Microsoft shall not retaliate against or threaten against an OEM by altering Microsoft's commercial relations with that OEM, or by witholding newly introduced forms of non-monetary Consideration.
So, as I read it, they have now been ordered not to exercise those anticompetitive practices any more, from now on. Wonderful. Are they getting punished in any way for the vast sums of money they have screwed out of consumers in the past? No. Are they being punished in ANY way? Not unless you consider it punishment to be told, "Nope, you can't break the law anymore, like you have been for the past couple decades." Great, yeah, that'll show 'em.
By heating a target to nearly 2,000 C, the microwaves soften it up enough for a small rod to be pushed through
So, the article was a bit misleading as the microwaves are not enough to go through.
That's +5 insightful? The headline didn't say "Using ONLY microwaves to drill through glass". Of COURSE it requires a small rod or some physical means to remove the molten material from the intended hole area. So, for a minute you thought someone had come up with a way to form a Green-Lantern-like drill bit energy field out of microwaves that physically cut into the material and spiralled it away from the target? No, sorry to disappoint you. The process is still very accurately described by the phrase "Using microwaves to drill through glass".
Without the right signature for DRM, you can't run a piece of software that isn't licensed to run on that hardware. IE, not "I don't have my 30 day license," but "I wrote some software, and didn't pay the company that made the OS so I could write it." In other words, bye bye Linux.
Yeah, you're wrong on the "bye-bye linux" part. What makes Winders so popular? Lots of applications. What OS do you think small app developers will prefer if Winders enforces this stuff?
Besides, the only way this could affect Linux is if somebody made a Winders-only BIOS, and none of the x86 hardware vendors would get on board with that - they know that Linux users are their fastest growing market for their high-end hardware. Even if someone did use a Linux-unfriendly BIOS, it would just be a big growth opportunity for Linux-friendly hardware vendors.
Why is warez sharing different from me stealing your car, and giving it out to whoever wants it?
Well, for one thing, if you steal my car, it's a total loss for me. I can't sell that car to someone else, because it's gone and I don't have it anymore. If you're distributing illegal copies of my software, all I lose is potential sales. Honest people, who comprise most of my customers, will still buy the software from me.
Now, aside from all that, I don't think anyone in this entire discussion has said that distributing warez is OK, or moral, or denied that it is breaking the law. Everyone here agrees that it's wrong. He DID commit a crime. It WAS wrong of him to do so. He SHOULD be punished. What we have been trying to pound through your thick skull is that a two year sentence for distributing warez (which is LONGER than one you would get for stealing cars) is ridiculous. Just because a law is on the books doesn't make it right.
Yes, too trivial. It's a fileshare. You know, NFS, SAMBA, netatalk, something like that. They're not using rm to delete files. Besides, deleting the rm binary would be a really bad idea.
I have heard of people using RCS for similar functionality. I think it might work, because as I understand it it creates archives containing the original file and all modifications to it over time. However, I haven't used it myself, so I really dont have any idea how well it would work with a fileshare. Good luck!
If morality was never-changing, how can you accept adulterors without stoning them to death?
Adultery is still immoral is it not? The method of punishment has nothing to do with morality.
You don't have a problem with stoning? Burying someone up to their neck and then throwing rocks at their head until they die? I guess you think that would be a lot of fun, assuming of course that the person deserved that kind of punishment. Our Christian ancestors didn't have a problem with it. Check your bible.
I do have a problem with it - I think it's cruel, and immoral, regardless of the stonee's offense. I think most people, Christian or otherwise, agree with that statement.
Morality does change. The alternative is that either most every sane compassionate person today is wrong about stoning being immoral, or (gasp) the Bible is wrong about stoning being an appropriate punishment.
I hope in their OpenLDAP setup and their configuration tools they provide for integration with Samba, nss_ldap, and pam_ldap. That would reduce a lot of headaches for me. I'm one of those masochistic admins who accepted a project to do what the German Govt. proposes (minus the calendaring). We are currently using OpenLDAP for mail routing, Samba authentication, e-mail group/mailing list address expansion, and Cyrus IMAP/POP authentication. As someone suggested, installation and upgrades can be a pain in the ass. It sure will be nice to have all the server components tested and distributed together as a set.
You would do well to simplify the question by asking if there are notebooks available with multiple hard drives. Lilo can boot to a software raid, so any notebook with two drives can do this. Whether the sound card or built-in ethernet/modem works is a different story, but you didn't mention whether those were important to you.
I'd like to add that fsck is ext3-aware. If the journal looks OK, it might not actually check the filesystem unless you tack on the -f option to force the issue.
Well, I agree that the ideas are far more important than the spelling and grammar, as long as poor spelling and grammar don't interfere with the communication of those ideas. For example, how likely is it that a senator is going to understand that a D2A/A2D is a digital-to-analog/analog-to-digital converter chip? Should they spend taxpayer money to hire someone to decipher this letter into layman's terms (and correct the spelling and grammar while they're at it)? Maybe it makes more sense for the Senator to focus on letters whose authors felt that their ideas were important enough to warrant a single proofreading.
Eewwww. Good point. I was thinking they would add proprietary software to the CD, but then I didn't think SuSE or TurboLinux would want them to do that.... I think you have hit the nail on the head, smiff.
Still, I expect to see "Untied" Linux available on the net as an iso with all proprietary items removed within about a week of the first UnitedLinux release. Ultimately, I don't care what they do, but I think all this negative publicity they're stirring up by not releasing the binaries isn't worth whatever they think it would have cost them to release the binaries.
As a corporate sysadmin I'm still going to recommend my company continues to subscribe to RedHat Network, because they manage to make money and pay free software developers while maintaining the support and goodwill of the free development community at the same time. How DO they do it? Perhaps Ransom will one day discover their secret methods.
You can do the same with UnitedLinux, the GPL provides for that right even.
Whoops, I should have been clearer. When I said, "It would be illegal to redistribute a UnitedLinux binary ISO if you changed a single byte on the CD," I really meant, "It would be illegal to redistribute a UnitedLinux binary ISO and still use the name UnitedLinux if you changed a single byte on the CD."
The arrangement and choice of software packages are what defines a Linux distribution. If you change anything, it's not really a UnitedLinux distribution anymore, and you're violating the trademark if you say that it is.
I think it's a violation of copyright. One can still copyright an ISO image. I'm not fully sure of the trademark implications, but if the United Linux CD carries any promise of support, then you obviously can't redistribute it without creating the false impression that you're also transferring the support. Your car analogy is not analogous, because you're not making unsupported clones of factory models.
Claiming copyright on the iso image might give them a legal means to limit distribution -- you might be right there. But it's legally pretty murky, because a copyright must be a significantly original creation: "sweat of the brow alone is not the 'creative spark' which is the sine qua non of originality." (*).
No CD or iso image carries a promise of support. Hell, there is a disclaimer of no warranty and no support in nearly every software package that will be on the UnitedLinux CD. Caldera, RedHat, Microsoft, and most everyone else don't offer support unless you have a valid, unique key code or other proof that you paid for the support. Why would people's expectations change for UnitedLinux?
With the car analogy, I was just making the point that using someone else's trademark to sell a product isn't against the law unless you're misrepresenting the product you're selling as something it's not.
(*) Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp, 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999)
One person mentioned that recipients of the binaries can redistribute as long as they don't use the name UnitedLinux. I'm not even sure that's true (but IANAL). It would be illegal to redistribute a UnitedLinux binary ISO if you changed a single byte on the CD. But if it's the exact same thing they're distributing, I can't see how it's a violation of trademark. If I buy a Ford car, I can turn around and sell it to my neighbor as a Ford car, even though I have no association with Ford. When the BSA goes after somebody printing thousands of pirate MS Office CD's, they don't prosecute for trademark violation, they prosecute for violating the copyright. You can only call it a trademark violation if you change the product, or if the product isn't actually something that was produced by the trademark holder. RedHat got away with threatening Cheapbytes on the basis that the CDs they produced might not have the same quality control as RedHat CDs. Even if RedHat didn't encourage.iso mirroring, there would be nothing stopping anyone from distributing an iso electronically and calling it RedHat 7.3 or whatever, because it would be EXACTLY the same as the product RedHat produces.
Since they don't hold the copyright for the vast majority of software they're distributing, they probably can't use that to prevent binary redistribution. The first guy who buys a UL distro will get the binaries for UL all nicely packaged on one CD, and I can't see any legal reason why he couldn't just post the.iso on a server somewhere. The fact that it's going to contain one single line of GPL'd software on the CD means that they can't put a restrictive license agreement on the package as a whole. The only scenario I can see that would work the way Ransom described it is like so:
They might put some proprietary software on the CD along with all the open stuff, and then they could restrict binary distribution of the entire CD, although there would be nothing stopping anyone from removing the proprietary code and redistributing the rest of the binaries. Of course, then they would not be able to use the UnitedLinux name, because they changed the content of the CD.
Personally, I'm sticking with RedHat for my company's servers. I'm happy with their support and support of their product by the community. I'm delighted that they can cultivate a positive relationship with that community while at the same time making money and paying the salaries of free software developers. They understand the community, and they get its support; it's as simple as that.
He's considering "rolling his own" with Zope, not from scratch. Zope already has most of these features - workflow, security, alerts, etc. as well as a large assortment of community-contributed modules.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft shall not retaliate against or threaten against an OEM by altering Microsoft's commercial relations with that OEM, or by witholding newly introduced forms of non-monetary Consideration.
So, as I read it, they have now been ordered not to exercise those anticompetitive practices any more, from now on. Wonderful. Are they getting punished in any way for the vast sums of money they have screwed out of consumers in the past? No. Are they being punished in ANY way? Not unless you consider it punishment to be told, "Nope, you can't break the law anymore, like you have been for the past couple decades." Great, yeah, that'll show 'em.
...it is a charity that is not affiliated with MS other than the fact that the Chairman of each board is the same man.
And the fact that all the money came from overcharging Microsoft customers...
And possibly a big ol' breeder reactor might be sitting at the core, if there's enough uranium floating around in there.
That's +5 insightful? The headline didn't say "Using ONLY microwaves to drill through glass". Of COURSE it requires a small rod or some physical means to remove the molten material from the intended hole area. So, for a minute you thought someone had come up with a way to form a Green-Lantern-like drill bit energy field out of microwaves that physically cut into the material and spiralled it away from the target? No, sorry to disappoint you. The process is still very accurately described by the phrase "Using microwaves to drill through glass".
Without the right signature for DRM, you can't run a piece of software that isn't licensed to run on that hardware. IE, not "I don't have my 30 day license," but "I wrote some software, and didn't pay the company that made the OS so I could write it." In other words, bye bye Linux.
Yeah, you're wrong on the "bye-bye linux" part. What makes Winders so popular? Lots of applications. What OS do you think small app developers will prefer if Winders enforces this stuff?
Besides, the only way this could affect Linux is if somebody made a Winders-only BIOS, and none of the x86 hardware vendors would get on board with that - they know that Linux users are their fastest growing market for their high-end hardware. Even if someone did use a Linux-unfriendly BIOS, it would just be a big growth opportunity for Linux-friendly hardware vendors.
Wow, those Illuminati guys are involved in everything.
RedHat 8.0 installs Python 2.2.1 by default.
Why is warez sharing different from me stealing your car, and giving it out to whoever wants it?
Well, for one thing, if you steal my car, it's a total loss for me. I can't sell that car to someone else, because it's gone and I don't have it anymore. If you're distributing illegal copies of my software, all I lose is potential sales. Honest people, who comprise most of my customers, will still buy the software from me.
Now, aside from all that, I don't think anyone in this entire discussion has said that distributing warez is OK, or moral, or denied that it is breaking the law. Everyone here agrees that it's wrong. He DID commit a crime. It WAS wrong of him to do so. He SHOULD be punished. What we have been trying to pound through your thick skull is that a two year sentence for distributing warez (which is LONGER than one you would get for stealing cars) is ridiculous. Just because a law is on the books doesn't make it right.
Yes, too trivial. It's a fileshare. You know, NFS, SAMBA, netatalk, something like that. They're not using rm to delete files. Besides, deleting the rm binary would be a really bad idea.
I have heard of people using RCS for similar functionality. I think it might work, because as I understand it it creates archives containing the original file and all modifications to it over time. However, I haven't used it myself, so I really dont have any idea how well it would work with a fileshare. Good luck!
In case you need a reference: the law of Moses says stoning's just groovy: Deuteronomy 21:21
You don't have a problem with stoning? Burying someone up to their neck and then throwing rocks at their head until they die? I guess you think that would be a lot of fun, assuming of course that the person deserved that kind of punishment. Our Christian ancestors didn't have a problem with it. Check your bible.
I do have a problem with it - I think it's cruel, and immoral , regardless of the stonee's offense. I think most people, Christian or otherwise, agree with that statement.
Morality does change. The alternative is that either most every sane compassionate person today is wrong about stoning being immoral, or (gasp) the Bible is wrong about stoning being an appropriate punishment.
Monkeys with four asses
Woman with two asses
And, finally,
God with two asses
I hope in their OpenLDAP setup and their configuration tools they provide for integration with Samba, nss_ldap, and pam_ldap. That would reduce a lot of headaches for me. I'm one of those masochistic admins who accepted a project to do what the German Govt. proposes (minus the calendaring). We are currently using OpenLDAP for mail routing, Samba authentication, e-mail group/mailing list address expansion, and Cyrus IMAP/POP authentication. As someone suggested, installation and upgrades can be a pain in the ass. It sure will be nice to have all the server components tested and distributed together as a set.
you cannot find them spammers are still shooting mail through open relays
Hehee, I hadn't heard that one before. +1 Funny
You would do well to simplify the question by asking if there are notebooks available with multiple hard drives. Lilo can boot to a software raid, so any notebook with two drives can do this. Whether the sound card or built-in ethernet/modem works is a different story, but you didn't mention whether those were important to you.
I'd like to add that fsck is ext3-aware. If the journal looks OK, it might not actually check the filesystem unless you tack on the -f option to force the issue.
Well, I agree that the ideas are far more important than the spelling and grammar, as long as poor spelling and grammar don't interfere with the communication of those ideas. For example, how likely is it that a senator is going to understand that a D2A/A2D is a digital-to-analog/analog-to-digital converter chip? Should they spend taxpayer money to hire someone to decipher this letter into layman's terms (and correct the spelling and grammar while they're at it)? Maybe it makes more sense for the Senator to focus on letters whose authors felt that their ideas were important enough to warrant a single proofreading.
Umm, caps shouldn't explode from doing that. You were probably playing with diodes.
Eewwww. Good point. I was thinking they would add proprietary software to the CD, but then I didn't think SuSE or TurboLinux would want them to do that.... I think you have hit the nail on the head, smiff.
Still, I expect to see "Untied" Linux available on the net as an iso with all proprietary items removed within about a week of the first UnitedLinux release. Ultimately, I don't care what they do, but I think all this negative publicity they're stirring up by not releasing the binaries isn't worth whatever they think it would have cost them to release the binaries.
As a corporate sysadmin I'm still going to recommend my company continues to subscribe to RedHat Network, because they manage to make money and pay free software developers while maintaining the support and goodwill of the free development community at the same time. How DO they do it? Perhaps Ransom will one day discover their secret methods.
You can do the same with UnitedLinux, the GPL provides for that right even.
Whoops, I should have been clearer. When I said, "It would be illegal to redistribute a UnitedLinux binary ISO if you changed a single byte on the CD," I really meant, "It would be illegal to redistribute a UnitedLinux binary ISO and still use the name UnitedLinux if you changed a single byte on the CD."
The arrangement and choice of software packages are what defines a Linux distribution. If you change anything, it's not really a UnitedLinux distribution anymore, and you're violating the trademark if you say that it is.
I think it's a violation of copyright. One can still copyright an ISO image. I'm not fully sure of the trademark implications, but if the United Linux CD carries any promise of support, then you obviously can't redistribute it without creating the false impression that you're also transferring the support. Your car analogy is not analogous, because you're not making unsupported clones of factory models.
Claiming copyright on the iso image might give them a legal means to limit distribution -- you might be right there. But it's legally pretty murky, because a copyright must be a significantly original creation: "sweat of the brow alone is not the 'creative spark' which is the sine qua non of originality." (*).
No CD or iso image carries a promise of support. Hell, there is a disclaimer of no warranty and no support in nearly every software package that will be on the UnitedLinux CD. Caldera, RedHat, Microsoft, and most everyone else don't offer support unless you have a valid, unique key code or other proof that you paid for the support. Why would people's expectations change for UnitedLinux?
With the car analogy, I was just making the point that using someone else's trademark to sell a product isn't against the law unless you're misrepresenting the product you're selling as something it's not.
(*) Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp, 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999)
So anyone who receives copies may redistribute..
.iso mirroring, there would be nothing stopping anyone from distributing an iso electronically and calling it RedHat 7.3 or whatever, because it would be EXACTLY the same as the product RedHat produces.
.iso on a server somewhere. The fact that it's going to contain one single line of GPL'd software on the CD means that they can't put a restrictive license agreement on the package as a whole. The only scenario I can see that would work the way Ransom described it is like so:
One person mentioned that recipients of the binaries can redistribute as long as they don't use the name UnitedLinux. I'm not even sure that's true (but IANAL). It would be illegal to redistribute a UnitedLinux binary ISO if you changed a single byte on the CD. But if it's the exact same thing they're distributing, I can't see how it's a violation of trademark. If I buy a Ford car, I can turn around and sell it to my neighbor as a Ford car, even though I have no association with Ford. When the BSA goes after somebody printing thousands of pirate MS Office CD's, they don't prosecute for trademark violation, they prosecute for violating the copyright. You can only call it a trademark violation if you change the product, or if the product isn't actually something that was produced by the trademark holder. RedHat got away with threatening Cheapbytes on the basis that the CDs they produced might not have the same quality control as RedHat CDs. Even if RedHat didn't encourage
Since they don't hold the copyright for the vast majority of software they're distributing, they probably can't use that to prevent binary redistribution. The first guy who buys a UL distro will get the binaries for UL all nicely packaged on one CD, and I can't see any legal reason why he couldn't just post the
They might put some proprietary software on the CD along with all the open stuff, and then they could restrict binary distribution of the entire CD, although there would be nothing stopping anyone from removing the proprietary code and redistributing the rest of the binaries. Of course, then they would not be able to use the UnitedLinux name, because they changed the content of the CD.
Personally, I'm sticking with RedHat for my company's servers. I'm happy with their support and support of their product by the community. I'm delighted that they can cultivate a positive relationship with that community while at the same time making money and paying the salaries of free software developers. They understand the community, and they get its support; it's as simple as that.
You're asking this on Slashdot? Most of us never leave the house. Ruins your flourescent tan.
He's considering "rolling his own" with Zope, not from scratch. Zope already has most of these features - workflow, security, alerts, etc. as well as a large assortment of community-contributed modules.