Absolutely NOT. The moment they were discovered to be using GPL'd code without properly licensing, the "threat" was there. Their lawyers knew it - that's the purpose of having lawyers.
If you mean, "Was it necessary to file papers in court before MS complied?" then the answer is "No."
Obviously, Ballmer and company would have used delaying tactics while consulting with the legal beagles, but the beagles almost certainly said, "Steve, no matter how many chairs you throw, if we fight this, we will lose."
The code was released under duress, as opposed to freely being offered. After the fact, the damage control people are trying to put a nice graceful spin to the story. And, people just lap it up. MS History teaches us better.
I don't exactly see anyone advocating that we take MS to court, and completely destroy them over this code. Linux isn't in the business of "embrace, extend, extinguish", after all.
I do hear voices - and I join with them - loudly proclaiming that MS is a bunch of dishonest, thieving douchebags, and that they deserve no credit, and no respect, for releasing the code in question AFTER they were busted for stealing code that was already GPL'd.
If/when the fanbois and MS marketing department stops trying to sing hosannahs to the great Microsoft Machine, then maybe those of us who are more honest will quiet down. If MS had been even trying to "play by the rules", they would have assigned a team to work with other open source people to get it right a year (or more) ago. Not after they were busted! Certainly not after they release statements proclaiming open source to be a cancer!
Obsessed? Hardly. On the one hand, we have MS marketing singing a duet with MS fanbois. "Oh, praise MS, praise Gates, and praise Ballmer, for we are contributing to the competition". It makes a pretty song, if you are unaware of the facts.
Embrace. Extend. Extinquish. This is history. MS takes, MS never gives.
The ONLY reason MS gives ANYTHING away, is that they think that doing so will increase their money flow. Or, in this case, eliminate a threat to their cash flow.
Those who object to the falsehoods being sung by the choir aren't obsessed at all. If there is an obsession here, it is MS obsession with money.
I'm terribly sorry, but that one word pretty much screws your post, and your attitude. MS "donated" nothing. They were caught redhanded with their hands in the cookie jar. They were threatened with legal action, so they paid for the cookies, in the currency damanded by their victims.
The seperate issue of examining that code? Go for it. A lot of people are examining it right now, I suspect.;)
Be applauded? Willing to play by the rules? Sorry, don't expect a lot of us to jump on that bandwagon.
It's been shown clearly that MS hijacked GPL'd code, and that they only released their code after being threatened with a lawsuit over their improper usage of that code.
I'll hold any applause for Microsoft until they actually release something new and useful. There are already good useful virtualization softwares out there. Releasing a driver that enables their virtualization to compete with the VM's from which they hijacked code isn't very commendable, IMHO.
Various people have given us analogous situations - seems to me, a classroom of kindergarten kids fits. Little Mikey Soft is bigger than all the other K kids, so he takes toys from them. When teacher intervenes, Mikey returns some toys, saying that he was going to return them anyway. We applaud Mikey, ignoring the fact that he has taken toys from all the other kids all year long, and refused to return any of them until now. I suspect that the only reason Mikey returned a toy THIS TIME, is that his daddy was standing in the door holding that infamous paddle. That 3 foot long paddle, with embedded glass particles, and holes drilled in it.
You seem to be making a case that the earth is overpopulated. And, by extension, we are poisoning ourselves with our waste products. If so, I'll have to point out that this is indeed a natural process. Check out any laboratory with cultures of bacteria.
Meanwhile - I have to point out that the GP's post seems to have gone over your head, or at least you dismiss his reasoning. The earth has warmed and cooled many times in the past. In fact, the earth has warmed and cooled within recent prehistory. That heating and cooling has taken place despite man's presence, and there is limited and tainted evidence to support the idea that man is causing global warming.
There are multiple places where man has left artifacts that are now being uncovered by melting glaciers. One story in South America shows that previously cultivated land is being exposed. (Sorry, it's late, I'm lazy, google it yourself if you're really interested)
The fact that there are more people today than at any time in history or prehistory may or may not have an impact on global warming. Fossil fuels probably have an impact, but it probably isn't as great an impact as the alarmists would like us to believe.
Face it: global warming and global cooling is a proven recurring fact. Politics isn't going to change that. Nor will any consensus change it. Given time, the world will cool again. The only question is, whether man will be here to witness it.
Let's start some moon colonies, some Mars colonies, and start out to the other planets. That would improve our chances of seeing the earth covered in ice again.....
"Come on you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?" Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly, 4 June 1918. Leading Marines at Belleu Wood.
Depressing? Hell no. The idea of living forever is more depressing than the idea of feeding the Tree of Freedom. I mean, hey, women start looking pretty gnarly after the first hundred years.
And, that is the problem. People admit to all kinds of stupid shitzl. If someone wants to look at your computer, tell them to get a frigging warrant. If they come back with a warrant, tell them you want a lawyer. Don't even admit that the computer BELONGS TO YOU! Make them prove everything!! That is their job, after all. It's your job to tell them to get stuffed, you don't know anything, you can't recall anything, and that the same aliens who abducted you and forcibly made you watch pr0n are probably responsible for any illegal content allegedly downloaded through your IP.
"Microsoft doesn't release an operating system in 5 years - people bitch. Microsoft releases a new operating system - people bitch. Microsoft's operating system drops some legacy support for some apps - people bitch."
Could the reason be that Gates and Ballmer are bitches?
I tend to agree with that. BUT, maybe not. I hate Gates, but when you start talking about "What if?" no one can know. If Gates hadn't come along to help popularize computers, it's possible that we wouldn't be as far along now as we are. Whatever else Gates did, right and wrong, he DID help to make it easy for your average dimwit to get started in computing. Ultimately, his actions made helped to make computers look desirable to a lot of people who would never have considered spending hard earned money a computer.
Let's be honest about the state of computing 30 years ago. Most computers came in a console format, which was often regarded as a gaming system, or a word processor. 30 years ago, I had no use for a word processor, and the going price for any 8080 (and later the 8088) was just to damned much for someone like me to spend on a toy.
BECAUSE Gates and others had the vision of a putting an affordable computer in every home, millions of youngsters today have the opportunity to learn, who may not have been exposed to comptuers unti they reached college age.
Again, I'm no fan of Gates - but let's give the devil his due, alright?
Bottom line, no one has the right to delete anything from anyone else's computer, without a court order, unless the owner AGREES explicitly to having it removed.
And, I don't mean some lame assed coercive EULA stating, "If you use our services, we can do whatever we want, and you'll be happy about it!"
"I have had my own shoes shined, and been driven in cabs by people who's bags I am not fit to carry - by means of either their intellect or simple good will and sheer humanity."
You, sir, have earned a great deal of respect with that statement. I am one who recognizes very, very, VERY few superiors. I do meet them, from time to time, though. And, they show up in the most out of the way places. For every individual in a suit that I recognized as my superior, in one way or another, I've probably met a dozen who would look and feel out of place in a suit. That is, if they could afford a suit to wear.
The size of his bank account is not an accurate measure of a man's worth.
Not robots or AI, but we've already put a zillion people out of work with technology. Look at construction, alone. The most backbreaking labor in construction has always been the dirtwork. Oftentimes, more work went into preparing the dirt UNDER the foundation, then the foundation, than all the total work that went into the structure standing ON the foundation. (depending, of course, on the purpose of the building, etc) We've had backhoes, trackhoes, 'dozers, and other earthmoving equipment for decades now. So, we've forgotten the amount of labor that was just tossed aside, in favor of millions of dollars worth of diesel engines with blades and arms a attached to them.
Isn't automation wonderful?
Somehow - I don't think that society has been terribly enriched by all of this. Oh, to be sure, business has been enriched, but not society.
The ship, or boat, is no problem at all. A tugboat and a garbage scow will accomodate a scud missile - you don't need anything massively huge, like the USS Enterprise. Some private yachts are big enough for the purposes being discussed here. Stability isn't a big issue here, where the goal is to lob a package somewhere/anywhere near a city. Of course, a larger, more stable weapons platform would be desirable, but people work with what is available.
The launcher isn't that big a deal. Iraq has a surplus at the moment. The thing is only truck sized, weighs less than 20 tons, easily portable. The missile isn't hard to get, either.
The only real obstacle, is to get some weaponized fissionable material into a warhead that will fit on the scud, then control it. I recall that there were some briefcase nukes that came up missing in the old Soviet Union. Who has them? THAT is the scary part of this whole scenario - we don't know if the bad guys might have them.
Oh, cry me a river. The last time I went to the ballots, I browsed down through the candidates on the local, state, and national level. There wasn't a single Libertarian to vote for on the national level, only one at the state level, and none on the local level.
You want me to feel bad that some browsers are so unknown and/or unpopular that they don't make it onto a setup ballot? FFS, at least if you really WANT that particular no-name browser, you can get it.
Which browser are you so worried about, anyway? I might want to try it.
Please stop being a bunch of douches, asshats, and twats.
"Oh, those nasty Euros are only doing this because they don't like successful American companies!"
Give it a BREAK!!
Only the most fanatical of the fanbois can deny that Microsoft is a monopoly. And, only half of those can do so with a straight face. The US government was first to say so, the EU made the same finging, and any homo sapient with an IQ larger than the number of digits on his hands has to be able to see that.
If AT&T could be broken up years ago, there is absolutely no reason that Microsoft can't be broken up as well. Short of being dismantled into several smaller companies, they will abide by court rulings around the world, wherever they do business. That is the nature of being multinational, after all.
And, no, Microsoft is NOT an American company. No matter what it says on paper, Microsoft has offices and subsidiaries around the world. They are multinational, and they take advantage of every loophole that exists in international taxation, money transfer, etc. Microsoft has all but dictated terms to national governments - "take it or leave it" deals.
All the whining and excuse making on Microsoft's behalf makes me sick. And, whining that the world is picking on an "American" company is worse than anything. Microsoft needs to be put in their place, once and for all.
Screw 'em all. If Microsoft were all that successful, they would be making all the money they want, and every little peasant among us would be HAPPY to give them all the money they wanted. They've spent a couple decades alienating people, and making enemies, by one means or another. Let them pay the price, and stop whining.
You may not be aware that brick and mortar libraries were required to keep records on an individual's activities in the library. If you were a suspect for any reason, in any crime, or even if you were merely a "person of interest", in some crime that involved a bomb, the FBI could check on your reading history. If you had read '10 easy steps to making your own pipe bombs' years ago, they could use that to help convince a jury that you really are a terroristic sumbitcht.
Enabling government to dog your steps, and track everything you do, say, or think is counterproductive.
No one at EFF wants to hide the knowledge contained in '10 easy steps', but EFF wants to protect anonymity online. People shouldn't be punished for reading and thinking, they should only be punished for illegal actions. (Of course, reading might be made illegal next.)
I would disagree. The purist DOES try to change the world to fit his views, yes. The pragmatist doesn't just accept the world - he does what he can to improve the world, but doesn't worry himself to death over the things he can't change. Instead, he works with what he has.
The guy who just goes along, to get along, and has few if any opinions on how things SHOULD be is just another conformist moron. That doesn't qualify him as a pragmatist at all.
Bill Gates is a pragmatist. He takes what works and makes it work for him. He will move hell and earth, if and when he's able, but when hell doesn't budge, he walks around to the other side. The purist would sit down and cry that hell won't cooperate.
Not that I like Gates, but we need to understand what the terms mean here.
Few people qualify as either a purist, or a pragmatist. They haven't the imagination or the determination to qualify for either.
Hey, don't ask me, I just copy/pasted from the site I linked to, lol
That was enough to prompt several responses, and I'm learning as we go here!! I was completely unaware of the "CPU bottleneck", and I'm still trying to figure things out.
You're modded funny. I guess you're being sarcastic. Hope so anyway. Just in case - - - The first patent should never have been awarded, is should be held invalid as a patent, because it properly falls under copyright law. Once that first patent is done away with, for the proper reason, any similar patent requests will fall flat on their face.
Sorry if I'm being dense, just felt I should point that out.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely NOT. The moment they were discovered to be using GPL'd code without properly licensing, the "threat" was there. Their lawyers knew it - that's the purpose of having lawyers.
If you mean, "Was it necessary to file papers in court before MS complied?" then the answer is "No."
Obviously, Ballmer and company would have used delaying tactics while consulting with the legal beagles, but the beagles almost certainly said, "Steve, no matter how many chairs you throw, if we fight this, we will lose."
The code was released under duress, as opposed to freely being offered. After the fact, the damage control people are trying to put a nice graceful spin to the story. And, people just lap it up. MS History teaches us better.
It seems that I misunderstood at least parts of your post. Our positions aren't very far apart, really.
Some related reading from my news feed: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/07/28/global-warming-inca.html
I don't exactly see anyone advocating that we take MS to court, and completely destroy them over this code. Linux isn't in the business of "embrace, extend, extinguish", after all.
I do hear voices - and I join with them - loudly proclaiming that MS is a bunch of dishonest, thieving douchebags, and that they deserve no credit, and no respect, for releasing the code in question AFTER they were busted for stealing code that was already GPL'd.
If/when the fanbois and MS marketing department stops trying to sing hosannahs to the great Microsoft Machine, then maybe those of us who are more honest will quiet down. If MS had been even trying to "play by the rules", they would have assigned a team to work with other open source people to get it right a year (or more) ago. Not after they were busted! Certainly not after they release statements proclaiming open source to be a cancer!
Obsessed? Hardly. On the one hand, we have MS marketing singing a duet with MS fanbois. "Oh, praise MS, praise Gates, and praise Ballmer, for we are contributing to the competition". It makes a pretty song, if you are unaware of the facts.
Embrace. Extend. Extinquish. This is history. MS takes, MS never gives.
The ONLY reason MS gives ANYTHING away, is that they think that doing so will increase their money flow. Or, in this case, eliminate a threat to their cash flow.
Those who object to the falsehoods being sung by the choir aren't obsessed at all. If there is an obsession here, it is MS obsession with money.
Donated?
I'm terribly sorry, but that one word pretty much screws your post, and your attitude. MS "donated" nothing. They were caught redhanded with their hands in the cookie jar. They were threatened with legal action, so they paid for the cookies, in the currency damanded by their victims.
The seperate issue of examining that code? Go for it. A lot of people are examining it right now, I suspect. ;)
Be applauded? Willing to play by the rules? Sorry, don't expect a lot of us to jump on that bandwagon.
It's been shown clearly that MS hijacked GPL'd code, and that they only released their code after being threatened with a lawsuit over their improper usage of that code.
I'll hold any applause for Microsoft until they actually release something new and useful. There are already good useful virtualization softwares out there. Releasing a driver that enables their virtualization to compete with the VM's from which they hijacked code isn't very commendable, IMHO.
Various people have given us analogous situations - seems to me, a classroom of kindergarten kids fits. Little Mikey Soft is bigger than all the other K kids, so he takes toys from them. When teacher intervenes, Mikey returns some toys, saying that he was going to return them anyway. We applaud Mikey, ignoring the fact that he has taken toys from all the other kids all year long, and refused to return any of them until now. I suspect that the only reason Mikey returned a toy THIS TIME, is that his daddy was standing in the door holding that infamous paddle. That 3 foot long paddle, with embedded glass particles, and holes drilled in it.
Fuck Mikey - hammer his ass!!
You seem to be making a case that the earth is overpopulated. And, by extension, we are poisoning ourselves with our waste products. If so, I'll have to point out that this is indeed a natural process. Check out any laboratory with cultures of bacteria.
Meanwhile - I have to point out that the GP's post seems to have gone over your head, or at least you dismiss his reasoning. The earth has warmed and cooled many times in the past. In fact, the earth has warmed and cooled within recent prehistory. That heating and cooling has taken place despite man's presence, and there is limited and tainted evidence to support the idea that man is causing global warming.
There are multiple places where man has left artifacts that are now being uncovered by melting glaciers. One story in South America shows that previously cultivated land is being exposed. (Sorry, it's late, I'm lazy, google it yourself if you're really interested)
The fact that there are more people today than at any time in history or prehistory may or may not have an impact on global warming. Fossil fuels probably have an impact, but it probably isn't as great an impact as the alarmists would like us to believe.
Face it: global warming and global cooling is a proven recurring fact. Politics isn't going to change that. Nor will any consensus change it. Given time, the world will cool again. The only question is, whether man will be here to witness it.
Let's start some moon colonies, some Mars colonies, and start out to the other planets. That would improve our chances of seeing the earth covered in ice again.....
"Come on you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?"
Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly, 4 June 1918.
Leading Marines at Belleu Wood.
Depressing? Hell no. The idea of living forever is more depressing than the idea of feeding the Tree of Freedom. I mean, hey, women start looking pretty gnarly after the first hundred years.
And, that is the problem. People admit to all kinds of stupid shitzl. If someone wants to look at your computer, tell them to get a frigging warrant. If they come back with a warrant, tell them you want a lawyer. Don't even admit that the computer BELONGS TO YOU! Make them prove everything!! That is their job, after all. It's your job to tell them to get stuffed, you don't know anything, you can't recall anything, and that the same aliens who abducted you and forcibly made you watch pr0n are probably responsible for any illegal content allegedly downloaded through your IP.
"Microsoft doesn't release an operating system in 5 years - people bitch. Microsoft releases a new operating system - people bitch. Microsoft's operating system drops some legacy support for some apps - people bitch."
Could the reason be that Gates and Ballmer are bitches?
"OS design would be probably a decade ahead"
I tend to agree with that. BUT, maybe not. I hate Gates, but when you start talking about "What if?" no one can know. If Gates hadn't come along to help popularize computers, it's possible that we wouldn't be as far along now as we are. Whatever else Gates did, right and wrong, he DID help to make it easy for your average dimwit to get started in computing. Ultimately, his actions made helped to make computers look desirable to a lot of people who would never have considered spending hard earned money a computer.
Let's be honest about the state of computing 30 years ago. Most computers came in a console format, which was often regarded as a gaming system, or a word processor. 30 years ago, I had no use for a word processor, and the going price for any 8080 (and later the 8088) was just to damned much for someone like me to spend on a toy.
BECAUSE Gates and others had the vision of a putting an affordable computer in every home, millions of youngsters today have the opportunity to learn, who may not have been exposed to comptuers unti they reached college age.
Again, I'm no fan of Gates - but let's give the devil his due, alright?
Bottom line, no one has the right to delete anything from anyone else's computer, without a court order, unless the owner AGREES explicitly to having it removed.
And, I don't mean some lame assed coercive EULA stating, "If you use our services, we can do whatever we want, and you'll be happy about it!"
Is this article a nostalgia peice for 8080 computers, or is it fanboy worship of the Great God Gates? Or, someone misses Basic?
I see nothing here worth reading, to be honest.
"I have had my own shoes shined, and been driven in cabs by people who's bags I am not fit to carry - by means of either their intellect or simple good will and sheer humanity."
You, sir, have earned a great deal of respect with that statement. I am one who recognizes very, very, VERY few superiors. I do meet them, from time to time, though. And, they show up in the most out of the way places. For every individual in a suit that I recognized as my superior, in one way or another, I've probably met a dozen who would look and feel out of place in a suit. That is, if they could afford a suit to wear.
The size of his bank account is not an accurate measure of a man's worth.
Not robots or AI, but we've already put a zillion people out of work with technology. Look at construction, alone. The most backbreaking labor in construction has always been the dirtwork. Oftentimes, more work went into preparing the dirt UNDER the foundation, then the foundation, than all the total work that went into the structure standing ON the foundation. (depending, of course, on the purpose of the building, etc) We've had backhoes, trackhoes, 'dozers, and other earthmoving equipment for decades now. So, we've forgotten the amount of labor that was just tossed aside, in favor of millions of dollars worth of diesel engines with blades and arms a attached to them.
Isn't automation wonderful?
Somehow - I don't think that society has been terribly enriched by all of this. Oh, to be sure, business has been enriched, but not society.
iTunes - - - normal - - - iTunes - - - normal
I just don't get the connection.
The ship, or boat, is no problem at all. A tugboat and a garbage scow will accomodate a scud missile - you don't need anything massively huge, like the USS Enterprise. Some private yachts are big enough for the purposes being discussed here. Stability isn't a big issue here, where the goal is to lob a package somewhere/anywhere near a city. Of course, a larger, more stable weapons platform would be desirable, but people work with what is available.
The launcher isn't that big a deal. Iraq has a surplus at the moment. The thing is only truck sized, weighs less than 20 tons, easily portable. The missile isn't hard to get, either.
The only real obstacle, is to get some weaponized fissionable material into a warhead that will fit on the scud, then control it. I recall that there were some briefcase nukes that came up missing in the old Soviet Union. Who has them? THAT is the scary part of this whole scenario - we don't know if the bad guys might have them.
But - how did they TRAIN all those little electrons to do that? A flea circus must be easy by comparison!
I read Windows help files on Linux. If Linux can do it, then SURELY the Micro-centric world can do it without IE.
Oh, cry me a river. The last time I went to the ballots, I browsed down through the candidates on the local, state, and national level. There wasn't a single Libertarian to vote for on the national level, only one at the state level, and none on the local level.
You want me to feel bad that some browsers are so unknown and/or unpopular that they don't make it onto a setup ballot? FFS, at least if you really WANT that particular no-name browser, you can get it.
Which browser are you so worried about, anyway? I might want to try it.
Please stop being a bunch of douches, asshats, and twats.
"Oh, those nasty Euros are only doing this because they don't like successful American companies!"
Give it a BREAK!!
Only the most fanatical of the fanbois can deny that Microsoft is a monopoly. And, only half of those can do so with a straight face. The US government was first to say so, the EU made the same finging, and any homo sapient with an IQ larger than the number of digits on his hands has to be able to see that.
If AT&T could be broken up years ago, there is absolutely no reason that Microsoft can't be broken up as well. Short of being dismantled into several smaller companies, they will abide by court rulings around the world, wherever they do business. That is the nature of being multinational, after all.
And, no, Microsoft is NOT an American company. No matter what it says on paper, Microsoft has offices and subsidiaries around the world. They are multinational, and they take advantage of every loophole that exists in international taxation, money transfer, etc. Microsoft has all but dictated terms to national governments - "take it or leave it" deals.
All the whining and excuse making on Microsoft's behalf makes me sick. And, whining that the world is picking on an "American" company is worse than anything. Microsoft needs to be put in their place, once and for all.
Screw 'em all. If Microsoft were all that successful, they would be making all the money they want, and every little peasant among us would be HAPPY to give them all the money they wanted. They've spent a couple decades alienating people, and making enemies, by one means or another. Let them pay the price, and stop whining.
You may not be aware that brick and mortar libraries were required to keep records on an individual's activities in the library. If you were a suspect for any reason, in any crime, or even if you were merely a "person of interest", in some crime that involved a bomb, the FBI could check on your reading history. If you had read '10 easy steps to making your own pipe bombs' years ago, they could use that to help convince a jury that you really are a terroristic sumbitcht.
Enabling government to dog your steps, and track everything you do, say, or think is counterproductive.
No one at EFF wants to hide the knowledge contained in '10 easy steps', but EFF wants to protect anonymity online. People shouldn't be punished for reading and thinking, they should only be punished for illegal actions. (Of course, reading might be made illegal next.)
I would disagree. The purist DOES try to change the world to fit his views, yes. The pragmatist doesn't just accept the world - he does what he can to improve the world, but doesn't worry himself to death over the things he can't change. Instead, he works with what he has.
The guy who just goes along, to get along, and has few if any opinions on how things SHOULD be is just another conformist moron. That doesn't qualify him as a pragmatist at all.
Bill Gates is a pragmatist. He takes what works and makes it work for him. He will move hell and earth, if and when he's able, but when hell doesn't budge, he walks around to the other side. The purist would sit down and cry that hell won't cooperate.
Not that I like Gates, but we need to understand what the terms mean here.
Few people qualify as either a purist, or a pragmatist. They haven't the imagination or the determination to qualify for either.
Hey, don't ask me, I just copy/pasted from the site I linked to, lol
That was enough to prompt several responses, and I'm learning as we go here!! I was completely unaware of the "CPU bottleneck", and I'm still trying to figure things out.
You're modded funny. I guess you're being sarcastic. Hope so anyway. Just in case - - -
The first patent should never have been awarded, is should be held invalid as a patent, because it properly falls under copyright law. Once that first patent is done away with, for the proper reason, any similar patent requests will fall flat on their face.
Sorry if I'm being dense, just felt I should point that out. ;-)