In XP, if you have the "common tasks" view in the sidebar on the left in Windows Explorer, and navigate to a folder containing/marked as containing music, you get the "Shop for music online" link. It then launches Internet Explorer in a seperate window, taking you to windowsmedia.com/shop.
I'm almost surprised that they don't just argue that Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer are just different views of the same app (as both can happily pretend to be the other), and that what they're actually doing is just opening a new window, rather than invoking a seperate application.
Whatever; I can't say that this is going to affect me in the slightest, personally. The first time I clicked that link was on reading the story just now, to see what it actually did:-)
If you're truly against frivolous patents, then you really shouldn't be supporting this one, even if the guy is using it to stick it to MS.
Look at it this way - by not speaking out against him, it sets a precedent. When the next guy with a similar patent starts taking *everyone* to court over it, including OSS projects, you'll be less justified in speaking out then.
All because they couldn't fix this simple problem quickly.
Interesting; I take it that you've seen the IE source code, then? I mean, you have to have, to know that it's a simple problem that can be fixed quickly, rather than something buried deep in the bowels of the code in a module that has hundreds of dependencies - or even something buried deep in the bowels of the OS/MFC, with thousands of dependencies.
No, I don't think it's likely - but you're spouting supposition as though it were gospel. Unless, of course, you've seen the source.
Yeah, that's taking security seriously!
Well, rushing a patch out as fast as possible isn't taking security seriously either, if that patch introduces another exploitable bug.
many home users don't really give a stuff if their machine is taking part in a DDoS attack
That's rather unfair - the vast majority of home users don't know what a DDoS attack is, and wouldn't know how to tell that their machine is involved in one.
There are essentially two ways to update a modern Windows machine (ie Win2k or newer - I've not used 98 in years, or Me at all). You can either visit the Windows Update site and choose what updates you want to install, or you can use the Automatic Updates tool.
Automatic Updates checks for critical updates only, and works in three modes: notify me, download and notify me, or download and install. In the first two modes, you have complete control over what gets installed - even in the case that it's downloaded, it won't be installed unless you give the go-ahead. The third mode, of course, is fully automatic - available critical updates are downloaded and installed at a time specified by the user (it defaults to 3am, iirc).
Personally, in the year or so I've been using XP, I've found no reason not to have it set to automatically install updates. Nothing has broken, and if any unpleasant features have been installed for me, I certainly haven't noticed. (And given the way sites like/. and the Register jump all over anything MS does, I assume that nothing has been)
Even if the process (of examining patent submissions) is 99.9% accurate when it comes to rejecting obvious/non-novel patents, if 10,000 are submitted per year, 10 bad ones will slip through the net.
Microsoft finially pushes the final patch that makes it impossible for your windows system to play ANYTHING not WMA AND signed.
And you know as well as I do that there would be an absolute uproar should that ever happen. MS are big, but they've been swayed by public outcry before - just look at the extension of support for Win98 as one example.
Besides which, as soon as the story hit, people would simply stop applying that patch - while some would almost certainly reinstall the OS to rid themselves of it if need be. I really can't imagine such a thing lasting very long, were it to happen.
in fact in the eula you had to agree to get the patch I mentioned before, even says they have the "right" to do such a thing.
I can't imagine that sort of thing standing up in court though. Sure, perhaps the EULA could be interpreted as allowing MS to do it, but that doesn't necessarily make it binding. EULAs aren't contracts, but here in the UK at least, you can't get away with putting just anything in a contract, and I would imagine that an EULA is the same. For example, just because I sign an employment contract with a clause in it that states that should I ever leave, I have to give them my firstborn, doesn't mean that I'd have to honour it.
In fact, if you read most EULAs thoroughly, you'll see something to the effect that should any clause be found to be unenforceable, that won't render the entire agreement void. That would imply to me that a court has the power to throw out terms it deems unreasonable. I would very much expect that enforced manipulation or deletion of software and data would be found to be unreasonable, whether the EULA allowed for it or not.
That's the thing I don't understand - I read a lot of people saying that sort of thing on websites like this. I also read a lot of (US) people bemoaning the government, and Bush in particular, claiming that he wasn't democratically elected, etc, and condemning things like the DMCA, PATRIOT Act, etc
So, if it's that bad, how come no-one's exercising their Second Ammendment rights?
And I don't see anything in it that talks about monitoring "all cars' speed and location, all the time, everywhere" - not even in the Register article, and they're famous for being as cynical about things as humanly possible.
All this is for is traffic monitoring with respect to jams and accidents, and advising drivers of changes to speed limits, potential problems, and so on.
Get back to me when your govenment mandates that *all* image processing software *must* include that feature, then I'll start listening to talk of rights.
Not saying that SkyOS will ever get that big - it's even harder now, with an incumbent "default" desktop OS - just pointing out that *everything* starts out small. That doesn't mean that everything gets big, just that you can't assume that nothing will.
Not as long as the majority of music downloaders use p2p primarily to search for new music and purchase the stuff they like.
Now, I'm not necessarily doubting the veracity of your claim, but I see that brought up here everytime there's a RIAA vs. World story, and I don't remember ever having seen any hard evidence to back it up.
Sure, I've seen lots of anecdotal evidence, from people here saying that that's what they do, but that doesn't actually prove anything. They could be telling the truth, they could be lying; either way, they may well not be representative of P2P users in general.
Do you (or anyone else reading this) actually have any hard data to support this sort of claim? If nothing else, it would be useful ammunition.
Not that it really matters either way to me, I guess - here in the UK, beneficial or not, copyright law (as I understand it - IANAL, etc) forbids unauthorised copying full stop. That includes ripping CDs I've bought to mp3, or taping them to play in a car cassette player, etc. Ain't the lack of a fair use clause grand?
Oh, and for what it's worth, the whole "piracy vs copyright infringement" argument is pretty much a lost cause unfortunately, just like "hacker vs cracker", especially as it's now in the dictionary. I personally wouldn't waste too much time or effort pursuing it; you're not going to convince people to change now. At worst, you'll just end up confusing the issue, and detracting from your main points.
And then, having said that, he remembered the word "valency"...
It's not exactly that the atoms themselves are slightly charged, and I no longer trust my memory of Chemistry enough to explain further. Suffice to say, it is the electrostatic force of attraction between the protons and the electrons that bind the hydrogen and oxygen atoms together to form water molecules. It's more like they "share" an electron each, though, than that they're charged.
The water molecules *are* charged, though, due to their shape - they form a sort of shallow v shape, with the oxygen at the point and the hydrogens at the end of the "arms".
And now, I'll stop wasting your time, let a real chemist take over, have my hot chocolate and go to bed:-)
so whatever it is that keeps those two hydrogen atoms attached to the oxygen atom would just disappear
That's electromagnetism, and no, it wouldn't just disappear:-)
The hydrogen and oxygen atoms combine to form water because of the electrical charges of the atoms. Despite having equal numbers of protons (positive) and electrons (negative), they each have a very slight overall charge (because of the distributions of the electrons - they're not uniformly distributed all the time, essentially). These charges attract, and form bonds between the atoms.
Atmospheric pressure helps keep the individual oxygen molecules together (as do those same electrical charges, as the molecules themselves are slightly charged), so you have a puddle of water rather than a cloud, but it doesn't keep the atoms in the molecules, if you see what I mean.
Not to be pedantic, but they are both chemical reactions, and so incapable of destroying matter. What you'll get is one bunch of compounds (eg carbon) turning into another (eg carbon dioxide).
It requires a nuclear reaction to actually annihilate matter and turn it completely into energy. The energy released in a chemical reaction comes from breaking/making bonds between atoms and molecules, not from breaking down the atoms themselves.
No it won't - I alrady have Caldera filtered. Unfortunately, I don't have "Businesses", "Linux Businesses" or "Technology/IT" filtered, which are the other categories this story is in.
In fact, judging from the "main" icon (the one next to the story), I'd assume that this is in Linux businesses primarily, with a sub-categorisation of the others, including Caldera. Thus, my filtering is to no avail.
Of course, nothing was stopping me (or the OP) from simply *ignoring* the story...;-)
Only in terms of money; it'll still take you time to do it, and get your new system set up just the way you like/need it, etc.
Yes, that's true of Windows too, which also costs money - I'm not saying that upgrading Windows is better, just that upgrading Linux is not free in *all* senses.
But the effects of a constant acceleration are constant throughout the box, while the equivalent effect of gravity is stronger nearer the gravitating body, and weaker further away. With sufficiently sensitive equipment, that difference can be measured.
For gravity to actually be a product of the acceleration of the universe, then that acceleration would presumably have to be non-uniform in order to account for the inverse-square nature of gravity.
Firewall: "Do you wish to allow "Very Important Microsoft Firewall Update to access the intenet?"
This user: "What? No - never heard of it, and it's been ages since I installed SP2 and this is the first I've seen of it... Let's have a little look" (checks path displayed, has a look at the binary, runs Adaware, searches the net for info, etc)
I know, I'm an exceptional case - most end users would do as you say. But they're the sort who wouldn't have installed a third party firewall anyway, so a little help is better than none at all:-)
For what it's worth, the recent article about the stuff that's supposed to be included in SP2 listed stuff such as net-bios, etc only listening on the internal network as one of the changes, so they are going that route too.
Slashdot Mirror
In XP, if you have the "common tasks" view in the sidebar on the left in Windows Explorer, and navigate to a folder containing/marked as containing music, you get the "Shop for music online" link. It then launches Internet Explorer in a seperate window, taking you to windowsmedia.com/shop.
:-)
I'm almost surprised that they don't just argue that Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer are just different views of the same app (as both can happily pretend to be the other), and that what they're actually doing is just opening a new window, rather than invoking a seperate application.
Whatever; I can't say that this is going to affect me in the slightest, personally. The first time I clicked that link was on reading the story just now, to see what it actually did
The lesser of two evils is still evil.
If you're truly against frivolous patents, then you really shouldn't be supporting this one, even if the guy is using it to stick it to MS.
Look at it this way - by not speaking out against him, it sets a precedent. When the next guy with a similar patent starts taking *everyone* to court over it, including OSS projects, you'll be less justified in speaking out then.
All because they couldn't fix this simple problem quickly.
Interesting; I take it that you've seen the IE source code, then? I mean, you have to have, to know that it's a simple problem that can be fixed quickly, rather than something buried deep in the bowels of the code in a module that has hundreds of dependencies - or even something buried deep in the bowels of the OS/MFC, with thousands of dependencies.
No, I don't think it's likely - but you're spouting supposition as though it were gospel. Unless, of course, you've seen the source.
Yeah, that's taking security seriously!
Well, rushing a patch out as fast as possible isn't taking security seriously either, if that patch introduces another exploitable bug.
many home users don't really give a stuff if their machine is taking part in a DDoS attack
That's rather unfair - the vast majority of home users don't know what a DDoS attack is, and wouldn't know how to tell that their machine is involved in one.
There are essentially two ways to update a modern Windows machine (ie Win2k or newer - I've not used 98 in years, or Me at all). You can either visit the Windows Update site and choose what updates you want to install, or you can use the Automatic Updates tool.
/. and the Register jump all over anything MS does, I assume that nothing has been)
Automatic Updates checks for critical updates only, and works in three modes: notify me, download and notify me, or download and install. In the first two modes, you have complete control over what gets installed - even in the case that it's downloaded, it won't be installed unless you give the go-ahead. The third mode, of course, is fully automatic - available critical updates are downloaded and installed at a time specified by the user (it defaults to 3am, iirc).
Personally, in the year or so I've been using XP, I've found no reason not to have it set to automatically install updates. Nothing has broken, and if any unpleasant features have been installed for me, I certainly haven't noticed. (And given the way sites like
Even if the process (of examining patent submissions) is 99.9% accurate when it comes to rejecting obvious/non-novel patents, if 10,000 are submitted per year, 10 bad ones will slip through the net.
Total troll.
Microsoft finially pushes the final patch that makes it impossible for your windows system to play ANYTHING not WMA AND signed.
And you know as well as I do that there would be an absolute uproar should that ever happen. MS are big, but they've been swayed by public outcry before - just look at the extension of support for Win98 as one example.
Besides which, as soon as the story hit, people would simply stop applying that patch - while some would almost certainly reinstall the OS to rid themselves of it if need be. I really can't imagine such a thing lasting very long, were it to happen.
in fact in the eula you had to agree to get the patch I mentioned before, even says they have the "right" to do such a thing.
I can't imagine that sort of thing standing up in court though. Sure, perhaps the EULA could be interpreted as allowing MS to do it, but that doesn't necessarily make it binding. EULAs aren't contracts, but here in the UK at least, you can't get away with putting just anything in a contract, and I would imagine that an EULA is the same. For example, just because I sign an employment contract with a clause in it that states that should I ever leave, I have to give them my firstborn, doesn't mean that I'd have to honour it.
In fact, if you read most EULAs thoroughly, you'll see something to the effect that should any clause be found to be unenforceable, that won't render the entire agreement void. That would imply to me that a court has the power to throw out terms it deems unreasonable. I would very much expect that enforced manipulation or deletion of software and data would be found to be unreasonable, whether the EULA allowed for it or not.
By a woodworker? You may be a programmer, and I know I am, but the vast majority of people aren't, and don't want to be.
you seriously think they didnt just get rid of or hide them in the 12+ years they had to do so?
Well, if they got rid of them, then they don't have them, right?
That's the thing I don't understand - I read a lot of people saying that sort of thing on websites like this. I also read a lot of (US) people bemoaning the government, and Bush in particular, claiming that he wasn't democratically elected, etc, and condemning things like the DMCA, PATRIOT Act, etc
So, if it's that bad, how come no-one's exercising their Second Ammendment rights?
Rubbish, roads are meant for travelling on, and predate the motor car by a couple of thousand years.
And I don't see anything in it that talks about monitoring "all cars' speed and location, all the time, everywhere" - not even in the Register article, and they're famous for being as cynical about things as humanly possible.
All this is for is traffic monitoring with respect to jams and accidents, and advising drivers of changes to speed limits, potential problems, and so on.
Well, I wouldn't say that the article was paticularly in depth, but I certainly got an article (mostly pictures of the train), not a rocket...
You still have the right to use another package.
Get back to me when your govenment mandates that *all* image processing software *must* include that feature, then I'll start listening to talk of rights.
Nor was Windows, once.
Not saying that SkyOS will ever get that big - it's even harder now, with an incumbent "default" desktop OS - just pointing out that *everything* starts out small. That doesn't mean that everything gets big, just that you can't assume that nothing will.
Not as long as the majority of music downloaders use p2p primarily to search for new music and purchase the stuff they like.
Now, I'm not necessarily doubting the veracity of your claim, but I see that brought up here everytime there's a RIAA vs. World story, and I don't remember ever having seen any hard evidence to back it up.
Sure, I've seen lots of anecdotal evidence, from people here saying that that's what they do, but that doesn't actually prove anything. They could be telling the truth, they could be lying; either way, they may well not be representative of P2P users in general.
Do you (or anyone else reading this) actually have any hard data to support this sort of claim? If nothing else, it would be useful ammunition.
Not that it really matters either way to me, I guess - here in the UK, beneficial or not, copyright law (as I understand it - IANAL, etc) forbids unauthorised copying full stop. That includes ripping CDs I've bought to mp3, or taping them to play in a car cassette player, etc. Ain't the lack of a fair use clause grand?
Oh, and for what it's worth, the whole "piracy vs copyright infringement" argument is pretty much a lost cause unfortunately, just like "hacker vs cracker", especially as it's now in the dictionary. I personally wouldn't waste too much time or effort pursuing it; you're not going to convince people to change now. At worst, you'll just end up confusing the issue, and detracting from your main points.
And then, having said that, he remembered the word "valency"...
:-)
It's not exactly that the atoms themselves are slightly charged, and I no longer trust my memory of Chemistry enough to explain further. Suffice to say, it is the electrostatic force of attraction between the protons and the electrons that bind the hydrogen and oxygen atoms together to form water molecules. It's more like they "share" an electron each, though, than that they're charged.
The water molecules *are* charged, though, due to their shape - they form a sort of shallow v shape, with the oxygen at the point and the hydrogens at the end of the "arms".
And now, I'll stop wasting your time, let a real chemist take over, have my hot chocolate and go to bed
so whatever it is that keeps those two hydrogen atoms attached to the oxygen atom would just disappear
:-)
That's electromagnetism, and no, it wouldn't just disappear
The hydrogen and oxygen atoms combine to form water because of the electrical charges of the atoms. Despite having equal numbers of protons (positive) and electrons (negative), they each have a very slight overall charge (because of the distributions of the electrons - they're not uniformly distributed all the time, essentially). These charges attract, and form bonds between the atoms.
Atmospheric pressure helps keep the individual oxygen molecules together (as do those same electrical charges, as the molecules themselves are slightly charged), so you have a puddle of water rather than a cloud, but it doesn't keep the atoms in the molecules, if you see what I mean.
or it's turned into energy (ala fire, explosions)
Not to be pedantic, but they are both chemical reactions, and so incapable of destroying matter. What you'll get is one bunch of compounds (eg carbon) turning into another (eg carbon dioxide).
It requires a nuclear reaction to actually annihilate matter and turn it completely into energy. The energy released in a chemical reaction comes from breaking/making bonds between atoms and molecules, not from breaking down the atoms themselves.
No it won't - I alrady have Caldera filtered. Unfortunately, I don't have "Businesses", "Linux Businesses" or "Technology/IT" filtered, which are the other categories this story is in.
;-)
In fact, judging from the "main" icon (the one next to the story), I'd assume that this is in Linux businesses primarily, with a sub-categorisation of the others, including Caldera. Thus, my filtering is to no avail.
Of course, nothing was stopping me (or the OP) from simply *ignoring* the story...
Upgrading to the latest version of Linux is free.
Only in terms of money; it'll still take you time to do it, and get your new system set up just the way you like/need it, etc.
Yes, that's true of Windows too, which also costs money - I'm not saying that upgrading Windows is better, just that upgrading Linux is not free in *all* senses.
But the effects of a constant acceleration are constant throughout the box, while the equivalent effect of gravity is stronger nearer the gravitating body, and weaker further away. With sufficiently sensitive equipment, that difference can be measured.
For gravity to actually be a product of the acceleration of the universe, then that acceleration would presumably have to be non-uniform in order to account for the inverse-square nature of gravity.
Are you crazy? Teenage girls on slashdot?
Somehow, I don't think so.
Firewall: "Do you wish to allow "Very Important Microsoft Firewall Update to access the intenet?"
:-)
This user: "What? No - never heard of it, and it's been ages since I installed SP2 and this is the first I've seen of it... Let's have a little look" (checks path displayed, has a look at the binary, runs Adaware, searches the net for info, etc)
I know, I'm an exceptional case - most end users would do as you say. But they're the sort who wouldn't have installed a third party firewall anyway, so a little help is better than none at all
For what it's worth, the recent article about the stuff that's supposed to be included in SP2 listed stuff such as net-bios, etc only listening on the internal network as one of the changes, so they are going that route too.