I know quite a few people in the medical field, either doctors or management...
Yes, actually it is true. The AMA artificially restricts the number of doctors in the market to insure wages are kept high. Doctors also have the power to keep clinics from hiring additional doctors because it means sharing another piece of the pie. Doctors would rather see 3 month waiting lists than having another doctor on staff.
It's not that doctors don't care about their patients, but keeping their pockets lined with green is pretty high up on the priority lists. Now obviously there are groups such as Doctors without Borders that are exceptions.
He simply refuses to understand that we are quickly entering into an age where either all information will be controlled or all information will be free.
I don't know, I always got the opinion that Lessig thought all information(well except the stuff he creates) should be given away for free.
But I do think that all information will be controlled. Specifically, the creator of the information will control whether it is to be given away for free or not.
That's how it is today, and I see nothing wrong with that.
BTW... Information is so easy to copy, modify, and manipulate
Yeah, that's sort of why Copyright law was created.
Over the Week-end this was plastered all over the UK's Broadsheets (quality) news papers in the last few day; and not technology sections but in the Business. The damage to Microsoft's reputation for bad-faith with the 'Captains of Industry' from this episode will be profound.
Heh. I like how you have to explain that the Register is not a credible news source.:)
Anyway, I read about this last week, not sure where. I have to agree that based on what I read(Sendo never received money MS and MS had an executive on Sendo's board) this places Microsoft in a really bad-faith situation.
You know, if Microsoft really did this, I hope they get slapped with a huge fine.
But I'll reserve judgement, it's quite possible the other side of the story is one of greedy executives on Sendo's board who are trying to lay blame on others. We've certainly seen a lot of that in the US markets this past year.
Spyglass was setup to sell off licensing to the NCSA Mosaic code. Microsoft bought a license, thinking at the time that's what they had to do.
Netscape didn't buy a license, they just stole the code by stealing the developers of the original Mosaic, who then went on to write Navigator in a better way having learned the lesson of how not to write it with Mosaic. They later ended up settling a lawsuit with the University over that very issue.
But then in around about IE 3.0 Microsoft rewrote the whole thing from scratch without using the Mosaic code. They only licensed Mosaic from Spyglass to get IE 1.0(or was it 2.0?) out the door quickly.
So what's the problem with Spyglass? They received some licensing money, but they didn't have a long term revenue stream from it. Should they? Does Opera have a license with spyglass? Legitimate question, I don't know... but are you saying that to create a browser you need it?
Now why you're ragging on Microsoft I don't understand. If someone was working on an open source browser at the time(prior to Netscape dumping Navigator off), do you think they would have licensed the code from Spyglass?
This is gratutious Microsoft bashing, plain and simple and a completely different situation than this Sendo story.
The taxpayers paid for it, precisely why should a business be allowed to profit from it without paying royalties back in one form or another?
Oh please! This has nothing to do with paying royalties.
IBM is now selling hardware with Linux on it. Do you think they are paying royalties? No... So this argument that the GPL prevents companys from profiting from the software is complete utter nonsense.
If that was really the question, then rather than the GPL the software would be licensed under something like the BSD license only it would state "for non-commercial use only" in there somewhere. Hmm, weird, where have I seen that before?
Then this statement would be accurate: "And it still comes back to, if the stuff was put out under the GPL, the company can go back to the agency that did the work and negotiate a license other than the GPL."
The intent of the GPL is only anti-commercial in that it makes the basic assumption that software developers should have no value attached to their work... all the value is really in the hardware.
The GPL specifically attacks the business model that Bill Gates created, but it provides completely favorable terms to people who are just trying to sell hardware and want some software to throw on. That's why there is all this confusion about whether the GPL is anti-business or not.
If John Smith releases product Foo under the GPL. It becomes successful over a few years and Fred, Bob, Jay and Jake all submit changes.
Does John Smith still have the right to sell a license to the Bar company for $X? Somehow I don't think he does.
That's the heart of MS's position: they want to be able to use everybody else's IP for free while still forcing everyone else to pay to use MS IP.
No, that's really not the heart of MS's position. Most companies realize that there were a variety of acts(look up Dole-Bayh) passed by Congress in the 1980's that encouraged research firms to license their work to corporations, so as to build up a synergy of research and implementation. I'm sure Microsoft would gladly pay a licensing fee to get their hands on innovative research. It wouldn't be the first time they've paid someone for their technology, would it?
What they don't want is for that research to have been released under the GPL such that the work is now potentially tainted by other people's contributions such that they cannot legally buy rights to it from the research group without putting themselves at risk to turn over the work that they created.
You don't seem to understand that this debate has nothing at all whatsoever to do with money. Money is a symptom, not the disease.
They're simply concerned that technologies will be chosen as standards which are not available to everybody on reasonable terms. What's interesting about this is that the Linux Community and Microsoft are both concerned about the same thing.
People on/. complain endlessly about patents being inserted into open standards. The reasoning is the same, the licensing terms conflict with your chosen business model. Well the GPL conflicts with Microsoft's business model, and there is no denying that... the GPL was designed specifically to conflict.
You want the same things, just two different sides of the coin. If you'd quit whining about how evil Microsoft is you'd probably realize this and could work together to establish it.
But as long as you keep fighting Microsoft, they are going to fight back. You try to force source code to be released under the GPL, then Microsoft is going to patent things to prevent you from using them.
Gates: "Good memo, I think this addresses our concerns." Ballmer: "Should I make sure this memo leaks as well?" Gates: "Yes, do it. We could use the free international exposure with our message, besides the nasty responses help insure nobody will ever take the Linux community seriously."
I do have to agree that it's far more likely the FSF will decide to sue someone than Microsoft.
I suspect it's one of the FSF's goals to make people feel comfortable and safe with the GPL so that they just automatically use it, and then later on they'll start clamping down and suing commercial projects which made the wrong decisions. You're right in that regard, I think this article aids the FSF motivations by confusing the issues.
Still, as to looking at the code. This may be something for the courts systems to deal with, I don't know if there is solid precedent yet, but I think there is a tremendously good argument to support reimplementation of algorithms without cut-n-paste being a different copyright entity. Depending on how that would play out in the courts, it could tremendously hurt the GPL.
If you don't like these restrictions, then get your own funding and do your own project where you get to make the rules. Frankly, I see nothing wrong with prohibiting non-US citizens from doing US research into defense initiatives.
Actually Rush Limbaugh tends to spread more lies and half-truths than any limp-dick liberal on the planet earth.
But in order to realize that you need to go to the effort of confirming statements made by Limbaugh, and most people who listen to the show are too lazy to know how to think for themselves.
Rosen's article is interesting because it shows glaring inconsistencies with other things he's written on the subject of copyrights.
If you look at it from an anti-Microsoft slashdot position, they are perfectly consistent with one another... i.e. Microsoft=bad, GPL=good.:-)
As to the "unconscious" copyright infringement case... this is nothing new and you'll note the late Stephen Ambrose was also accused of this. Historians have long had to face this problem, because one of the only ways left to them to find about the past is to read others works. That's why they have to take extremely detailed notes, so that they can make sure as to not duplicate the wording but rather the idea.
Therefore I don't agree that just looking at code will curse you. It's a more complicated issue than that. In the case of Ambrose or Harrison the problem was using the exact same wording, or chords. Copyright is about the implementation of the idea, not the idea itself.
Ask your self: How the hell did they know to image his laptop on September 11th? This means they already knew he was part of the attack, and they were already on to him. Funny how we, the people, were never warned.
He is confused because he insinuates, from his perception, that FS/OSS advocates are anti-profit or anti-business. This is not the case, and my point was that if that is how people are perceiving us, that perception needs to be repaired, and soon.
Repair the perception by explaining to me how I'm going to get rich by creating software.
represents a software development and distribution model that strikes a better balance between the rights of the user and the rights of the producer.
No... the GPL represents a software distribution model that favors the rights of the user over the rights of the producer. I agree that we need a better balance, but the GPL does not represent that. Largely because it's motivated by envy and spite rather than any positive virtues.
Is this ad hominem? You can't defend your position intelligently so you try to discount any opposition to it?
"In your out-of-context quote, he is not advocating banning high-paying jobs, which you may be claiming (I'm not sure!)."
Even in context, the quote advocates the banning of high-paying jobs. Why exactly are you uncertain why I am claiming this? Is it some sort of unwillingess to come to terms with the position you are defending? Why are you so fearful of Stallman that you pretend that he does not say that which his words advocate?
"But this is not what he is saying -- placed in context, he is simply stating a fact: that programmers are unhappy at low-paying jobs only when higher-paying ones are available to them. "
Yes, he said that, but then he went on to say that if we make higher-paying jobs unavailable then they'll all be happy again. What's that say to you? To me it says he's advocating the elimination of my freedom as a developer to choose who to sell my services to.
This right for me to decide the terms by which I am willing to sell my mind and body is one of the fundamental rights we enjoy in the United States.
"The example he used is one that was close to his heart, the programmers at the MIT AI lab. He claims they were perfectly happy while hacking at MIT, and were lured away by job offers where their happiness was not increased, only their money. "
That was *THEIR* choice. Besides that Stallman doesn't know whether or not they were happier, all Stallman knows is that he wasn't happy. So Stallman decided to take it upon himself to make their lives as miserable and retched as his own out of spite.
"The whole section is a claim that money does not have to be constantly changing hands in order to motivate people to work."
No it does not. There are many men and women who devote themselves to god and become Priests and Nuns. But you know what? They choose to do that.
"This has nothing to do at all with businesses capitalizing on free software as a product!"
You're right, it doesn't. This has to do with Richard Stallman advocating ways to eliminate high-paying jobs for developers. One such way is to destroy the notion of intellectual property via the GPL. The other such way is to ban commercial software.
Are you saying that RMS is speaking out against profiting from selling software? If so, you're wrong.
Really?
Maybe you should explain this quote from the Manifesto then...
"Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned."
I think you may be falling into the same trap that these mainstream pundits fall into.
Since when is reading comprehension a trap?
There's a old saying... "Above all things, be true to yourself." You should keep that in mind next time you try to claim RMS is not against profiting from selling software.
"My point was really that Microsoft could not only make their customers happy, but they could bury the threat of Free Software in one fell swoop by simply lowering their prices dramatically. "
It's interesting to note that had BSDI, Coherent, Dell Unix, whatever been available back in 1992 for about $100, chances are Linux would never have come to fruition. Many of the GNU tools would then not have seen widespread use, even gcc if the compiler had only been $50 or so.
Many years later, after these Unix companies were already losing marketshare, they turned around and started offering it for cheap. But by then it was too late, the mindshare had been lost.
Someone who posts crap to web forums to stir up anti-Microsoft sentiments, so as to convince people to use her favorite product instead is an astroturfer.
Did you ever see Clerks? The Chewy Gum salesman was an astroturfer.
You are an astroturfer.
"How can such an uninformed post get marked informative?"
Because it's more informative than your flouride conspiracy theory.
I think the very idea that someone in the mainstream has gotten the idea that we are anti-business/anti-profit is very BAD, as it constitutes a fundamental misunderstanding of the movement behind free software and the open source development model.
If I remember correctly, a segment of the GUID is your MAC address.
Yes, you should look at the DCE documentation to better understand this as that is where Microsoft took the GUID concept from.
That is the link back to your machine (especially if your using on-board ethernet ).
Unless of course you don't have ethernet on board, which is the case for most home computers.
But again, even if this is the case, someone would have to go through the effort it takes to track you down. Oddly enough the IP address provides better information for that purpose than the GUID, and this is recorded not just by Microsoft's CDDB solution but by every web server you ever connect to.
You appear to be making a number of really bad assumptions in your own analysis.
The first being that Unix is somehow a superior OS for certain solutions. That's been proven to be wrong numerous times over. I'd appreciate it if you could back up that implied claim with some examples.
The primary reason for migrating from say a Sun Sparc box to a x86 box is one of hardware cost. The other mitigating factor in this equation is the cost of work to rewrite the solution to work in the new environment.
It is far less work to port the solution from Solaris to Linux.
However, this claim "Win2K is not a good replacement for UNIX in too many cases." is simply not a factor in this equation. Any situation where Win2k is not a good replacement for UNIX is also going to be true for Linux, mainly limited by the x86 architecture.
Most companies were taken off guard by several of the major viruses and worms over the past 4-5 years. ILoveYou, Nimda, CodeRed, etc. But after each major hit things were done not just reactively, but also proactively.
Virus scan engines were updated, email servers had attachment blocking filters installed, patches were installed, etc.
There has been a slew of updates made available to applications like Outloook, Outlook Express, IIS and so forth which disable many of the features that these exploits took advantage of. The Outlook 2k security update, default permissions in OE 6.0, IIS Lockdown wizard, URLScan, etc.
Then you have a whole slew of administrative utilities such as HFNetChk from Microsoft/Shavlik to test systems for patches and various tools(HFNetChk Pro) to do reports on large numbers of machines and push out patches.
I do agree that the security finders tend to overstate the impact, but it's still important to react to the issues. The conclusion that wired really should be making is that we've learned lessons and learned how to better prepare and respond. That's why their are fewer major problems.
Slashdot Mirror
I know quite a few people in the medical field, either doctors or management...
Yes, actually it is true. The AMA artificially restricts the number of doctors in the market to insure wages are kept high. Doctors also have the power to keep clinics from hiring additional doctors because it means sharing another piece of the pie. Doctors would rather see 3 month waiting lists than having another doctor on staff.
It's not that doctors don't care about their patients, but keeping their pockets lined with green is pretty high up on the priority lists. Now obviously there are groups such as Doctors without Borders that are exceptions.
He simply refuses to understand that we are quickly entering into an age where either all information will be controlled or all information will be free.
I don't know, I always got the opinion that Lessig thought all information(well except the stuff he creates) should be given away for free.
But I do think that all information will be controlled. Specifically, the creator of the information will control whether it is to be given away for free or not.
That's how it is today, and I see nothing wrong with that.
BTW... Information is so easy to copy, modify, and manipulate
Yeah, that's sort of why Copyright law was created.
Over the Week-end this was plastered all over the UK's Broadsheets (quality) news papers in the last few day; and not technology sections but in the Business. The damage to Microsoft's reputation for bad-faith with the 'Captains of Industry' from this episode will be profound.
:)
Heh. I like how you have to explain that the Register is not a credible news source.
Anyway, I read about this last week, not sure where. I have to agree that based on what I read(Sendo never received money MS and MS had an executive on Sendo's board) this places Microsoft in a really bad-faith situation.
You know, if Microsoft really did this, I hope they get slapped with a huge fine.
But I'll reserve judgement, it's quite possible the other side of the story is one of greedy executives on Sendo's board who are trying to lay blame on others. We've certainly seen a lot of that in the US markets this past year.
Spyglass was setup to sell off licensing to the NCSA Mosaic code. Microsoft bought a license, thinking at the time that's what they had to do.
Netscape didn't buy a license, they just stole the code by stealing the developers of the original Mosaic, who then went on to write Navigator in a better way having learned the lesson of how not to write it with Mosaic. They later ended up settling a lawsuit with the University over that very issue.
But then in around about IE 3.0 Microsoft rewrote the whole thing from scratch without using the Mosaic code. They only licensed Mosaic from Spyglass to get IE 1.0(or was it 2.0?) out the door quickly.
So what's the problem with Spyglass? They received some licensing money, but they didn't have a long term revenue stream from it. Should they? Does Opera have a license with spyglass? Legitimate question, I don't know... but are you saying that to create a browser you need it?
Now why you're ragging on Microsoft I don't understand. If someone was working on an open source browser at the time(prior to Netscape dumping Navigator off), do you think they would have licensed the code from Spyglass?
This is gratutious Microsoft bashing, plain and simple and a completely different situation than this Sendo story.
I thought people around here actually knew what the GPL was and how it worked!
I think they know, but they pretend that these things aren't true so as to not scare anybody away from using it.
The goal is majority adoption, once they have that and everybody is dependent upon GPLed code... then they pull out the fine print.
It's the Embrace and Extend model that people keep accusing Microsoft of.
The taxpayers paid for it, precisely why should a business be allowed to profit from it without paying royalties back in one form or another?
Oh please! This has nothing to do with paying royalties.
IBM is now selling hardware with Linux on it. Do you think they are paying royalties? No... So this argument that the GPL prevents companys from profiting from the software is complete utter nonsense.
If that was really the question, then rather than the GPL the software would be licensed under something like the BSD license only it would state "for non-commercial use only" in there somewhere. Hmm, weird, where have I seen that before?
Then this statement would be accurate: "And it still comes back to, if the stuff was put out under the GPL, the company can go back to the agency that did the work and negotiate a license other than the GPL."
The intent of the GPL is only anti-commercial in that it makes the basic assumption that software developers should have no value attached to their work... all the value is really in the hardware.
The GPL specifically attacks the business model that Bill Gates created, but it provides completely favorable terms to people who are just trying to sell hardware and want some software to throw on. That's why there is all this confusion about whether the GPL is anti-business or not.
I have a question.
/. complain endlessly about patents being inserted into open standards. The reasoning is the same, the licensing terms conflict with your chosen business model. Well the GPL conflicts with Microsoft's business model, and there is no denying that... the GPL was designed specifically to conflict.
If John Smith releases product Foo under the GPL. It becomes successful over a few years and Fred, Bob, Jay and Jake all submit changes.
Does John Smith still have the right to sell a license to the Bar company for $X? Somehow I don't think he does.
That's the heart of MS's position: they want to be able to use everybody else's IP for free while still forcing everyone else to pay to use MS IP.
No, that's really not the heart of MS's position. Most companies realize that there were a variety of acts(look up Dole-Bayh) passed by Congress in the 1980's that encouraged research firms to license their work to corporations, so as to build up a synergy of research and implementation. I'm sure Microsoft would gladly pay a licensing fee to get their hands on innovative research. It wouldn't be the first time they've paid someone for their technology, would it?
What they don't want is for that research to have been released under the GPL such that the work is now potentially tainted by other people's contributions such that they cannot legally buy rights to it from the research group without putting themselves at risk to turn over the work that they created.
You don't seem to understand that this debate has nothing at all whatsoever to do with money. Money is a symptom, not the disease.
They're simply concerned that technologies will be chosen as standards which are not available to everybody on reasonable terms. What's interesting about this is that the Linux Community and Microsoft are both concerned about the same thing.
People on
You want the same things, just two different sides of the coin. If you'd quit whining about how evil Microsoft is you'd probably realize this and could work together to establish it.
But as long as you keep fighting Microsoft, they are going to fight back. You try to force source code to be released under the GPL, then Microsoft is going to patent things to prevent you from using them.
I don't understand. If Virtual desktops are such a big deal to you, why don't you just use them on Windows too?
s /p owertoys.asp
r l= /nhp/Default.asp?contentid=28001169
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/download
Actually I don't understand your scripting comment either.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?u
Are you claiming the Linux community never does anything like this?
Why worry about the splinter in someone elses eye, when there is a log within your own?
Gates: "Good memo, I think this addresses our concerns."
Ballmer: "Should I make sure this memo leaks as well?"
Gates: "Yes, do it. We could use the free international exposure with our message, besides the nasty responses help insure nobody will ever take the Linux community seriously."
I do have to agree that it's far more likely the FSF will decide to sue someone than Microsoft.
I suspect it's one of the FSF's goals to make people feel comfortable and safe with the GPL so that they just automatically use it, and then later on they'll start clamping down and suing commercial projects which made the wrong decisions. You're right in that regard, I think this article aids the FSF motivations by confusing the issues.
Still, as to looking at the code. This may be something for the courts systems to deal with, I don't know if there is solid precedent yet, but I think there is a tremendously good argument to support reimplementation of algorithms without cut-n-paste being a different copyright entity. Depending on how that would play out in the courts, it could tremendously hurt the GPL.
Those who have the gold get to make the rules.
If you don't like these restrictions, then get your own funding and do your own project where you get to make the rules. Frankly, I see nothing wrong with prohibiting non-US citizens from doing US research into defense initiatives.
Actually Rush Limbaugh tends to spread more lies and half-truths than any limp-dick liberal on the planet earth.
But in order to realize that you need to go to the effort of confirming statements made by Limbaugh, and most people who listen to the show are too lazy to know how to think for themselves.
Rosen's article is interesting because it shows glaring inconsistencies with other things he's written on the subject of copyrights.
:-)
If you look at it from an anti-Microsoft slashdot position, they are perfectly consistent with one another... i.e. Microsoft=bad, GPL=good.
As to the "unconscious" copyright infringement case... this is nothing new and you'll note the late Stephen Ambrose was also accused of this. Historians have long had to face this problem, because one of the only ways left to them to find about the past is to read others works. That's why they have to take extremely detailed notes, so that they can make sure as to not duplicate the wording but rather the idea.
Therefore I don't agree that just looking at code will curse you. It's a more complicated issue than that. In the case of Ambrose or Harrison the problem was using the exact same wording, or chords. Copyright is about the implementation of the idea, not the idea itself.
Ask your self: How the hell did they know to image his laptop on September 11th? This means they already knew he was part of the attack, and they were already on to him. Funny how we, the people, were never warned.
Have you been living in a Cave for the past year?
You've never heard of Moussaoui?
He is confused because he insinuates, from his perception, that FS/OSS advocates are anti-profit or anti-business. This is not the case, and my point was that if that is how people are perceiving us, that perception needs to be repaired, and soon.
Repair the perception by explaining to me how I'm going to get rich by creating software.
represents a software development and distribution model that strikes a better balance between the rights of the user and the rights of the producer.
No... the GPL represents a software distribution model that favors the rights of the user over the rights of the producer. I agree that we need a better balance, but the GPL does not represent that. Largely because it's motivated by envy and spite rather than any positive virtues.
"You know, you sound an awful lot like a troll."
u rc e.html
Is this ad hominem? You can't defend your position intelligently so you try to discount any opposition to it?
"In your out-of-context quote, he is not advocating banning high-paying jobs, which you may be claiming (I'm not sure!)."
Even in context, the quote advocates the banning of high-paying jobs. Why exactly are you uncertain why I am claiming this? Is it some sort of unwillingess to come to terms with the position you are defending? Why are you so fearful of Stallman that you pretend that he does not say that which his words advocate?
"But this is not what he is saying -- placed in context, he is simply stating a fact: that programmers are unhappy at low-paying jobs only when higher-paying ones are available to them. "
Yes, he said that, but then he went on to say that if we make higher-paying jobs unavailable then they'll all be happy again. What's that say to you? To me it says he's advocating the elimination of my freedom as a developer to choose who to sell my services to.
This right for me to decide the terms by which I am willing to sell my mind and body is one of the fundamental rights we enjoy in the United States.
"The example he used is one that was close to his heart, the programmers at the MIT AI lab. He claims they were perfectly happy while hacking at MIT, and were lured away by job offers where their happiness was not increased, only their money. "
That was *THEIR* choice. Besides that Stallman doesn't know whether or not they were happier, all Stallman knows is that he wasn't happy. So Stallman decided to take it upon himself to make their lives as miserable and retched as his own out of spite.
"The whole section is a claim that money does not have to be constantly changing hands in order to motivate people to work."
No it does not. There are many men and women who devote themselves to god and become Priests and Nuns. But you know what? They choose to do that.
"This has nothing to do at all with businesses capitalizing on free software as a product!"
You're right, it doesn't. This has to do with Richard Stallman advocating ways to eliminate high-paying jobs for developers. One such way is to destroy the notion of intellectual property via the GPL. The other such way is to ban commercial software.
http://www.redhat.com/opensourcenow/bill_openso
Are you saying that RMS is speaking out against profiting from selling software? If so, you're wrong.
Really?
Maybe you should explain this quote from the Manifesto then...
"Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned."
I think you may be falling into the same trap that these mainstream pundits fall into.
Since when is reading comprehension a trap?
There's a old saying... "Above all things, be true to yourself." You should keep that in mind next time you try to claim RMS is not against profiting from selling software.
I agree with everything you said.
"My point was really that Microsoft could not only make their customers happy, but they could bury the threat of Free Software in one fell swoop by simply lowering their prices dramatically. "
It's interesting to note that had BSDI, Coherent, Dell Unix, whatever been available back in 1992 for about $100, chances are Linux would never have come to fruition. Many of the GNU tools would then not have seen widespread use, even gcc if the compiler had only been $50 or so.
Many years later, after these Unix companies were already losing marketshare, they turned around and started offering it for cheap. But by then it was too late, the mindshare had been lost.
"Do you even know what an astroturfer is?"
Someone who posts crap to web forums to stir up anti-Microsoft sentiments, so as to convince people to use her favorite product instead is an astroturfer.
Did you ever see Clerks? The Chewy Gum salesman was an astroturfer.
You are an astroturfer.
"How can such an uninformed post get marked informative?"
Because it's more informative than your flouride conspiracy theory.
I think the very idea that someone in the mainstream has gotten the idea that we are anti-business/anti-profit is very BAD, as it constitutes a fundamental misunderstanding of the movement behind free software and the open source development model.
On the contrary it shows that they have a very good understanding of the movement behind free software.
Who in the mainstream is going to align themselves with us, if we give them the impression that we're anarchists and commies?
They are not. But if you want to shed that image you need to stop acting like Software Communists.
If I remember correctly, a segment of the GUID is your MAC address.
Yes, you should look at the DCE documentation to better understand this as that is where Microsoft took the GUID concept from.
That is the link back to your machine (especially if your using on-board ethernet ).
Unless of course you don't have ethernet on board, which is the case for most home computers.
But again, even if this is the case, someone would have to go through the effort it takes to track you down. Oddly enough the IP address provides better information for that purpose than the GUID, and this is recorded not just by Microsoft's CDDB solution but by every web server you ever connect to.
Again, how's that flouride treating you?
You appear to be making a number of really bad assumptions in your own analysis.
The first being that Unix is somehow a superior OS for certain solutions. That's been proven to be wrong numerous times over. I'd appreciate it if you could back up that implied claim with some examples.
The primary reason for migrating from say a Sun Sparc box to a x86 box is one of hardware cost. The other mitigating factor in this equation is the cost of work to rewrite the solution to work in the new environment.
It is far less work to port the solution from Solaris to Linux.
However, this claim "Win2K is not a good replacement for UNIX in too many cases." is simply not a factor in this equation. Any situation where Win2k is not a good replacement for UNIX is also going to be true for Linux, mainly limited by the x86 architecture.
Most companies were taken off guard by several of the major viruses and worms over the past 4-5 years. ILoveYou, Nimda, CodeRed, etc. But after each major hit things were done not just reactively, but also proactively.
Virus scan engines were updated, email servers had attachment blocking filters installed, patches were installed, etc.
There has been a slew of updates made available to applications like Outloook, Outlook Express, IIS and so forth which disable many of the features that these exploits took advantage of. The Outlook 2k security update, default permissions in OE 6.0, IIS Lockdown wizard, URLScan, etc.
Then you have a whole slew of administrative utilities such as HFNetChk from Microsoft/Shavlik to test systems for patches and various tools(HFNetChk Pro) to do reports on large numbers of machines and push out patches.
I do agree that the security finders tend to overstate the impact, but it's still important to react to the issues. The conclusion that wired really should be making is that we've learned lessons and learned how to better prepare and respond. That's why their are fewer major problems.
Oh no! Windows Media Player sends a GUID that uniquely identifies the bundle of requests, but is in no way able to link back to your machine.
Oh no! Oh my God!
I don't need to even get into your other points as they're just ridiculous.
Uh huh.
News flash: MS is worse now than they've even been.
No, you've just proven the anything-but-Microsoft astroturfers are more insane than they've ever been.
Christ, next you'll be claiming the government puts flouride in our water supply for mind control.