Authors: James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: March 2008

Patent Failure examines the current state of the American patent system based on the way it has traditionally been treated–as a type of property system. Using the yardstick of property rights and the economics they influence, Bessen and Meurer analyze the costs and benefits of patents to innovators. Their qualification: “If the estimated costs of the patent system to an innovator exceed the estimated benefits, then patents fail as property.”

The authors rightly point out that many of the criticisms of the patent system are anecdotal. We’ve all heard about the peanut-butter-and-jelly patent. So what are we to base reforms on then? Patent Failure answers that with empirical evidence, largely economic, but also from history, international comparison, and legal precedent. The book focuses quite a bit (some might say a bit too much) on the claims brought by E-Data, now a decade-old case.

For quite a few years, patents have been lumped in with the completely different systems of trademark and copyright under the title “intellectual property.” And, as the authors point out, the quotation marks have fallen away. Many, if not most, people now assume patents are property. But for certain industries, namely software, patents fail as a property system.

So what should we do?

That “for certain industries” part is a sticky point. I have to admit, it’s easy for me, and I suspect others, to forget that patents can work quite well outside of software. But because that’s where the controversy is, that’s where the media is, and so it’s the failures we hear about. Bessen and Meurer do plenty to build a separation, often making exceptions for chemical and pharmaceutical patents. Those types of patents come much closer to passing the patent-as-property test than software.

The authors then devote chapter 9 to “Abstract Patents and Software,” the entirety of which you can download as a book preview. They point out that “no other technology has experienced anything like the broad industry opposition to software patents that arose during the 1960s.” That is to say, this unprecedented opposition is coming from within the industry the patents ideally help protect. Software developers oppose patents on their own work. You simply cannot draw the same fence around the property lines of software patents the way you would around the property boundaries of the land you own. The authors conclude:

[Software patents] play a central role in the failure of the patent system as a whole. Any serious effort at patent reform must address these problems and the failure to deal with the problems of software patents–either with software-specific measures or general reforms–will likely doom any reform effort.

Like not giving away the end of the movie, I’ll leave it to you to read and form your own opinion of their recommendations that follow that chapter. You can also read excerpts and some interesting discussion about the book on PatentlyO, a patent law blog.

And if you’re interested in hearing more about the authors’ ideas firsthand, Michael Meurer will be presenting a session about Patent Failure at the Red Hat Summit on Thursday, June 19 at 11:30.

Linux.com, like many of the reviews, not only picked up on the technical innovation that Fedora leads, but the community that is at the center of everything the project does.

http://www.linux.com/feature/135102

“The Fedora distribution has a reputation for innovation, and the new Fedora 9, released today, is no exception. With features that range from easy filesystem encryption to support for the ext4 format, it includes a wide range of features that are likely to become standard in other distributions in the next six months. But for Paul W. Frields, who became Fedora project leader in February, what distinguishes the release is less the technology than the community that supports it, and how the technology contributes to the larger free software world.”

PC Pro, on the other hand, focused largely on the other two features that have been widely regarded as resounding sucesses for Fedora:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/196605/red-hat-dons-stylish-new-fedora.html

“Fedora 9 will be put up for download today, and continues the trend of making Linux a more inviting proposition for newcomers…

Fedora 9 also allows you to carry a persistent version of the operating system around on a 1GB or greater USB stick, which maintains all your updates and saved files, meaning you need never leave home without your operating system again.”

And bit-tech.net won the award for the most accurate and succinct report of all:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/05/12/fedora-9-leaked/1

“With the official release due tomorrow, it’s clear that there’s plenty for fans of the Fedora distribution to look forward to.”

If you’re interested in reading more reviews about Fedora 9, the project is keeping a regularly updated list of all the reviews they come across, and you can find it at the Fedora Project wiki.

Christopher Negus is responsible for some of the most widely-read and well-respected mass-market books on Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You may already know of, or own, Linux Toys, its sequel Linux Toys II, or one of his miraculously up-to-the-minute Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Bible books.

Negus has an uncanny ability to keep up with the rapid pace of development in the innovative Fedora distribution that, among other functions, serves as an upstream source for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, One Laptop Per Child, and other notable projects. If you’ve ever attended a Red Hat Summit or a Fedora Users and Developers Conference (FUDCon), you’ll undoubtedly find him circulating through the many interesting leading-edge seminars, picking up information for the next edition of the popular Bible series.

Recently, Negus teamed up with author François Caen to produce Fedora Linux Toolbox, which gives eager command-line enthusiasts a dense but easy reference for powerful shell tools. At about 300 pages, it also won’t bust the seams of your already overloaded computer bag. Fedora Linux Toolbox assumes the reader already has some experience with Linux in general, but not necessarily Fedora. Linux novices may prefer to start with a more thorough book, such as Negus’ Bible, or the latest edition of one of the others reviewed in this 2005 article, that spends time acquainting them with additional beginner topics.

Although the book is aimed at Linux users who have had moderate experience with the platform, even experts who have been using the Linux command line for many years can find new tricks in every chapter of this book. One friend to whom I showed the book is a pretty competent system administrator who runs a bank of Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers for a customer in our building. He’s been using Linux for years, but when he flipped to a random page about the process reporting utility ps, he read for about fifteen seconds, and with surprise and joy mingling on his face, immediately exclaimed, “[Wow], I didn’t know you could do that!” I had several epiphanies myself while reading it for this review.

Interesting anecdotes aside, a risk inherent in Fedora’s relentless pursuit of rapid innovation is that even up-to-the-moment guides can be left in the dust. How does Fedora Linux Toolbox fare, since it seems to have been mostly completed after the release of Fedora 7? Quite well, actually, in part because of its concentration on command line tools.

The Linux command line is renowned for its essential stability over time — the same set of core commands and power tools have sustained many a system administrator for years. By concentrating on command line proficiency, this book avoids the “currency trap” found in many other volumes about Fedora, wherein a book slips out of sync with reality because the authors can’t keep up with the distribution’s development pace. Certainly there are powerful command line tools off the beaten path that have emerged in the latest releases of Fedora, and won’t be seen in Fedora Linux Toolbox. But the core of knowledge found in this book is enough to take a Linux enthusiast from desktop user to command line jockey in practically no time.

Each chapter is arranged around a central topic, which allows readers to digest smaller chunks of the book as needed, or to solve particular problems. At a very manageable 15-20 pages per chapter, it’s possible to read a whole topic over a snack or before turning in for the night, although I suspect most Linux enthusiasts will be eager to try the material out as they read instead. The topics aren’t limited just to command line solutions, and concisely explain the concepts behind the tools, so readers can expand their use beyond the examples.

The random sampling of commands I tried from areas throughout the book showed that the technical editing work was excellent, which I suspect is at least in part inherited from the years of work involved in the many editions of the Bible series. A distinguishing feature of this book is that key phrases are typeset in boldface, allowing the reader to page through a chapter very quickly looking for specific topics–a very helpful feature in a book with fairly dense text. Sometimes the amount of text emphasis is not enough to compete with other boldface on a page, such as examples that show user input in bold and system output in medium weight, but overall it’s an effective measure.

If you’re a Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux desktop user or administrator looking for a way to jump start your command line skills, refresh your knowledge, or live without the GUI, Fedora Linux Toolbox is right up your alley.

About the reviewer

Paul Frields is the incoming Fedora Project Leader.

Over the years, I’ve spent countless hours on linux-laptop.net (and others) trying to get the most out of my hardware working under Linux. Things like proprietary drivers for video cards, network adapters and wireless, sound and modem support were virtually always making the life of the Linux geek a bit harder.

This month Linux Journal put out a laptop buying guide (subscription required) for the holiday season, a nice idea for the many people out there who may be thinking about buying a new laptop that can run Linux well.

SportCoat M750 photo from allaroundgeeks.com

About five months ago, I purchased a laptop from a fairly unknown place called allaroundgeeks.com . They have since re-branded their computers as TuxBox Computers, Inc. The laptop I purchased is called the SportCoat M750, which is an MSI laptop that can be purchased from several vendors.

Processor

At the TuxBox Computers online store, you are able to customize the type of CPU that comes on your SportCoat laptop. The base install comes with a 1.8 GHz Intel Core Duo (T7100), but can be upgraded up to 2.4 GHz (T7700), and all the other speeds in between.

RAM

The base laptop comes with 1 GB DDR2 667MHz RAM (1×1024MB), but can be upgraded to 2GB with either one or two sticks of memory.

The display

The SportCoat comes on a 15″ Anti-Glare WXGA LCD with a max resolution of 1280×800 and can be speced out with a Intel GMA X3100 or a NVIDIA GeForce 8400M-G video adapter. Both are supported under Linux, but for the NVIDIA adapter you will need to use proprietary drivers.

The keyboard and touchpad

The SportCoat also comes with a full keyboard, including the Num pad, which is something I hadn’t really seen before on a laptop before. The touchpad, which lets you scroll vertically by simply touching the right side of its surface area, works really well under Linux as well.

Networking devices and bluetooth

As of Fedora 7 (and 8), I have been able to get the PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller from Realtek and the Intel 3945ABG wireless adapter working out-of-the-box. It was as simple as installing Fedora and letting Network Manager recognize the networks available on my surroundings.

Unlike some laptops where you can turn off wireless and Bluetooth via the BIOS, the SportCoat allows the user to turn off the wireless and Bluetooth radios using extra buttons located on the upper right corner of the keyboards. When I first booted the laptop for the first time, it was turned off by default. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out and decipher the meaning of the drawings on the buttons.

I’ve also been able to connect mice and sync a cellphone on Fedora via the Bluetooth adapter.

Sound

With an Intel 82801G audio controller, the SportCoat has really good quality speakers and an external microphone. It also has input jacks for headphones, line-in, and microphone. It works really well on Fedora 8, and I constantly use it with VoIP software to make phone calls.

Expansion slots

The laptop comes with four USB ports (two in each side of the machine), one Firewire port, and an MMC/SD controller, which allows you to download your photos directly from your digital camera’s SD card (assuming you have one). It also has an express card slot.

Storage

Depending on your needs, you can customize your laptop’s hard drive with several choices from 60GB 5400RPM to 200GB 7400RPM. It also comes with a dual layer DVD-RW.

Webcam

This laptop does comes with an iSight-like camera. Unfortunately, that is the only piece of hardware that so far I haven’t been able to get working under Fedora. There are open source drivers for this Microdia webcam, but I haven’t gotten it working.

Suspend/Hibernate

As of Fedora 8, both Suspend to RAM, and Hibernate work out of the box. This certainly is one of the features that Linux geeks out there are always complaining about.

Conclusion

I use this laptop for my business and personal needs. For managing my digital photos, I use Google’s Picasa2 version 2.7 beta, whicha supports direct uploads to Picasa Web. I use Rhythmbox Music Player to manage my music and my iPod Classic, and when I have some time to kill, I do some “open source” racing with Vdrift and Maniadrive)

Overall, you should be able to customize this laptop to be as powerful as most modern laptops that are coming from the major brands we are all aware of, but at least with this SportCoat (MSI) laptop, I know that my favorite Linux distribution will take advantage of virtually all of its functionality.

Have you ever had deja vu? I re-read books on occasion, because I like them, and every once in a while I’ll re-read a book that I think I’m reading for the first time. Then I’ll sit there with this twisted-up look on my face, wondering why all the words seem so familiar. Then I remember when and where I saw them last.

I’ve been reading the new Fedora™ 7 Unleashed book by Andrew and Paul Hudson, and I’ve had that feeling several times. So I’ve made my face and wracked my brain, trying to figure out how I’ve read this before. The answer? I read Fedora Core 6 Unleashed and Fedora Core 5 Unleashed before that.

Its unfortunate. I think these ‘distro tomes,’ so to speak, provide a valuable service to the Linux uninitiated, and can be useful to more seasoned sysadmins interested in the latest technology a new release of a given distribution has to offer. The unfortunate part is that both of these groups have to suffer through repetitive rehashing of methods, processes, and utilities that have been throughly documented in a multitude of locations and media.

To be fair, this book does some things quite well, but as I’ve looked at more and more works in its genre, I’ve come to realize that the good ones are characterized by a bias toward documenting whatever new technology is available, while the less useful ones focus more on maximizing the width of their spine with well-worn stock material. I’m sorry to say that this book leans more toward the latter.

But lets not dwell on the negative (or at least let’s not start there). Theres good in everyone, and there is good in this book. Some of you may remember that I wrote a review of Tammy Fox’s book, Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 5 Administration Unleashed. This book, like that one, does many of the same things rather well. Specifically, it handles new technologies with aplomb.

Xen, while not new technology per se, is sufficiently in its infancy. The online documentation is still somewhat fragmented, and a concise summary of how xen virtualization operates is a perfect example of what this book excels at. SELinux also gets very fair treatment in this book, as does the Mono programming language. While not strictly bleeding edge, these topics are still sufficiently new that consolidated documentation is a benefit that books like this provide very well.

Most of the sections in this book have their usefulness. Everyone needs to know how the useradd or cp commands work. But I just can’t get past (and yes, I’m back to dwelling on the negative) how re-hashed so many of these chapters are. As part of my review of this book, I went and took a quick look at the table of contents for Fedora Core 6 Unleashed. Written by the same authors, its an amazing example of documentation re-use. Several of the chapters look sufficiently similar as to be identical.

I don’t want to insinuate that the information in these sections isn’t useful, it really is. It contains information everyone needs to know. You can’t administer a system without being able to change passwords, set up remote access, preform backups, so on and so forth. But good gosh! Lets just take one example: Chapter 17, Apache Web Server Administration. Its almost 40 pages of documentation about how to manage, configure, and tune the Apache web server to provide web pages to interested parties. Hmm, I wonder what would happen if I typed ‘Apache howto’ into Google. Dum de dum….hey, 2.550,000 hits! I wonder if Apache has a web site…..hey what do you know? They look like they might have some comprehensive documentation. And Amazon indicates there are 1,285 books on sale at their site exclusively on the subject of the Apache web server.

The same is true of the sections on FTP, database, SSH and network file access. Note to the authors: We’re covered. Your material is useful and factually accurate, but I just can’t get past the fact that it’s not really necessary. You could have written a book that was half as big, was consequently less expensive, and yet still provided all the same useful content.

I have a feeling it’s not the authors fault. You can pick up any number of comprehensive high-level OS documentation books, and see this. There is some material that is just covered again….and again….and again. My inner conspiracy theorist is convinced it’s more than coincidence. I firmly believe that (a) extraterrestrials are out there, and (b) publishers of these books will encourage their authors to add content in an effort to claim more shelf space. I think a better technical bookshelf could be constructed with a series of more targeted topics, but such an approach lowers the revenue generated by this type of books.

So that only leaves the final question: Should you buy this book or not? I’ve been pretty hard on it–in my view, with good reason. Despite that, I still think there is a demographic for whom this book would be fairly useful.

If you have any significant experience with a Linux distribution of any origin, I would expect that you have the skill (both technical and research-oriented) to find the information contained in this book on the web (or elsewhere). Likewise, if you’re a sysadmin, and you have experience (in a Linux or non-Linux environment) I would expect that your technical bookshelf has much greater depth, and much more targeted breadth, specific to your needs. So, clearly, this one’s not for those with experience.

However, if you are new to Linux and are interested in getting your feet wet, you probably don’t want to invest a fortune on reference material, or spend too many hours poking about on mailing lists or web sites putting together a reasonable set of information to get started. If this is you, then yes, this book is a good choice. It offers a comprehensive outline of what you need to know to work with Fedora 7, both as an end user and as an admin. And thats quite likely why these books tend to be a perennial favorite.

The Linux community has a consistent influx of new users and curious onlookers who have the desire to know more. A consumer-oriented, one-stop shop might get them there faster than the community would, with its plethora of websites and arcane knowledge passed down though stories on cryptic mailing lists. So to keep current, these books keep coming. And if you’re new, it could be your first step into a bigger world.

Why did you decide to release your music under a Creative Commons license?

I always considered art and music in particular as a way to share and build relationships with others. When I heard about the CC licences, I was immediately attracted because it fit my personal ethic. On the one hand, my works are protected under a copyright, but on the other hand I have the opportunity to do anything I want with it — and why not offer them by free downloads? It allows me to have good visibility on the web, a visibility which leads me into relationships with people like Red Hat Magazine readers!

How much of your work is CC-licensed?

All of my work is available under CC license on jamendo.com.

Who are your musical influences?

Actually I’m interested in all music; I’m like a kind of sponge. It influences me if i feel emotionally touched. Of course African music and ethnic music are my strongest influences. I fell for the Swiss harpist/guitar player Andreas Wollenweider. His music turned out to be a revelation for me — a kind of world fusion with a lot of instruments.

My carrier as a musician is pretty weird. Basically I’m a guitarist and I come from rock music. I had the chance to get in touch with many musicians with very different influences and they handed a little of their knowlege down to me, and they all contribute to build my tastes and my styles. I’m a completely open musician and I look forward to new discoveries.

What tools do you use to produce your music?