>> Pieter's rule #1: when a Slashdot poster writes "you guys", it's a Microsoft astroturfer. Pieter's rule #2: when a Slashdot poster says, "Google does it, how come you (guys) don't complain", it's still a Microsoft astroturfer.
Also, the astroturfers will often start with something like: "hey I have no special love for Microsoft, but . . . " and/or "I'm a Linux user myself, but . . . . " and/or "I'm not rying to defend Microsoft, but . . . "
Also, often bitter complaints about how everybody on slashdot is too insanely biased to even consider microsoft's point of view.
Have you actually tried the scenario that I discribed?
For example, when you post that: "you can easily remove the trial version, and reinstall the old version." Are you posting from actual experience, or from what you think should be possible?
BTW: even if trial software doesn't change your existing file formats, what about the files that were created during the trial period? At best, it's a headache trying to change all of those files to another format. And does an average end-user know about these compatibility packs? And do the compatibility packs actually work?
In my case, there was no compatibility pack to change the Outlook-2003 email back to Outlook-2000 email. Sure, my brother-in-law could have exported to a different format before the trial period ended, but we are talking about an average end-user here.
Call it FUD, or whatever you like, but I firmly believe that msft is trying to make end-users feel that they have to upgrade. Yes, there are ways around being actually forced, after all, msft has to have plausible deniability. But, I believe millions of end-users will feel compelled to buy msft's newest offering after having used the trial.
Again, if you have friends, or family, who are not msft experts, you may want to advise them to avoid such "trialware."
Imagine the kind of money these lawfirms must be making. By the time it's said and done the lawfirms get about half the settlement. And these IT patent lawsuits are often in the hundreds of millions, if not billions.
The growth of the number of lawers in the USA is explosive, and for good reason. You don't want all those new lawyers to have nothing to do, now do you?
Do patents help msft? Are you sure?
on
Patents Don't Pay
·
· Score: 1
Wasn't msft recently sued for $1.5B for violating (probably accidently) some submarine patent for some media format?
Also, ripped from investorsvillage.com post:
As has been noted on Slashdot and elsewhere Microsoft has been sued for patent infringement by Vertical Computer Systems. According to the April press release "Microsoft's.NET system violates a patent Vertical Systems filed in 1999, and awarded in 2004, covering "a system and method for generating computer applications in an arbitrary object framework."
The suit was filed on April 18,2007. The KSR v Teleflex decision affecting the determination of obviousness was on April 30, 2007.
Microsoft is in an interesting position when defending itself against software patents. What may now prove to be their best defense could set precedents that would seriously undermine their own patent portfolio. Settling rather than invalidating a patent that could be invalidated would just encourage more suits.
Recently shills for VCS (from th Y! VCSY.OB board) have popped up on the Y! MSFT board screaming that a settlement is almost a done deal with "a few details to work out". VCSY.ob stock is in the the two cent range. There have been a number of posts mocking MSFT's response to the complaint, including claiming the response has no defense of obviousness.
There seems to be no media coverage of the suit. I don't recall seeing anything about it on Groklaw. It could be an interesting case, not for the merits, but for how Microsoft deals with it.
>> 1. Install office 2000 to c:\progra~1\office 2. Install office 2003 to c:\progra~1\office2003 3. During the office 2003 install, it will detect that office 2000 is installed, and will ask you to confirm that it should be removed. Don't.
Here is how it went for me: my brother-in-law called me up, and said "I haven't been able to get to my email for the last week." I went over there and found that he had already installed the office-2003 trial over his office-2000. In this case, if you try to install office-2000, you get an error message that a newer version is already installed.
> How do you know it was 2003 format if you were never able to install the previous version. Huh? That makes no sense.
1) I copied the pst file to another computer 2) tried to load it with outlook-2000, it wouldn't work 3) I installed a trial version of outlook-2003 on the other computer, and it did work
> Is your brother-in-law still using windows? Then you've done him more harm than good, with your "lots of work".
In my experience, if you switch a typical windows user over to linux, you will get calls several times, everyday, about "how do I do this, how do I do that." and if *anything* goes wrong, it's your fault.
I seriously thought about switching him to thunderbird for an email client.
>>Outlook allows you to export and import your data in many different formats, so I don't understand why he had to install his own copy of the trial just to export some data.
Because my brother-in-law waited until his trial period was over. At which time he could not access Outlook at all.
But, you are right: if my brother-in-law had saved to a different format before his trial period ended, he would have saved me a lot of work. What could I say? My mother's even worse.
>But if you have an existing.pst file, outlook 2003 will not convert it to the new 2003 format.
When my brother-in-law's trial period was over, his.pst file was in an outlook-2003 format. That much I can tell you for sure. I believe both his old messages, and new messages, were in the 2003 format. Care to tell me how that happend? Maybe he allowed when he should have canceled, or something?
> Not true at all. Just go to add/remove programs and uninstall your trial software, then reinstall your old software.
Oh, it removes the trial software. But when you try to reinstall the old software, it won't let you. It detects a newer version, even though the newer version been technically removed. Symantec does the same thing. BTW: I can you from a *lot* of experience that msft's "add/remove software" is not worth crap. This is one of the reasons that registries get gunked up over time. Also, this sort of thing is a fairly common occurance.
> And you can not easily install Office-2000 and Office-2003 on the same PC.
As I recall, the install would not let us do that. Maybe if the disk had been partitioned, or something. We were trying to install office-2000, on XP-home, if that matters.
> You cannot have multiple versions of outlook on the same PC
Well, there you go. The problem was with Outlook.
> The reason for multiple versions of outlook is that the exchange connectivity is very different in outlook, and you can't have both.dlls installed at the same time.
Whatever the reason, it wrecked his computer to the point that I had to re-format his HDD.
You do what you want. But, after my experience, I can assure you that I have no intention of every installing any msft "trail" software on my PC. I warn as many people as can about this. Msft is not the only company that plays this game. I don't use Symantec anymore either.
You can think whatever you want about my intentions. Say I'm trying to spread FUD, or whatever. But, I promise you, the story is true. And I don't want it to happen to others.
>>There is absolutely no indication that the problems encountered by the submitter will come up again.
It's msft's MO. I believe that msft did the same thing with the upgrade from NT to 2000.
Here is the moral of story: when my brother-in-law installed the trial version of office-2003, it wrecked his computer. He could not access his email. He could not re-install office-2000 - we tried installing over office - it wouldn't work. We also tried removing the trial, still wouldn't work. And we could not install two versions of office. We tried like all hell to re-install office-2000, we couldn't do it.
It's something you might want to think about before you install any msft "trial" software, wouldn't you agree?
The problem was not with *my* computer, it was my brother-in-law's computer. Like most people, my brother-in-law is not all that sophisticated about computers.
No way in hell would I ever install msft "trialware."
The story was basically about the difficulties I had with Outlook. So how can you say the whole story is "FUD" while admitting that you don't know what happens with Outlook?
Below is a post about the GPL, from a retired attorney. The post is on a scox message board, but if you read it, you will see that it also applies to the apple case:
>> The GPL2 purports to be a contract in perpetuity. Lay your hands on code distributed under the GPL2, and you may use it anyway you want to, consistent with the GPL2. Relatively little new code will be distributed under the GPL3, most of it being old code. For the time being, the vast majority of code included in new releases will be covered by the GPL2.
Now the whining and complaining starts. Either the GPL3 is different from the GPL2, more restrictive, or it is not. If they are the same from a legal point of view, then all the discussion about the GPL3 is a waste of good nap time.
I don't care how many times you repeat it. It didn't work for SCOX or their lawyers and it won't work for the proponents of GPL3. Saying it louder and more often does not make it so.
Release anything with GPL2'd code in it, without an assignment of rights from the original author, and it is covered by the GPL2. Completely. The whole doggone distribution. GPL3 embossed on the cover or not.
Hint to the Open Source fanatics out there: this thing runs both ways. The lovely part of GPL2 is that it goes out and just keeps on giving. At least for RMS, the awful part of the GPL2, is that it goes out and just keeps on giving, even when you don't want it to.
An after-the-fact GPL3 winds up being completely neutralized by inclusion of a single line of code released by its author under the GPL2. With it in the distribution, by the terms of the GPL2, the whole distribution is covered by it.
Lawyers have to be particularly careful about wishful thinking, because it is easy to get caught up in a client's expectations, and lose sight of the fact that there is no merit at all to his claims. Laymen do it all the time. Part of the purpose in having a lawyer there is to bring the client back to a realistic assessment, instead of wasting all his money, and the court's time, on unwinnable cases.
RMS is brilliant, no doubt about it.
At the end of the day, he is still not a lawyer. __________________________________________________ _ AllParadox - Retired Attorney, no legal opinons, just my opinions. http://www1.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=1911&m n=35321&pt=msg&mid=2524974
Compare groklaw.net to the obvious msft shills like Rob Enderle, Dan Lyons, Laura Didio, or Maureen O'Gara.
Groklaw analyzes actual court filings. Those other bozos just rant like idiots, and make one unsubstantiated claim after the next. Groklaw has also proven itself to be *much* more moral than those other smear-campaign stalkers.
IMO: so called "professional journalists" are getting in a wad about being debunked, and out-classed by a bunch of amature bloggers. And that is why we see so many anti-blog articles these days.
I hate to post that, but doesn't it make much more sense?
For years I've have been watching Linux zealots post stuff like: "with msft no longer supporting W2K, everybody will switch to Linux." And I just think: WTF?
If people don't like msft's new offering, they will just stay with msft's old offering. There is absolutely nothing that compels anybody to switch to Linux.
I use Debian myself. I would like to see people switch to Linux, but I don't see it happening. Windows is much more compatible with popular desktop sw/hw. And frankly, I find windows to be much crisper, snappier, and more responsive, than Linux.
Why would an American want to waste his/her time, money, and effort, studying a discipline where he/she would have to compete with $5/hour offshore labor?
Face reality folks, the computer tech career field is a dead in the USA. Sure, there are still some $100K+ developers in Silicon Valley, or NYC: those are the guys with big targets painted on their backs. And the poor fools are too arrogant to even realize it.
When have you ever read about massive layoffs for lawyers or CEOs?
Msft provided all of the financial backing for the scox-scam. You may have noticed, the pro-scox articles are all written by the usual msft shills: didio, enderle, lyons, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
>>
Pieter's rule #1: when a Slashdot poster writes "you guys", it's a Microsoft astroturfer.
Pieter's rule #2: when a Slashdot poster says, "Google does it, how come you (guys) don't complain", it's still a Microsoft astroturfer.
Also, the astroturfers will often start with something like: "hey I have no special love for Microsoft, but . . . " and/or "I'm a Linux user myself, but . . . . " and/or "I'm not rying to defend Microsoft, but . . . "
Also, often bitter complaints about how everybody on slashdot is too insanely biased to even consider microsoft's point of view.
Although I can hardly blame msft for that. The US-DoJ really is a lame joke.
If msft is ballot stuffing to push msft standards, then shouldn't the FTC be concerned?
p proves-chevrons-acquisition-of-unocal-on-conditiod -gasoline.html
http://www.antitrustlawblog.com/article-133-ftc-a
n-of-release-of-patent-rights-to-carb-reformulate
The DoJ should be concerned, but that won't happen under this administration.
Of course, it isn't over yet. I get the feeling that msft will win. Hard to lose with all that money, and influence.
Have you actually tried the scenario that I discribed?
For example, when you post that: "you can easily remove the trial version, and reinstall the old version." Are you posting from actual experience, or from what you think should be possible?
BTW: even if trial software doesn't change your existing file formats, what about the files that were created during the trial period? At best, it's a headache trying to change all of those files to another format. And does an average end-user know about these compatibility packs? And do the compatibility packs actually work?
In my case, there was no compatibility pack to change the Outlook-2003 email back to Outlook-2000 email. Sure, my brother-in-law could have exported to a different format before the trial period ended, but we are talking about an average end-user here.
Call it FUD, or whatever you like, but I firmly believe that msft is trying to make end-users feel that they have to upgrade. Yes, there are ways around being actually forced, after all, msft has to have plausible deniability. But, I believe millions of end-users will feel compelled to buy msft's newest offering after having used the trial.
Again, if you have friends, or family, who are not msft experts, you may want to advise them to avoid such "trialware."
Imagine the kind of money these lawfirms must be making. By the time it's said and done the lawfirms get about half the settlement. And these IT patent lawsuits are often in the hundreds of millions, if not billions.
The growth of the number of lawers in the USA is explosive, and for good reason. You don't want all those new lawyers to have nothing to do, now do you?
Wasn't msft recently sued for $1.5B for violating (probably accidently) some submarine patent for some media format?
.NET system violates a patent Vertical Systems filed in 1999, and awarded in 2004, covering "a system and method for generating computer applications in an arbitrary object framework."
T O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2F, 826,744&RS=PN/6,826,744
e _no-2:2007cv00144/case_id-102638/
Also, ripped from investorsvillage.com post:
As has been noted on Slashdot and elsewhere Microsoft has been sued for patent infringement by Vertical Computer Systems. According to the April press release "Microsoft's
Patent is here:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P
srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,826,744.PN.&OS=PN/6
Dockets here for those with PACER access:
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-txedce/cas
( If someone with PACER access could make the complaint and MSFT response available...)
The suit was filed on April 18,2007.
The KSR v Teleflex decision affecting the determination of obviousness was on April 30, 2007.
Microsoft is in an interesting position when defending itself against software patents. What may now prove to be their best defense could set precedents that would seriously undermine their own patent portfolio. Settling rather than invalidating a patent that could be invalidated would just encourage more suits.
Recently shills for VCS (from th Y! VCSY.OB board) have popped up on the Y! MSFT board screaming that a settlement is almost a done deal with "a few details to work out". VCSY.ob stock is in the the two cent range. There have been a number of posts mocking MSFT's response to the complaint, including claiming the response has no defense of obviousness.
There seems to be no media coverage of the suit. I don't recall seeing anything about it on Groklaw. It could be an interesting case, not for the merits, but for how Microsoft deals with it.
> if what this guy is saying is true, you'd think that it automatically went through and converted all my .doc files to .docx.
I don't know why you'd think that, since that is not what I said.
>>
1. Install office 2000 to c:\progra~1\office
2. Install office 2003 to c:\progra~1\office2003
3. During the office 2003 install, it will detect that office 2000 is installed, and will ask you to confirm that it should be removed. Don't.
Here is how it went for me: my brother-in-law called me up, and said "I haven't been able to get to my email for the last week." I went over there and found that he had already installed the office-2003 trial over his office-2000. In this case, if you try to install office-2000, you get an error message that a newer version is already installed.
> How do you know it was 2003 format if you were never able to install the previous version. Huh? That makes no sense.
1) I copied the pst file to another computer
2) tried to load it with outlook-2000, it wouldn't work
3) I installed a trial version of outlook-2003 on the other computer, and it did work
So you tell me.
> Is your brother-in-law still using windows? Then you've done him more harm than good, with your "lots of work".
In my experience, if you switch a typical windows user over to linux, you will get calls several times, everyday, about "how do I do this, how do I do that." and if *anything* goes wrong, it's your fault.
I seriously thought about switching him to thunderbird for an email client.
>>Outlook allows you to export and import your data in many different formats, so I don't understand why he had to install his own copy of the trial just to export some data.
Because my brother-in-law waited until his trial period was over. At which time he could not access Outlook at all.
But, you are right: if my brother-in-law had saved to a different format before his trial period ended, he would have saved me a lot of work. What could I say? My mother's even worse.
>But if you have an existing .pst file, outlook 2003 will not convert it to the new 2003 format.
.pst file was in an outlook-2003 format. That much I can tell you for sure. I believe both his old messages, and new messages, were in the 2003 format. Care to tell me how that happend? Maybe he allowed when he should have canceled, or something?
.dlls installed at the same time.
When my brother-in-law's trial period was over, his
> Not true at all. Just go to add/remove programs and uninstall your trial software, then reinstall your old software.
Oh, it removes the trial software. But when you try to reinstall the old software, it won't let you. It detects a newer version, even though the newer version been technically removed. Symantec does the same thing. BTW: I can you from a *lot* of experience that msft's "add/remove software" is not worth crap. This is one of the reasons that registries get gunked up over time. Also, this sort of thing is a fairly common occurance.
> And you can not easily install Office-2000 and Office-2003 on the same PC.
As I recall, the install would not let us do that. Maybe if the disk had been partitioned, or something. We were trying to install office-2000, on XP-home, if that matters.
> You cannot have multiple versions of outlook on the same PC
Well, there you go. The problem was with Outlook.
> The reason for multiple versions of outlook is that the exchange connectivity is very different in outlook, and you can't have both
Whatever the reason, it wrecked his computer to the point that I had to re-format his HDD.
You do what you want. But, after my experience, I can assure you that I have no intention of every installing any msft "trail" software on my PC. I warn as many people as can about this. Msft is not the only company that plays this game. I don't use Symantec anymore either.
You can think whatever you want about my intentions. Say I'm trying to spread FUD, or whatever. But, I promise you, the story is true. And I don't want it to happen to others.
So, if you're using Outlook, you do have something to worry about?
BTW: the story was about my difficulties with Outlook. So, it's not exactly FUD, now is it?
>>There is absolutely no indication that the problems encountered by the submitter will come up again.
It's msft's MO. I believe that msft did the same thing with the upgrade from NT to 2000.
Here is the moral of story: when my brother-in-law installed the trial version of office-2003, it wrecked his computer. He could not access his email. He could not re-install office-2000 - we tried installing over office - it wouldn't work. We also tried removing the trial, still wouldn't work. And we could not install two versions of office. We tried like all hell to re-install office-2000, we couldn't do it.
It's something you might want to think about before you install any msft "trial" software, wouldn't you agree?
The problem was not with *my* computer, it was my brother-in-law's computer. Like most people, my brother-in-law is not all that sophisticated about computers.
No way in hell would I ever install msft "trialware."
>>What happens with Outlook I'm not sure
The story was basically about the difficulties I had with Outlook. So how can you say the whole story is "FUD" while admitting that you don't know what happens with Outlook?
Below is a post about the GPL, from a retired attorney. The post is on a scox message board, but if you read it, you will see that it also applies to the apple case:
_ _m n=35321&pt=msg&mid=2524974
>>
The GPL2 purports to be a contract in perpetuity. Lay your hands on code distributed under the GPL2, and you may use it anyway you want to, consistent with the GPL2. Relatively little new code will be distributed under the GPL3, most of it being old code. For the time being, the vast majority of code included in new releases will be covered by the GPL2.
Now the whining and complaining starts. Either the GPL3 is different from the GPL2, more restrictive, or it is not. If they are the same from a legal point of view, then all the discussion about the GPL3 is a waste of good nap time.
I don't care how many times you repeat it. It didn't work for SCOX or their lawyers and it won't work for the proponents of GPL3. Saying it louder and more often does not make it so.
Release anything with GPL2'd code in it, without an assignment of rights from the original author, and it is covered by the GPL2. Completely. The whole doggone distribution. GPL3 embossed on the cover or not.
Hint to the Open Source fanatics out there: this thing runs both ways. The lovely part of GPL2 is that it goes out and just keeps on giving. At least for RMS, the awful part of the GPL2, is that it goes out and just keeps on giving, even when you don't want it to.
An after-the-fact GPL3 winds up being completely neutralized by inclusion of a single line of code released by its author under the GPL2. With it in the distribution, by the terms of the GPL2, the whole distribution is covered by it.
Lawyers have to be particularly careful about wishful thinking, because it is easy to get caught up in a client's expectations, and lose sight of the fact that there is no merit at all to his claims. Laymen do it all the time. Part of the purpose in having a lawyer there is to bring the client back to a realistic assessment, instead of wasting all his money, and the court's time, on unwinnable cases.
RMS is brilliant, no doubt about it.
At the end of the day, he is still not a lawyer.
_________________________________________________
AllParadox - Retired Attorney, no legal opinons, just my opinions.
http://www1.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=1911&
>>Now Apple owns the copyright to the code. They can take it closed, relicense it, dual license it
Once something is GPL2, it stays GPL2. You can not take it back, even if you own the copyright. And any code you add, is also GPL2.
If Apple entirely re-writes the CUPS system, then Apple can do whatever they want with the licensing.
Compare groklaw.net to the obvious msft shills like Rob Enderle, Dan Lyons, Laura Didio, or Maureen O'Gara.
Groklaw analyzes actual court filings. Those other bozos just rant like idiots, and make one unsubstantiated claim after the next. Groklaw has also proven itself to be *much* more moral than those other smear-campaign stalkers.
IMO: so called "professional journalists" are getting in a wad about being debunked, and out-classed by a bunch of amature bloggers. And that is why we see so many anti-blog articles these days.
I hate to post that, but doesn't it make much more sense?
For years I've have been watching Linux zealots post stuff like: "with msft no longer supporting W2K, everybody will switch to Linux." And I just think: WTF?
If people don't like msft's new offering, they will just stay with msft's old offering. There is absolutely nothing that compels anybody to switch to Linux.
I use Debian myself. I would like to see people switch to Linux, but I don't see it happening. Windows is much more compatible with popular desktop sw/hw. And frankly, I find windows to be much crisper, snappier, and more responsive, than Linux.
Why would an American want to waste his/her time, money, and effort, studying a discipline where he/she would have to compete with $5/hour offshore labor?
Face reality folks, the computer tech career field is a dead in the USA. Sure, there are still some $100K+ developers in Silicon Valley, or NYC: those are the guys with big targets painted on their backs. And the poor fools are too arrogant to even realize it.
When have you ever read about massive layoffs for lawyers or CEOs?
So why are companies jumping through hoops to avoid hiring US workers? I assume everybody has seen that video and article by now?
Msft provided all of the financial backing for the scox-scam. You may have noticed, the pro-scox articles are all written by the usual msft shills: didio, enderle, lyons, etc.
Cancel or Allow?
(Sigh) . . . Allow .