Have the dealers lobbying for this legislation demonstrated an ability to service Tesla or other EVs in sufficient volume, across the entirety of the state (or at all), subsequent to this restriction going into force?
As soon as I noticed the release I went to try it out. I threw together a Thunderbird RPM based on the binary distribution for ease of management. I put up some instructions based on the work of another writer a few years back, figuring it might be elpful to others, but there is truth to the earlier point about how many early adopters of just-released email clients there really are. It seems to me that the early adopters are technically knowledgeable enough to put together whatever packaging they'd like, and newer users of Fedora or any other RPM based linux distribution would be unlikely to install non-repo based RPMs regardless. In any case, they're out there, and to give gredit where credit is due, Thomas Chung did great work with initial versions of the spec file.
Williams was and is an Oil infrastructure and services company. Their Communications subsidiary now provides cable, fiber and communications infrastructure services. At one point they tried to create a bandwidth exchange. I first became aware of them only when they started advertising on some of the sunday morning political discussion shows (along with Enron). I gater they were able to shed the exchange business without sustaining significant losses.
--CTH
Financial hedging and commoditization of bandwidth
on
Google's Sinister(?) Plans
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Who here remembers Williams Communications and their bandwidth exchange, back during the height of the bouble? This is simply an extension of commodity hedging in the absence of a liquid market. The only way you can achieve such commoditization in the current environment is to invest in the related infrastructure. Much as any company hedges against the cost of key input commodities, critical to thheir business -think airlines investing in oil futures- Google anticipates increasesing commodity costs. There's absolutely nothing sinister about about this. It does however, seem to tip Google's hand with regard to their expectations of Net Neutrality. Vint has probably realized that his quest for net neutrality legislation will fail, and Google will face significant changes in network monetization through a vastly expanded peering fee structure. Where previously, peering fees were (and are typically now) paid by smaller network providers, to larger providers for the right to connect to their networks, in the future, such fees will be structured not based on network size but relative volume of traffic sorted by type. Google wants to minimize the impact of such peering fees (passed from colo provider to colo clients such as Google) by leasing as much network infrastructure as they can acquire. The simple point here is the fewer connections to foreign networks, the smaller the overall cost of peering under any model, regardless of the outcome of the net neutrality debate, but especially if it gets shot down. The point is, there's nothing sinister here. It's simple corporate risk management. Google would be negligent if they didn't do this.
While slipstreaming service packs is a common practice, you can also slipstream hotfixes. Hack when I was in IT support we used this great script to automate the process. Some of the other links I still had bookmarked may be of value to people who not only want to slipstream service packs/hotfixes but also build an unattended installation CD. In our case we installed all the apps common to our PC images (except for office) from one CD. We threw the CD in, booted from it and came back 2 1/2 hours later to find a fully installed desktop with all our standard apps. This method is superior to using Ghost or other imaging software when you have a heterogenius enviroment where PC hardware varies drastically from depertment to department or desktop to desktop.
This last link related to a commercial software distribution enviroment but but it includes an archive of the known switches accepted by various installers to make them silent. The technique we used was to use the unattended.txt file to add a RunOnce registry entry, to regedit (to marge a secondary gegistry file containing other RunOnce entries) to be executed on the second reboot to silently install our list of apps, where the installer commands used included the switches detailed on the appDeploy website (and many other palces across the web).
There are a relatively small number of installers out there that take a relitively well known set of switches to make the installation silent (accepting all the defaults). These methods saves us thousands of man-hours in PC deployment in the two years they was in use.
Their mission statement says it all. Centos retains complete compatibility. 'Enough Compabibility' means there will be a divergence between WhiteBox and RHEL while they hope "to support RHEL Erata releases" which is a complete contrediction. It's not good enough to be able to install RHEL erata fixes. It's nessecery to ensure that no other security or reliability problems are introduced by any divergence from the platform on which you depend for your security patches.
While I believe variety in Linux distributions in itself is a positive contribution to the platform's overall growth and appeal, The distributions should be distinct enough to offer a meaningful value-add as compared to others already established in the market (free - as in beer - as the market is).
Where Centos provides an unincumbered version of a supported (and thereby presumed superior) distribution, what is WhiteBox providing over either of these existing and established offerings?
An earlier poster correctly states that any terrorist who wanted GIS data for nearly any part of the country could simply purchase the data on the open market, so lets move past that motive for secrecy and examine other possible motivations.
While most towns in Connectivut and across the country are striving to make GIS data available in the most convenient way possible, in order to stimulate development and growth of their tax base, Greenwich is one of those towns having the highest per capita income in the state, so their interest leans away from development and toward privacy. God forbid some poporatzi get ahold of a terrain map overlaid with a keyhole satelite photo of Mel Gibson's house. That would be outragous wouldnit it? Oh, wait, the Poporatzi could buy the data on the open market just as any terrorist could...
Information which is available to anyone who is willing to pay for it, and is then purchased with tax dollars with the express purpose of making it available to those tax payers, sahould certainly be made available (obviously) so the question becomes, how should that information be made available? Why should non-Greenwich-tax-payers have access to it? While I would have a problem if the town planning commission purchased the data and made it available selectively to certain developers while denying access to the general Greenwich citizenry, I don't have nearly the problem with the town government denying access to those who do not pay Greenwich taxes. Most towns have their GIS data available online for all to see and use, but that's a choice, not a requirement. As long as the tax payers are benefiting from the town's purchase of the GIS data, it's difficult to make an effective argument that prefenting non-taxpayers from accessing the data, or even charging such non-taxpayers a fee for access would be unreasonable.
The question is why is there no PKI infastructure in place to require SCRIPTS that run on the MsnTV embedded hardware platform to be signed so the user can make an informed choice? My proposal is relates only to scripted changes to user confuration changes. Manual changes made by the user to his/her own settings should be made through a secure interface, whether that be done through PKI or some other means.
As for the previous poster's examples of a Linux box or a Mac OS X, neither of these system are embedded system designed for the non-computer user. They are not designed to be limited in scope and functionality. They have mechanisms which facilitate selective patch application and security optimization by users directly.
While you can certainly argue in favor of prosecuting someone who endangers public safety, I'm more concerned about the company that allowed such a security hole to exist. Why isn't there a PKI infastructure around configuration changes in the MsnTV firmware? Why aren't scripts that change user settings required to be signed? At some point the vendors who provide these infarior and dangerous products must be held liable. Recently, slashdot had a with a quote from one of the heads of Microsoft security who said that in the case of Windows (where patch application is optional) We have never had vulnerabilities exploited before the patch was known'. In the case of NsnTV, firmware updates are not optional, and the fact that an update still doesn't exist which would authenticate scripts that change user settings, is extremely telling. Is it that it never occured to Microsoft that settings changes should be validated? That scripts which perform cuch changes should be signed or otherwise secured? Unbelievable...
I still don't understand how there could be spoilers for movies which are prequels. There were three movies made over 20 years ago, which established a plot arc to which these new prequels must match up. This is not to say we don't know the ending. We know the ending vary well. The question is, will the middle of the star wars mythos do justice to the end? Will it honor the spirit of the ending with which we are so familiar or will the release of this movie, which defines the middle of the story arc, simply serve to cheapen the experience of those of us who so enjoyed the original three movies? Only time will tell. While we wait though, we can still enjoy the originals and simply hope beyond hope that George Lucas won't further damage the mythos and cheapen the great work he produced early in his career.
--CTH
Cell phone jamming on private property
on
Cell-Phone Wars
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
While cell phone jamming in public spaces is illegal, my research suggests that jamming on private property is not illegal. It appears this has never been challenged in court. The big question though is, whether or not it's a good practice.
I finally relented and got a cell phone vary recently. I (like almsot every other slashdot reader) work in the tech sector 8 hours a day 5 days a week and have revused until recently to bring some of this technology into my home. I don't have cable TV, I don't have an answering machine and until a few weeks ago I didn't have a cell phone.
I for one, would be in favor of movie theaters jamming cell phones inside the theaters themselves, and any other private institution (museums perhaps) who wish to, being able to legally jam cell frequencies at their discression, within their own premisis. It should be considered no different than banning smoking in facilities on private property. The owners should have discression here, And if cell phone users don't like it they can take their business elsewhere. This will cause the business owners to carefully consider the practice before enguaging in it.
I do believe that signage should be requires when such jamming is in effect, so patrons would be aware they will be incomunicado while they are within the given facility, such that they can make an informed choice.
--CTh
Viewers not as active in support of Angel
on
WB Cancels Angel
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
It's interesting to see how cult shows like this survive, or as the case may be, do not. It seems to me that cult shows targeted toward men 18-34 seem to generally do better than cukt shows targeted toward women 18-34. I believe this is because certain demographics tend to be more vocal advocates than others. This is not to day women are less vocal but to say that they place less importance on television than on other elements of life. This possibly more a cliche than anything else but all cliches become cliches for a reason. Cult shows (such as Farscape) with leading male demographics, but with lesser performance and market shares than Angel seem to have survived longer.
If Microsoft is not involved and is not providing any source code or detailed internal specs, the only reason IBM could provide a superior office suite to that offered by OpenOffice.org is a simple resourcing issue. IBM has a great deal of money and programming expertise to throw at such an effort. With this in mind, why wouldn't IBM simply become a greater contributor to the OpenOffice.org effort?
What could IBM achieve on it's own that they could not achieve in colaboration with OpenOffice.org? This whole effort seems rather strange and somewhat poorly thought out.
Specialty phone numbers have always been bought sold and traded. Back when the only toll-free area code was '800', and the available numbers in this area code were running out there were many sales of such numbers. The practice was considered somewhat illicit, which is what prompted the faster introduction of the '888', '877', and '866' area codes. The introduction of number portability simply increases the visibility and lowers the barriers to entry of this market. All in all, this is - economically speaking - a positive thing.
Microsoft said that its own security had not been breached by whomever did the posting, nor was it released by a series of companies and governments with whom it shares the source code for the purpose of building software to work with Windows.
Aparently Microsoft has no idea how the source code was relased. This doesn't speak well for their security. If they can't protect their own code repositories - their single most valuable asset - how can we expect them to provide a secure or even non-trojaned product?
I knight thee for thy geek prowass, in spite of thy buggy insecure software, in spite of thy pending antitrust litigation, I knight thee for thy introduction of technology which will allow geeks around the world to stream Monty Python sketches over the web and share them with their geek brethren, in spite of the fact that you stole the concepts behind it from your competitors and insisted on including crippling and inherently broken DRM.
While on one level it's great to see this sort of standardization, one has to ask whether standardization on the WIndows driver architecture is the best choice. This is what standards organizations are for. While I like OSS as much as the next guy, and things like Wine, or other compatibility layers such as those mentioned in the article are certainly valuable in their own right, They shouldn't be seen as a mechanism for promoting standards. This just promotes adoption of proprietary mechanisms as de-facto standards, which is seldom a good thing.
I'm just waiting for Microsoft alter their EULA to disallow software written using their (presumably patented) driver architecture and copyrighted APIs on competing platforms, in a bid to deter hardware manufacturers from providing linux support by increasing the development costs for linux support through preventing unified cross-platform driver development.
Seems to me that deploying Linux in test labs used by business customers to evaluate Microsoft produsts is perhaps the smartest thing Microsoft has done in a while. When customers compare a poorly configured/optimized linux enviroment to a perfectly configured Microsoft enviroment, Microsoft would almost certainly win. If sales reps were to invite potential customers to such a lab, those customers would leave with the belief that they had tested Windows vs. Linux themselves in a fair evaluation, since they conducted it themselves. This of course would be a complete falacy, since the Linux side of the lab would have been configured by staff which were seeking to convince users to avoid Linux. This seems like a great Microsoft Marketing Strategy.
I love it. Part of the settlement administration website, managed by Rust consulting Inc., "... a class act in claims administration", located at http://microsoftcalsettlement.com/ is run on Microsoft IIS 5.0. I havn't seen the exact language of the settlement yet (does it cover Microsoft OSs more recent than Win05/98?) so it's hard to tell whether Rust Consulting Inc. will be filling out their own forms on their own website to claim their settlement coupons for their overpayment fot the OS running their website (or notifying their histing provider to do so).
Verizon wilreless uses standard cell hardware available for license by many service providers in the U.S. and internationally, so exactly what is being alledged here? Is it that Nextel entered into a contract with the same hardware manufacturer that Verizon was going to use in providing a competing service, or is it that Nextel aquired hardware from such a manufacturer when that hardware was exclusively developed for/licensed to Verizon. The article is vary sketchy about this rather important detail.
To 'hold harmless' is far different than a grant of license. Although the analogy in the parent is somewhat misleading, the point is absolutely valid. Eseentially, SCO is agreeing to exclude customers of it's own linux distribution from any future legal action.
The big question is, what constitutes a SCO customer? Must I have purchased SCO services with my download of the SCO linux distro, or can I simply make use of their distro to avoid the threat of legal action? How much of the SCO distro must I use?
Perhaps I should install a few packages on each of my Linux boxes, so as to avoid the the threat of lawsuits. As I re-read this, it appears the letter is only directed to current and ongoing SCO partners. This suggests that possibly, not only would I have had to have purchase SCO services but I would have to continue to pay for SCO service contracts indefinately into the future. Then again, IANAL, so perhaps I have misinterpreted the legal implications of this letter.
Microsoft has actually learned a lot over the past decade; particularly in the area or recurring revenue streams.
At this point a significant portion of the company revenues are derived from subscription services. Even if they waive all future upgrade license fees, they still have support contracts, MSDN and other subscriptions to services many large organizations will rerquire. It'll be vary interestingto see what Balmer is willing to offer to get this contract/deployment. There has got to be a point below which they will refuse to go. 'Under no circumstances, loose to linux' must have a limit. I just wonder where it actually is.
There are many sighns you are about to be fired, but most of them relate to steps your employer has taken to prevent you from doing damage to their systems in retaliation, like, say, changing the root password, deleting your personal userid, removing you from the company directory, and then there are these:
The point is, do what you need to do long before you are fired so as to make your exit as painless as possible. If your employer is not competent enough to take the nessecery steps, and so requires anti-employee insurance, then that's their problem, and it probably indicates they're too stupid to deserver to have you working for them anyway. If they havn't earned the respect of their employees, again, this is the mark of a bad employer and it's time to move on anyway.
It's simple, if any of the above events have occurred, plan to move on and if your company has purchased anti-employee insurance, it's time to het the hell out anyway.
There has been much political debate of this issue however, may I be the first to say that NASA should spend any amount of money needed to help George W. Bush get home. Now is the time, as mars grows closer to earth than it has in recorded history, we must act quickly to help the gramatically challenged one. If you don't believe me, here's the proof:
Of course the GPL is viral. There should be no question of this, but the question one should ask is "Is that a bad thing?". This was Stallman's goal. He wanted to screw up the software business model, which he succeeded in doing, but with the vary positive side effect of cuilding a cooperative culture of open software development with a fully functional service based business model behind it.
Clearly the GPL has benefitted many people and businesses. The fact that Microsoft isn't collectively smart enough to figure out a business model that will allow them to benefit from it isn't anyone's problem than theirs, and certainly doesn't make the GPL a bad thing.
The GPL established a structure where developers can leverage the vast amounts of work released by others for the relitively cheap buy-in of licensing the nw derivative code using the same license. This is not an unreasonable obligation by any streach of the imagination. As for it being viral, if you don't agree to the terms of the license, you are free to avoid building your work on top of code licensed in this way. In the case of SCO, of they were so neglegent as to fail to observer the license constraints they were adopting, through contributing to GPL-licensed software, this is their own fault. This does not in any way reflect poorly on the license. It is written in plain language, and the text of the license represents possibly the most widely distributed and available legal contract in history.
The nature of the GPL supports a specific development and business model which is inconsistant with certain other models. If Microsoft, SCO and others wish to benefit from software developed under this model, they must accept the simple and streight-forward license terms.
For an entertaining afternoon, print out and compare the GPL to the Microsoft.NET Studio EULA. It speaks for itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Have the dealers lobbying for this legislation demonstrated an ability to service Tesla or other EVs in sufficient volume, across the entirety of the state (or at all), subsequent to this restriction going into force?
As soon as I noticed the release I went to try it out. I threw together a Thunderbird RPM based on the binary distribution for ease of management. I put up some instructions based on the work of another writer a few years back, figuring it might be elpful to others, but there is truth to the earlier point about how many early adopters of just-released email clients there really are. It seems to me that the early adopters are technically knowledgeable enough to put together whatever packaging they'd like, and newer users of Fedora or any other RPM based linux distribution would be unlikely to install non-repo based RPMs regardless. In any case, they're out there, and to give gredit where credit is due, Thomas Chung did great work with initial versions of the spec file.
--CTH
Williams was and is an Oil infrastructure and services company. Their Communications subsidiary now provides cable, fiber and communications infrastructure services. At one point they tried to create a bandwidth exchange. I first became aware of them only when they started advertising on some of the sunday morning political discussion shows (along with Enron). I gater they were able to shed the exchange business without sustaining significant losses.
--CTH
Who here remembers Williams Communications and their bandwidth exchange, back during the height of the bouble? This is simply an extension of commodity hedging in the absence of a liquid market. The only way you can achieve such commoditization in the current environment is to invest in the related infrastructure. Much as any company hedges against the cost of key input commodities, critical to thheir business -think airlines investing in oil futures- Google anticipates increasesing commodity costs. There's absolutely nothing sinister about about this. It does however, seem to tip Google's hand with regard to their expectations of Net Neutrality. Vint has probably realized that his quest for net neutrality legislation will fail, and Google will face significant changes in network monetization through a vastly expanded peering fee structure. Where previously, peering fees were (and are typically now) paid by smaller network providers, to larger providers for the right to connect to their networks, in the future, such fees will be structured not based on network size but relative volume of traffic sorted by type. Google wants to minimize the impact of such peering fees (passed from colo provider to colo clients such as Google) by leasing as much network infrastructure as they can acquire. The simple point here is the fewer connections to foreign networks, the smaller the overall cost of peering under any model, regardless of the outcome of the net neutrality debate, but especially if it gets shot down. The point is, there's nothing sinister here. It's simple corporate risk management. Google would be negligent if they didn't do this.
-- CTH
While slipstreaming service packs is a common practice, you can also slipstream hotfixes. Hack when I was in IT support we used this great script to automate the process. Some of the other links I still had bookmarked may be of value to people who not only want to slipstream service packs/hotfixes but also build an unattended installation CD. In our case we installed all the apps common to our PC images (except for office) from one CD. We threw the CD in, booted from it and came back 2 1/2 hours later to find a fully installed desktop with all our standard apps. This method is superior to using Ghost or other imaging software when you have a heterogenius enviroment where PC hardware varies drastically from depertment to department or desktop to desktop.
e ak/default.mspx
http://www.nu2.nu/bootablecd/
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/ie/i
http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/
http://www.appdeploy.com/packages/
This last link related to a commercial software distribution enviroment but but it includes an archive of the known switches accepted by various installers to make them silent. The technique we used was to use the unattended.txt file to add a RunOnce registry entry, to regedit (to marge a secondary gegistry file containing other RunOnce entries) to be executed on the second reboot to silently install our list of apps, where the installer commands used included the switches detailed on the appDeploy website (and many other palces across the web).
There are a relatively small number of installers out there that take a relitively well known set of switches to make the installation silent (accepting all the defaults). These methods saves us thousands of man-hours in PC deployment in the two years they was in use.
--CTH
Their mission statement says it all. Centos retains complete compatibility. 'Enough Compabibility' means there will be a divergence between WhiteBox and RHEL while they hope "to support RHEL Erata releases" which is a complete contrediction. It's not good enough to be able to install RHEL erata fixes. It's nessecery to ensure that no other security or reliability problems are introduced by any divergence from the platform on which you depend for your security patches.
While I believe variety in Linux distributions in itself is a positive contribution to the platform's overall growth and appeal, The distributions should be distinct enough to offer a meaningful value-add as compared to others already established in the market (free - as in beer - as the market is).
Where Centos provides an unincumbered version of a supported (and thereby presumed superior) distribution, what is WhiteBox providing over either of these existing and established offerings?
--CTH
An earlier poster correctly states that any terrorist who wanted GIS data for nearly any part of the country could simply purchase the data on the open market, so lets move past that motive for secrecy and examine other possible motivations.
While most towns in Connectivut and across the country are striving to make GIS data available in the most convenient way possible, in order to stimulate development and growth of their tax base, Greenwich is one of those towns having the highest per capita income in the state, so their interest leans away from development and toward privacy. God forbid some poporatzi get ahold of a terrain map overlaid with a keyhole satelite photo of Mel Gibson's house. That would be outragous wouldnit it? Oh, wait, the Poporatzi could buy the data on the open market just as any terrorist could...
Information which is available to anyone who is willing to pay for it, and is then purchased with tax dollars with the express purpose of making it available to those tax payers, sahould certainly be made available (obviously) so the question becomes, how should that information be made available? Why should non-Greenwich-tax-payers have access to it? While I would have a problem if the town planning commission purchased the data and made it available selectively to certain developers while denying access to the general Greenwich citizenry, I don't have nearly the problem with the town government denying access to those who do not pay Greenwich taxes. Most towns have their GIS data available online for all to see and use, but that's a choice, not a requirement. As long as the tax payers are benefiting from the town's purchase of the GIS data, it's difficult to make an effective argument that prefenting non-taxpayers from accessing the data, or even charging such non-taxpayers a fee for access would be unreasonable.
--CTH
The question is why is there no PKI infastructure in place to require SCRIPTS that run on the MsnTV embedded hardware platform to be signed so the user can make an informed choice? My proposal is relates only to scripted changes to user confuration changes. Manual changes made by the user to his/her own settings should be made through a secure interface, whether that be done through PKI or some other means.
As for the previous poster's examples of a Linux box or a Mac OS X, neither of these system are embedded system designed for the non-computer user. They are not designed to be limited in scope and functionality. They have mechanisms which facilitate selective patch application and security optimization by users directly.
--CTH
While you can certainly argue in favor of prosecuting someone who endangers public safety, I'm more concerned about the company that allowed such a security hole to exist. Why isn't there a PKI infastructure around configuration changes in the MsnTV firmware? Why aren't scripts that change user settings required to be signed? At some point the vendors who provide these infarior and dangerous products must be held liable. Recently, slashdot had a with a quote from one of the heads of Microsoft security who said that in the case of Windows (where patch application is optional) We have never had vulnerabilities exploited before the patch was known'. In the case of NsnTV, firmware updates are not optional, and the fact that an update still doesn't exist which would authenticate scripts that change user settings, is extremely telling. Is it that it never occured to Microsoft that settings changes should be validated? That scripts which perform cuch changes should be signed or otherwise secured? Unbelievable...
--CTH
I still don't understand how there could be spoilers for movies which are prequels. There were three movies made over 20 years ago, which established a plot arc to which these new prequels must match up. This is not to say we don't know the ending. We know the ending vary well. The question is, will the middle of the star wars mythos do justice to the end? Will it honor the spirit of the ending with which we are so familiar or will the release of this movie, which defines the middle of the story arc, simply serve to cheapen the experience of those of us who so enjoyed the original three movies? Only time will tell. While we wait though, we can still enjoy the originals and simply hope beyond hope that George Lucas won't further damage the mythos and cheapen the great work he produced early in his career.
--CTH
While cell phone jamming in public spaces is illegal, my research suggests that jamming on private property is not illegal. It appears this has never been challenged in court. The big question though is, whether or not it's a good practice.
I finally relented and got a cell phone vary recently. I (like almsot every other slashdot reader) work in the tech sector 8 hours a day 5 days a week and have revused until recently to bring some of this technology into my home. I don't have cable TV, I don't have an answering machine and until a few weeks ago I didn't have a cell phone.
I for one, would be in favor of movie theaters jamming cell phones inside the theaters themselves, and any other private institution (museums perhaps) who wish to, being able to legally jam cell frequencies at their discression, within their own premisis. It should be considered no different than banning smoking in facilities on private property. The owners should have discression here, And if cell phone users don't like it they can take their business elsewhere. This will cause the business owners to carefully consider the practice before enguaging in it.
I do believe that signage should be requires when such jamming is in effect, so patrons would be aware they will be incomunicado while they are within the given facility, such that they can make an informed choice.
--CTh
It's interesting to see how cult shows like this survive, or as the case may be, do not. It seems to me that cult shows targeted toward men 18-34 seem to generally do better than cukt shows targeted toward women 18-34. I believe this is because certain demographics tend to be more vocal advocates than others. This is not to day women are less vocal but to say that they place less importance on television than on other elements of life. This possibly more a cliche than anything else but all cliches become cliches for a reason.
Cult shows (such as Farscape) with leading male demographics, but with lesser performance and market shares than Angel seem to have survived longer.
--CTH
If Microsoft is not involved and is not providing any source code or detailed internal specs, the only reason IBM could provide a superior office suite to that offered by OpenOffice.org is a simple resourcing issue. IBM has a great deal of money and programming expertise to throw at such an effort. With this in mind, why wouldn't IBM simply become a greater contributor to the OpenOffice.org effort?
What could IBM achieve on it's own that they could not achieve in colaboration with OpenOffice.org? This whole effort seems rather strange and somewhat poorly thought out.
--CTH
Specialty phone numbers have always been bought sold and traded. Back when the only toll-free area code was '800', and the available numbers in this area code were running out there were many sales of such numbers. The practice was considered somewhat illicit, which is what prompted the faster introduction of the '888', '877', and '866' area codes. The introduction of number portability simply increases the visibility and lowers the barriers to entry of this market. All in all, this is - economically speaking - a positive thing.
--CTH
I knight thee for thy geek prowass, in spite of thy buggy insecure software, in spite of thy pending antitrust litigation, I knight thee for thy introduction of technology which will allow geeks around the world to stream Monty Python sketches over the web and share them with their geek brethren, in spite of the fact that you stole the concepts behind it from your competitors and insisted on including crippling and inherently broken DRM.
-- The Queen Mother
While on one level it's great to see this sort of standardization, one has to ask whether standardization on the WIndows driver architecture is the best choice. This is what standards organizations are for. While I like OSS as much as the next guy, and things like Wine, or other compatibility layers such as those mentioned in the article are certainly valuable in their own right, They shouldn't be seen as a mechanism for promoting standards. This just promotes adoption of proprietary mechanisms as de-facto standards, which is seldom a good thing.
I'm just waiting for Microsoft alter their EULA to disallow software written using their (presumably patented) driver architecture and copyrighted APIs on competing platforms, in a bid to deter hardware manufacturers from providing linux support by increasing the development costs for linux support through preventing unified cross-platform driver development.
--CTH
Seems to me that deploying Linux in test labs used by business customers to evaluate Microsoft produsts is perhaps the smartest thing Microsoft has done in a while. When customers compare a poorly configured/optimized linux enviroment to a perfectly configured Microsoft enviroment, Microsoft would almost certainly win. If sales reps were to invite potential customers to such a lab, those customers would leave with the belief that they had tested Windows vs. Linux themselves in a fair evaluation, since they conducted it themselves. This of course would be a complete falacy, since the Linux side of the lab would have been configured by staff which were seeking to convince users to avoid Linux. This seems like a great Microsoft Marketing Strategy.
--CTH
I love it. Part of the settlement administration website, managed by Rust consulting Inc., "... a class act in claims administration", located at http://microsoftcalsettlement.com/ is run on Microsoft IIS 5.0. I havn't seen the exact language of the settlement yet (does it cover Microsoft OSs more recent than Win05/98?) so it's hard to tell whether Rust Consulting Inc. will be filling out their own forms on their own website to claim their settlement coupons for their overpayment fot the OS running their website (or notifying their histing provider to do so).
-- CTH
Verizon wilreless uses standard cell hardware available for license by many service providers in the U.S. and internationally, so exactly what is being alledged here? Is it that Nextel entered into a contract with the same hardware manufacturer that Verizon was going to use in providing a competing service, or is it that Nextel aquired hardware from such a manufacturer when that hardware was exclusively developed for/licensed to Verizon. The article is vary sketchy about this rather important detail.
--CTH
To 'hold harmless' is far different than a grant of license. Although the analogy in the parent is somewhat misleading, the point is absolutely valid. Eseentially, SCO is agreeing to exclude customers of it's own linux distribution from any future legal action.
The big question is, what constitutes a SCO customer? Must I have purchased SCO services with my download of the SCO linux distro, or can I simply make use of their distro to avoid the threat of legal action? How much of the SCO distro must I use?
Perhaps I should install a few packages on each of my Linux boxes, so as to avoid the the threat of lawsuits.
As I re-read this, it appears the letter is only directed to current and ongoing SCO partners. This suggests that possibly, not only would I have had to have purchase SCO services but I would have to continue to pay for SCO service contracts indefinately into the future. Then again, IANAL, so perhaps I have misinterpreted the legal implications of this letter.
--CTH
Microsoft has actually learned a lot over the past decade; particularly in the area or recurring revenue streams.
At this point a significant portion of the company revenues are derived from subscription services. Even if they waive all future upgrade license fees, they still have support contracts, MSDN and other subscriptions to services many large organizations will rerquire. It'll be vary interestingto see what Balmer is willing to offer to get this contract/deployment. There has got to be a point below which they will refuse to go. 'Under no circumstances, loose to linux' must have a limit. I just wonder where it actually is.
--CTH
It's simple, if any of the above events have occurred, plan to move on and if your company has purchased anti-employee insurance, it's time to het the hell out anyway.
--CTH
--CTH
Of course the GPL is viral. There should be no question of this, but the question one should ask is "Is that a bad thing?". This was Stallman's goal. He wanted to screw up the software business model, which he succeeded in doing, but with the vary positive side effect of cuilding a cooperative culture of open software development with a fully functional service based business model behind it.
.NET Studio EULA. It speaks for itself.
Clearly the GPL has benefitted many people and businesses. The fact that Microsoft isn't collectively smart enough to figure out a business model that will allow them to benefit from it isn't anyone's problem than theirs, and certainly doesn't make the GPL a bad thing.
The GPL established a structure where developers can leverage the vast amounts of work released by others for the relitively cheap buy-in of licensing the nw derivative code using the same license. This is not an unreasonable obligation by any streach of the imagination. As for it being viral, if you don't agree to the terms of the license, you are free to avoid building your work on top of code licensed in this way. In the case of SCO, of they were so neglegent as to fail to observer the license constraints they were adopting, through contributing to GPL-licensed software, this is their own fault. This does not in any way reflect poorly on the license. It is written in plain language, and the text of the license represents possibly the most widely distributed and available legal contract in history.
The nature of the GPL supports a specific development and business model which is inconsistant with certain other models. If Microsoft, SCO and others wish to benefit from software developed under this model, they must accept the simple and streight-forward license terms.
For an entertaining afternoon, print out and compare the GPL to the Microsoft
--CTH