GMail is a bit different, but I'm pretty sure I could rig up a python script to back up my gmail account, and move it onto a different server, if I was unhappy with their service.
I just use Thunderbird to download my mail from G-Mail. So if I'm ever unhappy with Google in general or G-Mail in particular I can easily move to another service without losing my existing mail. As I understand it Thunderbird shares a mail storage format with other (non Mozilla) programs and can have mail imported from it by those programs even across operating systems.
How easy is it to import from Outlook and Outlook Express these days?
That was one of the real problems. Another was the vast estates of the Templars paid no taxes. That helped to mess up the Monarchies budgets and left them running huge debts. As such it was necessary for the King to either confiscate their lands or make them taxable. It was a much better precedent from the churches viewpoint to allow the confiscation for trumped up reasons than allow church property to be taxed. Also the Pope was effectively a prisoner of France at the time and had little choice but to give in.
Especially since the patents I'm paying for are being ignored on both my Canadian and Mexican borders.
Are they being ignored or are they invalid in those countries? The U.S. patent system is notorious for granting patents on things that are not patentable in other countries. Why should those countries respect patents that their systems would not grant?
Presumably this "free PC" came preinstalled with McAffee products?
Now that they have proven their own products are ineffective what products actually work?
Personally I am nearly spam free even with my spam filters off while job hunting. With my spam filters on I see maybe one spam a month. I have used Thunderbird for E-Mail and Firefox of web browsing and my spam/malware levels did not change last year when I abandoned Windows for LinuxMint.
Don't forget that the research on embryonic stem cells started about a decade after that into adult stem cells. That head start means that embryonic stem cell research has not had the time yet to provide cures.
Even if embryonic stem cells never directly provide a cure they could do so indirectly. Comparing the results of research on embryonic and adult stem cells can give information that might have been over looked for years.
To be fair to Microsoft DOS 4 was not their fault. IBM used a clause in the contract with Microsoft to let IBM write DOS 4. The problems with DOS 4 were caused by IBM not Microsoft.
Yes, there was Digital Research. About nobody else though. If Gary Kidall hadn't been flying that plane...
Check your facts. This is an urban legend.
It was the draconian non disclosure agreement that IBM wanted him to sign that stopped it. If he had signed IBM could have kept him from doing anything with work that he was already doing that related to the NDA and he couldn't know what that was. Signing the NDA could have destroyed his company. Microsoft barely was a company and could get away with signing it as there was so little to lose compared to what they could gain.
The company that has tried to get GPL invalidated in the US as "un-american".
I remember them calling it unAmerican, a cancer and communist but I don't recall Microsoft trying to get the GPL itself invalidated.
I do recall Darl McBride (CEO of The SCO Group) sending a letter to Congress (or was it the Senate) claiming the GPL was unconstitutional and invalid. No connection with Microsoft was ever proven about that.
I also recall a guy called Wallace independently attempting to get it called unconstitutional and an anti-trust violation. But again no connection to Microsoft.
Please cite for me the actual attempt by Microsoft to get the GPL invalidated.
There is an attempt to get a (even more) draconian form of the U.S. DMCA into law here in Canada. It is being fought however. Previous attempts have been made and each has been defeated. Whether this one will pass it is too early to tell.
If nVidia buys VIA maybe there's even a chance that they choke VIA's previous open source effort.
I don't think that is likely. It would be more likely to go the other way.
My information is not up to date but I did some reading up on VIA a few years ago. They were then owned by a larger conglomerate. That conglomerate makes a lot of interlinking things. Other branches of the conglomerate make motherboards and the material used to encase CPUSs and other integrated circuits just to name 2 that I recall. They are much more powerful collectively than VIA is alone.
I want one so that when exchanging documents with friends, businesses and the government I can use the program that I wish and they can use the one they wish
It's called ASCII, and it's compatible with every word processor in existence and half the documents written with Word DOC format, OOXML, and ODF should be delivered in this format but aren't.
Nice try but no go for three reasons:
1/ Formatting. By your own admission at least half of the documents in existance need features that ASCII lacks. Documents exchanged with businessess and governments are most likely going to need those extra features.
2/ When dealing with governments and businessess they specify the document format and you MUST use it to deal with them.
3/ Even if they would let you send documents to them in ASCII they won't be sending them back in ascii.
I also hear a lot of "OOXML is proprietary" - this just isn't true. It's XML text in a ZIP file, much like ODF. I also hear a lot about patents, which is the same issue - Microsoft's patent pledge is almost identical to Sun's patent pledge (what, you thought ODF was somehow less encumbered?)
Almost does not neccessarily cut it.
Here is a cute little loop hole.
New versions of previously covered specifications will be separately considered for addition to the list.
The "Pledge" is void in any new versions of OOXML that may be developed unless Microsoft decides to update the pledge.
Here is Suns equivalent.
Sun irrevocably covenants that, subject solely to the reciprocity requirement described below, it will not seek to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents against any implementation of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 Specification, or of any subsequent version thereof ("OpenDocument Implementation") in which development Sun participates to the point of incurring an obligation, as defined by the rules of OASIS, to grant (or commit to grant) patent licenses or make equivalent non-assertion covenants.
At least if Sun takes part in updating the Spec the patent pledge is in effect. Unlike in Microsofts case where it doesn't matter if they have a part in it or endorse it the pledge becomes invalid when the Spec is updated. I think that it should be better and apply to any ISO certified version of ODF even if Sun takes no part, but it is still better than the Microsoft version.
The reciprocity element only kicks in if you sue any ODF implementation for patent violations. That helps protect ODF from attack by anyone who implements ODF. Microsofts equivalent only applies if you sue a Microsoft implementation of OOXML.
Of course there is one other element. Microsoft is already going around making claims of patent violations in Linux and yes OpenOffice but isn't backing those claims up with facts. What patents specifically are violated? If they know and they must to be making that claim why will they not back it up by telling people? The only reason for not telling so far given is that people will challenge the validity of the patents. If the patents are valid that should not be an issue. If they are invalid then they should be challenged. So to me this reason makes no sense at all.
What I do find though is that if you look around, the only people who actually care about this whole thing is the open source folks trying to force governments to legislate Office out of existence (let's face it, that's what you're trying to do - it's not about freedom at all),
Perhaps you would care to explain this. As I see it the "format fight" is to get a standardized office file format that everyone can use. I want one so that when exchanging documents with friends, businesses and the government I can use the program that I wish and they can use the one they wish. Right now I don't have that option and if OOXML is not defeated I likely will continue not to have that option. Having the "standard" file format be proprietary as it has been means that everyone regardless of their desire must use that program for data exchange.
How does mandating ODF or another unencumbered by patents format legislat Microsoft Office out of existence? Even Microsoft now admits that it can and will implement ODF. If OOXML were not to be a standard or was forced to take the longer non fast tracked route to standardization and ODF became the universal standard how would this block Microsoft from continuing to sell to those who desire to use MS Office?
They could install Windows 2000Pro which would accelerate it to functionality without the activation "feature" or most of the DRM they added in later versions
Funny, Office 2007 came out 'recently', as did 2008 for Mac. Did they put any money into that they are entitled to attempt to recoup?
They are definitely entitled to attempt to recoup their costs. The problem comes from their control of the market place which gives them the ability to compel expenditures and to use that compulsion to recoup their costs instead of letting the market decide if they deserve to recoup them.
Governments and businesses are entitled to control their own expenditures and to decide what format their data will be stored in. Right now Microsoft is working to compel them to change that data format because Microsoft desires it. Naturally that is being resisted. Governments and businesses are slowly beginning to say "It MY data and I WILL control it". Microsoft is like the Outer Limits control voice demanding that in fact they will control your data.
None of which matters. Businesses don't care what format they use as long as they can pass it back and forth and it just works. That isn't going to change anytime soon.
Businesses care because of what is happening now, with Office 2007 Microsoft is changing the format in a major way. It isn't decided by market forces, its decided by Microsoft, their customers have no say. Why the change? Microsoft gives various reasons, some may even be valid, but the big one is Microsoft wants to force an upgrade to improve their revenue stream. Companies don't like it that they can be forced by their supplier to replace their stock of a product for no reason but to improve the suppliers bottom line. If they can break free to a true standard then no one vendor can control when and if those businesses upgrade.
Businesses and governments have a massive archive of old data in the older DOC formats. Only Microsoft can provide the tools to convert them. This conversion is going to cost those governments and bushinesses a fortune and that expenditure is not dictated by their desires but by Microsoft. They are now beginning to realize that this can happen any time Microsoft wishes to dictate it. Naturally they don't wish to be forced to spend vast quantities of money whenever it is convenient to Microsoft. With a real standard no one company can force such a conversion. No one company will be the sole provider of the tools to do the conversion. No one company can hold your data hostage by their control of the format.
Governments and businesses are slowly coming to understand that right now they no longer control their data, Microsoft does. As that realization sinks in they begin to look for ways to take back control. A true standard helps to take back that control.
Right now in recessionary times when governments and businesses want to conserve money is when Microsoft is seeing a need to force an upgrade and compel those governments and businesses to spend, just when they can least afford to. Also due to the timing of the EU vs Microsoft antitrust cases the eyes of the world are on Microsoft and people are being shown how Microsoft's behaviour is bad for governments and businesses.
Companies that wish to compete for the Office software market have for sometime been educating companies and governments about these issue and slowly they are winning. Self interest is driving those companies to make the educational effort. Self interest is what makes the customers begin to care about standards. Self interest is why Microsoft has to fight so hard to continue their control of the Office market.
What about governments and businesses that want and need a usable standard? Many governments have to by law put bids up to public tender and cannot specify a precise product. Right now they get locked into a file format that only one company can fully support, they need a standard to make it possible for them to obey the law. Businesses don't like being locked into one supplier who can do anything knowing you have no choice. Other businesses want to be able to compete with Microsoft for those lucrative government and big company contracts.
It seems to me that it is more than just a few geeks.
The rasons that S.A. and you cite are straight out of MS-haters' talking points, alsmost as if the MS-Haters themselves wrote the appeal. This is not a surprise, since a large percentage of the original OOXML objections were penned directly by the MS-hating portion of IBM, headed by Rob Weir and Bob Sutor.
Come of with some real reasons with real evidence, otherwise S.A. is wasting everybody's time on a witch hunt.
So you don't think that having over 80% of the proposed resolutions for issues with OOXML not being discussed by anyone outside of ECMA is significant? You don't think that fast tracking a specification that is between 6000 and 7000 pages long is inappropriate? I think that the specification is too large for the fast track. I think that allowing ECMA as Microsofts agent to control without over sight so many of the fixes to objections is unacceptable.
All that ignores the scandals associated with the "passing" of OOXML.
South Africa, Brazil, India and Denmark have all objected now. Do you think that all four nations are now being controlled by "Microsoft hating geeks"? I think that unlikely. I think it more likely that they have valid objections. We will just have to wait and see how it works out.
Given Microsofts past history (and convictions around the world) I think it more likely that the objections are valid. Microsoft does have a history of trying illegal methods to stifle competition. Did they not in the DOJ vs Microsoft case falsify evidence that was presented to the judge?
I wonder how the citizens feel about their money being wasted on these appeals to satisfy the hatred of Microsoft by a few loudmouthed geek fanboys?
It couldn't possibly be because the proposed standard was too complex and too defective to be fast tracked in the 1st place? Consider that over 80% of the problems with the specification had soloutions proposed by ECMA but "due to lack of time" not reviewed or discussed. The committee should have been able to review and if needed revise those "solutions". The fact that one private body was given unsupervised control of "fixes" when it was supposed to be the committee composed of National representatives that had the actual say to me is a good enough reason to appeal.
All that of course ignores the ongoing scandals and accusations that the system was twisted by Microsofts wealth and power rather than following the rules.
An excerpt from South Africas appeal giving the core of their reasons.
This appeal is made in accordance with Clause 11.1.2: "A P member of JTC 1 or an SC may appeal against any action, or inaction, on the part of JTC 1 or an SC when the P member considers that in such action or inaction:
* questions of principle are involved;
* the contents of a draft may be detrimental to the reputation of IEC or ISO; or
* the point giving rise to objection was not known to JTC 1 or SC during earlier discussions."
We believe that there is an important question of principle involved and that the reputation of ISO/IEC is indeed at stake. There has been speculation about the need to revise the directives around fast track processing. While such revision might indeed be necessary, we cannot accept the outcome of a process which the existing directives have not, in our opinion, been applied.
It appears that they are appealing not to satisfy peoples hatred of Microsoft but because the rules state that appeals should be launched for one of 3 reasons all of which South Africa feels apply.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not? Brazil's language is Portuguese not Spanish.
I just use Thunderbird to download my mail from G-Mail. So if I'm ever unhappy with Google in general or G-Mail in particular I can easily move to another service without losing my existing mail. As I understand it Thunderbird shares a mail storage format with other (non Mozilla) programs and can have mail imported from it by those programs even across operating systems.
How easy is it to import from Outlook and Outlook Express these days?
Are you talking about the Catholic Church or the Templars? Either could apply based on my reading.
That was one of the real problems. Another was the vast estates of the Templars paid no taxes. That helped to mess up the Monarchies budgets and left them running huge debts. As such it was necessary for the King to either confiscate their lands or make them taxable. It was a much better precedent from the churches viewpoint to allow the confiscation for trumped up reasons than allow church property to be taxed. Also the Pope was effectively a prisoner of France at the time and had little choice but to give in.
The release of this April Fools gag was handled by the Vista team.
Are they being ignored or are they invalid in those countries? The U.S. patent system is notorious for granting patents on things that are not patentable in other countries. Why should those countries respect patents that their systems would not grant?
Add a motion detector so that as soon as it detects that it is being moved it calls it in. Catch thieves red handed.
Presumably this "free PC" came preinstalled with McAffee products?
Now that they have proven their own products are ineffective what products actually work?
Personally I am nearly spam free even with my spam filters off while job hunting. With my spam filters on I see maybe one spam a month. I have used Thunderbird for E-Mail and Firefox of web browsing and my spam/malware levels did not change last year when I abandoned Windows for LinuxMint.
Don't forget that the research on embryonic stem cells started about a decade after that into adult stem cells. That head start means that embryonic stem cell research has not had the time yet to provide cures.
Even if embryonic stem cells never directly provide a cure they could do so indirectly. Comparing the results of research on embryonic and adult stem cells can give information that might have been over looked for years.
I'm just waiting for Microsoft to hire Darl McBride as Ballmers successor.
We can't blame Gates for everything. For this one we have to blame your parents.
To be fair to Microsoft DOS 4 was not their fault. IBM used a clause in the contract with Microsoft to let IBM write DOS 4. The problems with DOS 4 were caused by IBM not Microsoft.
Check your facts. This is an urban legend.
It was the draconian non disclosure agreement that IBM wanted him to sign that stopped it. If he had signed IBM could have kept him from doing anything with work that he was already doing that related to the NDA and he couldn't know what that was. Signing the NDA could have destroyed his company. Microsoft barely was a company and could get away with signing it as there was so little to lose compared to what they could gain.
I remember them calling it unAmerican, a cancer and communist but I don't recall Microsoft trying to get the GPL itself invalidated.
I do recall Darl McBride (CEO of The SCO Group) sending a letter to Congress (or was it the Senate) claiming the GPL was unconstitutional and invalid. No connection with Microsoft was ever proven about that.
I also recall a guy called Wallace independently attempting to get it called unconstitutional and an anti-trust violation. But again no connection to Microsoft.
Please cite for me the actual attempt by Microsoft to get the GPL invalidated.
There is an attempt to get a (even more) draconian form of the U.S. DMCA into law here in Canada. It is being fought however. Previous attempts have been made and each has been defeated. Whether this one will pass it is too early to tell.
Hopefully this one will fail too.
I don't think that is likely. It would be more likely to go the other way.
My information is not up to date but I did some reading up on VIA a few years ago. They were then owned by a larger conglomerate. That conglomerate makes a lot of interlinking things. Other branches of the conglomerate make motherboards and the material used to encase CPUSs and other integrated circuits just to name 2 that I recall. They are much more powerful collectively than VIA is alone.
Nice try but no go for three reasons:
1/ Formatting. By your own admission at least half of the documents in existance need features that ASCII lacks. Documents exchanged with businessess and governments are most likely going to need those extra features.
2/ When dealing with governments and businessess they specify the document format and you MUST use it to deal with them.
3/ Even if they would let you send documents to them in ASCII they won't be sending them back in ascii.
Almost does not neccessarily cut it.
Here is a cute little loop hole.
The "Pledge" is void in any new versions of OOXML that may be developed unless Microsoft decides to update the pledge.
Here is Suns equivalent.
At least if Sun takes part in updating the Spec the patent pledge is in effect. Unlike in Microsofts case where it doesn't matter if they have a part in it or endorse it the pledge becomes invalid when the Spec is updated. I think that it should be better and apply to any ISO certified version of ODF even if Sun takes no part, but it is still better than the Microsoft version.
The reciprocity element only kicks in if you sue any ODF implementation for patent violations. That helps protect ODF from attack by anyone who implements ODF. Microsofts equivalent only applies if you sue a Microsoft implementation of OOXML.
Of course there is one other element. Microsoft is already going around making claims of patent violations in Linux and yes OpenOffice but isn't backing those claims up with facts. What patents specifically are violated? If they know and they must to be making that claim why will they not back it up by telling people? The only reason for not telling so far given is that people will challenge the validity of the patents. If the patents are valid that should not be an issue. If they are invalid then they should be challenged. So to me this reason makes no sense at all.
Perhaps you would care to explain this. As I see it the "format fight" is to get a standardized office file format that everyone can use. I want one so that when exchanging documents with friends, businesses and the government I can use the program that I wish and they can use the one they wish. Right now I don't have that option and if OOXML is not defeated I likely will continue not to have that option. Having the "standard" file format be proprietary as it has been means that everyone regardless of their desire must use that program for data exchange.
How does mandating ODF or another unencumbered by patents format legislat Microsoft Office out of existence? Even Microsoft now admits that it can and will implement ODF. If OOXML were not to be a standard or was forced to take the longer non fast tracked route to standardization and ODF became the universal standard how would this block Microsoft from continuing to sell to those who desire to use MS Office?
They could install Windows 2000Pro which would accelerate it to functionality without the activation "feature" or most of the DRM they added in later versions
The Voice of Microsoft:
There is nothing wrong with your computer.
Do not attempt to adjust its functions.
We are controlling its functioning.
If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume.
If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper.
We can reduce the performance to a crawl, or acclerate it to a functional level.
We will control your data.
We will control the format. For eternity, sit quietly and we will control all that you do.
You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind of Gate to... The Microsoft Domain Controller.
They are definitely entitled to attempt to recoup their costs. The problem comes from their control of the market place which gives them the ability to compel expenditures and to use that compulsion to recoup their costs instead of letting the market decide if they deserve to recoup them.
Governments and businesses are entitled to control their own expenditures and to decide what format their data will be stored in. Right now Microsoft is working to compel them to change that data format because Microsoft desires it. Naturally that is being resisted. Governments and businesses are slowly beginning to say "It MY data and I WILL control it". Microsoft is like the Outer Limits control voice demanding that in fact they will control your data.
Businesses care because of what is happening now, with Office 2007 Microsoft is changing the format in a major way. It isn't decided by market forces, its decided by Microsoft, their customers have no say. Why the change? Microsoft gives various reasons, some may even be valid, but the big one is Microsoft wants to force an upgrade to improve their revenue stream. Companies don't like it that they can be forced by their supplier to replace their stock of a product for no reason but to improve the suppliers bottom line. If they can break free to a true standard then no one vendor can control when and if those businesses upgrade.
Businesses and governments have a massive archive of old data in the older DOC formats. Only Microsoft can provide the tools to convert them. This conversion is going to cost those governments and bushinesses a fortune and that expenditure is not dictated by their desires but by Microsoft. They are now beginning to realize that this can happen any time Microsoft wishes to dictate it. Naturally they don't wish to be forced to spend vast quantities of money whenever it is convenient to Microsoft. With a real standard no one company can force such a conversion. No one company will be the sole provider of the tools to do the conversion. No one company can hold your data hostage by their control of the format.
Governments and businesses are slowly coming to understand that right now they no longer control their data, Microsoft does. As that realization sinks in they begin to look for ways to take back control. A true standard helps to take back that control.
Right now in recessionary times when governments and businesses want to conserve money is when Microsoft is seeing a need to force an upgrade and compel those governments and businesses to spend, just when they can least afford to. Also due to the timing of the EU vs Microsoft antitrust cases the eyes of the world are on Microsoft and people are being shown how Microsoft's behaviour is bad for governments and businesses.
Companies that wish to compete for the Office software market have for sometime been educating companies and governments about these issue and slowly they are winning. Self interest is driving those companies to make the educational effort. Self interest is what makes the customers begin to care about standards. Self interest is why Microsoft has to fight so hard to continue their control of the Office market.
Just a few geeks?
What about governments and businesses that want and need a usable standard? Many governments have to by law put bids up to public tender and cannot specify a precise product. Right now they get locked into a file format that only one company can fully support, they need a standard to make it possible for them to obey the law. Businesses don't like being locked into one supplier who can do anything knowing you have no choice. Other businesses want to be able to compete with Microsoft for those lucrative government and big company contracts.
It seems to me that it is more than just a few geeks.
So you don't think that having over 80% of the proposed resolutions for issues with OOXML not being discussed by anyone outside of ECMA is significant? You don't think that fast tracking a specification that is between 6000 and 7000 pages long is inappropriate? I think that the specification is too large for the fast track. I think that allowing ECMA as Microsofts agent to control without over sight so many of the fixes to objections is unacceptable.
All that ignores the scandals associated with the "passing" of OOXML.
South Africa, Brazil, India and Denmark have all objected now. Do you think that all four nations are now being controlled by "Microsoft hating geeks"? I think that unlikely. I think it more likely that they have valid objections. We will just have to wait and see how it works out.
Given Microsofts past history (and convictions around the world) I think it more likely that the objections are valid. Microsoft does have a history of trying illegal methods to stifle competition. Did they not in the DOJ vs Microsoft case falsify evidence that was presented to the judge?
It couldn't possibly be because the proposed standard was too complex and too defective to be fast tracked in the 1st place? Consider that over 80% of the problems with the specification had soloutions proposed by ECMA but "due to lack of time" not reviewed or discussed. The committee should have been able to review and if needed revise those "solutions". The fact that one private body was given unsupervised control of "fixes" when it was supposed to be the committee composed of National representatives that had the actual say to me is a good enough reason to appeal.
All that of course ignores the ongoing scandals and accusations that the system was twisted by Microsofts wealth and power rather than following the rules.
An excerpt from South Africas appeal giving the core of their reasons.
It appears that they are appealing not to satisfy peoples hatred of Microsoft but because the rules state that appeals should be launched for one of 3 reasons all of which South Africa feels apply.