That's a meltdown, all right, but Three Mile Island was a joke by comparison. There was some core melting, but it never left the containment vessel. I think the total radiation released to the atmosphere was something like 20 curies of iodine (1 curie will give a radiation dose of ~1 REM from a distance of 1 meter. Radiation doses lower than 5 REM per year are thought not to cause any significant risk of cancer, and radiation poisoning levels are in hundreds of REM. Just for comparison.)
I operated pressurized water reactors when I was in the US Navy, and I'm convinced that a properly trained staff is more than capable of safely handling any potential incident involving one. While TMI and Chernobyl were disasters, the lessons learned are carried on.
I'm talking cutting both ways. Don't fuck with business, PERIOD. Let the market take care of the cheats and would-be monopolists. Come up with some objective standard for patents/copyrights and leave it alone from there. No sweetheart no-bid contracts. Set a tax rate, and let 'em about their business. Of course they want things set up to maximize their profits, they're not fucking stupid. But with the government we've got now, they're in prime position to get their way via a legislature rather than the free market. There was no "corporatocracy" back when individuals had the power and the pertinent debate in Congress was "The National Bird: Eagle or Turkey?"
Ignorance of the patent is really the only way to avoid intentional infringement claims, with the potential for triple damages. I'm really not sure how FSF-type willful ignorance fits into this, though. Like any other patent claim, the potential for past damages does exist.
As for the money thing, I seriously doubt they're going to go on the warpath against end users. They're going to hit up the corporate guys, and probably Red Hat, too.
Don't kid yourself. IBM and MS have had their noses up each other's asshole since the MS-DOS days. Sun'll deal. Dell will likely settle for some token per-machine cost. The embedded guys will deal. They won't push the FSF too hard; whenever RMS or Moglen gets in the mainstream press, it makes Gates and Ballmer look rational. Red Hat is the obvious loser here. They deal, they get the same burning effigy treatment Novell is getting right now. They don't deal (or MS doesn't offer a deal, which is likely) they lose serious customer base in the US. That will likely finish them as a publicly traded company, and they're the ones that keep a lot of things going right now.
Take away government's ability to do stupid and arbitrary things to businesses, and you'll lose business's desire to do stupid and arbitrary things to government.
They can't throw it out of court because it hasn't been to court yet. They've stated openly that they're negotiating before litigating. When and if they sue, rest assured that the patents in question will be openly stated.
It's the Lanham Act, and I think that in this case it would probably be a really stupid thing for a company like Red Hat to do. Out of 235, they really only need one upheld patent to hang themselves with.
He was acquitted, and the impeachment was due to the fact that Cabinet-level positions are Senate-confirmed and apparently need Senate approval for termination (I don't recall the Senate getting a say in Rumsfeld's departure, but it might have just been one of those quickie 95 to 0 things like the Kyoto Protocol).
All too true. You know, it's sad, but the FOSS community knew since 1998 that MS would eventually bring out the patent guns. OSRM even did a study a few years back and found ~200 patent violations in the Linux kernel alone. But still, the devs have treated software patents like the bogeyman; if we don't believe in them, they won't hurt us. And thus we fiddled while Rome burned.
No, it won't; but it'll work with the companies that use Linux to do business in the US. Not to mention Linux vendors like Red Hat or Canonical. Or non-profits like SPI or the Linux Foundation, or perhaps even the FSF. Sure, the hobbyists will pick up the pieces and distribute via samizdat (or not, I doubt at that point MS will even care), but it will for all intents and purposes be over, as far as getting acceptance in the mainstream.
Two problems with patching them out: 1.) They can still be held liable for past infringement
2.) They could potentially be held liable for intentional infringement (triple damages are not fun)
They won't completely shut it down. They'll just effectively shut it down by bleeding Red Hat to death (most of the GNU stuff has really been Red Hat stuff for years now) and extracting rent from other companies that want to keep using it. If even a handful get through (and with 235, you know a handful are going to get through), it could be enough to shut down companies like Google.
He states the kernel is accountable for 42, and the rest are divied up between the GUIs and apps like OpenOffice. As for 'specific' infringement, look it up on the USPTO web site. They're all there.
The only "free software" company that really holds patents is Red Hat, and they've got like six of them. Sun, IBM, HP, etc have been cross-licensed up with MS for some time now.
This isn't survival; this is slitting your wrists to get a poison out of your bloodstream. All some scheme like this will end up doing is raising costs across the board. People will get paid more, but that extra money isn't going to do them any good. Not to mention the inevitable labor shortages precluding us getting a new car, TV set, etc..
Well, the one thing about government is that it doesn't have to be profitable. During the economic freefall of the '70s, businesses got into the whole 'efficiency' kick more or less out of necessity, shitcanning employees by the thousands. Even today they'll lay off something like 10 percent a year and rehire just to get rid of the poor performers.
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That's a meltdown, all right, but Three Mile Island was a joke by comparison. There was some core melting, but it never left the containment vessel. I think the total radiation released to the atmosphere was something like 20 curies of iodine (1 curie will give a radiation dose of ~1 REM from a distance of 1 meter. Radiation doses lower than 5 REM per year are thought not to cause any significant risk of cancer, and radiation poisoning levels are in hundreds of REM. Just for comparison.)
I operated pressurized water reactors when I was in the US Navy, and I'm convinced that a properly trained staff is more than capable of safely handling any potential incident involving one. While TMI and Chernobyl were disasters, the lessons learned are carried on.
That, right there, is more or less the sum of everything I find to be evil in humanity.
For ECMA/ISO, I believe that patents have to be available royalty-free.
That's just what I'm trying to say: what would there be to get from government?
I'm talking cutting both ways. Don't fuck with business, PERIOD. Let the market take care of the cheats and would-be monopolists. Come up with some objective standard for patents/copyrights and leave it alone from there. No sweetheart no-bid contracts. Set a tax rate, and let 'em about their business. Of course they want things set up to maximize their profits, they're not fucking stupid. But with the government we've got now, they're in prime position to get their way via a legislature rather than the free market. There was no "corporatocracy" back when individuals had the power and the pertinent debate in Congress was "The National Bird: Eagle or Turkey?"
IANAL:
Ignorance of the patent is really the only way to avoid intentional infringement claims, with the potential for triple damages. I'm really not sure how FSF-type willful ignorance fits into this, though. Like any other patent claim, the potential for past damages does exist.
As for the money thing, I seriously doubt they're going to go on the warpath against end users. They're going to hit up the corporate guys, and probably Red Hat, too.
Don't kid yourself. IBM and MS have had their noses up each other's asshole since the MS-DOS days. Sun'll deal. Dell will likely settle for some token per-machine cost. The embedded guys will deal. They won't push the FSF too hard; whenever RMS or Moglen gets in the mainstream press, it makes Gates and Ballmer look rational. Red Hat is the obvious loser here. They deal, they get the same burning effigy treatment Novell is getting right now. They don't deal (or MS doesn't offer a deal, which is likely) they lose serious customer base in the US. That will likely finish them as a publicly traded company, and they're the ones that keep a lot of things going right now.
Take away government's ability to do stupid and arbitrary things to businesses, and you'll lose business's desire to do stupid and arbitrary things to government.
That makes what, 234 more to go?
They can't throw it out of court because it hasn't been to court yet. They've stated openly that they're negotiating before litigating. When and if they sue, rest assured that the patents in question will be openly stated.
It's the Lanham Act, and I think that in this case it would probably be a really stupid thing for a company like Red Hat to do. Out of 235, they really only need one upheld patent to hang themselves with.
He was acquitted, and the impeachment was due to the fact that Cabinet-level positions are Senate-confirmed and apparently need Senate approval for termination (I don't recall the Senate getting a say in Rumsfeld's departure, but it might have just been one of those quickie 95 to 0 things like the Kyoto Protocol).
Lotus v. Borland was a copyright case. Patents are a whole different ballgame. As for X11, it's not so much the base as much as KDE/Gnome.
All too true. You know, it's sad, but the FOSS community knew since 1998 that MS would eventually bring out the patent guns. OSRM even did a study a few years back and found ~200 patent violations in the Linux kernel alone. But still, the devs have treated software patents like the bogeyman; if we don't believe in them, they won't hurt us. And thus we fiddled while Rome burned.
I'm betting a substantial portion will be interoperability stuff, like VFAT/NTFS in the kernel or something like Samba.
No, it won't; but it'll work with the companies that use Linux to do business in the US. Not to mention Linux vendors like Red Hat or Canonical. Or non-profits like SPI or the Linux Foundation, or perhaps even the FSF. Sure, the hobbyists will pick up the pieces and distribute via samizdat (or not, I doubt at that point MS will even care), but it will for all intents and purposes be over, as far as getting acceptance in the mainstream.
Two problems with patching them out: 1.) They can still be held liable for past infringement 2.) They could potentially be held liable for intentional infringement (triple damages are not fun)
They won't completely shut it down. They'll just effectively shut it down by bleeding Red Hat to death (most of the GNU stuff has really been Red Hat stuff for years now) and extracting rent from other companies that want to keep using it. If even a handful get through (and with 235, you know a handful are going to get through), it could be enough to shut down companies like Google.
He states the kernel is accountable for 42, and the rest are divied up between the GUIs and apps like OpenOffice. As for 'specific' infringement, look it up on the USPTO web site. They're all there.
The only "free software" company that really holds patents is Red Hat, and they've got like six of them. Sun, IBM, HP, etc have been cross-licensed up with MS for some time now.
US Patents are a matter of public record. USPTO even has a web search feature.
This isn't survival; this is slitting your wrists to get a poison out of your bloodstream. All some scheme like this will end up doing is raising costs across the board. People will get paid more, but that extra money isn't going to do them any good. Not to mention the inevitable labor shortages precluding us getting a new car, TV set, etc..
But didn't you get the memo? We can suspend economic laws by government fiat now!
You know, the gold bugs have been trying to tell you people this for about a century now.
Well, the one thing about government is that it doesn't have to be profitable. During the economic freefall of the '70s, businesses got into the whole 'efficiency' kick more or less out of necessity, shitcanning employees by the thousands. Even today they'll lay off something like 10 percent a year and rehire just to get rid of the poor performers.