It is very likely that DoD PCs are tied to a very tight firewall against the outside world and that the online registration with M$ Office 2000 did not sit with them very well.
I used to work on classified contracts and any communication with the outside world was closely monitored and periodic security briefings were a regular occurance. We had our own secured servers for data and for email, with little or no connection to the outside world. You can bet that the DoD is VERY concerned with what information is flowing out that internet port under their noses.
Had the RIAA actually gone ahead with the threat, they would've crossed the battle line and in time dug their own grave.
Read here:
http://www.law.cornell.edu:80/constitution/const it ution.billofrights.html#amendmenti
The first amendment says that Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of the press (read: the presentation paper) or the freedom of speech (read: the formal presentation).
The DMCA was made into law by Congress. It doesn't matter whether the RIAA or whoever lobbied for its passure. Only Congress has the power to make law, not the lobbyists. Therefore if the DMCA can be used to diminish the freedom of the press or freedom of speech, then a court would've declared the DMCA unconstitutional.
It has happened before. The EPA was deriled by the courts when their severe restrictions placed on wetlands that belonged to private owners was found to have violated the fourth amendment's rights against unreasonable seizure of private property.
In the USA, the acreage ratio of rural country to populated cities is far greater. Cellular towers are installed where the return on investment is greatest (IE largest concentration of customers), and there are plenty of rural areas where there will be no cell phone coverage for a long time.
For the doubters, look at cableTV - there are plenty of rural areas that have yet to have cable lines installed, so reception by satellite or antenna is the only option.
That's where the payphone comes in - voice communications by wire is very very entrenched in this country.
You musicians out there, do you feel it is your right to be able to live for the rest of your life off of a few hours of work (songwriting/recording)? And don't bullshit me that it's not a few hours of work, because it is. Programming is the same thing. Sure it make take me years to improve my skills, but the chances of me ever getting paid $20,000,000 USD for one song/program are next to zero, while no-talent boy-bands (that's right N-Sync, Backdoor boys, I'm talking about your dumb asses) rake in the dough because the cartels control the distribution of nearly all music. Do you like the fact that your
industry is more akin to a lottery than to art?
If I choose to live the rest of my life of a few hours of work, the Constitution gives me that liberty, but does not guarantee it as a "right". If I write a song that is timeless and is played/performed by millions over the world, it's not enough to pick up a guitar and spend a "few" hours to write the song. I'd better have all my ducks in order to live off the copyright/publishing royalties. You can be talented enough to pull off such a coup that supports you for the rest of your life, but you'd better be smart enough to have the paperwork in line and to have the signatures in the right places. That takes more than a "few hours". Think songs like "Happy Birthday" and "Jingle Bell Rock" - they are not public domain, it's still copyrighted by the author/family, everybody knows the song, and they've been broadcasted for at least forty years!
I'm a musician by hobby and a software developer by profession... back in 1981 when I was ready to enter college I was trying to decide between a music major or an engineering major.
One book set my career path: "The Platinum Rainbow" talked about the abuses of the music industry and the scavengers that plague it. We finally saw the fall of Disco after years of having it rammed down our throat, and looking forward from 1981 things still didn't look too good. I opted for engineering. My instincts were correct.
Distribution is only part of the problem. When you're a budding musician and you're young and stupid, you're the favored target of the labels. They'll make you a star and push a one-sided contract in front of you where, beneath all the legalese in fine print, you'll sign away all your copyright and publishing rights over to the company and you enter into an accounting system that'll never earn you a red cent and leave you in debt to the label. "Standard contract" they'll mutter. You want to be a star, right? That's all you care about.
Look at the popular music acts over the last twenty years. Young folks. Think the labels are using young artists to appeal to the teenage buying audience with the highest disposable income? That's just part of the picture. The labels aren't pushing selected music through the distribution channels based on quality of music, they're pushing based on what earns them the maximum return for themselves, not the artist! That's what motivates them - not the great songs, it's the maximum return for the almighty buck!
OK, some years have passed and the artist realizes he's being taken for a ride. The contract is up for renewal. The label can revise the contract but doesn't have to give the succeeding product any promotional push, so each succeeding CD which fails to "sell" as the ones under the previous contract will be viewed as a revenue loss to the label (they didn't promote, so people don't know it's out there, and nobody buys it - duh) and they drop you like a hot potato. The labels don't even have to renew the contract if they don't want to! It's the same as casinos - the rules favor the house. This happens ALL the time. You won't read about it in the papers because the same media conglomerate that controls the music industry also controls the press. There are many books out there that talk about the scavenging of musicians.
OK, right now some young musician teenager is reading this and decides to educate himself because he wants to make music for a living and doesn't want to fall into this trap. Later a label expresses an interest in him, shows him the "standard contract", and said musician wisely remembers experiences of other victims and tells the label he wants to review the contract with his lawyer. Label says "then the deal's off", they'll claim no recollection of the meeting after you come back, or they'll tell you they found a "more ideal" candidate. Uh-huh.
The labels don't want the talented musicians, they want the young and stupid ones. If you won't sign the "standard contract", they'll find another sucker who will. P.T. Barnum was right, especially of musicians. That's why you see young artists being promoted through the channels.
The Constitution gives everybody the liberty to live off your talents but does not guarantee prosperity nor does it guarantee it as a right. Whether the field is music or engineering or sports or media or crocheting, if you're not smart enough to seek legal or accounting advice before entering into a restrictive contract then that's YOUR problem. The music industry became a lottery because the musicians rolling through the revolving door ALLOWED it to become a lottery.
You musicians out there, do you feel it is your right to be able to live for the rest of your life off of a few hours of work (songwriting/recording)? And don't bullshit me that it's not a few hours of work, because it is. Programming is the same thing. Sure it make take me years to improve my skills, but the chances of me ever getting paid $20,000,000 USD for one song/program are next to zero, while no-talent boy-bands (that's right N-Sync, Backdoor boys, I'm talking about your dumb asses) rake in the dough because the cartels control the distribution of nearly all music. Do you like the fact that your
industry is more akin to a lottery than to art?
I don't trust subscription plans and I will not buy a package that uses it.
One, that would require an interface to your local ISP. I have good reason to keep certain PCs isolated from the internet. It's both a privacy issue and a reliability issue - I have two separate machines, one only for music and one for internet and everything else. It has been a long established convention that a Windows PC used for music is more reliable if it is used ONLY for music. I don't need a virus or a corrupted registry or driver to bring down the entire system, thank you. Windows becomes too unstable when you add bells and whistles. I will shop around for a non-subscription equivalent or do without, but putting certain PCs online is out of the question.
Two, the temptation to download personal info behind my back (contents of hard drive, etc) is too great. Want to peek at my checking account in MS Money? No thanks, that's off limits. I value my privacy.
Three, WIN95 has been known to engage in a hunt-and-destroy mission for competitor's software - many users, including myself, have seen entire directories and non-M$ applications simply disappear, Netscape among them. Whenever I install an app I always change the default directory name, IE net$cape in place of netscape. I have no question this "feature" has remained in succeeding versions. The potential to download a "bomb" or virus on my PC is just too real.
If this is M$'s idea of a business model for the future, they can shove it. I have my own retirement to fund, not theirs.
IANAL, but you should seek the advice of an attorney immediately. This falls under harassment. If you did not sign any contract of the sort, then no one can harass you into silence and deprive you of your first amendment rights. But you need to take legal action to prevent monetary disaster before your name falls on a blacklist, which does still happen.
Your lawyer should contact your former employer with a cease and desist letter, and possibly advise the HR department or other at your current employer that the former employer is a hostile company out to ruin your name. Your career is your life - take charge of it!
...they not only gave away a product for free, they had an incentive to respond to user feedback, to accelerate the development process, and to make a decent product.
Look at IE5.
This might have a positive impact.
And no, I am not sympathetic to M$, in fact I am leaving Wintel for MacOS.
Forty years ago before CATV existed, signals were broadcast through the air. Ads were stuffed in your face, but that paid for the broadcasting expenses. No problem.
Then CATV arrived, and you had to pay for access. OK, now the broadcasting expenses are paid for by the consumer. But the ads were still there.
Cable channels such as MTV began commercial-free (I'm showing my age here), then it was barraged with ads.
The shopping channels? Ads, ads, ads.
Then CATV classifies certain channels as "premium", which you had to cough up more dough to view. Those have ads too!
I grew up on one or two minute commercial interruptions for every ten minutes of programming. More and more channels are showing 4, 5, *6* minutes of commercials! I clocked one show that interrupted five minutes of program with five minutes of commercials!
Then, depending on your local CATV provider, late night programming on the lower VHF channels were replaced with "infomercials". Hello, didn't I pay for access to the content of that channel...?
Yes, the argument can be made that the ads provide revenue for the independent CATV channels and the cable subscription pays for the distribution, but the amount of advertising is rather overwhelming!
Now DigCATV promises hundreds of channels - for what, more ads shoved in my face? And now the digital CATV industry wants to control what I watch and when I watch it, and whether I can record it? I don't like where this is heading.
Any wonder why I started my TV-free life this year?
When the Pentium was in beta, Intel sent preliminary specifications to motherboard manufacturers for a 486 to Pentium upgrade path via the "Pentium Overdrive" socket.
When the Pentium was released, the specification had *changed* and those preliminary "Pentium Overdrive" sockets would *not* work with the new cpu. The upgrade was promised but not delivered.
Imagine my disappointment when, after doing hours of homework to invest in a motherboard with a promised upgrade path, the OEM tells me that my mobo has a non-compliant "Pentium Overdrive" socket.
Later 486 mobo's have the correct implementation, but the only way to tell if your mobo is true Pentium compatible is to call the manufacturer, as there is no socket pinout, color, or other circuitboard trait that identifies it as a non-compliant Pentium mobo.
I'm still using my 486 with VISA buss mobo and it works quite well, thank you.
Six years ago I invested in that 486 because Intel promised backward compatibility for future Pentium processors. They dropped the ball. The only upgrade then was a new motherboard, and my integrity in Intel was destroyed. That's 1/2 the reason I am leaving the Wintel platform.
I refuse to keep up with the Joneses by replacing my PC every 1.5 years; I got my own retirement to fund, not theirs. I can get at least ten years out of an automobile, and I expect to get that much out of my PC.
CPU replacements should be as simple as swapping a chip or subboard, but *don't* make me buy a complete new system. We've already got more than enough disposable non-bidegradable junk sitting in our landfills.
"Don't forget for every Spice girls there are 100 bands that get printed, promoted and distributed and never sell crap"
The truth is, of those 100 bands there are 95 that *don't* get the promotional resources and never sell crap (duh). They are passed over by the label in favor of product that reaches a wider audience. Many "one-hit-wonder" bands fell victim to this, even though they had good follow-up product.
Management calls it "effective allocation of resources". Is it any mystery why the product choices in brick-and-mortar stores are so narrow?
The music industry is littered with scavengers; the studio, the graphic artists, the print shop, the CD manufacturers, the publishers, the promotion, the PR dept, the distributers, the CD stores, all the resources to push your product line up to take the maximum cut against your account. Most instances you have no bargaining power because the labels specify who does the work (the devil is in the details of the contract).
CDs would be a lot cheaper if most of the middlemen were eliminated. Many independent artists already have taken that route; offer a cheaper CD with the same quality of music but without cutting into your bottom line, and you increase the chances of sales.
Slashdot Mirror
It is very likely that DoD PCs are tied to a very tight firewall against the outside world and that the online registration with M$ Office 2000 did not sit with them very well.
I used to work on classified contracts and any communication with the outside world was closely monitored and periodic security briefings were a regular occurance. We had our own secured servers for data and for email, with little or no connection to the outside world. You can bet that the DoD is VERY concerned with what information is flowing out that internet port under their noses.
Great. When it boots up we'll be greeted with a dialog box that says "You've got ammo!"
Had the RIAA actually gone ahead with the threat, they would've crossed the battle line and in time dug their own grave.
t it ution.billofrights.html#amendmenti
Read here:
http://www.law.cornell.edu:80/constitution/cons
The first amendment says that Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of the press (read: the presentation paper) or the freedom of speech (read: the formal presentation).
The DMCA was made into law by Congress. It doesn't matter whether the RIAA or whoever lobbied for its passure. Only Congress has the power to make law, not the lobbyists. Therefore if the DMCA can be used to diminish the freedom of the press or freedom of speech, then a court would've declared the DMCA unconstitutional.
It has happened before. The EPA was deriled by the courts when their severe restrictions placed on wetlands that belonged to private owners was found to have violated the fourth amendment's rights against unreasonable seizure of private property.
In the USA, the acreage ratio of rural country to populated cities is far greater. Cellular towers are installed where the return on investment is greatest (IE largest concentration of customers), and there are plenty of rural areas where there will be no cell phone coverage for a long time.
For the doubters, look at cableTV - there are plenty of rural areas that have yet to have cable lines installed, so reception by satellite or antenna is the only option.
That's where the payphone comes in - voice communications by wire is very very entrenched in this country.
Does anybody remember eBay and AOL conveniently resetting user preferences behind their backs?
What's to stop the ad agencies from doing the same?
If I can't trust the world's largest e-marketer to keep my preferences where I want them, how can I trust anybody else to do the same?
Filters are still the best solution.
If I choose to live the rest of my life of a few hours of work, the Constitution gives me that liberty, but does not guarantee it as a "right". If I write a song that is timeless and is played/performed by millions over the world, it's not enough to pick up a guitar and spend a "few" hours to write the song. I'd better have all my ducks in order to live off the copyright/publishing royalties. You can be talented enough to pull off such a coup that supports you for the rest of your life, but you'd better be smart enough to have the paperwork in line and to have the signatures in the right places. That takes more than a "few hours". Think songs like "Happy Birthday" and "Jingle Bell Rock" - they are not public domain, it's still copyrighted by the author/family, everybody knows the song, and they've been broadcasted for at least forty years!
I'm a musician by hobby and a software developer by profession... back in 1981 when I was ready to enter college I was trying to decide between a music major or an engineering major.
One book set my career path: "The Platinum Rainbow" talked about the abuses of the music industry and the scavengers that plague it. We finally saw the fall of Disco after years of having it rammed down our throat, and looking forward from 1981 things still didn't look too good. I opted for engineering. My instincts were correct.
Distribution is only part of the problem. When you're a budding musician and you're young and stupid, you're the favored target of the labels. They'll make you a star and push a one-sided contract in front of you where, beneath all the legalese in fine print, you'll sign away all your copyright and publishing rights over to the company and you enter into an accounting system that'll never earn you a red cent and leave you in debt to the label. "Standard contract" they'll mutter. You want to be a star, right? That's all you care about.
Look at the popular music acts over the last twenty years. Young folks. Think the labels are using young artists to appeal to the teenage buying audience with the highest disposable income? That's just part of the picture. The labels aren't pushing selected music through the distribution channels based on quality of music, they're pushing based on what earns them the maximum return for themselves, not the artist! That's what motivates them - not the great songs, it's the maximum return for the almighty buck!
OK, some years have passed and the artist realizes he's being taken for a ride. The contract is up for renewal. The label can revise the contract but doesn't have to give the succeeding product any promotional push, so each succeeding CD which fails to "sell" as the ones under the previous contract will be viewed as a revenue loss to the label (they didn't promote, so people don't know it's out there, and nobody buys it - duh) and they drop you like a hot potato. The labels don't even have to renew the contract if they don't want to! It's the same as casinos - the rules favor the house. This happens ALL the time. You won't read about it in the papers because the same media conglomerate that controls the music industry also controls the press. There are many books out there that talk about the scavenging of musicians.
OK, right now some young musician teenager is reading this and decides to educate himself because he wants to make music for a living and doesn't want to fall into this trap. Later a label expresses an interest in him, shows him the "standard contract", and said musician wisely remembers experiences of other victims and tells the label he wants to review the contract with his lawyer. Label says "then the deal's off", they'll claim no recollection of the meeting after you come back, or they'll tell you they found a "more ideal" candidate. Uh-huh.
The labels don't want the talented musicians, they want the young and stupid ones. If you won't sign the "standard contract", they'll find another sucker who will. P.T. Barnum was right, especially of musicians. That's why you see young artists being promoted through the channels.
The Constitution gives everybody the liberty to live off your talents but does not guarantee prosperity nor does it guarantee it as a right. Whether the field is music or engineering or sports or media or crocheting, if you're not smart enough to seek legal or accounting advice before entering into a restrictive contract then that's YOUR problem. The music industry became a lottery because the musicians rolling through the revolving door ALLOWED it to become a lottery.
No, I pressed "Submit" instead of "Preview". Oops.
You musicians out there, do you feel it is your right to be able to live for the rest of your life off of a few hours of work (songwriting/recording)? And don't bullshit me that it's not a few hours of work, because it is. Programming is the same thing. Sure it make take me years to improve my skills, but the chances of me ever getting paid $20,000,000 USD for one song/program are next to zero, while no-talent boy-bands (that's right N-Sync, Backdoor boys, I'm talking about your dumb asses) rake in the dough because the cartels control the distribution of nearly all music. Do you like the fact that your industry is more akin to a lottery than to art?
My aversion to subscrib-o-ware applies to music software as well as office apps, games, etc.
Cheers
I don't trust subscription plans and I will not buy a package that uses it.
One, that would require an interface to your local ISP. I have good reason to keep certain PCs isolated from the internet. It's both a privacy issue and a reliability issue - I have two separate machines, one only for music and one for internet and everything else. It has been a long established convention that a Windows PC used for music is more reliable if it is used ONLY for music. I don't need a virus or a corrupted registry or driver to bring down the entire system, thank you. Windows becomes too unstable when you add bells and whistles. I will shop around for a non-subscription equivalent or do without, but putting certain PCs online is out of the question.
Two, the temptation to download personal info behind my back (contents of hard drive, etc) is too great. Want to peek at my checking account in MS Money? No thanks, that's off limits. I value my privacy.
Three, WIN95 has been known to engage in a hunt-and-destroy mission for competitor's software - many users, including myself, have seen entire directories and non-M$ applications simply disappear, Netscape among them. Whenever I install an app I always change the default directory name, IE net$cape in place of netscape. I have no question this "feature" has remained in succeeding versions. The potential to download a "bomb" or virus on my PC is just too real.
If this is M$'s idea of a business model for the future, they can shove it. I have my own retirement to fund, not theirs.
Your lawyer should contact your former employer with a cease and desist letter, and possibly advise the HR department or other at your current employer that the former employer is a hostile company out to ruin your name. Your career is your life - take charge of it!
...and while Gates was evasive in his deposition
...he complains about judicial bias without one reference to the findings of fact?
"Ballmer, more birdshot"
...they not only gave away a product for free, they had an incentive to respond to user feedback, to accelerate the development process, and to make a decent product.
Look at IE5.
This might have a positive impact.
And no, I am not sympathetic to M$, in fact I am leaving Wintel for MacOS.
I am most unimpressed with the progress of CATV.
Forty years ago before CATV existed, signals were broadcast through the air. Ads were stuffed in your face, but that paid for the broadcasting expenses. No problem.
Then CATV arrived, and you had to pay for access. OK, now the broadcasting expenses are paid for by the consumer. But the ads were still there.
Cable channels such as MTV began commercial-free (I'm showing my age here), then it was barraged with ads.
The shopping channels? Ads, ads, ads.
Then CATV classifies certain channels as "premium", which you had to cough up more dough to view. Those have ads too!
I grew up on one or two minute commercial interruptions for every ten minutes of programming. More and more channels are showing 4, 5, *6* minutes of commercials! I clocked one show that interrupted five minutes of program with five minutes of commercials!
Then, depending on your local CATV provider, late night programming on the lower VHF channels were replaced with "infomercials". Hello, didn't I pay for access to the content of that channel...?
Yes, the argument can be made that the ads provide revenue for the independent CATV channels and the cable subscription pays for the distribution, but the amount of advertising is rather overwhelming!
Now DigCATV promises hundreds of channels - for what, more ads shoved in my face? And now the digital CATV industry wants to control what I watch and when I watch it, and whether I can record it? I don't like where this is heading.
Any wonder why I started my TV-free life this year?
...anybody notice the MICROSOFT prefix in MSNBC?
Wouldn't that imply a *cough* SLIGHT bias in the polls?
Windows won, gee imagine that... duh
Ah, the "Pentium Overdrive" socket.
When the Pentium was in beta, Intel sent preliminary specifications to motherboard manufacturers for a 486 to Pentium upgrade path via the "Pentium Overdrive" socket.
When the Pentium was released, the specification had *changed* and those preliminary "Pentium Overdrive" sockets would *not* work with the new cpu. The upgrade was promised but not delivered.
Imagine my disappointment when, after doing hours of homework to invest in a motherboard with a promised upgrade path, the OEM tells me that my mobo has a non-compliant "Pentium Overdrive" socket.
Later 486 mobo's have the correct implementation, but the only way to tell if your mobo is true Pentium compatible is to call the manufacturer, as there is no socket pinout, color, or other circuitboard trait that identifies it as a non-compliant Pentium mobo.
I'm still using my 486 with VISA buss mobo and it works quite well, thank you.
Six years ago I invested in that 486 because Intel promised backward compatibility for future Pentium processors. They dropped the ball. The only upgrade then was a new motherboard, and my integrity in Intel was destroyed. That's 1/2 the reason I am leaving the Wintel platform.
I refuse to keep up with the Joneses by replacing my PC every 1.5 years; I got my own retirement to fund, not theirs. I can get at least ten years out of an automobile, and I expect to get that much out of my PC.
CPU replacements should be as simple as swapping a chip or subboard, but *don't* make me buy a complete new system. We've already got more than enough disposable non-bidegradable junk sitting in our landfills.
Consider these facts:
1) Gnutella was developed and released into the wild under AOL's nose before being shut down.
2) AOL had removed a search function in an mp3 player within a week of its release.
3) Time-Warner is one of the companies who filed suit against Napster *and* the DeCSS case. They have as much to lose as $ony.
4) Anybody out there use Roadrunner, a high speed cable ISP owned by Time-Warner?
Considering these facts:
Replace "$ony" with "AOL/Time-Warner" and re-read the statements.
I smell a rat.
Precious :)
"Don't forget for every Spice girls there are 100 bands that get printed, promoted and distributed and never sell crap"
The truth is, of those 100 bands there are 95 that *don't* get the promotional resources and never sell crap (duh). They are passed over by the label in favor of product that reaches a wider audience. Many "one-hit-wonder" bands fell victim to this, even though they had good follow-up product.
Management calls it "effective allocation of resources". Is it any mystery why the product choices in brick-and-mortar stores are so narrow?
The music industry is littered with scavengers; the studio, the graphic artists, the print shop, the CD manufacturers, the publishers, the promotion, the PR dept, the distributers, the CD stores, all the resources to push your product line up to take the maximum cut against your account. Most instances you have no bargaining power because the labels specify who does the work (the devil is in the details of the contract).
CDs would be a lot cheaper if most of the middlemen were eliminated. Many independent artists already have taken that route; offer a cheaper CD with the same quality of music but without cutting into your bottom line, and you increase the chances of sales.
What's to stop M$ from using this to tell competing apps to stay in the holding pattern while M$ apps get priority in the message queue?
If I don't want to be interrupted by an email client, I'll shut it down manually.
Do I really need software to do this?
So Yesmail wants to "opt-out" of the RBL, huh?
:)
I can't believe the irony
This confirms my belief that analog has a warmer sound than digital ;)
You are witnessing Microsoft innovation at work