You'll get no argument that decades of precedent don't make things right, or that IP law is a total mess.
But the laws are codified and enforced, so you complaining about them isn't going to change them any time soon. And there's a world of difference between slavery, civil rights, etc. and software licensing. With software licensing, it's really really simple: if you don't like the deal you're offered, don't buy into it. There are alternatives.
Or you can try suing Microsoft, and seeing how that goes. Good luck with that.
Until then, Microsoft's lawyers and executives - like those of so many other companies - will continue to do unethical (and hence illegal) things in violation of fundamental rights arising under the highest law of the land, and will get away with it.
They will as long as people continue to throw money at them despite all the abuse they get back. If people stopped doing that, these companies would go out of business. I don't know about you, but personally I haven't contributed anything to MS's coffers.
No, you're the retard if you think some opinion by a judge matters one whit when there is ZERO enforcement action attached to the case. "Guilty" doesn't mean squat when there's nothing more than a slap on the wrist, moron.
And yes, you're an idiot if you've never heard of a prepaid debit card.
You sure about that? I thought it was the other way around. Maybe we have some mix-ups with definitions here. I thought, first, that progressives were liberals, but a subset of them. Secondly, I thought the progressives were the ones who wanted real economic changes (like Bernie's hammering about wealth inequality), while more mainstream liberals were basically "limosine liberals" who support the status quo but will talk about throwing a bone to the lower classes now and then. Now, if you're talking about the social justice types, I'm not sure what to call them, other than SJWs or "wacky left". Considering how they trashed one of Bernie's rallies, I wouldn't consider them to be aligned with him.
The problem is all the stupid liberals who are jumping on the Hillary bandwagon because she's a woman, and apparently care more about banning guns than reducing wealth inequality and restoring Glass-Steagall (which of course Hillary is completely opposed to).
Mark my words, we're going to have a repeat of 2000: the super anti-gun candidate gets nominated, and then loses the general election to a Republican who starts yet another war.
it's to use your own free speech to tell everyone why they're wrong.
That doesn't actually work. Just look at all the extremist stuff that's become popular with the ubiquity of the internet: far right-wing "press" here in the US, and the rise of ISIS in the middle east. Telling people they're wrong just doesn't work; people have confirmation bias, they read something that agrees with their preconceived notions, and pushes them even farther, and they ignore anything that opposes that viewpoint. It's even worse when you mix religion in there, because it's impossible to argue with religious beliefs, since they have no basis in reality whatsoever.
If you want to shut down terrorist groups like ISIS on social media, the best way to do so is to ridicule them. Who wants to join a group that's a complete laughingstock?
This is a fanciful notion that has no actual evidence supporting it. As I said before, you can't argue with religion. ISIS says the "end of days" is coming, that a massive war with the "Romans" is just around the corner, and that Muslims should join them to be part of this "great" event. You can mock them and say their religious beliefs are stupid, but that's not going to change anyone's minds, that's just going to make anyone who was leaning that way go even farther in that direction.
In a nutshell, free speech and easy communication really isn't having the moderating effect that people like you think it should; instead, it's having directly the opposite effect: it's aiding in the spread of extremist ideologies, and fracturing public opinion. This wasn't the case pre-internet because extremists didn't have an easy and cheap way to spread their thoughts: printing presses and travel are expensive. Now with the internet, any fool can put up a YouTube video for nothing.
Bernie's not that anti-gun, not like Hillary. That's why he's not going to win the Democratic nomination; the left-wingers want to elect a woman and someone strongly anti-gun. So it's going to be a repeat of what happened in 2000: the anti-gun Democratic nominee will lose to the GOP one. Remember how that went?
This isn't to say that Bernie is super pro-gun or anything like that, but he's more moderate on the issue, which would be good for winning the general election because swing voters like moderates, and swing voters are the ones who really decide our elections.
We don't speak their language and we have no intention to listen to their reasoning or empathize with their situation.
Well of course not; they're stupid and crazy, and you can't reason with that. So they self-organize into their own echo chambers and feed off each other. There's really no way to deal with it, except to pursue a policy of isolation of some sort.
Free speech and free flow of information does more good than harm. Seems counter intuitive to lock violent radicals out of the very information that could change their minds, educate the ignorant, and carry a non violent message.
Do you have any evidence to back up this assertion? This sounds like one of those assertions that people claim because they think it "makes sense" and is "obvious", but in reality there's actually no evidence to support it at all.
Just look at how politics in America have gone since the WWW became so popular. 30 years ago, no one would have believe crazy claims about FEMA building concentration camps, yet these days those kinds of ideas are very commonplace among the right-wing. The whole Tea Party movement is a product of the free speech enabled by the Internet.
Progressives have a naive idea that free speech will make people see "the truth", but instead what we're seeing is that it enables radicalism, whether it's ultra-far-right wing groups here in the US or whether it's ISIS in the middle east. ISIS is famous for making great use of social media to spread the word about their cause and to recruit people; why do you think tens of thousands of Muslims have left Europe to go to the middle east so they can commit murder and mayhem?
Things were different in the "old days" (pre-internet), because speech was highly limited, to those who had enough money to build a TV station or own a printing press. Now, any moron can start a Facebook activism page about any crazy thing they want. It's a double-edged sword: it helps counter big-money interests, so for instance we have internet activists screaming about SOPA/PIPA and getting politicians to back down on that (temporarily), but on the other hand it enables all sorts of other radicals, and contributes to radicalization in general.
Isn't that what active controls are for? It's just like the B2 bomber; it's unstable and can't be flown without computer control. But with it, it works just fine.
If you get a car new enough to dial the cops when you idiotically back into something, it should also be new enough to have a rearview camera. With one of those, you have to be really brain-dead to back into anything. There's a good reason rearview cameras will be mandatory starting 2018.
I don't know of any computer store I can go to here where I can buy a computer which isn't pre-loaded with Windows
What is "here"? A local area? What kind of backwards person still buys computers at local shops? It's easy to buy computers without Windows online.
That's not an alternative.
Yes, it is an alternative. Just because it isn't served up on a silver platter for you doesn't mean you don't have alternatives. And seriously, buying computers locally? How idiotic.
not in the eyes of the DoJ, not in the eyes of the EC.
Bullshit. Show me where these entities have actually done anything to change MS's behavior. Some opinion written by a discredited judge is irrelevant.
Leaving it alone is irresponsible: the vendor has an obligation to provide security updates. Not doing so is leaving you open to malware infections and breakins. MS merely chooses to update your system wholesale to the latest Windows version to stay up-to-date.
Also, as I recall, it's entirely possible to disable all updates to Windows. It's just not set that way by default.
Uber and Lyft are perfectly legal. Your mistake is thinking that taxi laws apply to them; they don't. They don't have taximeters, and therefore are not taxis. They're limosines, and operate under those laws.
To my knowledge, this is a line of reasoning which has never actually been tested in court.
Then I encourage you to hire a legal team and start suing software companies based on your legal theories, since you seem to feel you have the right to dictate to Microsoft how they should run their business and treat their customers. Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, I'll simply opt out of using MS's products.
The bottom line is that legality is determined by whoever wins in court, and that costs a lot of money. The smart way to deal with this situation is to opt out.
Also, if you want to argue that an EULA "offers" a warranty or tech support or something, I'll concede that too -- but will point out that the property owner is perfectly free to reject said warranty or whatever and still use his property.
You're free to reject MS's updates and spying. But they're under no obligation to make it easy for you; you'll need to block them at the firewall to be really sure. Again, the smart way is to simply opt out. Just like I'm not going to buy a car from a company that's known to make cars which turn into fireballs when rear-ended, I'm not going to use products from a software company that disrespects me and abuses me.
Just like there's little stopping you from changing your legal name when you get CRISPRed into a 25-year-old hottie, there's nothing stopping you from creating a new Slashdot account.
Suppose I give you a licence to shoot rabbits on my land, with no time limit. I cannot one day say that I am changing the licence from shooting rabbits on my land to shooting rats in my cellar, because the rabbit stuff was "only a licence".
The rabbit-shooting license doesn't mean that you can't ever make any changes to your land, or that you can't sell the land to someone else, or subdivide it, or that rabbits will continue to inhabit that land.
Your Windows license says you can use Windows as long as you like. It doesn't say that they have to continue supporting Windows 7/8, or that they can't push updates on you. They've simply updated you to the latest-and-greatest Windows.
To walk away from Windows means either embracing Apple's Walled Garden approach, or delving into the tangled world of Linux.
No one ever said freedom was free or easy. If you want the convenience the Microsoft offers, then you need to put up with their abuse. If you don't like that, then be prepared for things to not be quite as convenient. Personally, Linux Mint works just great for my wife's computer; she doesn't have any trouble at all with it, except that it won't run Windows software. Since all she does is surf the web, use Facebook (ugh...), and watch videos with it, it serves her needs just fine. And so much stuff these days is web-based anyway, so your OS doesn't matter any more.
If I demanded to run some Apple-only software like Garageband, I sure wouldn't be bitching and complaining about the high cost of Apple Macbooks or how much I hate OSX's UI; that's part of the deal. So I simply avoid Apple-only software.
I don't give a shit about what you or even some sell-out judge says. This is WRONG (morally and factually)
Citation needed on the factually claim. There is literally decades of precedent supporting software licensing. You can believe whatever you want, but you just look like a lunatic when you claim things that are completely contrary to all the rest of society and the entire legal system we've been using for many decades (in regard to software).
Honestly, this all sounds like a bunch of whiners complaining that the government needs to step in and make software vendors behave as they think they should. Have you forgotten that this government is all in favor of massive surveillance and spying on citizens? Or are you going to complain about that too, while continuing to elect politicians who support these programs?
Slashdot Mirror
You'll get no argument that decades of precedent don't make things right, or that IP law is a total mess.
But the laws are codified and enforced, so you complaining about them isn't going to change them any time soon. And there's a world of difference between slavery, civil rights, etc. and software licensing. With software licensing, it's really really simple: if you don't like the deal you're offered, don't buy into it. There are alternatives.
Or you can try suing Microsoft, and seeing how that goes. Good luck with that.
Until then, Microsoft's lawyers and executives - like those of so many other companies - will continue to do unethical (and hence illegal) things in violation of fundamental rights arising under the highest law of the land, and will get away with it.
They will as long as people continue to throw money at them despite all the abuse they get back. If people stopped doing that, these companies would go out of business. I don't know about you, but personally I haven't contributed anything to MS's coffers.
No, you're the retard if you think some opinion by a judge matters one whit when there is ZERO enforcement action attached to the case. "Guilty" doesn't mean squat when there's nothing more than a slap on the wrist, moron.
And yes, you're an idiot if you've never heard of a prepaid debit card.
You sure about that? I thought it was the other way around. Maybe we have some mix-ups with definitions here. I thought, first, that progressives were liberals, but a subset of them. Secondly, I thought the progressives were the ones who wanted real economic changes (like Bernie's hammering about wealth inequality), while more mainstream liberals were basically "limosine liberals" who support the status quo but will talk about throwing a bone to the lower classes now and then. Now, if you're talking about the social justice types, I'm not sure what to call them, other than SJWs or "wacky left". Considering how they trashed one of Bernie's rallies, I wouldn't consider them to be aligned with him.
That's exactly what I think too.
The problem is all the stupid liberals who are jumping on the Hillary bandwagon because she's a woman, and apparently care more about banning guns than reducing wealth inequality and restoring Glass-Steagall (which of course Hillary is completely opposed to).
Mark my words, we're going to have a repeat of 2000: the super anti-gun candidate gets nominated, and then loses the general election to a Republican who starts yet another war.
it's to use your own free speech to tell everyone why they're wrong.
That doesn't actually work. Just look at all the extremist stuff that's become popular with the ubiquity of the internet: far right-wing "press" here in the US, and the rise of ISIS in the middle east. Telling people they're wrong just doesn't work; people have confirmation bias, they read something that agrees with their preconceived notions, and pushes them even farther, and they ignore anything that opposes that viewpoint. It's even worse when you mix religion in there, because it's impossible to argue with religious beliefs, since they have no basis in reality whatsoever.
If you want to shut down terrorist groups like ISIS on social media, the best way to do so is to ridicule them. Who wants to join a group that's a complete laughingstock?
This is a fanciful notion that has no actual evidence supporting it. As I said before, you can't argue with religion. ISIS says the "end of days" is coming, that a massive war with the "Romans" is just around the corner, and that Muslims should join them to be part of this "great" event. You can mock them and say their religious beliefs are stupid, but that's not going to change anyone's minds, that's just going to make anyone who was leaning that way go even farther in that direction.
In a nutshell, free speech and easy communication really isn't having the moderating effect that people like you think it should; instead, it's having directly the opposite effect: it's aiding in the spread of extremist ideologies, and fracturing public opinion. This wasn't the case pre-internet because extremists didn't have an easy and cheap way to spread their thoughts: printing presses and travel are expensive. Now with the internet, any fool can put up a YouTube video for nothing.
Bullshit. Mint chocolate chip is the best.
And vim is the best text editor.
I propose we censor any speech which criticizes mint chocolate chip ice cream or which advances non-vi-style editors.
A TV channel for selling guns? What a ridiculous idea. Who the hell watches TV any more????
Well, maybe it's not so stupid: conservatives do tend to be rather backwards in a lot of ways.
Bernie's not that anti-gun, not like Hillary. That's why he's not going to win the Democratic nomination; the left-wingers want to elect a woman and someone strongly anti-gun. So it's going to be a repeat of what happened in 2000: the anti-gun Democratic nominee will lose to the GOP one. Remember how that went?
This isn't to say that Bernie is super pro-gun or anything like that, but he's more moderate on the issue, which would be good for winning the general election because swing voters like moderates, and swing voters are the ones who really decide our elections.
A better integration program? How's that supposed to work? Make French culture more Islamic so the Muslims fit in better?
We don't speak their language and we have no intention to listen to their reasoning or empathize with their situation.
Well of course not; they're stupid and crazy, and you can't reason with that. So they self-organize into their own echo chambers and feed off each other. There's really no way to deal with it, except to pursue a policy of isolation of some sort.
So, a mass shooting that has now been labeled as terrorism happens in the state with the strictest gun control laws available in the US
Absolutely wrong.
California's gun laws aren't that strict. Illinois's and New Jersey's laws are stricter.
The only thing that would help is gun control
How did gun control help prevent the multiple attacks in Paris?
Free speech and free flow of information does more good than harm. Seems counter intuitive to lock violent radicals out of the very information that could change their minds, educate the ignorant, and carry a non violent message.
Do you have any evidence to back up this assertion? This sounds like one of those assertions that people claim because they think it "makes sense" and is "obvious", but in reality there's actually no evidence to support it at all.
Just look at how politics in America have gone since the WWW became so popular. 30 years ago, no one would have believe crazy claims about FEMA building concentration camps, yet these days those kinds of ideas are very commonplace among the right-wing. The whole Tea Party movement is a product of the free speech enabled by the Internet.
Progressives have a naive idea that free speech will make people see "the truth", but instead what we're seeing is that it enables radicalism, whether it's ultra-far-right wing groups here in the US or whether it's ISIS in the middle east. ISIS is famous for making great use of social media to spread the word about their cause and to recruit people; why do you think tens of thousands of Muslims have left Europe to go to the middle east so they can commit murder and mayhem?
Things were different in the "old days" (pre-internet), because speech was highly limited, to those who had enough money to build a TV station or own a printing press. Now, any moron can start a Facebook activism page about any crazy thing they want. It's a double-edged sword: it helps counter big-money interests, so for instance we have internet activists screaming about SOPA/PIPA and getting politicians to back down on that (temporarily), but on the other hand it enables all sorts of other radicals, and contributes to radicalization in general.
Isn't that what active controls are for? It's just like the B2 bomber; it's unstable and can't be flown without computer control. But with it, it works just fine.
If you get a car new enough to dial the cops when you idiotically back into something, it should also be new enough to have a rearview camera. With one of those, you have to be really brain-dead to back into anything. There's a good reason rearview cameras will be mandatory starting 2018.
Haha, yeah right. Corporations are so stupid they're not going to abandon Windows no matter what MS does to them.
I have software that doesn't run on Mac or Linux.
It was your choice to purchase broken software.
I don't know of any computer store I can go to here where I can buy a computer which isn't pre-loaded with Windows
What is "here"? A local area? What kind of backwards person still buys computers at local shops? It's easy to buy computers without Windows online.
That's not an alternative.
Yes, it is an alternative. Just because it isn't served up on a silver platter for you doesn't mean you don't have alternatives. And seriously, buying computers locally? How idiotic.
not in the eyes of the DoJ, not in the eyes of the EC.
Bullshit. Show me where these entities have actually done anything to change MS's behavior. Some opinion written by a discredited judge is irrelevant.
Leaving it alone is irresponsible: the vendor has an obligation to provide security updates. Not doing so is leaving you open to malware infections and breakins. MS merely chooses to update your system wholesale to the latest Windows version to stay up-to-date.
Also, as I recall, it's entirely possible to disable all updates to Windows. It's just not set that way by default.
Uber and Lyft are perfectly legal. Your mistake is thinking that taxi laws apply to them; they don't. They don't have taximeters, and therefore are not taxis. They're limosines, and operate under those laws.
So what? Do you happen to remember what the punishment was in that case? Oh yeah, there wasn't any.
And that case was about them bundling IE and Windows; that's no longer applicable because so many people use Firefox and Chrome these days.
To my knowledge, this is a line of reasoning which has never actually been tested in court.
Then I encourage you to hire a legal team and start suing software companies based on your legal theories, since you seem to feel you have the right to dictate to Microsoft how they should run their business and treat their customers. Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, I'll simply opt out of using MS's products.
The bottom line is that legality is determined by whoever wins in court, and that costs a lot of money. The smart way to deal with this situation is to opt out.
Also, if you want to argue that an EULA "offers" a warranty or tech support or something, I'll concede that too -- but will point out that the property owner is perfectly free to reject said warranty or whatever and still use his property.
You're free to reject MS's updates and spying. But they're under no obligation to make it easy for you; you'll need to block them at the firewall to be really sure. Again, the smart way is to simply opt out. Just like I'm not going to buy a car from a company that's known to make cars which turn into fireballs when rear-ended, I'm not going to use products from a software company that disrespects me and abuses me.
Just like there's little stopping you from changing your legal name when you get CRISPRed into a 25-year-old hottie, there's nothing stopping you from creating a new Slashdot account.
Suppose I give you a licence to shoot rabbits on my land, with no time limit. I cannot one day say that I am changing the licence from shooting rabbits on my land to shooting rats in my cellar, because the rabbit stuff was "only a licence".
The rabbit-shooting license doesn't mean that you can't ever make any changes to your land, or that you can't sell the land to someone else, or subdivide it, or that rabbits will continue to inhabit that land.
Your Windows license says you can use Windows as long as you like. It doesn't say that they have to continue supporting Windows 7/8, or that they can't push updates on you. They've simply updated you to the latest-and-greatest Windows.
To walk away from Windows means either embracing Apple's Walled Garden approach, or delving into the tangled world of Linux.
No one ever said freedom was free or easy. If you want the convenience the Microsoft offers, then you need to put up with their abuse. If you don't like that, then be prepared for things to not be quite as convenient. Personally, Linux Mint works just great for my wife's computer; she doesn't have any trouble at all with it, except that it won't run Windows software. Since all she does is surf the web, use Facebook (ugh...), and watch videos with it, it serves her needs just fine. And so much stuff these days is web-based anyway, so your OS doesn't matter any more.
If I demanded to run some Apple-only software like Garageband, I sure wouldn't be bitching and complaining about the high cost of Apple Macbooks or how much I hate OSX's UI; that's part of the deal. So I simply avoid Apple-only software.
I don't give a shit about what you or even some sell-out judge says. This is WRONG (morally and factually)
Citation needed on the factually claim. There is literally decades of precedent supporting software licensing. You can believe whatever you want, but you just look like a lunatic when you claim things that are completely contrary to all the rest of society and the entire legal system we've been using for many decades (in regard to software).
Honestly, this all sounds like a bunch of whiners complaining that the government needs to step in and make software vendors behave as they think they should. Have you forgotten that this government is all in favor of massive surveillance and spying on citizens? Or are you going to complain about that too, while continuing to elect politicians who support these programs?