Until there exists standard applications that are THE SAME on both platforms. Then there will be a possibility of setting up systems running Linux. Until then, putting those types of systems together will be tough to do.
This indeed is the reason that I included Yahoo and AIM as being available on Linux - while not necessarily exact matches, they are sufficiently close that a Windows user could navigate them - starting with recognizing the program icons. While MSN functionality is available in other applications, unless the MSN messenger can run under WINE (which Microsoft both fails to authorize and actively modifies code to prevent) there is no look-and-function-alike client.
In the meanwhile, running Mozilla on the Windows boxes should help pave the way for the users:)
Here is one thing that might hold you up... IRC, Yahoo! Messenger, Aol Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger. These are all used on public access machines.
Since clients for IRC, Yahoo! mess!, AIM and ICQ are all available under Linux, these clients are a non-issue. I doubt that the absence of MSN Messenger will be a breaking point (at least, not beyond not being an MS box).
Do you really think Microsoft would again start a practice that they were previously prosecuted for and for which they signed a consent decree?
In a word, Yes. Or in this case, instead of charging for every machine, they may be charging for every bios that Windows XP witll recognize as being 'no activation required'.
Do you think that Microsoft will obey the intent of a judgment as long as a single weaselwording workaround exists?
I wonder whether Microsoft even had to make a single concession to Dell for Dell to leave this 'feature' to them, or if Dell was simply glad to give up responsibility. (Yet another reason I won't buy a Dell.) And when the OS does video memory allocation, the "legacy memory" is only used to show boot splash screens and BSODs, and is otherwise wasted - so for the Windows-centric view there's no need for adjusting it.
But this isn't the type of BIOS problem that I'm afraid of - this is 'only' a chipset support issue so far, since Linux, or at least the XFree86 drivers so far, don't support the chipset's dynamic allocation yet.
This isn't completely a Dell issue, though. Even if the BIOS did have this capability, the chipset is limited to 8MB of 'Legacy memory' allocation, quite a bit less than the chip can actually use in its extended memory modes, and at the moment, there are NO linux drivers for the i830 chipset that know how to use the extended memory capability - though there will probably be some specific drivers for it eventually.
No, this is just another facet - maybe another step - in differentiating 'Windows' machines from 'Commodity' machines, though it needs to be addressed by the Linux driver developer community somehow, or it will be another big chunk of the 'Linux can't replace the desktop' strategy simply because of the volume that Dell sells.
It's pretty easy to explain what this entails and why this is happening - I'll make a bet that the XP installs that Dell ships after the cutoff date won't need to be 'activated' through Microsoft, but will recognize the machine and bios as a 'licensed platform'. This effectively means that the OS license is built into the machine - so so Microsoft won't let them ship them without paying Microsoft.
Ok, so maybe Dell will make a few machines ('n-series') that don't run Windows - but they're now a completely different machine. The previous court order stating that Microsoft cannot charge for every machine sold (regardless of OS) has now been circumvented.
That's enough of a step backwards to behaviour already found to be illegal on it's own, but this seems to be the first step towards making manufacturers have to distinguish "Microsoft ready' machines from OS agnostic machines.
A few more steps like this, differentiating Microsoft machines from the others, and it's a sure bet that the commodity hardware - 'Microsoft OS ready' machines - are going to be the much vaunted 'Trusted platform' - complete with a bios that will REFUSE to boot anything except a Microsoft OS.
Yes, I'm paranoid about Microsoft's intentions. but I suspect that I'm not being paranoid enough.
b) everything is passed by reference - no recursion whatsoever
I hope that was menat as two separate, unrelated items. I wouldn't want you to be unnecessarily accused of overgeneralizing - but most old Fortrans allow recursion, you just need local variables to pass as arguments (or even using calculated values in most versions). Pass by reference in itself does NOT imply no recursion. Ancient lame compilers that statically allocate the argument data, however.......
"this law ultimately serves no purpose that couldn't be served by enforcing stiffer penalties on thieves."
"It's apparent purpose is to present the impression of a government "doing something". With passing redundant laws being a prefered option to something like more police..."
It WILL have the effect of cutting out the 'third party' number changers (or at least, making them much harder to find). Right now, Alfie can steal a cell phone - but can't sell it to Bertie because the IMEI number will show up on the 'stolen' list. So he take it to Clarence, who, no questions asked, changes the IMEI number, then sells it to Bertie as a legitimate phone that cannot be proven to be the stolen one. Or Alfie can now use the phone himself, since there is no longer an easy way to prove that the phone is the one that was stolen.
The existence of legal number changing services in various markets (not necessarily public) is essential to the small scale muggers swiping cell phones - the 'adapter kits' and PC software to do this doesn't seem very likely to be actually owned by the individual muggers - anyone with the capability is probably going to sell it - currently legally - as a service instead. (Obviously, the number changing services would make an excellent place for the police to conduct a 'sting' operation.)
Right now, Clarence can't be convicted of anything because he's only performing a legal service. Making that service illegal puts Clarence out of business, or convicted for running such a business, and it eliminates the believability of the defence that he didn't know the phone was stolen, so he can be convicted as an accessory to theft along with Alfie.
So what kind of patents for which no prior art can be found could possibly exist for ADO.Net or WinForms?!
This is unfortunately irrelevant to almost all open source developments (with the possible exception of IBM, who patent everything themselves). It doesn't matter that the patents are unjustified or can be invalidated - there is no way an open source development can afford to go to U.S. court against Microsofts seemingly bottomless legal coffers to prove it. (In another country that implements 'loser pays' for the cost of going to court this may be less of a limitation.) The fact that someone is able to develop in another country where those patents can't be used to block development notwithstanding, if Microsoft decides that Mono or a similar development is a threat, then they WILL use those patents to try to intimidate anyone involved with it - customers, distributors, support organizations, developers - who has any U.S. interests whatsoever. If indeed they do so, then there are very few significant uses for the.net functionality that will not be affected.
It may be only FUD, but Microsoft are masters of successful (and possibly even legally sanctioned) FUD, and few corporate IT critters can afford to ignore it.
Oh, and I fully expect that the.Net API and JIT compiled runtime (as opposed to.net languages such as C-hashed) will be the only API for some future multi-platform OS - so they will try to obfuscate the necessary details even more than they have succeeded (intentionally or otherwise) in doing so on the Windows API so far.
I would get very worried about this 'public forum' where apparently nobody outside the Hollywood and system builder crowd has heard about it. (Is it not even on the Slashdot main page - with so few comments, how could it be?)
All it takes is for Hollywood/Hollings to pack the forum with supporters of the CBDTPA, and the questions that the forum is supposed to answer are NOT going to be appropriate.
Of course, the topic "The effectiveness of efforts to pursue technical standards or solutions that are designed to provide a more predictable and secure environment for digital transmission of copyrighted material" is probably going to emphasize "piracy" aka exercising fair use such as making a tape of a TV show.
I can just see the CBDTPA supporters claiming that "Current consumer attitude towards online entertainment" is strongly supportive of DRM, and that "Major obstacles facing an open commercial exchange of digital content" are "uncontrolled software platforms" - in other words, the GPL and open source software.
And I'm very much afraid that the conclusion will be that "What a future framework for success might entail" will be the CBDTPA + DMCA
Yes, the changes could be implemented by the auto manufacturers - and with the economy of scale, it wouldn't be that much difference in cost compared to the price of the vehicle. Right now, though, unless forced to either by demand (unlikely) or legislation, the manufacturers will only produce the absolute lowest cost designs.
As for safety - a properly designed fram is safe regardless of the material, and aluminum alloys are stronger than steel for the same weight. The most dangerous part of most SUV designs is the tendency to roll over, anyway - and an aluminum body instead of steel would help considerably in reducing that tendency. (The center of gravity would be lower.)
The real problem is incentive. Right now, there is NO incentive for manufacturers to improve the mileage on SUVs of any kind. (They don't have to meet the EPA/DOT mandated mileage figures, and are actually a cash cow for the manufacturers - they are priced many K$ above the real cost, and people buy them regardless.)
Maybe there's more information somewhere else, but, from what I did NOT see in the articles:
First off: Is there any proof whatsoever that being listed in SPEWS is in any way incorrect or libelous? Certainly it is not illegal, even in AU to add an IP block to that address as being friendly to either a known spammer or a known spamvertized site. After all, SPEWS bills itself as being opinion that nobody has to follow.
Unless being added to SPEWS has some form of illegality, what basis is there for suing Mr McNichol for expressing an opinion?
Secondly, if SPEWS is operated secretly, then how can anybody prove that this Joseph McNichol was responsible for them being blocked?
Is there some provable connection between him and SPEWS somehow?
It would certainly seem likely that sufficient people on the receiving end of the spam would have complained sooner or later such that SPEWS would put them onto the blacklist.
And even so - don't SPEWS say in their FAQ that they don't block sites based on complaints? That they depend on the knowledge of the *unknown* people that set up the lists directly? That it requires repeated offenses before a company is considered a 'Known Spammer'?
So where is the evidence - not apparent anywhere in anything I have seen of this matter - that there is any actual connection between Mr. McNichol and SPEWS?
If either of these proofs is missing, then this should be dismissed by the first competent judge in any jurisdiction.
No, it shouldn't be stopped at the border for patent infringement. CSS was never patented (it's a no-longer-secret trade secret), and I believe MPEG playback can be accomplished without breaking any patents (DVDs don't use MPEG-4).
But I have no doubt that it WOULD be stopped as an 'illegal circumvention device' for DMCA purposes.
Well, both buckyballs and diamond have carbon-carbon bonds:) (admittedly the fullerenes have bonds more similar to graphite than diamond).
But the article just says that the buckyballs are the raw material - and they WILL provide carbon atoms which, at the surface, are arranged very similarly to diamond. Supposedly the diamond crystals have only about 1000 atoms - so we're talking about a crystal that has been formed from as few as 30 buckyballs. Suppose they only use the surface from one side of a buckyball to build up the crystals - we're still talking about being able to build the crystals layer by layer, using the buckyballs to supply an entire layer at a time.
I suspect that doping (similar to P or N doping in silicon) the diamond can be done by putting the dopants inside the buckyballs to accomplish a MUCH more even distribution of dopant atoms than can be accomplished by diffusion into silicon.
This would undoubtedly be a good thing - but I can see two things that should go along with that.
First, Microsoft should be prohibited from selling any applications that use any API functionallity that has not been documented and released for a given period - 6 months is probably adequate. (This prohibition, rendered in sufficiently broad legalese, should also prevent the applications from either modifying the OS or even determining what the OS is - only testing if published functions exist.) It would also need to make sure that things like the Word viewer applet did NOT get 'integrated' into the OS, but used the published APIs.
Second, Microsoft needs to be deprived of any form of software patent DMCA claim, or copyright enforcement that could be used to prevent a competing product from using those APIs. Publishing their APIs must include the free (as in beer) and unrestricted use of the API.
Microsoft is welcome to keep their proprietary code for implementing and using the APIs, but they must not be allowed to either block anyone's client functions (be they local applications, file access, or remote procedures/objects) that uses the documented APIs from working with their OS, or prevent their own products from working with any OS that can provide the published APIs.
release and freeze the file formats
Freezing the file formats would NOT be a good thing - aside from the valid complaint that Microsoft would have about losing the 'Freedom to innovate' - it would also be innefective, since 'bug fixes' where data is munged 'unintentionally' would be bound to happen. Releasing full documentation on all of the application's file formats in use (including those for future version) would indeed be useful - but I doubt that Microsoft could comply 100% if they wanted too. (After all, even they messed up file compatibility between various versions of Word.) MSWord users still need to be educated not to send MSWord 'native format' attachements everywhere - save as XML or HTML, save as TEXT, even RTF - these formats at least are understood.
<RANT>
Microsoft HAS a monopoly, they have abused the power - these were the findings of fact, which are not at question in the case - what right do they have to claim that the remedies should only prevent them from doing what they did in the past? Certainly, if an entity murders Mr. Drdos with an axe, and smothered Mr. Netscape with a pillow, the punishment should prevent all future murders, but Microsoft seems to be arguing that they should only be banned from using axes and pillows, while they can keep on using assault rifles, grenades, and small thermonuclear devices on whoever they choose.
</RANT>
No, they are many computers running programs that implement protocols.
Protocols can't catch viruses.
True. Unfortunately, the Kazaa program installs more than one protocol handler - one is the file sharing protocol itself, and another is a 'distributed computing' facility that allows (theoretically only the Kazaa servers, but...) remote control of the machine. Compromising this functionality would allow distributing malware through the entire network.
Now if you're talkinga 'bout attacking specific flaws in Kazaa client software, or Gnutella software, then so be it - but that's not the network!
Well, if you infect all the machines that make up a network using a flaw in the code that creates that network, I'd have to say that the network is infected. And if there is an attack that works on any client, then the first machine compromised already knows the addresses of more machines... worm code that uses the network topology (which is NOT the protocol) could then propagate to the entire network - potentially millions of machines, dwarfing the scale of even the 'code red' worm.
And if that's not effectively spreading through the network, I don't know what would be.
Moderate this fool back to 1.
The parent of your post is not the fool - but you definitely failed to understand the post.
But that client patch is Warforge junk. How does it pertain to Tim Jung (the ISP) and the bnetd project?
That's exactly what I meant by 'Wrong target' - it seems from the complaint that Vivendi/Blizzard is trying to hit the bnetd project with a complaint that appears to be based on code that I would expect to find in that patch, not in the bnetd server.
The only connection that I can see is that the patch would be useless without the presence of bnetd servers.
I haven't seen what patches were distributed on the site that Vivendi/Blizzard is attacking, but there are two separate items available on the 'net.
The first is the bnetd daemon itself. This is the code that has been created by reverse engineering the protocols, since the server code has never been published.
The second is the patch that allows a user with their newest authentication tricks (that require the server to authenticate itself) to bypass said checks and use the the bnetd servers.
Vivendi/Blizzard claim that the code that matches their client code is part of the server - Unless this is some very low level link formatting (in which case similar functions will result in similar code) this seems to be unlikely - even if the client-side patch is somewhere in the bnetd tree.
The only real substance to the complaint appears to be that the 'client code' has been used - but this should only apply to the game patch, not to the bnetd daemon/server itself. And last I knew, the bnetd website itself did NOT include that patch.
I can see that Vivendi could have some case against a patch that replaced an entire file - though that argument would be invalidated if the patch was distributed as a binary patch to the games own code.
I may be wrong about what was on the website - or on Sourceforge - or could it be that Vivendi is not above trying to manufacture evidence?
You may still be able to get a Cirque 'glide-pad' touchpad for a mouse - while it has buttons, you can use a tap on the pad as a click, and re-assign the buttons to different actions (such as cut and paste). Under Windows, the drivers provide the 'click' throught the PC squeaker - but this can be turned off.
I haven't seen any for sale for a few years now, though. (On the other hand, I have several, and NONE of them have failed in years of every day use - though the touch surfaces are all well polished and slightly concave now. They're the most reliable mouse I've ever encountered.)
The THEMIS thermal infrared and visible imaging spectrometer aboard the Odyssey spacecraft successfully turned on today and started its mapping mission.
According to the linked article, the THEMIS imager was turned on back on Nov 2, last year, and had already produced a number of images. I suspect that you mean that they're now at the point where they can turn it on and leave it operating on a regular basis. Or at least, that they are really considering the spacecraft itself ready to start mapping.
The only additional information I can find is on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft site that indicates that they haven't even finished calibration yet, but does state (or misstate?) that the THEMIS camera system was turned on today. It also states that there are other instruments (the gamma ray spectrometer at least) that were turned on for apparently the first time today.
The esteemed fundamentalist leader died today, after being struck by a bolt of lighning.
"It must have been humiliating for him" one of his disciples said after the incident. "After all of these years calling for divine wrath to strike others, it appears that he has been struck down in such a fashion himself."
A large transport aircraft was seen in the vicinity at around the time of the strike, but was apparently undamaged. Some people have also reported that, for some reason, there was a salty taste in the air immediately after the strike.
Slashdot Mirror
In the meanwhile, running Mozilla on the Windows boxes should help pave the way for the users
Do you think that Microsoft will obey the intent of a judgment as long as a single weaselwording workaround exists?
Ouch.
I wonder whether Microsoft even had to make a single concession to Dell for Dell to leave this 'feature' to them, or if Dell was simply glad to give up responsibility. (Yet another reason I won't buy a Dell.) And when the OS does video memory allocation, the "legacy memory" is only used to show boot splash screens and BSODs, and is otherwise wasted - so for the Windows-centric view there's no need for adjusting it.
But this isn't the type of BIOS problem that I'm afraid of - this is 'only' a chipset support issue so far, since Linux, or at least the XFree86 drivers so far, don't support the chipset's dynamic allocation yet.
This isn't completely a Dell issue, though. Even if the BIOS did have this capability, the chipset is limited to 8MB of 'Legacy memory' allocation, quite a bit less than the chip can actually use in its extended memory modes, and at the moment, there are NO linux drivers for the i830 chipset that know how to use the extended memory capability - though there will probably be some specific drivers for it eventually.
No, this is just another facet - maybe another step - in differentiating 'Windows' machines from 'Commodity' machines, though it needs to be addressed by the Linux driver developer community somehow, or it will be another big chunk of the 'Linux can't replace the desktop' strategy simply because of the volume that Dell sells.
It's pretty easy to explain what this entails and why this is happening - I'll make a bet that the XP installs that Dell ships after the cutoff date won't need to be 'activated' through Microsoft, but will recognize the machine and bios as a 'licensed platform'. This effectively means that the OS license is built into the machine - so so Microsoft won't let them ship them without paying Microsoft.
Ok, so maybe Dell will make a few machines ('n-series') that don't run Windows - but they're now a completely different machine. The previous court order stating that Microsoft cannot charge for every machine sold (regardless of OS) has now been circumvented.
That's enough of a step backwards to behaviour already found to be illegal on it's own, but this seems to be the first step towards making manufacturers have to distinguish "Microsoft ready' machines from OS agnostic machines.
A few more steps like this, differentiating Microsoft machines from the others, and it's a sure bet that the commodity hardware - 'Microsoft OS ready' machines - are going to be the much vaunted 'Trusted platform' - complete with a bios that will REFUSE to boot anything except a Microsoft OS.
Yes, I'm paranoid about Microsoft's intentions. but I suspect that I'm not being paranoid enough.
The existence of legal number changing services in various markets (not necessarily public) is essential to the small scale muggers swiping cell phones - the 'adapter kits' and PC software to do this doesn't seem very likely to be actually owned by the individual muggers - anyone with the capability is probably going to sell it - currently legally - as a service instead. (Obviously, the number changing services would make an excellent place for the police to conduct a 'sting' operation.)
Right now, Clarence can't be convicted of anything because he's only performing a legal service. Making that service illegal puts Clarence out of business, or convicted for running such a business, and it eliminates the believability of the defence that he didn't know the phone was stolen, so he can be convicted as an accessory to theft along with Alfie.
This is unfortunately irrelevant to almost all open source developments (with the possible exception of IBM, who patent everything themselves). It doesn't matter that the patents are unjustified or can be invalidated - there is no way an open source development can afford to go to U.S. court against Microsofts seemingly bottomless legal coffers to prove it. (In another country that implements 'loser pays' for the cost of going to court this may be less of a limitation.) The fact that someone is able to develop in another country where those patents can't be used to block development notwithstanding, if Microsoft decides that Mono or a similar development is a threat, then they WILL use those patents to try to intimidate anyone involved with it - customers, distributors, support organizations, developers - who has any U.S. interests whatsoever. If indeed they do so, then there are very few significant uses for the
It may be only FUD, but Microsoft are masters of successful (and possibly even legally sanctioned) FUD, and few corporate IT critters can afford to ignore it.
Oh, and I fully expect that the
I would get very worried about this 'public forum' where apparently nobody outside the Hollywood and system builder crowd has heard about it. (Is it not even on the Slashdot main page - with so few comments, how could it be?)
All it takes is for Hollywood/Hollings to pack the forum with supporters of the CBDTPA, and the questions that the forum is supposed to answer are NOT going to be appropriate.
Of course, the topic "The effectiveness of efforts to pursue technical standards or solutions that are designed to provide a more predictable and secure environment for digital transmission of copyrighted material" is probably going to emphasize "piracy" aka exercising fair use such as making a tape of a TV show.
I can just see the CBDTPA supporters claiming that "Current consumer attitude towards online entertainment" is strongly supportive of DRM, and that "Major obstacles facing an open commercial exchange of digital content" are "uncontrolled software platforms" - in other words, the GPL and open source software.
And I'm very much afraid that the conclusion will be that "What a future framework for success might entail" will be the CBDTPA + DMCA
Yes, the changes could be implemented by the auto manufacturers - and with the economy of scale, it wouldn't be that much difference in cost compared to the price of the vehicle. Right now, though, unless forced to either by demand (unlikely) or legislation, the manufacturers will only produce the absolute lowest cost designs.
As for safety - a properly designed fram is safe regardless of the material, and aluminum alloys are stronger than steel for the same weight. The most dangerous part of most SUV designs is the tendency to roll over, anyway - and an aluminum body instead of steel would help considerably in reducing that tendency. (The center of gravity would be lower.)
The real problem is incentive. Right now, there is NO incentive for manufacturers to improve the mileage on SUVs of any kind. (They don't have to meet the EPA/DOT mandated mileage figures, and are actually a cash cow for the manufacturers - they are priced many K$ above the real cost, and people buy them regardless.)
Maybe there's more information somewhere else, but, from what I did NOT see in the articles:
First off: Is there any proof whatsoever that being listed in SPEWS is in any way incorrect or libelous? Certainly it is not illegal, even in AU to add an IP block to that address as being friendly to either a known spammer or a known spamvertized site. After all, SPEWS bills itself as being opinion that nobody has to follow.
Unless being added to SPEWS has some form of illegality, what basis is there for suing Mr McNichol for expressing an opinion?
Secondly, if SPEWS is operated secretly, then how can anybody prove that this Joseph McNichol was responsible for them being blocked?
Is there some provable connection between him and SPEWS somehow?
It would certainly seem likely that sufficient people on the receiving end of the spam would have complained sooner or later such that SPEWS would put them onto the blacklist.
And even so - don't SPEWS say in their FAQ that they don't block sites based on complaints? That they depend on the knowledge of the *unknown* people that set up the lists directly? That it requires repeated offenses before a company is considered a 'Known Spammer'?
So where is the evidence - not apparent anywhere in anything I have seen of this matter - that there is any actual connection between Mr. McNichol and SPEWS?
If either of these proofs is missing, then this should be dismissed by the first competent judge in any jurisdiction.
No, it shouldn't be stopped at the border for patent infringement. CSS was never patented (it's a no-longer-secret trade secret), and I believe MPEG playback can be accomplished without breaking any patents (DVDs don't use MPEG-4).
But I have no doubt that it WOULD be stopped as an 'illegal circumvention device' for DMCA purposes.
Since these diamonds are only a few nanometers wide, they won't have much effect on jewelry costs.
:)
Unless, of course, somebody produces a low cost and fashionable electron microscope so that they can be admired at a party
Well, both buckyballs and diamond have carbon-carbon bonds :) (admittedly the fullerenes have bonds more similar to graphite than diamond).
But the article just says that the buckyballs are the raw material - and they WILL provide carbon atoms which, at the surface, are arranged very similarly to diamond. Supposedly the diamond crystals have only about 1000 atoms - so we're talking about a crystal that has been formed from as few as 30 buckyballs. Suppose they only use the surface from one side of a buckyball to build up the crystals - we're still talking about being able to build the crystals layer by layer, using the buckyballs to supply an entire layer at a time.
I suspect that doping (similar to P or N doping in silicon) the diamond can be done by putting the dopants inside the buckyballs to accomplish a MUCH more even distribution of dopant atoms than can be accomplished by diffusion into silicon.
First, Microsoft should be prohibited from selling any applications that use any API functionallity that has not been documented and released for a given period - 6 months is probably adequate. (This prohibition, rendered in sufficiently broad legalese, should also prevent the applications from either modifying the OS or even determining what the OS is - only testing if published functions exist.) It would also need to make sure that things like the Word viewer applet did NOT get 'integrated' into the OS, but used the published APIs.
Second, Microsoft needs to be deprived of any form of software patent DMCA claim, or copyright enforcement that could be used to prevent a competing product from using those APIs. Publishing their APIs must include the free (as in beer) and unrestricted use of the API.
Microsoft is welcome to keep their proprietary code for implementing and using the APIs, but they must not be allowed to either block anyone's client functions (be they local applications, file access, or remote procedures/objects) that uses the documented APIs from working with their OS, or prevent their own products from working with any OS that can provide the published APIs. Freezing the file formats would NOT be a good thing - aside from the valid complaint that Microsoft would have about losing the 'Freedom to innovate' - it would also be innefective, since 'bug fixes' where data is munged 'unintentionally' would be bound to happen. Releasing full documentation on all of the application's file formats in use (including those for future version) would indeed be useful - but I doubt that Microsoft could comply 100% if they wanted too. (After all, even they messed up file compatibility between various versions of Word.) MSWord users still need to be educated not to send MSWord 'native format' attachements everywhere - save as XML or HTML, save as TEXT, even RTF - these formats at least are understood.
<RANT> Microsoft HAS a monopoly, they have abused the power - these were the findings of fact, which are not at question in the case - what right do they have to claim that the remedies should only prevent them from doing what they did in the past? Certainly, if an entity murders Mr. Drdos with an axe, and smothered Mr. Netscape with a pillow, the punishment should prevent all future murders, but Microsoft seems to be arguing that they should only be banned from using axes and pillows, while they can keep on using assault rifles, grenades, and small thermonuclear devices on whoever they choose. </RANT>
And if that's not effectively spreading through the network, I don't know what would be.The parent of your post is not the fool - but you definitely failed to understand the post.
The only connection that I can see is that the patch would be useless without the presence of bnetd servers.
I haven't seen what patches were distributed on the site that Vivendi/Blizzard is attacking, but there are two separate items available on the 'net.
The first is the bnetd daemon itself. This is the code that has been created by reverse engineering the protocols, since the server code has never been published.
The second is the patch that allows a user with their newest authentication tricks (that require the server to authenticate itself) to bypass said checks and use the the bnetd servers.
Vivendi/Blizzard claim that the code that matches their client code is part of the server - Unless this is some very low level link formatting (in which case similar functions will result in similar code) this seems to be unlikely - even if the client-side patch is somewhere in the bnetd tree.
The only real substance to the complaint appears to be that the 'client code' has been used - but this should only apply to the game patch, not to the bnetd daemon/server itself. And last I knew, the bnetd website itself did NOT include that patch.
I can see that Vivendi could have some case against a patch that replaced an entire file - though that argument would be invalidated if the patch was distributed as a binary patch to the games own code.
I may be wrong about what was on the website - or on Sourceforge - or could it be that Vivendi is not above trying to manufacture evidence?
You may still be able to get a Cirque 'glide-pad' touchpad for a mouse - while it has buttons, you can use a tap on the pad as a click, and re-assign the buttons to different actions (such as cut and paste). Under Windows, the drivers provide the 'click' throught the PC squeaker - but this can be turned off.
I haven't seen any for sale for a few years now, though. (On the other hand, I have several, and NONE of them have failed in years of every day use - though the touch surfaces are all well polished and slightly concave now. They're the most reliable mouse I've ever encountered.)
This puts a whole new meaning on 'pigeonholing' a document.
:)
But the real problem that this technology has created, is that until now, nobody realized that pigeons were really penguins in disguise...
The THEMIS thermal infrared and visible imaging spectrometer aboard the Odyssey spacecraft successfully turned on today and started its mapping mission.
According to the linked article, the THEMIS imager was turned on back on Nov 2, last year, and had already produced a number of images. I suspect that you mean that they're now at the point where they can turn it on and leave it operating on a regular basis. Or at least, that they are really considering the spacecraft itself ready to start mapping.
The only additional information I can find is on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft site that indicates that they haven't even finished calibration yet, but does state (or misstate?) that the THEMIS camera system was turned on today. It also states that there are other instruments (the gamma ray spectrometer at least) that were turned on for apparently the first time today.
The esteemed fundamentalist leader died today, after being struck by a bolt of lighning.
"It must have been humiliating for him" one of his disciples said after the incident. "After all of these years calling for divine wrath to strike others, it appears that he has been struck down in such a fashion himself."
A large transport aircraft was seen in the vicinity at around the time of the strike, but was apparently undamaged. Some people have also reported that, for some reason, there was a salty taste in the air immediately after the strike.
There have been no official government comments.
It seems to me that there are plenty of large corporations who would just love to be able to buy the ICANN votes.
It's already been seen that the original ICANN committee does NOT want any opinions from the open source and free software communities.
I suspect that this is the first step in trying to price such opinions out of their committee.
File extensions may not be an ideal way of managing this, but they DO allow a simple syntax to specify widely used file types.
I'd hate to have to replace hello.c with something that looked like hello;source/c;application/text;editable/emacs
It's not the same story. Last time it was posted, it included IE4 in the list of vulnerabilities.
Now, they don't even admit that anyone is still running IE4. (Well, I shouldn't admit to running it, either.....)
(For that matter, has anybody tried setting the same content-type MIME headers in an e-mail?)