You could just pay a licensing fee. Ten bucks would cover mp3 encoding/decoding, DVD, some decent fonts, a cleartype implementation...
Or I guess you can keep trying to sidestep these patents by pulling down source and calling it a "description of the patent in C" and that you are using it for research purposes only...;)
It has a duty to its shareholders to engage in as much trust making activity as possible, to compete as aggressively as possible, and in general make ROI (which it is doing).
When you are throwing a quarter of a trillion dollars in weight around you are going to make some people upset. Then you have a duty to your shareholders to defend your position according to the risk/benefit analysis your lawyers come up with.
So, yes, MS are doing their job, and looking at the financial figures, they are doing it very well indeed. If you are suffering butthurt regarding them being better at business than your favourite companies, then perhaps your complaint should be with the DOJ slash your government for not legislating more strictly?
Listening to some freetards trot out the "convicted monopolist" line is like me calling Redhat a bunch of "convicted patent infringers". I don't, however, because I am not a douchebag.
Not at all. The patent is valid, and MS has a duty to its shareholders to collect the revenue. They were granted a patent on "a lookup table for LFN support lol" - and Tomtom hasn't paid to use it.
The rest of the patents listed in the lawsuit are just flexing to force Tomtom to settle.
Theres probably around ten million bucks of cash up for grabs here, and I own around a ten millionth of MS - meaning those Norwegian fuckers personally have ripped me off a buck. Fuck them. They can either get the patent invalidated or pay the fuck up.
Because the legal analysis will go along the lines of "While asshattery on MS's behalf, they will likely win or force Tomtom to settle". This isn't something the Slashdot demographic wants to hear.
Well as an Australian, I often ask the "Why not just shoot them?".
We end up with a bloody Koala problem, where they are overpopulated, and are going to die of starvation. The greenies persuade everyone that the population needs to be reduced. So a cull right?
Hell no. We go in there and neuter them. At several hundred dollars per animal. We knock them out, and cut their nuts off, and stick them back up a tree. All this because they are cute and fluffy.
Of course when it comes to kangaroos, we just shoot them. Guess they didn't evolve to be fluffy and loved by hippies.
These are the same hippies that block the creation of firebreaks... because it destroys the native vegetation. Hows the native vegetation doing now?
FFS. This is why democracy fails - you get raving loonies like this (and our religious net censorship advocate) holding the balance of power.
If by "sucking cock" you mean "investing in MSFT", and by "cum" you mean "dividends" then I'd have to say you can't go past the large payouts under Gates.
Oh yeah, that thing that people do with software when they are good at making monopolies - make real money, and spend it on crack and bitches!
Yeah... TBH if I was in that situation I'd probably just give the nice police officer the codes, tell him hes unauthorised to look at them, and then wash my hands of the whole thing.
If anyone complains I'd scream coersion / brutality / threats against my person / bestiality, whatever it took:P
However those people are the ones getting a bundled OEM copy, which is a far cry from the $100 a retail Home Basic costs. Try around $10.
I've posted before that my gut feel is that the bundled trialware with a box pays in full for the OS. So cost for home users barely matters.
When it gets to enterprise level, well you're going to have 100k of salary running a decent sized network - so the OS cost will be insignificant as well:/
Parent's excellent monologue, delivered in the style of renowned technology analyst (or analysts!) Twitter, shows solid construction and consistancy throughout. With clever use of symbology - especially with the dollar symbol - this well-reasoned posting is a pleasure to read.
Truly excellent application of delusion and paranoia. Four and a half stars.
What the hell are you talking about? I take the damn TomTom SD card, and I jam it in my Touch Diamond, it installs and Just Works.
If the SD card was formatted as some random filesystem I'd have to either plug the damn phone in and run the driver installer - or go and download a driver using the device.
I don't give two shits about your ideal little world fantasy. The fact is that a FAT32 formatted device will work on just about everything, and an EXT3 device won't. Thats it!
"I will speak only to the Mayor" when you clearly have mental problems is pretty ridiculous. Even if the Mayor had time to see him, I'm certain his minders wouldn't allow it.
Its an egotistic stunt by a self-important fucktard - on the level of Stallman trying to get an audience with the French president after being told to fuck off repeatedly.
No part of IE was integrated into the kernel. Dunno what people expected... push a pointer to a URL, raise an interrupt and then pop a bitmap of rendered HTML?:P
The core of IE was a COM component - a reusable component for rendering DHTML with a well defined interface. Handy.
So it was re-used in a wide variety of places by MS, to provide the help system, etc. Because it was always there, it was also used by tonnes of third party developers (I'm guilty of it - an HTML about box is very very easy way out for the lazy...).
Now this means that they can't just go and remove all of IE, as it will break tonnes of first party and third party apps. It may not be an "essential" component (as in you can remove it), but a whole load of programs will break. So MS ended up settling with a "we'll just provide the 'Default Programs' API/Control Panel so people can change browsers".
Realistically I see this as fair enough. The registered handlers for html documents and protocols are set to use Opera on my Vista box. This was done by clicking Opera in the default programs (and well you could click "Set as default for everything this prog says it can open" - but I use a diff mail client, so I went with the tickboxes for each type/protocol).
As for asking them to remove all DHTML rendering services for all applications, well that just fucking sucks. You'll get a whole bunch of apps "requiring IE (to be installed - which people will read as 'requires you to use')", which is just silly.
Well MS doesn't *want* to do that, they are just reacting to the Web.
What MS wants, is that you deploy thin/thick client applications using.Net (so Silverlight, XBAPs or full clickonce) and take advantage of the.Net permissions/trust framework.
I can't remember the default zone settings off the top of my head, but from an internet zone, you should be able to run a single-form application that has limited isolated storage and can talk back to its original domain via web services / wcf. All sandboxed, so you could use a fairly thick *shrugs* airline booking client without any security prompts/risk*.
* Assuming you trust MS to implement the security stuff correctly - but.Net has a fairly decent record so far.
Events/delegates do exactly what they are intended to do. They do not attempt to hide the fact that they reference the subscriber. If you are finding this an issue I suggest you take a look at IDisposable, finalizers or weak events.
Don't think you can just pick up a tool and bang out code with a silly monkey grin on your face without understanding how it works.
LINQ is a nice syntax. Beats a load of "new SomePredicate(left, right)". Of course this is not going to stop a bunch of newbies picking it up and not understanding how it works.
If you are hiring a bunch of nubs, then I suggest you put up a big "CHECK ACCESS TO MODIFIED CLOSURES" poster.
An increase in expressiveness in the language is a good thing. It doesnt magically mean that less skilled devs can suddenly churn out complex bug-free software without knowing what the hell they are doing though...
Thou shalt not entangeleth with another man as thou would quantum entangle thyself with another woman - this is an abomination.
He also goes on to talk about not getting quantumly entangled with beasts of the field.
In fact theres not very many Jewish physicists, because of the risk of accidently entangling yourself with a passing insect or even a flamboyantly gay bosun.
I damned well have a right right to play content I bought, regardless of what the whiney authors want.
You should have the right, I agree. Currently you do not have the legal right.
We are far and beyond the original scope of this discussion "Does Windows DRM affect what you can do with your computer?". The answer is "No, its those corrupt asshats in congress that are affecting what I can do with my computer.".
If you aren't planning on watching DRM'd content, then Windows DRM doesn't affect you. If you are planning on working around the DRM, then you won't be using Windows DRM anyway - you'll be using DeDRM Plus, and then a random media player to watch.
In fact the only time you are using Windows DRM is when you are playing along with the media studio's stupid rules. (Yes this does sound like DRM systems are a stupid waste of time, doesn't it?:P)
Like I said, these APIs are no more insiduous than a random player app checking the damn country settings and refusing to run if I'm in Israel. Exposing "GetSystemLocale" is hardly Microsoft destroying my freedom with their anti-semetic APIs.
Whine to your local congressman, not to MS. They're just providing what the market wants (Yes, Joe Public does want to be able to play Bluray discs).
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You could just pay a licensing fee. Ten bucks would cover mp3 encoding/decoding, DVD, some decent fonts, a cleartype implementation...
Or I guess you can keep trying to sidestep these patents by pulling down source and calling it a "description of the patent in C" and that you are using it for research purposes only... ;)
It has a duty to its shareholders to engage in as much trust making activity as possible, to compete as aggressively as possible, and in general make ROI (which it is doing).
When you are throwing a quarter of a trillion dollars in weight around you are going to make some people upset. Then you have a duty to your shareholders to defend your position according to the risk/benefit analysis your lawyers come up with.
So, yes, MS are doing their job, and looking at the financial figures, they are doing it very well indeed. If you are suffering butthurt regarding them being better at business than your favourite companies, then perhaps your complaint should be with the DOJ slash your government for not legislating more strictly?
Listening to some freetards trot out the "convicted monopolist" line is like me calling Redhat a bunch of "convicted patent infringers". I don't, however, because I am not a douchebag.
I'm pretty certain that when Tomtom backs down on this, the butthurt expressed here will be epic.
Almost on the same scale as "Microsoft is Invading my Firefoxes" from a month or so ago.
Not at all. The patent is valid, and MS has a duty to its shareholders to collect the revenue. They were granted a patent on "a lookup table for LFN support lol" - and Tomtom hasn't paid to use it.
The rest of the patents listed in the lawsuit are just flexing to force Tomtom to settle.
Theres probably around ten million bucks of cash up for grabs here, and I own around a ten millionth of MS - meaning those Norwegian fuckers personally have ripped me off a buck. Fuck them. They can either get the patent invalidated or pay the fuck up.
Also fuck you.
Because the legal analysis will go along the lines of "While asshattery on MS's behalf, they will likely win or force Tomtom to settle". This isn't something the Slashdot demographic wants to hear.
Not if they drink a nice warming cup of booze from RAPTOR JESUS.
Well as an Australian, I often ask the "Why not just shoot them?".
We end up with a bloody Koala problem, where they are overpopulated, and are going to die of starvation. The greenies persuade everyone that the population needs to be reduced. So a cull right?
Hell no. We go in there and neuter them. At several hundred dollars per animal. We knock them out, and cut their nuts off, and stick them back up a tree. All this because they are cute and fluffy.
Of course when it comes to kangaroos, we just shoot them. Guess they didn't evolve to be fluffy and loved by hippies.
These are the same hippies that block the creation of firebreaks... because it destroys the native vegetation. Hows the native vegetation doing now?
FFS. This is why democracy fails - you get raving loonies like this (and our religious net censorship advocate) holding the balance of power.
If by "sucking cock" you mean "investing in MSFT", and by "cum" you mean "dividends" then I'd have to say you can't go past the large payouts under Gates.
Oh yeah, that thing that people do with software when they are good at making monopolies - make real money, and spend it on crack and bitches!
Yeah... TBH if I was in that situation I'd probably just give the nice police officer the codes, tell him hes unauthorised to look at them, and then wash my hands of the whole thing.
If anyone complains I'd scream coersion / brutality / threats against my person / bestiality, whatever it took :P
However those people are the ones getting a bundled OEM copy, which is a far cry from the $100 a retail Home Basic costs. Try around $10.
I've posted before that my gut feel is that the bundled trialware with a box pays in full for the OS. So cost for home users barely matters.
When it gets to enterprise level, well you're going to have 100k of salary running a decent sized network - so the OS cost will be insignificant as well :/
Parent's excellent monologue, delivered in the style of renowned technology analyst (or analysts!) Twitter, shows solid construction and consistancy throughout. With clever use of symbology - especially with the dollar symbol - this well-reasoned posting is a pleasure to read.
Truly excellent application of delusion and paranoia. Four and a half stars.
I dunno, guess we can start with.. say.. FAT32?
Yeah, my gut feel is that this is all about licensing FAT. The other shit is just thrown in so they have a bit of wriggle room.
What the hell are you talking about? I take the damn TomTom SD card, and I jam it in my Touch Diamond, it installs and Just Works.
If the SD card was formatted as some random filesystem I'd have to either plug the damn phone in and run the driver installer - or go and download a driver using the device.
I don't give two shits about your ideal little world fantasy. The fact is that a FAT32 formatted device will work on just about everything, and an EXT3 device won't. Thats it!
"I will speak only to the Mayor" when you clearly have mental problems is pretty ridiculous. Even if the Mayor had time to see him, I'm certain his minders wouldn't allow it.
Its an egotistic stunt by a self-important fucktard - on the level of Stallman trying to get an audience with the French president after being told to fuck off repeatedly.
Context: The guy acted like a dick, and generally a simple guide to law is: Don't be a dick.
Whoops! Looks like you forgot that his neighbours modem is not somewhere where he is likely to be caught with it.
Unless hes fucking his neighbour's wife, in which case I retract my statement.
Who provides the anti-phishing support and default search in Firefox and indirectly funds the majority of its development?
Just sayin'...
No part of IE was integrated into the kernel. Dunno what people expected... push a pointer to a URL, raise an interrupt and then pop a bitmap of rendered HTML? :P
The core of IE was a COM component - a reusable component for rendering DHTML with a well defined interface. Handy.
So it was re-used in a wide variety of places by MS, to provide the help system, etc. Because it was always there, it was also used by tonnes of third party developers (I'm guilty of it - an HTML about box is very very easy way out for the lazy...).
Now this means that they can't just go and remove all of IE, as it will break tonnes of first party and third party apps. It may not be an "essential" component (as in you can remove it), but a whole load of programs will break. So MS ended up settling with a "we'll just provide the 'Default Programs' API/Control Panel so people can change browsers".
Realistically I see this as fair enough. The registered handlers for html documents and protocols are set to use Opera on my Vista box. This was done by clicking Opera in the default programs (and well you could click "Set as default for everything this prog says it can open" - but I use a diff mail client, so I went with the tickboxes for each type/protocol).
As for asking them to remove all DHTML rendering services for all applications, well that just fucking sucks. You'll get a whole bunch of apps "requiring IE (to be installed - which people will read as 'requires you to use')", which is just silly.
Its like refusing to drive your mums car after you found out I banged her last night.
Well MS doesn't *want* to do that, they are just reacting to the Web.
What MS wants, is that you deploy thin/thick client applications using .Net (so Silverlight, XBAPs or full clickonce) and take advantage of the .Net permissions/trust framework.
I can't remember the default zone settings off the top of my head, but from an internet zone, you should be able to run a single-form application that has limited isolated storage and can talk back to its original domain via web services / wcf. All sandboxed, so you could use a fairly thick *shrugs* airline booking client without any security prompts/risk*.
* Assuming you trust MS to implement the security stuff correctly - but .Net has a fairly decent record so far.
Events/delegates do exactly what they are intended to do. They do not attempt to hide the fact that they reference the subscriber. If you are finding this an issue I suggest you take a look at IDisposable, finalizers or weak events.
Don't think you can just pick up a tool and bang out code with a silly monkey grin on your face without understanding how it works.
LINQ is a nice syntax. Beats a load of "new SomePredicate(left, right)". Of course this is not going to stop a bunch of newbies picking it up and not understanding how it works.
If you are hiring a bunch of nubs, then I suggest you put up a big "CHECK ACCESS TO MODIFIED CLOSURES" poster.
An increase in expressiveness in the language is a good thing. It doesnt magically mean that less skilled devs can suddenly churn out complex bug-free software without knowing what the hell they are doing though...
Leviticus 23:45
He also goes on to talk about not getting quantumly entangled with beasts of the field.
In fact theres not very many Jewish physicists, because of the risk of accidently entangling yourself with a passing insect or even a flamboyantly gay bosun.
Bad pickup lines? They certainly worked well enough when I became entangled with your mom last night!
You should have the right, I agree. Currently you do not have the legal right.
We are far and beyond the original scope of this discussion "Does Windows DRM affect what you can do with your computer?". The answer is "No, its those corrupt asshats in congress that are affecting what I can do with my computer.".
If you aren't planning on watching DRM'd content, then Windows DRM doesn't affect you. If you are planning on working around the DRM, then you won't be using Windows DRM anyway - you'll be using DeDRM Plus, and then a random media player to watch.
In fact the only time you are using Windows DRM is when you are playing along with the media studio's stupid rules. (Yes this does sound like DRM systems are a stupid waste of time, doesn't it? :P)
Like I said, these APIs are no more insiduous than a random player app checking the damn country settings and refusing to run if I'm in Israel. Exposing "GetSystemLocale" is hardly Microsoft destroying my freedom with their anti-semetic APIs.
Whine to your local congressman, not to MS. They're just providing what the market wants (Yes, Joe Public does want to be able to play Bluray discs).