"The government only stepped in in that instance because they were investigating other antitrust abuses involving MS in response to civil suits from other companies about antitrust abuse."
Actually the government became involved before the civil suits, but yes, it was triggered by competitors' complaints as I strongly suspect was the case for the EU as well.
"What the hell are you talking about? I don't support Apple's DRM at all so I can hardly be called a "fan-boy." I don't even own an iPod."
OK, so your unlikely scenario is not motivated by a fan-boy attitude.
blah, blah "that a significant number of people would abandon the iPod and move to other players?"
Unless iPods are very unreliable or people own many of them, the bulk of iPod sales will be to new customers, so iPod market share could take a hit without a single current iPod customer switching players.
"First, how would they be convicted of this if the only parties that know are Apple and the RIAA and it is a trade secret?"
Did MS and computer OEMs make their agreements public before the government stepped in? If the government suspects a problem, hiding behind a trade secret isn't going to help particularly if the only purpose of the trade secret is to limit competition.
"Assuming there was such an agreement and Apple came forward, the RIAA could claim they just wanted to present a consistent experience to customers to avoid confusion and it is entirely possible the courts would buy it and Apple would have just sacrificed years of investment and building a music/player business for no real gain."
Wow, we're definitely in fan-boy-fantasy-land now. Why not accept the simpler explanation: if iTunes offered non-DRM'd music they wouldn't have any excuse for not allowing it to play on other portable players. If iTunes music could be played on competitors' players the iPod's market share would most definitely take a hit.
There were always alternatives to IBM-compatible computers and MS OS's available, it was the market that made them the winners exactly as it was with Apple and the iPod.
Ever noticed how the EU was perceived to be smart when it was punishing MS for behavior that might someday lead to a monopoly in server OS's, but is considered dumb when they attack Apple who has a monopoly today on portable music players.
First of all, this hard distinction between CS and programming is mostly a fiction believed in primarily by academics and recent CS graduates. There has always been a research component in programming work.
As far as problems like the Semantic Web are concerned, it's not enough to understand the problem, you have to implement the solution as well and that will most certainly require programming. If past history tells us anything, the implementation won't be performed by WC3 celebrities, but by rank-and-file programmers.
"It's like complaining that tires cost more than milk."
If your analogy made any sense, it would be like trying to get people to switch from tires to milk. Apple ads don't try to convince you to switch only from high-end PCs to Macs, so clearly Apple understands that all PCs are their competitors even if you don't.
"2. However, Apple does not sell barebones configurations; that is not its business."
That's Apple's choice, but the fact is that many customers do buy cheaper configurations of PCs and that means that Apples are more expensive overall regardless of how you want to spin it.
The issue is whether MS gave Novell a license to one or more of their patents which your quote doesn't provide any evidence of.
Unless Novell's distro violates a patent and the other distros don't, there's nothing unique about Novell's situation with respect to MS patents or GPLv3 that I can see. It's only the relationship between MS and Novell's customers that is unique.
"At that point Novell has a problem: they can't bring the new versions into their distribution without being caught squarely between the GPLv3's terms and their deal with MS"
I don't see the problem. Are you assuming that Novell is planning to add new code to their distro that violates a MS patent? Their agreement with MS doesn't allow that. If existing GNU software already violates a MS patent, MS could sue all the distro makers (including Novell) and which version of the GPL the offending code was licensed under will be irrelevant to that suit.
In my day, we had to walk 5 miles in the snow ...
on
Spore Dev Down On the Wii
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· Score: 2, Informative
He should try writing a game for the Atari 2600. That would make him appreciate the hardware riches he has:
CS: The 2600 doesn't have a two-dimensional bitmap. Chris: What!? You mean the bitmap can only hold one scan line worth of image? CS: Well, not a whole scan line. Chris: What? CS: Did I mention that background pixels are about 1/4 inch in width. Chris: Arrgh! Give me a Wii, give me a Wii!
Sure, in the same sense that we don't know if your code is in it. The point is that there's no reason to believe that GPL'd code in particular exists within MS code (with the exception of Windows Services for Unix as others have informed me here, but that's not covert).
There are two broad categories of GPL'd code: Core utilities that provide functions that Windows has had for many years and full-blown applications whoose code would be difficult to resuse in a Windows application. Neither is particuarly useful for MS to steal.
When most people talk about MS using GPL'd code, they're talking about Windows, Office, etc, but technically you're correct.
This is a product with no other purpose than to allow interoperability between Unix and Windows, so naturally it's logical for it to use GCC. So MS could be forced by GPLv3 to drop this product. This would be so trivial an event that Balmer probably wouldn't even give a chair a dirty look. Perhaps he'd be happy for having a good legal excuse to limit support for Unix and perhaps sell a few more Windows servers in the process.
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"The government only stepped in in that instance because they were investigating other antitrust abuses involving MS in response to civil suits from other companies about antitrust abuse."
Actually the government became involved before the civil suits, but yes, it was triggered by competitors' complaints as I strongly suspect was the case for the EU as well.
"What the hell are you talking about? I don't support Apple's DRM at all so I can hardly be called a "fan-boy." I don't even own an iPod."
OK, so your unlikely scenario is not motivated by a fan-boy attitude.
blah, blah "that a significant number of people would abandon the iPod and move to other players?"
Unless iPods are very unreliable or people own many of them, the bulk of iPod sales will be to new customers, so iPod market share could take a hit without a single current iPod customer switching players.
"First, how would they be convicted of this if the only parties that know are Apple and the RIAA and it is a trade secret?"
Did MS and computer OEMs make their agreements public before the government stepped in? If the government suspects a problem, hiding behind a trade secret isn't going to help particularly if the only purpose of the trade secret is to limit competition.
"Assuming there was such an agreement and Apple came forward, the RIAA could claim they just wanted to present a consistent experience to customers to avoid confusion and it is entirely possible the courts would buy it and Apple would have just sacrificed years of investment and building a music/player business for no real gain."
Wow, we're definitely in fan-boy-fantasy-land now. Why not accept the simpler explanation: if iTunes offered non-DRM'd music they wouldn't have any excuse for not allowing it to play on other portable players. If iTunes music could be played on competitors' players the iPod's market share would most definitely take a hit.
There were always alternatives to IBM-compatible computers and MS OS's available, it was the market that made them the winners exactly as it was with Apple and the iPod.
Ever noticed how the EU was perceived to be smart when it was punishing MS for behavior that might someday lead to a monopoly in server OS's, but is considered dumb when they attack Apple who has a monopoly today on portable music players.
The music labels would be in deep antitrust trouble if they collectively made an agreement with Apple that locked-out smaller labels on any basis.
"You want to design and create brand new ways of computing?"
What "brand new ways of computing" have computer scientists created in the last 20 years?
"You want to work on AIs?"
What significant accomplishments in AI have there been in the last 30 years?
If these are the only reasons for a CS degree, no wonder it's in decline.
"How long until the entire media industry implodes due to their short-sightedness and inability to embrace new technology?"
Well, if lawsuits like this are successful, probably a lot longer than you think.
I don't see why the management of Google can't be morons once in awhile.
First of all, this hard distinction between CS and programming is mostly a fiction believed in primarily by academics and recent CS graduates. There has always been a research component in programming work.
As far as problems like the Semantic Web are concerned, it's not enough to understand the problem, you have to implement the solution as well and that will most certainly require programming. If past history tells us anything, the implementation won't be performed by WC3 celebrities, but by rank-and-file programmers.
Apparently games like these that created the industry didn't qualify.
"Now with Vista getting routinely bashed even in the pro PC press it's made everyone take a second look at Macs."
What pro PC press?
"It's like complaining that tires cost more than milk."
If your analogy made any sense, it would be like trying to get people to switch from tires to milk. Apple ads don't try to convince you to switch only from high-end PCs to Macs, so clearly Apple understands that all PCs are their competitors even if you don't.
"2. However, Apple does not sell barebones configurations; that is not its business."
That's Apple's choice, but the fact is that many customers do buy cheaper configurations of PCs and that means that Apples are more expensive overall regardless of how you want to spin it.
"There's this little known thing called unix, and the future was 37 years ago."
I guess teletype machines and paper tape were the future too.
The issue is whether MS gave Novell a license to one or more of their patents which your quote doesn't provide any evidence of.
Unless Novell's distro violates a patent and the other distros don't, there's nothing unique about Novell's situation with respect to MS patents or GPLv3 that I can see. It's only the relationship between MS and Novell's customers that is unique.
"The deal alleges that things like Samba already include Microsoft's IP, and that through the deal Novell acquires the right to distribute them."
Do you have a link for that. My understanding is that MS hasn't granted Novell any patent licenses, but I'm willing to be corrected if there's proof.
"At that point Novell has a problem: they can't bring the new versions into their distribution without being caught squarely between the GPLv3's terms and their deal with MS"
I don't see the problem. Are you assuming that Novell is planning to add new code to their distro that violates a MS patent? Their agreement with MS doesn't allow that. If existing GNU software already violates a MS patent, MS could sue all the distro makers (including Novell) and which version of the GPL the offending code was licensed under will be irrelevant to that suit.
He should try writing a game for the Atari 2600. That would make him appreciate the hardware riches he has:
CS: The 2600 doesn't have a two-dimensional bitmap.
Chris: What!? You mean the bitmap can only hold one scan line worth of image?
CS: Well, not a whole scan line.
Chris: What?
CS: Did I mention that background pixels are about 1/4 inch in width.
Chris: Arrgh! Give me a Wii, give me a Wii!
I was a game developer in ancient days and took myself a bit too seriously as well, but I didn't whine about the limitations of gaming consoles.
It sounds like some game developers take themselves way to seriously.
Sure, in the same sense that we don't know if your code is in it. The point is that there's no reason to believe that GPL'd code in particular exists within MS code (with the exception of Windows Services for Unix as others have informed me here, but that's not covert).
There are two broad categories of GPL'd code: Core utilities that provide functions that Windows has had for many years and full-blown applications whoose code would be difficult to resuse in a Windows application. Neither is particuarly useful for MS to steal.
Either one of these consequences is reasable. The bottom line is that MS isn't really going to be hurt by GPLv3.
When most people talk about MS using GPL'd code, they're talking about Windows, Office, etc, but technically you're correct.
This is a product with no other purpose than to allow interoperability between Unix and Windows, so naturally it's logical for it to use GCC. So MS could be forced by GPLv3 to drop this product. This would be so trivial an event that Balmer probably wouldn't even give a chair a dirty look. Perhaps he'd be happy for having a good legal excuse to limit support for Unix and perhaps sell a few more Windows servers in the process.
Perhaps if you actually wrote a sentence, I'd know what your point was.
That's a non-issue for MS because they aren't using GPL'd code of any version and are unlikely to do so in the future.