Microsoft can make copies of Windows to distribute to the public as the copyright holder; in fact, they have the exclusive right to do so. As for the EULA, that's a contract between you and Microsoft, theoretically for mutual benefit--they give you some rights, you give them some rights, etc., etc. But I doubt they'd try to take away that particular right of theirs in a contract that they wrote.:)
You could only do that if the company in question gave its shareholders such rights to its intellectual property. For Cringley's example to work, the company would probably have to do a little more than purchase one copy of one CD, but in Microsoft's case, they already own Windows, and if they wanted to give their shareholders a discount, I'm sure they could. I hear they have a sweet deal for employees, at least.
I was not aware that Cringely was trying to base this around Fair Use, (I had hoped he had a better argument than that at the core of this!) but I did in fact read the article, and before it was posted on/. IANAL, and apparently neither are you; Fair Use is not the holy grail of all copyright law--there are other limitations placed on the copyright holders, and they aren't all listed in the code. I mention one of them in my other post in this thread. I doubt that it could be used to justify what Cringley wants to do here, but it would be more likely to succeed than Fair Use.
Incidentally, I end up with copyrighted material stored on my computer all the time. Corporations give it to me, and for free! Since no sale has taken place, they still have the right to do whatever they want with it, and could probably try to sue me depending upon the countries involved and their interpretations of the law. It's all hidden away in my browser cache.
I did, actually, and before this showed up on/. -- I didn't think he was basing it around Fair Use, because if he were, then that *would* be absurd, and his lawyer friends should have smacked him silly. He'd have a better chance at setting up a lending library under the First Sale Doctrine than he would trying to use Fair Use; at least then, he might have the right to transmit the contents of the CDs in the first place...
Please continue your illegal and unethical policies of slander, libel, blustering, barratry and extortion; when a class-action suit is filed against you on behalf of all users of Linux, I hope to get many $$$ in damages, and a few free swings at Darl McBride's maggot-infested hide. And either an apology too, or a complete dissolution of the company. You lying sacks of shit.
That wasn't a recommendation; it was a correction. Note that the article link said "LSF".
I use Gentoo, and the "installer" was fine with me, but there are a lot of real installers out there, even GPL'd ones. Major distributions have written and use them.
There are also tons of tiny distros and bootable Linuxes out there, from tomsrtbt to KNOPPIX; you could use any of them as a starting point, bootstrapping into your installer of choice.
Do you want to? Personally, I'll leave it to IBM to fight the good fight for now, but I'm sure someone will sue SCO, and hopefully they'll have deep pockets and good lawyers.
I don't see this as a failure of the US legal system as of yet; we do have laws in place that give us recourse against extortion and whatnot. But it does take two parties to have a lawsuit, so someone would have to sue SCO first.
On the pages, it says that you can extend its range over the internet--but it also says that there's security built in as well. So you can let people track your stuff globally if you want to, but you don't have to if you don't want to.
I'd suggest looking into UnitedLinux; heck, even SCO likes it! Evaluate it and see if that's more compatible out of the box with your stuff.
If you want a second opinion, here's some more advice; he also confirms that it's easier to move existing SCO stuff over to UnitedLinux than it would be to switch to RedHat Linux, for example.
However, it would help in that you would have a site for.torrents that wouldn't get shut down. The trade-off here is that you lose some privacy but gain a lot of speed.:)
Well, not exactly new; many open source projects have been signed on for years, as well as some has-been writers and editors, and more recently some p2p companies as well, some government lobbies, the occasional tech press release or product endorsement, and a few anime and game production houses. But Crest is our first mainstream corporate client outside of the IT industry!
Please give them a warm welcome; you'll be seeing more of them at least every month, with specials on such riveting topics as tooth whitening, OSS in dentistry, the importance of regular check-ups, and more on the government's nefarious conspiracy with the snack food industry.
I used Popout Prism on match.com, and those chicks looked *awesome*... Can I get some glasses that do this IRL, or do I just have to drink a lot of beer to get the same effect?
Yes, and Fast User Switching was all *I* was talking about in the first place. However, it sounds like what you're talking about has more to do with profiles. Windows has actually had a way to change system settings (specifically for laptop users) since '9x in that manner. They do something similar for themes. Other than that, usually these sorts of things are left up to the application; for instance, Mozilla has its own notion of user profiles.
It's a wonder they ever managed to get even that first patent, seeing as how the only thing new about "Fast User Switching" is the name.
All of the settings a user can change are already stored in that user's home directory. Therefore, "fast user switching" on Unix simply consists of "logging in as a different user". And, as the article mentions, XP *has* fast user switching.
Actually, it's so obvious that it's been a stock feature of Unix for decades, and that doesn't make it worth patenting, or even patentable.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft can make copies of Windows to distribute to the public as the copyright holder; in fact, they have the exclusive right to do so. As for the EULA, that's a contract between you and Microsoft, theoretically for mutual benefit--they give you some rights, you give them some rights, etc., etc. But I doubt they'd try to take away that particular right of theirs in a contract that they wrote. :)
You could only do that if the company in question gave its shareholders such rights to its intellectual property. For Cringley's example to work, the company would probably have to do a little more than purchase one copy of one CD, but in Microsoft's case, they already own Windows, and if they wanted to give their shareholders a discount, I'm sure they could. I hear they have a sweet deal for employees, at least.
I was not aware that Cringely was trying to base this around Fair Use, (I had hoped he had a better argument than that at the core of this!) but I did in fact read the article, and before it was posted on /. IANAL, and apparently neither are you; Fair Use is not the holy grail of all copyright law--there are other limitations placed on the copyright holders, and they aren't all listed in the code. I mention one of them in my other post in this thread. I doubt that it could be used to justify what Cringley wants to do here, but it would be more likely to succeed than Fair Use.
Incidentally, I end up with copyrighted material stored on my computer all the time. Corporations give it to me, and for free! Since no sale has taken place, they still have the right to do whatever they want with it, and could probably try to sue me depending upon the countries involved and their interpretations of the law. It's all hidden away in my browser cache.
Software--unlike books or music--is generally licensed, and not sold, which means that the purchaser doesn't have rights under First Sale Doctrine.
I did, actually, and before this showed up on /. -- I didn't think he was basing it around Fair Use, because if he were, then that *would* be absurd, and his lawyer friends should have smacked him silly. He'd have a better chance at setting up a lending library under the First Sale Doctrine than he would trying to use Fair Use; at least then, he might have the right to transmit the contents of the CDs in the first place...
I don't think Cringely was using Fair Use as the basis for this, but rather actual (corporate) ownership.
Please continue your illegal and unethical policies of slander, libel, blustering, barratry and extortion; when a class-action suit is filed against you on behalf of all users of Linux, I hope to get many $$$ in damages, and a few free swings at Darl McBride's maggot-infested hide. And either an apology too, or a complete dissolution of the company. You lying sacks of shit.
That is all.
You can find many more of these here...
It's about time someone called a spade a spade. Now to do the same thing in the US...
That wasn't a recommendation; it was a correction. Note that the article link said "LSF".
I use Gentoo, and the "installer" was fine with me, but there are a lot of real installers out there, even GPL'd ones. Major distributions have written and use them.
There are also tons of tiny distros and bootable Linuxes out there, from tomsrtbt to KNOPPIX; you could use any of them as a starting point, bootstrapping into your installer of choice.
Linux From Scratch
Do you want to? Personally, I'll leave it to IBM to fight the good fight for now, but I'm sure someone will sue SCO, and hopefully they'll have deep pockets and good lawyers.
I don't see this as a failure of the US legal system as of yet; we do have laws in place that give us recourse against extortion and whatnot. But it does take two parties to have a lawsuit, so someone would have to sue SCO first.
On the pages, it says that you can extend its range over the internet--but it also says that there's security built in as well. So you can let people track your stuff globally if you want to, but you don't have to if you don't want to.
Now all we need is a 6MW laser and a large, spinning mirror, and we can vaporize a human target from space!
I'd suggest looking into UnitedLinux; heck, even SCO likes it! Evaluate it and see if that's more compatible out of the box with your stuff.
If you want a second opinion, here's some more advice; he also confirms that it's easier to move existing SCO stuff over to UnitedLinux than it would be to switch to RedHat Linux, for example.
Take down your FTP Servers, boys, we're going back into the dark ages.
However, it would help in that you would have a site for .torrents that wouldn't get shut down. The trade-off here is that you lose some privacy but gain a lot of speed. :)
I just have to wait for someone to implement a P2P network that uses FreeNet to store .torrent files... ...or do you freenet folks do this already?
* IS DYING (including BSD and NETCRAFT)
MLDonkey both runs on Linux, and supports multiple P2P protocols, including FastTrack (which Kazaa uses).
Well, not exactly new; many open source projects have been signed on for years, as well as some has-been writers and editors, and more recently some p2p companies as well, some government lobbies, the occasional tech press release or product endorsement, and a few anime and game production houses. But Crest is our first mainstream corporate client outside of the IT industry!
Please give them a warm welcome; you'll be seeing more of them at least every month, with specials on such riveting topics as tooth whitening, OSS in dentistry, the importance of regular check-ups, and more on the government's nefarious conspiracy with the snack food industry.
I used Popout Prism on match.com, and those chicks looked *awesome*... Can I get some glasses that do this IRL, or do I just have to drink a lot of beer to get the same effect?
Yes, and Fast User Switching was all *I* was talking about in the first place. However, it sounds like what you're talking about has more to do with profiles. Windows has actually had a way to change system settings (specifically for laptop users) since '9x in that manner. They do something similar for themes. Other than that, usually these sorts of things are left up to the application; for instance, Mozilla has its own notion of user profiles.
It's a wonder they ever managed to get even that first patent, seeing as how the only thing new about "Fast User Switching" is the name.
All of the settings a user can change are already stored in that user's home directory. Therefore, "fast user switching" on Unix simply consists of "logging in as a different user". And, as the article mentions, XP *has* fast user switching.
Actually, it's so obvious that it's been a stock feature of Unix for decades, and that doesn't make it worth patenting, or even patentable.
Couldn't X-Terminals do this like a zillion years ago?
or, for that matter: su - change user ID or become super-user