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Groklaw Putting Comes v. Microsoft Docs Online
An anonymous reader writes "PJ of Groklaw is working on putting the documents from Comes v. Microsoft online, to make them searchable and accessible to everyone. If you don't remember their history, the plaintiffs got these documents from Microsoft during discovery after fighting the lawyers tooth and nail. After realizing how embarrassing the documents were to Microsoft, they put them online and later got a very large settlement from Microsoft by agreeing to take their website down. The web being what it is, these documents had already been mirrored and were later (legally) made available on the Pirate Bay. Now Groklaw has put them online and is looking for people to help transcribe them, so that documents like the infamous Evangelism is War presentation will not be forgotten."
I'm quite grateful for the Streisand Effect. If not for that, then normally someone who sells out or is (legally) bribed like this removes everyone's access to such information. Too bad those people caved, but that need not cost us the ability to know what they wanted so badly to hide.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I somewhat doubt microsoft fought and bribed to suppress anything complimentary. I like the way you smear PJ, btw. Wouldn't PJ's best source of income be getting a microsoft bribe to keep the records obscure?
Being a shill is bad enough, but is anybody even paying you to post this shit, or is this some sort of public service? Groglaw is also a sort of public service, but somehow they have credibility.
If you don't like Groklaw, debunk what is presented there.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I had one of the people working on the case come talk to my college class. The documents provided to the law office were on paper. The office had an impressive cluster of computers used to do optical code recognition on all the documents so that they could be indexed and searched. There were tons of documents. It was not easy technically, and they worked a lot of hours.
The person I talked to always hoped someone would take this on. They couldn't give up their work for public domain, but there was a ton of computer history contained in those files.
This is why I wish the internet would become a development platform for application (GUI driven in this case). If this was the case the platform wars (to borrow Microsoft terminology) would be over and developers would code for the internet. Google, with chrome os etc, seems to be an ally in this, not that they are benevolent benefactors, just that their business aims and the open source community desires align.
What would it take to code in any number of languages (in the way we can now code in javascript) for the web.
When you get out of grammar school they'll teach you about reasoning in a little more detail, but for now, what you did there is called a "false dichotomy", arguing from the premise that only two alternatives are possible.
It works very well to trap the unwary, because the dishonest part is unspoken.
If this post is making you angry, perhaps you'd like to put more effort into detecting false premises in your own.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Is that right around the same time Microsoft started thinking about using its bulk and business practices to achieve marketing ends, is right around the same time its innovation, risk taking, and other admirable traits about the company slacked off. I mean, yeah, it might have been hurtful to Borland for Microsoft to buy the superior Fox and use it to crush dBase, but at least the market did get a better product. And it might have been wrong to use Windows money to fund the development of Visual Studio to propel it past Turbo C++, but, again, the consumer got a better product. Even IE4 was better than Netscape.
But this email is from 1997, when MS had won the OS wars, the browser wars, and since then, what has happened? MS has lost its focus on computing entirely. Folding the Windows NT core into the Windows 95 shell to get first Windows NT 4.0 and then Windows 2000 were the best things the company did, and since then, we've had really not much to write home about.
This is my sig.
there was a ton of computer history contained in those files.
Indeed! There're many interesting bits in these emails that explain quite well some of the things we suffer every day.
"One things I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn't try and make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific. It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work. Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me. Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open. Or maybe we could patent something related to this" - Bill Gates
"One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered well by others people browser is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPIETARY IE capabilities" - Bill Gates
No, they won't. It sure would be nice, though.
If the (government-owned, government-operated) public schools actually taught logic, argumentation, and critical thinking, thoroughly and exhaustively, it would remove a lot of individuals and interests from power. Imagine if we never had any laws or policies except those that could stand up to rigorous examination. Imagine that clearly enough and you'll see why no one who could arrange that is inclined to let it happen.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Imagine that clearly enough and you'll see why no one who could arrange that is inclined to let it happen.
Said no one who could arrange that being the electorate of your county/state/country?
Right. The electorate who lack the critical thinking skills and knowledge of logical fallacies to understand what's wrong with the status quo are unlikely to demand leaders who institute policies that stand up to critical thinking and are free of logical fallacies. This suits our current leaders just fine. Those leaders are not stupid. They know how to play the game of politics to their advantage. They are aware of the situation and its implications, they know what's wrong with their laws and policies, but those serve the interests who got them into power so they are unwilling to change this system. It could only come from the electorate, which, as I already said, is ill-equipped to demand this sort of change. Did you fail to derive that from my previous post?
That's the danger of giving government direct control over education and the curriculum. I have no problem with the state governments using tax money to fund education, but the parents should be able to use that tax money to send the children to any school they like. I'd like to see something like the voucher system (the money follows the child instead of the child having to follow the money) and I'd also like to see government get out of the education business entirely other than providing the voucher. The reason we don't have vouchers is because the NEA is its biggest opponent and they have a ton of political clout that they have no reservations about using. It's not because vouchers are an unsound idea or are logically flawed. Refer to my previous point for how we arrived at this situation.
I don't like it and I don't delight in pointing it out, but most people are passive sheep. If the schooling they received does not teach them logic, argumentation, and critical thinking, then they won't learn those things. They could find books, Web sites, and other resources and teach themselves, for only basic literacy is required, but they won't because it doesn't occur to them that they should. Only a tiny minority of people would ever take that sort of initiative. So the reality is, if the schools don't teach these things, then the number of people who retain this knowledge are going to be such a tiny minority that politicians can safely ignore them in any election. I hope this explains why we have the current situation and why it's unlikely to change anytime soon.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Submitter here.
Yes, it was mirrored by others (thankfully people had the foresight to mirror this stuff right away). In fact, one person who had all the files asked what to do with them (either here or on Groklaw, I don't recall), and I was the one who suggested it be put on the Pirate Bay. I don't know for sure that he took my advice, but I do know that a Comes collection appeared there shortly thereafter.
The Judge granted Plaintiffs authority to personally watchdog Microsoft.
The watchdogs are granted, first among other things,
"The whole document" is the evidence that got the Judge to do that.
Thousands of pages. Gigabytes of video.
Somehow, I think the Judge's response to that evidence is a bit ... harsher ... than your description would support.
Hmm. Whose assessment of the evidence should I rely on? Hmm. Hmmm.
I'm going with the newly-signed-up /. poster who read the whole case and weighed all the evidence in a case that took six months to present, overnight. I mean, speed-reading skills like that command respect.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Can we have an example of an open format that Microsoft can't implement? And no, the GPL does not prevent a proprietary software maker from making a compatible application.
please cite *one* case where an open standard was deliberately obstructing to MS.
Keep in mind who we're discussing here. When your goal is to leverage your monopoly -- to lock your customers in and your competitors out -- then open standards are deliberately obstructive! :)
Let's be fair and accurate. You totally mischaracterized Bill Gates' position. The email doesn't say lets not go out of our way to make the stuff easier for others to implement, it says we should go out of our way to make it so others cannot implement it . The two are completely different, and worlds apart.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I think you see the Google Chrome OS as something Google is trying to use to take over every computer, which is certainly not true. Google wants to use it to create a new class of computer, a netbook that only does internet and nothing else.
Well you miss the point. First off, the question was really, what would the world be like if Google dominated computing as much as Microsoft did, and therefor, my "dystopian fantasy" was a viable answer. Google's business model envisions everyone accessing their data on third party computers with dumb internet only appliances. Therefor, to be a host, you have to get Google's permission, and, consumers will never own their data. That's what this is.
This is my sig.
Precisely!
More people need to understand this. It's clear MS does - but on our side most people still seem to be under the illusion that it is somehow possible to play fair and get along with MS. It isnt. It never was. From their point of view you are either helping them develop lock-in and total control of each and every PC in the world, or you are against them and they will stop at nothing to destroy you.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
While patents are clearly BS protectionism, what you describe is an extra layer of BS. Patents do not work that way at all. You can only patent a method, not an implementation. You cannot selectively license a patent (0|+inf). You are intentionally mixing ideas from copyright and patent to create bullshit.
If it "would not be hard to do...", please do. Otherwise, being shamed as a bullshitting shill will lose you your $241 bonus.
If Google wins then there will be available numerous facilities available in the Google cloud that are attractive alternatives to doing things the hard way, for every case where excellent cloud apps make sense.
Google's not trying to take your personal workstation away. If you want to host your own data and crunch your own numbers your way that's up to you. But if you don't, they want to be the easiest and best way to assemble and reference information online. I don't see that as a bad thing.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This behaviour is in Microsoft's DNA from the first dealings with Gary Kildall to the current i4i debacle. It didn't mysteriously originate at the moment that Microsoft turned the corner from logarithmic growth to slow decline in January of 2000. For that radical course correction we need look no further than the appointment of Steve Ballmer to the helm on that day.
Obviously Ballmer isn't responsible for the culture that established these behaviours - he inherited that. We should just be thankful he's not as good at executing it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If you had enjoyed the benefit of playing with SVR2 through a 30" high def graphical terminal in 1984 as I did, Microsoft's "innovations" in Windows 2000 some 15 years later might seem a bit less amazing. In 1984 we had aerial photos on LaserDisc overlaid with terrain data that we could draw on, and real-time position data in a distributed database with mesh networking for geotracking important operational assets. You could take a bomb to all but one node in the system, and that last node would stay up and have the latest propagated data. Yes, it took three or four seconds to redraw when you shifted scale or moved the map, but it was 1984. We had csh, ksh, X-Windows with widgets that looked better than W2k's. Networking was assumed. It was a multiuser system with an evolved system of managing user security that persists to this day. This was about nine months after Microsoft had invented the remarkable "subdirectory" concept with DOS 2.0, and 14 years before they included an IP stack by default. </sarcasm>.
Back then it took about 12 minutes to draft a professional one page letter using a CPT dedicated word processing station with full-page WYSYWIG and a SCSI daisy wheel printer. Today you can do a Google maps mashup of your own Cell GPS geolocation data in real time, and it takes about 25 minutes to craft a one-page letter. So the advantage of 25 years of progress is that technolgies are cheaper and more common and individuals are less effective.
A default install of SVR2 included development tools - grep, lex, yacc, awk, sed, an assembler, compiler, and cross-compiler for new hardware architectures, the source for the OS and all the tools, an ip stack including email. It was a multiuser environment. The processor performance graph, to give an example, included an animated graph of the pen writing the data on the scrolling log - an unnecessary but artful use of screen space that I miss to this day.
Rock solid? Windows 2000? Give me a break! If you think W2k was rock solid you have low standards.
Microsoft marketed Windows 2000 as the most secure Windows version ever,[15] but it became the target of a number of high-profile virus attacks such as Code Red and Nimda.[16] Over nine years after its release, it continues to receive patches for security vulnerabilities nearly every month.
Windows 2000 was a remarkable advance in the scope of "Microsoft operating systems". People who know better found nothing special in it. It wasn't as good as eight year old Jolix then, and it still isn't.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Of course, the world might change after the Supreme Court decides Bilski, but to take a real-world example, back when CompuServe decided to be stupid and start charging royalties on GIF implementations, wouldn't it have been smarter of them to say that, if your implementation is under the GPL, then there is no royalty? They killed that golden goose about the time it should have started laying them some serious eggs if they had treated it better.
So, if an implementation of GIF was under the GPL (and also available not under the GPL) both the software author and the patent holder could have profited from selling the non-GPLed software version (these could be one and the same entity/person, but that's not strictly necessary). A sane strategy would have charged "x" dollars for the use of the patent, "x+y" for the patent + software, or "0" for the software and patent in a GPLed application.
I don't know what you think people do with patents, but most patents are, in fact, quite selectively licensed.
One might imagine his handwashing will be as enthusiastic as his evangelism was. In order to extract the maximum marketability from his confession it's necessary that he embellish it until it was even more diabolical than it actually was.
I'm not giving him a pass here - the man promoted the evil prevention of progress in a most effective way. I'm just pointing out that much like his efforts then were, his efforts to promote his book will be equally self-serving.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Let's start with ISO/IEC 29500. This is Microsoft's own bought-and-paid-for International Standards Organization format that includes such rigorous definitions as "whitespace like Office 95 does it". Microsoft managed to destroy the credibility of a 60 year old standards organization devoted to international cooperation in order to get their "standard" accepted but can't be bothered to implement it:
Microsoft, which currently has no products which are compatible with ISO/IEC 29500,[45][46][47][48] has voiced commitment to using the ISO/IEC 29500 standard in their future products.[49]
Help stamp out iliturcy.
What precisely is healthy about stacking panels and planting stories? I think you've been working for Satan too long.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
To be fair it's not like the other side go out of their way to make their 'standards' easy for Microsoft to implement.
Others have focused on the fact that there is a big difference between not making standards easy to implement, and deliberately making them more difficult. However, there is another issue here: you are a liar. The "other side" does in fact make their standards easy for Microsoft to implement them. As if publishing RFCs which describe the protocols wasn't enough, the source code is Open. That means that Microsoft can look right into the code and see precisely how the system is implemented — a benefit not available from Microsoft platforms, at least not for the common user.
You are either an ignoramus who should keep his hands off the keyboard when he doesn't know shit, or a troll. Pick one; there's no third way.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The only way MS could then implement software to work with the data format would be to use the gplv3 source code which would require that the entire application be gplv3'd.
Wrong, only the decoder need be GPLv3. An application is only required to be GPL'd if it has GPL dependencies; WiMP could continue to be closed-source, while the decoder went GPLv3, because WiMP still functions without the decoder. Nice try, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"