Yes, but so what? If I link their code with GPL'ed code, then my combination must be redistributed in source form. That doesn't affect anybody else's use of Microsoft's code. So, I don't see what their problem with this is.
The point is that you cannot redistribute their code under MS license and apply GPL to it; that would violate MS license and you would have no rights. What MS' point is that they would like to keep the binary-only option open for selling the software. Allowing GPL link would effectively eliminate that option - so, yes, it will have a major effect.
Sure, but I don't see serious implications; it's not like the license obligates you to do anything unless you redistribute.
Actually, I see very serious implications between governing the *use* vs. the redistribution: I could add any usage terms I wanted to to that license, as long as it stays compatible with the MS' original version. I could say by using this software you agree to [insert your favorite EULA restriction]. The MS license makes it especially easy to add such conditions with binary-only distribution, check the license.
I think both are clear. Microsoft's choice is different from the GPL. And that's fine, I think. I actually also think it makes less of a practical difference than one might think: patents are public, so if an important piece of software is covered by patents, people will find out about it and can decide whether they want to use it or not. While patent abuse by contributors is possible, usually a more common threat is unexpected patents coming out of nowhere.
I didn't find MS license very clear on patent issue at all. First, it says you don't have any patent rights other than those explicitly granted by this license. This is kind of deceptive since there are no patent rights explicitly granted by this license, but the license itself grants the rights for use and redistribution. Do I take this as I have the license to use patented software but not redistribute? Do I have the right to redistribute, but actual users are responsible for royalties? None of the above? All of the above? It may be resolved, but I don't find it very clear outright, like GPL.
And, I wish people would stop with - "patents are public" response. I, by no means, am blaming or pointing at you specifically (since you yourself realize some problems posed), but there are severe issues with most, if not all, software patents in these cases. There is no way - absolutely no way - that you would be aware of all existing software patents before you write or modify a piece of code. There is no way in hell you could look up all the relevant patents on any line of code you write or modify. There are a lot of very lame algorithm patents that have been granted (some also reported on/.) that simply restrain you of doing things certain way, however obvious that may seem. It seems like adding "electronic means/method of [insert an obvious activity]" can and is being approved as a patent. I am wondering if a day will come when everyone will have to pay a lawyer to double-check their code to make sure it's reasonably free from existing patents AND patent applications pending at the time (but that's a separate discussion).
So, I'd like any license that I deal with to be clear on this issue - like I said, MS' license is not as clear as GPL from my point of view.
Apple and Plan 9 actually have software that might be useful to open source. I can't think of anything I would want from Microsoft.
Hmm... They could start with MS Office filters and DirectX.
The restriction of not linking with GPL'ed software seems spiteful and a gratuitious incompatibility--there isn't really any commercial or legal interest that that serves (I guess Microsoft's licenses work like their software), but other open source licenses are incompatible with the GPL, so that's not necessarily and issue.
Under the MS license you can redistribute software either in source/binary or binary form only, i.e. you are not obligated to include source code, also allowing you to effectively sell commercial software. If they allowed the GPL compatibility they would lose this feature of the license.
The one statement I paid a some attention to is the beginning phrase:
This license governs use of the accompanying software ("Software"), and your use of the Software constitutes acceptance of this license.
Eh? Use of software means acceptance of the license? This is radically different from most of GPL that covers only redistribution and not use. I imagine this can have some awkward implications on what uses are allowed. E.g., this in conjuction with:
9. That the patent rights, if any, granted in this license only apply to the Software, not to any derivative works you make.
First of all, my reading of this license doesn't grant user any patent rights at all; does this statement? Second, am I allowed to redistribute the patented parts of software when they are included in the derivative works? If MS holds a patent on a piece of code under this license, and I redistribute my derivative work based on the software which also includes the patented code, am I finally liable to MS for patent royalties? Are my customers? I think GPL is more clear on this issue.
But overall, it is a step closer to the OSS. Could this be considered for an OSI approval?
Microsoft's OSes are confusing as hell, with My Computer trying to hide away the drive letters, and then forcing you to go through it to reach the drive of choice. It is the most frustrating part of Windows. Luckily, using \ will take you to the root of the C:\ drive, which makes life easier, though still frustrating when you need to access another device.
I find this whole C:, D:, E:, etc. drives quite confusing and not user friendly. Why does it start from C? Is B: still reserved for the second floppy?/home/username,/dvd,/cdrom,/floppy makes a lot more sense to me.
This is just an example of how he takes Windows as the gold standard, and then tries to hold other environments to that standard. Rarely do they come up with a "better" score. Why? Because if all singers tried to sing and be like Elvis Presley, overall nobody would be better than him.
You say that KDE has never crashed on you but Konqueror has? What's the difference? Were you browsing the web, or a list of files at the time?
The difference is that only one process crashes, others keep on going. There is no effective parent-child relationship to browsing a directory tree and browsing the web when you use Konqueror; Konqueror doesn't even run on its own when KDE desktop is running. Windows is a different story, it runs explorer all the time.
Another point is that yes - Konqueror has crashed on me more than once, let me see - 3 times, but IE has crashed on me more often, seems like every time I use it. So has MS Office, and XP itself - rebooted or dumped memory. There is no way, in my experience, XP should be getting anywhere close to acceptable for stability, much less over KDE. That's my experience.
Is MainActor a commercial Linux video editing application or is this a Suse created application?
It's here. It's a commercial video editing app. It's pretty cool when you know what the hell it is you are doing. As far as I was able to use it was editing frames in movies, but hey, I don't want to give out too many ideas to the goatse.cx guy.
GCC 3.3 is not released yet; are they hoping that it'll be out before their deadline, will they include an unstable 3.3, or is this a typo in the announcement?
In that case, most likely they will include the stable GCC as well as the pre-release, as they have always done, and provide choices to users. SuSE offers a lot more choices and flexibility in their setup than people give them credit for. Consider the selection between 2.2.x and 2.4.x kernels before 2.4 matured and caught on. And, while they do support KDE as their main desktop environment, they have by no means abandoned GNOME either.
The point is that they are a small company with little money and no direction, and were doomed to failure. MS adding money just delayed the inevitable.
Why would MS want to delay Corel going under? Did they invest and support their competitors? Unless they ensured that was Corel's failure would be the definite and only outcome.
It was close to running out of cash, but not yet dead. They tried to diversify, appeal to governments, port all their apps to Linux, etc. Microsoft's strategy in all this was to make sure Corel would die, and it was willing to pay for it. $100 some odd million? Pocket change to guarantee your major competitor's death for MS.
Remember what MS did - cash injection in return to Corel dumping their Linux strategy and signing up for.Net. Yeah, like MS was going to put cash into prospering competition in one of the 2 lines of business where MS actually makes money. Who thought that was going to happen?
MS made sure Corel was on the dying path and did not come up with a last second buzzer-beater to keep going. It is sad to see that this is being allowed by DOJ, especially in light of the fact that MS has been convicted for abusing their monopoly power.
(c) Circumvention for Noninfringing uses - (1) Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, a person who lawfully obtains a copy or phonorecord of a work, or who lawfully receives a transmission of a work, may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to the work or protects a right of a copyright holder under this title if - (A) such act is necessary to make nonifringing use of the work under this title; and (B) copyright holder fails to make publicly available the necessary means to make such noninfringing use without additional cost or burden to such person.
I don't agree with (A) "and" (B); I think it should be (A) *or* (B) there. Why should anyone's fair use be impacted by any "means" that copyright holders may or may not provide? In fact, this word "means" is not defined anywhere. Since when is it *fair use* that everyone has to use the "means" that copyright holders provide for consumption of their content?
They should have a copyright only on content, and, as long as I don't violate any other laws, I should be able to use whatever "means" I want to enjoy that content, whether or not similar "means" already exist from the copyright holders.
Wait a second... IBM lacked the knowledge of operating systems and hardware architecture which is, to this day, still called IBM-compatible?
SCO: "Yes, your honor, they invented the sewing machine, but they don't know how to thread the needle." Judge (to IBM): "Do you guys know how to thread the needle?" IBM: "You betcha." Judge: "Cased dismissed." Bailiff: "Next case is: MPAA vs. SCO." SCO: "WTF?" Judge: "Order in the courtroom!" MPAA: "Your honor, we hereby declare that SCO used and engaged in unlicensed and illegal performance of our copyrighted content." SCO: "WTF?" Judge: "Order!" MPAA: "They made fools of themselves, and then they asked $1 billion in ransom from the biggest software corporation - all this while arguing about some software invented in 1970s; you see, your honor, this directly violates our copyright for unauthorized public performance from our recent Austin Powers movie..." Judge: "Hahahaha! I loved that part..." Judge (turning to SCO): "Why did you guys do this?" SCO: "WTF?" Judge: "OK, I've had enough of this. I hereby order that all intellectual property of SCO be put into public domain effective immediately. I also order that MPAA send me the special feature DVDs of all Austin Powers movies so I can further review the evidence. We'll reconvene in 4 weeks."
On a more serious note, if SCO (then Caldera) themselves distributed Linux and thereby accepted the GPL terms, how can they claim patent rights to any GPLed code? If they did have some patent issues they should have pointed those out then, without agreeing to GPL. On the other hand, if they did not agree to GPL, then they are in gross violation of copyright law and can probably be sued out of existence by copyright holders. EFF not interested?
Features like letting people see stories early or giving them extra karma for money will cheapen and ultimately ruin the site.
Having money doesn't mean you are more intelligent, or have more important things to say.
The U.S. government disagrees with you. Actually, people who have money are, in fact, more intelligent, and do have more important things to say than people who don't. I say, +1 bonus for the "special interests".
I'm starting to agree with the people who say patents are bad in general. This is utter idiocy.
In this particular case, though, I don't know what extra protection does a patent give them. That icon (as designed) is or can be already protected by copyright, I assume, which lasts, let me see, forever.
What's the point of getting these design patents? Or, even better, what is the point of awarding ornamental design patents, other than a source of funding for the USPTO?
Ext3 is very stable. I've used it for over a year on my laptop and have never lost anything
Being "stable" on your laptop means nothing. The question is about high-end Unix servers, very heavy load, mission critical complex apps.
XFS (SGI) and JFS (IBM). XFS has been there for years and is not exactly what I'd call experimental stuff...
Obviously those file systems have been around, but their implementations are still "experimental" under Linux; even though they have been working on implementations for some time now.
... this can be extrememly expensive for Microsoft if they are then forced to change the name of Windows as they've spent untold bucks on establishing the Windows name.
The name of the product is "Microsoft Windows", not just "Windows". And I don't think they would consider changing that at all.
On the other hand, if Lindows were to lose, MS could go on to claim trademarks on words like "Access", "Word", "Office", etc. thereby denying anyone the use of these terms in connection with software applications. These are, in every regard, generic terms and they should not be able to trademark them.
If the code is illegally leaked, it is very easy for M$ to accuse other products (future Linux apps?) of using illegally acquired trade secrets.
Usually, once a trade secret is leaked, it's not a secret anymore. I'm not sure MS would have much of an argument in that case; they should have been more careful with their secrets, e.g. not trust them to a communist governemnt maybe. And any protection that they may have, and I don't know of any under international law and treaties, would be against Chinese government.
You actually could have a better time proving that DVDs of movies are knowingly and willingly sold to Chinese distributors by MPAA, many times before even it's shown on screen in most of the world. Why? Grounds for increased legislation against "piracy", read more control over consumers and technology.
But on a serious note, whats the chance theyll ever do anything with it?
Most likely nothing. When they type './configure', 'make', and 'make install', and it doesn't compile, then they'll just go back to 'make menuconfig'. Well, actually, they may sell the CD to the street vendors.
Hmm. Using a spoofed (or at least, invalid) e-mail address? As most FTP servers allow anonymous access if you "Please provide e-mail address as password", I'd call that gaining access under false pretences.
I wonder if anyone has implemented such a feature where anonymous FTP access is gained after e-mail has been verified? Like those for some account registration - server sends an e-mail to the supplied e-mail address and gives a random username/password valid for first login, say, next 30 minutes. Somewhat inconvenient but could cut down on abuse such as this one by BSA.
Well, at least they would have to give their e-mail address, and in that e-mail you could specify that by logging in user agrees to use this service for such and such purpose, any abuse is strictly prohibited and may result in abuser responsible for bandwidth and related fees. In the U.S., you could even throw in a DMCA threat.
It would have been more of a story if the BSA started trying to find out which company owns OpenOffice, or just blindly pressed on with their accusations... but they didn't.
Don't worry. They still have time, they've got another thing coming when they discover StarOffice and KOffice.
Their incentive to invest is that their privileged position can be stripped away via government action.
That's a theoretical view. In reality, which government? The government that they pay to elect? The article also says that Congress is in part reluctant to be harsher on them because they provide a good share of local employment in all areas. The government has a lot of reasons to keep Baby Bells happy, and they are not competing, they are uniting to fight against competition.
It's entirely up to them what they do with their equipment.
Actually it's not entirely up to them. They were, and in many regards still are, government regulated monopolies. Lot of effort has been put in deregulation and sparking competition in the industry and services they provide, some of them successful, some of them not because of various "special" big-money interests involved.
They are the crybabies against competition. I want competition. I don't agree with FCC's decision to allow them to be monopolies (in their respective areas) for DSL services; especially if you consider that in order to convince the FCC to make this decision in their favor, these companies "promised" in return to start upgrading their equipment and provide better and faster service.
From the article:
The committee, which is generally sympathetic to the Baby Bells, also criticized the local phone companies for their failure to invest. Several congressmen noted that the Baby Bells had received a lot of what they had asked for since the 1996 Telecommunications Act but were still not making the investments that they had promised they would make.
And now they even refuse to do that, but they get to keep the monopoly and high prices. What's their incentive to invest? There is no competition.
Whoopty do. Pop in a linux boot floppy with ntfs support and do the same thing
I thought that one point that was made was that you could use the win2k recovery console on XP without having to reboot it. That is at least slightly different.
If any user was in possession of this recovery console, he or she could defeat the XP's multi-user environment while XP is still running. Moreover, it proves that it is possible for someone to design a tool that effectively bypasses XP's multi-user security *without* having to boot into a different OS and mount partitions from there.
Obviously, the risk is not as bad as some articles depicted, but it's not a non-issue either.
So, in addition to downloading a list of all possible patches for all possible applications and all possible hardware configurations (pretty big list), it also has to download some sort of ruleset that goes around all of those to actually figure out locally what udpates are available and necessary. That's a lot of bandwidth.
Actually, no need to download all patches and updates, just metadata about them. Client OS then can easily determine what updates it needs and present a choice to the user. It is actually less bandwidth this way because you don't have to transmit the information about your complete system, including 3rd party apps to MS. MS will only provide metadata about *updates*, not a metadata of a complete system.
In any case, this metadata transmission is not substantial, much less so if compression is used.
Hello!? How do they know what patches you need if they can't look at your system and tell their servers what you've already got.
Simple. Server sends client the metadata of updates in a compressed format; client reads the metadata and decides what it needs to update, then presents a choice to the user. No information is needed by MS. That's not what's happening though, obviously.
In the future, look for MS digging through your documents and music files to "check" that they are compatible with the updates being performed. I am betting message will say the same thing "No information is being transmitted."
Good luck with relying on marketing and PR for your privacy and security.
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Yes, but so what? If I link their code with GPL'ed code, then my combination must be redistributed in source form. That doesn't affect anybody else's use of Microsoft's code. So, I don't see what their problem with this is.
/.) that simply restrain you of doing things certain way, however obvious that may seem. It seems like adding "electronic means/method of [insert an obvious activity]" can and is being approved as a patent. I am wondering if a day will come when everyone will have to pay a lawyer to double-check their code to make sure it's reasonably free from existing patents AND patent applications pending at the time (but that's a separate discussion).
The point is that you cannot redistribute their code under MS license and apply GPL to it; that would violate MS license and you would have no rights. What MS' point is that they would like to keep the binary-only option open for selling the software. Allowing GPL link would effectively eliminate that option - so, yes, it will have a major effect.
Sure, but I don't see serious implications; it's not like the license obligates you to do anything unless you redistribute.
Actually, I see very serious implications between governing the *use* vs. the redistribution: I could add any usage terms I wanted to to that license, as long as it stays compatible with the MS' original version. I could say by using this software you agree to [insert your favorite EULA restriction]. The MS license makes it especially easy to add such conditions with binary-only distribution, check the license.
I think both are clear. Microsoft's choice is different from the GPL. And that's fine, I think. I actually also think it makes less of a practical difference than one might think: patents are public, so if an important piece of software is covered by patents, people will find out about it and can decide whether they want to use it or not. While patent abuse by contributors is possible, usually a more common threat is unexpected patents coming out of nowhere.
I didn't find MS license very clear on patent issue at all. First, it says you don't have any patent rights other than those explicitly granted by this license. This is kind of deceptive since there are no patent rights explicitly granted by this license, but the license itself grants the rights for use and redistribution. Do I take this as I have the license to use patented software but not redistribute? Do I have the right to redistribute, but actual users are responsible for royalties? None of the above? All of the above? It may be resolved, but I don't find it very clear outright, like GPL.
And, I wish people would stop with - "patents are public" response. I, by no means, am blaming or pointing at you specifically (since you yourself realize some problems posed), but there are severe issues with most, if not all, software patents in these cases. There is no way - absolutely no way - that you would be aware of all existing software patents before you write or modify a piece of code. There is no way in hell you could look up all the relevant patents on any line of code you write or modify. There are a lot of very lame algorithm patents that have been granted (some also reported on
So, I'd like any license that I deal with to be clear on this issue - like I said, MS' license is not as clear as GPL from my point of view.
Apple and Plan 9 actually have software that might be useful to open source. I can't think of anything I would want from Microsoft.
Hmm... They could start with MS Office filters and DirectX.
The restriction of not linking with GPL'ed software seems spiteful and a gratuitious incompatibility--there isn't really any commercial or legal interest that that serves (I guess Microsoft's licenses work like their software), but other open source licenses are incompatible with the GPL, so that's not necessarily and issue.
Under the MS license you can redistribute software either in source/binary or binary form only, i.e. you are not obligated to include source code, also allowing you to effectively sell commercial software. If they allowed the GPL compatibility they would lose this feature of the license.
The one statement I paid a some attention to is the beginning phrase:
This license governs use of the accompanying software ("Software"), and your use of the Software constitutes acceptance of this license.
Eh? Use of software means acceptance of the license? This is radically different from most of GPL that covers only redistribution and not use. I imagine this can have some awkward implications on what uses are allowed. E.g., this in conjuction with:
9. That the patent rights, if any, granted in this license only apply to the Software, not to any derivative works you make.
First of all, my reading of this license doesn't grant user any patent rights at all; does this statement? Second, am I allowed to redistribute the patented parts of software when they are included in the derivative works? If MS holds a patent on a piece of code under this license, and I redistribute my derivative work based on the software which also includes the patented code, am I finally liable to MS for patent royalties? Are my customers? I think GPL is more clear on this issue.
But overall, it is a step closer to the OSS. Could this be considered for an OSI approval?
Microsoft's OSes are confusing as hell, with My Computer trying to hide away the drive letters, and then forcing you to go through it to reach the drive of choice. It is the most frustrating part of Windows. Luckily, using \ will take you to the root of the C:\ drive, which makes life easier, though still frustrating when you need to access another device.
/home/username, /dvd, /cdrom, /floppy makes a lot more sense to me.
I find this whole C:, D:, E:, etc. drives quite confusing and not user friendly. Why does it start from C? Is B: still reserved for the second floppy?
This is just an example of how he takes Windows as the gold standard, and then tries to hold other environments to that standard. Rarely do they come up with a "better" score. Why? Because if all singers tried to sing and be like Elvis Presley, overall nobody would be better than him.
You say that KDE has never crashed on you but Konqueror has? What's the difference? Were you browsing the web, or a list of files at the time?
The difference is that only one process crashes, others keep on going. There is no effective parent-child relationship to browsing a directory tree and browsing the web when you use Konqueror; Konqueror doesn't even run on its own when KDE desktop is running. Windows is a different story, it runs explorer all the time.
Another point is that yes - Konqueror has crashed on me more than once, let me see - 3 times, but IE has crashed on me more often, seems like every time I use it. So has MS Office, and XP itself - rebooted or dumped memory. There is no way, in my experience, XP should be getting anywhere close to acceptable for stability, much less over KDE. That's my experience.
Is MainActor a commercial Linux video editing application or is this a Suse created application?
It's here. It's a commercial video editing app. It's pretty cool when you know what the hell it is you are doing. As far as I was able to use it was editing frames in movies, but hey, I don't want to give out too many ideas to the goatse.cx guy.
GCC 3.3 is not released yet; are they hoping that it'll be out before their deadline, will they include an unstable 3.3, or is this a typo in the announcement?
In that case, most likely they will include the stable GCC as well as the pre-release, as they have always done, and provide choices to users. SuSE offers a lot more choices and flexibility in their setup than people give them credit for. Consider the selection between 2.2.x and 2.4.x kernels before 2.4 matured and caught on. And, while they do support KDE as their main desktop environment, they have by no means abandoned GNOME either.
The point is that they are a small company with little money and no direction, and were doomed to failure. MS adding money just delayed the inevitable.
Why would MS want to delay Corel going under? Did they invest and support their competitors? Unless they ensured that was Corel's failure would be the definite and only outcome.
Corel was pretty much dead as it was.
.Net. Yeah, like MS was going to put cash into prospering competition in one of the 2 lines of business where MS actually makes money. Who thought that was going to happen?
It was close to running out of cash, but not yet dead. They tried to diversify, appeal to governments, port all their apps to Linux, etc. Microsoft's strategy in all this was to make sure Corel would die, and it was willing to pay for it. $100 some odd million? Pocket change to guarantee your major competitor's death for MS.
Remember what MS did - cash injection in return to Corel dumping their Linux strategy and signing up for
MS made sure Corel was on the dying path and did not come up with a last second buzzer-beater to keep going. It is sad to see that this is being allowed by DOJ, especially in light of the fact that MS has been convicted for abusing their monopoly power.
From page 8:
(c) Circumvention for Noninfringing uses -
(1) Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, a person who lawfully obtains a copy or phonorecord of a work, or who lawfully receives a transmission of a work, may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to the work or protects a right of a copyright holder under this title if -
(A) such act is necessary to make nonifringing use of the work under this title; and
(B) copyright holder fails to make publicly available the necessary means to make such noninfringing use without additional cost or burden to such person.
I don't agree with (A) "and" (B); I think it should be (A) *or* (B) there. Why should anyone's fair use be impacted by any "means" that copyright holders may or may not provide? In fact, this word "means" is not defined anywhere. Since when is it *fair use* that everyone has to use the "means" that copyright holders provide for consumption of their content?
They should have a copyright only on content, and, as long as I don't violate any other laws, I should be able to use whatever "means" I want to enjoy that content, whether or not similar "means" already exist from the copyright holders.
If IBM lacked it, which I doubt, I guess ...
Wait a second... IBM lacked the knowledge of operating systems and hardware architecture which is, to this day, still called IBM-compatible?
SCO: "Yes, your honor, they invented the sewing machine, but they don't know how to thread the needle."
Judge (to IBM): "Do you guys know how to thread the needle?"
IBM: "You betcha."
Judge: "Cased dismissed."
Bailiff: "Next case is: MPAA vs. SCO."
SCO: "WTF?"
Judge: "Order in the courtroom!"
MPAA: "Your honor, we hereby declare that SCO used and engaged in unlicensed and illegal performance of our copyrighted content."
SCO: "WTF?"
Judge: "Order!"
MPAA: "They made fools of themselves, and then they asked $1 billion in ransom from the biggest software corporation - all this while arguing about some software invented in 1970s; you see, your honor, this directly violates our copyright for unauthorized public performance from our recent Austin Powers movie..."
Judge: "Hahahaha! I loved that part..."
Judge (turning to SCO): "Why did you guys do this?"
SCO: "WTF?"
Judge: "OK, I've had enough of this. I hereby order that all intellectual property of SCO be put into public domain effective immediately. I also order that MPAA send me the special feature DVDs of all Austin Powers movies so I can further review the evidence. We'll reconvene in 4 weeks."
On a more serious note, if SCO (then Caldera) themselves distributed Linux and thereby accepted the GPL terms, how can they claim patent rights to any GPLed code? If they did have some patent issues they should have pointed those out then, without agreeing to GPL. On the other hand, if they did not agree to GPL, then they are in gross violation of copyright law and can probably be sued out of existence by copyright holders. EFF not interested?
Features like letting people see stories early or giving them extra karma for money will cheapen and ultimately ruin the site.
Having money doesn't mean you are more intelligent, or have more important things to say.
The U.S. government disagrees with you. Actually, people who have money are, in fact, more intelligent, and do have more important things to say than people who don't. I say, +1 bonus for the "special interests".
I'm starting to agree with the people who say patents are bad in general. This is utter idiocy.
In this particular case, though, I don't know what extra protection does a patent give them. That icon (as designed) is or can be already protected by copyright, I assume, which lasts, let me see, forever.
What's the point of getting these design patents? Or, even better, what is the point of awarding ornamental design patents, other than a source of funding for the USPTO?
... until AOL pull their act together in terms of marketing and security, no corporate IT department in it's right mind would deploy their stuff.
You don't mean "marketing and security", what you really mean is "marketing the security"; MS has been very successful at the latter.
Ext3 is very stable. I've used it for over a year on my laptop and have never lost anything
Being "stable" on your laptop means nothing. The question is about high-end Unix servers, very heavy load, mission critical complex apps.
XFS (SGI) and JFS (IBM). XFS has been there for years and is not exactly what I'd call experimental stuff...
Obviously those file systems have been around, but their implementations are still "experimental" under Linux; even though they have been working on implementations for some time now.
... this can be extrememly expensive for Microsoft if they are then forced to change the name of Windows as they've spent untold bucks on establishing the Windows name.
The name of the product is "Microsoft Windows", not just "Windows". And I don't think they would consider changing that at all.
On the other hand, if Lindows were to lose, MS could go on to claim trademarks on words like "Access", "Word", "Office", etc. thereby denying anyone the use of these terms in connection with software applications. These are, in every regard, generic terms and they should not be able to trademark them.
Try laptopparts.com here. Those are brand name displays, search found 903 of them, and no way to sort by price.
If the code is illegally leaked, it is very easy for M$ to accuse other products (future Linux apps?) of using illegally acquired trade secrets.
Usually, once a trade secret is leaked, it's not a secret anymore. I'm not sure MS would have much of an argument in that case; they should have been more careful with their secrets, e.g. not trust them to a communist governemnt maybe. And any protection that they may have, and I don't know of any under international law and treaties, would be against Chinese government.
You actually could have a better time proving that DVDs of movies are knowingly and willingly sold to Chinese distributors by MPAA, many times before even it's shown on screen in most of the world. Why? Grounds for increased legislation against "piracy", read more control over consumers and technology.
But on a serious note, whats the chance theyll ever do anything with it?
Most likely nothing. When they type './configure', 'make', and 'make install', and it doesn't compile, then they'll just go back to 'make menuconfig'. Well, actually, they may sell the CD to the street vendors.
Hmm. Using a spoofed (or at least, invalid) e-mail address?
As most FTP servers allow anonymous access if you "Please provide e-mail address as password", I'd call that gaining access under false pretences.
I wonder if anyone has implemented such a feature where anonymous FTP access is gained after e-mail has been verified? Like those for some account registration - server sends an e-mail to the supplied e-mail address and gives a random username/password valid for first login, say, next 30 minutes. Somewhat inconvenient but could cut down on abuse such as this one by BSA.
Well, at least they would have to give their e-mail address, and in that e-mail you could specify that by logging in user agrees to use this service for such and such purpose, any abuse is strictly prohibited and may result in abuser responsible for bandwidth and related fees. In the U.S., you could even throw in a DMCA threat.
IANAL and maybe I'm on the wrong track here.
It would have been more of a story if the BSA started trying to find out which company owns OpenOffice, or just blindly pressed on with their accusations... but they didn't.
Don't worry. They still have time, they've got another thing coming when they discover StarOffice and KOffice.
Their incentive to invest is that their privileged position can be stripped away via government action.
That's a theoretical view. In reality, which government? The government that they pay to elect? The article also says that Congress is in part reluctant to be harsher on them because they provide a good share of local employment in all areas. The government has a lot of reasons to keep Baby Bells happy, and they are not competing, they are uniting to fight against competition.
It's entirely up to them what they do with their equipment.
Actually it's not entirely up to them. They were, and in many regards still are, government regulated monopolies. Lot of effort has been put in deregulation and sparking competition in the industry and services they provide, some of them successful, some of them not because of various "special" big-money interests involved.
They are the crybabies against competition. I want competition. I don't agree with FCC's decision to allow them to be monopolies (in their respective areas) for DSL services; especially if you consider that in order to convince the FCC to make this decision in their favor, these companies "promised" in return to start upgrading their equipment and provide better and faster service.
From the article:
The committee, which is generally sympathetic to the Baby Bells, also criticized the local phone companies for their failure to invest. Several congressmen noted that the Baby Bells had received a lot of what they had asked for since the 1996 Telecommunications Act but were still not making the investments that they had promised they would make.
And now they even refuse to do that, but they get to keep the monopoly and high prices. What's their incentive to invest? There is no competition.
Whoopty do. Pop in a linux boot floppy with ntfs support and do the same thing
I thought that one point that was made was that you could use the win2k recovery console on XP without having to reboot it. That is at least slightly different.
If any user was in possession of this recovery console, he or she could defeat the XP's multi-user environment while XP is still running. Moreover, it proves that it is possible for someone to design a tool that effectively bypasses XP's multi-user security *without* having to boot into a different OS and mount partitions from there.
Obviously, the risk is not as bad as some articles depicted, but it's not a non-issue either.
So, in addition to downloading a list of all possible patches for all possible applications and all possible hardware configurations (pretty big list), it also has to download some sort of ruleset that goes around all of those to actually figure out locally what udpates are available and necessary. That's a lot of bandwidth.
Actually, no need to download all patches and updates, just metadata about them. Client OS then can easily determine what updates it needs and present a choice to the user. It is actually less bandwidth this way because you don't have to transmit the information about your complete system, including 3rd party apps to MS. MS will only provide metadata about *updates*, not a metadata of a complete system.
In any case, this metadata transmission is not substantial, much less so if compression is used.
Hello!? How do they know what patches you need if they can't look at your system and tell their servers what you've already got.
Simple. Server sends client the metadata of updates in a compressed format; client reads the metadata and decides what it needs to update, then presents a choice to the user. No information is needed by MS. That's not what's happening though, obviously.
In the future, look for MS digging through your documents and music files to "check" that they are compatible with the updates being performed. I am betting message will say the same thing "No information is being transmitted."
Good luck with relying on marketing and PR for your privacy and security.