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Judge Says Microsoft Must Give States Windows Code
murphro (along with many others) writes, "Reuters is posting a story describing how the Judge has ordered the release of Windows code to the states seeking antitrust sanctions. I doubt it will actually happen (because MS will fight it this to the end). But if it did, do you think we commoners would ever see it? And if you did get your hands on the code, what would you do with it?" Here's the Yahoo link. (The same Reuters story is on dozens of other sites, too.)
As for not finding some parts of the code, simply provide a court order to one of the universities who already have it.
-- Dan
Go to CNN.COM and scroll down to the bottom of the main page.
On the bottom right there is a poll asking the question, "Was a judge correct in ordering Microsoft to reveal the coding for its Windows program?"
As of a couple minutes ago, 69% of respondants were saying 'NO'. That majority is probably comprised of clueless MS users and a voting bot running at Redmond right now, but still.
And no, 'Cowboy Neal' is not a choice.
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
IANAL either but I think the code *would* be public record but kept as a sealed document, ie. public record exempt from public disclosure.
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I think we need a few more programs like IEEradicator. Microsoft have already produced enough of thier own versions to spare.
Let's just think of the various MS programs and what they hoped to achieve:
DOS = CP/M Eradicator
W3.x = DOS App Eradicator
W95 = OS/2 Eradicator
W98 (with IE) = Netscape Eradicator
NT4 = Novell Eradicator
Office DLL/kernel integration = Wordperfect/Quattro Pro/Dbase Eradicator
Visual Studio = Borland Eradicator
W2K Server = Samba Eradicator (not while I'm alive!)
Media Player = RealPlayer Eradicator
XP = Privacy and "Fair use" Eradicator
Q:I was listening to a CD in Grip and it sounded horrible! What's up? A:Perhaps you are listening to country music
The real victory here is Judge Kollar-Kotelly's attitude. She has been an unknown for many months, and we are now starting to see her attitude. I like it. She is not going to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, but she is not going to appear partial to the states. She is going to be fair, and she is not going to be easily fooled. The outcome might not be my pipe dream ("Bill, fetch me another mocha."), but I have faith in the judge.
As for the debate ensuing here, I have my answers:
Is the code in the public domain?
No.
If it were, would it be ethical or legal to use it to make our open source projects better?
No (we do not want to make Microsoft a victim in any way).
Are there faked nude celebrity photos of the judge on the internet?
Give it time, young grassshopper.
Actually, that entry in the Add/Remove Programs is kind of misleading. All it does is remove the shortcuts to IE from your Start menu/Quicklaunch bar/desktop/whatever. The program itself and all associated DLL's continue to sit happily on your hard drive.
-Colin
From Microsoft's perspective, that was excellent design. Look at the market situation back in the mid 1990s -- The number of Internet users was growing exponentially. Most users stuck with whatever browser someone gave to them, and Netscape was way ahead. Thus Microsoft had to use every legal or illegal channel to get their warez out into the hands of the consumer before Netscape did.
By turning IE into what SSM calls 'Windows Internet Shell Upgrade', they encouraged classic Win32 developers to use the "nice shell enhancements" in their apps.
Now originally, if a 3rd party developer did this, they had to ship IE with their software media -- for the first year or so, Microsoft changed their "redistributable" DLL licence so that you couldn't just ship the upgraded "system" DLLs, you had to ship the whole IE package. But, in order to do that, Microsoft demanded that you include special "IE Enhanced" features on your website (things like DHTML or Channels). Later on, they relaxed these requirements, but core intention of getting millions of copies of IE onto 3rd party media was successful.
Furthermore, you can see how they almost anticipated telling a Federal Judge that it was unremovable. Anyway, you can see how MS's software design is dictated by the geniuses over in marketing.
personally, i never cared for real player either... but shortly after i tried wmp7 i promotly got rid of it for the same reasons i got rid of real player... i've been using wmp6.4 since...
the enemy of my enemy is just as bad as my enemy
so now we have two irritating bloated programs that are trying to take over the media sphere...I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me