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Seriously.

Inadequate? BS. I think everyone would agree that the USPTO (US patent office) is allowing all sorts of ridiculous, obvious patents to be approved through without adequate oversight & investigation. That's a problem with the USPTO, not the law. Contentious areas of patent law include "ways of doing business" patents and patenting higher organisms (like the Harvard mouse)

Have you just come back from a trip from Mars Mr Anonymous Coward? The big topic here on earth is patent reform. Many sound minds in the software and IT industries have begun clamoring for it, primarily because a general consensus seems to be emerging that the current patent system is indeed woefully broken. Here is a recent slashdot post on the topic so you can catch up. I would encourage you to read it. At the very least read this one on ZDNET where it is reported that even MS lawyers are clamoring for it.

You may also want to update yourself on the meaning of BS. BS means outright wrong here on earth. I don't think I am outright wrong in saying that the law is inadequate, when even lawyers are wincing at the plethora of frivolous patent suits being litigated in the courts.

A patent owner can do whatever they want with their patent, including sell it, license it, burn it, or do nothing. That is basic economic freedom, that you can do whatever you want with your property.

Economic freedom has nothing to do with patent laws, in theory or applicability. And FYI, at least here in the US (arguably the most free economic system on Earth) you cannot do whatever you want with your property. You cannot for example simply burn down your house. In most states you cannot carry your gun, even if properly licensed, inside you jacket pocket - and that regardless of whether you intend to use it or not.

Back to the topic though. Patent laws were instituted to protect inventors and innovators from copy cats. What companies like NTP do is abuse that system by buying out patents and then sitting on them until they find a product that may perhaps infringe on that patent. That is not economic freedom. That is stiffling innovation. Sure it is legal, but when you can legally usurp a law and use it in a manner counter to its intended purpose, then it seems to me that the law is in fact inadequate. I am not arguing that patents are bad, I own a couple myself and I am currently developing the ideas they express. But as a patent holder, it makes me sick to think that I would sit on those patents waiting for some other person to have the same idea, go develop it and then sue them for profit.

But then again, you sound like a patent lawyer for a patent holding company, judging from the eloquence of your response.

However, I really think the EU made itself ridiculous by ordering Microsoft to ship an alternative version of Windows without the Media Player. Microsoft created that "Windows Reduced Media Edition" (a name that doesn't quite suggest you should buy it) and sold it at the same price (!) as Windows with the Media Player. Obviously they didn't do anything to generate demand for that particular version. So what's the point in all of that? It just became a matter of principle for some bEUrocrats.

Moreover, the EU Commission lacks a consistent strategy for the software market. On the one hand, they start those anti-trust proceedings and believe they make the market more competitive (which the "Windows Reduced Media Edition" obviously didn't). On the other hand, the EU Commission was a driving force behind that EU software patent directive. And now the EU Commission even wants to retry and legalize software patents in Europe as a side effect of a so-called "community patent regulation":
ZDNet UK: EC slipping software patents "through backdoor"
TheInquirer.net: EU attempts to intro software patents by the back door

That makes no sense to me. A bundling of Windows with the Media Player isn't even 1% as bad as patents on multimedia data formats. The bundling may affect market share over time and it may make consumers less likely to choose another software for playing digital media, but patents constitute monopolies from day one and potentially eliminate all choice.

The European Patent Office has granted numerous anti-virus and firewall patents, which the EU Commission wanted and still wants to legalize in Europe:
ZDNet UK: EC slipping software patents "through backdoor"
TheInquirer.net: EU attempts to intro software patents by the back door
That would be much more anti-competitive than any bundling decision that Microsoft could ever take.

It's the same with the Media Player, which the Commission wants to be un-bundled from Windows: Today's computers are multimedia devices, and it's just logical to me that software like that would be pre-installed on a computer when I buy it. As long as those multimedia data formats aren't patented, people would still have the choice to download alternative solutions like MPlayer.

Getting back to Symantec: That company is a crying baby. They can't seriously insist that Microsoft deliver less secure software just so that Symantec can make some more money! If the EU Commission were to support Symantec's special interest in this case, then it might as well start putting out Stalin-like five-year plans for the European IT markets.

There must be a limit to (near-)monopoly abuse. If MSFT were to decide that everyone who wants to buy Windows has to buy Office, then I'd also be against it. But I can't see the reason why MSFT shouldn't provide some security software. In fact, my own experience is that Windows' built-in security tools cause a lot less trouble to my system than Symantec's Norton anti-virus and firewall tools (which also leave a lot to be desired in terms of usability).

If there's such hosility out there for online advertising amongst users why is it still a growing industry? See http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,392257 85,00.htm Answer: Internet Explorer

And now folks, click on the Talk back link of that ZDNet article. You get the source of the HTML instead of the rendered page.

Being convicted for the act of breaking the law is the way it's supposed to work. However, there's a difference - he was convicted because he lied to the cops.

zdnet Judge Purdy accepted that Cuthbert had not intended to cause any damage, and also pointed out there was almost no case law in this area.

District judge Mr Q. Purdy, who heard the case, told Cuthbert it was "with deep regret that he was finding him guilty"

It looks to me that if he hadn't changed his story, nothing serious would have happened. If he had not talked to the cops without a lawyer, I think there's a good chance he would have gotten away with maybe a slap on the wrist. Since he lied to the cops to confuse the issue, the judge got mad and used a guilty verdict as a punishment for a lie. That's just wrong, and it sets a horrible precedence for future cases that are pursued based on a horrible law.

I guess it's not just the US who has a fuggered up legal system that bases legal decision on petty "get even" routines... It's just sad.

Somehow, I think Daniel Cutberth, 28, east London, arrested on January 20th and the Solaris using, Lynx toting 28-year-old east Londoner arrested about the same time are one and the same.

So much for the "Lynx theory".

Sure, you can argue that there's less of a lower-class, but as far as I can tell, computers are still both produced by wage slaves, in developing countries, brought to the West for our use, and then and disposed in the same developing countries.

Obviously these people have never read those MSFT funded TCO studies or they would never have let that commie OS through the door.

I'll bet they have, they actually wrote one of those studies

From TFA:

Menzel defended this study, saying that Capgemini provides an independent view, but admitted "sometimes there are situations where you get together with the client and defend their data."

Yeah, sure. Those "situations" would be when "the client" gives you a lot of "their money".

Very objective consultancy.

A company that migrated from Microsoft Windows to Linux on the desktop has praised the open source operating system's stability.

Günter Stoverock, the data processing manager at German import company Heinz Tröber, said on Thursday his firm had decided against running its ERP software on Windows as it considered it less stable than the open source alternative.

Is it not amazing that MS is supporting PDF? AFTER MA made its decision with use on Open Document formats? I mean if this is such a great feature, then why was it not discussed at the PDC? Oh yeah, forgot at that time the MA decision was not final. So I wish MS would admit that they are doing this so that they can be MA decision compliant (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,390203 96,39215912,00.htm) and not because "the customer" wanted it. BECAUSE the customer has wanted it for ages!

Last Monday, the FFII and NoSoftwarePatents.com jointly won the CNET award for Outstanding Contribution to Software Development in Europe.

This award for the anti software patents movement is both very welcome and very well deserved. When the European Parliament rejected software patents on July 6, it was a great victory. Not only for the open source movement, but for all European businesses that use or produce software. It is nice to see this recognized in this manner.

One To Win

We also have a chance of winning another award in recognition of all activists who have spent countless hours on making the swpat victory happen.

The founder of NoSoftwarePatents.com Florian Müller has been nominated as a candidate for the title "European of the Year" in an open Internet poll organized by The European Voice, a weekly magazine that focuses on EU politics.

If he wins either the big "European of the Year" award, or the category "Campaigner of the Year" where he is also nominated, it would be a nice PR victory for the anti-swpat movement.

Also nominated in the "MEP of the Year" category is Michel Rochard, the former French Prime Minister who championed our cause as rapporteur in the European Parliament, where we won on July 6.

If you want to donate a few mouseclicks to the fight against software patents, you can go to and register your vote. Only one vote per person.

Note that you have to vote in all the categories, or your vote will be disqualified. For the most part it doesn't matter who you choose in the other categories, but there are a few bad apples (from an anti-swpat perspective), so here are some suggestions. But it's Campaigner, MEP, and European of the Year that are the important ones.

1) Commissioner of the Year:
Don't vote for Charlie McGreevy, who is the commissioner who tried to ram software patents down Europe's throat.

2) MEP of the Year:
Vote for Michel Rochard, who won for us in Parliament.

3) Statesman of the Year:
Avoid Blair, Schröder, and Juncker because of how their respective governments behaved over the directive (especially Juncker, Luxembourg). This leaves the candidates from Italy, Poland or Spain to choose from.

4) Diplomat of the Year:
Don't vote for Nicolas Schmitt, who is part of the Luxembourg government that handled the swpat issue so disgracefully and anti-democratically during the Luxembourg EU Presidency.

5) Campaigner of the Year:
Vote for Florian Müller, NoSoftwarePatents.com

6) Business Leader of the Year:
Pick one.

7) Journalist of the Year:
Pick one.

8) Achiever of the Year:
Pick one.

9) Non-EU Citizen of the Year:
Pick one.

10) European of the Year:
Vote for Florian Müller, NoSoftwarePatents.com
Although one could argue that Michel Rochard would be just as worthy from our perspective, I think it sends a stronger and clearer message if one of our activists wins the award, rather than a politician that is involved in many other issues as well. As it would be very damaging to our chances of winning the most prestigious of the awards if the anti-swpat vote is split on two candidates, my recommendation is Florian Müller only.

For more information about the nominees, see the presentations at the award site here. The poll closes on November 11, and the award will be handed out at a gala dinner hosted by former EU Parliament president Pat Cox later that month.

• Don't let us gloat over the damage to Microsoft. The Eolas patent is a threat to large parts of the Internet as we know it.

• Eolas' success will encourage investments in industrialized deep-pocket patent trolls by venture capitalists, corporations, and high net-worth individuals. Look at this Goldman Sachs venture here, for an example: www.ipvalue.com

• The Eolas case will be used as a key argument of the IT industry to support that Patent Reform Bill in US Congress, a piece of legislation that would limit the damage an Eolas can cause to a Microsoft while giving the large players ever more advantages and disadvantaging the defensive power of open-source projects and smaller companies.

Good news:

• Microsoft backed virtually any pro-patent lobbying entity in Europe (ACT, CompTIA, Campaign for Creativity, EICTA, BSA, and numerous local ones). A dozen Eolas-like cases down the road, they may reconsider their stance.

• As a representative of the anti-software patent movement in Europe, I've been nominated by a jury for the Europeans of the Year award, which is sponsored by Microsoft. It's a public Internet poll in which I might even win, either in the EU Campaigner of the Year or the overall European of the Year category, and I've already vowed to give the prize money to the FFII, which fights against software patents. If you feel like supporting this Microsoft money to anti-patent group effort, please vote for me there in both categories (Campaigner and the long overall list at the end). Don't have to be European for that. Thanks. End of campaign message :-)

Going offshore isn't much protection if the US gets their way:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651, 39220179,00.htm

Microsoft, *IAA, etc. know they can't win against offshore firms and open source under the current global legal system. They're pushing hard to have US laws (and presumably the US patent/copyright databases) applied globally.

Both from September:

From Xiti, a French Web monitoring company.

From NetApplications, a US Web monitoring company. Both say that while FF is growing, it's not growing as fast as some of the other alternative browsers. Of particular interest is that both say IE is still slowly losing ground.

Linux on the desktop is way less common than Mac. Mac is about 3-5% of the desktop market, Linux is about .25%. That is 6-10 times less, and I'll bet a good portion of those desktops are work machines (I know departments at my company that use Linux for desktops instead of Windows).

Where do you get your numbers? From Microsoft?

In late 2003, Linux had 2.8% desktop market share to the Mac's 2.9% according to IDC. (ref: http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39 020472,39118695,00.htm

According to w3schools.com, 3.3% of browsers are reporting an operating system of Linux, compared to 3.1% reporting Mac OS. (ref: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp).

Yes, I bought Linux Game Programming (by Nurgle, not JRH's unfortunately) and he was adamant on that point, but it'd be nice to have AvP & other old games fully portable.

If Carmageddon uses Direct Play then I think it's in the best interests for all of us discerning gamers!

I don't seem to see anyone point out that Mirosoft's License for interoperability (also here and here ) that was created for Open Source access to otherwise DRM'ed information was a sham. They put "Per installation Licensing Fee's" in it!

This was demanded by the EU on the grounds of Open Source being deliberately disempowered BTW. IMHO they deserve all they get from this (which will be very little no doubt).

I'm glad to hear that game developers have wised-up and stopped using Direct Play, it seems fairly trivial to build your own network code anyhow.

Thus the drive by MS to push DRM'd proprietary formats with illegal tying to other proprietary tools, all protected by the DMCA/EUCD, EEA and sw patents. Then the US will enforce MS' will.

Definitely, check out these screenshots, I mean I haven't tried it but this ribbon thingy doesn't strike me as intuitive as the menu paradigm we're used to.

Microsoft's Screenshot
Zdnet series of screenshots

Plus it takes loads of screen real-estate.

Does Symantec know customers who did?

Is Ed Gibson a Firefox user?

Whilst it's not all the fault of the credit card companies, Credit Card Security is nothing better than pathetic.

You don't need to look far to see stories about millions of credit card details getting stolen, or Hotel chains putting full unencrypted card details and address information on their swipe cards. Whilst Google, Yahoo and major search engines are very good now at filtering them from their results, online shopping sites for small businesses are still lax in their security by having their online order files with customer names, addresses and credit card details freely downloadable (if you know the URL), often in something as simple as a CSV file maintained by FrontPage extensions.

So why would Johnny Hacker spend time and money acquiring an RFID Card Reader so he can tour buses and trains to swipe card details for a few individuals, with the increased risk of getting caught, when he can stay in front of his computer to get hundreds, thousands or millions of cardholder details with far more ease? Again I say: The issue of Card ID theft isn't really that much more than it already is.

Bah at your linking to the printable version of that story, which came up in a teeny-tiny font that (in IE) I couldn't resize. Linking to the main story webpage at http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,390203 75,39219186,00.htm would have been much easier to read on-screen, even if I did have to wait for the ads to load.

ouch

Mozilla has reacted to a Symantec report issued on Monday which said serious vulnerabilities were being found in Mozilla's browsers faster than in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The study was conducted over the first six months of 2005.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/print/?TYPE=story&AT=392191 86-39020375t-10000025c

I use linux daily and enjoy it, but is it really ready for your standard mom-and-pop windows users anyways?

On and off for five years, I've seen a range of people from grade schoolers to retirees come into the library and use various linux distros without noticing. For a few years now, the distros are set up to detect and mount floppies and flash drives automatically. Unmounting the drives is actually easier than on MS-Windows.

Try it. I recommend Mandriva or Ubuntu for that purpose. Linux distros are there. The only thing lacking is either 1) OEM installations on new machines and/or 2) consumer awareness. And you know the obstacle with those already ...

b) indemnify themselves as much as possible against any public disclosure of said security holes by labeling the disclosers as 'irresponsible'.

And to prepare legal proceedings against those that do end up disclosing the holes against the wishes of the companies trying to patch them (here).

very well done though, yay technology.

I noticed a few days ago that I could watch a few documentarys online from their site, which was nice. A friend who works there told me they had plans to do stuff like this, so it's good to see that they're going ahead with it.

The only problem is that it's in Real format, which is fine on my Linux desktop, but an absolute pain on my iBook (I have to view the HTML source and look for the .ram file, then feed that into Realplayer manually).

Maybe it's my fault and I'm doing something wrong on my iBook (though I've tried to fix it for ages), but that's not the point really. I wish they'd hurry up with their new open format and release stuff in that soon.

This refers to an interview with Cohen about greater cooperation with Microsoft and more proprietary software on Linux.

Linus, who works at OSDL, has always been a pragmatist and never believed in FSF/Stallman religion. The vast majority of people look at code/computers as a tool and/or a technical curiousity, not a cult.

What, like one of these?

Unfortunately the CDDL which seems to be a deliberately more "patent friendly" license will never be safe to use;

I call either sheer FUD or that you havn't actually read the CDDL.

since Sun practically admits that it may contain patented code that they have the right to redistribute but that forks of their project couldn't.

This is absolute FUD. The CDDL *requires* the originator and contributors to automatically give patent grants, for good, to that CDDL code and its deratives - non-revocable.

See also what RMS has to say about OpenSolaris: Peculiar licence he says (cause it isn't GPL) but he uses the word "free" several times, not a word RMS applies to software lightly.

Note that one of the things that seems likely for the GPLv3 are patent provisions for a patent pool, similar to what the CDDL does.

--paulj

Sun employee (not speaking for Sun), FSF supporter.

Now Solaris is free (kinda, I have reservations about the license).

It's free full stop. Even RMS says it's now a "free" OS (but a "peculiar" licence in his words, see RMS' article in ZDNet on Sun). RMS isn't exactly noted for using the word "free" in a loose way. If he says the licence is "free" (albeit peculiar to him because it isn't GPL), exactly what is it in the CDDL which causes you to have reservations about it?

That means people have Solaris code available to them.

No, it means they're free to do what they want with it. Solaris source has not been /that/ hard to get, lots of people outside Sun have had it available to them for /long/ time. Now, additionally, they're free to hack on it, extend and do almost whatever they like (The CDDL doesn't try to reach into other non-CDDL or CDDL-derived files, as the GPL tries to. Indeed, if you were a BSD person you might say the CDDL is more free than the GPL ;) ).

Can we say it is a Solaris with the Linux name?

Or vice versa.

More competition in the "Free-nix" world is never a bad thing. BSD, Linux, OpenSolaris. Sounds good to me.

--paulj

NB: I work for Sun, but I don't claim to speak for Sun.

Microsoft seems to be getting a bit desperate. Or greedy, probably both. You'd think IE Explorer gaining on Firefox would be enough for them (even though Firefox is clearly better).

According to Malcolm, who admits to being against software patents, said there is 'no question' that Linux already violates a number of patents, which could lead to further litigation.

He provided a lot of fuel for the fire, without giving a single one of the "obvious" examples.

With friends like that, you don't need enemies.

Or to pick a more apropos thought - "useful fool." After all, people like him, who have to join mensa to try to make people think they're smart, must think we're all stupider than he is (fact - more than 99.9% of all geniuses world-wide are smart enough to avoid the mensa scam, whereas lots of non-geniuses with enough time and practice testing - you can buy the practice tests from the person who wrote the mensa test - can get in).

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,392132 95,00.htm

For those of you that were hoping to read more than some author's wild speculation here's real google news... They've suspended scanning books due to copyright issues. It sounds like they're giving everyone a chance to respond that has a copyright on whether or not they get their books included.

man do i hate ie

Just posted this on ZDUK.

Also posted on the story's comments page

Congratulations - with your unrepentant attitude and sophomoric sarcasm you've clearly identified yourselves as the bad guys here.

The original article buried what should have been two interesting cautionery stories (about the information trails we leave behind us and Google's questionable data retention policies) under a mountain of unnecessary privacy-invasion and cheap personal shots. It was utterly unnecessary (and you had no right) to explictiely identify the person you'd researched, and selecting Google's CEO was a blatant attack both on his person and the company, making it very obvious the author had some kind of axe to grind.

A professional journalist, acting with integrity, would either have anonymised the person but reported a frightening selection of facts about them or "objectively" researched their own (or a colleague's) life. They would certainly have asked permission before publicly holding anyone up to such unwanted scrutiny.

Simply because the information is out there, that doesn't justify publicising it. Light is constantly bouncing off your body when you're at home, but that wouldn't justify poking a camera through the blinds and taking naked photos of the "journalist" who caused this furore, would it?

Granted, Google appears to have over-reacted in blacklisting CNet for a year, but it was both the journalist *and* CNet the company who allowed this hatchet-job to be posted to the site, and since you've left yourself open to lawsuits for such blatant and deliberate infringement of privacy I'd say you got off lightly.

With this childish attempt at getting one more dig in you demonstrate beyond the shadow of a doubt that this is more about a personal vendetta against Google, and not (as you will no doubt claim) reporting in the public interest.

This is doubly uncalled-for, because Google themselves are the ones making this information available. Unless you are seriously arguing for the abolishment of all search engines (which would pretty much render the web useless), it should be obvious to all that the onus is on the user to use their service responsibly. Congratulations - you are the first entity to publicly prove that you can't.

In addition, your sensationalist methods have quite obscured the *important* parts of this debate - how to deal with the increasing transparency of an information society, and Google's data retention policies. If you were trying to make any point at all in the public interest, you have therefore failed miserably.

You should know that this pathetic display has quite turned around my opinion of the integrity and professionalism of ZDNet and CNet both, and I will no longer be using your websites or purchasing your publications in any form.

I agree, particularly when you consider that MS meant to exclude wine users with WGA

I teach game development and do alot of 3D modelling. Alot of what you say above is false out of the box.

The state of 3D on Linux is far from sucking. Proprietary Nvidia drivers on Linux cannot be beaten, out-doing their Win32 counterparts alot of the time, even where frame rate (Q3a, Doom3, UT2004, AA) is concerned. Nvidia on Linux is an industry standard 3D animation platform in the feature film industry, for good reason. When teaching game development, if my students are sitting at machines running Nvidia binary drivers on a Linux OS, I'm having a very good day. Naturally, I'd love it if an open alternative could compete - you seem only aware of the open-source drivers, which are essentially blind to the rich talents of the Nvidia GPU. ATI's fglrx drivers are now (finally) on par with Win32 where pixel/vertex shaders (GLSL ) are concerned and close to a performance equal generally. The installation process is slightly more annoying, that is all. Many non-free distro's handle this for the user automagically (Mepis Linux comes to mind)

Secondly, binary compatibility is no more troublesome these days than it is between versions of Windows, eg running a game made for Win95 on XP - occassionally an issue. Installation of binaries can be done easily using a system like Autopackage if one doesn't want to find and or become an *.rpm/*.deb package maintainer.

Where devices are concerned, the trouble you speak of is many years in the past - udev works in userspace, and uses hotplug calls that the kernel signals whenever a device is added or removed from the kernel. Permissions, naming and control is all done in userspace.

Finally where sales of Linux games are concerned, I tend to agree that it is perhaps a little harder to market to Linux users, though from experience I am the first to buy a game that comes out for Linux. You will find though that due to existance of compatibility layers like Wine, publishers simply don't know how many Linux users are buying their games. I can account for around 14 windows games I've bought with the pure intention of playing them on Linux (for instance). Linux desktop market share is widely considered to be above or equal to that of the Apple OS. Whatever kind of market it is, it's growing.

Lastly, for the grandfather, Ryan, of Icculus is your best bet for a Linux port.

PS. Game development, as a culture, needs free software if a) small to medium sized developers are to survive and b) if micro-markets (like that of the indie-film industry) are to burgeon. Tools are increasingly expensive and publishers offset this cost with IP tradeoffs (buy outs). If I were you I'd ship the engine as free software (binary checksum for login, cheat protection and validation) and sell the data and/or subscription time. More on why here.

Ok!

Here you go. It was on slashdot a while back.

In the meantime, please use nosoftwarepatents.com instead, where you will find more information on the issue.

I know a lot more about the TPM than what is in any FAQ; I've read every page of the spec and have written software .... okay?

If you are the expert you say you are, then it should be obvious to you that the preceding attestation is insecure. :)

...there is no interest in general purpose PCs to stop them booting other OS's.

Here, you are not supporting your argument on a technical basis (e.g. Intel writes the BIOS, therefore Intel decides if Linux can boot), but a social one (e.g. Intel likes Linux, really we do *blink* *blink*).

Intel makes money off of Linux and they are never going to stop making machines that can run it!

Is that a promise? Sign here. Well, that's not where I was going with this, but I have no quarrel with that as a goal.

The problem with what you describe is you could patch the BIOS to disable this check of the TPM

That depends on how picky the boot ROM wants to be about the BIOS it checksums. If you are saying that in some current crop of systems it's not going to resort to being picky, that is something I might be led to believe. But, that's something that may be changed in the future, without a public announcement, if, say, MSFT requires it from Dell as part of some pact. In fact, come to think of it, they had announced a strategy to lock Linux out of PCs a while while back.

And there are other restrictions that the BIOS may have to fulfill before it can even start, but I won't get into those.

In short the TPM is not there to keep the machine from booting other software....

I don't [have to] doubt your [presently] good intentions about that. MSFT, who has bought Gator/Claria, and other spyware vendors will have their own plans for it. They are also in the business to make money. I won't describe the horrid things they are capable of doing with this because I don't want to give them any ideas :)

...That does have DRM implications, but the details are totally different from the misleading picture that you described.

You are once again focusing on what the most immediate systems do, while ignoring the capabilities other people will use it for, especially a couple of years from now. I'm more interested in what the full capabilities are, and where this is going. Are we unwittingly enabling a 1984 type of future for ourselves? If so, maybe the name of Sapiens Sapiens should be reconsidered.

And when, pray tell, has Opera Software "whined"?

And that's just the company itself. Don't even get me started on how Opera's users whine (Hey, Opera had that feature first! They stole it from us!). Damn, I already got started.

"And, of course, they aren't making some kind of patent requiring exclusivity. So anybody who *does* want to do it themselves, still can."

I'm a bit confused. Isn't exclusivity and licensing the point of patents? Amazon doesn't have a great track record of non-exclusivity.

Amazon Patents User Viewing Histories
Amazon Patents Cookies (from the "are you f'ing kidding me dept.)
Amazon One-Click Shopping

From what I can see, Amazon's primary business may be Amazon.com. But, it's secondary business is certainly to patent the obvious and the mundane, then attack its rivals with them. And there are plenty of rival companies out there already doing this for many services, not just web. In fact, you can sell web services over eBay now, using Paypal, also owned by eBay. How is this different?

Check again, IBM encouraged its users to switch to firefox two months ago. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39 020384,39198253,00.htm

the correct link for the 2nd article [Mozilla: IE7 will boost Firefox take-up] is:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/applications/0,39 020384,39209591,00.htm

ZdNet UK also has a new "behind the scenes at the Mozilla Foundation" article which talks about some of the contributors and has photos of the office (including a cool bridge made of soda cans)

http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,39020463,392 08853,00.htm

a few reasons.