Comment What this really says. (Score 1) 117
"New startup makes it easier and standard practice to legitimize the practice of patent trolling."
Just fix the damn system already!
Just fix the damn system already!
Submission + - Free software group files copyright lawsuits (computerworld.com.au)
Arashtamere writes: The Software Freedom Law Center, an organization focused on protecting open-source and free software, has filed copyright lawsuits against two US companies, alleging that they are redistributing software in violation of the GNU GPL (General Public License).
The SFLC filed lawsuits Monday on behalf of the developers of BusyBox against High-Gain Antennas of Parker, Colorado, and Xterasys of City of Industry, California. The lawsuits, filed in US District Court for the Southern District of New York, allege that the companies are distributing BusyBox illegally, without meeting the GPL requirement of providing access to the source code of their implementation.
BusyBox, available since November 1999, is a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities commonly used in embedded systems licensed under GPL version 2. The two companies are distributing "BusyBox, or a modified version of BusyBox that is substantially similar to BusyBox," the lawsuits allege. The lawsuits ask the court to give the BusyBox developers the profits from that software, plus other damages.
But Richard Bruckner, CEO of High-Gain Antennas, said the SFLC is mistaken about the GPL violation. The company, which makes wireless broadband antennas and related products, uses firmware from a company called Edimax, not BusyBox, and makes the source code available, at the request of customers, he said.
Bruckner said he tried to explain the situation in a conference call with SFLC officials but was hung up on. During that first conversation SFLC was "already asking for money," he said. "What they need to do is get their act together and read the source code."
If the SFLC doesn't end its threats, High-Gain Antennas may file a countersuit, Bruckner added.
Maryland To Tax Custom Programming and Computer Services 395
mcwop writes "Early this morning Maryland passed legislation to apply a new 6% sales tax to 'custom computer programming' and other computer- and hardware-related services. Computer industry groups lobbied hard against the measure to no avail. Purchasers of IT services may find that in-house IT and buying out-of-state become attractive options, as well as cutting money out of other projects."
Submission + - AT&T Censors Pearl Jam's Anti-Bush Lyrics (forbes.com)
VE3OGG writes: "Numerous news agencies are reporting that Pearl Jam's recent Lollapalooza concert has met with some controversy. According to the news reports, when Eddie Vedder sang: "George Bush leave this world alone. George Bush find yourself another home." AT&T censored the lyrics on its webcast. AT&T has said that this was an accident on the part of Davie-Brown Entertainment and should never have happened as it is against their policies of editing political messages out of webcasts and has posted an apology and is taking steps to publish the songs in their entirety on its Blue Room website, however Pearl Jam has gone on record as saying "AT&T's actions strikes at the heart of the public's concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.""
Submission + - Intro to Reverse Engineering, No Assembly Required (ethicalhacker.net)
ddonzal writes: "Great intro to reverse engineering for someone with no experience whatsoever on the subject. In this continuing series on coding essentials for those programmatically-challenged InfoSec Pros (ethical hackers), we build on the knowledge learned in the first article, "Intro to C." No prior knowledge of Assembly is Required!
http://www.ethicalhacker.net/content/view/152/2/"
Submission + - AT&T censors PerlJam--Band fires back (arstechnica.com)
kramer2718 writes: Recently, AT&T censor Pearl Jam for some anti-Bush comments during a performance.
The band fired back saying, "This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media. What happened to us this weekend was a wake-up call, and it's about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band."
Other public interest groups have used this censorship as an argument for net-neutrality.
Ars Technica has more. What do slashdotters think?
The band fired back saying, "This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media. What happened to us this weekend was a wake-up call, and it's about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band."
Other public interest groups have used this censorship as an argument for net-neutrality.
Ars Technica has more. What do slashdotters think?
Submission + - Escaping the Malthusian Trap (hughpickens.com)
Hugh Pickens writes: "The New York Times is running a story on Dr. Gregory Clark's book "A Farewell to Alms" that explains how the Industrial Revolution came about after thousands of years when most people on earth lived in abject poverty, first as hunters and gatherers, then as peasants or laborers. Dr. Clark, an economic historian at UC Davis, contends that prior to the industrial revolution, the economy was locked in a Malthusian trap — each time new technology increased the efficiency of production a little, the population grew, the extra mouths ate up the surplus, and average income fell back to its former level. After researching medieval economic data for the past 20 years, Clark has come to the conclusion that the surge in economic growth that occurred in England around 1800 came about because of the new behaviors of nonviolence, literacy, long working hours and a willingness to save that he says were transmitted either culturally or genetically. According to Clark, between 1200 and 1800, the rich had more surviving children than the poor and this caused constant downward social mobility as the poor failed to reproduce themselves and the progeny of the rich took over their occupations. Around 1790, a steady upward trend in production efficiency first emerged that made possible England's escape from the Malthusian trap and the emergence of the Industrial Revolution."
Submission + - Education slows learning (in babies)
mcgrew writes: "New Scientist reports that
Well DUH, why do you think they call it the 'boob tube'?"Educational DVDs may hinder rather than help a young child's learning. Infants who watch DVDs such as "Brainy Baby" and "Baby Einstein" know fewer words than those who do not watch such programmes, a new study suggests.
In recent years the popularity of such infant programmes has soared, particularly in the US. Parents hope the programmes, which typically consist of brief dialogue and picture sequences, will boost the learning ability of children as young as eight months old, even though the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that youngsters not watch television until two years of age.
Submission + - Vote Swapping Ruled Legal!
cayenne8 writes: Way back when (2000), during that election, there were some sites set up (voteswap.com and votexchange.com) for people across the nation to agree to swap votes. This was set up mostly for Nader and Gore voters to work against Bush.
California representatives threatened to proscute these sites as criminal offenses, and many of them shut down. On Monday, the 9th US court of appeals upheld that "the websites' vote-swapping mechanisms as well as the communication and vote swaps they enabled were constitutionally protected" and California's spurious threats violated the First Amendment. The 9th Circuit also said the threats violated the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause."
See the story HERE .
California representatives threatened to proscute these sites as criminal offenses, and many of them shut down. On Monday, the 9th US court of appeals upheld that "the websites' vote-swapping mechanisms as well as the communication and vote swaps they enabled were constitutionally protected" and California's spurious threats violated the First Amendment. The 9th Circuit also said the threats violated the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause."
See the story HERE .
Surviving in Space Without a Spacesuit 481
Geoffrey writes "The recent movie Sunshine features a scene (echoing the famous scene in 2001: a Space Odyssey) in which two astronauts have to cross from one ship to another without spacesuits. But, can you survive in space without a spacesuit?
Morgan Smith, writing in Slate, asks whether this is realistic, and concludes: "Yes, for a very short time.""
Google Pushes Open Source OCR 212
SocialWorm writes "Google has just announced work on OCRopus, which it says it hopes will 'advance the state of the art in optical character recognition and related technologies.' OCRopus will be available under the Apache 2.0 License. Obviously, there may be search and image search implications from OCRopus. 'The goal of the project is to advance the state of the art in optical character recognition and related technologies, and to deliver a high quality OCR system suitable for document conversions, electronic libraries, vision impaired users, historical document analysis, and general desktop use. In addition, we are structuring the system in such a way that it will be easy to reuse by other researchers in the field.'"
Journal Journal: unorganized rantings on software patents
Software Patents
I'll start off with a notice to those who would say that I am out to
undermine all the work of programmers everywhere, in hopes that I may
receive a free lunch: I am a programmer, I understand what it is to
see a project through to its completion and hope for it's continued
success. A free ride has never been my goal. Furthermore, it is
another misstatement to say that abolishing software patents would
somehow make software available at zero cost.
Journal Journal: Speaking of software.
Most contemopary people are unaware remain unaware of the nature of software
when related to communications in general. Software is not some ghostly image
conjoured by a computer wizard; It encompasses a much broader realm. Software
is in essence language. It can be translated into innumerable sequences of
differing interpetations.
Journal Journal: tabla rosa
rm -rf /var/log/
int main(int argc, char **argc)
{
printf("Hello World!\n");
}
int main(int argc, char **argc)
{
printf("Hello World!\n");
}
