[Coco] OT: Vista and MS patent application, Linux

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 04 February 2007 14:59, Mannequin* wrote:
>Gene Heskett wrote:
>
>...
>
>>>> If MS gets a US patent, that could
>>>> be a problem. Even if it's not a full patent, but just grants
>>>> exclusivity to some portions or ideas about a modular system, MS
>>>> will viciously protect it. They don't have to be right, or to win.
>>>> They just have ot have enough of a "foot in the door" to have a
>>>> viable suspicion to claim infringement to get a court order to
>>>> "cease and desist" then take a small company to court. That will be
>>>> enough. MS pockets are deep enough to drag a case out long enough to
>>>> bankrupt the competition, or prevent anyone from even trying to
>>>> compete for fear of being dragged through court. That's a typical
>>>> big business practice. There are law firms who have purchased older
>>>> patents simply to go after infringers that the orignal holder
>>>> couldn't afford to take to court. We'll have to wait and see what
>>>> happens here...
>>
>> Waiting and seeing will end up costing you money as well as your
>> faith, do it now. Install one of the more widely distributed flavors
>> on linux, and never look back.
>
>Yeah, I totally agree with Gene here... But for more selfish reasons.
>*wink wink* I'd love to see a version of Portal-9 -or- Rainbow IDE for
>Linux. Open source would be nice as well, but I know you have a two-fold
>reason for creating these IDEs: the community, and money for those
>hosting bills. The last reason being enough to keep it closed source, I
>guess. Although, I'm pretty sure a donation button would help keep
>things going. I say this only because I've seen people around here pay
>out for your projects when you've asked for help, Roger.

I think that's (the donate button) a very good idea, unforch there are 
those of us who have read the paypal TOS and despite frequent gargles 
with more better tasting stuff, just can't seem to get that one down.

No one but me and my bank has any rights to my routing numbers so they can 
reach in and grab a few bucks, according to the TOS, anytime.

>> With all the older machines that have not been upgraded to FC6,
>> that means there are upwards of 10 million copies of linux in use that
>> came from the redhat machines.  Heck, there are probably, in a server
>> closet someplace, a couple of RH5.1 installs laboring along and more
>> than likely forgotten about.
>
>Ah, I loved playing around with RH5.x. 'Twas one of my first Linux
>installs... It being before GNOME came in to 'part dominance' of the
>Linux world. My first install was Debian with kernel 0.9x. But after
>hours of working with my brother on the thing, it was evident that it
>hated my hardware with a passion. I had to wait to upgrade to friendlier
>hardware. :)
>
Yup, that one was picky about hardware, but today, in linux, there are 
more good hardware drivers than winderz can claim by a large margin.  The 
only real - sign is in wireless drivers because most of those chips can 
be programmed to output far more power than the friendly candy company 
allows.  But we're getting better in that dept too. by 100% clean room 
reverse engineering.  The broadcom 802-11g chipset in my lappy is now 
working well for instance.  And I'm NOT using windows drivers snarfed 
from the windows code pile.

>> One such server at Berkeley couldn't be located
>> for years, but was finally found during a remodel project that knocked
>> out a wall, it had been sealed in by a previous remodel 6 years back
>> up the log!
>
>...
>
>Ran like a charm still?

Yup, a wee bit slow though, elderly pentium IIRC.

>I could see it. It certainly beats Winders users 
>saying how great it is to only restart once every few weeks... I used to
>have a server (running Debian Woody, I think) for a modem connection and
>restarted it very rarely. Before it burned the motherboard out (I didn't
>give it good ventilation), I'm pretty sure it had an uptime of at least
>6 months. That is /nothing/ for a Linux machine. :)

I've had over a year here a couple of times with my old rh7.3 firewall 
box.  And those reboots were to reload to a newer kernel, no crashes, 
ever.  And TBT, a year is about as long as these machines get to go 
before they are shut down, and wheeled out on the front deck for their 
annual blow job along with pull the cpu coolers & clean & regrease them 
with artic silver.  Routine PM in other words.

Several years ago now, we had setup our own mail server at the tv station.  
We had to clean out a root kit that got in through one of binds infamous 
holes, and we did that on only 1 reboot.  It ran 17 months before the ups 
wasn't big enough during a power failure.

This one of course will never do that as it will have at least one build & 
install of 2.6.20-final before the day is out.  I started the download 
about 15 minutes ago on another of my 8 screens so that 50 some megs 
of .gz should be here by now.  And now you know what I do with my 'spare' 
time.  I have fun.  :-)

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.