Slashback: Switchover, EULA, Perspectives

Slashback. Updates and second thoughts tonight (below) on Borland's restrictive EULA, now much improved; another ueber-patch for MSIE; happy trails on the long ride from mediaone to aatbi; and how BSD suddenly topped Linux on the desktop.

It's the little things. Time for another cumulative patch for IE, it seems. (Mozilla may have its share of security problems, but at least there's a new build broken in unique and exciting ways more frequently :)). Logica writes with a snippet from this ZDNet article, which reads: "Microsoft released a collection of software fixes Monday to plug six security problems in its Internet Explorer browser, including one that could be exploited to take over a victim's computer."

"Users are urged to download the latest patch."

What happened to the tar-and-feather clause? djmurdoch writes "Back in January, Borland promised to come up with new EULAs without some objectionable terms. They've just posted the new EULAs. Gone are the anti-competitive product clause, the right to audit, and the requirement to give up a jury trial. They still have required registration, and you can't use a 2nd hand copy. They've added a requirement that it be licensed to one named user; you need extra licenses to share a copy. Not perfect, but a big improvement."

Keep in the loop as consolidation continues. craig writes: "AT&T Broadband has now posted instructions for their cable modem users to change their e-mail addresses from @mediaone.net to @attbi.com. The instructions have been posted here. The instructions seem to work, and my upgrade has been smooth.

The instructions have been posted on the web, but it looks like they have not been e-mailed to current AT&T Broadband subscribers. It is probably a good idea to follow these instructions before they are mailed to the masses, because chances are, this is migration is going to keep AT&T Broadband customer support very busy. The old @mediaone.net addresses will stop working on March 15, as was mentioned in this previous posting on Slashdot."

And although it's been said many times, many ways ... LiquidPC writes: "Apple's Ernest Prabhakar is reporting that BSD is now 3 times as popular on the desktop as Linux, largely thanks to MacOSX, of course. He also commented that Microsoft now has Office running on a Berkeley UNIX."