suffice it to say that that doesn't have any
uses which are lawful under the US's new Digital Millenium Copyright Act
What if I want digitical copies of all the old LP's I have but have refused to buy again on CD? Since the DMCA doesn't alter "fair use" (or so it say's), I can legally make a "copy" of my LP's by pulling them down with Napster or GNUtella or FTP or whatever.
Even Judge Kaplan says I can make copies of analog media. With these tools, I can "make" legal copies without having to buy the recording hardware...
In this case, could I buy a Ford and a set of "Super Tires" and modify the Ford, tires, or both so I could use them together? Yes. Would either Ford or Chevy be able to sue me because I used either in a manner that they did not license? No.
FWIW, I think the comparisons all gotta go. The U.S. has a constitutional use of copyrights including limited duration and the doctrine of "fair use". This has been extended by case law to include the "right of first sale". The DMCA and various other methods of attempting to control access to information that is already constitutionaly demonstrated to belong to the purchaser is, quite simply, a violation of the rights of U.S. citizens. It needs to be fought, as it is now, in the courts. In addition to the specific suits brought by the Big Business (TM) plaintiffs, I'd like to see a class action civil rights suit brought by owners of DVD's against the the media moguls that are attempting to prevent us from exercising those rights.
Comparisons to other issues and cases do little to place the discussions where they belong, back in the constitution. The "War on Drugs", "Violence in Schools", and other hot button issues have demonstrated just how easily citizens will relinguish their rights when the issues are phrased and framed by those that want to remove them. We should not get caught up in what the DVD issue is like. We should ignore the fact that the DMCA is stupid, annoying or even unenforcable. We should focus on the fact that it is illegal.
No more annoyed than when Jefferson, Paine, Franklin, et. al. went around talking about what "we Americans" think.
Not that I agree with everything esr says and definitely not to elivate him to that stature. I just think that "we hackers" have to recognize that this is a political debate. In this context, you have to presume that the speaker represents some body of people {X}, and that there are people who consider themselves members of {X} that agree with the speaker, and some that to not.
Jesse Jackson is called a "black leader". Why? Is it because he's black and is a leader, or is it because he leads black people? Does he speak for all black people? Or is it simply that "black leader" is a convenient, if distracting label, for someone who gives voice to a message that alot of people (of different colors, I may add) want heard, despite the fact that others disagree?
So, like it or not, esr is a "hacker leader". To those who call themselves hackers, and to those who do not, he still has to make his case with his own words. Whether "we" agree with him or not, the important role he plays is that he draws "us" into the discussion.
Although it's not in my reply, the context was "judges". For the most part, they courts are the only place where laws are actually thought about any more. Congress passes them without even reading them either because they're paid to or because their misinformed constitutents who haven't (or can't) read them either want them to.
I have to hope they're going to do okay on this type of decision or else I'd be in a constant state of panic. That may or may not be realistic....
Not to disparage the elderly, but by and large, those who fought Germans, Japanese, and Italians in the 40's do not grasp computers, DVD's, encryption (barring the occasional Waterhouse;) and basically anything more advanced that a Selectric Typewriter.
I have to agree on this point. On the other hand, these people generally have a much better appreciation for the constitutional principles. In particular, judges tend to pride themselves on being able to apply the law regardless of the circumstances. Judge Jackson certainly wasn't much of a techie when the MS case started.
In general, I think (hope) we're going to find the courts are more friendly to the idea of open information than the corporations really want. The only problem is that there's going to have to be alot of court cases to counter the number of stupid laws. Can we charge congress with malpractice?
It's also one of my favorite books (and the only Hubbard I've read) and I was really hopefull (but not real optimistic) that they wouldn't trash the movie. So, based on the reviews I ran out on opening day and saw..MI-2. (I'll watch it when it comes out on video because I still gotta see it.)
But, just because it's a favorite doesn't mean it's art. I've still been known to pick up a MAD magazine now a then because I want to be entertained. This is an entertaining book.
wafer NOTICE=Do not send copyrighted information other than the specifically requested document and it's components. Note especially, license conditions (copyright or otherwise) on cookies or other information not normally visible and not specifically requested are not agreed to
wafer COPYRIGHT=Personal information contained herein is exclusively for use in the requested transaction. All other rights are reserved. Any other use is forbidden without written consent.
wafer CONDITIONS=NOTICE: By responding to this request, you agree that the requester is not bound by any terms and conditions other than that which they expressly greed to.
Since they agreed to my conditions first, they're terms and conditions are null and void. If they sue me for violating there conditions, they're going to have to produce web logs which include these wafers indicating that they have no right to sue me....
But then again, traditionally, no vendor has required that you run telnetd, inetd, etc. In fact most recommend that to secure yourself as much as possible you should turn off what you don't need. Microsoft has repeatedly demonstrated that they are willing to sacrifice the user's security to tie proprietary extensions to the OS. I'd be much more comfortable knowing that I could just as easily install a third party telnetd than the one available from either MS company.
In that regard, I think the judges line was drawn in the right place. It keeps the OS group from extending into areas where components have always been easily removed or changed. If MS has to seperate their bastardized kerberos from the OS, I'm sure other vendors would stand up to make a compatible version which companies with heterogonous platforms would pay for in a heartbeat.
Most of what you mention can be part of any operating environment, but it's not in the OS. There are several JVM's available for various platforms. Consumers should get to choose. There are several "servers": web, database, application, CORBA... Consumers should get to choose. Voice recognition, same. Clients, cli and otherwise same.
It acheives the whole purpose of anti-trust: The consumer gets to choose.
Could always set the domain of the cookie to.com and it will be sent to any.com that the user visits.
Except that you're not supposed to be able to. The cookie spec requires at least 2 positions for the domain, e.g. slashdot.com can't read cnet.com's cookies. The problems are 1) many browser implementations are broken, and 2) this came out before country TLD's. So now, slashdot.com.uk COULD read cnet.com.uk's cookies if they where only set to.com.uk.
As an exercise, search CERT for "cookies exposed" to pick up on several vulnerablities. In effect, CNet has just patented a security vulnerability.
Cookies or not, client side information (state or otherwise) should NOT be shared across domains.
Just a note since I was also registered Independent until an informed registrar asked me if I really meant that I wanted to be a member of the party created by George Wallace in his presidential bid. Whoops! What I really wanted, is to be registered as "No Party".
This may or may not be the case with you, or in your state, but it's worth checking.
Re:News Flash: Most OSes support Cut and Paste!
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AtheOS
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I wish someone would implement it as part of KDE or something...
Maybe then we need to point out that the documentation should be:
Relevant
Concise
Indexed
Well written
I have to agree that alot of documentation is worthless. This is NOT being helped by the 10,000 page unleashed dummy bibles that should have the famous cereal disclaimer:
This product sold by weight, not by volume. Some settling may have have occurred during shipping. Don't worry 'though 'cause our editors overpackaged in the first place.
It's worrysome, only because the PHB's are still out shopping for clues.
Reputable businesses realize that they live by satisfying their customers. If I get a mail from Sun (which I have) and I kindly ask them to remove me from their list (which I did), and they do, I'm happy.
When I get a spam with forged headers through stolen relay services that refer to encoded URL's (escaped characters or single digit IP's), it's clear to me that the sender knows that what they are doing is WRONG! If not, why hide?
I always complain to the postmaster of the originating site, as well as any mentioned web-sites, as concisely and breifly as I can in the hopes that they get shut down and have to move again. In most these cases, this is clearly theft of service. Affected ISP's as well as customers should unite to sue these idiots out of business.
That will set the tone for responsible commercial email. No reputable company would send anything that someone didn't request.
Push it up the bestseller lists, gain mass-marketing attention, and get it in the hands of people who get their news from the TeeVee.Has anybody seen any reports regarding the final report of the Columbine event? Me neither. The closest I've seen is like a page A-12 2 inch newspaper column saying something to the effect of: "It didn't really happen that way."
There's another "victim" involved here and I don't think the/. community fully understands the extent of his victimization: Jon Katz.
Ignore your feelings about his writing style, his topics, whether or not you feel he is a "geek" or not and try to understand what happened to him.
I had the pleasure of meeting Jon for lunch not long after the Hellmouth series. The discussions ranged the entire breadth of his writing experiences and was generally pleasent and informative. (BTW, he does NOT consider himself a geek).
On the Hellmouth subject, however, his entire demeanor changed. He was no longer the Rolling Stone/Wired/Slashdot author, but a human being that struck a cord that tens of thousands of high school students that responded directly to HIM, mostly privately. Seeing and hearing the man, you cannot convince me that anything that this man does on THIS PARTICULAR SUBJECT has anything at all to do with "personal benefit". I believe he feels a strong sense of duty to do whatever he can to ease the pain of these youth, although I'm not sure that he has any real idea HOW to do so.
Also remember, you were picked on. I was picked on. At some point everyone was picked on. Kids pick on each other and we survive. This is only a small piece in the puzzle that unravelled in the responses to the Hellmouth series. The picking is now not only condoned (or at least ignored) if perpetrated by the "in" croud, but Columbine opened the door for institutional "picking" by school administration. The crys from the Hellmouth were not as much "the jocks beat me up", but "The counsellor asked me how I felt, I answered truthfully and now I'm expelled."
Maybe I'm a minority in/. demographics, but I have 2 teenage children. It has been a constant war with public school personnel to deal with what is going on under their noses. They know what's going on, but rarely admit it. When you make it clear the you know what's going on, they shut up completely. Here's another big hoax perpetrated by the public school system. Despite their calls for volunteers, they do NOT want parents involved unless they are willing to do exactly and only what the are asked to do. If you are a parent, just try to volunteer for something that YOU think would make a difference but they don't.
In the final analysis, the real victims are our children, all of them in every school, and that puts the future in jeopardy.
This is a very thoughful analysis based entirely on hearsay. Since the published material is not yet available, I think it may be prudent to withhold your legal interpretations until the evidence is in.
To me, this is the "Great Crime" (TM) of Columbine and most major breaking news.. Everyone jumps in with their analysis before the actual facts have been gathered, let alone reviewed. By it's very nature,/. contributes somewhat to this phenemona, BUT, it's clear that the contributions of readers are OPINIONS.
So, since the jury is still out (or at least the book is not yet in), I can't deny the validity of your concerns. Most are well founded, yet they are valid only within specific circumstances which may or may not actually apply. I can't help but compare your post to the legions of major media reports on the Microsoft trial written by people who obviously never read any of the actual court documents.
I'd be far more interested in your analysis after you've reviewed the book, and encourage you to offer up a review for slashdot.
Re:Everybody take a breather
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Microsoft Loses
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Stu, In truth, I can't dispute the market influence of any multi-billion dollar corporation, but I still have issues with the phrase "responsible for economic growth." Apple was the first PC in the business world, brought in by middle managers for one reason -- VisiCalc. Corporate DP balked at giving anyone access, let alone control of these little buggers. Along comes IBM and "poof", PC's are legitimized in Big Business. There was alot of competition for various applications, Lotus 123, Dbase, WordPerfect began stepping ahead of the pack, but there were still contenders in every application area, at all times. No "winner" could ever afford to rest on their laurels. It is this competition that spawned aggresive innovation as each of the competitors strove to gain more market share by better serving the needs on their customers.
To me, the prospect that all this activity would have vanished if Microsoft had not established dominance is ludicrous. The exact opposite is what happened, MS established it's dominance at the expense of smaller, more innovative and more customer oriented competitors. They did it by leveraging their dominance in the OS arena, and they did it illegally. Without them, I think PC operating system and application technology would be more advanced than it is today.
Regarding your last paragraph: I don't know how many times this needs to be said before it sinks in. This whole case was brought up because Microsoft illegally removed true choice from the consumer. PEOPLE may have bought Microsoft, but they did so because they didn't have a real alternative. So the "market" didn't decide anything. I believe that, if it had, we would have a for more stable economy with our far more stable PC's.
Re:Everybody take a breather
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Microsoft Loses
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Wha?....What's what point? You made a variety of claims basically propping up the "what's good for Microsoft is good for America" theory. I refuted each one showing how the reverse is true. This is why they are in court, and this is why the lost.
As to your specific examples -- NT and IIS: What does Microsoft use for Hotmail? Why? NT and IIS do not scale. SQL server is not an "internet technology" it's a database that can't even dream of being a ingres/postgres, let alone an Oracle/Sybase/DB2. ASP? See "IIS". For application development, that's easy. Anything Borland. OWL was leaps beyond MFC, and the Borland C++ 5 IDE that I recall from years ago was intuitive and easy. The Visual Studio 6(?) I used last year was painful, non-intuitive and the help files were just plain wrong. I'm sure you'd like to compare VB to Delphi, too.
Listen, If you want to go Microsoft, by all means do so. Personally, I was in the computer business before Microsoft. They have "innovated" nothing, nada, ZIP! Everything they market was either copied, only sometimes legally, or bought. Once they've got their hands on a product it is rapidly bloated with useless features, stuffed with fancy widgets to click that do nothing but force your hands off the keyboard in order to slow you down. Believe me, if you code as fast in Visual Studio as I do in vim their editor lags sorely behind.
I, for one, am fed up with having to support their garbage. I can't go to relative's or friends houses with out the inevitable "Can you look at my computer? Somethings not right." If they can't market a decent product without forcing it on people then they should close up shop and go home.
Re:Everybody take a breather
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Microsoft Loses
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Oh,...Where to begin???
Yup, Microsoft will appeal. Tell us something we don't know
Yup, many people lost money. Lots and LOTS of people lost money buying Windows several times. Upgrades (patch fixes), additional copies on new PC's, copies they didn't want (because they where illegally bundled). Oh, and lost productivity due to Computer Crashes (TM), file incompatibilities (you upgraded Office 97? Can you please send me that document so I can read it with Word 6?), system reload/re-installs, and data recovery. I know how much of my time was LOST.
Bad for Gore? Maybe. Is that supposed to imply it's bad for the country? I hope Bush put's it all over him and everyone gets fed up enough to not vote for either of them.
So, what if Billy took his ball and went home? First, the API's would quit changing. It might actually be possible to reverse engineer enough so that WINE can run Windows better than Windows (as OS/2 DID at one time). Never again will you have to worry that you can no longer read a file created by a different version of Microsoft whatever. And who would be left to prosecute those who "crack" file formats and API's for improved compatibility. NO-ONE! Whooo!
Those businesses and industries that "depend" on Microsoft would be able to quite worrying about whether they had to upgrade to Win2K or not. They just wouldn't. Miraculously, DNS will continue to work uncorrupted by a Microsoft server on every subnet. Applications will continue to run without a broken directory to help them loose data and interfaces. Those businesses could quite worrying about how to play with Microsoft and focus on their own strategic product lines.
What about the internet? There were free IP stacks for Windows before Microsoft new what IP was. Netscape was "free" before IE was dreamed of. Mosaic was free even before Netscape. Oh, and about your Netscape Java crashes...Could that be related, perhaps, to the multiple, incompatible versions of Java brought to you illegally and in direct violation of contract by your fr^hiends at Microsoft? You don't seem to be seeing exactly what has been brought up in this lawsuit.
I will not dispute your assertion that Microsoft is responsible for our economic growth. I simply refuse to believe it. ("Contributed" maybe, but if you subtract the damage they cost, I'll still argue value.) It's your hypothesis, you prove it. You mention server software, internet technologies and application development, yet like most MS apologists you fail to provide one, single, specific, QUANTIFIABLE example where Microsoft advanced anything other than their own bank balances. (Microsoft "Bob" does NOT count!)
About jobs lost: If MS closed it's doors, MS software would not vanish. There would be a tremendous opportunity for former MS people as consultants and contractors. Believe it or not, Mr.Gates probably hasn't contributed a line of code in a while. With a major hole like this, and an army of ex-employees with the source code in their heads, you'd see an explosion of improvements in Microsoft compatible products.
Ok, I've thought about it. I pretty much like the idea.
A TRADEMARK is either a word, phrase, symbol or design, or combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, which identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods or services of one party from those of others. A service mark is the same as a trademark except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than a product. Throughout this booklet the terms "trademark" and "mark" are used to refer to both trademarks and service marks whether they are word marks or other types of marks. Normally, a mark for goods appears on the product or on its packaging, while a service mark appears in advertising for the services.
So in order to be a "trademark", it has to "identify and distinguish" the product. "Coke(TM)" may do so, since coke (as in steel or drugs) is not capitalized. This just points out that wordsin domain names are not likely to be protected. (Expect a rush of trademark requests on [myproduct].COM!)
Note also that in the domain name dispute policy, section 8 indicates that a trademark holder has to present both evidence of ownership, and "the legal harm the trademark owner is incurring". I don't think the Coca-Cola (TM) Company is being harmed by an inactive domain, nor do I think they're likely to be harmed by anything short of a "Don't Drink Coke" site at coke.[whatever].
My personal (IANAL) recommendation would be to try to initiate dispute procedings yourself, providing background for your use of the word "coke" and claiming no harm to the Coca-Cola Company and try to get something from NSI to indicating you can continue to use the domain. If you do, send a copy to Coke(TM) to snort.
There is absolutely no way this can be used to provide copy protection unless it is forced on each and every consumer. Every consumer who buys a digital display will pay for it. Every consumer who uses any video service other than broadcast will pay for it. No consumer needs it for their own purposes (which is even worse than the Clipper, since some people might actually want that).
This raises again the need for/. readers to become politically aware, if not active. One responsibility of government is to protect consumers. Content protection is fine. Organizations have a right to protect their intellectual property (like it, or not). But they have no right to control the market in such a way that we have no alternative other than their chosen medium. And the idea that they can remotely monitor the use of a product that I paid for is assinine. If I want to by a 45" digital monitor to use as an aquarium, I can. If I want a 45" digital monitor exclusively for unencrypted use, I had better be able to get one. As long as I can, and as long as most people do, unencrypted content will have to be made available or it simply won't sell.
So the key here is to stay alert and make sure that this doesn't become the ONLY method (especially, legislated) of viewing commercial content. Give them their niche market in industries that require high security. As long as it has competition in the consumer market, it will fail.
they've gone on record saying that compatibility is not a priority. This is just ludicrous.
From the KOFFICE FAQ:
There is a filter manager for KOffice that allows the development of filters for different formats. However, many of these file formats aren't documented or are poorly documented, making filter development not an easy task. E.g. the MS-Word format partially contains binary object code, making it very difficult to parse. If MS-Office should offer XML as a file format in its next versions, this will be much easier.
There's an ASCII, an MIF and an RTF filter in the KWord source tree, but the latter ones are not very functional. Werner Trobin is working on an import filter for WinWord 97. However, a corresponding export filter is not likely ever to be written.
So, KOffice can handle any file format that someone writes a filter for. So, yes, compatibility is not their priority, but they support it if you want to make it your priority. Scratch your own itch.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's all open Window's file-sharing across the internet, then sue Microsoft for developing piracy software.
What if I want digitical copies of all the old LP's I have but have refused to buy again on CD? Since the DMCA doesn't alter "fair use" (or so it say's), I can legally make a "copy" of my LP's by pulling them down with Napster or GNUtella or FTP or whatever.
Even Judge Kaplan says I can make copies of analog media. With these tools, I can "make" legal copies without having to buy the recording hardware...
Does any one know for a fact which group Kaplan is in? I hope it's elected because this could be made a major issue come re-election time.
In this case, could I buy a Ford and a set of "Super Tires" and modify the Ford, tires, or both so I could use them together? Yes. Would either Ford or Chevy be able to sue me because I used either in a manner that they did not license? No.
FWIW, I think the comparisons all gotta go. The U.S. has a constitutional use of copyrights including limited duration and the doctrine of "fair use". This has been extended by case law to include the "right of first sale". The DMCA and various other methods of attempting to control access to information that is already constitutionaly demonstrated to belong to the purchaser is, quite simply, a violation of the rights of U.S. citizens. It needs to be fought, as it is now, in the courts. In addition to the specific suits brought by the Big Business (TM) plaintiffs, I'd like to see a class action civil rights suit brought by owners of DVD's against the the media moguls that are attempting to prevent us from exercising those rights.
Comparisons to other issues and cases do little to place the discussions where they belong, back in the constitution. The "War on Drugs", "Violence in Schools", and other hot button issues have demonstrated just how easily citizens will relinguish their rights when the issues are phrased and framed by those that want to remove them. We should not get caught up in what the DVD issue is like. We should ignore the fact that the DMCA is stupid, annoying or even unenforcable. We should focus on the fact that it is illegal.
Not that I agree with everything esr says and definitely not to elivate him to that stature. I just think that "we hackers" have to recognize that this is a political debate. In this context, you have to presume that the speaker represents some body of people {X}, and that there are people who consider themselves members of {X} that agree with the speaker, and some that to not.
Jesse Jackson is called a "black leader". Why? Is it because he's black and is a leader, or is it because he leads black people? Does he speak for all black people? Or is it simply that "black leader" is a convenient, if distracting label, for someone who gives voice to a message that alot of people (of different colors, I may add) want heard, despite the fact that others disagree?
So, like it or not, esr is a "hacker leader". To those who call themselves hackers, and to those who do not, he still has to make his case with his own words. Whether "we" agree with him or not, the important role he plays is that he draws "us" into the discussion.
I have to hope they're going to do okay on this type of decision or else I'd be in a constant state of panic. That may or may not be realistic....
I have to agree on this point. On the other hand, these people generally have a much better appreciation for the constitutional principles. In particular, judges tend to pride themselves on being able to apply the law regardless of the circumstances. Judge Jackson certainly wasn't much of a techie when the MS case started.
In general, I think (hope) we're going to find the courts are more friendly to the idea of open information than the corporations really want. The only problem is that there's going to have to be alot of court cases to counter the number of stupid laws. Can we charge congress with malpractice?
But, just because it's a favorite doesn't mean it's art. I've still been known to pick up a MAD magazine now a then because I want to be entertained. This is an entertaining book.
- wafer NOTICE=Do not send copyrighted information other than the specifically requested document and it's components. Note especially, license conditions (copyright or otherwise) on cookies or other information not normally visible and not specifically requested are not agreed to
- wafer COPYRIGHT=Personal information contained herein is exclusively for use in the requested transaction. All other rights are reserved. Any other use is forbidden without written consent.
- wafer CONDITIONS=NOTICE: By responding to this request, you agree that the requester is not bound by any terms and conditions other than that which they expressly greed to.
Since they agreed to my conditions first, they're terms and conditions are null and void. If they sue me for violating there conditions, they're going to have to produce web logs which include these wafers indicating that they have no right to sue me....In that regard, I think the judges line was drawn in the right place. It keeps the OS group from extending into areas where components have always been easily removed or changed. If MS has to seperate their bastardized kerberos from the OS, I'm sure other vendors would stand up to make a compatible version which companies with heterogonous platforms would pay for in a heartbeat.
It acheives the whole purpose of anti-trust: The consumer gets to choose.
Except that you're not supposed to be able to. The cookie spec requires at least 2 positions for the domain, e.g. slashdot.com can't read cnet.com's cookies. The problems are 1) many browser implementations are broken, and 2) this came out before country TLD's. So now, slashdot.com.uk COULD read cnet.com.uk's cookies if they where only set to .com.uk.
As an exercise, search CERT for "cookies exposed" to pick up on several vulnerablities. In effect, CNet has just patented a security vulnerability.
Cookies or not, client side information (state or otherwise) should NOT be shared across domains.
Just a note since I was also registered Independent until an informed registrar asked me if I really meant that I wanted to be a member of the party created by George Wallace in his presidential bid. Whoops! What I really wanted, is to be registered as "No Party".
This may or may not be the case with you, or in your state, but it's worth checking.
Get klipper.
I have to agree that alot of documentation is worthless. This is NOT being helped by the 10,000 page unleashed dummy bibles that should have the famous cereal disclaimer:
This product sold by weight, not by volume. Some settling may have have occurred during shipping. Don't worry 'though 'cause our editors overpackaged in the first place.
Reputable businesses realize that they live by satisfying their customers. If I get a mail from Sun (which I have) and I kindly ask them to remove me from their list (which I did), and they do, I'm happy.
When I get a spam with forged headers through stolen relay services that refer to encoded URL's (escaped characters or single digit IP's), it's clear to me that the sender knows that what they are doing is WRONG! If not, why hide?
I always complain to the postmaster of the originating site, as well as any mentioned web-sites, as concisely and breifly as I can in the hopes that they get shut down and have to move again. In most these cases, this is clearly theft of service. Affected ISP's as well as customers should unite to sue these idiots out of business.
That will set the tone for responsible commercial email. No reputable company would send anything that someone didn't request.
Push it up the bestseller lists, gain mass-marketing attention, and get it in the hands of people who get their news from the TeeVee.Has anybody seen any reports regarding the final report of the Columbine event? Me neither. The closest I've seen is like a page A-12 2 inch newspaper column saying something to the effect of: "It didn't really happen that way."
(sigh)
Ignore your feelings about his writing style, his topics, whether or not you feel he is a "geek" or not and try to understand what happened to him.
I had the pleasure of meeting Jon for lunch not long after the Hellmouth series. The discussions ranged the entire breadth of his writing experiences and was generally pleasent and informative. (BTW, he does NOT consider himself a geek).
On the Hellmouth subject, however, his entire demeanor changed. He was no longer the Rolling Stone/Wired/Slashdot author, but a human being that struck a cord that tens of thousands of high school students that responded directly to HIM, mostly privately. Seeing and hearing the man, you cannot convince me that anything that this man does on THIS PARTICULAR SUBJECT has anything at all to do with "personal benefit". I believe he feels a strong sense of duty to do whatever he can to ease the pain of these youth, although I'm not sure that he has any real idea HOW to do so.
Also remember, you were picked on. I was picked on. At some point everyone was picked on. Kids pick on each other and we survive. This is only a small piece in the puzzle that unravelled in the responses to the Hellmouth series. The picking is now not only condoned (or at least ignored) if perpetrated by the "in" croud, but Columbine opened the door for institutional "picking" by school administration. The crys from the Hellmouth were not as much "the jocks beat me up", but "The counsellor asked me how I felt, I answered truthfully and now I'm expelled."
Maybe I'm a minority in /. demographics, but I have 2 teenage children. It has been a constant war with public school personnel to deal with what is going on under their noses. They know what's going on, but rarely admit it. When you make it clear the you know what's going on, they shut up completely. Here's another big hoax perpetrated by the public school system. Despite their calls for volunteers, they do NOT want parents involved unless they are willing to do exactly and only what the are asked to do. If you are a parent, just try to volunteer for something that YOU think would make a difference but they don't.
In the final analysis, the real victims are our children, all of them in every school, and that puts the future in jeopardy.
To me, this is the "Great Crime" (TM) of Columbine and most major breaking news.. Everyone jumps in with their analysis before the actual facts have been gathered, let alone reviewed. By it's very nature, /. contributes somewhat to this phenemona, BUT, it's clear that the contributions of readers are OPINIONS.
So, since the jury is still out (or at least the book is not yet in), I can't deny the validity of your concerns. Most are well founded, yet they are valid only within specific circumstances which may or may not actually apply. I can't help but compare your post to the legions of major media reports on the Microsoft trial written by people who obviously never read any of the actual court documents.
I'd be far more interested in your analysis after you've reviewed the book, and encourage you to offer up a review for slashdot.
To me, the prospect that all this activity would have vanished if Microsoft had not established dominance is ludicrous. The exact opposite is what happened, MS established it's dominance at the expense of smaller, more innovative and more customer oriented competitors. They did it by leveraging their dominance in the OS arena, and they did it illegally. Without them, I think PC operating system and application technology would be more advanced than it is today.
Regarding your last paragraph: I don't know how many times this needs to be said before it sinks in. This whole case was brought up because Microsoft illegally removed true choice from the consumer. PEOPLE may have bought Microsoft, but they did so because they didn't have a real alternative. So the "market" didn't decide anything. I believe that, if it had, we would have a for more stable economy with our far more stable PC's.
As to your specific examples -- NT and IIS: What does Microsoft use for Hotmail? Why? NT and IIS do not scale. SQL server is not an "internet technology" it's a database that can't even dream of being a ingres/postgres, let alone an Oracle/Sybase/DB2. ASP? See "IIS". For application development, that's easy. Anything Borland. OWL was leaps beyond MFC, and the Borland C++ 5 IDE that I recall from years ago was intuitive and easy. The Visual Studio 6(?) I used last year was painful, non-intuitive and the help files were just plain wrong. I'm sure you'd like to compare VB to Delphi, too.
Listen, If you want to go Microsoft, by all means do so. Personally, I was in the computer business before Microsoft. They have "innovated" nothing, nada, ZIP! Everything they market was either copied, only sometimes legally, or bought. Once they've got their hands on a product it is rapidly bloated with useless features, stuffed with fancy widgets to click that do nothing but force your hands off the keyboard in order to slow you down. Believe me, if you code as fast in Visual Studio as I do in vim their editor lags sorely behind.
I, for one, am fed up with having to support their garbage. I can't go to relative's or friends houses with out the inevitable "Can you look at my computer? Somethings not right." If they can't market a decent product without forcing it on people then they should close up shop and go home.
Yup, Microsoft will appeal. Tell us something we don't know
Yup, many people lost money. Lots and LOTS of people lost money buying Windows several times. Upgrades (patch fixes), additional copies on new PC's, copies they didn't want (because they where illegally bundled). Oh, and lost productivity due to Computer Crashes (TM), file incompatibilities (you upgraded Office 97? Can you please send me that document so I can read it with Word 6?), system reload/re-installs, and data recovery. I know how much of my time was LOST.
Bad for Gore? Maybe. Is that supposed to imply it's bad for the country? I hope Bush put's it all over him and everyone gets fed up enough to not vote for either of them.
So, what if Billy took his ball and went home? First, the API's would quit changing. It might actually be possible to reverse engineer enough so that WINE can run Windows better than Windows (as OS/2 DID at one time). Never again will you have to worry that you can no longer read a file created by a different version of Microsoft whatever. And who would be left to prosecute those who "crack" file formats and API's for improved compatibility. NO-ONE! Whooo!
Those businesses and industries that "depend" on Microsoft would be able to quite worrying about whether they had to upgrade to Win2K or not. They just wouldn't. Miraculously, DNS will continue to work uncorrupted by a Microsoft server on every subnet. Applications will continue to run without a broken directory to help them loose data and interfaces. Those businesses could quite worrying about how to play with Microsoft and focus on their own strategic product lines.
What about the internet? There were free IP stacks for Windows before Microsoft new what IP was. Netscape was "free" before IE was dreamed of. Mosaic was free even before Netscape. Oh, and about your Netscape Java crashes...Could that be related, perhaps, to the multiple, incompatible versions of Java brought to you illegally and in direct violation of contract by your fr^hiends at Microsoft? You don't seem to be seeing exactly what has been brought up in this lawsuit.
I will not dispute your assertion that Microsoft is responsible for our economic growth. I simply refuse to believe it. ("Contributed" maybe, but if you subtract the damage they cost, I'll still argue value.) It's your hypothesis, you prove it. You mention server software, internet technologies and application development, yet like most MS apologists you fail to provide one, single, specific, QUANTIFIABLE example where Microsoft advanced anything other than their own bank balances. (Microsoft "Bob" does NOT count!)
About jobs lost: If MS closed it's doors, MS software would not vanish. There would be a tremendous opportunity for former MS people as consultants and contractors. Believe it or not, Mr.Gates probably hasn't contributed a line of code in a while. With a major hole like this, and an army of ex-employees with the source code in their heads, you'd see an explosion of improvements in Microsoft compatible products.
Ok, I've thought about it. I pretty much like the idea.
- A TRADEMARK is either a word, phrase, symbol or design, or combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, which identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods or services of one party from those of others. A service mark is the same as a trademark except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than a product. Throughout this booklet the terms "trademark" and "mark" are used to refer to both trademarks and service marks whether they are word marks or other types of marks. Normally, a mark for goods appears on the product or on its packaging, while a service mark appears in advertising for the services.
So in order to be a "trademark", it has to "identify and distinguish" the product. "Coke(TM)" may do so, since coke (as in steel or drugs) is not capitalized. This just points out that wordsin domain names are not likely to be protected. (Expect a rush of trademark requests on [myproduct].COM!)Note also that in the domain name dispute policy, section 8 indicates that a trademark holder has to present both evidence of ownership, and "the legal harm the trademark owner is incurring". I don't think the Coca-Cola (TM) Company is being harmed by an inactive domain, nor do I think they're likely to be harmed by anything short of a "Don't Drink Coke" site at coke.[whatever].
My personal (IANAL) recommendation would be to try to initiate dispute procedings yourself, providing background for your use of the word "coke" and claiming no harm to the Coca-Cola Company and try to get something from NSI to indicating you can continue to use the domain. If you do, send a copy to Coke(TM) to snort.
This raises again the need for /. readers to become politically aware, if not active. One responsibility of government is to protect consumers. Content protection is fine. Organizations have a right to protect their intellectual property (like it, or not). But they have no right to control the market in such a way that we have no alternative other than their chosen medium. And the idea that they can remotely monitor the use of a product that I paid for is assinine. If I want to by a 45" digital monitor to use as an aquarium, I can. If I want a 45" digital monitor exclusively for unencrypted use, I had better be able to get one. As long as I can, and as long as most people do, unencrypted content will have to be made available or it simply won't sell.
So the key here is to stay alert and make sure that this doesn't become the ONLY method (especially, legislated) of viewing commercial content. Give them their niche market in industries that require high security. As long as it has competition in the consumer market, it will fail.
From the KOFFICE FAQ:
- There is a filter manager for KOffice that allows the development of filters for different formats. However, many of these file formats aren't documented or are poorly documented, making filter development not an easy task. E.g. the MS-Word format partially contains binary object code, making it very difficult to parse. If MS-Office should offer XML as a file format in its next versions, this will be much easier.
So, KOffice can handle any file format that someone writes a filter for. So, yes, compatibility is not their priority, but they support it if you want to make it your priority. Scratch your own itch.There's an ASCII, an MIF and an RTF filter in the KWord source tree, but the latter ones are not very functional. Werner Trobin is working on an import filter for WinWord 97. However, a corresponding export filter is not likely ever to be written.