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I did. It works in C++ too. :-)

Yeah, we'll have to "upgrade" to Win2K Advanced Server to get enough processor licenses for a dual processor hyperthreading box. Otherwise we'll be violating the EULA, and they might hit us or something. (*cringes*). Great, I can't wait.

Hyperthreading is a pretty cool idea, especially for those of us who would like to see SMP move more into the mainstream.

According to this article, though (posted on 2cpu.com), the Windows 2000 scheduler doesn't know how to take advantage of hyperthreading, since it doesn't know how to take advantage of virtual processors. (I suppose Windows XP does?) Go figure. Anyway, this looks like it's probably worth checking into. I'm sure Linux will support it!

This is, in fact, legal in some states (California being one).

Holy shit, now that is scary.

If Microsoft had wanted this, they could have just come up with a proprietary interface protocol with a really weird connector, both of which would be patented.

That's true, obviously it's been done before. The thing is, USB is extremely cheap (chipsets are only a couple $$, and cables aren't bad either), plus a lot of people know it since it's a pretty open standard, so you don't have to train people to use it. I mean, we're talking R&D, manufacturing, etc. lots of money here, not just drivers. Instead, they (predictably) choose to take an open-looking standard and twist it so nobody but them can play. How is this any different than what they've been up to their entire (corporate) life?

if you are a big company and you want to prevent competitors from manufacturing peripherals for your product, is there any law that would allow you do to so?

AFAIK, you can patent the interface. That's about it (copyright doesn't apply, and you can't call it a trade secret because - *doh* - millions of people have it.)

Xbox To Use Region-Locked Peripherals

True, maybe the Japanese controllers will work with the MS consoles, but we need to look beyond the immediate future here.

Hmm, let's think here...

1. MS (rumored to be) using region locking, *in the context of*
2. the well-known DVD region fiasco, equals...

Well, at any rate, it sure makes me nervous. Think about when they start selling region-locked Ethernet, or region locked hard drives, etc. add-ons for the Xbox. Region locking in general is a way for large companies to restrain trade contrary to international agreements. It was never a problem before recently because either (a) nobody thought of it (doubtful) or (b) the technological means to do it weren't around until recently.

DVD's have recently proven (in some people's minds, anyway) that "consumers" (if we're all consumers, who the hell is producing, btw?) will put up with this region locking restraint of trade nonsense. And it's a well known fact that the courts are so far behind in their understanding of technology that they won't figure out what's going on until nobody even remembers the way things used to be. I mean, "Microsoft" and "restraint of trade" -- who would have ever thought of those two words in the same sentence? :-) IOW, this doesn't surprise me in the least.

At least I know which gaming console I won't be buying anytime soon, though! :-)

...those controllers tend to wear out pretty quickly. Maybe MS did a study and decided they'd be missing out on a lot of long-range profits if they let other people sell controllers. Maybe they don't want the price of controllers driven down by competition...

*or* maybe they're just thinking in the short term, and some middle manager in a mid-life crisis somewhere thinks he's oh so great because he can Bend Consumers To His Will.

After all, look what clones did for the PC market... but also remember, IBM isn't selling them anymore. Still, it's *controllers* for heaven's sake, not entire consoles! Oh well, I guess we'll see programmable USB packet editors showing up pretty soon (that could be pretty cool anyway. :-)

Actually, I don't think the BSA counts hard drives per se, but their method for estimating piracy (as of May 2001) was (essentially) to count the number of PC's shipped, then compare the number of applications they *think* will be installed per PC to the (number shipped pre-installed + number bought in stores). (See especially pages 8-9 in the PDF file.) People have been complaining about this for a while, but it's the BSA's stated position not to back down (since that would lead to lower piracy figures and less public outcry).

The BSA claims to have "softened" since the 1997 article, but I doubt it, considering that a year ago they were still sending out anti-piracy letters threatening clandestine raids, etc. Microsoft was helping them, and people were complaining about it. They basically pick random companies, threaten to sue them out of existence, and simultaneously try to get employees to turn them in. I doubt much has changed since then.

Anyway, I've strayed off topic from your off topic post. :-) Back to the original question, they count PC sales (and probably motherboards, etc. too) so yes all our Linux/FreeBSD/whatever home built computers are counted in the piracy figures. Also, I know MS OEM license agreements won't let companies that sell Windows sell blank computers because "they're sure to pirate Windows." MS has recently started charging for Visual Studio along with MSDN because "everyone who buys MSDN will use Visual Studio, so we might as well charge them for it." Etc.

I'd like to thank my good friend google for helping me along with this post. :-)

• There is no reason to be distributing warez, and if they have evidence that you are, then they have a legal right to seize the computer as evidence.

  I agree with the sentiment to some extent. My point was that they're overdoing it. I mean, why take the whole computer (motherboard, case, power supply, processor, heat sink, cd-rom, keyboard, monitor, etc.) when all they actually need is the hard drives? IMO, that's like saying, "OK, we found you had drugs in your car. So in addition to taking the drugs and your car, we're going to take your garage, toolshed, vacuum cleaner, and all your other cars too!" There isn't enough requirement for evidence, as someone else in this thread pointed out. The process is too open to abuse. And the powers that be have no motivation to change their behavior or self-police, after all, it's useful as an intimidation tactic, and we want to Intimidate Criminals.

  Plus, what if it wasn't warez? What if it was sharing some MP3's with a couple of friends? (granted, the people that get caught tend to be bandwidth hogging and posting their services all over Usenet, but from what I can tell, the anti-piracy crowd likes to encourage people to narc on each other too.) That's much more borderline, yet I could still see the FBI raiding dorm rooms for it.

• If it is found that something illegal was being done with the property, then you will not get it back, but then again you were doing something illegal with it, and should have thought about it.

  Don't forget about the 18 month intermediate period where they're holding it, or where some bureaucrat decided it would make a nice present for his daughter and "lost" it.

  What ever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?" I guess that went out of vogue with unrigged jury trials and fair courts...

How is the parent post flamebait?

You're right, he shouldn't have to turn the stock over to Nintendo. What the heck do they have to do with it? Are they some kind of governmental body or NGO? I mean, *he bought and paid for the units.*

Originally, there was precedent for banks seizing property if you didn't pay them, because, let's face it, you owed them money. This was similar to your neighbor coming and beating you up because you borrowed his club and didn't give it back. There was also precedent for governmental agencies (e.g. tax collectors) seizing property, for much the same reason.

Then, in the 1800's, the US got into "eminent domain." Basically, this means if the state doesn't agree with how you're using some land/property, they can seize it. But note, now for the first time it wasn't "theirs anyway," they're just flat out taking it.

...take a little step through seizing illegal drugs, etc...

and we wind up in the state we have nowadays, where college dorm rooms are routinely raided for computers. I mean, these are people in *college* for crying out loud! Can they really afford to replace their computers? If the FBI wants to take the warez ("illegal materials") or mp3's, shouldn't they just take the hard drives, give the seizee (I think I just invented a new word) a new equivalent capacity or value hard drive, and *oh* -- make sure to give them a copy of the OS too, since you wouldn't want them pirating Windows, which they will obviously do since you just gave them a new, blank hard drive, and that's how we count pirates! Oh, I forgot, it's the secret po^W^WFBI, and you're a Suspected Criminal, so that means all your base are belong to us! Welcome to the land of the free, biotch!

So obviously, IMO, having *anyone* seizing property because of an *alleged* violation of the DMCA is just way over the top.

Oops, my bad, it was Lotus vs. Borland. (That explains why I couldn't find it on Google!) I was confusing it with Apple vs. Microsoft, 'cause they were both look and feel cases.
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Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!

Just when it looks like the US might be realizing it's gone overboard with copyright and patent law, now here's a proposal to have the EU copy everything that's gone wrong with US IP law.

I thought originally patents were supposed to cover mechanisms. In the loose sense of the word, I suppose an algorithm is a mechanism, but *not* like Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, for crying out loud! In early landmark cases like Apple vs. Franklin (1983; Apple sued Franklin Computer for copying the ROM's on the Apple II+ directly to make a clone), the courts applied *copyright law*, not *patent law*. (Apparently you can only get a patent on generic ROM chips, not on ROM chips programmed a specific way.) The court used the (at the time) new Copyright Act of 1976 (which IMHO was much more reasonable than the DMCA is now!) to frame their decision. Unfortunately, the Lotus 123 case (Lotus vs. Microsoft), the Pentium name trademark case, and the Apple vs. Microsoft case, the courts significantly eroded copyright's ability to provide meaningful protection to software. So I think that's why companies have turned to software patents, because legally speaking, they're much more intractable. (Although there was obviously prior art for ripping off people through patents, e.g. LZW compression which *wasn't even original* (it was a derivative of the earlier LZ compression), yet was awarded a software patent.

Anyway, this is unfortunate, but it doesn't surprise me that the BSA would be pushing software patents. After all, they're the same people who estimate "sales lost to piracy" by counting the number of PC's sold without Windows and Office and ASSUMING that everyone having one of those PC's (a) really *is* running Windows and Office, they just pirated it, (b) would have paid for it to begin with. Plus they send threatening letters to companies telling them that "the BSA police might come knocking on their door," while simultaneously telling disgruntled employees to turn in their employers. Nothing like a little backstabbing to make our lives easier, eh. Oh well, the world is full of scumbags. Just my $0.02.
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Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!

Geez, looks like it disappeared. OK, well originally it was a link to the same page that's now in my .sig.
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Have you crashed Windows XP with a simple printf recently? Try it!

I've been using Apache 2 on Linux and FreeBSD for about 2 months now (got into it while playing around with Subversion, another project that seems to be making excellent progress), and IMHO it is really going to rock the server world. Some major plusses:

• ./configure; make; make install (almost). No more APACI, thankfully.
• APR. It's already starting to be used by other projects.
• Totally rewritten mod_cache, mod_proxy, etc. Works much better now!
• Will actually work on Windows (well, some may not see this as a benefit, but whatever).

People have been complaining that Apache 2 is slow to come out, but from what I've seen lurking on the mailing list, it's because they want to ensure the quality of this release. They've also been talking about how they want a lot of beta testers, because (<rumor mode on>)they want to release soon, maybe even from 2.0.32. So get out there and beta test it!

8.WebDAV support for Digest authentication

That's interesting, because AFAIK MSIE still doesn't support Digest authentication for WebDAV shares (a.k.a. "Web Folders"). (At least, IE5.5 doesn't, and IIRC neither does IE6). It seems to get confused and try to access the site using FrontPage extensions instead, which of course doesn't work because it's running Apache 2.0. That makes it hard to interoperate MSIE with other WebDAV products (like Subversion), at least if you're using Digest auth. I'm glad to see at least someone is actually trying to implement web standards, instead of mixing them together with proprietary stuff. Anyway, just my $0.02.
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Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!