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Bullshit: iOS has 23% smartphone marketshare, 63% tablet marketshare, and nearly 100% of whatever category iPod Touch falls into.

And, as long as you toolbags keep thinking of this as Windows vs. Mac circa 1991, you're going to wrong about your conclusions.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/24/idc-q1-2012-world-smartphone-share/
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=10100CJ4VFI4

why the poor science education in the United States is such a big problem?

Barnes & Noble's device is fairly decent, although its missing Wikipedia and some of the features could be better done. Why is this is being set up as an Apple vs. Amazon fight when, of the several companies putting out eReaders, Apple is the only one who doesn't actually have a device available for sale right now?

For one because without being out the iPad had such a high level of pre-orders it's likely to be even more successful than the iPhone. http://www.newsfactor.com/news/Strong-Demand-Reported-for-iPad/story.xhtml?story_id=10300BOVCI9L&full_skip=1

But it's not really an Apple Vs Amazon, it's a Publishers Vs Amazon, Amazon is loosing it's enjoyed monopoly on eBooks the day the iPad hits the streets and now publishers get options. Apparently, the Kindle will become a side market with the iPad being the main point of interest for publishers.

Thing is, anything other than this would be illegal. If Apple went in and agreed with Amazon on a price, it would become price fixing and both companies would be in trouble.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139250/Snow_Leopard_bug_deletes_all_user_data

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=031001SMSU6O

http://venturebeat.com/2009/08/27/apples-snow-leopard-may-stop-you-from-doing-your-job/

I can go on forever....

The patent filed in 2002 was for an extension of a patent granted in 1998.

IANAL, IAN even a legal hobbyist, but wouldn't this prior art insubstantiate the patent?

Java isn't prior art. Work started on Java in 1991, by James Gosling, but it wasn't released until 1995. "Eolas said it first demonstrated in 1993 -- and for which it received a U.S. patent in 1998". Java was developed concurrently.

I'm not supporting Eolas, I don't know what the patent covers or if it's a valid patent, here but I wanted to correct your information.

Falcon

I don't know why people complain about Genuine Advantage. If you buy the software it is unlocked. If you pirate it it will still work, even though it knows it is pirated, but it won't work 100%. I.e. pirate copies are partially locked.

Genuine Advantage would be better if they had a sense of humour about it. Like instead of black screening pirate copies they could shrink the desktop slowly surrounded it by a dirty border and have photorealistic DirectX 10 cockroaches in the border. When you unlocked the workstation they'd scatter, but you still see the odd leg or antenna poking out from the edge of the monitor. Every so often one would run across the screen when you were hard at work. Hell, maybe you'd let people crush them with the mouse pointer but it would leave a nasty yellow blob on the screen. The longer you held out against buying a license, the more bold the roaches would become, and the more hit points they would have.

Essentially Microsoft discovered a way to make people RAGE! by accident with Clippy. They should put that knowledge to use annoying pirates and making everyone else laugh at them. Most people have a fear of being mocked for being cheap, they should put that fear to use.

"The metamaterials work of Professor Xiang Zhang and his team at the University of California at Berkeley is being highlighted in a paper Wednesday in the online version of the journal Nature and in another appearing Friday in the journal Science."

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=61321

Beyond that, who buys pre-built systems these days anyway?

About 271 million people in 2007. Seriously, if you think that most people build their own systems, you need to get out more.

Install Linux. I don't know about the influenza virus, but it sure as hell stopped the Code Red Virus

(It was a joke people, lighten up)

In all seriousness, I usually just lightly mist Lysol on a soft t-shirt, and wipe my keyboard down with it. I'm not exactly sure how smart that is, but it has yet to damage anything.

Unfortunately our AT&T account was opened (and text messaging was disabled) before I had a larger role in the technical aspects of the company. I know that if you have a competent AT&T rep, call them and tell them you know it can be disabled, and you want to have it disabled or else they risk losing a customer. Alternatively you can maybe check out the following article:

AT&T: Yes. Log on to My Account at mymessages.wireless.att.com. You have the option to allow or block certain e-mail addresses and domains (up to 250), or to block all text or multimedia messages sent to you as e-mail.

The above option is not really feasible if you have a lot of mobile numbers though. Either way, AT&T knows it is a very competitive market in most areas, and they are stupid to not do for the customer what they know is technically possible. Tell your rep that you will consider switching to Verizon, T-Mobile, or Sprint unless they can turn off text messaging. Or try to ask for their manager, since alot of reps have senior account reps available in these situations.

Great. So now somebody has an incentive to cut off my fingers.

there is nothing going on ... Iranian sites are available just fine. Only the data from Egypt is going to be rerouted through US and UK.

Everything I have ever heard in the past and everything I could find from looking around just now indicated that they have no bizarre "save your receipts" requirement.

I heard (from a Korean) it was released in Korea before iPod (was released there?)...

(Note, the Techeblog site fracks with my Mozilla Firefox browser in that it DELAYS my getting off their page and back into my Slashdot tab... I suspect some fracked up ad code, cookies/java/other code interrupting my keyboard and mouse...)

http://www.newsfactor.com/news/Samsung-Introduces-an--iPhone-Killer-/story.xhtml?story_id=0210017RZFZR

http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/09/14/samsung.croix.for.vodafone/

http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/samsungs-iphone-killer-f700

Now, on the techeblog site, someone remarked that the phone was not touchscreen capable.... Their comments were in February.

The MacNN site has commentary that it is touchscreen.

The NewsFactor site article is also in Feb 07. See "Features Galore" section.

But, as for regular phones, check out things that kick the pants off US-market phones (tho I realize most of the cell phones here ARE from Japan or Korea):

http://au.kddi.com/english/product/index.html

http://mb.softbank.jp/mb/en/

http://mb.softbank.jp/mb/en/product/3g/815t/index.html

I used to have a Vodafone phone that had a multicolor strobe emitting from the camera flash. It was independently activated.

http://www.sharp.co.jp/products/v402sh/

When I lost it I wanted to DIE.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think not. Here's an article http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=003000AMBS9L

Posting anonymously under a pseudonym, bah. Gill Bates.

He generally pays people to do that or to be Apple switchers, outraged voters and Slashdot posters. At the same time, you have to wonder how much of his "email time" is actually ... Slashdot time.

Liberate your code, Bill.

Yeah, April Fools!

In fact, it has been all but ordered that people at the company participate in online communities daily and maintain their own blogs (especially on the Microsoft sites).

That would be good, but I'm afraid their PR machine does not work this way. It would be great if actual M$ employees were here reading what people really think and how quickly their company's propaganda is torn to pieces. They would quickly learn what about the rotten things their company does and M$ would be forced to change or loose people to competitors like Google. As Steve Ballmer brainwashed his own kids to avoid Google and iPod and other best of class things, I imagine Slashdot viewing is forbidden and that people posting for M$ are nothing more than paid PR and harassment droids.

I speculate that M$ has farmed out all of their dirty work. I'm sure M$ wants their people doing the job they pay them for. Second, they don't have enough people there to make a dent on a place like Slashdot. The basics of their techniques were worked out in the Steve Barkto and DRDOS cases: slam the competitor and encourage M$ use. The Apple Switcher and anti-trust astroturfing of legislators are both examples of where they have hired firms for questionable marketing. Questionable stuff like harassment by dorks like:

• This
• This
• This
• This

It does not really work, however. The circle of harassment is growing as fast as interest in other platforms and the two are linked. At some point the pawns get it.

If it's not a threat then why is Microsoft 'partnerning' with Novell to get SLED in the door at Wal-mart, in the process giving Linspire the big heave-ho.

'By dropping software from Microsoft and avoiding "Intel inside," retailer Wal-Mart Stores is offering a $199 computer it says is a hot seller on its Web site', Dec 2002

Microsoft and Novell Alliance Embraced by Wal-Mart, Jan. 22, 2007

'MS won't care if everybody uses the ODF standard, because at the end of the day, just like with Windows, people will continue buying their software in large numbers because'

How do people get to choose their software when the OEM contract with Microsoft prevents them from selling any other OS, else they are penalized with higher prices. The last time DELL tried to get into the LInux Desktop market MS moved very quickly to shut it down.

'A PC dealer in Europe has begun selling Dell desktop computers equipped with Linux, but Dell has distanced itself from the announcement, saying that the systems were customized by the dealer, and that it is not the first time a reseller has loaded Linux onto Dell computers'

'Questar claims that in the 24 hours since it began shipping the Linux computers, which can be delivered to 20 countries in Europe, its Web site has received over 200,000 hits'

'The question remains, why devote 150 staff to a business unit, spend millions investing in start-ups, only to can the exercise a few weeks later?'

'Lewis Mettler sums up the story from trial documents'

'Microsoft held a series of meetings with Dell in regard to Linux'

'Dell in June of 2001 informs Microsoft that Dell has canceled their Linux business unit'

was: Not necessarily a "threat" at all (Score:1, Insightful)

ps: I'd prefer to be a 'zealot' rather than a bought and paid for media whore like you ..

No, Sun actually bought code from SCO, they wanted the ix86 device drivers from SCO Unix.

Under the terms of the recent agreement, Sun is permitted to use software from SCO's Unix System V Release 4. This allows Sun to use the Unix driver components that the company needs for its version of Solaris developed for Intel servers Relevant Products/Services.

They've always had the right to give away Solaris gratis and were doing so well before the SCO deal. I, personally, have a Solaris 8 media pack, bought in 2001 for the cost of the media and with as many free licenses as I wanted to be obtained from the website. The major problem with Solaris 8 is that it barely works on Intel (indeed, on both machines I tried it, a Thinkpad 600, and a VIA C3 based PC, the installer wouldn't make it all the way through for one reason or another.)

Sun had a different deal with AT&T and its successors than the deals IBM, DEC, HP, etc had.

I'm not sure, incidentally, how the term "FUD" applies to anything I've said. If Sun has bought an illegitimate indemnity deal from SCO, then that actually would have been wrong, especially given the timings. But SCO did have a legitimate product, in terms of its actual real (and unimagined) code in SCO Unix, and there's no reason why Sun shouldn't have bought it other than SCO being a company with evil business practices.

IBM actually did some research into using what amounted to molecular dominos for computing. It worked pretty fast, but they literally had to set it up on molecule at a time, and you thought dominos were a pain. They too predict that it might replace transistors. Read more about it here.

This covers up to iTunes 7 or so...
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/04/04/29/1554231.s html?tid=107&tid=141&tid=187&tid=188
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=316 65
http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/29/hymn-is-back-fa irplay-on-itunes-6-finally-cracked/
http://hymn-project.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=155 3

Wanna find a multitude of unencrypted AAC files? http://thepiratebay.org/search.php?q=AAC&audio=on

Please cite that FairPlay has been not been cracked and illicit copies are NOT ABUNDANT. Otherwise, I assert teh laws of teh internets. (anything that can be copied, will be, and en masse.)

They can sell upgrades to the dead.

Since the dead have already mounted a grassroots campaign in support of Microsoft, they'd probably be pretty keen to buy in.

Unbreakable?

anyone?

"[Take open source.] Open source is not a new technology area. It was a new business model", SB

First RFC April 1969 for the ARPANET. The Open Source Initiative originated in Feb 1998.

"In the last three or four years, we have competed very well by extending our value", SB

"Microsoft has proposed a licencing agreement blatantly tailored to exclude free software from accessing it.", FSF Europe

" RealNetworks .. sued .. Microsoft on antitrust charges .. Our case is based on .. failure to disclose interface information and imposing restrictions on PC makers"

"Open source never goes away as a business model or competitor. We have learned how to compete with open source", SB

"Microsoft is claiming some form of IP rights over .. a total of 130 protocols which Microsoft is offering for license .. Many of the listed protocols are [IETF] RFC to the core TCP/IP v4 and TCP/IP v6 protocol specifications"

"competing with open source will have to be something that's burned bright on the foreheads of our senior people", SB

"OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects' entry into the market."

"In the case of open source, we couldn't adopt the business model. We adopted a competitive approach that so far has worked very well", SB

Under NO circumstances lose against Linux"

"Microsoft also indicated there was a lot more money out there and they would clearly rather use Baystar "like" entities to help us get signifigantly more money if we want to grow further or do acquisitions"

"Microsoft and Sun .. announced the antitrust settlement/technology pact between the two on Friday"

"Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) has signed a deal to license SCO Group's Unix intellectual property"

"Microsoft will license the rights to Unix technology from SCO"

"there are cases where software gets monetized through hardware", SB

Like years ago when you bought hardware and the software was included for free.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/technology/05goo gle.html?ex=1286164800&en=bf0a64b22abd15b8&ei=5088 &partner=rssnyt&emc=rssSun Java

http://www.newsfactor.com/news/Adobe-To-Bundle-Goo gle-Toolbar/story.xhtml?story_id=112003LQO47KAdobe shockwave

There's more then that but thoes 2 are at the top of my head

On the flip side, Team OS/2's lack of structure meant that it was vulnerable. Various journalists have documented a "dirty tricks" campaign by Microsoft.[citation needed] Online, numerous individuals (nicknamed "Microsoft Munchkins" by John C. Dvorak[citation needed]) used pseudonyms to attack OS/2 and manipulate online discussions. Whittle was the target of a vicious character assassination campaign, and anyone friendly to OS/2 faced numerous vociferous attacks as well.[citation needed] Some journalists who were less than enthusiastic about OS/2 received death threats and other nasty e-mail from numerous sources, always identified in taglines as "Team OS/2".[citation needed] Ultimately, at least some of Microsoft's efforts were exposed on Will Zachmann's Canopus forum on CompuServe, where the owner of one particular account, ostensibly belonging to "Steve Barkto", (who had been attacking OS/2, David Barnes, Whittle, and other OS/2 fans) was discovered to be funded by the credit card of a high-level Microsoft employee / evangelist who had also been active in the forums.[citation needed] James Fallows, a nationally-renowned journalist, even weighed in to state that the stylistic fingerprint found in the Barkto posts were almost certainly a match with the stylistic fingerprints in the Microsoft evangelist's postings.[citation needed] Will Zachmann sent an open letter to Steve Ballmer, futilely demanding a public investigation into the business practices of the publicly traded Microsoft.[citation needed] What is clear is that Microsoft was taking seriously the threat posed by Team OS/2 and their online and real-world activities.

Having said that, I am trying to understand whether the horror-scenario you sketch is the one that actually happened, and to be frank I am totally skeptical. I cannot think of any motive for the EU to deliberately allow Microsoft to produce documentation that is useless. Ordinary everyday incompetence on part of the EU, yes (the EU are a Government organisation after all ...) but not sabotage. And ... forgive me if I repeat myself from previous posts, but Microsoft was charged with producing a specific result, and not with sticking to a format or a process. Can it not be blamed for trying to take advantage of the EU's (apparent) incompetence in assessing the technical documentation as an excuse not to have to deliver?

Since the correspondence between Microsoft and the EU will likely not be public, I am looking for different ways to get a handle on whether their claim is true. If you can give me any (verifiable) information I would be happy to study it.

I think the problematic bit with the argument you make is that it makes assumptions (they're evil) about the intention of Microsoft and use those assumptions to reinforce the original argument (they are evil. so their intention in producing industry standard documentation was to obfuscate and be useless. Therefore they are evil).

Circular reasoning on my part to decide "Microsoft is Evil"? If I did commit circular reasoning, then I retract that part of what I said. I do admit that my previous post seems a bit disorganised. Sorry about that, I'll do better. However I didn't mean to commit circular reasoning, and frankly I don''t think I did. My argument has two parts: first arguing that Microsoft is inherently untrustworthy, second combining that with the motive they have to err ... present the facts as other than they really are.

I mean that I believe that, given Microsoft's conduct in court cases over the past 10 years, we have excellent cause to be distrustful of Microsoft's good intentions. Why? I base that on:

- the material presented at this http://www.kmfms.com/whatsbad.html#deception site. a)the doctored video(s) that Microsoft presented, purportedly showing the "crash" of MS Windows after Explorer was removed. I think that any ordinary person who pulled a stunt like that would have faced prosecution for perjury. For some reason Microsoft didn't suffer any comparable penalty b)Microsoft going back on the promise to support JAVA when it needed people to believe that Microsoft would in fact support Java c)Bill Gates' claim that Windows doesn't have bugs in an interview with FOCUS. If Allchin was aware of the problems with Windows message queues, then Gates would have been to. He simply told untruths. d)Microsoft's misleading claims regarding the security of it's passport service.

- Microsoft's use of astroturfing (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing). "In 2001, the Los Angeles Times accused Microsoft of astroturfing when hundreds of similar letters were sent to newspapers voicing disagreement with the United States Department of Justice and its antitrust suit against Microsoft. The letters, prepared by Americans for Technology Leadership, had in some cases been mailed from deceased citizens or nonexistent addresses. [3] " According to this article, Microsoft actually sent letters of support with the address of (among others) of deceased citizins, which clearly proves that the letters were in fact written by Microsoft and posted under other names.

- Microft's deceit (again) by astroturfing (see http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/st

Much of this happened before the Web was mature enough to capture and document the discussion. There's good link in one of the other replies, but here are a few more:

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=283 96
Link to a new item about a lawsuit Novell filed in 2004 alleging OS-level sabotage. It does point out that WordPerfect's main problem was lack of a Windows version, but it also alleges Microsoft indulged in some software sabotage.

http://www3.gripe2ed.com/scoop/comments/2005/10/24 /9814/8315/20?mode=alone;showrate=1
An anonymous posting to Ed Foster's Gripelog by someone who claims his wife was a WP beta tester. Mentions the undocumented API issue but does point out it has never been proven sufficiently to allow companies to sue MS for damages. Blames a lot of the troubles with both MS Word and Wordperfect on memory management issues, which is a valid shot.

But the most interesting is this analysis of the MS anti-trust trial written by Ralph Nader (admittedly no friend of any monopolist, but a guy who does his homework): http://www.cptech.org/ms/harm.html. When you get far enough down in the article, you'll find this quote:

But, as Judge Jackson points out, and as most computer experts know, not all of the quality problems are innocent. In its internal emails and by countless examples, Microsoft has demonstrated that it believes it benefits when consumers cannot make competitor's products work correctly. Microsoft has a range of methods to undermine its competitor's products. When it does not use deliberate sabotage, it can withhold important technical information or refuse to license technology to its competitors, such as when it refused to permit Netscape to distribute a utility to log-on to Internet Service Providers, or when it withholds or unexpectedly changes applications programming interfaces and data file formats.

The reason Novell included intentional sabotage in their suit was becuase of evidence submitted from the anti-trust trial. Again, there are only indirect references to the practice in the trial evidence, not explicit evidence from the OS code itself, but when has anyone who hasn't signed a non-disclosure agreement really gotten a good look at what's under Windows' hood?

Does it pass the test for "beyond resonable doubt" -- probably not. However, "preponderance of evidence" only requires 51% certainty. There are quite a few people who will look at the trial evidence and Microsoft's behavior in other areas and pass that 51% mark.

A summary with several links to more info can be found here. And another report on it here. Don't know if that's the "proof" you want, but it sure looks like MS was/is astroturfing to me.

1) The US is not the world, so your laws can go hang.

. . . an IBM Cell-based bladeserver. Lookie here:
The Linux Beacon--IBM Announces BladeCenter Kickers
The Cell Processor's Other Life - NewsFactor Network

You can get a IBM Cell blade, but its only availiable by special bid:

http://www.itjungle.com/tlb/tlb021406-story02.html
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=022 00000JLPQ The Cell Processor's Other Life - NewsFactor Network

You can get a IBM Cell blade, but its only availiable by special bid:

http://www.itjungle.com/tlb/tlb021406-story02.html
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=022 00000JLPQ The Cell Processor's Other Life - NewsFactor Network

While Sony could be prosecuted under U.S. cybercrime law, no one thinks it will be.
 
What I want to know is why the fuck shouldn't a corporation be held to the same rules the rest of us are? As the line above illustrates, people now assume that companies can abuse the law as they see fit and not get reprimanded.
 
While the rest of us (AKA as not rich) get sued into oblivion or prosecuted to the fullest for downloading a shitty CD that should only be $5.

Yeah the Blue Gene running Linux thing is a bit overstated. According to this article from Newsfactor, "only 1,000 of the nodes will be powered by Linux, while the rest will use specialized software to power the machine." I expect that the 'specialized software' is z/OS or something similar, or custom code specific to the application or problem being solved.

It's already happened. Sony Slammed with Suits over Rootkit

Among other things, Sony is specifically accused of fraud, false advertising, trespass and violation of state and federal statues prohibiting malware, and unauthorized computer tampering,

I don't really see much of a point in arguing with you as I obviously can't change your mind, but if you insist:

NetBSD's fast portability is due to its Modular Portability Layer (MPL). With the MPL, the driver is completely isolated from the hardware platform, I/O instructions or no I/O instructions, interlocking, retry error recovery, bounce buffers, memory type boundaries, scatter/gather maps in host bridges, even peripherals are transparently handled beneath the driver layer. Several embedded systems using NetBSD have required no additional software development other than toolchain and target rehost.

With Linux, however, device driver code must be reworked for every new architecture. Wasabi Systems engineers ported NetBSD to the SuperH processor core in under six weeks; Linux took three months. NetBSD was ported to the AMD x86-64 architectures in about a month; Linux took six months. NetBSD supports over fifty architectures from the same source tree meaning any change to the machine independent code is available to all architectures as soon as the build system can churn them out.

Even AMD agrees:

"According to Ed Gasiorowski, director of developer relations for AMD's Computation Products Group, the port to AMD's Opteron processor was extremely fast. "I think the initial port was probably about two days [and] might have been as short as one day. That was a full 64-bit port." He told NewsFactor that the speed of the port was due to the quality of NetBSD's codebase. "We were quite impressed with how clean the code was.... This code was ready for 64-bit before it ever got to porting over to Opteron. Not only from having done it before [porting to a 64-bit system], but also good programming practices." - read full article at: http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21244.html

"Due to NetBSD's ease of portability, Wasabi was able to get up and running on AMD's x86-64 platform several months sooner than other teams could port Linux."
- full article: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1150126 ,00.asp

Again, I am not saying that NetBSD is better that Linux, just an inherently more portable opertaing system.

Recent story

Sun's Niagara is coming...

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_title= Sun_Micro_Set_To_Release_Eight_Core_Niagara_System s&story_id=37716

Here's some facts for you: broadband usage in the U.S. has more than tripled since 2001, and it was projected (in fall 2004) that by the end of that year, 43% of U.S. households would have broadband, according to the FCC and research group IDC (sorry, there aren't any more recent stats).

While the U.S. is ranked only 11th worldwide in penetration rates per capita, this is due to the fact that many of the countries ahead of us have urban areas with much higher population densities.

If the government in the U.S. subsidized broadband here the way they do in Korea, Hong Kong, Canada, etc., all the Bush-bashers would be complaining about how we're wasting money on technology instead of feeding the poor, cleaning up the environment, etc. etc. etc.

Bill Gates has come out publicly announcing there will be a Halo 3, and that it will be released on the day of the release of the PS3:

http://www.newsfactor.com/news/Gates-leaks-Halo-3- Release-Date/story.xhtml?story_id=11300CTNVK45

A good ploy.. If I get a PS3, I'll still be playing Halo 3 on my xbox 360 that first day (and probably for quite a while after that).

"Target thrives; Wal-Mart wobbles"

"Wal-Mart Quits Online DVD Biz"

So I reiterate: gees, maybe mindless growth... yadda yadda....

Perhaps instead of spending time online slinging around insults, you should try reading the news some time.

A lawsuit, even a fairly big one, is well within the means of a typical homeowner. Not for a ramen-eating subsistence level college student, but even there, you have plenty of legal options. And most developers that I talk to are married with a home and children, certainly able to retain counsel, especially for something that is clear cut and can provide hefty fees the attorney can get a cut of.

We're not talking about some elite, near mythical group of people; open a phone book if you need a lawyer.

--
Evan

If you have any such magic bits of code, you're better off going after suckers that paid off SCO like this mircosoft partner or even better these guys who seem to make it a political statement to pay off anyone who threatens anyone with IP (probably at the bidding of their new master who bought them for $2B).

The license may be opensource, but Sun sure as hell isn't, they sold java to M$ for chump change for fucks sake, that small amount of cash isn't going to make a difference, even to a company falling as fast as Sun, its clearly indicative of a greater plan to retake the Unix world. Sun is very clearly anti-open-source, after all they are Sco's secret licensee.

I know those other programs are on the list. I listed them.
It is good to know that you are still using WP (and kudos to the other lawyers and lawyer-types who are as well). But youve gone off the deep end if you think that my poke at WP somehow meant you should, as you say "throw in the towel yada yada yada" and suddenly use MS products. I challenge you to point out where in my post I say this.
But as far as all the other software listed (or not listed), it simply is not possible for everyone to be happy.
You missed the entire point of my post. Someone in an earlier post put up this list. I replied with the list as humor (in my opinion anywa) - realistically, what percentage of the corporate workstations (this article references admins, presumably ones that work for a "company") actually have Windows-Eyes installed?
You will actually be forced to install it someday.
But anyway, I just wanted to clear it up. The original reply somehow hosed my intent. Meh.

People will also pay for "fill dirt", or dirt taken from a construction site where they dug a big hole in the building process.

But the thing is, there's a reason that people will pay for dirt or manure or whatever. Dirt and turds have legitimate uses. If you have a big hole in your yard after tearing down the old shed out back, you need some fill dirt to fill in that hole. If you need to fertilize a field, go buy yourself some animal feces. People pay money for these because making enough dirt or crap themselves is prohibitively inconvenient (do you really feel like raising chickens or cows yourself just for their excrement?).

On the other hand, browser extensions - which appear to be all this new company offers - are much easier either to create by oneself or to find a free version that someone else has created. Yes, the usefulness might still be there in some cases, but when you eliminate the prohibitive inconvenience of self-production, it reduces the value of the commodity tremendously.

The only way I can see this company succeeding is if they have a lot of capital available to buy the extensions that other people have created in order to lock down the market, as well as to tie people up in farcical legal battles over patents and copyrights.

Come to think of it, maybe they could hit Microsoft up for some investment prospects.

In Other news: Bill Gates Promises Action on Spyware & Malware

http://business.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_t itle=Gates-Promises-Action-on-Spyware--Malware&sto ry_id=1510.46178820&category=business