent against bigger names. Akin to boxing in that you don't take on Drederick Tatum first, but rather local hobos.
Besides, PanIP is an IP holding company. It does no actual business. The guy who incorporated it just holds a bunch of nonsense patents and uses those to sue people. Kinda like Rambus. I don't know that any attempts to reach this guy have been succesful by the press based on the more recent articles I've read. Basically, the incoporator is a sleaze abusing a flawed system for personal gain. Who he hurts and what little respect for the US patent system may have remained that he destroys is secondary to 5 grand per small business he collects. These people need to be lined up and deported Haiti or Uganda or Iraq where suing people is secondary to not getting mashed on by the government.
That's true, although I'm not a big QNX guy, I did work on developing ChorusOS 4.0 about 3 years ago at Sun's Grenoble facility. I can say that Chorus had a much better memory management model that AE does, and it was very stable on PPC embedded platforms. It also did C++ more natively than other RTOS offerings.
I know, C++ in the embedded world? C++ in an OS? Well, when done with some forethought and a brain, it's not an altogether bad idea.
As well, I think it's really big failing was that Sun pretty much never put ANY effort into promoting or pursuing this outside of some half hearted attempts to get it into the auto and cellular infrastructure industries. They pretty much let it die a slow painful death. Couple that with the less than warm relationship between Sun's team and the original Chorus guys, and the requirements that it's few customers had, and you have a recipe for failure. It's good to see it came back. Time to dig out the blades at work and see if I can get it running again. WooHoo, nerd work!
I think you miss the point. This isn't strictly a vote count. The article states that 20K activists works out to (can't remember, don't want to look it up, but I think it's) 2 votes per activist. So, they now have 40K votes. In a state like Montana, 40K votes would easily influence an election. Now, on to what I think are the missed bits of stuff.
This Free State perogative makes no mention of eduction. Actually, it completely ignores even education funding from the feds as a possible leash. No taxes sounds great, but eveyone has to pay for a private school? Maybe, but ouch, that would get pricey. A lot of those interested may not have noticed this point. Also, there have been many attempts to obtain similar goals throughout history (Britian had 2 or 3 utopian projects roughly 300 years ago). None have been successful. The system we have, while still better than most, if not all, of the other systems, is how it is because getting a large number of individuals to agree and stay interested 100% of the time is not possible. We're individuals, and that actually means something.
And in my opinion, this project will encounter the inability of even a relatively small number of individuals to agree or maintain focus for the required amount of time. Especially when moving, setting up a new home, getting the kids settled, and figuring who you neighbors are and what the best grocery is. Life is generally too complex to be a poli activist 100% of the time. You have lots of stuff to think about, so the dedication this project expects (it's not even 100% if you read the FAQ) is probably a little too high.
Yeah, the feds may attempt to stop this. Those in power don't like threats to said power. But really, this group isn't planning anything illegal, and with the stated goals, the feds don't have nearly as much leverage as they had for the Waco incident as an example (I'm not comparing them, they just had similar stated freedom goals. Their methods look to be 100% different). However, the fact that getting all those people to agree all the time, on issues quite radically different than what we have been living with for the last 100+ years is not going work.
This is one more cog in the wheel that is useful software from opensource communities. It really is a great idea, but I think, slightly flawed. Let me explain...
The arch paper goes into great depths describing all the great things the server and clients will do. It really is a description of a full end to end solution (I know that's what was asked for). Which, BTW, doesn't necessarily mean just to replace Outlook, but could refer to any other expensive groupware solution as there are at least 3 being used right now (Lotus Notes for instance). My take on this is that the project should focus on defining useful groupware properties from the perspective of a user. Put that information out for everyone to read and comment on, then work on creating a backed server type solution that is completely client agnostic. Then, in parallel, develop a KDE client to work with it. I would think it would be much easier for Evolution, KMail, Mozilla, and whoever else writes clients to adhere to a good open standard than it would to adhere to a completely KDE solution, even if it is open source. This also alleviates some of the other issues raised, such as the project is too KDE centric, or why do what MS does?
Having read and digested some of this, it seems like a fantastic idea, but it's hard to overcome the feeling that it is absolutely targeted at Outlook. Maybe instead of competeing (like the German gov't wants), this is an opportunity to create a more user defined type of groupware. It's also an opportunity to create business opportunities for companies supporting Linux. Create a full blown groupware package based on this project and sell setup-config-support. This is also a fantastic opportunity to further all sorts of pieces of GNU/Linux that where limiting the design is, IMHO, limiting it's appeal and usefulness.
But who knows? I'm not all that against a complete KDE desktop takeover. Can't be a monopoly if it doesn't sell it's product.
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My assumption now is that IBM will wait till they win one way or the other, and then offer some unreasonably low price for the IP that SCO actually does own. What happens after that is probably too nebulous to think about. IBM did the right thing though when they decided to fight this and not buy out. It's almost certain that this was the original plan out of SCO. Buy us and give us a big paycheck and we can do it again with another company. Darl seems very good at becoming CEO and suing.
This may be true, but I would bet on market forces here. If company X decides it can get away with binary modules, and that module has serious issues, who's gonna by the hardware? With a video card, at least there's the fallback option, but with a northbridge driver, or with an ATA driver, you won't be able to boot your PC.
Some products, such as video, possibly wireless, or whatnot, can probably get away with binary only drivers and survive in the Linux space. Other hardware will just fail. Until Linux on the desktop is a little more popular, it's not going to be an issue though. I do expect some companies to do whatever they can to scam the community. I don't think this is what ATI and Nvidia are doing.
I could be wrong, but I believe that if you are running a 64 bit compiled kernel, you _can't_ use the 32bit drivers. While the CPU would support running 32bit applications, the kernel would be running in 64 bit mode, and you won't be able to load the driver. If you're running a normal distro (32 bit), then yeah, you could use the driver. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong though, as I'd love to hear that. Then I could load the ATI driver into FC1 for X86_64.
I know it's still really new, but I would love to see some token support from ATI or Nvidia for X86_64! The X driver for ATI is a little flaky in FC1 for X86_64, and I would love to have a native driver from ATI or Nvidia. My next Vid card is the one supported best for this platform running Linux.
The FCC, in long standing tradition, defines the Communication moniker of FCC to mean all things communicated, and has implemented a broadcast flag requirement on all forms of communication. Diebold, in an attempt to protect itself from destructive free speech, retroactively implemented the flag on the words Diebod, vote, poll, and all derivates of those words. The are currently asking the FBI to trace and prosecute any American who unfarily abuses the new Deibold flag by uttering of those words in any sentence Diebold disagrees with.
If you think this is funny or conspirist, catch up with the RIAA and MPAA.
You're first statement is correct, but from there on out, it sort of fizzles. There is a very specific definition of what 3G is, and what it takes to be able to call your network 3g. There's even a public website (which unfortunately I have at home, not at work, ironically) which explains this. 4G is really only the addition of more bandwidth and hasn't been classfied yet as 4G or any other such thing.
As for cooperation, why would they? When has it been good for business to allow a user to seemlessly switch? Might be good for the user, but the user really only matters one day a month. And there are other technical challenges with migrating seemlessly in that the way your digital cell phone figures out what to do with the network is based on knowing a specific frequency to listen for when it starts up. That's why phones are built for specific operators, it's cheap and easy to just set the frequency band your phone can listen to rather than have to dynamically deal with it and then worry about multiple tuners and whatnot.
Ok, while Wi-Fi is a mobile possibility, it's not likely to be on a phone you hold any time soon. There's a lot of weird challenges to solve there, and really, there are other more interesting challenges to solve, such as how to make high speed data access possible using radio over long distances with obstacles. Making antenna's and amplifiers better and find a way to make the software on the provider side better are some such problems. But mostly, the issue is that no one is paying the billions that the providers paid for airwaves to do this stuff. There is no killer app. Until the Windows type app bloat that everyone must have is vogue, then 3G/4G/whatever will just be another who care's in the annals of failed business plans.
Finally, UMTS and GPRS don't work that way really. In fact, they are two different types of cell networks and you wouldn't switch from one to the other. GPRS is the data service high bandwidth add on for GSM networks, and UMTS is the same thing for CDMA networks. When you get 10Mb + speeds in a building, you'll use the same system network as you move away from the tower or receiver and the network will slow you connection down as the distance or interference grows, just like it works today.
Eh, it will probably be Jenna Bush, she seems to be the one who would most likely be the next Bush in the White House. She will continue in the Bush tradition of invading Iraq a year or two after the innaguration party in which Ashton Kutcher proves he's not an idiot by dancing shirtless on the second stage. She will also claim that her administration invented cellular technology, and then give a contract to rebuild the Iraq cellular infrastructure to a bankrupt company with NO experience in building cellular networks. Should be fun. I'm waiting for the Bush twins in Stuff or Maxim.
Tehcnically, what you posted isn't a letter. It's more of a note or thought. In that vein, you did not type the letter, and since everyone is not dead, then you are proven wrong regarding your assertion.
Or, you did type this letter (which particular letter in your thought did you mean, BTW), and we are left with no way to prove you right or wrong. You're philosophy argument stands.
Pick one, but in another universe, realize you picked the other option and then potentially ate a donut.
No, I think this has more to do with George Lucas being extremly narcissitic. Basically, I believe that he does things (no Star Wars trilogy on DVD, not DTS or commentary in the new Indy trilogy) simply because he can, not because they make more money or make sense. Seriously, look back over the last 10 years, and pick one good thing George Lucas has done. I dare you. You can't! Ok, that's horribly subjective, but still...
Anyway, I suspect that Spielberg takes a back seat when Lucas is involved. Spielberg has done other DVD releases of his films that are quite good, and include lots of intelligent and interesting extras. Lucas has none of those credits. If I didn't enjoy all three movies so much, I would boycott this release (ok, subjective again, but if you don't like it, just kiss off and keep the flames to yourself). I count on being dissapointed by Lucas no matter what he does from here on out. And check out the commentary on the digital bits for some higher level perspective.
I feel better already.
Basically. I mean, what they hell happened to innovation that all these companies complain that other types of legislation will stomp out? Why not take all the brain power these companies have and fix the problem so that we DON'T need legislation. I mean, who really trusts these companies to do what's in the best interests of the public? I certainly don't. I never will. We only serve to give them money (and grief complaining when something doesn't work, but mostly money). Why would they have any reason to be altruistic regarding the consumers view of spam? NONE! By going the route of legistlation, they are offsetting the costs into public taxes and the legal domain, and they are effectively wiping out the legal protection and legal benefits that the consumer (this is a bad thing) and the spammer (one could go either way with the spammer) have. This is not a good thing.
C'mon, slashdot used to sniff this crap out quickly. Please tell me we are not being desensitized to shady legal maneuvers.
Well, GSM is making inroads into the states, particularly in the midwest. CDMA is expensive due to paying Qualcomm licenses, and GSM is quite good and making inroads everywhere. Especially with the new 3G services taking advantage of existing GSM infrastructure.
Obviously wasn't an IBM 75 Gig IDE drive. I've had 3 now that went about 6 months a piece in an Ultra 10. This machine never even so much as vibrated. I tossed one of them across a room into a brick wall, but never plugged it in to see if that may have fixed it.
A friend had a really old IDE drive from a laptop that died. He had a bunch of data on it that he wanted to get off. Problem was that it wouldn't spin up. It had sat for a while, and that seemed to have stuck the spindle. The solution, power it up, and then by hand rotate the entire drive really fast to try and free the spindle. Magically, it spun up, he copied stuff off, and life was grand. Unsure of what happened to the drive.
I think these are the same ideas. The conspiracy is mostly not proveable, but the circumventing of contract law is definately proveable, fault to be determined later. Here is where the lawsuit should stay. The courts would be very interested in maintaining contract law very strictly to avoid very difficult issues in the future. Anyway, that's the way I see it.
A lot of posts are missing the point. The article states that the lawsuit is to argue that software vendors have exercised a loophole in sales practices that makes it possible to enforce a contract never agreed upon by the consumer. This isn't about getting money back for windows, or really even about how legal EULA's are. It's about whether the vendors are breaking the law by using the loophole. If so, they are liable, if not, consumers continue to be screwed.
However, this case will most likely also touch on the legality of EULA's in some aspect. You can't argue that I had to agree to a contract I have never seen without arguing that the contract itself is flawed. CompUSA et. al. don't care about piracy really, they care about selling software. Granted, piracy cuts their profits as well, but not as radically or in as unique a way as it does vendors. If dumping EULA's altogether strengthens the retail position, retailers will stand behind this lawsuit (not likely, I realize). It's the software vendors who don't want their software to be copied. They even have a powerful trade group in the BSA. So, to avoid copying, you can't open and return software. This is reasonable. It doesn't take a software engineer to realize that you can avoid ever having to refund ANY money if you put the EULA in a place where it can't be agreed upon until after the vendors first concern is violated (opened box). Wow, a perfect system.
And this is the actual issue on which the lawsuit is based. You can't agree to the EULA until you actually pay for the obligated items, effectively binding you to the contract (EULA) prematurely. It essentially undercuts everything that US contract law is founded on. I assume if the lawyers can build an adequate case on this fact alone, that there will be at least monetary success (read settlement). Realistically, the consumer can only hope that there is legal and precendent setting success as well, where either the software sale practice in question is deemed illegal, or the EULA system is deemed illegal. A settlement in this case will be a severe detriment for consumers of software in that it doesn't touch on the legality of any of the lawsuit items.
Pray for litigation on this one folks.
No, in this case, the best thing the consumers get is either a very consumer friendly ruling on returning software to vendor/retailer, or a very non-consumer friendly ruling. In this case, a non-ruling would be detrimental in that the issue remains untouched by law and precedent and the consumer continues to get the shaft. Obviously, the money will most likely be incomprehensible to mere mortals, but the real benifit will be if/when a judge (and subsequent appeals) sees that the means of selling software is explicitly anti-consumer and says "Stop". A ruling like that will force companies/retailers (much to their chagrin) to reinvent the wheel so to speak, but in the meantime, it will provide us with the means to return copies of the crap we just don't want to be contracted to.
Acutally, the best case scenario would be that the judge and subsequent appeals determine that EULA's are unfair contractural obligations damaging to the consumer. Not likely, there's a lot of money and lobby power in the software industry, but it would be nice. I would look for a quiet and quick settlment that pays the lawyers handsomely, and provides the consumer with a website that asks if we bought software we didn't like in the last 20 years and what our address is so they can send a check to some charity because the cost of mailing the checks is prohibitive. Oh, and none have to admit that the practice is wrong or bad.
I didn't get rid of my landline, but did limit it's usefullness (unlisted, no answering machine, no extras) and use my cell phone for EVERYTHING. This has worked for about 2 years now. I never use my house phone, and will only answer it once in a blue moon. SBC actually disconnected me accidentally for two weeks and I didn't notice until TIVO complained (so I bought the ethernet card). Now if it's gone, I doubt I would notice ever to be honest. I only really keep it for emergencies anyway, cells are good, but less reliable than I'm willing to cope with in an emergency.
Now to the point. I have gotten several telemarketing calls on my cell. For everyone, I ask if the DM will reimburse me for the call as it's my cell phone and I have to pay for the minutes used to sell me something. In all but one case the individual on the other end made some comment about not calling cell phones and dropped me from their call list. The isolated case was the guy who tried to convince me that I don't pay incoming calls against my minutes. That went on for a little while, but I haven't heard back from that company either. I get the feeling that DM's don't want to deal with calling cell phones plus the hassles of charging people to advertise and therefore just leave those numbers alone (although how they would know which is which is beyond me).
Realistically speaking, it is still very early in the computer age. We haven't even begun to sort out some of the basic issues about what is really important to society just yet. Sure, we have great business tools, and we have cheap PC's, and we have diversity (Mac, Linux, Windows, Big Iron, embedded, ...), but the industry is so very young. It's still dealing with how to sort out what distribution methods work the best (free v not free?), what development paradigms work the best, and what situations or business models deserve what type of development.
This is where I think future Sci-Fi gets it right. You never see anyone there fighting to understand the newest user interface, or wondering when the bridge computer is gonna crash and reboot. No one ever talks about a 5 computer redundancy in the flight controls. Those are the ideas that all of the current work is moving towards. All of the books, all of the failures, all of the fighting, and all of the fast paced development will move us towards a happy equilibrium at some point.
Where is software development now? It's growing up. Slowly, but this isn't easy. It may never be, but sooner or later, it will be done in some correct way. That's the day you don't see a Mac switch add talking about how easy it is to use a Mac vs. a PC in my opinion. Or you don't read about how the newest US fighter jet may reboot a flight control computer in flight. And your mobile phone rings every time you expect it to ring. It's all about evolution here.
In SAG, I believe that it is unique in the SAG listings, and not unique across the board. They (SAG) just want to prevent the same name happening more than once in relevant media credits. This to avoid mistaken identity problems. My brother investigated this and discovered some older actor with the same name as his. He then would have had to use the three name hack or come up with a new name and have it legally changed. There are about 2 dozen individuals in this country with the same first/last name as his though. I'm not sure about Equity, but I would suspect the rules are the same or similar.
After last night's episode of 24, I suspect you won't see any sort of nuclear fuel powered battery in the near future. I mean, put a few in a an old storage site, have someone alert homeland defense, and sentence an anti-terrorisim agent to death in a very likely shootout in that same storage site. What government would allow this to happen? No, it's more likely that they outlaw this and any other nuclear source to keep certain sketchy individuals from creating a nuclear bomb to blow up Los Angeles.
Exactly, this is a little weird, especially given today's IP driven technology infrastructre. Everyone else is just licensing and reaping the windfall, so why is Tivo/Sonic Blue going it alone? I suspect that either the patents involved are not strong enough to manage this, or are to narrowly written to hold off another company from doing something similar. I guess it's also possible that these guys think that their business model is the more correct one and don't want to compromise.
But to be perfectly honest, while I love my Tivo and have hacked away, it doesn't provide me a compelling reason not to buy a combo DirecTV unit. Anytime you suggest that I pay a monthly fee over a non monthly fee, I will pick the non monthly fee every time. Makes sense. All Tivo gives me for the monthly fee is a really nice OSD. DirecTV gives me a really nice OSD as well, and that's bundled with the service, so what do I gain by paying Tivo? Couple that witht the up front cost of a Tivo versus the upfront cost of a subsidized piece of no name hardware and you have no contest. Finally, that one less remote, one less device sucking electricity, one less thing to break is definately a consideration. Really, the combo units will win hands down as the majority of the buying public will weigh the same arguments I just did. I'm all for Tivo succeeding, but they don't provide an irreplacable service here, or much less a convience even.
This guy wants to avoid any chance of someone actually fighting the patent for as long as possible. He is suing in CA courts, but not suing anyone in CA. Why? Paying a lawyer to go to California from Vermont or Indiana is gonna be really expensive. Make the cost of fighting greater than settling and the little guy will settle. Walla, a money making venture.
True, but it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend against a lawsuit. Small business doesn't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to throw at defending against a lawsuit. Especially considering settling only costs thousands which, unfortunately, is affordable in many cases.
If you followed the story, more information regarding PanIP comes up, as well as lawyer attitudes, how PanIP found it's targets (small businesses with an online presence in good financial health), and the reasoning for the strategy. The lawyer in charge, I forget her name has even said it may not be nice or even not reprehensible, but it is legal. And the simple reason for the targets is the knowledge that PanIP may never be challenged but rather accumulate settlements. And with settlements, it builds up precedent. Then, it takes precendent against bigger names. Akin to boxing in that you don't take on Drederick Tatum first, but rather local hobos.
Besides, PanIP is an IP holding company. It does no actual business. The guy who incorporated it just holds a bunch of nonsense patents and uses those to sue people. Kinda like Rambus. I don't know that any attempts to reach this guy have been succesful by the press based on the more recent articles I've read. Basically, the incoporator is a sleaze abusing a flawed system for personal gain. Who he hurts and what little respect for the US patent system may have remained that he destroys is secondary to 5 grand per small business he collects. These people need to be lined up and deported Haiti or Uganda or Iraq where suing people is secondary to not getting mashed on by the government.
That's true, although I'm not a big QNX guy, I did work on developing ChorusOS 4.0 about 3 years ago at Sun's Grenoble facility. I can say that Chorus had a much better memory management model that AE does, and it was very stable on PPC embedded platforms. It also did C++ more natively than other RTOS offerings.
I know, C++ in the embedded world? C++ in an OS? Well, when done with some forethought and a brain, it's not an altogether bad idea.
As well, I think it's really big failing was that Sun pretty much never put ANY effort into promoting or pursuing this outside of some half hearted attempts to get it into the auto and cellular infrastructure industries. They pretty much let it die a slow painful death. Couple that with the less than warm relationship between Sun's team and the original Chorus guys, and the requirements that it's few customers had, and you have a recipe for failure. It's good to see it came back. Time to dig out the blades at work and see if I can get it running again. WooHoo, nerd work!
I think you miss the point. This isn't strictly a vote count. The article states that 20K activists works out to (can't remember, don't want to look it up, but I think it's) 2 votes per activist. So, they now have 40K votes. In a state like Montana, 40K votes would easily influence an election. Now, on to what I think are the missed bits of stuff.
This Free State perogative makes no mention of eduction. Actually, it completely ignores even education funding from the feds as a possible leash. No taxes sounds great, but eveyone has to pay for a private school? Maybe, but ouch, that would get pricey. A lot of those interested may not have noticed this point. Also, there have been many attempts to obtain similar goals throughout history (Britian had 2 or 3 utopian projects roughly 300 years ago). None have been successful. The system we have, while still better than most, if not all, of the other systems, is how it is because getting a large number of individuals to agree and stay interested 100% of the time is not possible. We're individuals, and that actually means something.
And in my opinion, this project will encounter the inability of even a relatively small number of individuals to agree or maintain focus for the required amount of time. Especially when moving, setting up a new home, getting the kids settled, and figuring who you neighbors are and what the best grocery is. Life is generally too complex to be a poli activist 100% of the time. You have lots of stuff to think about, so the dedication this project expects (it's not even 100% if you read the FAQ) is probably a little too high.
Yeah, the feds may attempt to stop this. Those in power don't like threats to said power. But really, this group isn't planning anything illegal, and with the stated goals, the feds don't have nearly as much leverage as they had for the Waco incident as an example (I'm not comparing them, they just had similar stated freedom goals. Their methods look to be 100% different). However, the fact that getting all those people to agree all the time, on issues quite radically different than what we have been living with for the last 100+ years is not going work.
This is one more cog in the wheel that is useful software from opensource communities. It really is a great idea, but I think, slightly flawed. Let me explain...
The arch paper goes into great depths describing all the great things the server and clients will do. It really is a description of a full end to end solution (I know that's what was asked for). Which, BTW, doesn't necessarily mean just to replace Outlook, but could refer to any other expensive groupware solution as there are at least 3 being used right now (Lotus Notes for instance). My take on this is that the project should focus on defining useful groupware properties from the perspective of a user. Put that information out for everyone to read and comment on, then work on creating a backed server type solution that is completely client agnostic. Then, in parallel, develop a KDE client to work with it. I would think it would be much easier for Evolution, KMail, Mozilla, and whoever else writes clients to adhere to a good open standard than it would to adhere to a completely KDE solution, even if it is open source. This also alleviates some of the other issues raised, such as the project is too KDE centric, or why do what MS does?
Having read and digested some of this, it seems like a fantastic idea, but it's hard to overcome the feeling that it is absolutely targeted at Outlook. Maybe instead of competeing (like the German gov't wants), this is an opportunity to create a more user defined type of groupware. It's also an opportunity to create business opportunities for companies supporting Linux. Create a full blown groupware package based on this project and sell setup-config-support. This is also a fantastic opportunity to further all sorts of pieces of GNU/Linux that where limiting the design is, IMHO, limiting it's appeal and usefulness.
But who knows? I'm not all that against a complete KDE desktop takeover. Can't be a monopoly if it doesn't sell it's product.