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John VanSickle wrote:
> There may be a term in the EULA which prohibits reverse engineering.
... which *used* to be unenforceable in the US, since copyright law is
federal and allows reverse engineering, while EULAs are contract law which
is state law.
The DMCA and all that probably changed this in the 30+ years since I learned
that, tho.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
that the code does what you think it does, even if
it doesn't do what you wanted.
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Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> OK. But what's to say that M$ haven't patented the same thing in every
> single duristiction that they operate in?
The fact that software cannot be patented in most countries. The EU doesn't
acknowledge software patents.
--
- Warp
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Why would it be illegal? There's no law in any country I know of which
> > would forbid building a system which is capable of running an program.
> It would probably be the "look and feel" lawsuits, even ignoring the patent
> problems.
I have hard time believing that trade dress laws apply to basic computer
user interfaces. Else Microsoft could sue the creators of KDE and Gnome for
copying their windowing ideas (not to talk that Apple could probably sue
Microsoft for the same thing, as windowing was probably implemented in Apple
computers before Windows)l
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> Why would it be illegal? There's no law in any country I know of which
>>> would forbid building a system which is capable of running an program.
>
>> It would probably be the "look and feel" lawsuits, even ignoring the patent
>> problems.
>
> I have hard time believing that trade dress laws apply to basic computer
> user interfaces.
It's copyright law here. Basically, the original lawsuit was over greeting
cards. One company hired people to think up and design greeting cards. At
another company, the CEO would go into stores and buy up competitor cards he
liked, then give them to his workers who would draw new pictures but give
the same basic "look and feel" to the cards. One example was a card with a
cute little girl in a sun dress and bonnet, and inside it said "I wuv you."
The competitor drew it with a pink background instead of blue, put a
teddy-bear instead of a girl, and put the same text inside. So the artwork
was all original, and the text wasn't copyrightable, but the overall
look-and-feel was (for better or worse) judged to be subject to copyright.
It's nothing to do with "trade dress", which is more like trademarks than
copyright. Microsoft wasn't making any products that could be confused with
Apple's products, which is what trademark is about.
> (not to talk that Apple could probably sue
> Microsoft for the same thing,
Indeed, Apple is the one that started applying "look-and-feel" to Microsoft
in a lawsuit over the UI.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corporation
Unfortunately, the "look-and-feel" argument has been applied so much to
software that I can't easily track down the original lawsuit over greeting
cards that set off the whole "look-and-feel is subject to copyright even if
all the actual text and artwork is new" stuff. Altho I did find one
reference that greeting cards are the *second* most litigated look-and-feel
suit. :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
that the code does what you think it does, even if
it doesn't do what you wanted.
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On 6/23/2010 12:09 PM, SharkD wrote:
> On 6/23/2010 1:43 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> lol More like, for so long, at this point, that you could build a VMWare
>> version that "mimics" 4 core processors, while running it on 64 cores,
>> while using only 2GB or the 16TB of memory available to your 5 year old
>> computer system. The patent system is that screwed up, from what I have
>> seen.
>>
>
> That sounds like way too many cores. AFAIK multi-core CPUs are just a
> temporary "hack" to resolve heat issues. There's only so much room on a
> motherboard, and with 64 cores you may run out!
>
Intel already has a 32 core system. They have given test models out to
various experts, to do their debugging/testing for them, to see how well
they work. Note, this isn't 32 cores on X chips. Its 32 cores on **one**
chip, so the issue is how much you can cram on the chip, not how much
room there is on the MB.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Intel already has a 32 core system.
It also depends what you want the "core" to do. A 32-core x86 processor?
Awesome. A 32-core FORTH processor? Yawn.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
that the code does what you think it does, even if
it doesn't do what you wanted.
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On 6/24/2010 4:28 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> For those of you that don't know, there's a thing called ReactOS.
>>> It's a free operating system which is supposed to be
>>> binary-compatible with Microsoft Windows XP. (Despite the small and
>>> obvious problem that this _should_ be 100% illegal.)
>>
>> Why would it be illegal? There's no law in any country I know of which
>> would forbid building a system which is capable of running an program.
>> It's not much different from making an emulator, and those aren't
>> illegal.
>>
>> It would be illegal for them to lift binaries (eg. system libraries) from
>> Windows XP and distributing them alongside their own OS, but it's
>> perfectly
>> legal for them to build their own versions of those binaries.
>
> I was under the impression that things like (for example) the API for
> DirectX is patented, and therefore you can't write a library that has
> the same API (i.e., the same functions with the same names and
> signatures that do the same thing).
Actually.. No. An API is an "interface". The underlying way that it goes
from, "I gave it this data", to, "It gave me this result", is what is
patented, not the API itself. Otherwise emulating **anything**,
including the BIOS, which you need to do things like DOSBox, would be
illegal too.
--
void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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>> Intel already has a 32 core system.
>
> It also depends what you want the "core" to do. A 32-core x86 processor?
> Awesome. A 32-core FORTH processor? Yawn.
I have a processor with 192 cores, capable of generating about 700
GFLOPS of compute power. And it's not even an expensive research
prototype. It's an off-the-shelf component. It's called a GPU. ;-)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> OK. But what's to say that M$ haven't patented the same thing in every
>> single duristiction that they operate in?
>
> The fact that software cannot be patented in most countries. The EU doesn't
> acknowledge software patents.
Oh, right. I didn't know that.
Does this mean that software patents actually don't get granted? Or just
that hypothetically you could go to court to have them revoked?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> I was under the impression that things like (for example) the API for
>> DirectX is patented.
> Actually.. No. An API is an "interface". The underlying way that it goes
> from, "I gave it this data", to, "It gave me this result", is what is
> patented, not the API itself.
Really? Interesting. What underlies the API calls is obviously subject
to _copyright_ protection, but I didn't think you could _patent_
executable code. However, I thought that you *can* patent an API.
> Otherwise emulating **anything**,
> including the BIOS, which you need to do things like DOSBox, would be
> illegal too.
Only illegal if the BIOS interface is patented. (AFAIK, it isn't.) The
actual BIOS code in any given motherboard has copyright protection
[usually], but then it only works with one given motherboard anyway...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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