__/ [ The Ghost In The Machine ] on Monday 14 May 2007 16:43 \__
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
> <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote
> on Mon, 14 May 2007 10:50:18 +0100
> <2330223.BPoVRr3Mi7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> __/ [ peterwn ] on Monday 14 May 2007 08:44 \__
>>
>>> On May 14, 6:17 pm, "Guy Fawkes" <spare_the_...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>> wrote:
>>>> http://news.com.com/Report+Microsoft+says+open+source+violates+235+pa...
>>>>
>>>> Baldy again mentioning IP violations in Linux probably brings the day
>>>> closer that Microsoft will start litigation against Linux in the U.S.
>>>>
>>> I cannot see any difference between Microsoft's behaviour and 1929
>>> Chicago style protection rackets. In the former you get your arse
>>> dragged through the courts and in the latter you get your shop (or
>>> funeral parlor) front blown out with a Molitov cocktail.
>>
>> This isn't the first time today that I hear about Molitov cocktails in
>> this context...
>>
>> See the following:
>>
>> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070513234519615
>>
>> It's a toothless tiger. Just roar, no bite.
>>
>
> Pedant Point: it's spelled with an 'o'.
It seems like a o/i typo (QWERTY layout does this). I just copied and paste
because it was quick, so I grabbed the typo along with the rest.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov_cocktail
>
> (The original Cyrillic is very clear on this as well;
> it uses U+043E -- the cyrillic "O" -- as opposed to
> U+0438, the backwards "N", which is pronounced as "i",
> though I'm not sure whether that's "ih" or "eye" --
> probably "eye" as U+0439 is "short i", and looks like a
> backwards N with a u over it. There's also U+0456 and
> U+0457, which look respectively like our "i" and an "i"
> with a diaeresis/umlaut -- all this according to Gnome's
> Character Map accessory. Handy little beast, since I
> don't know Russian beyond a reading of _Anna Karenina_
> and _Crime and Punishment_ in my youth -- and both of
> those were of course translated to English.)
>
> Such devices are named in honor of (if one can call it
> that) Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (nee Skryabin) [*]:
Better than Nobel, eh? This is just dynamite!
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyacheslav_Molotov
>
> a leading figure in the Stalin government, though
> apparently such devices were first used in the Spanish
> Civil War. The term apparently stuck when Molotov, in a
> fit of propaganda, claimed he was dropping food instead
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> of bombs, causing the Finns to call the bombs "Molotov
> bread baskets".
I know some oils are edible, but I'm not sure abour petrolium. Microsoft does
something similar. It claims to be dropping FUD instead os bomb lawsuits (or
was it the other way around?).
> The cocktail was the logical response.
>
> Oddly, Alko (Finland's beverage retailing monopoly)
> mass-produced the devices at one of its distilleries
> during the Winter War (Soviet-Finnish war, started by the
> Soviets invading Finland 1939-11-30). (They were shipped
> with handy matches and a Bengal fire stick, the latter
> being safer than the traditional/original burning rag.
> 450,000 bottles were produced. No word on whether they
> were all consumed, or where.)
>
> ObLinux: A Finn (Linus Torvalds) [+] started it. ;-)
> Therefore all this is actually somewhat relevant to COLA.
>
> As for Ballmer litigating against Linux -- it'll probably
> be a reverse class-action lawsuit. Linux has hundreds
> or thousands of contributors, and possibly hundreds of
> thousands if one counts X, the GNU software, and various
> packages included in the over 450 distros built around
> the Linux kernel.
There won't be a lawsuit. It's just corporate terror, a cold war.
> The reading of the defendants alone could probably take
> the better part of a month. ;-) Presumably Linus will be
> one of them, though it's hard to say at this point until
> the lawyer types actually file the massive thing in court.
>
> (One hopes it's not quite as big as the OOXML spec, but
> given MS's track record, I'm not all that hopeful.)
>
> The story details are mildly interesting. The Linux kernel
> is alleged to directly violate 42 Microsoft patents, with
> user interface elements (presumably KDE, Gnome, and X)
> violating another 65. OpenOffice is claimed to violate 45
> patents, and 83 more are scattered around other programs
> -- this according to a Fortune interview with Brad Smith,
> to which the news.com report links:
>
>
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/index.htm
>
> No clarifications on exactly which patents are violated,
> of course. Also, it is far from clear whether Microsoft
> will also go after FreeBSD, which can use some of Linux's
> GUI elements (and indeed offers them for installation,
> last I looked).
>
> This story's got legs, mutating in various ways as Google
> searches for "Linux patent violation". As for teeth -- I
> for one don't know; the courts may have to decide that.
No courts, trust me. ;-)
> The good news: it's unlikely that utilities such as cp, mv,
> and rm will be affected, unless I'm missing something in
> their newer incarnations. The patents thereon (if any)
> have long since expired, since they were in use in the
> late 1960's, and I for one can personally attest to using
> them in the early 1980's, if only because that's when I
> used System6/System7/BSD4.2 in college. :-) 'vi' is
> a bit trickier as there are several variants, among them
> elvis, vile, vim, and Emacs' "vi emulation mode".
There's vi with clippy (well, not really, it's just a viral gif animation),
so therein you have possible risk. But wait! Didn't Sweaty kill Clippy
before MSO07? No dog takes its place, either.
> Microsoft has a patent problem of its own. Seems that
> Vertical Computer Systems holds a patent for XML-based
> component structures used to build and operate web sites.
> Unlike Microsoft, this story identifies specifically which
> patent (it's US Patent #6,826,744), and helpfully links thereto
> as well.
>
> http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/21/0654204&from=rss
> http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/20/HNmsdotnetpatentsuit_1.html
>
> Whoops!
>
> [*] apparently he adopted the pseodyn "Molotov" for his
> political work in 1906 or thereabouts. The term "Molotov"
> means "hammer" in Russian.
>
> [+] Yes, he was born in Finland in 1969.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
I thought he was a little younger... 1991... Msc degree... 22+(2007-1991)...
oh! It makes perfect sense now. I still had an old 286 box back in 1991. It
had DOS on it. Blech!
--
~~ Best regards
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Free the mind, the source will follow"
http://Schestowitz.com | RHAT Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
3:05am up 18 days 11:27, 6 users, load average: 1.88, 1.99, 1.63
http://iuron.com - Open Source knowledge engine project
|
|
