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Malaysian Police Not Roping Longhorn Rustlers
Artifex writes "CNN/Reuters reports that an early release of Microsoft's next operating system, 'Longhorn,' is already being sold openly in markets in Malaysia, with local police doing little to stop it. Microsoft's response, of course, is that consumers should steer clear. I'm sure this chaps their hides, as crashing copies of this as-yet-unreleased product are sure to cause dilution of branding."
Looks like no one bothered to read the What's Wrong With the Open Source Community article.
Maybe this will cause the price of microsoft products to drop, just like we saw with Playstation in China.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
More than likely, it's simply a case of pirating whatever comes their way. So far as I can tell, the basic process for pirating stuff in SE Asia consists of making a good cover for the product with as many possible logos (DVD-ROM, CD-ROM, VCD, Windows, Microsoft, Logitech, Abercrombie, etc.), some misspelled/grammatically incorrect English, and then burning as many copies as the market will sustain. In my experience in the middle east, the copies were actually burnt on demand for customers. I don't think extensive market research and a serious analysis of product utility has much of a place in the business plans of pirates. Or of Microsoft for that matter.
Head down, go to sleep to the rhythm of the war drums...
Well, what will happen if some folks already use Longhorn and a new worm attacks Windows and Longhorn as well. Of course Microsoft is NOT going to provide a patch until Longhorn is officially released. I guess this will become a serious problem any time soon.
I heard that the reason longhorn won't come out til 2006 is because there was a judgement in 2000 that Microsoft had to share certain source code with certain companies for 5 years (ie until 2005) and that they dont want to write the bulk of the DRM in until after that? Can anyone confirm or is that total crap?
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Hey, at the very least they won't have to do any further testing to make sure it works as expected...
.dll that does essentially the same thing and call it bar.dll? If the code is different, but it does the same thing, is it still IP infringement?
In all seriousness, though, WHY would anyone want such a thing. The ONLY reason I would be interested in something like that is if it ALSO came with enough source to compile. After all, that would put a monkey wrench in things.
Imagine if someone who got (however) access to the source, then wrote a paper on what would be necessary to implement compatibility, and then someone else, upon reading it, then wrote a description of that paper (but with enough detail to be useful). Now imagine if someone then implemented the description. What is their level of liability (having never seen the source, or even the paper by the guy who wrote it)?
Even so, it would probably be easier to just do it the way we are--from scratch. Another question though--are the names of certain files copyrighted? That is, if I know program X wants bar.dll, can I make a
Just questions, don't flame me because I am asking--I really want to know.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
The secret to Windows 98 stability is to install it and not install a bunch of crappy drivers. My Windows 98SE never crashes. It always shuts down and I've never had to reinstall. I use it for MM Fireworks/Photoshop/Mozilla/Flash Development. All that in 96MB on a 200 MHz P1. A bit slow, but it works. Connects to my Samaba box with no problems.
I know of at least one rewritten .DLL, for Windows9x, the folks at wininternals rewrote the VCACHE functionality with some better self-management and memory compression. Apparently they did accomplish a working replacement to the Windows VCACHE system, but without full-disclosure the performance and reliability were limited. In the end the speed was the same as the old VCACHE, and the compact/compress parts didn't seem to be all that useful.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Thats my exact same experience.
I have RedHat 9 running on the same machine and although RH has a nicer UI, Windows runs faster and more integrated.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I had a dual boot machine at the time with OS/2 and Win 3.1, all my school assignments, code, etc. all unprotected and un-backed-up on my one-and-only machine. Gee, Fred, can you see this one coming?
So, I spent hundreds of hours over about 2 weeks downloading all the various floppies from the BBS, which was one of the first GUI BBSs in the area. But all that time was SO worth it when I saw that Chicago logo as I installed to a new partition on a 1 or 2 gig drive.
About an hour and a half later, the install was complete, and I was ready to boot for the first time. I held my breath and rebooted. BSOD! I rebooted. BSOD again! I rebooted several more times, each involving a BSOD!
So, I huffed and puffed and tried to get into the partition from OS/2 - no such luck. OS/2 wouldn't boot.
Uhhhhh.
But it was on another drive! Still, both my drives were unbootable toast.
I called several computer stores, the guy at the BBS, and several friends. No one had a solution for me. I tried booting back into Win 3.1 with floppies, but it could no longer read from the drive, either. Finally, I gave up on the conventional and tried calling Microsoft. I came up with a good excuse about how a student friend had "borrowed" my computer and brought it back in this state. I managed to finally get through to a technician, and I explained the error codes I was getting from the bluescreen. He didn't believe me, and thought I should just re-install. He said, "Those aren't Windows error codes. Are you sure that's on the screen?" Finally, in a huff, I gave up and cracked a beer open. About halfway through my beer my phone rang. It was "Tim" from Microsoft. He was an Engineer, and one of the Tech guys had followed up on my problem with him, a developer of Win 95.
Uhhhhh.
Tim was REALLY interested in how I had gotten ahold of the copy, and could he please have the name of the friend? When I balked, he threatened to have MS attorneys look into it, as "corporate espionage" (as he put it) was serious business. He threatened to get the school involved, and once again threatened with the attorneys before I hung up on him. I unplugged the phone for a few days, and magically, never heard from him again.
Oh, yeah. A good copy of Slackware fixed my problem, btw. Great lesson learned about stealing software, and espeically about how a real OS works...
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
Nobody really buys them. I asked a shop owner just yesterday whether anyone actually buys the Longhorn CDs. He replied that they haven't sold even one copy, because apparently, no one "has heard of it and so they don't want to try". And no, I did NOT buy it. I use Linux.
I live in Thailand, and can say that, although there are quite a few books in the local store teaching desktop linux, the 60% pre-installed figure (it may even be higher. I don't know) really doesn't trtanslate into anything, because the customers just go home and wipe the disk, installing 98SE like they have for years.
The other 40% (or less, maybe) are almost completely sold with a "thirty day trial" of XP Home (which we all know doesn't exist. These are also replaced with pirated copies. The government puts the rate at over 90%.
Microsoft dropped their prices on only the government low-cost computer, which was set to put (best Dr. Evil voice) one million machines with desktop Linux on the street. The other prices remain about 80% of what they were last year. This govenment program is credited, however, with destroying MS' "one price around the world" policy oncee and for ever.
Put identity in the browser.