Posted on 05/13/2007 4:05:27 PM PDT by Zakeet
Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task - and it's blessedly crash-resistant.
A broad community of developers, from individuals to large companies like IBM, is constantly working to improve it and introduce new features. No wonder the business world has embraced it so enthusiastically: More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers.
But now there's a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it's being cast by Microsoft. The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google (Charts, Fortune 500), Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won't be free anymore.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
Please repeat. Your message was garbled.
64-bit Vista can handle 16 exabytes, so it's really only limited by how many chips you can put on a motherboard. However, it's artificially capped for the Home versions (8 and 16 GB, thanks Microsoft for breaking your OS to achieve market segmentation).
While 32-bit Vista can handle up to 4 GB RAM, various devices like video cards are counted as addressable memory, so they eat into it. Count on losing the ability to address about 512 MB of your RAM because of this (maybe more depending on your hardware), so 3.5 GB is really the limit of usable memory for your applications. In any case, no one application can be assigned over 2 GB RAM.
But, (there's always a "but" in computers), some hardware can let 32-bit Windows use more than 4 GB RAM through physical address extensions (sort of an extended memory hack). This setup is common on 32-bit Windows Server 2003 implementations. I don't know whether regular 32-bit Vista does this too.
In any case, you really need to be running a 64-bit machine, OS and software if you want to use that much memory.
Can you give me an example of where they've done so without explicit permission from the originator? If you can't, then where's the problem?
Obviously because these "originators" as you called them, mostly work at high tech US companies like IBM, HP, Sun, who have access to the best technology we have to offer here in the US. They then clone other software, mostly from the US and often made by their parent company, and give it away to the rest of the world via Stallman's license. Like most Green Party schemes it's a US giveaway program that is designed to attack US companies and support communist governments like Cuba. Thankfully, patents will probably stand in the way, else these kooks left up to their own ambition would give it all away, eventually.
So you think Linux should be able use Microsoft’s FAT, FAT32 or NTFS disk formats without paying a license? All those users across the globe who are switching to these free clones of US products should be just able to do it? You’re using “Ubuntu” isn’t it, yourself? Does it even have a legal DVD driver?
So you're talking about cloning, not copying. Like Windows is a VMS clone, BSD is a UNIX clone, Vista's UI is an OS X clone, etc.?
Thankfully, patents will probably stand in the way
Windows likely violates several patents held by the Open Invention Network, including key Web services patents that could seriously hurt Microsoft. Oracle is also a member, so Microsoft had better watch out for what patents SQL Server violates. IBM is also a member, and they have more software patents than anybody else.
Software patents are a double-edged sword, so Microsoft is playing with fire. There is NO application of any decent complexity that does not violate somebody's patent, and Microsoft has a lot of complex applications out there.
Not nearly in the same context as Linux is a copy of Unix. Nor are there employees working at Apple giving their code to Microsoft to use in Vista, Microsoft actually had to write the iPod software itself from what I've heard. Nor would that be a transfer to a foreign government. China based their "Red Flag" software on a direct copy of "Red Hat" which is based in North Carolina. Not as if you didn't know, but especially to claim Vista is a copy of OSX as a defense in this context is far from the mark.
Microsoft had better watch out for what patents SQL Server violates. IBM is also a member, and they have more software patents than anybody else.
Yes IBM has history of aggresively using software patents, just as with their recent suits including one against Amazon which was settled in IBM's favor. Microsoft doesn't have a history of aggressively suing others, but I would think this would be an appropriate moment from their perspective, would you not? With IBM launching its own patent suits seems like the opportune time actually.
Yeah, my fault. You said SCP, and I had a little brain flatulence and was thinking Digital Research.
No, OS10.2 and they have cleaned up the fonts. The issue of the Mac not being able to handle fonts is behind us thanfully. If ever we get a font with client art that the Mac can't deal with, I just dump the ad into photoshop, flaten it, drop it in and move on. Text gets rasterized and looks worse but who has time to fix it (Mac quality?)
No matter the source of the particular problem of the moment on the Mac, though, the point is that when a Mac crashes you lose all your work. Something that does not seem to happen on a PC running XP.
It will make you happy, perhaps, to hear that I have found something I like better about a Mac: The menu bar that remain at the top of the screen and merely changes depending on what program is opened. And other than the problems it has with crashing/data loss, the Mac works.
Good to hear from you again. FReepRegards!
Linux is a copy of UNIX in a more legitimate way. UNIX is a published specification (actually a set of them, depends on how you define "UNIX"), free for anyone to implement. Microsoft even implemented POSIX in NT, as do most operating systems, at least partially.
What'll really burn you is that the official name, POSIX, was coined by Stallman.
Nor are there employees working at Apple giving their code to Microsoft to use in Vista
No, but if Apple wanted to let them it would be fine with me. It's their code, their right.
China based their "Red Flag" software on a direct copy of "Red Hat" which is based in North Carolina.
With Red Hat's permission. Of course, what gave the Chinese the right to do that is also the only reason that the Red Hat corporation exists in the first place. Would you rather those American jobs not exist?
Microsoft doesn't have a history of aggressively suing others, but I would think this would be an appropriate moment from their perspective, would you not?
They're getting desperate. But they'd better be careful because, as you said, IBM likes to enforce its patents. A patent suit against any Linux vendor risks IBM pulling out the likely thousands of patents that could cover Microsoft products.
And as far as open source only copying, then why is there a project for open source as prior art? I followed one example of invalidating a software patent, and it referenced numerous examples of open source software as prior art.
Hero worship.
With Red Hat's permission.
I'm sure Loral's decision to give the Chinese the engineering expertise to build ICBM's was perfectly fine with you too.
They're getting desperate. But they'd better be careful because, as you said, IBM likes to enforce its patents.
IBM has a cross patent license agreement with Microsoft, Sun too. The end result of this will be more cross license agreements as well, patents are here to stay and if Stallman wants to distribute software he'll have to face the same liabilities as everyone else.
Good for you, although you may want to think about an upgrade. 10.2 is really the minimum version of OS X to be using to do any work. It's kind of like using Windows XP SP1.
The issue of the Mac not being able to handle fonts is behind us thanfully.
Actually, that's the issue of corrupt fonts ruining your system, although OS 9 got hit bad because of its ancient unreliable design, somewhere around Windows 95 technology (which, BTW, heavy Photoshop use would regularly make unstable, several restarts required every day).
If ever we get a font with client art that the Mac can't deal with, I just dump the ad into photoshop, flaten it, drop it in and move on.
Better to tell clients to convert the fonts into curves. Even better, get good font management software that will automatically turn on the font (it'll grab it from the client's disk) just long enough to do it yourself, then automatically turn it off. After you're done it'll be like the font was never on your system.
Text gets rasterized and looks worse but who has time to fix it (Mac quality?)
True, and unfortunate, for any system. Normally your text gets rendered at 3600dpi (or whatever you use), so to cut it down to 300dpi or whatever in your image is going to look bad. The only thing you can do is up the resolution when rasterizing, but that can screw with any images in the artwork and make your RIPs work that much harder.
No matter the source of the particular problem of the moment on the Mac, though, the point is that when a Mac crashes you lose all your work. Something that does not seem to happen on a PC running XP.
It's the software that saves you, not the OS. Photoshop will still lose everything if Windows crashes (at least the version I have).
The menu bar that remain at the top of the screen and merely changes depending on what program is opened.
It's a basic rule of human-computer interaction. Things always being at the same place lets users work faster and more reliably. Your motor memory and Fitts' Law gets you to that one top menu bar faster than you could get to any application's individual menu bar. That's why the menu bar is better like that, and why Microsoft's menus, and especially their personalized menus, suck.
Good to hear from you again. FReepRegards!
Glad to see things are at least somewhat better over there. Hope something above helped.
Depends on the algorithm, in my mind. A simple binary tree search algorithm wouldn't be reasonable, but complex, non-obvious algorithms like LZW compression or RSA data encryption might have a better case for being patentable.
No doubt. As do Win32 servers. But if you look at the 32GB, not all is availaible. Maybe 30.5GB or 31GB, etc., but not the whole 32GB.
I have an HP Itanium 2. It has 8GB of RAM. Looking at it right now it has 7.98GB available. That's rounding off of course :)
The reason "home" or "gamer" machines take it in the shorts is that they have video cards that have gobs of memory. And, unfortunately, those memory addresses have to stay below 4GB. So a video card with 768MB of RAM sucks that much away from your total of 4GB RAM. As it's rare for a server to have such a card it "loses" much less due to video memory addresses.
Fact. I don't really care about him, but you despise him, so it's fun to show you things like that.
Plus you just sidestepped the issue. Linux is more legit in acting like UNIX than Vista is in acting like OS X, or NT being designed by former DEC employees using their VAX experience.
I'm sure Loral's decision to give the Chinese the engineering expertise to build ICBM's was perfectly fine with you too.
That falls under export controls. This doesn't. Is that too hard to grasp?
You again sidestep the issue, in that Red Hat's work was not stolen, and the license you don't like, and that allowed the Chinese to take it, is the only reason Red Hat, and thus the jobs of its American employees, exists. I guess you'd prefer those American programmers be out of a job.
IBM has a cross patent license agreement with Microsoft, Sun too.
Really? I've never heard of it. They probably did back in the early days of OS/2 joint development, but that was a long time ago, and IBM has filed thousands of patents each year in the about 15 years since then.
patents are here to stay
That's fine, but it's software patents I'm worried about. You think about it only in connection to free software (which includes BSD and thus OS X, and even portions of Windows), but it also affects small proprietary software companies. They don't have the defensive patent portfolios of the big guys, so the end of this trend will be that the only people developing software are the large corporations.
Microsoft has ALWAYS been a legal firm. What built them was the contract they signed with IBM: “You sell the OS with every box, we retain the rights to the OS.”
MS didn’t have an OS when they had made that deal. They went out and bought PC-DOS for $50K.
Linux acts much more like OSX than Vista does, the popular foreign Ubuntu version is often claimed to be almost an exact copy of OSX look/feel.
That falls under export controls. This doesn't. Is that too hard to grasp?
Just because Clinton removed export controls on software doesn't mean they shouldn't exist. Only free software utopias such as yourself support such free giveaways of US technology to adversaries.
it also affects small proprietary software companies. They don't have the defensive patent portfolios of the big guys, so the end of this trend will be that the only people developing software are the large corporations.
Ridiculous. Most patent claims are made by the small against the large. To my knowledge, Microsoft has been sued several times by smaller firms for patent infringement, but has never actually launched a suit against someone else, especially smaller companies.
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