Another moment, it is not a copyright issue, but one of stealing trade secrets.
At another time, it is not a trade secret issue, but one of stealing "ways of doing things" and "know-how".
Of course, the only laws that protect ways of doing things and know how are patents.
But it is not a patent case, because SCO has no relevant patents. (Patent numbers can be looked up, despite what SCO might wish for.)
But this is an issue of Linux having "millions of lines" of code that is improperly copied from Unix. (But it is not a copyright issue.)
Well, this is an issue of Linux users needing to pay to properly compensate us for our the use of code which shows how badly broken our previous business model was.
Should firmware flashing utilities be able to check a MD5 checksum. (Or perhaps a digital signature? Nah, that would prevent us from building our own firmware.)
[my dad]...also keeps asking if there's anything I can do to stop the semi-porn spam - and other than the usual precautions, the answer is still "not really".
Yes you can! Easily!
Get Mozilla. Use it as your e-mail client. It can either POP or IMAP. It has bayesian filtering. Just start training it, and your spam will be filtered. It doesn't save your bandwidth, but it does save your time.
I was talking with someone just yesterday evening. She is not a geek. She does use Mozilla for both browsing and e-mail as I recommended. She was raving about how she never gets popups, and hardly ever sees any spam. Her boyfriend gets tons of both. (Again a non-geek.) She keeps recommending that he get Mozilla. He thinks it is too much trouble to download it and run Setup.exe.
It is the easiest thing to do for a Windows user.
It is very sensible. Switch from a corporate-friendly e-mail client that can't filter, and a corporate-friendly browser to a user-friendly one of each. Mozilla's agenda is different. It is open-source, which is automatically user-oriented rather than vendor-oriented. Mozilla is never going to have the internal conflict whether they are being "too" harsh about filtering out vendor's potential advertising.
It just astounds me that so many Windows users complain about both pop-ups and about spam, when it is so amazingly easy to get rid of both in one fell swoop. Truly amazing.
So are the Microsoft zealots terrorists? After all, they want nothing less than 100% domination. There is no room for competition. There can be no choice.
I'll also say that it might not even be a matter of merit. I may see absolutely no merit to another position at all. (All cons, no pros.) Yet still I can respect that someone chooses that position for no logical reason. Sometimes people choose things that seem incredibly stupid, but they cannot be convinced. I / we, etc. need to be able to accept that some people make such choices and move on.
Hypothetical example: If someone really things that typing a long report on a typewriter is superior to a word processor, then it is not my duty to convince them otherwise. Naturally, I tend to lose a lot of respect for people who make such choices even against clear reasons to the contrary.
Now this is more extreme than a Linux vs. Windows comparison. I can see valid reasons why someone might choose Windows or Microsoft Office.
Having said that, I cannot accept or respect people who do such an irrational and illogical thing as to drink Pepsi instead of Coke.:-) (Vi/Emacs, KDE/Gnome, etc., etc., other flamebait)
Want to see a true zealot? Play the Steve Ballmer monkey boy video. Or the "I Love This Company" video.
Why do people automatically assume that the zealots are all on one side?
Why do zealots on the other side assume that having passion about anything is wrong? (Unless it is the same passion that they share.)
Why does the article begin by stating that a Pro (not priest or zealot) is platform agnostic? So you can't be a Linux Pro and have a platform preference? Would having a Microsoft platform preference automatically disqualify you from Pro and put you into Microsoft Priest or Microsoft Zealot?
What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
The death of PDA's was predicted in The Economist. You know, a magazine written for and by the set of people who tend to not worry about money -- other than accumulating vast amounts of it.
Correlarry: You don't need to buy SQL Server... MS wouldn't shoot themselves in the foot like that.
What if the price of SQL Server is "bundled" into the price of Longhorn?:-)
Or, maybe you really don't need an SQL server. Developers get hooked by an easy to use new way to store and query vast amounts of data. And it is just the filesystem!
Oh, you're going to deploy more than five workloads? You'll a twenty thousand dollar license for that. Sort of like MSDE today. It's free to get you hooked on small time. But need to do something significant, you pay. (Or your client pays.)
Another thing that monopolies do is to give stuff away at a loss to kill competitors. So the grandparent poster could be right. Give away a capable database to kill Oracle. Later, you begin charging money for it. If there is anything that one should learn from watching IBM in the 50's, 60's, 70's is that nothing is more important than market share. Not profit. Not even legality. Even if you are prosecuted and end up paying a huge fine, you still own the market after all competitors are long gone.
It could be called "longhorn" because you're going to get really screwed this time.
Re:Corrupt filesystems faster,
on
CNet on WinFS
·
· Score: 1
Everything Microsoft Does can be interpreted as a sneaky new way to enforce DRM.
Some things they do seem to have no other motive than getting your data into their system, and not letting it get back out again. No reason to assume DRM is the motive in all cases.
The thing about it is that it just makes it sound so simple that almost anyone can see that this isn't an effective method of copy-protection. This is exactly the type of writing that needs to be done to show that these so-called "flawless" schemes are often poorly designed.
Wrong, I think.
An Autorun will be effective against the vast majority of Windows and Mac users.
For those who don't have Autorun enabled, the disk provides the necessary Social Engineering in both Mac and Windows formats to induce you to install their Trojan Horse. (Trojan Horse: software that does what it says, but also has a concealed unwanted surprise that you don't find out about until after you've already let it inside the city gate.)
Finally for those evil terrorist hacker criminals and their shift keys who are too smart to fall for the Autorun and Social Engineering tactics, this proves the indisputable need for stronger legislation to protect the artists. I can hear it now: "After all, we've invested substantial resources into the devilopment of MediaMax crapware. You can clearly see from the easy installation procedure and the flashy graphics that it is of good quality. Those evil hackers have circumvented our secret proprietary technology. There is no way they could have done that without doing something wrong."
They don't depend on Autorun. They social engineer you into installing their trojan horse software in case it does not install automatically. Social Engineering provided for both Mac and Windows.
(Trojan horse: software that does what it says it does, but has an unwanted secret hidden inside. You don't discover this until after you've let it inside the city gate.)
In any case, the whole point of DRM is that it would disable the audio-out port on your sound card if you don't have the appropriate "rights" to copy the media
So DRM's purpose is to make sure I can't LISTEN if I do not own rights to COPY?
When will manufacturers grow up and realize that they're supposed to be providing value to their customers?
Since when is business about giving customer markets what they want?
which, according to my acquaintance studying economy, is mostly like astrology
An interesting comparison. Both do sophisticated calculations in order to arrive at their conclusions. So they must be valid. I remember back in the day when anything printed on green bar tractor fed printer paper was gospel. Hey it came out of the computer so it must be right!
I think to create sufficient critical demand for software allowing it to become the industry standard is to create demand at the top of the business chain (who MS bend over backward to serve), so something that MS don't have is the only thing that can break them.
I understand your argument. I just don't agree with it.
Look at Apache. Look at how Internet mail is handled. The growth of Linux is not slowing down, if anything, accellerating.
On the very day that some open source announces a cool feature that MS doesn't have is the same day that MS announces the vaporware feature in MS products. Just wait! It will be so cool! MS will have it bigger, better, faster, and for more money! So why not wait? And MS will release the new feature in their software. And it will be slickly integrated.
So I think that merely being open source is enough. I belive that open source can succeed simply on its merits -- which is more than just a feature list, or even steeply discounted software in volume. It is about something called freedom.
I believe that Governments will eventually adopt open standards for public data. It is inevitible. This gives open source software a fair chance to compete. Perhaps even an advantage.
So again, I disagree with the proposition that open source can only succeed if it has more features.
You can do everything you want in MS Office. You don't have to pay for it. So keep using it, and I hope it makes you happy. I'll go on using OOo and be very happy with it.
There are plenty of business users who do not buy a Bazillion or even merely a Jillion copies to obtain steep discounts and get to be best buddies with Microsoft.
OOo is not only for the home user. There are plenty of small businesses and schools that can use OOo. Have you seen the Star Office for Kids site?
I just discovered, last night in fact, that a pet grooming shop in my area gives out a 2004 calendar. I noticed that the calendar is produced by an OOo macro that
I wrote
(and LGPL'ed). I was pleased to say the least (to see OOo being used).
However to me, the ONLY SURE WAY FOR NEW SOFTWARE TO SUCCEED (proprietary or open source) is to offer new functionality.
I disagree with this statement. If you see the world only in terms of 10,000 unit deployments, then this may color your perception of things. One way that new software can succeed over proprietary software is by being open source and having open document formats, and a large powerful open API.
You could try recording a macro to do this. Then bind the macro to a key. At least you would only have to hit one key instead of picking a menu command.
Slashdot Mirror
Its all spam, its all lies, its all fraud.
But this is insignificant compared to the power of the Campaign Contributions.
RTFA... Read the Friendly article.
One moment, it is a copyright issue.
Another moment, it is not a copyright issue, but one of stealing trade secrets.
At another time, it is not a trade secret issue, but one of stealing "ways of doing things" and "know-how".
Of course, the only laws that protect ways of doing things and know how are patents.
But it is not a patent case, because SCO has no relevant patents. (Patent numbers can be looked up, despite what SCO might wish for.)
But this is an issue of Linux having "millions of lines" of code that is improperly copied from Unix. (But it is not a copyright issue.)
Well, this is an issue of Linux users needing to pay to properly compensate us for our the use of code which shows how badly broken our previous business model was.
Should firmware flashing utilities be able to check a MD5 checksum. (Or perhaps a digital signature? Nah, that would prevent us from building our own firmware.)
[my dad]...also keeps asking if there's anything I can do to stop the semi-porn spam - and other than the usual precautions, the answer is still "not really".
Yes you can! Easily!
Get Mozilla. Use it as your e-mail client. It can either POP or IMAP. It has bayesian filtering. Just start training it, and your spam will be filtered. It doesn't save your bandwidth, but it does save your time.
I was talking with someone just yesterday evening. She is not a geek. She does use Mozilla for both browsing and e-mail as I recommended. She was raving about how she never gets popups, and hardly ever sees any spam. Her boyfriend gets tons of both. (Again a non-geek.) She keeps recommending that he get Mozilla. He thinks it is too much trouble to download it and run Setup.exe.
It is the easiest thing to do for a Windows user.
It is very sensible. Switch from a corporate-friendly e-mail client that can't filter, and a corporate-friendly browser to a user-friendly one of each. Mozilla's agenda is different. It is open-source, which is automatically user-oriented rather than vendor-oriented. Mozilla is never going to have the internal conflict whether they are being "too" harsh about filtering out vendor's potential advertising.
It just astounds me that so many Windows users complain about both pop-ups and about spam, when it is so amazingly easy to get rid of both in one fell swoop. Truly amazing.
So are the Microsoft zealots terrorists? After all, they want nothing less than 100% domination. There is no room for competition. There can be no choice.
I agree.
:-) (Vi/Emacs, KDE/Gnome, etc., etc., other flamebait)
I'll also say that it might not even be a matter of merit. I may see absolutely no merit to another position at all. (All cons, no pros.) Yet still I can respect that someone chooses that position for no logical reason. Sometimes people choose things that seem incredibly stupid, but they cannot be convinced. I / we, etc. need to be able to accept that some people make such choices and move on.
Hypothetical example: If someone really things that typing a long report on a typewriter is superior to a word processor, then it is not my duty to convince them otherwise. Naturally, I tend to lose a lot of respect for people who make such choices even against clear reasons to the contrary.
Now this is more extreme than a Linux vs. Windows comparison. I can see valid reasons why someone might choose Windows or Microsoft Office.
Having said that, I cannot accept or respect people who do such an irrational and illogical thing as to drink Pepsi instead of Coke.
Want to see a true zealot? Play the Steve Ballmer monkey boy video. Or the "I Love This Company" video.
Why do people automatically assume that the zealots are all on one side?
Why do zealots on the other side assume that having passion about anything is wrong? (Unless it is the same passion that they share.)
Why does the article begin by stating that a Pro (not priest or zealot) is platform agnostic? So you can't be a Linux Pro and have a platform preference? Would having a Microsoft platform preference automatically disqualify you from Pro and put you into Microsoft Priest or Microsoft Zealot?
What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
The death of PDA's was predicted in The Economist. You know, a magazine written for and by the set of people who tend to not worry about money -- other than accumulating vast amounts of it.
How would you like to be six inches taller and earn hundreds of thousands more dollars?
You should try our new all-natural herbal enlargement pills!
Correlarry: You don't need to buy SQL Server... MS wouldn't shoot themselves in the foot like that.
:-)
What if the price of SQL Server is "bundled" into the price of Longhorn?
Or, maybe you really don't need an SQL server. Developers get hooked by an easy to use new way to store and query vast amounts of data. And it is just the filesystem!
Oh, you're going to deploy more than five workloads? You'll a twenty thousand dollar license for that. Sort of like MSDE today. It's free to get you hooked on small time. But need to do something significant, you pay. (Or your client pays.)
Another thing that monopolies do is to give stuff away at a loss to kill competitors. So the grandparent poster could be right. Give away a capable database to kill Oracle. Later, you begin charging money for it. If there is anything that one should learn from watching IBM in the 50's, 60's, 70's is that nothing is more important than market share. Not profit. Not even legality. Even if you are prosecuted and end up paying a huge fine, you still own the market after all competitors are long gone.
It could be called "longhorn" because you're going to get really screwed this time.
Everything Microsoft Does can be interpreted as a sneaky new way to enforce DRM.
Some things they do seem to have no other motive than getting your data into their system, and not letting it get back out again. No reason to assume DRM is the motive in all cases.
The thing about it is that it just makes it sound so simple that almost anyone can see that this isn't an effective method of copy-protection. This is exactly the type of writing that needs to be done to show that these so-called "flawless" schemes are often poorly designed.
Wrong, I think.
An Autorun will be effective against the vast majority of Windows and Mac users.
For those who don't have Autorun enabled, the disk provides the necessary Social Engineering in both Mac and Windows formats to induce you to install their Trojan Horse. (Trojan Horse: software that does what it says, but also has a concealed unwanted surprise that you don't find out about until after you've already let it inside the city gate.)
Finally for those evil terrorist hacker criminals and their shift keys who are too smart to fall for the Autorun and Social Engineering tactics, this proves the indisputable need for stronger legislation to protect the artists. I can hear it now: "After all, we've invested substantial resources into the devilopment of MediaMax crapware. You can clearly see from the easy installation procedure and the flashy graphics that it is of good quality. Those evil hackers have circumvented our secret proprietary technology. There is no way they could have done that without doing something wrong."
They don't depend on Autorun. They social engineer you into installing their trojan horse software in case it does not install automatically. Social Engineering provided for both Mac and Windows.
(Trojan horse: software that does what it says it does, but has an unwanted secret hidden inside. You don't discover this until after you've let it inside the city gate.)
In any case, the whole point of DRM is that it would disable the audio-out port on your sound card if you don't have the appropriate "rights" to copy the media
So DRM's purpose is to make sure I can't LISTEN if I do not own rights to COPY?
When will manufacturers grow up and realize that they're supposed to be providing value to their customers?
Since when is business about giving customer markets what they want?
Does this mean that anything that is NOT Windows is a DMCA violation?
They've been doing this for years. It's a simple plan: make movies so bad no one will want to copy them.
It will never work.
The RIAA has tried this strategy. People still want to copy them. So I expect the same will be true for movies.
Here is how to put a final stop to the Windows viruses once and for all. Or at least a big dent.
Have a big jail time or financial penalty for....
Software Piracy!
None of this settlement nonsense. Let's have RIAA style $150 million lawsuits for pirated Microsoft software.
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to connect the dots.
which, according to my acquaintance studying economy, is mostly like astrology
An interesting comparison. Both do sophisticated calculations in order to arrive at their conclusions. So they must be valid. I remember back in the day when anything printed on green bar tractor fed printer paper was gospel. Hey it came out of the computer so it must be right!
As for marketing, I've never seen a Sun ad on television.
I have. It was several years ago. "Sun. We're the dot in dot-com."
And what will happen if VeriSlime refuses to pull ShiteFinder?
I'm not sure why such simple problems still exist, honestly.
Here's why.
Because Word is a closed, secret, proprietary, and especially undocumented format.
Microsoft is free to play games with the format on every new release.
The only software that will ever have perfect compatibility with Word documents is: Word. (Unless the above stated conditions change.)
I think to create sufficient critical demand for software allowing it to become the industry standard is to create demand at the top of the business chain (who MS bend over backward to serve), so something that MS don't have is the only thing that can break them.
I understand your argument. I just don't agree with it.
Look at Apache. Look at how Internet mail is handled. The growth of Linux is not slowing down, if anything, accellerating.
On the very day that some open source announces a cool feature that MS doesn't have is the same day that MS announces the vaporware feature in MS products. Just wait! It will be so cool! MS will have it bigger, better, faster, and for more money! So why not wait? And MS will release the new feature in their software. And it will be slickly integrated.
So I think that merely being open source is enough. I belive that open source can succeed simply on its merits -- which is more than just a feature list, or even steeply discounted software in volume. It is about something called freedom.
I believe that Governments will eventually adopt open standards for public data. It is inevitible. This gives open source software a fair chance to compete. Perhaps even an advantage.
So again, I disagree with the proposition that open source can only succeed if it has more features.
Have you tried OOo 1.1 or only 1.0.x for opening Word documents?
You can do everything you want in MS Office. You don't have to pay for it. So keep using it, and I hope it makes you happy. I'll go on using OOo and be very happy with it.
There are plenty of business users who do not buy a Bazillion or even merely a Jillion copies to obtain steep discounts and get to be best buddies with Microsoft.
OOo is not only for the home user. There are plenty of small businesses and schools that can use OOo. Have you seen the Star Office for Kids site?
I just discovered, last night in fact, that a pet grooming shop in my area gives out a 2004 calendar. I noticed that the calendar is produced by an OOo macro that I wrote (and LGPL'ed). I was pleased to say the least (to see OOo being used).
However to me, the ONLY SURE WAY FOR NEW SOFTWARE TO SUCCEED (proprietary or open source) is to offer new functionality.
I disagree with this statement. If you see the world only in terms of 10,000 unit deployments, then this may color your perception of things. One way that new software can succeed over proprietary software is by being open source and having open document formats, and a large powerful open API.
You could try recording a macro to do this. Then bind the macro to a key. At least you would only have to hit one key instead of picking a menu command.