"Flessner said that Crossgain competed because its technology would allow users to exchange data over the Internet."
So I guess anyone who's worked at Microsoft and written a web page or used a web browser after they left is guilty....
Seems to me that Microsoft thinks they own the Internet. Sometimes I wish DARPA had retained control and made Microsoft pay a licensing fee to develop software for their network...
Currently, the majority of folks listen to their music for free. I stopped buying CD's when I got a radio. Now that I have a computer, I can buy CD's, encode them into mp3's on my hard drive, and listen to mixes through Winamp and X11amp. Guess what's going to happen when I can't do this because of CPRM? - That's right, I'll stop buying CD's, buy a radio, and listen to music for free again....
Face the facts, folks,
we're programmers. We can find ways around any copy protection scheme. Here's one: write a C program to read a file (say, your CD media file) into memory, and then write it out to another file, (say, your hard disk file), and viola! CPRM is useless.
So what will CPRM actually do? It will make me buy fewer CD's. It will hurt the music and movie industry. But, it will give them the mind-candy they've been asking for - they'll think that no one will enjoy their media without paying for it.
Obviously, copyright is important to us. Without copyright, we couldn't enjoy the quality of music and video we have now. What we need is an open-source media initiative - that is, a media file format which prevents piracy while still allowing the user his fair use rights. Until the Free Software Foundation or some open-source initiative takes care of this, we can look forward to more of the CPRM type problems in the future...
This is nothing new to those of us running Windows... HELLO? Wakeup! Insecure systems are the way of the future! While all you folks have been happy in *NIX-land, the world has accepted the fact that vulnerability is the way of the future - in the future all systems will have advanced virus-enabling features, though I must admit, it will be a while before you *NIX freaks catch on to this new trend...
Remember back in the 80's when Ford did research on radar anti-collision systems? They said that the car of the future would have a radar transmitter which would guage the distance between vehicles, and if you got too close, the 'computer' would activate the brakes.
Never happened.
I suspect that if you start putting speed controls on cars, people will start fixing up the old ones to avoid having the privacy intrusion. New car sales will falter, and the speed controls will come out. No large corporation wants to get a bad reputation with it's clientele, and I think the fear of being labelled as a 'big brother' type of corporation will keep automakers from actually implementing this...
IW: Does that mean you'll pursue that?
Wetherell: Yes, we will. Coming up in the first quarter of 2001.
IW: So we may see some lawsuits...
Wetherell: If necessary, we will defend it, to the letter of the law.
IW: Are there any specific examples of the types of patents?
Wetherell: If you index a distributed set of databases--what the Internet is--and even within intranets, corporations, that's one of the patents. We did a press release on this with a list of six or ten of the key areas that the patents cover.
It's going to be interesting to see if the court will uphold patenting "-what the Internet is-", when it was developed with public tax dollars. I think that the CEO understands less about technology and patent law than he's letting on to. He has a point about patenting indexing distributed databases, however, his company own only the specific implementation, not the idea. Basically, if you structure your searches differently, you haven't infringed...
Still, I would like to watch this pursued, because:
If they sue for patent infringement and get shot down, it will be a victory for the Internet. However, the notion of "Intellectual Property" not being absolutely ownable is going cast a cloud of uncertainty over many IP and internet related businesses. Ultimately, this could cause a downturn in the economy.
If they sue and win, we can all look forward to "owning" the "Next Big Thing". As coders, our salaries are directly related to the fact that someone can "own" an idea. We merely need to organize our efforts, patent the blatantly obvious, and bilk Corporate America - then we will see a change in patent law.
So what happens to those of us who would like to run Linux on our laptops, but are forced to use Windoze so we can run school-mandated software? Those of us at Northern Illinois University are FORCED to log into a UNIX system to do our Computer Science homework, because they use an incompatible protocol (works with Windoze) for their DSL servers. We could just as easily use Linux and GCC, but are forced to run Windoze and login (Translate: slow) and compile on their Sun servers (which, BTW, don't run the network) because the DSL servers use a DHCP protocol which doesn't like Linux. I fear for those who will be forced to buy Windoze and have to deal with crashes and viruses because their school requires them to use it.
I have used both OWL and MFC, and in my opinion, OWL was better technology - it was entirely C++ and didn't rely on a "framework" consisting of classes, macros, and special "dependencies" that only the compiler knows about. OWL, on the other hand, used the C++ OO paradigm, and it was very easy for a C++ programmer new to windows programming to get a windows app developed in a short period of time. Unfortunately, though, OWL covered only the most basic of windows classes, so when Windows95 came out, it became pretty much obsolete. And then there was the AppWizard in MSVC++, which shortened application development times drastically for those familiar with MFC.
What really happened is that programmers gave up the ease of development with OWL for the features and shorter development times with MFC and MSVC++. MFC has a very complex and idiosyncratic interface - but, provided that the application programmer can handle the complexity, it is a much better RAD tool than OWL.
Unfortunately, the Linux community has been blind to all of this. What Linux needs is a standard graphical interface with a standard RAD tool. Face it - there are no GUI development tools that run in Linux that have even come close to offering the features that MSVC++ has - AppWizards, ClassBrowsers, integrated resource editors (AppStudio), syntax highlighting, and a standard application framework for rapid application development(MFC). Until the Linux community responds to the needs of the larger development community, it will ever be a niche OS.
I thought this quote was particularly interesting:
next you will have gun manufacturers sued because someone used their gun to kill someone, breweries sued because they facilitate drunkenness or the BBC news sued because they mention a rise in drug dealing.
This is exactly what happened in the city of Chicago - the city sued gun manufacturers for the costs of law enforcement and adverse health effects of gunshot wounds. Today, it seems that one can't sneeze in the wrong direction without getting sued. Word to the wise - if you are involved in anything even slightly controversial, you better retain legal counsel.
Is an absolute necessity. This is a perfect example of where something as simple as a bug in an email collection routine could frame the wrong guy.... The "innocent don't have anything to hide" defense for an invasion of privacy is invalid - the Government is accountable to the people, not the other way around. The FBI should have to justify to us why they feel it necessary to snoop on our communications, rather than us having to justify why we don't want them in our ISPs
"You'll be back in control," Gates told attendees.
So Mr Gates has finally admitted that he runs your machine....And to get control back, you'll have to buy his softare....again.
Supposedly, ease of use and control was what the Windows environment was all about. Has Microsoft come to the conclusion that their GUI has made things harder on the user?
They do things like this to "stop the spread of violence," yet:
Abortion claims millions of lives a year, and it is considered a "right" by some.
Schools get sued if they post the 10 commandments or let students pray at graduation.
Lawmakers insist that capital punishment (state sanctioned murder) is necessary to combat crime.
They villify people who express belief in morals as "intolerant"
I don't believe this is about protecting children. It's about control. As the article states:
Distributors of Soldier of Fortune must now recall the computer game and become licensed distributors of adult products before being able to redistribute the game, she said.
Our society is filled with culturally sanctioned violence; the only reason why soldier of fortune is treated this way is because it doesn't fit the mold of our culturally sanctioned violence categories.
It's an Orwellian attempt at thought control. It doesn't matter if you have a right to say something, because the conduit through which you speak is privately owned. Therefore, the First Ammendment doesn't apply; if I own a server and I don't like the comments you post on my server, I am well within my rights to delete that content. Since most ISP's are in it for the money, they will always yield to the whims of Big Corporation rather than fight out a costly court battle. Thus, there is truly no right to free speech on the internet. Unless, of course, you own your own server and have a dedicated line.
Someone needs to do something about this before it gets out of hand... Could we use the same techniques that this company uses to find their customer list and blacklist those corporations?
The quality of education has been in steady decline since the 60's-70's era. Computers are just another way in which the teacher can capture the attention of kids without really making them think. If anything, I think having computers in the classroom teaches kids how to take tests rather than solve problems. I think that having computers in classrooms is a good idea - provided that they are used to teach concepts and not to entertain, which is how they are used now.
short version of the bandwidth story is that while there are scenarios in which Xbox could run out of bandwidth, there should be more than enough for most cases
Since when has Microsoft or any of its developers done what should be done? This is going to suck simply because no one at Microsoft but Abrash is going to pay attention to the possible bandwidth problem. In the end, Microsoft will have all too many scenarios in which Xbox could run out of bandwidth . The result: the same blue screen and stall to which MS users have grown accustomed.
"It provides operating system independence (which Java provides), but it also provides language independence, which Java can't provide." The new language will offer features available in Java but not available in C or C++. The features include better security and "garbage collection," which tidies up computer memory used in a software program, Microsoft executives said.
Does anyone really think that programs written in a language which allows (and will probably require, for speed reasons) direct access to the hardware will be portable? Who expects, in all honesty, Microsoft to port C# to its competitor's platforms? And what does "language independence" mean? Does Microsoft mean to tell us that if we accept their C# as our new development standard, that we won't be dependent on the whims of Microsoft for providing support for the language?
A language that extends the features of other languages cannot claim language independence, because, as MS puts it "The new language will offer features available in Java but not available in C or C++." So if we develop with C#, we will be forever tied to MS to provide us with compilers because it has features that aren't available in other languages. So much for language independence.
The only problem with porting Linux to a mainframe is that Linux is probably too slow. I work with an S/390 at Northern Illinois University, and have experienced firsthand just how slow mainframes run. Contrary to popular belief, mainframes are not fast machines - the average Sun server can run circles around a mainframe in terms of instructions executed per second. However, mainframes make up for slow processor speed with massive IO capabilities - and given that most data processing tasks are IO bound, this is good design. However, Linux wasn't designed to be run on systems where every single processor cycle counts, and MVS was. Granted, MVS is a piece of junk from the user's perspective, and I would rather run Linux any day. But I don't think that Linux will make successful inroads into the mainframe community simply because it is a processor-cycle intensive operating system; this isn't a problem on PC's which have processor cycles to waste, but on a mainframe, where every clock cycle counts, Linux would probably be more of a drag on the system than anything else. Think about it - if you have to process 250 million records, you don't need the OS taking away any more clock cycles than absolutely necessary, and a kernel written in C with portability in mind can't possibly be as efficient as one written specifically for the hardware (and probably in assembler).
The problem with having such a database is that people invariably trust computers - in spite of the fact that all of the data in the database was entered by hand and is not only subject to human error, but also software errors as well. What Canada (and probably the U.S. as well) has now is a situation in which someone in a government office can make major decisions affecting an individual without ever meeting that individual, based on data that may not even be true! This problem is not just limited to databases. We are rapidly becoming a "plastic" society - people make decisions about our value as people without ever meeting us, based solely on some chunk of data found in a machine.
For example, take State Farm Insurance. I applied for a position some time ago and was instructed to prepare a "scannable" resume. Why? Well, at State Farm, your resume isn't even read by humans - its scanned into their machines and kept on file. When they want to hire people, presumably, they just do a query for certain keywords; if your resume doesn't have the right keywords, your resume won't even be read by a human being.
This is a quiet way of covering up covert discrimination. Because people "trust" computers, one can justify hiring/not hiring based on "computer generated" results, the implication being that a computer is completely objective. Anyone who has ever worked with databases knows that a carefully constructed query can get the user whatever result they desire, yet people still trust the analysis done be a computer without question
This impression of infallible accuracy makes computers all the more dangerous, especially when they are wrong. Imagine if the criminal record of someone else was "accidentally" appended to your file. Imagine trying to straighten the situation out and hearing the clerk say The computer is always right. How can you appeal computer data? Where is the physical paper trail?
I like computers, but must admit that, just like everything else in society, there are inappropriate uses for them. The danger of Canada's database outweighs any perceived benefits that it might have brought; it has reduced human beings to mere numbers and stripped Canadiens of their individual dignity.
The deadly computron radiation that will be released when this happens. My brother-in-law survived the explosion caused by this email, only to die a few days later from computron radiation poisoning.
The problem with secular humanism is that it won't get you to heaven nor provide the spiritual, emotional, and physical healing that only a community of Christians can. Without "organized" religion (Christianity), the poor, the sick, the starving, and the hopeless would all be left to fend for themselves. Mother Teresa was not a secular humanist - she was a Christian, and it was organized religion that allowed her to have such a large impact on the world.
Yes, there have been people that went off on a tangent and were deceived by Satan and called themselves Christians. But it was not the "organization" that caused this behavior: it was Satan, and he would have deceived them regardless of whether or not these people were involved in the organization. The fact that they were organized gave them a visible presence and allowed the world to see their bad deeds for what they were: sin.
Secular humanism is nothing more than a "feel good" excuse to deny your responsibility for yourself and those around you.
IANAL, but it would stand to reason that a patch is merely a "derived work" based on the original, and that it would fall under the derived works category in the GPL. We shouldn't be concerned about patches, though. It is entirely within the scope of the GPL for a company like Microsoft to distribute free software (LINUX?!) with its proprietary software (Say OFFICE), and charge a fee for both. Sure, you could copy MSLINUX to your heart's content, but MS could very well engineer it so that MSLINUX won't run without the proprietary accompanying MSOFFICE software, which, of course, is copyrighted and falls unders a restrictive license. Voila! Free software can be exploited by the industry in spite of the GPL. Sure, you could run a "free" version of LINUX, but MS could very well engineer its software to run only on "their" distro...
I can understand why Symantec wouldn't want such a thing decrypted - a competitor could simply decrypt their list and use it. However, seeing as I-gear probably won't be installed on any/.'ers computer, I don't think its an issue. Who cares what some software company has in it's license terms? Don't we realize that if we in the open source movement wrote software that EVERYONE wanted to run, that these "Big Bad Software Companies" would be at our mercy. They couldn't release software with ludicrous license agreements if everyone wanted to run GPL'ed software.
Why is it that if someone copies a physical product's design that it is patent infringement, yet copying user interface isn't? (MacOS and Win95/98, anyone?). This sets up a scary precedent should the courts start viewing software this way. Should this happen, the freedom of free software could very easily be threatened, because the bulk of free software was copied from existing programs...
Is not some clone of an existing UI. We need to create the next user interface. We've seen the popup menu system replace the command line, and the GUI replace the popup interface. It's time to replace the GUI with something more usable. Moving a mouse to point and click requires too much time. We need a keyboard-driven shell with graphical capabilities. For once, the Open Source community should be the ones doing the innovating. Face it, copying the Windows interface is merely admitting the superiority of the design.
Does this matter to anyone? Who cares what the public thinks about Microsoft. This is the same American public that pays $1 for 20 ounces of bottled French water simply because it's French. Don't tell me you mistaked the public for having a clue. There are far worse tradgedies - you know, like the beautiful woman who always goes back to her abusive boyfriend. Ultimately, everyone gets the OS that they deserve, and most Americans don't deserve anything better than Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
So I guess anyone who's worked at Microsoft and written a web page or used a web browser after they left is guilty....
Seems to me that Microsoft thinks they own the Internet. Sometimes I wish DARPA had retained control and made Microsoft pay a licensing fee to develop software for their network...
Currently, the majority of folks listen to their music for free. I stopped buying CD's when I got a radio. Now that I have a computer, I can buy CD's, encode them into mp3's on my hard drive, and listen to mixes through Winamp and X11amp. Guess what's going to happen when I can't do this because of CPRM? - That's right, I'll stop buying CD's, buy a radio, and listen to music for free again....
Face the facts, folks, we're programmers. We can find ways around any copy protection scheme. Here's one: write a C program to read a file (say, your CD media file) into memory, and then write it out to another file, (say, your hard disk file), and viola! CPRM is useless.
So what will CPRM actually do? It will make me buy fewer CD's. It will hurt the music and movie industry. But, it will give them the mind-candy they've been asking for - they'll think that no one will enjoy their media without paying for it.
Obviously, copyright is important to us. Without copyright, we couldn't enjoy the quality of music and video we have now. What we need is an open-source media initiative - that is, a media file format which prevents piracy while still allowing the user his fair use rights. Until the Free Software Foundation or some open-source initiative takes care of this, we can look forward to more of the CPRM type problems in the future...
This is nothing new to those of us running Windows... HELLO? Wakeup! Insecure systems are the way of the future! While all you folks have been happy in *NIX-land, the world has accepted the fact that vulnerability is the way of the future - in the future all systems will have advanced virus-enabling features, though I must admit, it will be a while before you *NIX freaks catch on to this new trend...
Never happened.
I suspect that if you start putting speed controls on cars, people will start fixing up the old ones to avoid having the privacy intrusion. New car sales will falter, and the speed controls will come out. No large corporation wants to get a bad reputation with it's clientele, and I think the fear of being labelled as a 'big brother' type of corporation will keep automakers from actually implementing this...Still, I would like to watch this pursued, because:
-
If they sue for patent infringement and get shot down, it will be a victory for the Internet. However, the notion of "Intellectual Property" not being absolutely ownable is going cast a cloud of uncertainty over many IP and internet related businesses. Ultimately, this could cause a downturn in the economy.
-
If they sue and win, we can all look forward to "owning" the "Next Big Thing". As coders, our salaries are directly related to the fact that someone can "own" an idea. We merely need to organize our efforts, patent the blatantly obvious, and bilk Corporate America - then we will see a change in patent law.
Either way, we can exploit this to our advantage.So what happens to those of us who would like to run Linux on our laptops, but are forced to use Windoze so we can run school-mandated software? Those of us at Northern Illinois University are FORCED to log into a UNIX system to do our Computer Science homework, because they use an incompatible protocol (works with Windoze) for their DSL servers. We could just as easily use Linux and GCC, but are forced to run Windoze and login (Translate: slow) and compile on their Sun servers (which, BTW, don't run the network) because the DSL servers use a DHCP protocol which doesn't like Linux. I fear for those who will be forced to buy Windoze and have to deal with crashes and viruses because their school requires them to use it.
Gives new meaning to the term "Space Herpes". (Ice Pirates, anyone?)
I have used both OWL and MFC, and in my opinion, OWL was better technology - it was entirely C++ and didn't rely on a "framework" consisting of classes, macros, and special "dependencies" that only the compiler knows about. OWL, on the other hand, used the C++ OO paradigm, and it was very easy for a C++ programmer new to windows programming to get a windows app developed in a short period of time. Unfortunately, though, OWL covered only the most basic of windows classes, so when Windows95 came out, it became pretty much obsolete. And then there was the AppWizard in MSVC++, which shortened application development times drastically for those familiar with MFC.
What really happened is that programmers gave up the ease of development with OWL for the features and shorter development times with MFC and MSVC++. MFC has a very complex and idiosyncratic interface - but, provided that the application programmer can handle the complexity, it is a much better RAD tool than OWL.
Unfortunately, the Linux community has been blind to all of this. What Linux needs is a standard graphical interface with a standard RAD tool. Face it - there are no GUI development tools that run in Linux that have even come close to offering the features that MSVC++ has - AppWizards, ClassBrowsers, integrated resource editors (AppStudio), syntax highlighting, and a standard application framework for rapid application development(MFC). Until the Linux community responds to the needs of the larger development community, it will ever be a niche OS.
Is an absolute necessity. This is a perfect example of where something as simple as a bug in an email collection routine could frame the wrong guy.... The "innocent don't have anything to hide" defense for an invasion of privacy is invalid - the Government is accountable to the people, not the other way around. The FBI should have to justify to us why they feel it necessary to snoop on our communications, rather than us having to justify why we don't want them in our ISPs
So Mr Gates has finally admitted that he runs your machine....And to get control back, you'll have to buy his softare....again.
Supposedly, ease of use and control was what the Windows environment was all about. Has Microsoft come to the conclusion that their GUI has made things harder on the user?
- Abortion claims millions of lives a year, and it is considered a "right" by some.
- Schools get sued if they post the 10 commandments or let students pray at graduation.
- Lawmakers insist that capital punishment (state sanctioned murder) is necessary to combat crime.
- They villify people who express belief in morals as "intolerant"
I don't believe this is about protecting children. It's about control. As the article states: Our society is filled with culturally sanctioned violence; the only reason why soldier of fortune is treated this way is because it doesn't fit the mold of our culturally sanctioned violence categories.It's an Orwellian attempt at thought control. It doesn't matter if you have a right to say something, because the conduit through which you speak is privately owned. Therefore, the First Ammendment doesn't apply; if I own a server and I don't like the comments you post on my server, I am well within my rights to delete that content. Since most ISP's are in it for the money, they will always yield to the whims of Big Corporation rather than fight out a costly court battle. Thus, there is truly no right to free speech on the internet. Unless, of course, you own your own server and have a dedicated line.
Someone needs to do something about this before it gets out of hand... Could we use the same techniques that this company uses to find their customer list and blacklist those corporations?
The quality of education has been in steady decline since the 60's-70's era. Computers are just another way in which the teacher can capture the attention of kids without really making them think. If anything, I think having computers in the classroom teaches kids how to take tests rather than solve problems. I think that having computers in classrooms is a good idea - provided that they are used to teach concepts and not to entertain, which is how they are used now.
Since when has Microsoft or any of its developers done what should be done? This is going to suck simply because no one at Microsoft but Abrash is going to pay attention to the possible bandwidth problem. In the end, Microsoft will have all too many scenarios in which Xbox could run out of bandwidth . The result: the same blue screen and stall to which MS users have grown accustomed.
Does anyone really think that programs written in a language which allows (and will probably require, for speed reasons) direct access to the hardware will be portable? Who expects, in all honesty, Microsoft to port C# to its competitor's platforms? And what does "language independence" mean? Does Microsoft mean to tell us that if we accept their C# as our new development standard, that we won't be dependent on the whims of Microsoft for providing support for the language?
A language that extends the features of other languages cannot claim language independence, because, as MS puts it "The new language will offer features available in Java but not available in C or C++." So if we develop with C#, we will be forever tied to MS to provide us with compilers because it has features that aren't available in other languages. So much for language independence.
The only problem with porting Linux to a mainframe is that Linux is probably too slow. I work with an S/390 at Northern Illinois University, and have experienced firsthand just how slow mainframes run. Contrary to popular belief, mainframes are not fast machines - the average Sun server can run circles around a mainframe in terms of instructions executed per second. However, mainframes make up for slow processor speed with massive IO capabilities - and given that most data processing tasks are IO bound, this is good design. However, Linux wasn't designed to be run on systems where every single processor cycle counts, and MVS was. Granted, MVS is a piece of junk from the user's perspective, and I would rather run Linux any day. But I don't think that Linux will make successful inroads into the mainframe community simply because it is a processor-cycle intensive operating system; this isn't a problem on PC's which have processor cycles to waste, but on a mainframe, where every clock cycle counts, Linux would probably be more of a drag on the system than anything else. Think about it - if you have to process 250 million records, you don't need the OS taking away any more clock cycles than absolutely necessary, and a kernel written in C with portability in mind can't possibly be as efficient as one written specifically for the hardware (and probably in assembler).
For example, take State Farm Insurance. I applied for a position some time ago and was instructed to prepare a "scannable" resume. Why? Well, at State Farm, your resume isn't even read by humans - its scanned into their machines and kept on file. When they want to hire people, presumably, they just do a query for certain keywords; if your resume doesn't have the right keywords, your resume won't even be read by a human being.
This is a quiet way of covering up covert discrimination. Because people "trust" computers, one can justify hiring/not hiring based on "computer generated" results, the implication being that a computer is completely objective. Anyone who has ever worked with databases knows that a carefully constructed query can get the user whatever result they desire, yet people still trust the analysis done be a computer without question
This impression of infallible accuracy makes computers all the more dangerous, especially when they are wrong. Imagine if the criminal record of someone else was "accidentally" appended to your file. Imagine trying to straighten the situation out and hearing the clerk say The computer is always right. How can you appeal computer data? Where is the physical paper trail?
I like computers, but must admit that, just like everything else in society, there are inappropriate uses for them. The danger of Canada's database outweighs any perceived benefits that it might have brought; it has reduced human beings to mere numbers and stripped Canadiens of their individual dignity.
The deadly computron radiation that will be released when this happens. My brother-in-law survived the explosion caused by this email, only to die a few days later from computron radiation poisoning.
The problem with secular humanism is that it won't get you to heaven nor provide the spiritual, emotional, and physical healing that only a community of Christians can. Without "organized" religion (Christianity), the poor, the sick, the starving, and the hopeless would all be left to fend for themselves. Mother Teresa was not a secular humanist - she was a Christian, and it was organized religion that allowed her to have such a large impact on the world.
Yes, there have been people that went off on a tangent and were deceived by Satan and called themselves Christians. But it was not the "organization" that caused this behavior: it was Satan, and he would have deceived them regardless of whether or not these people were involved in the organization. The fact that they were organized gave them a visible presence and allowed the world to see their bad deeds for what they were: sin.
Secular humanism is nothing more than a "feel good" excuse to deny your responsibility for yourself and those around you.
IANAL, but it would stand to reason that a patch is merely a "derived work" based on the original, and that it would fall under the derived works category in the GPL. We shouldn't be concerned about patches, though. It is entirely within the scope of the GPL for a company like Microsoft to distribute free software (LINUX?!) with its proprietary software (Say OFFICE), and charge a fee for both. Sure, you could copy MSLINUX to your heart's content, but MS could very well engineer it so that MSLINUX won't run without the proprietary accompanying MSOFFICE software, which, of course, is copyrighted and falls unders a restrictive license. Voila! Free software can be exploited by the industry in spite of the GPL. Sure, you could run a "free" version of LINUX, but MS could very well engineer its software to run only on "their" distro...
I can understand why Symantec wouldn't want such a thing decrypted - a competitor could simply decrypt their list and use it. However, seeing as I-gear probably won't be installed on any /.'ers computer, I don't think its an issue. Who cares what some software company has in it's license terms? Don't we realize that if we in the open source movement wrote software that EVERYONE wanted to run, that these "Big Bad Software Companies" would be at our mercy. They couldn't release software with ludicrous license agreements if everyone wanted to run GPL'ed software.
Why is it that if someone copies a physical product's design that it is patent infringement, yet copying user interface isn't? (MacOS and Win95/98, anyone?). This sets up a scary precedent should the courts start viewing software this way. Should this happen, the freedom of free software could very easily be threatened, because the bulk of free software was copied from existing programs...
Is not some clone of an existing UI. We need to create the next user interface. We've seen the popup menu system replace the command line, and the GUI replace the popup interface. It's time to replace the GUI with something more usable. Moving a mouse to point and click requires too much time. We need a keyboard-driven shell with graphical capabilities. For once, the Open Source community should be the ones doing the innovating. Face it, copying the Windows interface is merely admitting the superiority of the design.
Does this matter to anyone? Who cares what the public thinks about Microsoft. This is the same American public that pays $1 for 20 ounces of bottled French water simply because it's French. Don't tell me you mistaked the public for having a clue. There are far worse tradgedies - you know, like the beautiful woman who always goes back to her abusive boyfriend. Ultimately, everyone gets the OS that they deserve, and most Americans don't deserve anything better than Microsoft.