Linux was not responding as a company would and MS could not deal with 100,000 developers, they needed a company.
Okay, so they've (maybe) got SCO, if IBM doesn't do the smart thing and beat them to it. This isn't going to affect Linux in a major way, because they're still up against 100,000 developers.
Just because a routine works like something that's in their "IP", it doesn't necessarily follow that it is their "IP". And I don't care how much buckage they try to push into the court system; they're going to try to force the Linux development community to prove a negative, and that attempt will fall flat on its face.
There are a finite number of ways to arrive at a given programming solution. (Think "infinite number of monkeys on infinite number of typewriters".) An anecdotal example of how this works is easy to come by. All the coders out there who took (insert name of typical programming language here) in an "organized class" had a final exam program, yes? The results were important, not the actual means of arriving at the results. Twenty or so different students, twenty or so different programs (at least in my class), but I'll bet dollars to donut holes that some of the core algorithms and routines looked very similar between those programs. Did anyone get yelled at for stealing someone else's work? Not when the instructor was walking through the lab watching the students sweating and pounding out code for two hours. Individual efforts on a common problem yielded common results. So much for "IP."
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something.
Rumor has it that there's a whole bunch of open relays out there which are owned by the spamhausen. (I'd love to see some evidence to the contrary, but that's asking proof of a negative, so I won't hold my breath.) If we accept that rumor as fact for the sake of argument, all the FTC letter is going to do is tell said spamhausen that their crap is getting to the target audiences, and they'll happily redouble their efforts.
It's been said before, but it's worth repeating. The best way to eliminate spam is not to go after the machines (and coincidentally the people in charge of the care and feeding of them). Go after the people and companies hiring the spamhausen...the ones pushing their "herbal Viagara" (sic), pr0n, better mortgage rates, and so forth down the wire and into our overloaded mail accounts. Take away the revenue stream, and all those open relays will go idle until someone puts them to better use (for example, Quake 3 servers).
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something.
Transmission-line Internet is, IMO, a great idea whose time has come.
But...
I can't see this happening for quite a while, in the US at least. The Baby Bells and the cable monopolies will tie this up in court for years, all the while jacking up their prices to feed their war chests, and Joe User will sit there and shuck out the bucks, completely oblivious to what's going on. Small dialup providers may turn out to be the big winners of such a battle, at least in the short term.
The solution: power transmission utilities need to quietly but quickly deploy, especially in the mentioned rural areas (like where I am) that can't get either cable or xDSL provisioned.
As always, YMMV. This is just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a new monitor or something.
To quote Sam Clemens, "There are three kinds of lies...lies, damned lies and statistics." Trouble is, the American press (and by extension, the general American public) sees numbers and believes them to be absolute truth. The running joke/slogan seems to be "garbage in, gospel out".
It all sort of makes me wonder, though...what would happen to these numbers if the Generally Accepted Accounting Practices were applied?
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something.
I can relate to the old-construction thing, living in a house that's rapidly pushing 150 years old (and having recently remodeled a room). And 802.11b makes sense for people doing the laptop thing, especially if one or more of the residents is a student.
My particular aversion comes with trying to do the wireless thing on a desktop box. It's a whole lot easier, for me anyway, to use the 10/100 card already there (or in one box's case, built onto the mobo) and run the Cat5. (Granted, I have an advantage in running all the boxen in the same room, so I haven't had to drill.) Perhaps if one or more laptops were involved I'd consider it, but not for desktop-to-desktop(/server) connections.
Okay, let's make this plain off the top...this post is probably at least 75% pure, unadulterated flamebait. Having said that...
What is so hot about WiFi, anyway? I mean, I can see it for corporate and educational campuses, letting Joe or Jane User pop a card into their laptop, tablet, etc. and access the 'Net from wherever they happen to plop their arses. Email between colleagues, data-sharing for study groups and all that...those are the benefits of WiFi in those places. Beyond that, what's wrong with tried-and-true copper? Does everyone really need a wireless Ethernet adapter for their desktop box? I know I don't; I get along fabulously with a 10/100 switch feeding packets to the various boxen in the house, and it's good enough for server testing, print sharing and the occasional fragfest.
My own position on the matter: For the 40% (my own estimate) of the American populace that has two or more boxen in the home and wants to network them, the best means is Cat5 in the walls. No interference from such sources as lightning, mercury lamps, microwave ovens, cordless phones and so on, no security risks with someone wardriving by and trying to crack in (yes, it's a remote concern here, but according to some "experts" it's also a valid concern), and in the long run it's a damn sight cheaper. So someone wants to plug a laptop into the network...what's so hard about leaving a length of cable dangling off the hub? 100baseT, 16-port hubs are well within the financial reach of anyone who can afford to run three computers in the home.
Don't get me wrong here...I think the technology for 802.11b is a Very Good Thing Indeed. But Average Keyboard Pounders don't need it for most applications. Copper's cheaper, more reliable and keeps the snoops at bay.
These are all my own, personal and (probably) minority views on the matter...YMMV.
'Nuff said.
IIRC there's an AEsop's fable which holds the moral that "one is usually paid in one's own coin." I doubt anyone will (successfully) argue that this is, in fact, the case here.
'Nuff said.
The reason there haven't been any cases is because none of the small-time developers who have run afoul of the DMCA so far have had deep enough pockets to hire lawyers with enough intestinal fortitude to take it on and get it shot down. One good failure of the DMCA in case law would be all it takes, but (IMO) unless you've got the financial resources of Microsoft, Sun, Oracle et al you ain't gonna get the job done. So rather than fight the good (but expensive) fight, developers get that nasty letter which threatens to invoke DMCA and they knuckle under.
Does this mean all the spam I'm getting from kornet.com will also have Nimda attached? Wow...maybe that overpriced antivirus software can now be used as a spam filter too!
We now return to our regularly-scheduled MS flaming, already in progress...
(Yes, this is an attempt at humor. Moderate accordingly.)
Okay, so there's a new MS-SQL worm going about. And it goes after default-install systems, of which there are around 1000 or so (now compromised, according to the article).
Big deal.
The problems, IMO, are not specific to Microsoft, no matter what this article may or may not imply. It's also a matter of getting trained and clueful admins in house to handle production-level servers, instead of just foisting the job off to the nearest PFY.
Granted, I'm not the most sympathetic voice in the crowd towards Microsoft. If what I've read is anywhere close to accurate, the government should immediately pull Microsoft's plug and migrate all critical systems and applications to [insert name of favorite *nix-type system here] in the shortest time possible. But clueful sysadmins and DBAs are the first, best line of defense against such attacks. Anyone care to dispute that?
End of vent. Coffee and croissants are being served in the community building next door. And be careful, the coffee's hot.
Three arguments against Microsoft's position:
Nimda.
Code Red.
The fact that a virus framework for.Net was released to the wild before the "official".Net specification.
No, I don't believe them, not for a second. I'd sooner trust an armada of politicians and their attendant [strike]lackeys[/strike] lawyers.
REDMOND - Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) filed suit against the RIAA this morning, claiming antitrust violations.
"We're all for a corporation attaining world domination," Microsoft's Steve Ballmer was quoted as saying, "but we feel Rosen's actions are a bit heavy-handed and self-serving."
Face it, kids...this is a long way off. My reasoning (such as it is on a Thursday morning):
1. Known security flaws in the existing product; until they can be definitively shown to be proof against the l33t and script kiddies, it won't be implemented.
2. Diversity of platforms; I remember accessing a site not that far in the past that required Netscape to make some of the functions work. Where's that gonna leave the IE people? (Opera wasn't an option at the time...maybe I'll go try it.) Of course, that can work both ways - some hotshot GS5 "webmaster" will write a site with strict IE extensions and tell all the Netscape users to change browsers if they want to access the services for that bureau.
3. Public outcry; I don't think I need to look much further than what I'm seeing so far in the "like HELL they are" sort of comments in this topic to demonstrate my point.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something.
You're not going to find many altruistic coders or designers working for companies that put boxed games on the shelves at Egghead or Best Buy (sidenote, that last is most definitely an oxymoron. But I digress.)...game programmers who work for big software houses are in it for the bucks, and the only OS/platform that they see as paying the bills is WinXX. So they write for WinXX, and right now, that means primarily using DX APIs. If there were a bigger demand (read: potential revenue stream) for other platforms and OSs, OpenGL would probably make more sense to them...and I'm willing to bet my lunch that the games that are still OpenGL-capable have also been ported to the Mac platform (not that I've looked, since I don't own a Mac, ergo don't need to examine the offerings for it).
In short...DX makes more economic sense, simplicity of coding notwithstanding.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer float or something.
Re:thought this was funny in the MSNBC topic
on
Netscape 6.1
·
· Score: 1
AOL Time Warner released the first final upgrade...
FNORD!
This begs the question...was it an editorial error, or did the "MS" in MSNBC slip it in, along with the headline proclaiming that this is a "new beta"?
We now return to our regularly-scheduled anti-Microsoft trolling and flaming, already in progress.
I hate to be the one to say this (well, no, not really, but it's almost midnight and I haven't been fed yet), but this is fairly old news. It tried to attack my Win machine last Thursday, and again Friday...Eudora(TM) sort of chuckled and said "You're kidding, right?".
It's amazing how many Win users don't even realize there are (much better!) alternatives to Outlook and its minions.
Okay, that's the obligatory combination anti-Windows and "old news on/." post for the day. Mod down at will, if for nothing else than the alcohol-induced.sig line.
when SETI is running the CPU can't shutdown into low power mode...
Yep...very important to a power utility. And an important message to their customers too..."don't run this software, because it'll keep your home computer from dropping to standby mode, thereby raising your electric bill...no, wait, PLEASE run this software!"
Okay, I'll shut up now...I really shouldn't respond to such as this without eating first.
Gee, that's funny, the NT box I use at work has a selection on the Start menu called "Command Prompt" and it has the MSDOS logo next to it. And I can add the same thing to ME by creating a shortcut to COMMAND.COM...fancy that.
And they accuse me of ignorance and not having facts straight...
I'll admit I'm not the best-informed luser in the online world, and I go a lot on third- and fourth-hand information sometimes (because that's all I get). But how does what you've been so kind to straighten me out on affect the conclusions? Not at all, IMO.
And has Microsoft come out and said how much that "reactivation" is going to cost the average luser? Example: I decide I want to take my home machine, which for some reason is running XP, and build a video editing system into it. Upgrade CPU, larger primary HD, add a SCSI-U2W controller and a RAID array. I'm pretty sure that'll trip the process. Especially since the CPU upgrade will probably mean a mobo replacement too, which means it can't reference the BIOS serial. Oh, my goodness...this guy's pirating XP! He needs to buy a full license! Yes, I can hear that one coming 'round the bend. It's a sickening sound.
Thanks, but no thanks...I'll stick with 98SE for my gaming and mandatory office things, and the Linux distro du jour for online things. If I can possibly avoid it (and trust me, I can), I'll never pay another cent to Microsoft.
I'm not sure, but I think I may be missing something, so I want to list off what I see going on...(these are in no particular order, except as they come to mind)
1. AOL is the most expensive national dialup ISP going.
2. XP, according to rumor, is time-limited, so the user has to pretty much re-purchase it every so often, or their box quits running XP.
3. (this is one of the things I'm not sure of) AOL at one time was in the process of switching to Netscape/Mozilla as their embedded browser; at least, until this "agreement" came along.
4. AOL and Time-Warner currently constitute one of the biggest home-entertainment conglomerates going.
5. Microsoft and AOL are buddying up on software and content provision.
6. Starting with Win2k/ME, Microsoft has been working to isolate the functions of the operating system from the user, the most obvious of these attempts being the removal of the option to boot to a DOS prompt and the loss of a DOS window in the OS as shipped.
7. Another rumor has it that once XP is installed on a machine and registered to it, if the user upgrades either the HD or the CPU they have to buy another copy of XP, because theirs won't work and can't be reinstalled. (Yes, I did say this was a rumor. Put the torches away.)
What does all this add up to? IMO it's a combined attempt to make sure of three things: the general user base doesn't ever get its unwashed fingers inside the workings of either their machine or the fancy, overpriced and oversized OS that Microsoft demands drive it; the user only can use the software and content that Microsoft (with AOL at its side) approves of; and no matter what happens, both Microsoft and AOL are guaranteed their revenue streams pretty much in perpetuity.
Would someone please tell Microsoft and AOL that they're about 17 years too late for this crap? And all the FUD they can spread won't change the fact that some of the "unwashed" they want to protect from such things as working code can, in fact, make their own good decisions? AND this is really the worst time for them to be trying this, with the (admittedly myopic) eyes of the USDOJ, among others, gazing down upon them?
Okay, that's my rant for the day. Thanks for paying attention...I'll be here until Saturday. Don't forget to tip your waiter.
"People's Republic of China"...is it just me, or does that name strike anyone else as a severe oxymoron? (Sort of like "Microsoft Works"... *THWACK* okay, I'll shut up now...)
Why do so many lawyers seem to excel at initiating action which does absolutely nothing in the long run except shoot their employer/client in the proverbial foot?
Slashdot Mirror
Linux was not responding as a company would and MS could not deal with 100,000 developers, they needed a company.
Okay, so they've (maybe) got SCO, if IBM doesn't do the smart thing and beat them to it. This isn't going to affect Linux in a major way, because they're still up against 100,000 developers.
Just because a routine works like something that's in their "IP", it doesn't necessarily follow that it is their "IP". And I don't care how much buckage they try to push into the court system; they're going to try to force the Linux development community to prove a negative, and that attempt will fall flat on its face.
There are a finite number of ways to arrive at a given programming solution. (Think "infinite number of monkeys on infinite number of typewriters".) An anecdotal example of how this works is easy to come by. All the coders out there who took (insert name of typical programming language here) in an "organized class" had a final exam program, yes? The results were important, not the actual means of arriving at the results. Twenty or so different students, twenty or so different programs (at least in my class), but I'll bet dollars to donut holes that some of the core algorithms and routines looked very similar between those programs. Did anyone get yelled at for stealing someone else's work? Not when the instructor was walking through the lab watching the students sweating and pounding out code for two hours. Individual efforts on a common problem yielded common results. So much for "IP."
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something.
Rumor has it that there's a whole bunch of open relays out there which are owned by the spamhausen. (I'd love to see some evidence to the contrary, but that's asking proof of a negative, so I won't hold my breath.) If we accept that rumor as fact for the sake of argument, all the FTC letter is going to do is tell said spamhausen that their crap is getting to the target audiences, and they'll happily redouble their efforts.
It's been said before, but it's worth repeating. The best way to eliminate spam is not to go after the machines (and coincidentally the people in charge of the care and feeding of them). Go after the people and companies hiring the spamhausen...the ones pushing their "herbal Viagara" (sic), pr0n, better mortgage rates, and so forth down the wire and into our overloaded mail accounts. Take away the revenue stream, and all those open relays will go idle until someone puts them to better use (for example, Quake 3 servers).
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something.
Transmission-line Internet is, IMO, a great idea whose time has come.
But...
I can't see this happening for quite a while, in the US at least. The Baby Bells and the cable monopolies will tie this up in court for years, all the while jacking up their prices to feed their war chests, and Joe User will sit there and shuck out the bucks, completely oblivious to what's going on. Small dialup providers may turn out to be the big winners of such a battle, at least in the short term.
The solution: power transmission utilities need to quietly but quickly deploy, especially in the mentioned rural areas (like where I am) that can't get either cable or xDSL provisioned.
As always, YMMV. This is just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a new monitor or something.
To quote Sam Clemens, "There are three kinds of lies...lies, damned lies and statistics." Trouble is, the American press (and by extension, the general American public) sees numbers and believes them to be absolute truth. The running joke/slogan seems to be "garbage in, gospel out".
It all sort of makes me wonder, though...what would happen to these numbers if the Generally Accepted Accounting Practices were applied?
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something.
I can relate to the old-construction thing, living in a house that's rapidly pushing 150 years old (and having recently remodeled a room). And 802.11b makes sense for people doing the laptop thing, especially if one or more of the residents is a student.
My particular aversion comes with trying to do the wireless thing on a desktop box. It's a whole lot easier, for me anyway, to use the 10/100 card already there (or in one box's case, built onto the mobo) and run the Cat5. (Granted, I have an advantage in running all the boxen in the same room, so I haven't had to drill.) Perhaps if one or more laptops were involved I'd consider it, but not for desktop-to-desktop(/server) connections.
Okay, let's make this plain off the top...this post is probably at least 75% pure, unadulterated flamebait. Having said that...
What is so hot about WiFi, anyway? I mean, I can see it for corporate and educational campuses, letting Joe or Jane User pop a card into their laptop, tablet, etc. and access the 'Net from wherever they happen to plop their arses. Email between colleagues, data-sharing for study groups and all that...those are the benefits of WiFi in those places. Beyond that, what's wrong with tried-and-true copper? Does everyone really need a wireless Ethernet adapter for their desktop box? I know I don't; I get along fabulously with a 10/100 switch feeding packets to the various boxen in the house, and it's good enough for server testing, print sharing and the occasional fragfest.
My own position on the matter: For the 40% (my own estimate) of the American populace that has two or more boxen in the home and wants to network them, the best means is Cat5 in the walls. No interference from such sources as lightning, mercury lamps, microwave ovens, cordless phones and so on, no security risks with someone wardriving by and trying to crack in (yes, it's a remote concern here, but according to some "experts" it's also a valid concern), and in the long run it's a damn sight cheaper. So someone wants to plug a laptop into the network...what's so hard about leaving a length of cable dangling off the hub? 100baseT, 16-port hubs are well within the financial reach of anyone who can afford to run three computers in the home.
Don't get me wrong here...I think the technology for 802.11b is a Very Good Thing Indeed. But Average Keyboard Pounders don't need it for most applications. Copper's cheaper, more reliable and keeps the snoops at bay.
These are all my own, personal and (probably) minority views on the matter...YMMV.
'Nuff said.
IIRC there's an AEsop's fable which holds the moral that "one is usually paid in one's own coin." I doubt anyone will (successfully) argue that this is, in fact, the case here.
'Nuff said.
The reason there haven't been any cases is because none of the small-time developers who have run afoul of the DMCA so far have had deep enough pockets to hire lawyers with enough intestinal fortitude to take it on and get it shot down. One good failure of the DMCA in case law would be all it takes, but (IMO) unless you've got the financial resources of Microsoft, Sun, Oracle et al you ain't gonna get the job done. So rather than fight the good (but expensive) fight, developers get that nasty letter which threatens to invoke DMCA and they knuckle under.
'Nuff said.
One word: enforcement.
One question: how?
Does this mean all the spam I'm getting from kornet.com will also have Nimda attached? Wow...maybe that overpriced antivirus software can now be used as a spam filter too!
We now return to our regularly-scheduled MS flaming, already in progress...
(Yes, this is an attempt at humor. Moderate accordingly.)
Okay, so there's a new MS-SQL worm going about. And it goes after default-install systems, of which there are around 1000 or so (now compromised, according to the article).
Big deal.
The problems, IMO, are not specific to Microsoft, no matter what this article may or may not imply. It's also a matter of getting trained and clueful admins in house to handle production-level servers, instead of just foisting the job off to the nearest PFY.
Granted, I'm not the most sympathetic voice in the crowd towards Microsoft. If what I've read is anywhere close to accurate, the government should immediately pull Microsoft's plug and migrate all critical systems and applications to [insert name of favorite *nix-type system here] in the shortest time possible. But clueful sysadmins and DBAs are the first, best line of defense against such attacks. Anyone care to dispute that?
End of vent. Coffee and croissants are being served in the community building next door. And be careful, the coffee's hot.
*pauses to wipe coffee off monitor*
Three arguments against Microsoft's position: .Net was released to the wild before the "official" .Net specification.
Nimda.
Code Red.
The fact that a virus framework for
No, I don't believe them, not for a second. I'd sooner trust an armada of politicians and their attendant [strike]lackeys[/strike] lawyers.
'Nuff said.
REDMOND - Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) filed suit against the RIAA this morning, claiming antitrust violations.
"We're all for a corporation attaining world domination," Microsoft's Steve Ballmer was quoted as saying, "but we feel Rosen's actions are a bit heavy-handed and self-serving."
Face it, kids...this is a long way off. My reasoning (such as it is on a Thursday morning):
1. Known security flaws in the existing product; until they can be definitively shown to be proof against the l33t and script kiddies, it won't be implemented.
2. Diversity of platforms; I remember accessing a site not that far in the past that required Netscape to make some of the functions work. Where's that gonna leave the IE people? (Opera wasn't an option at the time...maybe I'll go try it.) Of course, that can work both ways - some hotshot GS5 "webmaster" will write a site with strict IE extensions and tell all the Netscape users to change browsers if they want to access the services for that bureau.
3. Public outcry; I don't think I need to look much further than what I'm seeing so far in the "like HELL they are" sort of comments in this topic to demonstrate my point.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something.
You're not going to find many altruistic coders or designers working for companies that put boxed games on the shelves at Egghead or Best Buy (sidenote, that last is most definitely an oxymoron. But I digress.)...game programmers who work for big software houses are in it for the bucks, and the only OS/platform that they see as paying the bills is WinXX. So they write for WinXX, and right now, that means primarily using DX APIs. If there were a bigger demand (read: potential revenue stream) for other platforms and OSs, OpenGL would probably make more sense to them...and I'm willing to bet my lunch that the games that are still OpenGL-capable have also been ported to the Mac platform (not that I've looked, since I don't own a Mac, ergo don't need to examine the offerings for it).
In short...DX makes more economic sense, simplicity of coding notwithstanding.
Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer float or something.
AOL Time Warner released the first final upgrade...
FNORD!
This begs the question...was it an editorial error, or did the "MS" in MSNBC slip it in, along with the headline proclaiming that this is a "new beta"?
We now return to our regularly-scheduled anti-Microsoft trolling and flaming, already in progress.
This proves once and for all that Slashdot does attract literate people.
Of course, some leading physicists might label this phenomenon strange attractors and have their grad students prepare doctoral theses on it...
*THWAP*
Okay, it's time for my medication again...
Nurse?
Nursey-poo?
Oh, Nurse???
I hate to be the one to say this (well, no, not really, but it's almost midnight and I haven't been fed yet), but this is fairly old news. It tried to attack my Win machine last Thursday, and again Friday...Eudora(TM) sort of chuckled and said "You're kidding, right?".
It's amazing how many Win users don't even realize there are (much better!) alternatives to Outlook and its minions.
Okay, that's the obligatory combination anti-Windows and "old news on /." post for the day. Mod down at will, if for nothing else than the alcohol-induced .sig line.
when SETI is running the CPU can't shutdown into low power mode...
Yep...very important to a power utility. And an important message to their customers too..."don't run this software, because it'll keep your home computer from dropping to standby mode, thereby raising your electric bill...no, wait, PLEASE run this software!"
Okay, I'll shut up now...I really shouldn't respond to such as this without eating first.
Gee, that's funny, the NT box I use at work has a selection on the Start menu called "Command Prompt" and it has the MSDOS logo next to it. And I can add the same thing to ME by creating a shortcut to COMMAND.COM...fancy that.
And they accuse me of ignorance and not having facts straight...
Here comes the flamish rant...be ready.
I'll admit I'm not the best-informed luser in the online world, and I go a lot on third- and fourth-hand information sometimes (because that's all I get). But how does what you've been so kind to straighten me out on affect the conclusions? Not at all, IMO.
And has Microsoft come out and said how much that "reactivation" is going to cost the average luser? Example: I decide I want to take my home machine, which for some reason is running XP, and build a video editing system into it. Upgrade CPU, larger primary HD, add a SCSI-U2W controller and a RAID array. I'm pretty sure that'll trip the process. Especially since the CPU upgrade will probably mean a mobo replacement too, which means it can't reference the BIOS serial. Oh, my goodness...this guy's pirating XP! He needs to buy a full license! Yes, I can hear that one coming 'round the bend. It's a sickening sound.
Thanks, but no thanks...I'll stick with 98SE for my gaming and mandatory office things, and the Linux distro du jour for online things. If I can possibly avoid it (and trust me, I can), I'll never pay another cent to Microsoft.
'Nuff said.
I'm not sure, but I think I may be missing something, so I want to list off what I see going on...(these are in no particular order, except as they come to mind)
1. AOL is the most expensive national dialup ISP going.
2. XP, according to rumor, is time-limited, so the user has to pretty much re-purchase it every so often, or their box quits running XP.
3. (this is one of the things I'm not sure of) AOL at one time was in the process of switching to Netscape/Mozilla as their embedded browser; at least, until this "agreement" came along.
4. AOL and Time-Warner currently constitute one of the biggest home-entertainment conglomerates going.
5. Microsoft and AOL are buddying up on software and content provision.
6. Starting with Win2k/ME, Microsoft has been working to isolate the functions of the operating system from the user, the most obvious of these attempts being the removal of the option to boot to a DOS prompt and the loss of a DOS window in the OS as shipped.
7. Another rumor has it that once XP is installed on a machine and registered to it, if the user upgrades either the HD or the CPU they have to buy another copy of XP, because theirs won't work and can't be reinstalled. (Yes, I did say this was a rumor. Put the torches away.)
What does all this add up to? IMO it's a combined attempt to make sure of three things: the general user base doesn't ever get its unwashed fingers inside the workings of either their machine or the fancy, overpriced and oversized OS that Microsoft demands drive it; the user only can use the software and content that Microsoft (with AOL at its side) approves of; and no matter what happens, both Microsoft and AOL are guaranteed their revenue streams pretty much in perpetuity.
Would someone please tell Microsoft and AOL that they're about 17 years too late for this crap? And all the FUD they can spread won't change the fact that some of the "unwashed" they want to protect from such things as working code can, in fact, make their own good decisions? AND this is really the worst time for them to be trying this, with the (admittedly myopic) eyes of the USDOJ, among others, gazing down upon them?
Okay, that's my rant for the day. Thanks for paying attention...I'll be here until Saturday. Don't forget to tip your waiter.
A related sidenote...looks like Linus Torvalds is in full agreement with this position regarding innovation, at least according to this.
"People's Republic of China"...is it just me, or does that name strike anyone else as a severe oxymoron? (Sort of like "Microsoft Works"... *THWACK* okay, I'll shut up now...)
Why do so many lawyers seem to excel at initiating action which does absolutely nothing in the long run except shoot their employer/client in the proverbial foot?
'Nuff said.