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You do not understand trusted computing. It is not about locking down your system.

It is a common fallacy that the primary goal of trusted computing is to enable DRM so the movie studios/RIAA controls your computer. This is simply not true.

If that's true, why do TC chip makers refuse to consider the option of Owner override? That would leave you in full control, while voiding any third party's attempt to lock down your system.

Nope, I'm including most of them in the statement as well.

"or b) Unix people, which also makes them technically incompetent but also gives them an unjustified superiority complex."

Quite the elitist aren't you? Such a massive assumtion but I know who you are now. Professionally I've found most IT professionals good to work with if you are prepared to learn something. Even if I agree that it is the case, arrogance is not a professional quality that can be appreciated in the long term.

Stick to the topic at hand, we're not talking home users. Home users don't see any value in their computers, let alone their OS.

Funny that I thought the topic was control systems aboard the ISS.

Yes that's true, but the same attitude propagates into the small to medium business market otherwise there wouldn't be a BSA.

I think you're confused. The last major change to the GUI occured in 1995.

That would be the users that are confused by the microsoft offering, because most of them haven't been using Linux as long as we have. I'm not saying Linux is any better in this regard, only that the right value proposition is yet to be reached. Due to the fact that the code based is secured outside any single proprietary entity, the development work can continue until the right combination is achieved. What you forget is that Linux is not being marketed into the desktop space in the same way windows is. You cite the many differences of Linux distributions as a weakness like it's similar to the old Unix days where compatibility across platforms didn't exist. The main difference I see is that compatibility across Linux distributions and CPU platforms is not particularly difficult due to the availability of development tools, if you are competant enough to use them.

Hardly. As a Linux user since 1993, I'm certain I've got tons more personal AND professional experience with the product than you.

An incorrect asumption.

On a day there's an announcement that OSI has accepted two MS licenses you're going to pull out that old chestnut? Beyond that, though, citations and references to back that up?

I'm sorry check for citations here . But I got ahead of myself, Microsoft has never abused it's market position, it's never used it's monopoly against competition, it's never usurped ideas from companies such as netscape, there is no such thing as "embrace and extend", the Samba project will be given specifications of SMB v2 so that life between Linux and Vista is hunkey dorey, it never lobbied congress. As for the 200 or whatever innovation restricting patents that MS hold against Open Source Vendors even after MS let the OSS community what they were so they don't infringe, Microsoft won't use them because Microsoft is happy to see products compete in "their" marketplace without interference at the OEM level and they didn't really mean it when they said that Open Source is like a cancer in the industry. Sun should have accepted Microsofts intentions with Java were pure. Even if we deploy NGSCB, Paladium or DRM we won't use it, hhhonest!

What was I thinking to say that Microsoft has been anything but a shiney beacon of all that's good and proper in the world, but you know theres this thing called reality.

What the hell are you talking about? Change for change's sake? the growing need of business to do more with less.

So of your 14000 windows desktop deployments how many are Vista right now, will vista run on a 5 year old laptop?

This is where Linux and OSS typically falls down because the majority of OSS supporters are geeks who don't understand business needs.

Perhaps, but business continues to invest in Open Source Software and generate a return

Yep. Here is the web page: http://www.linuxjournal.com/issue/162 and Trolltech's web site:

http://trolltech.com/products/qtopia/greenphone/index

MS Exchange actually uses an open protocol licensed from The Open Group. MS made some changes to it, but the bulk of it is still the original DCE protocol: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6368

http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000088

Word's designers never seem to have [...] heard that leader dots between an entry's text and page number is[sic] a sign of faulty design.

The LinuxJournal article is opening for me at the moment: http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/8012/print The article appears to be about how to create ToCs, Indexes and Bibliographies in OpenOffice's Writer. (author is a fellow named Bruce Byfield). A tutorial.

After trimming back the original URL I was able to finally get the NewsForge article at http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/08/16/2038242.shtml to come back up and now that I read the byline more closely... ha! it's by the same fellow. Maybe what we have here is just one guy stating his opinion as if it were some known fact or something?

I phoned the ACM and got it sorted out. As you see now on their site, it's freely-available. The ACM was reasonable and reacted quickly. That isn't always the case.

One of the problems with supercomputers is that there aren't really very many of them, because of the size and cost. It means that the tools you use to run your supercomputing applications are similarly unusual. The skills to use and develop on parallel systems are then equally scarce. Access to a supercomputer isn't exactly common.

Having just finished a project for the Space Station http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7190 I appreciate the need for structure documentation. We've used the following methods, for different parts of the documentation.

Word:
pros: everyone has it, except when you're using Linux.
Cons: buggy. Master documents are awful, document navigation inserts unwanted and often wrong formatting in the document. Styles are inconsistent, and whenever someone with automatic styles even touches the document, all the careful formatting is broken.

OOo:
pros: really xplatform. documents stay intact. Styles pretty good, Document navigator works well, master documents work well. Xml format allows scripting (for instance putting cvs numbers inside the document :-)
Cons: problems with outline numbering. can be worked around but are easy to trigger.

Docbook:
pros: very well structured. You can use your favorite texteditor
cons: easy to mess up the xml structure. Very hard to structurally edit, you have no overview when wading through pages of xml.

Rst: (from python doc)
pros: simple, structured, easy on the eyes, favorite texteditor
cons: too simple for large documents.

After all these years of doc writing and programming, I think my favorite setup would be as yet non-existing:

Stripped down OOo:
Impossible to (re)define styles: you live with the styles that are in a custom template
No manual formatting. Italic, Bold, fonts, all that stuff is gone
No frames, Images go inline!

A database with ODF blobs, that can be xreffed from your document, and shows live in your document.

I'd love to build something like that actually, but don't have the time at the moment.

Bart

You're not the only one who thinks so.

Since I am a green horn at writing drivers, I would not start with Networking... since they seemed pretty covered-- for now.

However if they were USB or other dongle related, then this is where the need seems to be more now (with Linux).

Also, the article/thread seems to head in the very same direction that many other 'beginer' or 'how to's' are... which is.. either the writer asumes an awfule lot on what the reader knows already.. or it cover things the average programmer already knew since he fell out of his crib.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4786 is an attempt at helping those interested in working with developing USB drivers and it's associated aspects.

And here http://www.us.design-reuse.com/news/news8597.html is interesting tech that helps simplify the device driving process from the start, by helping programmers develop the hardware, automatically after putting in merely the algorithms.

Although this process is not directly related, the point is we have to get away from re-inventing the wheel, by using more automatic code-writing, and into the realm of letting the computer do what it does best (repetition & long calcs).. and let developers do what they do and love best... *designing*.

It's amazing that this thread, which could have been the driest all week, turned out to be the one more interesting & funniest =:]

---NO!! I am NOT trying to be a 'good boy'.. It's just that sometimes I can't help myself :)

You can setup a voice menu which will stop the phone from ringing unless a menu option is selected. Check LinuxJournal site they have a few tutorials about setting up similar scenarios ( like http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9190 )

Did you try to recover the photos? If it was a filesystem corruption (quite likely) then try this on Linux:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8366

I did this on an unreadable SD card and got nearly everything back except some photos were chopped off part way down the image.

Maybe try digiKam or F-Spot. Brief overview here but no reason not to try them both and see which you prefer.

Linux Journal just published a case study I wrote on how SELinux protected a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 server from an attack on a Mambo installation:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/xstatic/abstracts/2007 -07/bt9176

You can find the article in the July 2007 issue of the print magazine, or read it on the web if you are a Linux Journal subscriber. Linux Journal typically opens up their archives to public access a couple months after publication, also, though I would encourage people interested in Linux to subscribe to support this quality magazine.

Since writing the article, I've also helped another company with a postmortem analysis of a different Mambo exploit that RHEL 4's SELinux implementation also stopped.

Why don't the movie studios contribute some of their millions of lines of Linux code to open source? Many studios have developed proprietary Linux video playback and editing software, an area where open source is deficient. Could they give that to open source? Today's treacherous patent landscape is one obstacle, but beyond that is the cost to maintain it. For example, ILM found it more work to open the OpenEXR image format than expected. The studios are busy making movies.

The film industry does sometimes sponsor outside open-source efforts, such as deep paint support for GIMP in 1999. Unfortunately, 16-bit per channel paint was never released as part of GIMP. It did later see the light of day as CinePaint [an OSS project I lead]. But rather than use CinePaint and have to retrain Photoshop users, DreamWorks Animation, Disney and Pixar provided some funding to CodeWeavers to make Windows Photoshop work on Linux under Wine in 2003.

The film industry may not like open source that cuts too close to its domain. The open-source renderer BMRT, developed by former employees of Pixar, was discontinued as part of an infringement settlement in 2002 between Pixar and NVIDIA (which had acquired a more sophisticated version of the BMRT render technology from the company Exluna to support Cg GPU rendering).

It's funny to see a professional that knows nothing about a software application pan it on slashdot.

Gimp is not a drawing program, it is an image manipulation program, please take the time to understand the program you are putting down. Gimp is designed for photo manipulation and it's tools are good for that. Lots of people have added in scripts and other plugins to do some incredibly creative stuff which mimic the drawing capabilities of photoshop and corel draw. It is evolving way faster than Photoshop ever could.

As for Gimp not being used by a "professional" I guess these guys are not professionals - ScoobyDoo Article

or the tens of thousands of professional WEB graphic artists that use it....

to me it seems you are confusing functionality with familiarity. A mistake that lots of professionals make.

"It's always funny to see someone who never designed professionally in their life suggest GIMP."

What's even funnier is the poster who declares that others have never designed professionally, while never posting a link to their own portfolio. For all we know, your sum total of graphics design experience involves crayons and construction paper.

Meanwhile open source tools continue to dominate web design, and the movie design industry:
http://www.linuxtoday.com/high_performance/2003100 201126OSBZHE
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5472
http://www.linuxmovies.org/studios.html
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT7096363910. html

including this guy here:
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/rsstory/57300.html
who says:

"Linux is the default operating [system] on desktops and servers at major animation and visual effects studios, with maybe 98 percent [or more] penetration," CinePaint Project Manager Robin Rowe told LinuxInsider. "With the big dogs, there's nobody left to convert to Linux. Every studio is already on board."

That's Cinepaint... a fork of Gimp.

Yes, some of these people design professionally just a tiny bit. And some of them might answer this question on Slashdot with just that response. Yeah, the rest of your points have some merit, but not this one.

- sincerely, a professional designer who uses all FOSS tools, and kicks your butt at it.

Been using http://www.gtkpod.org/ for a few years now with my 4G iPod, now with Fedora Core 6. Works flawlessly, but the dekstop program has weird sorting. You could also use udev rules to back up anything: http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/9311/

Man, I gotta cut down on the caffeine and get more sleep. I was really confused about why the fanfic folks were having their LinuxJournal forum accounts terminated.

"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

i'm your mamma, i'm your daddy
i'm that nerd in the alley
i'm your doctor, when in need
want some word, have some IE
you know me, i'm your friend
your main boy, thick and thin
i'm your pusherman
i'm your pusherman

'these machines would have to be a little bit more robust than linux is capable of being at the moment'

What stability issue, and do you have an citations for major data loss because of the stability issue. Is IBM fibbing when it refers to its legendary stability.

'One of Linux's claims to fame is its legendary stability'

'Manufacturer moves to Linux for stability'

'As the manufacturer had already used Linux, it was aware of its great stability. SAP, combined with IBM and Linux offered the best deal in terms of price and performance

'Linux systems excel in many areas, ranging from end-user concerns such as stability, speed, and ease of use, to serious concerns such as development and networking'

hmm (in a story about the NYSE moving to Linux inject a little stability FUD)

Interesting... I just did a search on something I am interested in: 'linux pic microcontroller programmer' since I am thinking of getting into PIC programming for a hobby. Google's first choice was by far the best. It took me to a comprehensive page covering numerous PIC related projects that run on Linux, with links to a lot of information that exactly fits what I'm looking for. Yahoo came in second, taking me to a Linux Journal article that covers one of the programmers listed on the first page (and the first page has links to the article as well), though the page only covered one package and MSN came in a very distant 3rd, taking me to a Wikipedia article which only has a single sentence mentioning Linux and it didn't have a lot to do with programming, although the Wikipedia page does have links to some of the information I'm looking for at the bottom. There is a reason Google is so popular, and it's more than its brand.

If I had to rate the links on a scale of 1 to 10 based on relevance, Google would get 10, Yahoo would get 5 and MSN would get 2.

It's quite possible that most people who search for "travel agency" online don't want to see "Dick and Jane's Travel, Fargo, ND" when they're in Phoenix, AZ. They probably want Travelocity, etc. If I want to find a small Mom and Pop type place because I want that type of boutique shop, I either look in the Yellow Pages or do some other kind of local search. Google is for searching the whole internet and finding the *most* relevant site to your search terms.

If you read about creating a successful website (without using bad practices), it's about writing *good* content, determining a target audience, then figuring out what search terms a person who wants to read your stuff would be using and making sure that the keywords, title, and first paragraph, etc., contain those terms. Mom and Pop places can certainly do that.

It's page rank (incoming links) that kills "local" sites. If you want your site to be considered highly relevant for "widgets" then you need *lots* of sites from around the internet to link to your site with the keyword "widgets". If you're a Mom & Pop place and you're only relevant to local people, then only local sites are liable to link to you. To fix this, Google is trying to integrate a Google local search into their maps.google.com page, so you can do a geographic search. But they can't do this for all sites unless pages identify their geographic co-ordinates, if applicable (see GeoTagging).

And after waiting 20 minutes to submit I finally find an article on it:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7392

Intellectual Property does not exist

If people became aware of this simple fact - that intellectual property does not exist - I think it might be easier to persuade even politicians to do something about this crazy state of affairs.

The term "IP" is a very clever trick played by those who indeed want to own ideas. I always use the phrase "intellectual monopoly" instead, because that's what copyright and patents are: they are monopolies granted by the government for a limited time to encourage innovation and creativity. If, instead of talking about extending "property" rights for "IP", you phrase it as extending a monopoly right, that doesn't sound so good, because it's clear that something is being taken away from everyone.

I think we must work hard to roll back this term "IP", because every time we use it we reinforce the misconception that ideas can be owned. As soon as you get people to think in terms of monopolies, they become far less impressed by big business's demands for more "IP" protection, and the case for copyright and patents is correspondingly weaker.

Here is another comparison on the Linux Journal which compares tools such as rzip, lzop, lzma and 7za in addition to bzip2 and gzip.

I have been using LZMA for some time now for things

There ARE NO free groupware solutions, there never have been, and I'm starting to think there never will be. The support costs are simply to brutal and impassible an issue for the open source community to deal with.

I hope you have a photo or other copy of the license, and stay focused. You will get people trying to run you around in circles so keep a log of who you talk with, when and about what - that will make it easier to escalate. Anyway, here are some examples:

• Getting a Windows Refund in California Small Claims Court
• Toshiba/Microsoft Saga
• User refund for no Windows option
• How to get a Windows tax refund

http://www.saltypickle.com/rubydotnet
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000049
And here's a list of more languages: http://dotnetpowered.com/languages.aspx

In this Linux Journal article Lisa Corsetti describes writing a program to test if the NIC is actually connected, so that if not she could bypass the network initialization and in particular the DHCP request with its requisite timeout.

Programming ioctl calls is beyond my comfort zone so I took the lazy approach of changing the default 60 second timeout to 10 with a "-t 10" argument to my dhcpd commands in my startup scripts, so instead of a Linux Journal article, I get a Slashdot post.

Threads are indeed more efficient at context switching than processes, but the real question is: does that really matter?

Thread switches can be less expensive than process switches, as illustrated in this table: http://www.linuxjournal.com/articles/lj/0057/2941/ 2941f1.png. I suspect the difference (when it exists) is not important in many cases, with some notable exceptions such as near-real-time systems such as games.

As to the other reason for using threads, the sharing of memory, there's this really cool new technology out these days. Maybe you've heard of it. It's called "shared memory".

You can't easily put the complex memory states there. With the shared memory, you basically need to serialize the data at the input and the de-serialize it at the output. This is not very efficient way of doing things (both from the CPU-performance an brain-performance perspective).

For example, while not being game developer myself, I suspect games have this big interconnected graph of objects and each thread of execution has a need to access numerous objects from this graph. Putting this into processes and then designing what is essentially a "communication protocol" using shared memory would complicate (not to mention slow down) things considerably.

The bottom line is this: if you need concurrency in your application, you should be using processes, not threads.

The reason for keeping your threads in separate processes might be that the communication required is simple and/or the memory protection is extremely important (such as in DBMS - Oracle is multi-process for that reason).

However, it is unjustified to make blanket statements of type: "you should always do X" and then skip the valid reasons for doing Y.

How many mistakes in that sentence?

1) © is the Copyright symbol (clue: it begins with "C"), ® means "Registered" trademark.
2)Trademark is not copyright.
3)You can't "copyright" a single word.

But yes, "Linux" is a trademark, owned by Linus Torvalds. While you can use a trademark in an editorial way, as in "Linuxsucks", when you're a competitor using it in a commercial campaign I think you might be in trouble, unless you are a billion dollar corporation and can piss on the law at will.

You could drop iSCSI and just use layer-2 Ethernet to transfer blocks, but then you'd have to define a comm protocol for disks on layer-2 Ethernet. Not that it couldn't be done, but I'm not aware of one in common use today (at least not on commodity Ethernet hardware).

ATA over Ethernet gets you at least halfway there.

http://www.pcquest.com/content/technology/2006/106 110402.asp
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8149
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10880_11 -6106721.html

The only features missing for those categories are email / calendaring / scheduling (similar to Outlook/Exchange, GroupWise or Lotus Notes)

Digital Village Radio will be interviewing Scott Maxwell and John Wright, two Mars Rover drivers next Saturday (3/24/2007). Scott co-wrote (along with Frank Hartman) the August 2004 Linux Journal article Driving the Mars Rovers about the use of Linux and OSS by the Rover team. Scott is also the author of Linux Core Kernel Commentary.

Here in Brazil, Sérgio Amadeu, head of ITI (Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia da Informação, Portuguese for National Information Technology Institute), claimed that Microsoft tactics are those of a drug dealer: provide the stuff for free or nearly free, get the "customer" to be addicted, and then get money out of him. He was legally threatened by Microsoft for saying so. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7654.

Also,

if books are ever going to return to mainstream, they need to replace all those words with pictures.

...And your arrogant, flip little comment, reflecting the general attitude of the Computer Priesthood(tm), is EXACTLY why Linux will NEVER be ready for the desktop.

The (in your terms) Luser must never, ever, ever HAVE to experience a config file, nor HAVE to type in some INCANTATION into a CLI. Period.

I suppose you'd find it acceptable to have to write an XML file to record a program on your DVR, too?

Oh wait! I forgot! The MUST HAVE Linux DVD PLAYER, MPlayer, *still* runs from the Command Line by default, doesn't it?

Heck, the MPlayer GUI isn't even in the BUILD by default!

From the MPlayer Docs: "MPlayer comes with a GUI that is not build by default. The GUI section of the documentation explains how to enable it. Several external MPlayer frontends provide alternative GUIs."

I rest my case.

:) That really is funny. If you read A GPL license vs. for example, the M$ EULA, there is very little difference in the amount of liability the M$ has vs. GPL'd software. M$ will cover you for the greater of $5, or the price of the software, The GPL, of course, covers you for nothing. IMO, practically speaking, the M$ warranty is worthless, compared to what sort of liability the end user is subject to, and the difficulty in actually getting a refund. A google search turned up this interesting little article ... http://interactive.linuxjournal.com/article/7040 . Getting any refund is much more trouble than it's worth.

sections 17 and 18 of the M$ EULA ...
17. EXCLUSION OF INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL AND CERTAIN OTHER DAMAGES. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL MICROSOFT OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS OR CONFIDENTIAL OR OTHER INFORMATION, FOR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, FOR PERSONAL INJURY, FOR LOSS OF PRIVACY, FOR FAILURE TO MEET ANY DUTY INCLUDING OF GOOD FAITH OR OF REASONABLE CARE, FOR NEGLIGENCE, AND FOR ANY OTHER PECUNIARY OR OTHER LOSS WHATSOEVER) ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY RELATED TO THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWARE, THE PROVISION OF OR FAILURE TO PROVIDE SUPPORT OR OTHER SERVICES, INFORMATON, SOFTWARE, AND RELATED CONTENT THROUGH THE SOFTWARE OR OTHERWISE ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THE SOFTWARE, OR OTHERWISE UNDER OR IN CONNECTION WITH ANY PROVISION OF THIS EULA, EVEN IN THE EVENT OF THE FAULT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), MISREPRESENTATION, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF CONTRACT OR BREACH OF WARRANTY OF MICROSOFT OR ANY SUPPLIER, AND EVEN IF MICROSOFT OR ANY SUPPLIER HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
18. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY AND REMEDIES. Notwithstanding any damages that you might incur for any reason whatsoever (including, without limitation, all damages referenced herein and all direct or general damages in contract or anything else), the entire liability of Microsoft and any of its suppliers under any provision of this EULA and your exclusive remedy hereunder (except for any remedy of repair or replacement elected by Microsoft with respect to any breach of the Limited Warranty) shall be limited to the greater of the actual damages you incur in reasonable reliance on the Software up to the amount actually paid by you for the Software or US$5.00. The foregoing limitations, exclusions and disclaimers (including Sections 15, 16 and 17) shall apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, even if any remedy fails its essential purpose.

The world is flat,
earth is the center of the universe,
the telephone has too many shortcomings,
everything that can be invented has been invented,
a rocket will never leave the earth's atmosphere,
etc ...

Red Hat says it better in their Truth Happens campaign.

And the truth is that every generation has people fearing that their butts will get kicked when things they don't understand start changing the world.
And the latest and greatest news is the industry's attempt to kill the Internet Radio.
Pretty disturbing I would say.

And yes, every company can tell you how you can use a technology you licensed from it.
No, they can't. Software companies can't do it any more than Ford can forbid you from having your car serviced by someone else. Specifically, see Microsoft Corp. v. DAK Indus.

IANAL but the only legal argly-bargly i CAN find questionable, is that most times you can only see the contract terms after buying the product - at least, when you are a private person instead of a company.
Well, let me help.

Read this. You might be slightly reassured by the last and second last paragraphs.

"Of course, many here on Slashdot could probably set up their own OpenID server that has a unique identifier for each site, but how many do you think {are going to/are able to} do that -- especially among AOL users?"

And how many people could rip and encode a DVD before hackers made it easy?

Maybe we could distribute a mod for one of these for our AOL using friends.

4. USE WITH VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES. You may not use the software installed on the
licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system.

http://linuxjournal.com/article/5628 - The Good
http://www.eff.org/wp/eula.php - The Bad
goatse - The Ugly

YouTube and Google are not supposed to demand proof. The DMCA is very specific: The party who believes their copyright has been infringed must send a signed statement stating that the copyright is theirs, under penalty of perjury. Once that has happened, the ISP must take down the content if they don't want to risk being held liable for having the content.

When the claim is obviously BS, YouTube and Google could tell Viacom to stuff it and they have nothing to worry about.

Failing to act in response to a DMCA takedown letter is not against the law. "They can always choose not to take advantage of the safe harbor," Seltzer said. However, only by complying with the letter and taking pages out of their index can Google escape a possible copyright infringement lawsuit.

If it is determined that the copyright holder misrepresented its claim regarding the infringing material, the copyright holder then becomes liable to the OSP for any damages that resulted from the improper removal of the material.

Stop whining and do something about it.

For a very good Exchange replacement, try Citadel -- http://www.citadel.org/ Your mileage may vary, but the February issue of Linux Journal has declared, "Microsoft Exchange, Meet Your Replacement."