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FSF Attacks Windows 7's "Sins" In New Campaign
CWmike writes "The Free Software Foundation today launched a campaign against Microsoft Corp.'s upcoming Windows 7 operating system, calling it 'treacherous computing' that stealthily takes away rights from users. At the Web site Windows7Sins.org, the Boston-based FSF lists the seven 'sins' that proprietary software such as Windows 7 commits against computer users. They include: Poisoning education, locking in users, abusing standards such as OpenDocument Format (ODF), leveraging monopolistic behavior, threatening user security, enforcing Digital Rights Management (DRM) at the request of entertainment companies concerned about movie and music piracy, and invading privacy. 'Windows, for some time now, has really been a DRM platform, restricting you from making copies of digital files,' said executive director Peter Brown. And if Microsoft's Trusted Computing technology were fully implemented the way the company would like, the vendor would have 'malicious and really complete control over your computer.'"
I work in a games company and was involved in art tools for many years. Anyone technical who digs into 3DS comes to hate it with a passion. It's a mess in desperate in need of a rewrite. Blender IS better to develop for. API/scripting aside, the rigging stuff in 3DS Max is terrible, it's not a proper animation package, we have dropped it here for animation, after it failed to do the job so badly it's supporters lost all authority on the matter. Maya is used for animation, Max if used at all, is used only by modelers. Blender IS better than Max for animation. There are artists here who love Blender (but it's only home they use it). The ones who have tried it and hate it, hate it because the interface is so different for Max/Maya. They don't want to learn a new interface. It's hard to argue it can't be used for high quality work when there is high quality work done with it (Big bunny, Elephant dream and others). I'm not involved with art tools and artists any more, but I keep in contact with those that are, and Blender is certainly one to watch. Especially as Maya quality decays under Autodesk and XSI is beginning to decay too. Why Autodesk was allowed to own Max, Maya and XSI is beyond me. Blender is one of a few of rays of hope.
That's because society in general has conflated pedophilia with ephebophilia. Pedophilia, in it's technical sense, means "sex with pre-pubescents" (or rather, an inclination to such sex). Ephebophilia is an inclination towards sex with adolescents. Society, in it's endless quest to eliminate fine distinctions, uses "pedophilia" to mean "sex with children". It then uses the legal definition of child - "under 18" - rather than the biological one, and ends up with "pedophilia is sex with under 18s". Which leads to the cases like the 18 year-old with the 17 year-old girlfriend who's convicted of statuatory rape. What (I assume) Stallman means is probably quite true. 16 year olds having consensual sex is probably not going to do them any more harm than having consensual sex two years later.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Or you could download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats which is free, doesn't require genuine software validation, and will patch anything back to Office 2000, which was released in 1999. It's a quick download and takes very little time to install.
The claim that Microsoft forces you to upgrade Office to maintain file format compatibility is simply incorrect. Arguing that you must upgrade to continue receiving support is disingenuous, because almost every software vendor does this -- including the F/OSS ones.
The Freelance Wizard