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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 27 2012 @ 05:26 PM EDT |
This is a particularly fascinating story. Numerous "journalists" and
"independent analysts" had been calling Patrick Byrne a loony for even
suggesting that anything like "naked shorting" went on. Now it turns out that
not only was it common practice, it was company policy to do so. There's an old
saying that "small crooks rob banks, big crooks own banks".
What is
even more fascinating is how the bank responds to to the revelations; they start
heaping abuse on their opponent. It's exactly the same tactic we hear from large
monopolistic vendors in the software industry whenever free/open source software
is mentioned.
When you take what we've seen the software industry, and
compare it to what we've seen in the financial industry, we can see that there's
a strong parallelism in the tactics used by the disreputable parties.
When you turn over a rock, some really horrible little things crawl
out from under it. These horrible things thrive in dark corners the existence of
which they justify as "proprietary secrets". What's needed is more transparency
to bring them to light. The patent and financial systems are both rotten to the
core. Both these systems are the creatures of national laws, and are therefore
in the hands of the electorate and their representatives to do something about.
It's time that something was done.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 28 2012 @ 05:16 PM EDT |
To the British readers of Groklaw.
If you’re looking around your office this
morning and wondering where everyone is, Microsoft might be to blame.
Does this mean Mickey$oft has to pay for the loss of paid time
at work . Of course not you are silly enough to trust Mickey$oft . [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 28 2012 @ 06:09 PM EDT |
Well, maybe it's time to head back to this one, from 2009:
Patent Failure
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- Patent wars - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 29 2012 @ 05:36 AM EDT
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 28 2012 @ 07:05 PM EDT |
If MicroSoft have an effective monopoly, as indicated by the requirement to use
MicroSoft software to access official documents, is it appropriate that they can
require users to forgo joining a class action? Was this the intent of the SCOTUS
ruling in 2011? Use of MicroSoft products is forced by official bodies, must
users be forced to give up rights 'voluntarily' through EULAs?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: macrorodent on Tuesday, May 29 2012 @ 03:29 AM EDT |
That looks like a project worth supporting (I did my bit for $10), but a lot is
still missing before the Sunday deadline. There are already open multimedia file
formats, but a free specification for a whole DVD-like "bundle" with
navigation etc is missing, and that project looks like it could fill this gap.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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