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I'm not arguing "natural rights" here. Statutory rights are rights created by statute - law. Most areas have consumer protection legislation, and that legislation is quite specific as to your right to sue the manufacturer and the distributor and everyone else in the "food chain" down to the final vendor. Gateway can't "present" an EULA that takes away that right, in part because this would be a "contract of adhesion" between two very unequal parties, and also because most consumer protection laws state that they take precedence over any warranty or license that claims to remove your rights to bring suit.

Here's boilerplate from as an example:

Disclaimer of Warranty. The SDK is licensed "as-is." You bear the risk of using it. Microsoft gives no express or implied warranties, guarantees or conditions. You may have additional consumer rights under Your local laws which this agreement cannot change. To the extent permitted under Your local laws, Microsoft excludes the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringem

Local law takes precedence. Gateway loses this one in a walk.

Yahoo reports release of Google Gadgets while Microsoft Gadgets flounder

AV-ClamWin, Watchdog (works in conjunctions w/ ClamWin, Foxit PDFreader. But in the scheme of things this is really just a reaction to Microsoft's http://ideas.live.com/ Take a look. The OneCare app is an inbound/outbound firewall to replace the built in xp inbound firewall/virus scanner, etc. The http://start.com/ - the testing site and http://live.com/ - their production site even started using Gadgets http://microsoftgadgets.com/, just as Yahoo bought Konfabulator http://widgets.yahoo.com/ & has widgets now. Google just made some more API's available and brought out Google modules http://www.google.com/ig/directory Microsoft is working on a new messenger program, a primitive mapping program (that they've had for a long time), the whole live site is basic white even. Every one is getting the minimalist sites and all-in-one package deals. If you check the big browsers they are all competing for a desktop/browser setup. Personnally, I don't like when my browsers take their crap onto my desktop and make apps out of them. Anything that indexes my desktop seems like a security risk and a definite performance hog. If I wanted gadgets/widgets/modules... well I don't. And I really don't need a toolbar. I'm not surprised this was Google's next step but I try not to download the stuff I don't need. I'm a Windows OS fan but *nix ported apps are the best in my mind.

Of course Microsoft would finally embrace RSS, when Atom reached 1.0 a while ago. Gotta keep comfortably behind the times, but still pretend that you're "with it."

You want "with it"? Check this out: Live.com's RSS proxy can read Atom, RDF, and RSS feeds and present them in a unified way as RSS 2.0 to live.com gadgets and RSS feeds. I'd call that "with it".

I get the feeling that Microsoft uses "RSS" as a generic term for "syndicated data feeds", whether they're in RSS format or Atom. While it would be best to have a single standard, this follows along the lines of the whole "DVD-/+RAM/R/RW" thing. If you can't settle on a single standard, just support them all.

Microsoft (and numerous other companies) already has widgets, and had them long before Google. Microsoft calls them Gadgets and you can read about them here.

"and (I assume) Microsoft."

Not only do you assume correctly, Microsoft is going to allow their widgets to work both online (live.com - gadgets, and start.com - startlets, more (microsoftgadgets.com gadgets here) but on the user's desktop as well once Vista is released. Perhaps these gadgets will even share the same code and can live on both the desktop and live.com simultaneously.

Microsoft is also dabbling in widget's, or as they call them gadgets. There is a long video interview about the "gadgets" and their version of Dashboard.

They have "gadgets" and they're holding a development competition. I think getting more developers is part of their "live" web strategy.

gDesklets and Konfabulator are available only for Gnome/KDE based systems.

Just because Konfabulator starts with a 'K' doesn't mean it's a KDE tool. In fact, it doesn't even run on Linux, but Windows and Mac OS X. Oh yeah, and it's owned by Yahoo now, too. Looks like gadgets, widgets, and sidebars are the new battelground, with Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, and now Google in the mix. Yahoo has a serious lead, since Konfabulator is the oldest product.

Now there is something on the .NET platform that Microsoft is making called "Atlas". It builds on AJAX but allows a developer to write ASP.NET server controls that render AJAX-ish code. At least that's the concept, I believe. Will be nice to see how it pans out.

For what it's worth, Live.com (and Start.com before it) uses Atlas. Building Gadgets for Live.com/Start.com is a good way to get your feet wet with Atlas, though they could do a better job of providing documentation.

My sentiments exactly except I don't think they even tried to extend it. It's a somewhat anemic version of the Google Personal Homepage with nary a hope of ever catching up. I am confounded by the "Windows Live" aspect, but in fairness it is in Beta. Perhaps an Internet based bootable OS is right around the corner. From Microsoft I mean. BWAHAHAHAHHAHAAAAHAHAHHAHAH!!!!

Have you even tried using Live.com? Sure, it's superficially like Google's personalized home page, but it does more than that. First off, Live.com is from the Start.com project, which has been around longer than Google's personal page (as others have already pointed out), and thus Google is copying Microsoft. BWAHAHAHA. Ahem. Second, Live.com is more "slick", for lack of a better word. You can change the number of columns (want 2 columns instead of 3? only 1 long column?), and the interface just feels "smoother" than Google's (not sure if it's the colors, fonts, icons, or what, and I'll agree that this is really personal preference).

Third, and probably most importantly, Live.com is much more customizable than Google's page. Sure, you can add or remove certain canned items or create a new "section" from a search or a feed on Google's page. You can do that on Live.com as well. However, you can also write your own "gadgets" to add on to the page that are not just RSS feeds. I'm sure Google has the knowledge and talent to be able to do something like that, but you can't deny that Live.com does things Google Personal doesn't.

As for the name "Windows Live", the Slashdot article title is just completely stupid. This is not an "Internet Version of Windows", but a companion. The "Live" naming obviously comes from Xbox Live, which is not an "Internet Version of Xbox" but a companion service that allows you to communicate and interact in new and interesting ways with your Xbox ("new" and "interesting" as applied to Xbox, as online gaming, voice chat, and friends lists have all obviously been done elsewhere before Xbox Live). "Windows Live" is obviously aiming at that same idea. Whether they get there or not is still yet to be seen, but at least they're trying. That the beginning looks like stuff we've already seen (though to be fair, we did see it from Microsoft before Google) isn't the point. Go to Windows Live Ideas and look at some of the stuff that's coming. Live Mail is just parity, but Windows Live Safety Center looks pretty cool, as does Windows Live Favorites (okay, so it only imports from IE and not Firefox, but a) it is Beta, and b) it is still Microsoft ...). And it sounds like this is just the beginning. Maybe the whole Windows Live thing will fizzle out with nothing more than a neat portal and a modern web mail client, but it could also turn into something really cool.

My sentiments exactly except I don't think they even tried to extend it. It's a somewhat anemic version of the Google Personal Homepage with nary a hope of ever catching up. I am confounded by the "Windows Live" aspect, but in fairness it is in Beta. Perhaps an Internet based bootable OS is right around the corner. From Microsoft I mean. BWAHAHAHAHHAHAAAAHAHAHHAHAH!!!!

Have you even tried using Live.com? Sure, it's superficially like Google's personalized home page, but it does more than that. First off, Live.com is from the Start.com project, which has been around longer than Google's personal page (as others have already pointed out), and thus Google is copying Microsoft. BWAHAHAHA. Ahem. Second, Live.com is more "slick", for lack of a better word. You can change the number of columns (want 2 columns instead of 3? only 1 long column?), and the interface just feels "smoother" than Google's (not sure if it's the colors, fonts, icons, or what, and I'll agree that this is really personal preference).

Third, and probably most importantly, Live.com is much more customizable than Google's page. Sure, you can add or remove certain canned items or create a new "section" from a search or a feed on Google's page. You can do that on Live.com as well. However, you can also write your own "gadgets" to add on to the page that are not just RSS feeds. I'm sure Google has the knowledge and talent to be able to do something like that, but you can't deny that Live.com does things Google Personal doesn't.

As for the name "Windows Live", the Slashdot article title is just completely stupid. This is not an "Internet Version of Windows", but a companion. The "Live" naming obviously comes from Xbox Live, which is not an "Internet Version of Xbox" but a companion service that allows you to communicate and interact in new and interesting ways with your Xbox ("new" and "interesting" as applied to Xbox, as online gaming, voice chat, and friends lists have all obviously been done elsewhere before Xbox Live). "Windows Live" is obviously aiming at that same idea. Whether they get there or not is still yet to be seen, but at least they're trying. That the beginning looks like stuff we've already seen (though to be fair, we did see it from Microsoft before Google) isn't the point. Go to Windows Live Ideas and look at some of the stuff that's coming. Live Mail is just parity, but Windows Live Safety Center looks pretty cool, as does Windows Live Favorites (okay, so it only imports from IE and not Firefox, but a) it is Beta, and b) it is still Microsoft ...). And it sounds like this is just the beginning. Maybe the whole Windows Live thing will fizzle out with nothing more than a neat portal and a modern web mail client, but it could also turn into something really cool.

Wow. Further analysis of the page at http://www.microsoftgadgets.com/ reveals sock-puppetry at it's finest.

Wow. Further analysis of the page at http://www.microsoftgadgets.com/ reveals sock-puppetry at it's finest.

I don't think it's bunk. A google search found connections to http://www.microsoftgadgets.com/ which has references to the new live.com and, in addition, a search of channel9.msdn.com shows no hits (yet) for "www.live.com", but several referring to the microsoftgadgets page, including some from (apparently) Microsoft employees. WHOIS shows that both microsoftgadgets.com and live.com have the same contact name. That's enough for me to dismiss the idea of it being a hoax.

Microsoft is back!

Troll me, if you will, but nobody really saw this coming, at least none of the Google and Apple fanboys on /. And did you see all the features and the fact that you can build on top of it.

Oh, and for those who don't know, Microsoft Start.com development has supported Mozilla based browsers for over a year. Anyway, it's good for innovation.

...inventing startling new technology, like Gadgets. I mean...wow. I've never seen anything like this before! *coughwidgetscough*

And its Gadgets vs Yahoo's Widgets and Apple's Dashboard.