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From this article?

I was already under the impression that Apple has already fought this battle with Quicktime 6. *And* QT6 is open standards compliant.

And microsoft said that those claims that its applications would go on linux were all balderdash. This is just the first step.

Not that it's germane to the discussion, but trademarks take into acount the field of endeavour for each trademark. There may be hundreds of different companies all trademarking the same word, as long as there isn't another company claiming prior trademark use within that field there's typically not a problem registering. The fact that Microsoft registered the Windows name in the computer software domain doesn't mean nobody else has used that word ever in the history of the world, instead that nobody else used that word to describe or name a product in the limited domain of computer software.

Further, Microsoft's Windows trademark is teneous at best, with at least one federal judge questioning the legitimacy of their trademark claim

And no, I'm not a Lawyer -- yet, although with my newly acquired LSAT scores I may soon remedy that.

" The reason is that the federal government is not allowed by law to compete against private coorporations. "

Well I guess Microsoft has a legitimate complaint against this.

Gator for example claims millions of "satisfied customers" - in my experience they have millions of victims who don't know how the crap got into their computers in the first place and no clue as to how to remove it. But I guess that's a valid "installed base".

As for C-Dilla, I don't think it's spyware (not in the classic definition anyway), but regardless of that TurboTax is no longer welcome on my computer, and I happen to be a 5 year satisfied user. There's absolutely no fucking way I'm going to live with a resident executable living in my system hooking processes to see if they are "protected". Intuit can smooch my bootay. I'm going with TaxCut for 2002.

I hope the company rents a clue from this, and I hope their sales fall through the basement and they fix it for 2003. If they do, I'll buy it again.

Here is a printable version of the article that contains less spam and is easier to read.

More of this on here and here and here

One port is for the old link cable, and the other is for the new battery recharging pack

They only licensed Mosaic from Spyglass to get IE 1.0(or was it 2.0?) out the door quickly.

But then in around about IE 3.0 Microsoft rewrote the whole thing from scratch without using the Mosaic code.

You claim that Netscape did some devilish thing and was sued for it, yet I have no memory of, and can find no record of, such an event ever having taken place. Are you thinking of the Netscape=>Microsoft antitrust suit?

Does Opera have a license with spyglass?

Legitimate question, I don't know... but are you saying that to create a browser you need it?

This is gratutious Microsoft bashing, plain and simple and a completely different situation than this Sendo story.

Huh? So now you accuse me of lying. To tell you the truth, I don't remember exactly the reasons why the NSA was upset about the GPL, but they WERE. They had some plans for their secure distro, and they realized that those plans were going to be incompatible with the GPL. I'm not making the story up. So you tell me what they were upset about, and if it doesn't apply here, you have won the argument. But I think it does (from what I do remember), and thus my argument stands.

Well, since you didn't look it up yourself, I guess I will do it for you.

To quote the article, "Despite the intense battle surrounding the open source, the NSA will still fund research on secure operating systems based on Linux as well as work with U.S. companies to create better security in their own operating systems."

Two camps were primarily pissed off about it.

1) Microsoft, because the NSA was funding their competitor.

2) Ultra Nationalist who didn't want the benefits of the GPL to go outside the US.

The project is still alive and being developed.

I guess I thought you would have done a little research before blindly posting. Sorry, I was wrong to attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance.

Unless the video game makers state their intents for the game, it is next to impossible to know if the company is providing violent entertainment for the purpose of making sales, or because they might have a hidden agenda, or maybe even because they personally like the idea of running people down in cars (arguably disturbing). If a game company produced a game that allowed you to become a terrorist and choose Suicide Bomber, Fly Plane Into Building, etc. would we treat that game the same way as a game that lets the player run people over using automobiles, or the same as a first person shooter where you just blow things away?

We don't necessarily know the intent of the game company, but we can make informed decisions about the game based on its content, or own values, and/or the social politics of the day. Therefore maybe it's not a bad idea to enforce the rating system on video games just like ratings are (usually) enforced in the movie theatres for age groups. For example, don't let minors purchase violent video games, whether they have to wait to a certain age or need consent of a parent might work. However we all know the realities of computers and how easy it is to electronically distrubute bits and bytes. Most likely the kid will get his or her hands on the software eventually. However I don't believe that's an argument for not enforcing the video game rating.

Maybe a parent who doesn't mind their kid joining the army, doesn't mind the "recruiting experience" offered by the U.S. Army video game (which involved killing people). However the same parent might not let their kid become a terrorist offered by another video game. However in another country this situation might be reversed.

Same topic:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-979197.html?tag=fd_t op

As of today Justice O'Conner has rescinded the stay and the California Supreme Court ruling will stand. The case in california is effectively over. Nothing prevents the DVDCCA filing an action in the defendant's home state of Texas though. However this was obviously not their preferred option in they were prepared to go to the Supreme Court to keep the case in California.

In a recent ZDNet article, ZDNet write/predicts that Linux will this year or perhaps next overtake Apple's OS to become the second most common desktop OS. Microsoft simply seems to be reponding to this increasing pressure, which as the ZDNet article point out, is coming as more government's switch over to Linux.

Microsoft has been working on this for ages. Remember Cairo? I think I first heard presentations on it in 92. Basically all of it has been implemented over the years except for the famed object file system, which is basically what this sounds like. Plans are currently to implement it in Longhorn.

Got a response? TalkBack!

like this one? http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-519911.html?legacy=zd nn

there's been plenty of bad press about Microsoft all over all the news palces. and it keeps coming on over and over and over again. somehow their stock continues to prevail and is extremely strong even in these economicly weak times. i think it works something like this:

1) write extremely buggy and non-origional Operating System.
2) force all hardware manufactures into exclusive contracts. our OS or no OS!
3) ?????
4) Profit!!!

This sounds about as funny as RFC 1149 IP over Pigeon

...maybe we could just lock in the coordinates on our freight transporter and teleport it directly into the sun. You're thinking 1000 years, not 100. Think of what we have accomplished in the past 100 years and stop being ridiculously optimistic.

Yep. There are two arguments in the quoted passage: First, that Congress has abused the meaning of "limited time"; second, that retroactive extensions of "existing terms" are prohibited. I'm sympathetic to the second, and think the first is for Congress not the courts.

I do sort of wish the Court would intervene to say the term has gotten too long, but don't want a precedent like that for the Court to do so in other cases. Historical experience has been that although unchecked power of Congress is bad, the unreviewable power of the Court can be worse, as when it was busy invalidating the New Deal. Given precedent, I don't think th Court will, and I'd prefer we petition Congress, as has happened with the DMCA.

But who cares what I think -- here is the transcript of the Oct. 9 oral argument, which discussion well describes the essentially simple dipute.

a related story on C|Net.

Another version of this story was posted on CNET news. Where he states how he's going to raise money for his $16k legal fees, making corporate videos for how to not be socially hacked.

How long until Jello fakes out the system and causes it to be scrubbed?

Microsoft courted Sendo, then
killed them.

If someone from Microsoft smiles at you, shoot them right away or you're the corpse :)

Easy Cd-Da Extractor @ Download.com Excellent program...includes cd-ripping software, cd-burning software, and an awesome audio file converter ( will convert virtually any audio format to another )

And even IDC thinks Linux will surpass Macintosh on the desktop in 2003 or 2004 (here).

I remember seeing, at one time, stats showing Linux to have a 4% share of the desktop market. I think that is what the parent cites. As I have only seen that stat in one or to places over the past 3 years, I do not believe it is very accurate. Of course, you can always pick and choose which stats you want to use (e.g. the year or the type: number according to use or number according to sales). I think the same year Linux had a less than 1%, Apple had about 2% (according to another research firm), so the parent must have chosen a 2001 stat and compared it to a 1999 stat. Here are some stories (courtesy of google).

1999 IDC (International Data Corporation): less than 1%.

2001 WebSideStory: less than .25%

2000/01? IDC: 4% Linux, 5-6% Apple

Actually, the pyramid is already past due: Intel touts pyramid PC

Sun is saying lots of things, that does not make them true.

Sun is the DEC of the 2000s. Its hardware business is stagnant and its software business has no real connection to the hardware. ...However they spend 65% of their time whining about Microsoft.

I doubt that it will come to that as Microsoft will certainly appeal and the chances of blocking the temporary injunction are pretty good, they can win simply by spinning out the appeal.

Java on the client is a pretty wierd idea. Very few sites have ever used Java. I don't think we will suddenly see a rush to switch from flash to Java on the basis...

Sure.. as of October, according to this page, Yahoo searches/google searches/MSN searches were about equal in popularity here in the US. Of course, all three are/were powered by google.

Nicely put. I hadn't thought of it that way. Microsoft has benefitted enormously from being in the U.S., not least because of the size of the market here. And, believe it or not, from the decent legal system that is has used to go after others plenty of times.

Of course, Microsoft wouldn't be Microsoft if the gov't had sought serious enforcement years earlier, as in their earlier investigation (here is a timeline of earlier and now forgotten legal activity).

Which way will the wind blow in Europe?

A minor addendum, the judge in this case, Judge Motz in Baltimore, is a bright and politically moderate guy, likely a good person for the difficult task (I assume he was assigned the case randomly?). Expect him to get reversed and affirmed a couple of times, MS litigates aggressively.

*

This is OT, but have y'all noticed that everyone mistypes DMCA? Me too. Congress should rename it DCMA when they get around to fixing it.

First, I honestly feel bad for ya because you're going to suffer the "Slashdot Death by Disagreement" fate. I disagree with you, but that does not, in of itself, make your post bad. It should be moderated, IMO, merely by how it contributes to good discussion.

To answer, however, I think that the Reuters article covers that question well by quoting the judge:

"'It is an absolute certainty that unless a preliminary injunction is entered, Sun will have lost forever its right to compete, and the opportunity to prevail, in a market undistorted by its competitors' antitrust violations,' Motz wrote in his decision."

The Judge's opinion is available as a PDF obtained via the C|Net article.

AOL teamed up with Inktomi in early 2000 to go head-to-head vs. Akamai in the content distribution business. So this might be a bit more than just search engine stuff.

AOL teamed up with Inktomi in early 2000 to go head-to-head vs. Akamai in the content distribution business. So this might be a bit more than just search engine stuff.

Take a look at this article on ZDnet I read recently about Flash MX.

It seems that in some cases, Flash can be used to build REAL APPLICATIONS like this one here that are:

1) Easy to use.

2) Cross platform (windows, mac, unix, palm, etc)

3) Easy to build

In this regard, this puts pressure on VB and/or .NET. This review shows it's not quite there yet, but it's certainly a step in this direction.

What does MS do whenever it runs into something that outperforms their own products?

Buy the company, of course.

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-918460.html has the price.

Quoth the article:

"Microsoft will sell a $49.95 Xbox Live package, O'Rourke said, which includes a 12-month subscription to the service and a headset microphone that connects to the Xbox for voice chat. The fee does not include a broadband connection, which is required to subscribe."

Google is our friend (I simply searched using 'XBox Live price' as the string).

Also, http://www.xbox.com/live/xboxlive-retailers.htm shows where you can get the starter kit from your favorite local (nationwide) retailer.

If you go to the main XBox live page, there's a link on the page under 'Get it now!' that lists the price.

Wow. So Hailstorm wasn't about a brave new e-service. Rather just another plot of Microsoft to take over the movie industry. But it's sad they need German scientists to cover up their involvement, why can't they just admit they like both Hollywoon and potatoes?

--
The right to be heard does not include the right to be taken seriously

Apple says it's anti-DRM, but just try using their DVD recording software with non-Apple drives or getting iTunes-recorded music back off your iPod (yes, it is possible, but that's not the point).

This is awesome! Now, does anyone have a speech-to-text program that accepts ogg streams as input?

If you prefer using open standards route, then you might want to look at transfering the Linux src via the Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol (CPIP) instead.

(Of ocurse you'd have to do something like ftp over cpip).

Boy, was that a lot of fuss with zero results.

This may be useless but CNET also has the same article here

here's is the story. I made a mistake in saying it was OE4 when it was OE5

Now before you start thinking that this would never happen, just think of all the other products out there that block popups and what would happen to them once it's built into IE. They lose revenue, Claim Microsoft is using it's OS Monopoly to put them out of business and sue MS to death until they either get money or get it removed.

...Michael Wolff, a consultant who advised Time Warner not to buy AOL in the early 90's...

DARPA's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project is slowly shrinking from public view. According to a CNET story: "the TIA site shrank still more and some links ceased to work. Biographical information about the TIA project leaders, including retired Adm. John Poindexter, disappeared from the Defense Department's site last month."

CNET goes on to report that, "the disappearing documents come as the TIA has become a lighting rod for criticism and as online activists have been turning the tables on Poindexter by reposting his personal information and home telephone number as widely as possible."

What has not changed is the Information Awareness Office's (IAO) commitment to TIA. The IAO "vision" clearly states:

"The most serious asymmetric threat facing the United States is terrorism, a threat characterized by collections of people loosely organized in shadowy networks that are difficult to identify and define. IAO plans to develop technology that will allow understanding of the intent of these networks, their plans, and potentially define opportunities for disrupting or eliminating the threats. To effectively and efficiently carry this out, we must promote sharing, collaborating and reasoning to convert nebulous data to knowledge and actionable options. IAO will accomplish this by pursuing the development of technologies, components, and applications to produce a proto-type system."

What is most interesting about the TIA project is the program strategy "focusing on the development of:

"1) architectures for a large-scale counter-terrorism database, for system elements associated with database population, and for integrating algorithms and mixed-initiative analytical tools;
2) novel methods for populating the database from existing sources, create innovative new sources, and invent new algorithms for mining, combining, and refining information for subsequent inclusion into the database; and,
3) revolutionary new models, algorithms, methods, tools, and techniques for analyzing and correlating information in the database to derive actionable intelligence.

In short, the government wants free access to all of your personal data, including, but not limited to medical, financial, family history, and all public records.

I think we can safely say that George Orwell was right and McCarthyism is alive and well.

Anyone want to guess how many of your developer, coder, dba, Network Admin, Hacker friends will be "black-listed" after refusing to adhere to the coming government guidelines? Hmmm, and I thought the .com bust was bad, wait until you have to prove that you're government friendly in order to get a job.

For anyone who visited the Total Information Awareness website early on, you'll notice a major change. CNET is reporting that the site has shrunk drastically in recent weeks. It appears that the backlash from that announcement had an effect, tho perhaps only superficial.

I hope no one tells the RIAA about this. They will be putting landmines in P2P soon.

To late... They already thought of it...

A) How exactly is Apple "choosing to enforce the DMCA"?

They complained.

B) The GPL only has meaning because of copyright.

The GPL is an attempt to modify or extend traditional copyright. It is a set of limitations that make publications more free. It is copyleft. The DMCA has several provisions that make publications less free. I won't bother enumerating them here.

GPL != GNU. GPL is a tool that the GNU community uses to enable the production and protection of free publications. GPL relies on copyright, but the notion of freedom does not. This notion predates Gutenberg significantly ;)

Why are any of these old issues still being discussed? Were all of Microsoft's new hires this year astroturfers?