I think this is technically not correct. They were also selling server software etc. I'm not sure of the balance of the revenue though (i.e. whether they got significant money from their server software, or whether it was basically zero and everything was dependent on the browser)
I detested what they did with the Real8 installation process - at one point you would be presented with a series of checkboxes with, apparently, all of the checkboxes unchecked, UNLESS you went and scrolled down the listbox in which case you would see that EVERY one of those not-initially-viewable listboxes was checked.
I'd thought about it and although it COULD be a "UI ease of use issue", it wouldn't have been too difficult to make the dialog larger and so make it obvious to the user that there WERE certain options that were by default selected.
Instead, the way they made it, it looked like they were trying to "sneak" something by me, in an underhanded way that just made me angry every time I had to install Real (I do a lot of unofficial tech support for friends; I personally avoid Real streams whenever I had a choice, the level of antipathy I had for them was that great).
It is better to adapt and survive than to be crushed
It's possible to adapt AND still die.
(ok in which case that makes it "attempt to adapt"). Why are you so sure that Netscape would have made it if they'd done what you'd said they should do?
go to their portal site back when portals were the in-thing,/i>
But looking at the other portals of that time, they didn't last very long did they? Netscape would just have been delaying the inevitable. Maybe the owners could have cashed out, but the company's survival would be a different issue...
If MS puts Money into the OS, then Quicken is out of luck? What about if they start bundling their own PDF writer... Adobe has no recourse?
Don't you think that these would automatically result in a massive hit to their share prices, and the industry news would start being flooded with "these guys are doomed" statements? Yes I know that quicken has successfully fought off MS so far, but then MS has not bundled Money free either. The reason they have not I would think could possibly be because
(a) the Money/Quicken using market isn't quite as critical as the web browser is to Microsoft, in the sense that if Netscape succeeded in their declared aim of making the base OS irrelevant it would threaten MS in a way that sales of MS Money dropping to zero with Quicken going to 100%, would not, and
(b) MS would immediately face another antitrust-related action.
In which case (re: (b)) Intuit would in part have Netscape to thank....
Netscape still failed to adapt in a way that would allow them to remain alive
But isn't the point being, that when your product is facing a zero-cost alternative being subsidised by alternative revenue sources you do not have, there IS no way to adapt that would allow survival?
It's probably something inherent in the design. Probably affects all trackpoints (trackpoints are an IBM patent anyway).
for gaming (it's like a joystick on the keyboard
Holy crap you can play FPS games properly with a trackpoint?! I'd hate to see you with a proper mouse... You wouldn't happen to be the guy on PAGN on Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory who always frags me, would you....
then keep going in a certain direction for 5-30 seconds
The IBM ThinkPad manual for the T20 I had said that the pointer moving of its own accord every now and then (I think they meant immediately after you lift your finger off it, but I can't recall right now) was "normal" behaviour, and that the way to deal with it was to just ignore it (and the pointer will stop on its own). It never happened to me, but I'm curious if this is what you're talking about, or if it's another problem entirely?
If you look at the history of Excel, you'll find out it came out on the Mac first - first Mac version 1985, first Windows version 1987.
It's been said that's where MS "built up their chops" doing a GUI spreadsheet, such that when GUIs took over on the x86 PC side, MS killed Lotus et al dead.
Word technically "originated" on the IBM PC side of things, but this Word was a character-mode application (think Wordstar, or the original WordPerfect). The first GUI "MS Word" was again on the Mac.
So based on the criteria of "origin", (non-character-mode) Word, Excel - they're all Mac apps that now exist in Windows versions.
I remember reading the alert for the OpenSSH bug, where one of the options listed was to upgrade to lsh - not "change to", "try using", or anything of the sort, but "upgrade" - and I thought then that that demonstrated an unnecessarily... high-horse-y attitude. I'll bet they regret saying that now... . Humility really IS the best policy.
The TRUE lesson to be learned from the BSA is pirate ALL software published by BSA members... then there is no record of your company in their databases.
I can't decide if this is +5 Insightful or +5 Funny:-)
In your example the "end user" is distributing - by having the website
Hrm, ok, good point, bad example on my part...
But the customers of those companies were never at risk or liable
But is this a question of not-being-able-to-do-it, or not-being-allowed-to-do-it? If, theoretically it was possible to sue each and every person who downloaded that picture off the site, isn't it logical that if that picture was unacceptable-for-distribution in the first place, they can be demanded-back and destroyed?
In the "real world" it's going to be nigh-impossible to try and get x million people rounded up and have their offending pictures destroyed, but still... - hrm, would something like illegal pornography be a better example?
For example, there was that porn actress who they discovered later on that she was underage - they recalled and destroyed the existing stocks of the videos etc. Does it mean that the people who already bought it are ok to hang on to it? (as a separate question from "can they be tracked down" or "did the district attorneys try to go after the customers")
Companies that have been sued by SCO have bought their products from Red Hat or similar companies. This means, the responsibility actually falls on Red Hat and SuSe etc
Erm... are you sure this is how the law works?
Let's say someone takes sneak photos of you when you're naked (for the sake of argument here, no smart-aleck follow-on posts here, please). That someone then goes off and sells/gives it to other people (again, for the sake of argument). This someone has committed a crime, but the people they sell it to go on and use it to populate their website, "DIRTY NAKED ASSHOLES!!!!" for example (... hrm. I've just decided I'm not going to google this to find out if it exists:-). Are you saying that you expect only to be able to sue the person who took those photos, but cannot go and get the actual site to take down those photos?
If you take it that SCO is doing all this to do the maximum amount of FUD etc. (either because they're funded by MS to do such a thing to disrupt linux adoption, or whatever other purpose), then it is EXACTLY to their goals to hit on as wide a range of people as possible, and even if they do not prevail in the end (and I don't know if it's a certainty they can't win - it's been said before, when you go to court, you don't get Justice, you get the Law, and they may not be the same thing... - heck look at all the people released from jail years later after DNA evidence proves they're innocent), I think it looks like they CAN request court action to stop people from using/doing things....
The core issue is about the value of intellectual property in an Internet age.
Would this be the same Internet that largely relies on Free Software?
The real problem here is, you understand this, I understand this, but will the judge understand it? Sometimes I think everyone here is a little overconfident. In a sense, SCO could not have chosen a worse target to sue, in that if a truly wrong judgement is handed out, IBM has the resources to take it all the way to the highest courts whereas a weaker opponent may have just folded. But this phrase has always rung true to me: When you go to Court, you don't get Justice, you get the Law. They may not be one and the same.
IIRC the reason why the APSL is not "GPL" compatible is because Apple wants control over your release. I.e. if you're modding it and using it internally for your own purposes, fine (as would be the case for GPL), but if you want to release it to the world at large, Apple needs to be informed/alerted/registered-with, i.e. you cannot release the code out into the world EVEN though you submit all the changes you fix etc. (i.e. as you would to comply with the GPL), which would be "undue influence" from the perspective of the GPL - if you release your code with the requirement that any subsequent public mods must also be (virally) released, that is enough for the GPL, but it isn't enough for the APSL. Anyone else who knows more about this issue and can enlighten us?
(my 2 cents worth)- I think Linux deployment is at a critical stage right now, legal challenges by SCO casting FUD around, stuff like this just gives the anti-linux entities more ammo
Considering the past statements made by MS execs re: linux ("communist"?) - e.g. "Look, the Chinese government is happy to use linux to power their weapons. American coders - mind you, american coders who are NOT working on Microsoft platforms - are happily contributing code day and night (when not wasting their time on/.) that will be used by the Chinese military. Shouldn't Congress be doing something about it?".
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because that was their only source of revenue
I think this is technically not correct. They were also selling server software etc. I'm not sure of the balance of the revenue though (i.e. whether they got significant money from their server software, or whether it was basically zero and everything was dependent on the browser)
Anyone can enlighten us?
though BBC and other sites only offer video in Real format
I'm curious, is there any particualr reason why? anybody know?
will just destroy each other.
that's only a possibility if they are anywhere near evenly matched, which they are not.
RealPlayer is the original spyware
I detested what they did with the Real8 installation process - at one point you would be presented with a series of checkboxes with, apparently, all of the checkboxes unchecked, UNLESS you went and scrolled down the listbox in which case you would see that EVERY one of those not-initially-viewable listboxes was checked.
I'd thought about it and although it COULD be a "UI ease of use issue", it wouldn't have been too difficult to make the dialog larger and so make it obvious to the user that there WERE certain options that were by default selected.
Instead, the way they made it, it looked like they were trying to "sneak" something by me, in an underhanded way that just made me angry every time I had to install Real (I do a lot of unofficial tech support for friends; I personally avoid Real streams whenever I had a choice, the level of antipathy I had for them was that great).
It is better to adapt and survive than to be crushed
It's possible to adapt AND still die.
(ok in which case that makes it "attempt to adapt"). Why are you so sure that Netscape would have made it if they'd done what you'd said they should do?
go to their portal site back when portals were the in-thing,/i>
But looking at the other portals of that time, they didn't last very long did they? Netscape would just have been delaying the inevitable. Maybe the owners could have cashed out, but the company's survival would be a different issue...
If MS puts Money into the OS, then Quicken is out of luck? What about if they start bundling their own PDF writer... Adobe has no recourse?
.
Don't you think that these would automatically result in a massive hit to their share prices, and the industry news would start being flooded with "these guys are doomed" statements? Yes I know that quicken has successfully fought off MS so far, but then MS has not bundled Money free either. The reason they have not I would think could possibly be because
(a) the Money/Quicken using market isn't quite as critical as the web browser is to Microsoft, in the sense that if Netscape succeeded in their declared aim of making the base OS irrelevant it would threaten MS in a way that sales of MS Money dropping to zero with Quicken going to 100%, would not, and
(b) MS would immediately face another antitrust-related action.
In which case (re: (b)) Intuit would in part have Netscape to thank...
Netscape still failed to adapt in a way that would allow them to remain alive
But isn't the point being, that when your product is facing a zero-cost alternative being subsidised by alternative revenue sources you do not have, there IS no way to adapt that would allow survival?
The fact that I have to search through the registry to disable the stupid "Real Message Center" background app
u rr entversion\run or?
i really hate this too, and want to get rid of it. Which part of the registry is it in?
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\c
It's probably something inherent in the design. Probably affects all trackpoints (trackpoints are an IBM patent anyway).
.
for gaming (it's like a joystick on the keyboard
Holy crap you can play FPS games properly with a trackpoint?! I'd hate to see you with a proper mouse... You wouldn't happen to be the guy on PAGN on Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory who always frags me, would you...
then keep going in a certain direction for 5-30 seconds
The IBM ThinkPad manual for the T20 I had said that the pointer moving of its own accord every now and then (I think they meant immediately after you lift your finger off it, but I can't recall right now) was "normal" behaviour, and that the way to deal with it was to just ignore it (and the pointer will stop on its own). It never happened to me, but I'm curious if this is what you're talking about, or if it's another problem entirely?
So? Don't many Mac users use Word, Excel, etc
If you look at the history of Excel, you'll find out it came out on the Mac first - first Mac version 1985, first Windows version 1987.
It's been said that's where MS "built up their chops" doing a GUI spreadsheet, such that when GUIs took over on the x86 PC side, MS killed Lotus et al dead.
Word technically "originated" on the IBM PC side of things, but this Word was a character-mode application (think Wordstar, or the original WordPerfect). The first GUI "MS Word" was again on the Mac.
So based on the criteria of "origin", (non-character-mode) Word, Excel - they're all Mac apps that now exist in Windows versions.
I remember reading the alert for the OpenSSH bug, where one of the options listed was to upgrade to lsh - not "change to", "try using", or anything of the sort, but "upgrade" - and I thought then that that demonstrated an unnecessarily... high-horse-y attitude. I'll bet they regret saying that now... . Humility really IS the best policy.
When does the case begin hitting the courts (as in, hearings etc. begin)? One suspects that would be the days when the stock price starts falling.
Unless, of course, they start winning.
The TRUE lesson to be learned from the BSA is pirate ALL software published by BSA members... then there is no record of your company in their databases.
:-)
I can't decide if this is +5 Insightful or +5 Funny
how clear it becomes that SCO is just completely insane
They're not insane.
They're greedy.
In your example the "end user" is distributing - by having the website
Hrm, ok, good point, bad example on my part...
But the customers of those companies were never at risk or liable
But is this a question of not-being-able-to-do-it, or not-being-allowed-to-do-it? If, theoretically it was possible to sue each and every person who downloaded that picture off the site, isn't it logical that if that picture was unacceptable-for-distribution in the first place, they can be demanded-back and destroyed?
In the "real world" it's going to be nigh-impossible to try and get x million people rounded up and have their offending pictures destroyed, but still ... - hrm, would something like illegal pornography be a better example?
For example, there was that porn actress who they discovered later on that she was underage - they recalled and destroyed the existing stocks of the videos etc. Does it mean that the people who already bought it are ok to hang on to it? (as a separate question from "can they be tracked down" or "did the district attorneys try to go after the customers")
Companies that have been sued by SCO have bought their products from Red Hat or similar companies. This means, the responsibility actually falls on Red Hat and SuSe etc
:-). Are you saying that you expect only to be able to sue the person who took those photos, but cannot go and get the actual site to take down those photos?
.
Erm... are you sure this is how the law works?
Let's say someone takes sneak photos of you when you're naked (for the sake of argument here, no smart-aleck follow-on posts here, please). That someone then goes off and sells/gives it to other people (again, for the sake of argument). This someone has committed a crime, but the people they sell it to go on and use it to populate their website, "DIRTY NAKED ASSHOLES!!!!" for example (... hrm. I've just decided I'm not going to google this to find out if it exists
If you take it that SCO is doing all this to do the maximum amount of FUD etc. (either because they're funded by MS to do such a thing to disrupt linux adoption, or whatever other purpose), then it is EXACTLY to their goals to hit on as wide a range of people as possible, and even if they do not prevail in the end (and I don't know if it's a certainty they can't win - it's been said before, when you go to court, you don't get Justice, you get the Law, and they may not be the same thing... - heck look at all the people released from jail years later after DNA evidence proves they're innocent), I think it looks like they CAN request court action to stop people from using/doing things...
It should just sit and listen for scan requests from MSBlaster
Sounds like a good idea. Hrm. If I had mod points...
even worse - they actually TRIED the pigeon thing once (anyone with a URL?).
I think +5 funny isn't enough for this... I'm in the middle of a lecture and I almost burst out laughing
The core issue is about the value of intellectual property in an Internet age.
Would this be the same Internet that largely relies on Free Software?
The real problem here is, you understand this, I understand this, but will the judge understand it? Sometimes I think everyone here is a little overconfident. In a sense, SCO could not have chosen a worse target to sue, in that if a truly wrong judgement is handed out, IBM has the resources to take it all the way to the highest courts whereas a weaker opponent may have just folded. But this phrase has always rung true to me: When you go to Court, you don't get Justice, you get the Law. They may not be one and the same.
IIRC the reason why the APSL is not "GPL" compatible is because Apple wants control over your release. I.e. if you're modding it and using it internally for your own purposes, fine (as would be the case for GPL), but if you want to release it to the world at large, Apple needs to be informed/alerted/registered-with, i.e. you cannot release the code out into the world EVEN though you submit all the changes you fix etc. (i.e. as you would to comply with the GPL), which would be "undue influence" from the perspective of the GPL - if you release your code with the requirement that any subsequent public mods must also be (virally) released, that is enough for the GPL, but it isn't enough for the APSL. Anyone else who knows more about this issue and can enlighten us?
and most of it not even being "their" work ultimately, even if the kernel itself WAS really SCO code.
*sigh*
What's the progress of the Hurd?
(my 2 cents worth)- I think Linux deployment is at a critical stage right now, legal challenges by SCO casting FUD around, stuff like this just gives the anti-linux entities more ammo
Considering the past statements made by MS execs re: linux ("communist"?) - e.g. "Look, the Chinese government is happy to use linux to power their weapons. American coders - mind you, american coders who are NOT working on Microsoft platforms - are happily contributing code day and night (when not wasting their time on /.) that will be used by the Chinese military. Shouldn't Congress be doing something about it?".