Slashdot/Andover is still responsible for removing copyrighted material from any servers they have control over. Microsoft has notified them that they believe that a copyrighted document they control is being duplicated without authorization and asking Slashdot/Andover to remove it in good faith. Slashdot/Andover doesn't HAVE to remove the document. If S/A doesn't remove it, then Microsoft can pursue it more toughly, and at some point (assuming MS wins) S/A will HAVE to remove the document or suffer various legal problems. So you are right, S/A, at this point, is under no obligation to remove the document.
S/A will have to establish that the copyright is invalid, and none of the questions their lawyers posed hit that straight on the head. A good question to have asked is "We allege that your specification is based on illegal use of a work, therefore your copyright is not valid. How do you respond?" But instead they dance around with questions barely related to the issue at hand.
<flamebait>Besides, if Kerberos kicks so much ass, how come Microsoft had to add things to it?</flamebait>
True, but Slashdot/Andover is still responsible for removing the copyrighted material from any servers they have control over. I know they are concerned about opening themselves up to having to police their site, but AFAIK, that's not true. They can take a hands off approach, but react when a company requests to have content removed, much like when an ISP is asked to remove the content of a customer.
Good points, but what's the point? Here is Microsoft's key complaint:
Included on http://www.slashdot.org are comments that now appear in your Archives, which include unauthorized reproductions of Microsoft's copyrighted work entitled "Microsoft Authorization Data Specification v.1.0 for Microsoft Windows 2000 Operating Systems" (hereafter "Specification"). (Bold added for emphasis)
Regardless of whether or not Microsoft is allowed to attach the Kerberos name to their protocol, or whether or not it's technically still a Trade Secret, Microsoft still owns EXCLUSIVE copyrights to said work, and if someone is redistributing that work, then there are laws being broken.
In some ways I'm surprised that you actually paid your lawyers for this (or should I say "lawyers"), on the other hand, it is a good deflection tactic (one that the hyper-aggressive Linux/OSS advocates (fanatics) in the IRC channels I frequent use to derail perfectly valid points) so maybe it is worth the money.
1) They never did in the e-mail they sent to you. 2) Not once do they mention "Kerberos" in their request. 3) They don't mention "trade secret" either. The closest they come is proprietary, which can also mean exclusive rights. 4) Again, not relevant to the request. 5) Not relevant to the copyright infringement alleged. 6) Lack of harm does not make copyright infringement legal. 7) Irrelevant to copyright infringement allegation. 8) There's no reason why they shouldn't be able to, but it's up to Microsoft to let that happen. They own the copyright on the work so they can do whatever they want.
On another note, I notice that Microsoft recognizes who owns comments:
Under the provisions of the DMCA, we expect that having been duly notified of this case of blatant copyright violation, Andover will remove the above referenced comments from its servers and forward our complaint to the owner of the referenced comments. (Bold added for emphasis)
In short: You might want to address the claims that Microsoft has laid forth in its letter. The other questions are great, yes, but is not going to get you very far in stating your case as for why unauthorized reprodctions of copyrighted work appear on your site. Even if Microsoft relinquished all rights that they have to the specification, the infringement still occurred in the past and is punishable.
If I'm not mistaken, there's something called "Good Faith" that says "Hey, we think this is wrong, and we're pretty sure we'd win in court. We want to give you the oppurtunity to make things right before we bring the courts into it."
Slashdot doesn't have to remove the comments right now, but if it does go to court, and Microsoft does succeed in getting a court order, Slashdot might be in a bit more trouble, especially if the judge determines that there was absolutely no doubt that the content was illegal.
I think Slashdot's best interest would be to censor the blatant illegal copy, and fight the links and EULA circumvents if it feels like doing so.
Microsoft is trying to stop copyright infringement, this is the first step. If this doesn't work THEN they go to the judge and get the court order.
In short: Microsoft's request holds no obligation for Slashdot, but Slashdot can put themselves at risk should it be found later that the content is illegal and Slashdot could have done something about it, especially when it was brought to their attention.
I used to work for Microsoft and I'm not writing this because of that, I'm writing this because I believe what you wrote is completely irrational. I will only address one paragraph, I don't have time to analyze the entire thing.
Look. We all knew this was comeing. It was only a matter of time before gates moved to silence his critics(1). It is an inevitable part of any tyrant's rise(2)... seize control of the critical press(3). Make sure ONLY your viewpoint is heard by the masses. Stalin did it. Mao did it. Castro did it. Hussain did it.(4) Numbers added by me
1) Microsoft is not asking to have any posts that solely criticized Microsoft taken off. There are a great number of posts that criticize Microsoft, and some that can even be considered slanderous that Microsoft hasn't touched. In this case Microsoft is attempting to enforce a valid Copyright that it owns. The parts having to do with the DMCA are sketchy, but the post that copies verbatim the document (including the numerous "(c) 2000 Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft Confidential" are definately in violation of Copyright laws. Regardless of if the document should be free, wants to be free, or whatever. Even if the spec is "wrong" because it breaks Kerberos (or whatever others are claiming), it is still Copyright. The National Enquirer holds a copyright on whatever they write, true or not. Microsoft is defending it's property, not it's image.
2) Gates is not a tyrant, plus many would say that his rise is over.
3) I would hardly call Slashdot "Critical Press." a) They aren't a newspaper or any other sort of newsmedia, they are more of a digest (although not even that since they link). b) Slashdot, unlike the standard news organizations, doesn't even pretend to be biased. You can't have good press if you are completely biased.
4) Microsoft nor Gates has ever killed anyone, even those that strongly oppose them.
As long as Slashdot continues to maintain an illegal copy of copyrighted mateerial on their servers they can be sued. Free Speech or otherwise (BTW, as far as the law is concerned (AFAIK), the government is the only entity not allowed to take away your right to Free Speech, individuals and corporations can do whatever they want. Slashdot is completely within it's rights to censor comments, ZD Net does in it's talk back as do many other online forums. Now, free speech as a matter of principle, that's different), those documents should not be on Slashdot and only Slashdot has the power to remove them, that makes Microsoft well within their rights to ask Slashdot to remove at least the duplicated document post.
Your post is nothing but Anti-Microsoft Propaganda, and completely unfounded as well. It's like if someone backed into my car in the parking, we got a brawl, and I took out a gun a shot him. If he were black (or any other minority) *BOOM* it's a hate crime or racially motivated. Regardless of the real reason (I'm a dearranged psycho-path with an itchy trigger, short temper, and misplace hostilities) it becomes racially motivated. You are taking a valid complaint (your site is mirroring copyrighted documents without our permission) and turning it into a suppression of speech. You are using this as a Call to Arms.
Read something other than Slashdot for a change, and no, I'm not impressed that you know Sir Winston "SuperTyke" Spencer Churchill's middle name. If you knew his mother's maiden name, that'd be dope (but no fair going to Encarta).
(The only reason I'm replying is because I don't have moderator points today and I can't -1 you down)
The DAT tape is still around and it is legal. The only reason it's still around is because of something kindly referred to as the "pirate tax," or a bit of pittance tacked on to the price of blank DATs (and blank CDRs) that gets kicked back to the publishing houses to compensate for whatever licensing fees they might lose because of illegal copying. This is a law or act or something that was passed. You can't sell a digital recording device without doing this (this is the thing they tried to get the Diamond Rio on, remember?) No doubt this thing by Philips will do the same (and apparently there are other people with similar devices, if I read correctly from other posts).
The thing is, Philips, IIRC, makes a DVD player, therefore it's paid its 5k (or whatever) to the DVD Mafia for the rights to develop a player. And doing so there is, no doubt, numerous clasuses saying "You can't do this." So that means one of 2 things: 1) Philips is ok in releasing this, and therefore won't have any lawsuits. 2) Philips is doing a bad thing and can be sued for breaking their contract/licensing agreement.
P.S. Sorry for all the derogatory name calling, I'm just in that mood. It's more tongue-in-cheek than anything.
What hassle you ask? It's just copying and pasting links? Well I'll tell you what hassle. If I go and post links, the slashdot people will concntrate only on those links, and launch attacks against those links, and use them as ammunition to perpetuate their own denial. It doesn't matter if I'm right, or I made a mistake, or whatever, my whole argument will be judged on those links.
So I leave the links out? What does that accomplish? 1) The people that are in denial can stay in denial without having to expend any extra energy justifying to themselves or to other people (via flames to my post). People in denial will stay in denial, no loss there. 2) Those that are genuinely interested will pick up on the "short search on Microsoft's site" part and actually do research on their own (which they probably would have done anyway even if I had posted links). 3) I can go back to work and not worry about it.
See, I know how slashdot works. I didn't write that post to get moderated up. I didn't write that post to be insightful or informative. I wrote that post to write it. Now, if you check my profile and go look at the article I posted an hour or so ago, you'll see a post that is intended to be insightful or make people think, present information, and maybe ge moderated up. But on general Linux vs. Windows stuff, I don't get involved. I just wanted to let people know that a Windows Smart Card solution existed, and has for about a year.
I don't bitch about how anti-Microsoft Slashdot is. I leave that to someone else. I generally bitch about how biased and opinionated Slashdot is (not which way they are biased, just that they are) when they are trying to be a news magazine. "Slashdot needs to figure out if they are MSNBC or Slate."
Oh, and come on. There isn't anything that goes by in the computer world that ISN'T submitted to Slashdot.:)
He just doesn't know it. He probably thinks he's written a provocative article to generate flame and hits, but (without reading the article intensely) I think he's right.
Open Source has created good products, but it has yet to complete "The Project." And "The Project" is not necessarily a single product.
Linux (feel free to substitute *BSD in this argument, or any other OS) has been in development for 10+ years. It gained fringe popularity 5+ years ago, and has achieved cult popularity in the last 2 years. There are thousands of developers working on Open Source projects for Linux in addition to Linux itself. However Linux still hasn't released a product capable of competing with Microsoft Windows on all levels. And I'm not talking about Windoes interoperability. I'm talking about ease of use, features for dummies, consistency among apps, and interoperability among other Linux systems. Linux is an incomplete piece of software. It's functional beta (very functional).
Sure, linux competes quite well on the server side as far as pure performance, but all over Linux is lacking. Linux is still a long way from competing in the desktop world.
Look at the article here to see him completely ignore apache, the kernel, fetchmail, KDE/Gnome and all the other great open source projects that make the internet possible and livable in. - Paul Bristow
Livable, yes..but comfortable? For all?
It's clear that Linux has a future and that it's still attracting smart people. Open source, on the other hand, appears to be struggling. The reason is simple: People gravitate toward products, and open source is not geared to create but to critique. It's best at tearing apart the establishment because it consists of underappreciated programmers who suddenly have a voice. - John Taschek
This might be the most insightful (+1) paragraph in the whole article. "Open source is not geared to create but critique" I think that phrase is half right. Open source is geared to create...but the people in Open Source are geared to critique. The fragmentation in Linux is amazing, instead of helping to improve an existing WM people would rather write their own. I'm surprised everyone has settled on one Web Server. "It's best at tearing apart the establishment..." The establishment, I believe, is more than just Wintel or Proprietary software. The establishment is anything that's "established." The problem with having a bunch of hacker type people working on Open Source is that you get the individuality and righteous indignation of hackers. "I can do it better" or "my way is better."
Now, granted, not all projects suffer this problem. Gimp, from what I've seen, appears to a very nice image manipulation program. Well done. But come on, BeOS managed to eclipse you all with a well-polished desktop OS in only a handful of years.
Can Open Source beat Microsoft? I think so. Will it do it anytime soon? Probably not. But it's definately not going to do it with the current Open Source mindset.
And you should all fear the capitalistic involvement with Open Source. Because if you think the lone wolf, righteous indignation of hackers is bad, then you haven't seen just what capitalism can do. All your precious Linux companies will be releasing competing apps, all vying for the title of best Linux company. APT, PKG, etc.. Want to see what I'm talking about? Just imagine what would happen if Microsoft decided to Embrace and Extend Linux. Released their own distribution then started slowly moving everyone to their apps, then slowly changing the playing field. Like the frog in a pot that doesn't realize the water is getting hot until he's cooked. Now once you've got that image in your head then realize that your Linux comapnie are already doing that.
In closing I would like to say that I do not "represent the Open Source Community" (Hemos). In fact I'm a former Microsoft employee. I left my job 2 months ago, because I wanted to do something different, and for no other reason. I've watched the Open Source Community, and have even participated in select OSS projects. What I have written does not apply to all OSS projects, by far, there are some that are very effective and are not plagued by such problems, but I see a trend, and it's based int he same religious OS war that makes you hate Microsoft with a passion.
Microsoft released it's own Smart Card OS (Windows for Smart Cards) quite a while ago. In fact a short little search right now of MS's site shows press releases around May of last year.
But of course it's not Linux so who cares, right? Heck I couldn't even find it on Slashdot.
I would think that it would be difficult to get this patent off. For one thing Microsoft has Embedded Windows NT (2000) on a smartcard, and if Microsoft hasn't applied for a patent (which is something they're starting to do quite a bit now), there would at least be some prior art, I would think.
I am not a lawyer, but I was in a group legal plan once.
Re:It looks like unix is OK but UNIX is not
on
UNIX.com On eBay?
·
· Score: 1
IIRC, from NSI's rules, the.com is not considered when resolving trademark infringements. So if you own the trademark on unix.com, you can't go after a squatter that has unix.com via NSI's arbitration. In the same way you can't claim that you are using it as unix.com to get out of a trademark dispute with someone who own the unix trademark.
>I'm just saying, there's better/cheaper ways to get your point across.;>
Yeah, but not necessarily more novel.
In other news today, Taco Bell paid $6.3 million to put their now popular, Chalupa-loving dog on the side of the ISS. {Cut to multiple shots of the ad that "will never get seen"}. It will be painted on the side of the space station's mess pod. Unfortunately, due to NASA restrictions, the ad will not be visibile, even with a high powered telescope, because it must face away from earth. Here's Taco Bell spokesman, Commander Taco, with some words about this PR stunt. {insert video of spokesman talking about why they did it.} That's it for Roger 10 News, we'll see you tomorrow."
COMMERCIAL We here at Taco Bell have always thought big, except when it came to prices, and so the biggest thing we could possibly do is to put our ad on the side of the largest man-made structure in space. But that wasn't enough so we are going even further. In addition to the large $6.3 million ad we have painted on the side of the ISS, for a price of $9.6 million, plus $1.2 million a year for the next 10 years, our chalupa-loving dog will live aboard the International Space Station. He will work and play along with astronauts of all nations. So next time you get the craving for almost authentic mexican food, remember to run for the border, because with the help of the ISS, we at Taco Bell are helping to erase them.
To be followed, in later weeks, with an announcement by McDonalds that they will be sending up a McDonald's restaurant pod to be attached to the spacestation, serving delicious McDonald's food, and also some story about how an astronaut is refusing to wear the Nike branded spacesuits that NASA requires because it conflicts with his Adidas endorsement contract.
You have satellite until someone decides to build one of these jammers! Then you get to see Mr. T try to act.
Anyone wish that Knight Rider, A-Team, and/or Airwolf did a cross-over show? You know like those Hardy Boy/Nancy Drew crossover books? It would be cool to see the Knight Rider team (Go Michael Knight!) and team Airwolf (Dominic Santini forever!) fighting evil together. Maybe even having the A-Team getting ouy their blow torches and welding them together into some sort of flying KITT.
Oh, and for those of you lucky enough to have a tv station playing airwolf, you have to play the stock footage drinking game. Everytime they show a clip of Airwolf with it's bottom mounted rockets retracted when they are supposed to be extended, drink. Basically anytime some accessory on airwolf inexplicably retracts and extends between shots. It's really quite fun.:)
Yeah good question: How do you determine what the minimum set of products taht should be integrated with the OS are? You do realize the TCP/IP stacks used to be a big business for companies like WRQ and Novell? Now they are integrated into Windows. Linux is an OS without a default graphical UI, Windows 95 is DOS with an integrated UI (a UI that used to be sold separately).
So essentially, if you want 100% compliance, you'd end up with Microsoft selling DOS 3.3 for $30, and Windows 98 for $99. And nearly every software product released will say "Requires Windows 98 Enhanced Edition".
Let's count off the technologies: DirectX (What?! A 2d and 3d Graphics API, that's not CORE OS), Networking (You nearly killed Novell and WRQ!), Defrag (Ooh! Bundled! Bad!), File Compression (Bye Bye Doublespace and Stacker), Windows Media Player (Long live Winamp, Sonique, Kjofol, MusicMatch (RealPlayer can sod off and die, though..ugh POS alert!)), of course IE (*Gasp* Netscape takes a free Browser, sells, it, then gets pissy when other people give theirs away for free, which is pretty much everyone else.), and the list goes on.
What it comes down to is, what is considered a CORE component of an OS? And you can't look back at DOS and say "That's a CORE OS" because we've come to expect more...like you said, TCP/IP stacks. So now TCP/IP stacks are considered a CORE part of the OS. Why?
The Justice System isn't for sale. Jackson is definately not on the take, if he were he would be dismissed PDQ (and if he were on the take..it's definately not Microsoft lining his pockets).
However, the governemnt IS for sale, and always has been. Why do you think this lawsuit was started in the first place? And all of America gets surprised when Microsoft hires a lobbyist, or an anti-lobbyist. Microsoft has, historically, had no lobbyists, only recently (last few years) have they had to resort to using lobbyists.
Lobbyists are nothing new, you know that, I know that. If Netscape, Sun, et al have their henchmen in DC greasing the palms of who knows who, it's only fair that Microsoft be doing it as well. As a shareholder I would be apalled if they didn't.
NOT that I'm in support of lobbying. It unfairly weighs representation into a minority. Just look at Tobacco.
But don't get on the Slashdot horn and start raising a ruckus over something like this.
It's not very scalable. I don't know what the limitis, I haven't looked at it that hard, but I know that the network will most likely collapse under itself if currently implemented in its current state.
Example: With 2500 hosts person A connects up to the network, that person sends an INIT broadcast message to the host he's immediately connected to, person B. Person B sends it out to everyone else he's connected to, etc. Then the replies start coming back, single-cast, to person A from 2500 other nodes (or possibly less, due to TTL). Searches happen the same way, except this time with more data.
A couple of problems I see: 1) with more hosts, the number of ping messages sent and the number of ping replies sent will grow (linearly, I think). 2) With an average TTL of 7 it is possible that one node may not be able to reach a segment of the network (any other node that's 8 or more hops away).
The protocol needs to be modified so that there are other ways of getting host information. Maybe a master browser or two. Someone can decide, or be elected a master browser. That client collects a number of hosts, and should a new host connect they can choose to ping the entire network, or talk to the master browser.
Another thing is that it really isn't necessary, as far as I can tell, to ping the entire network to see who's there, other than to possibly get additional hosts to connect to. That could be gotten in much better way. Gnutella has a list of other hosts, why can't it send those to each new person that's connected, rather than them creating a small flurry of activity on the network?
There are other issues that I've run across while developing my gnutella irc bot (gnurd - "/msg gnurd !help" on efnet). I think the developers will work out something, intelligent routing, etc. But in my opinion large changes to the protocol would have to be made to scale up past 10k people or so.
Not everything one Gnutella is piracy. Yesterday I searched for 'txt' and found nice little, perfectly legal, zip file containing txt's of various ICQ exploits.
As one of those coders (I just wrote a Gnutella IRC bot - go to efnet irc and/msg gnurd !help), I don't really see a problem. Sure there are a lot of pirates (read as "script kiddies that don't even know how to use scripts and OSS vigilantes" (there's, that's me flamebait -1 for the day)) that will abuse the system, but that doesn't make the system illegal. Irc is, in a way, a type of decentralized file distribution system. Go to #warez (or one of the less obvious more content channels), do a search or just wait for the spam. Then you create a direct DCC connection. There. That's gnutella but using a centralized network for decentralized file sharing. That doesn't mean irc should be shut down (it should be shut down for other reasons, I hate it, but I'm on it all the time, and writing leet-o gnutella irc bots:).
Sue me for writing my bot, I don't care (actually, I kind of do now that I don't have legal insurance, but I do have Microsoft Stock..oh, wait...shoot..nevermind). My bot doesn't transfer files. It just provides a means of searching of vast "database" (I use that term lightly, gnutella cracks me up in a lot of ways) of files and returns results. Much like Google, but not nearly as cool.
Now for the highly philosophical part of the post where I wax intellectual about the legal system in our country, drawing parallels between the corporate and individual world. By this point the previous paragraphs would have shooed away all the moderators, so I should be able to post this and not get moderated up. Ok, here goes:
It seems to me that a good number of corporations are starting to get litigious simply because they don't want to deal with the responsibility of running a corporation. It's like in the private sector, someone's kid gets hurt by _________, all of a sudden that parent is *^&$% psycho and on a sue-happy spree. Excuse me, 1) getting hurt is part of life 2) where's your adult supervision? People don't want to take responsibility for their actions and instead turn to the not so efficient court system to solve their problems. This is most relevant to the DVD problem. The DVD consortiuum messes up, it was their responsibility to do something, they messed up, and now they're are suing all the kids on the playground that hurt their feelings. . In summation, people don't want to take responsibility for their actions, and they don't want to take responsibilty for their responsibilities. You smoked cigarettes for the last 10 years and now you have cancer? Ha! I can just hear the surgeon general chanting "Told you so". All those years you told your friends "I like the way it tastes. I can quit. Smoking a little won't hurt me. It's my &*^$%ing life I can do what I want." you now want to recoup from the Tobacco companies? Screw you! And the government (read: me the tax-payer) shouldn't have to pay for treating your ass either. (Side note: The tobacco companies should be regulated and controlled and basically dicked to hell and back. Screw them. They have preyed on society since the dawn of time and they should pay....but not because some ditz decided smoking was cool when she was 24 and ended up with cancer and a premature baby).
Ok, that's it, I have to go to work. Stop suing people for your own mistakes, go play with my irc bot, but don't break him, he's still kind of fragile (I wonder what slashdot will do to his cache that I don't clean up yet), and moderate this post up. I'm going to go do the same on some other article.
I'm having a difficult time believing that you can sit there and type the above. It started ok, listing the fact that there are different versions, win95, win98, win98se, win nt, win2000, plus service packs, etc. But the simple to answer to that is "Win98 and Win2000". MS doesn't sell NT4 or Win95 anymore. Win98 is just a new version of Win95, granted it's a little confuising what with SE and ME and whatever. Then there's Win2000 which replaces NT4. Win2000 has Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter, each of which target a different workspace (And they are pretty self-descriptive). My point? There are really only 2 kinds of windows when it comes down to it, plus different revs of each.
Enter paragraph two and Linux. You end up having different distributions, which do different things and have different version numbers. Redhat 5 has what version of the kernal? 2.something? I really don't know. And is Debain 2 newer or older than RH5? I'll give you that windows has some confusing names, the marketing dept of windows should be flogged sometimes, but windows is not as fragmented as the Linux world.
Paragraph 3, one I've entitled "Don't touch". This starts getting into the religious side of things. Linux vs Windows in Usability, Power, etc. I don't want to get killed so I'm not going to remark, except to say that there are quite a few people that can say (and provide compelling evidence) that Windows is more powerful than Linux. It depends on what you call power and what features are important to you.
Paragraph 4, Replace "Windows" with "Linux" and the sentence is just as true. The thing is with me if I had Linux machines I wouldn't upgrade them, I'd be too damn scared to break them, however I would upgrade ANY windows machine I had to Windows 2000. I suffered with crappy pre-release Open-GL drivers from nVidia that would bluescreen Win2000 and made me have to turn off features of Q3 in order to work rather than use Win98. (nVidia has finally released some decent drivers, so I haven't had a bluescreen in months, and I've never had a blue-screen other than with those crappy drivers from nVidia).
Paragraph 5: 9x: If you are using fvwm go to step 412. 9z: If you are using KDE go to step 419. 9aa: If you are using KDE, TCL/TK and csh go to step 917q then go to step 124, do step 143 6 times, then kill yourself, 'cause everyone knows you should use bash. 9ab: If you use the bash shell see step 9aa.
:)
In summary: I agree Windows can be confusing with different names and versions, but Linux can be just as bad, or worse. Not to mention ask someone fairly technical which on you should use and you get 10 different answers, and maybe start a small land war in asia. With windows there's pretty much 3 answers: 1) Win2000 2) If you don't trust Win2000 then NT4 Sp6 (or SP3 if you are super paranoid for no reason). 3) Win98 if you really need compatibility with just about everything and don't mind giving up stability for it.
Cheers, Joe
P.S. I used to work at Microsoft, I don't anymore, nevertheless these opinions are mine, not anyone elses. If someone agrees with me, that's just a coincidence. If someone doesn't agree with me, then they're wrong.
Typical Slashdot.org rush to judgement. Here slashdot (or, more specifically HeUnique) is trying to be a breaking news journalist...without getting all the facts. This is the same thing authors and readers of slashdot bash other publications for doing. Mr. Cox brings up a very valid point, that even i you didn't or couldn't get comment by the USB-IF you could have at least echoed. HeUnique: What's your response to this message? http://electr icrain.com/lists/archive/linux-usb/2000/02/msg0115 9.html
To: hetz@nospam (Hetz Ben Hamo)
Subject: Re: [linux-usb] USB specifications made non free
From: Alan Cox
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 12:37:15 +0000 (GMT)
Cc: greg@nospam (Gregory P. Smith), linux-usb@nospam
In-Reply-To: from "Hetz Ben Hamo" at Feb 29, 2000 11:30:46 AM
-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------
> Hi, I'm Hetz (also nicked HeUnique) - and I'm a slashdot.org author.. > Should I post this as a story on slashdot? what do u say?
I think it might be a good story to post - in about a weeks time. Right now people are knocking politely on USB forums doors saying 'this might be a bad idea'. Its going to be much easier for them to say 'hey you might be right' or 'that was a mistake' if they haven't been hit by a nuclear warhead as well.
If nothing comes of it then you have a better story at the end of the week and time to phone the USB forum and ask them for their side of the story.
You know...I really should start making posts of actual substance, instead of continually tearing down Slashdot, but I think Slashdot could be an excellent medium if some issues with it were addressed - such as journalistic integrity (as if there were such a thing).
You are right, there is nothing wrong with pointing out the connection...but it depends on how you create the connection. The last half of the post (the one buried under "more...") is more or less fine ("So where's the crippling damage from evil music pirates?" slightly exaggerated wording, but a very fair question), but the heavily sarcastic intro was very unjournalistic.
BTW, I didn't even NOTICE that this article fell under "Your Rights Online". Sigh...don't even get me started.
Basically my point it Slashdot needs to figure out if it's www.msnbc.com or www.slate.com (very abstract analogy...one's a news site, the other's an editorial site...please don't go into a site bashing war about them).
Good points. I find, on the whole, Slashdot to be an ok source of some interesting news articles. I generally browse at 3, but I very rarely do that anymore. The only reason I started looking at the comments on this one is that I felt like posting. The number of good comments is rare (I wouldn't even consider what I'm writing a good comment).
What I wanted to write about, and it sort of goes along with your comment, is my disgust at the wording of this post: michael took a legitimate news story, that most people probably wouldn't care that much about, and put a massively biased spin on it. So the music industry made money...that in no way justifies mp3's nor reflects the impact of mp3s. There are way too many variables at stake, like the fact that just about everyone I know bought the South Park album. That's probably $14 mil right there. Between South Park and Bewitched it probably accounted for most of the album sales.
Mp3s may or may not have had an affect on the music industry, positive or negative, but that's not the point of the news article, and it was very unjournalistic of michael to put the mp3 spin on it, considering the article itself doesn't mention mp3s.
I think slashdot is losing it's audience, losing it's integrity, and losing it's appeal (at least to me). I know a lot of people have been saying this, but slashdot needs to re-evaluate who it is. Are the "News for Nerds?" Or are they "Editorials for Counter-Culture Geeks?"
To be a good journalist you have to present things unbiasedly. You can be biased all to hell, I don't give a shit, but don't inject your bias into my news. It happens all the time on Network News and in the papers. Just by the wording reporters can skew the feel of the message.
The day that slashdot can post a derogatory story about Linux alongside a praiseworthy story about Windows WITHOUT adding bias into either one is the day that I start respecting Slashdot again.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot/Andover is still responsible for removing copyrighted material from any servers they have control over. Microsoft has notified them that they believe that a copyrighted document they control is being duplicated without authorization and asking Slashdot/Andover to remove it in good faith. Slashdot/Andover doesn't HAVE to remove the document. If S/A doesn't remove it, then Microsoft can pursue it more toughly, and at some point (assuming MS wins) S/A will HAVE to remove the document or suffer various legal problems. So you are right, S/A, at this point, is under no obligation to remove the document.
S/A will have to establish that the copyright is invalid, and none of the questions their lawyers posed hit that straight on the head. A good question to have asked is "We allege that your specification is based on illegal use of a work, therefore your copyright is not valid. How do you respond?" But instead they dance around with questions barely related to the issue at hand.
<flamebait>Besides, if Kerberos kicks so much ass, how come Microsoft had to add things to it?</flamebait>
Joe in Kirkland
True, but Slashdot/Andover is still responsible for removing the copyrighted material from any servers they have control over. I know they are concerned about opening themselves up to having to police their site, but AFAIK, that's not true. They can take a hands off approach, but react when a company requests to have content removed, much like when an ISP is asked to remove the content of a customer.
Fair use does not give you the right to copy an entire document verbatim and distribute it to whomever you want.
Good points, but what's the point? Here is Microsoft's key complaint:
Regardless of whether or not Microsoft is allowed to attach the Kerberos name to their protocol, or whether or not it's technically still a Trade Secret, Microsoft still owns EXCLUSIVE copyrights to said work, and if someone is redistributing that work, then there are laws being broken.
In some ways I'm surprised that you actually paid your lawyers for this (or should I say "lawyers"), on the other hand, it is a good deflection tactic (one that the hyper-aggressive Linux/OSS advocates (fanatics) in the IRC channels I frequent use to derail perfectly valid points) so maybe it is worth the money.
1) They never did in the e-mail they sent to you.
2) Not once do they mention "Kerberos" in their request.
3) They don't mention "trade secret" either. The closest they come is proprietary, which can also mean exclusive rights.
4) Again, not relevant to the request.
5) Not relevant to the copyright infringement alleged.
6) Lack of harm does not make copyright infringement legal.
7) Irrelevant to copyright infringement allegation.
8) There's no reason why they shouldn't be able to, but it's up to Microsoft to let that happen. They own the copyright on the work so they can do whatever they want.
On another note, I notice that Microsoft recognizes who owns comments:
In short: You might want to address the claims that Microsoft has laid forth in its letter. The other questions are great, yes, but is not going to get you very far in stating your case as for why unauthorized reprodctions of copyrighted work appear on your site. Even if Microsoft relinquished all rights that they have to the specification, the infringement still occurred in the past and is punishable.
If I'm not mistaken, there's something called "Good Faith" that says "Hey, we think this is wrong, and we're pretty sure we'd win in court. We want to give you the oppurtunity to make things right before we bring the courts into it."
Slashdot doesn't have to remove the comments right now, but if it does go to court, and Microsoft does succeed in getting a court order, Slashdot might be in a bit more trouble, especially if the judge determines that there was absolutely no doubt that the content was illegal.
I think Slashdot's best interest would be to censor the blatant illegal copy, and fight the links and EULA circumvents if it feels like doing so.
Microsoft is trying to stop copyright infringement, this is the first step. If this doesn't work THEN they go to the judge and get the court order.
In short: Microsoft's request holds no obligation for Slashdot, but Slashdot can put themselves at risk should it be found later that the content is illegal and Slashdot could have done something about it, especially when it was brought to their attention.
I ANAL, but I also like missionary.
I used to work for Microsoft and I'm not writing this because of that, I'm writing this because I believe what you wrote is completely irrational. I will only address one paragraph, I don't have time to analyze the entire thing.
1) Microsoft is not asking to have any posts that solely criticized Microsoft taken off. There are a great number of posts that criticize Microsoft, and some that can even be considered slanderous that Microsoft hasn't touched. In this case Microsoft is attempting to enforce a valid Copyright that it owns. The parts having to do with the DMCA are sketchy, but the post that copies verbatim the document (including the numerous "(c) 2000 Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft Confidential" are definately in violation of Copyright laws. Regardless of if the document should be free, wants to be free, or whatever. Even if the spec is "wrong" because it breaks Kerberos (or whatever others are claiming), it is still Copyright. The National Enquirer holds a copyright on whatever they write, true or not. Microsoft is defending it's property, not it's image.
2) Gates is not a tyrant, plus many would say that his rise is over.
3) I would hardly call Slashdot "Critical Press." a) They aren't a newspaper or any other sort of newsmedia, they are more of a digest (although not even that since they link). b) Slashdot, unlike the standard news organizations, doesn't even pretend to be biased. You can't have good press if you are completely biased.
4) Microsoft nor Gates has ever killed anyone, even those that strongly oppose them.
As long as Slashdot continues to maintain an illegal copy of copyrighted mateerial on their servers they can be sued. Free Speech or otherwise (BTW, as far as the law is concerned (AFAIK), the government is the only entity not allowed to take away your right to Free Speech, individuals and corporations can do whatever they want. Slashdot is completely within it's rights to censor comments, ZD Net does in it's talk back as do many other online forums. Now, free speech as a matter of principle, that's different), those documents should not be on Slashdot and only Slashdot has the power to remove them, that makes Microsoft well within their rights to ask Slashdot to remove at least the duplicated document post.
Your post is nothing but Anti-Microsoft Propaganda, and completely unfounded as well. It's like if someone backed into my car in the parking, we got a brawl, and I took out a gun a shot him. If he were black (or any other minority) *BOOM* it's a hate crime or racially motivated. Regardless of the real reason (I'm a dearranged psycho-path with an itchy trigger, short temper, and misplace hostilities) it becomes racially motivated. You are taking a valid complaint (your site is mirroring copyrighted documents without our permission) and turning it into a suppression of speech. You are using this as a Call to Arms.
Read something other than Slashdot for a change, and no, I'm not impressed that you know Sir Winston "SuperTyke" Spencer Churchill's middle name. If you knew his mother's maiden name, that'd be dope (but no fair going to Encarta).
(The only reason I'm replying is because I don't have moderator points today and I can't -1 you down)
The DAT tape is still around and it is legal. The only reason it's still around is because of something kindly referred to as the "pirate tax," or a bit of pittance tacked on to the price of blank DATs (and blank CDRs) that gets kicked back to the publishing houses to compensate for whatever licensing fees they might lose because of illegal copying. This is a law or act or something that was passed. You can't sell a digital recording device without doing this (this is the thing they tried to get the Diamond Rio on, remember?) No doubt this thing by Philips will do the same (and apparently there are other people with similar devices, if I read correctly from other posts).
The thing is, Philips, IIRC, makes a DVD player, therefore it's paid its 5k (or whatever) to the DVD Mafia for the rights to develop a player. And doing so there is, no doubt, numerous clasuses saying "You can't do this." So that means one of 2 things: 1) Philips is ok in releasing this, and therefore won't have any lawsuits. 2) Philips is doing a bad thing and can be sued for breaking their contract/licensing agreement.
P.S. Sorry for all the derogatory name calling, I'm just in that mood. It's more tongue-in-cheek than anything.
I don't care enough to go through the hassle.
:)
What hassle you ask? It's just copying and pasting links? Well I'll tell you what hassle. If I go and post links, the slashdot people will concntrate only on those links, and launch attacks against those links, and use them as ammunition to perpetuate their own denial. It doesn't matter if I'm right, or I made a mistake, or whatever, my whole argument will be judged on those links.
So I leave the links out? What does that accomplish? 1) The people that are in denial can stay in denial without having to expend any extra energy justifying to themselves or to other people (via flames to my post). People in denial will stay in denial, no loss there. 2) Those that are genuinely interested will pick up on the "short search on Microsoft's site" part and actually do research on their own (which they probably would have done anyway even if I had posted links). 3) I can go back to work and not worry about it.
See, I know how slashdot works. I didn't write that post to get moderated up. I didn't write that post to be insightful or informative. I wrote that post to write it. Now, if you check my profile and go look at the article I posted an hour or so ago, you'll see a post that is intended to be insightful or make people think, present information, and maybe ge moderated up. But on general Linux vs. Windows stuff, I don't get involved. I just wanted to let people know that a Windows Smart Card solution existed, and has for about a year.
I don't bitch about how anti-Microsoft Slashdot is. I leave that to someone else. I generally bitch about how biased and opinionated Slashdot is (not which way they are biased, just that they are) when they are trying to be a news magazine. "Slashdot needs to figure out if they are MSNBC or Slate."
Oh, and come on. There isn't anything that goes by in the computer world that ISN'T submitted to Slashdot.
He just doesn't know it. He probably thinks he's written a provocative article to generate flame and hits, but (without reading the article intensely) I think he's right.
Open Source has created good products, but it has yet to complete "The Project." And "The Project" is not necessarily a single product.
Linux (feel free to substitute *BSD in this argument, or any other OS) has been in development for 10+ years. It gained fringe popularity 5+ years ago, and has achieved cult popularity in the last 2 years. There are thousands of developers working on Open Source projects for Linux in addition to Linux itself. However Linux still hasn't released a product capable of competing with Microsoft Windows on all levels. And I'm not talking about Windoes interoperability. I'm talking about ease of use, features for dummies, consistency among apps, and interoperability among other Linux systems. Linux is an incomplete piece of software. It's functional beta (very functional).
Sure, linux competes quite well on the server side as far as pure performance, but all over Linux is lacking. Linux is still a long way from competing in the desktop world.
Livable, yes..but comfortable? For all?
This might be the most insightful (+1) paragraph in the whole article. "Open source is not geared to create but critique" I think that phrase is half right. Open source is geared to create...but the people in Open Source are geared to critique. The fragmentation in Linux is amazing, instead of helping to improve an existing WM people would rather write their own. I'm surprised everyone has settled on one Web Server. "It's best at tearing apart the establishment..." The establishment, I believe, is more than just Wintel or Proprietary software. The establishment is anything that's "established." The problem with having a bunch of hacker type people working on Open Source is that you get the individuality and righteous indignation of hackers. "I can do it better" or "my way is better."
Now, granted, not all projects suffer this problem. Gimp, from what I've seen, appears to a very nice image manipulation program. Well done. But come on, BeOS managed to eclipse you all with a well-polished desktop OS in only a handful of years.
Can Open Source beat Microsoft? I think so. Will it do it anytime soon? Probably not. But it's definately not going to do it with the current Open Source mindset.
And you should all fear the capitalistic involvement with Open Source. Because if you think the lone wolf, righteous indignation of hackers is bad, then you haven't seen just what capitalism can do. All your precious Linux companies will be releasing competing apps, all vying for the title of best Linux company. APT, PKG, etc.. Want to see what I'm talking about? Just imagine what would happen if Microsoft decided to Embrace and Extend Linux. Released their own distribution then started slowly moving everyone to their apps, then slowly changing the playing field. Like the frog in a pot that doesn't realize the water is getting hot until he's cooked. Now once you've got that image in your head then realize that your Linux comapnie are already doing that.
In closing I would like to say that I do not "represent the Open Source Community" (Hemos). In fact I'm a former Microsoft employee. I left my job 2 months ago, because I wanted to do something different, and for no other reason. I've watched the Open Source Community, and have even participated in select OSS projects. What I have written does not apply to all OSS projects, by far, there are some that are very effective and are not plagued by such problems, but I see a trend, and it's based int he same religious OS war that makes you hate Microsoft with a passion.
Collaborate, cooperate, and create.
-Joe
Microsoft released it's own Smart Card OS (Windows for Smart Cards) quite a while ago. In fact a short little search right now of MS's site shows press releases around May of last year.
But of course it's not Linux so who cares, right? Heck I couldn't even find it on Slashdot.
I would think that it would be difficult to get this patent off. For one thing Microsoft has Embedded Windows NT (2000) on a smartcard, and if Microsoft hasn't applied for a patent (which is something they're starting to do quite a bit now), there would at least be some prior art, I would think.
I am not a lawyer, but I was in a group legal plan once.
IIRC, from NSI's rules, the .com is not considered when resolving trademark infringements. So if you own the trademark on unix.com, you can't go after a squatter that has unix.com via NSI's arbitration. In the same way you can't claim that you are using it as unix.com to get out of a trademark dispute with someone who own the unix trademark.
However in regular court it could go either way.
>I'm just saying, there's better/cheaper ways to get your point across. ;>
Yeah, but not necessarily more novel.
In other news today, Taco Bell paid $6.3 million to put their now popular, Chalupa-loving dog on the side of the ISS. {Cut to multiple shots of the ad that "will never get seen"}. It will be painted on the side of the space station's mess pod. Unfortunately, due to NASA restrictions, the ad will not be visibile, even with a high powered telescope, because it must face away from earth. Here's Taco Bell spokesman, Commander Taco, with some words about this PR stunt. {insert video of spokesman talking about why they did it.} That's it for Roger 10 News, we'll see you tomorrow."
COMMERCIAL
We here at Taco Bell have always thought big, except when it came to prices, and so the biggest thing we could possibly do is to put our ad on the side of the largest man-made structure in space. But that wasn't enough so we are going even further. In addition to the large $6.3 million ad we have painted on the side of the ISS, for a price of $9.6 million, plus $1.2 million a year for the next 10 years, our chalupa-loving dog will live aboard the International Space Station. He will work and play along with astronauts of all nations. So next time you get the craving for almost authentic mexican food, remember to run for the border, because with the help of the ISS, we at Taco Bell are helping to erase them.
To be followed, in later weeks, with an announcement by McDonalds that they will be sending up a McDonald's restaurant pod to be attached to the spacestation, serving delicious McDonald's food, and also some story about how an astronaut is refusing to wear the Nike branded spacesuits that NASA requires because it conflicts with his Adidas endorsement contract.
3 cheers for capitalism!
Luckilly, these days, we got satelite...
You have satellite until someone decides to build one of these jammers! Then you get to see Mr. T try to act.
Anyone wish that Knight Rider, A-Team, and/or Airwolf did a cross-over show? You know like those Hardy Boy/Nancy Drew crossover books? It would be cool to see the Knight Rider team (Go Michael Knight!) and team Airwolf (Dominic Santini forever!) fighting evil together. Maybe even having the A-Team getting ouy their blow torches and welding them together into some sort of flying KITT.
Oh, and for those of you lucky enough to have a tv station playing airwolf, you have to play the stock footage drinking game. Everytime they show a clip of Airwolf with it's bottom mounted rockets retracted when they are supposed to be extended, drink. Basically anytime some accessory on airwolf inexplicably retracts and extends between shots. It's really quite fun. :)
Here's something else to read: http://politics.slate.msn.com/politics/code/Ballot Box/BallotBox.asp?Show=4/12 /00&idMessage=5085
Actually it is wrong for your OS to not be able to address more than 640KB of memory, but that's Intel/IBM's fault. :)
Yeah good question:
How do you determine what the minimum set of products taht should be integrated with the OS are? You do realize the TCP/IP stacks used to be a big business for companies like WRQ and Novell? Now they are integrated into Windows. Linux is an OS without a default graphical UI, Windows 95 is DOS with an integrated UI (a UI that used to be sold separately).
So essentially, if you want 100% compliance, you'd end up with Microsoft selling DOS 3.3 for $30, and Windows 98 for $99. And nearly every software product released will say "Requires Windows 98 Enhanced Edition".
Let's count off the technologies: DirectX (What?! A 2d and 3d Graphics API, that's not CORE OS), Networking (You nearly killed Novell and WRQ!), Defrag (Ooh! Bundled! Bad!), File Compression (Bye Bye Doublespace and Stacker), Windows Media Player (Long live Winamp, Sonique, Kjofol, MusicMatch (RealPlayer can sod off and die, though..ugh POS alert!)), of course IE (*Gasp* Netscape takes a free Browser, sells, it, then gets pissy when other people give theirs away for free, which is pretty much everyone else.), and the list goes on.
What it comes down to is, what is considered a CORE component of an OS? And you can't look back at DOS and say "That's a CORE OS" because we've come to expect more...like you said, TCP/IP stacks. So now TCP/IP stacks are considered a CORE part of the OS. Why?
The Justice System isn't for sale. Jackson is definately not on the take, if he were he would be dismissed PDQ (and if he were on the take..it's definately not Microsoft lining his pockets).
However, the governemnt IS for sale, and always has been. Why do you think this lawsuit was started in the first place? And all of America gets surprised when Microsoft hires a lobbyist, or an anti-lobbyist. Microsoft has, historically, had no lobbyists, only recently (last few years) have they had to resort to using lobbyists.
Lobbyists are nothing new, you know that, I know that. If Netscape, Sun, et al have their henchmen in DC greasing the palms of who knows who, it's only fair that Microsoft be doing it as well. As a shareholder I would be apalled if they didn't.
NOT that I'm in support of lobbying. It unfairly weighs representation into a minority. Just look at Tobacco.
But don't get on the Slashdot horn and start raising a ruckus over something like this.
And maybe you should start reading other articles, like http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/in_depth/business /2000/microsoft/newsid_638000/63 8300.stm.
Like the other guy said: Don't be so naive.
Don't forget Dreamcast and X-Box.
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Plus any OS that runs Java.
It's not very scalable. I don't know what the limitis, I haven't looked at it that hard, but I know that the network will most likely collapse under itself if currently implemented in its current state.
Example:
With 2500 hosts person A connects up to the network, that person sends an INIT broadcast message to the host he's immediately connected to, person B. Person B sends it out to everyone else he's connected to, etc. Then the replies start coming back, single-cast, to person A from 2500 other nodes (or possibly less, due to TTL). Searches happen the same way, except this time with more data.
A couple of problems I see: 1) with more hosts, the number of ping messages sent and the number of ping replies sent will grow (linearly, I think). 2) With an average TTL of 7 it is possible that one node may not be able to reach a segment of the network (any other node that's 8 or more hops away).
The protocol needs to be modified so that there are other ways of getting host information. Maybe a master browser or two. Someone can decide, or be elected a master browser. That client collects a number of hosts, and should a new host connect they can choose to ping the entire network, or talk to the master browser.
Another thing is that it really isn't necessary, as far as I can tell, to ping the entire network to see who's there, other than to possibly get additional hosts to connect to. That could be gotten in much better way. Gnutella has a list of other hosts, why can't it send those to each new person that's connected, rather than them creating a small flurry of activity on the network?
There are other issues that I've run across while developing my gnutella irc bot (gnurd - "/msg gnurd !help" on efnet). I think the developers will work out something, intelligent routing, etc. But in my opinion large changes to the protocol would have to be made to scale up past 10k people or so.
Not everything one Gnutella is piracy. Yesterday I searched for 'txt' and found nice little, perfectly legal, zip file containing txt's of various ICQ exploits.
As one of those coders (I just wrote a Gnutella IRC bot - go to efnet irc and /msg gnurd !help), I don't really see a problem. Sure there are a lot of pirates (read as "script kiddies that don't even know how to use scripts and OSS vigilantes" (there's, that's me flamebait -1 for the day)) that will abuse the system, but that doesn't make the system illegal. Irc is, in a way, a type of decentralized file distribution system. Go to #warez (or one of the less obvious more content channels), do a search or just wait for the spam. Then you create a direct DCC connection. There. That's gnutella but using a centralized network for decentralized file sharing. That doesn't mean irc should be shut down (it should be shut down for other reasons, I hate it, but I'm on it all the time, and writing leet-o gnutella irc bots :).
Sue me for writing my bot, I don't care (actually, I kind of do now that I don't have legal insurance, but I do have Microsoft Stock..oh, wait...shoot..nevermind). My bot doesn't transfer files. It just provides a means of searching of vast "database" (I use that term lightly, gnutella cracks me up in a lot of ways) of files and returns results. Much like Google, but not nearly as cool.
Now for the highly philosophical part of the post where I wax intellectual about the legal system in our country, drawing parallels between the corporate and individual world. By this point the previous paragraphs would have shooed away all the moderators, so I should be able to post this and not get moderated up. Ok, here goes:
Ok, that's it, I have to go to work. Stop suing people for your own mistakes, go play with my irc bot, but don't break him, he's still kind of fragile (I wonder what slashdot will do to his cache that I don't clean up yet), and moderate this post up. I'm going to go do the same on some other article.
Cheers,
Joe
I'm having a difficult time believing that you can sit there and type the above. It started ok, listing the fact that there are different versions, win95, win98, win98se, win nt, win2000, plus service packs, etc. But the simple to answer to that is "Win98 and Win2000". MS doesn't sell NT4 or Win95 anymore. Win98 is just a new version of Win95, granted it's a little confuising what with SE and ME and whatever. Then there's Win2000 which replaces NT4. Win2000 has Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter, each of which target a different workspace (And they are pretty self-descriptive). My point? There are really only 2 kinds of windows when it comes down to it, plus different revs of each.
Enter paragraph two and Linux. You end up having different distributions, which do different things and have different version numbers. Redhat 5 has what version of the kernal? 2.something? I really don't know. And is Debain 2 newer or older than RH5? I'll give you that windows has some confusing names, the marketing dept of windows should be flogged sometimes, but windows is not as fragmented as the Linux world.
Paragraph 3, one I've entitled "Don't touch". This starts getting into the religious side of things. Linux vs Windows in Usability, Power, etc. I don't want to get killed so I'm not going to remark, except to say that there are quite a few people that can say (and provide compelling evidence) that Windows is more powerful than Linux. It depends on what you call power and what features are important to you.
Paragraph 4, Replace "Windows" with "Linux" and the sentence is just as true. The thing is with me if I had Linux machines I wouldn't upgrade them, I'd be too damn scared to break them, however I would upgrade ANY windows machine I had to Windows 2000. I suffered with crappy pre-release Open-GL drivers from nVidia that would bluescreen Win2000 and made me have to turn off features of Q3 in order to work rather than use Win98. (nVidia has finally released some decent drivers, so I haven't had a bluescreen in months, and I've never had a blue-screen other than with those crappy drivers from nVidia).
Paragraph 5: 9x: If you are using fvwm go to step 412. 9z: If you are using KDE go to step 419. 9aa: If you are using KDE, TCL/TK and csh go to step 917q then go to step 124, do step 143 6 times, then kill yourself, 'cause everyone knows you should use bash. 9ab: If you use the bash shell see step 9aa.
:)
In summary: I agree Windows can be confusing with different names and versions, but Linux can be just as bad, or worse. Not to mention ask someone fairly technical which on you should use and you get 10 different answers, and maybe start a small land war in asia. With windows there's pretty much 3 answers: 1) Win2000 2) If you don't trust Win2000 then NT4 Sp6 (or SP3 if you are super paranoid for no reason). 3) Win98 if you really need compatibility with just about everything and don't mind giving up stability for it.
Cheers,
Joe
P.S. I used to work at Microsoft, I don't anymore, nevertheless these opinions are mine, not anyone elses. If someone agrees with me, that's just a coincidence. If someone doesn't agree with me, then they're wrong.
HeUnique:
What's your response to this message? http://electr icrain.com/lists/archive/linux-usb/2000/02/msg011
You know...I really should start making posts of actual substance, instead of continually tearing down Slashdot, but I think Slashdot could be an excellent medium if some issues with it were addressed - such as journalistic integrity (as if there were such a thing).
You are right, there is nothing wrong with pointing out the connection...but it depends on how you create the connection. The last half of the post (the one buried under "more...") is more or less fine ("So where's the crippling damage from evil music pirates?" slightly exaggerated wording, but a very fair question), but the heavily sarcastic intro was very unjournalistic.
BTW, I didn't even NOTICE that this article fell under "Your Rights Online". Sigh...don't even get me started.
Basically my point it Slashdot needs to figure out if it's www.msnbc.com or www.slate.com (very abstract analogy...one's a news site, the other's an editorial site...please don't go into a site bashing war about them).
Good points. I find, on the whole, Slashdot to be an ok source of some interesting news articles. I generally browse at 3, but I very rarely do that anymore. The only reason I started looking at the comments on this one is that I felt like posting. The number of good comments is rare (I wouldn't even consider what I'm writing a good comment).
What I wanted to write about, and it sort of goes along with your comment, is my disgust at the wording of this post: michael took a legitimate news story, that most people probably wouldn't care that much about, and put a massively biased spin on it. So the music industry made money...that in no way justifies mp3's nor reflects the impact of mp3s. There are way too many variables at stake, like the fact that just about everyone I know bought the South Park album. That's probably $14 mil right there. Between South Park and Bewitched it probably accounted for most of the album sales.
Mp3s may or may not have had an affect on the music industry, positive or negative, but that's not the point of the news article, and it was very unjournalistic of michael to put the mp3 spin on it, considering the article itself doesn't mention mp3s.
I think slashdot is losing it's audience, losing it's integrity, and losing it's appeal (at least to me). I know a lot of people have been saying this, but slashdot needs to re-evaluate who it is. Are the "News for Nerds?" Or are they "Editorials for Counter-Culture Geeks?"
To be a good journalist you have to present things unbiasedly. You can be biased all to hell, I don't give a shit, but don't inject your bias into my news. It happens all the time on Network News and in the papers. Just by the wording reporters can skew the feel of the message.
The day that slashdot can post a derogatory story about Linux alongside a praiseworthy story about Windows WITHOUT adding bias into either one is the day that I start respecting Slashdot again.
Cheers,
Joe