No, the "Water" example is using something simple to showcase a problem. The but about the agreements has occurred.
MS has a history of refusing to do OEM agreements with a company if that company wants to offer more than MS Operating Systems. AFAIK they are still doing similar to this – it's one of the reasons Dell took so long to offer Linux – but now it's differences in licensing cost.
So, AC, it appears you are either misinformed as to the truth, or you are just an idiot. I'd like to think that it's the first, but know that it's probably the first with the cause being "willful ignorance". Now go away.
Have to correct myself. The power of a photon is a function of it's frequency, in a linear progression in relation to Plancks Number. (E = hf where E is the energy of a photon, h is Plancks number and f is the frequency)
In other words it takes fewer photons to make up a given power as the frequency goes up. (At 3GHz a photon has about 1.24eV of power while at 3THz a photon has about 12.4meV of power)
So, while frequency is important, it's important because there are fewer photons, but at a higher power, in a 1THz signal than in a 1GHz signal. Interestingly, a signal from 3 to 30 terahertz is good for cooking - it's infrared radiation.
True. But there is more power in a high-frequency signal. This is why a 2.4GHz signal at 1000 Watts creates a heating effect when a 700MHz signal at the same power doesn't. So it's natural that a signal at higher frequencies would be more damaging at lower powers.
The fact is that these people are claiming an extreme sensitivity to a range of RF frequencies that have been in use for years. Almost every commercial alarm system in the world will trigger a radar detector - most RADAR systems run in the 2.4GHz band. Microwaves run at 2.4GHz. There are cordless phones that run at 2.4GHz (I have seen these!).
I say test them. Put them in a trial - either like the one done in Britain to show that the "we're sensitive to cellphone mast" people were full of shit - or a true double-blind. It's almost guaranteed that you'll find that there is no statistical evidence that these people are correct.
Yes, 2.4GHz is dangerous - if pushed to high power levels. The military and commercial RADAR systems generate a signal powerful enough to cook almost anything in under a minute. During WW2, before the advent of the microwave oven, pilots would warm themselves by standing in front of the antennas. (this is what actually led to the creation of the microwave)
People have mentioned the danger of X-Rays and Gamma Rays and fail to see that the problem actually comes from the amount of power in them. Understand that? It's the amount of POWER behind the signal that causes the damage, not the frequency. (okay, frequency is important - at 2.4GHz the signal does resonate with water)
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.... oh, wait, this is supposed to be a.sig
According to the US Patent Office until the early twentieth century you had to provide a model or functional prototype of your device in order to receive a patent. Until the late 1970's/early 1980's a patent could only cover a physical device.
That is exactly what the patent system was designed to cover. Processes were added at some point, though I'm not exactly certain when, and almost assuredly because of businesses. Writings, data and artwork were to be covered solely by copyrights.
(Not a quote, but I had to set this aside somehow...)
If I begin working on an operating system that is multi-threaded, uses multiple processors and such, there are very few methods of having shared data structures safely. The safest and most efficient would be to read the data, make a copy of it that isn't shared, work on the copy, then update the shared original from the copy. This is extremely obvious and almost anyone would arrive at the same conclusion given the same requirements.
However, it is patented. It's the "RCU" - or "Read, Copy, Update" - method of safely having pools of shared data in a multi-threaded environment. If I implemented it I could be sued over the patent violation. It doesn't matter that I have never seen or read the patent. It doesn't matter that the system seemed painfully obvious to me. What matters is that it wasn't obvious to the people at the US Patent and Trademark Office.
My example above isn't to show that all software patents are bad. What it's doing is showing that the USPTO (and presumably other countries patent offices) need to start using people who understand the field that the patent is in. If you try to patent something like the RCU method, it goes to someone who has experience with programming. If it is a patent on a firearm, it goes to someone with experience as a gunsmith (or similar).
That alone - using a person or group with experience in the field that the patent applies to to examine the patent and make sure it's 100% valid before granting it - should cut down on the number of bogus patents. Truthfully, there should also be limits placed on what can be "claimed" by a patent - to stop someone from patenting a never-produced design for something and then suing when someone produces something that is only marginally related.
Go watch "Johnny Mnemonic" sometime. Pharmaceuticals companies exist to make money, the same as every other company. Even if they did find a cure for Cancer or AIDS do you honestly believe they'd market it?
The fact is that making $2000 a month for the drugs to treat a disease is a lot more profitable than making a one-time earning of $20,000 for each person cured of that disease. Companies are not beholden to the public but to their shareholders. Remember this. It's one of the reasons that companies like Microshaft^WMicrosoft do business in the way that they do - to make as much money for the shareholders as possible.
----
Before going off on a rant about the movie I mentioned, note that I've read every cyberpunk novel written by Gibson and have also read his anthology "Burning Chrome".
Umm... hell no. You're completely and utterly wrong. The point of the taser is to offer a non-lethal alternative to the gun in cases where it is safe for the officer to use it instead. That fact that it turned out not to be entirely non-lethal is the concern here. You'll not find any police departments even remotely considering having their officers carry tasers instead of guns because that would be ridiculously unsafe for them.
Incorrect. The TASER is not "non-lethal", because anything could be lethal in the proper circumstances. In this case the correct term is "less than lethal" - because when used properly and the target doesn't have a pre-existing condition that can be triggered by it - the TASER will not kill.
Note that "less than lethal" is also used to describe things like Rubber Bullets and bean-bag rounds. Neither is designed to be lethal, but if you hit someone in the right place and they are at the right range, they will die.
This applies to the TASER. If you have a heart condition (or just a weak heart) being hit with the voltage from a TASER can cause a heart-attack. But then, an old-fashioned, hand-held stun gun would do the same thing if it was used to hit someone near the heart.
Instead of focusing energy on the ISO vote, focus on getting implementations of the standard that *you* think is reasonable into widespread usage. If you think it is ODF or RTF or HTML or any of the hundreds of file formats for document representation that should be the choice of governments, then get good, usable versions of software into the market. RTF is a de-facto industry standard, but it is actually controlled by MS and is updated in a systematic lock-step with the binary office document standard.
Standing around crying because Microsoft bought a standard is only counterproductive and makes you come off looking like a bunch of whiners. On top of that, because the whining is explicitly anti-this new standard, it is implicitly perceived to be against progress. So you shoot yourself in the foot by appearing to want to go technologically backwards and like whiny bitches at the same time. The problem is that they did buy the vote. This is the first I've heard of possible impropriety in the British vote. However... All the proof anyone should need that the vote was bought is available - just look at Norway.
Your argument falls apart, however, because renting a location out means that the company without the license is no longer utilizing said property. What MediaSentry has done, if they did, in fact, rent out the lines to a company that was not under a restraining order, is to attempt to sidestep the ruling against them.
They are still doing their jobs - ie: collecting evidence for the RIAA - even though they are not doing it directly. In other words, they are providing the lines to an "authorized agent". Since MediaSentry was enjoined from collecting the data themselves, any company that they provided the lines to and "authorized" to collect the data in their stead is also enjoined from doing the collection.
QED: No matter how you try to twist the facts, MediaSentry is still breaking the law.
This is the problem with the GPL and LGPL - no matter how many times you #include a file that contains interface information for a GPL'd library you aren't creating a derivative. It doesn't matter one bit that the final output contains things carried over from those header files - because #include is acted on by a mechanical translation mechanism. Under US and *MOST* other nations copyright laws, a mechanical translation cannot hold a separate copyright from the original.
What this means is that you can write an application that uses Qt, Gnome, etc... and release it under your own license - with no requirement to distribute the source code to the application. It doesn't affect the license on the libraries - you will still be bound by the license on them - but...
Basically what it means is that the LGPL and the "Bison Exception" were never needed.
1) I completely agree. But in this case it's a Random Number Generator - unless those random numbers form a key part of the encryption process, I can't see a backdoor in a random number generator being a problem. (Except in certain specific cases)
2) Yes, of course. But what I'm saying is that I've never heard of a processor flaw where a faulty instruction would reveal part of the data being worked on. Yes, a processor can have problems with instructions - the original Pentiums had a nasty one in the FPU's lookup tables and then there is the venerable F00F bug - but the FPU bug affected certain calculations and the F00F bug caused the processor to lock or triggered a system reboot. Neither one revealed data.
3) Yes, the microcode is uploaded at runtime. But all it would take is a "cracker" (*grin*) writing an exploit that caused a hacked version of the microcode to be loaded for it to become a problem. No need for the kind of access you're talking about, just a classic exploit like those that plague every version of Windows. Sure, it'd pretty much take an idiot with root access for a linux box to be compromised that way, but hey - Windows has more "market penetration" and is a much more likely target.
(And yes, the "microcode update" system was implemented so that Intel could patch problems on various processors but that doesn't make it a good thing)
1) It's not clear that the ECC PRNG is "backdoored" - everything I've seen says that it "may" or "might" have a weakness where there is a second, related set of numbers - not that there IS a second set of numbers.
2) This article doesn't say anything new. If a processor has a flaw in its math processing then exploiting that flaw could lead to any result - but it's unlikely that it'd just cause the processor to kill the security software. Look at the F00F bug on older Intel chips - it caused the processor to fault and lockup. So a processor fault causing a single process on a system to fault seems like a non-starter.
3) Almost all modern processors actually "decode" a single instruction (like movb %ah, %al) into a series of very low-level instructions. Intel has actually built a way to update this translation process into its newer processors - the "microcode update" system. On Linux and Windows, at least, you can install a new version of the microcode on a processor.* This process could be co-opted by someone with the proper resources to cause a processor to mis-function.
*I think the reason they don't offer things like SSE3 as a microcode update has more to do with economics than limitations of the silicon
--- Sometimes, I wonder if the world isn't just a dream and me the dreamer. Then I stub my toe and know it isn't
Considering Sun refuses to incldue open source code into OOo without owning the copyright, this will be an interesting move. Although how will bundling Thunderbird help add functionality to OOo rather then simply installing the two separately? True. However, the requirement for copyright assignments should have no impact. The FSF requires the same thing for all the different GNU project's and it doesn't stop them from being bundled with code that the FSF doesn't hold copyright to. (However, the FSF, to my knowledge, doesn't make the bundles themselves, so...)
Theo and Reyk quite clearly don't think the changes are sufficient. I started looking at the code and could see the massive differences between the OpenBSD and Linux versions immediately - to the point that I stated as much in the most recent flamewar over it on LKML. The OpenBSD folks shouted me down, yelling that "I didn't care about the truth" and that the changes were "mere adaptation not deserving their own copyright". When presented with facts to the contrary they got real quiet and the thread died.
So I'm guessing that Theo (at least - Reyk strikes me as much more intelligent and open to the truth) won't accept this examination. He has, at least once, very vocally accused the FSF of backing Moglen setting up the SFLC as a move to "infect" all code with the GPL. With that viewpoint in mind - the paranoid, FSF is out to get me viewpoint - I can deduce that Theo's response will be "Lawsuit! The SFLC is an arm of the FSF and Linux! Our code is being stolen!".
Of course, with the re-licensing of the once GPL(v2) only changes under the ISC license (and with the SFLC's review of the code), I can't see any lawsuit being successful. Strangely, I don't expect Theo to understand this, as he doesn't seem to understand anything else.
(And, from pages linked to from TFA, it appears that the BSD people, in general, aren't all that happy with the review. One of them has even claimed that the review is wrong and at least one of the files the review claims contains a lot of original work shows only changed variable names and some "minor" work to make it work with Linux.)
1. Xorg crashs and takes out my ssh connections. I just cant have this issue happen to me. When I have multiple connections using putty on xp, explorer might crash, but my applications don't. (This is my main complaint, x crashs, all your apps die.) Xorg != Explorer
Xorg == WINDOWS
Gnome/KDE/XFCE/etc... == Explorer
So your problem is that when Xorg (WINDOWS) crashes it takes out all your applications with it. Huh, thats strange, it happens in the M$ world all the time. When MS Explorer crashes it doesn't take out your applications - well, when (on the rare occasion that it happens) KDE crashes on me I don't lose my applications. Gee, when you stop comparing apples to oranges your complaint doesn't make any sense.
4. Font's, I'm using a vga font for my terms, and the font hints are great, but I just don't find it as easy on the eyes as windows truetype. That is a problem. You see, Linux systems really can't use all the features of TrueType Fonts because of the patents that are on some parts of the format. However, the truth is that the Linux console fonts are great - I find it easier to read them than I do any of the fancy fonts in X. Now the big thing is that I've never had to choose a special font for terminal windows - the default works. But back when I still used Windows I had to choose a special 'vga' font that was just fscking nasty.
5. Wifi, to be honest, my wifi has been crap under windows too, but on my 2 laptops, I just dont have the same quality or stability under linux. What, running a 2.4 kernel? Or are you using a wifi device that needs one of the low-quality vendor blob drivers? I've had wifi running under 3 different 2.6 series kernels and my only problem occurred back when I was using WPA-PSK instead of WEP. WEP may have its problems, but if you properly configure the AP a lot of those problems go away. Strangely, I've tested my system with both Windows and Linux and Linux is more stable on the Wifi than Windows. (Hell, I've tested 4 different laptops on my network, all but mine running windows and the result was that my Linux system had a more stable wifi connection than the windows boxes.)
6. File managers, I'm rather partial to Dopus or enhanced explorer, 2 browser windows. I can just navigate files quicker in windows. I find gnome to be a tad slower. I can't stand Gnome myself. But when it comes to a 'file manager' there are so many choices it's pitiful - though I prefer to just do the tasks by hand from the console. (Any task I've got is damned easy to do from the console - it just takes a little bit of brain-power.)
7. Taskbar, really, all i want is alt-tab and a taskbar, get out of my way and let me work. I don't want to have a million keys, just stay out of my way and let me work. I can't believe someone is actually making this complaint. Pick almost any window-manager and you get all that functionality. There isn't any reason for you to use the extra functionality of most WM's taskbars if you don't want to. Sure, I've got a rather cluttered taskbar, with a bunch of applets embedded in it, but thats because I've customized it to make the things I do most commonly easier. (See, it's called "productivity enhancement" (by management) - the less time it takes you to find the application needed for the task, the faster you can get started on it and the more "productive" you are.)
As to the rest of your complaints - if a companies IT department uses hardware and software that is only well supported in Windows, then use Windows.
But Outlook SUCKS - and I speak from experience. At two of the places I used to work they had problems with Outlook and Exchange. (At the one place the accounts manager was moved into another office and Exchange broke - took us guys in IT three days to solve that problem. The other shop was running FreeBSD for the mail server and it took more than a week to get Exchange and Outlook working with it and using all the security features that were enabled in the server.
I haven't had to provide any of that support for my family, yet my parents use Linux. In fact, when they want to use the computer I just stop what I'm doing and let them use it on my account. No special setup or anything for new users. Just the same desktop I use, customized to match how I do things. In fact, if you ask my mother what she'd want on a new computer, should she buy one, she'll tell you "Linux". ("It does what you tell it, doesn't crash and you don't see all the popups" - though, admittedly, the last computer she owned ran Windows 98) However, its been my experience that you can get similar responses from the most common class of Windows user by letting them use a Linux system for a bit - of course the Gamers out there won't run it, but thats because their games are all "DirectX Required" and released only under Windows.
As to your "complaint" that "all the examples show a specialized setup" I'm guessing you've never done support for anyone that wasn't computer savvy. I've done setup (all windows systems) - as a living - and all but a few of the customers requested "Email, Internet and IM" icons on the desktop. That's "specialized setup" - same as the person you decided to yell at did - and its not Linux.
Now ask yourself the same question:
If it's so easy, why did you have to configure those buttons? Why couldn't your grandmother do it herself? But phrase it as "Why couldn't the clients do it themselves?" The answer is simple - they could have. But they felt better having someone else do it for them. Why couldn't his Grandmother do it for herself? Truthfully, she probably could have. If he hadn't used WindowMaker. WindowMaker is a WM for the more "computer literate" - if I'd been in his position I'd have used KDE. It follows the known windows paradigm and is extremely forgiving for the new user. It does, however, consume a lot more resources than WindowMaker and that might have been the reason he didn't use it.
Slashdot Mirror
should be "the bit about the agreements" - I missed the typo. (not the first time I've missed a typo, but it makes me feel bad)
No, the "Water" example is using something simple to showcase a problem. The but about the agreements has occurred.
MS has a history of refusing to do OEM agreements with a company if that company wants to offer more than MS Operating Systems. AFAIK they are still doing similar to this – it's one of the reasons Dell took so long to offer Linux – but now it's differences in licensing cost.
So, AC, it appears you are either misinformed as to the truth, or you are just an idiot. I'd like to think that it's the first, but know that it's probably the first with the cause being "willful ignorance". Now go away.
Have to correct myself. The power of a photon is a function of it's frequency, in a linear progression in relation to Plancks Number. (E = hf where E is the energy of a photon, h is Plancks number and f is the frequency)
In other words it takes fewer photons to make up a given power as the frequency goes up. (At 3GHz a photon has about 1.24eV of power while at 3THz a photon has about 12.4meV of power)
So, while frequency is important, it's important because there are fewer photons, but at a higher power, in a 1THz signal than in a 1GHz signal. Interestingly, a signal from 3 to 30 terahertz is good for cooking - it's infrared radiation.
True. But there is more power in a high-frequency signal. This is why a 2.4GHz signal at 1000 Watts creates a heating effect when a 700MHz signal at the same power doesn't. So it's natural that a signal at higher frequencies would be more damaging at lower powers.
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There is no
The fact is that these people are claiming an extreme sensitivity to a range of RF frequencies that have been in use for years. Almost every commercial alarm system in the world will trigger a radar detector - most RADAR systems run in the 2.4GHz band. Microwaves run at 2.4GHz. There are cordless phones that run at 2.4GHz (I have seen these!).
I say test them. Put them in a trial - either like the one done in Britain to show that the "we're sensitive to cellphone mast" people were full of shit - or a true double-blind. It's almost guaranteed that you'll find that there is no statistical evidence that these people are correct.
Yes, 2.4GHz is dangerous - if pushed to high power levels. The military and commercial RADAR systems generate a signal powerful enough to cook almost anything in under a minute. During WW2, before the advent of the microwave oven, pilots would warm themselves by standing in front of the antennas. (this is what actually led to the creation of the microwave)
People have mentioned the danger of X-Rays and Gamma Rays and fail to see that the problem actually comes from the amount of power in them. Understand that? It's the amount of POWER behind the signal that causes the damage, not the frequency. (okay, frequency is important - at 2.4GHz the signal does resonate with water)
--Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.... oh, wait, this is supposed to be a
According to the US Patent Office until the early twentieth century you had to provide a model or functional prototype of your device in order to receive a patent. Until the late 1970's/early 1980's a patent could only cover a physical device.
That is exactly what the patent system was designed to cover. Processes were added at some point, though I'm not exactly certain when, and almost assuredly because of businesses. Writings, data and artwork were to be covered solely by copyrights.
(Not a quote, but I had to set this aside somehow...)My example above isn't to show that all software patents are bad. What it's doing is showing that the USPTO (and presumably other countries patent offices) need to start using people who understand the field that the patent is in. If you try to patent something like the RCU method, it goes to someone who has experience with programming. If it is a patent on a firearm, it goes to someone with experience as a gunsmith (or similar).
That alone - using a person or group with experience in the field that the patent applies to to examine the patent and make sure it's 100% valid before granting it - should cut down on the number of bogus patents. Truthfully, there should also be limits placed on what can be "claimed" by a patent - to stop someone from patenting a never-produced design for something and then suing when someone produces something that is only marginally related.
Go watch "Johnny Mnemonic" sometime. Pharmaceuticals companies exist to make money, the same as every other company. Even if they did find a cure for Cancer or AIDS do you honestly believe they'd market it?
The fact is that making $2000 a month for the drugs to treat a disease is a lot more profitable than making a one-time earning of $20,000 for each person cured of that disease. Companies are not beholden to the public but to their shareholders. Remember this. It's one of the reasons that companies like Microshaft^WMicrosoft do business in the way that they do - to make as much money for the shareholders as possible.
----Before going off on a rant about the movie I mentioned, note that I've read every cyberpunk novel written by Gibson and have also read his anthology "Burning Chrome".
Incorrect. The TASER is not "non-lethal", because anything could be lethal in the proper circumstances. In this case the correct term is "less than lethal" - because when used properly and the target doesn't have a pre-existing condition that can be triggered by it - the TASER will not kill.
Note that "less than lethal" is also used to describe things like Rubber Bullets and bean-bag rounds. Neither is designed to be lethal, but if you hit someone in the right place and they are at the right range, they will die.
This applies to the TASER. If you have a heart condition (or just a weak heart) being hit with the voltage from a TASER can cause a heart-attack. But then, an old-fashioned, hand-held stun gun would do the same thing if it was used to hit someone near the heart.
Your argument falls apart, however, because renting a location out means that the company without the license is no longer utilizing said property. What MediaSentry has done, if they did, in fact, rent out the lines to a company that was not under a restraining order, is to attempt to sidestep the ruling against them.
They are still doing their jobs - ie: collecting evidence for the RIAA - even though they are not doing it directly. In other words, they are providing the lines to an "authorized agent". Since MediaSentry was enjoined from collecting the data themselves, any company that they provided the lines to and "authorized" to collect the data in their stead is also enjoined from doing the collection. QED: No matter how you try to twist the facts, MediaSentry is still breaking the law.
This is the problem with the GPL and LGPL - no matter how many times you #include a file that contains interface information for a GPL'd library you aren't creating a derivative. It doesn't matter one bit that the final output contains things carried over from those header files - because #include is acted on by a mechanical translation mechanism. Under US and *MOST* other nations copyright laws, a mechanical translation cannot hold a separate copyright from the original. What this means is that you can write an application that uses Qt, Gnome, etc... and release it under your own license - with no requirement to distribute the source code to the application. It doesn't affect the license on the libraries - you will still be bound by the license on them - but... Basically what it means is that the LGPL and the "Bison Exception" were never needed.
1) I completely agree. But in this case it's a Random Number Generator - unless those random numbers form a key part of the encryption process, I can't see a backdoor in a random number generator being a problem. (Except in certain specific cases)
2) Yes, of course. But what I'm saying is that I've never heard of a processor flaw where a faulty instruction would reveal part of the data being worked on. Yes, a processor can have problems with instructions - the original Pentiums had a nasty one in the FPU's lookup tables and then there is the venerable F00F bug - but the FPU bug affected certain calculations and the F00F bug caused the processor to lock or triggered a system reboot. Neither one revealed data.
3) Yes, the microcode is uploaded at runtime. But all it would take is a "cracker" (*grin*) writing an exploit that caused a hacked version of the microcode to be loaded for it to become a problem. No need for the kind of access you're talking about, just a classic exploit like those that plague every version of Windows. Sure, it'd pretty much take an idiot with root access for a linux box to be compromised that way, but hey - Windows has more "market penetration" and is a much more likely target.
(And yes, the "microcode update" system was implemented so that Intel could patch problems on various processors but that doesn't make it a good thing)
1) It's not clear that the ECC PRNG is "backdoored" - everything I've seen says that it "may" or "might" have a weakness where there is a second, related set of numbers - not that there IS a second set of numbers.
2) This article doesn't say anything new. If a processor has a flaw in its math processing then exploiting that flaw could lead to any result - but it's unlikely that it'd just cause the processor to kill the security software. Look at the F00F bug on older Intel chips - it caused the processor to fault and lockup. So a processor fault causing a single process on a system to fault seems like a non-starter.
3) Almost all modern processors actually "decode" a single instruction (like movb %ah, %al) into a series of very low-level instructions. Intel has actually built a way to update this translation process into its newer processors - the "microcode update" system. On Linux and Windows, at least, you can install a new version of the microcode on a processor.* This process could be co-opted by someone with the proper resources to cause a processor to mis-function.
*I think the reason they don't offer things like SSE3 as a microcode update has more to do with economics than limitations of the silicon
---
Sometimes, I wonder if the world isn't just a dream and me the dreamer. Then I stub my toe and know it isn't
Theo and Reyk quite clearly don't think the changes are sufficient. I started looking at the code and could see the massive differences between the OpenBSD and Linux versions immediately - to the point that I stated as much in the most recent flamewar over it on LKML. The OpenBSD folks shouted me down, yelling that "I didn't care about the truth" and that the changes were "mere adaptation not deserving their own copyright". When presented with facts to the contrary they got real quiet and the thread died.
So I'm guessing that Theo (at least - Reyk strikes me as much more intelligent and open to the truth) won't accept this examination. He has, at least once, very vocally accused the FSF of backing Moglen setting up the SFLC as a move to "infect" all code with the GPL. With that viewpoint in mind - the paranoid, FSF is out to get me viewpoint - I can deduce that Theo's response will be "Lawsuit! The SFLC is an arm of the FSF and Linux! Our code is being stolen!".
Of course, with the re-licensing of the once GPL(v2) only changes under the ISC license (and with the SFLC's review of the code), I can't see any lawsuit being successful. Strangely, I don't expect Theo to understand this, as he doesn't seem to understand anything else.
(And, from pages linked to from TFA, it appears that the BSD people, in general, aren't all that happy with the review. One of them has even claimed that the review is wrong and at least one of the files the review claims contains a lot of original work shows only changed variable names and some "minor" work to make it work with Linux.)
As to your "complaint" that "all the examples show a specialized setup" I'm guessing you've never done support for anyone that wasn't computer savvy. I've done setup (all windows systems) - as a living - and all but a few of the customers requested "Email, Internet and IM" icons on the desktop. That's "specialized setup" - same as the person you decided to yell at did - and its not Linux.
Now ask yourself the same question: If it's so easy, why did you have to configure those buttons? Why couldn't your grandmother do it herself? But phrase it as "Why couldn't the clients do it themselves?" The answer is simple - they could have. But they felt better having someone else do it for them. Why couldn't his Grandmother do it for herself? Truthfully, she probably could have. If he hadn't used WindowMaker. WindowMaker is a WM for the more "computer literate" - if I'd been in his position I'd have used KDE. It follows the known windows paradigm and is extremely forgiving for the new user. It does, however, consume a lot more resources than WindowMaker and that might have been the reason he didn't use it.