At least when it comes to music, static visual arts and writing nothing stop the artists to release their work in open formats. The same goes for video artists.
Movies, unfortunately, is another matter, becuase the entr price to make any decent movie is far too high.
A world in which I have music in a open format as well as literature in an open format even if movies are not in an open format is far better.
So it is the artists who will have to decide if they want to sideline with these laws or not, and the only way they are going to do it is if they can make a living without the hideous middle man releasen their products in open formats for hardware that uses those formats.
I for once have bought my new shiny MP3 player and am stocking my CD collection for the next 20 years (not jocking guys, thankfully I prefer classical music to pop;-) ) and will never buy a single encrypted music CD.
I am an avid movie buyer in VHS format. I am not buying and will never buy a DVD in its cuyrrent format.
I hope you all guys are doing the same, not just babling about it.
Most important is that you should let know both your inept politician and the companies you are not buying from that you are doing so.
A propossed standard letter:
Dear :
I wish to inform you that during last year I did not buy a single one of your products because of the draconian technologies you have implanted and promoted to stop fair use of your copyrigthed material.
I will do the same next year unlees you provide adequate means to allow fair use, desist in promoting technologies that stop fair use and in general constraint the bility of users to use the material they have paid for in a lawful manner.
Also, have you checked you pension funds and stocks? Are you investing in companies that do and promote this kind of stuff?
There you are, there is a lot you can do, so what are you waiting for?
The most astounding victories for democracy during the XXth century came from unarmed people advocating no violence: Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi and even from jailed people that up to a degree advocated no violence like Nelson Mandela. The only arm they needed was the conviction that they were right and the others were wrong (and with the advantageous point we have several decades later, now we know they were correct).
Most of the goverments that came to power by violent means have fallen (USSR, Suharto's Indonesia, Franco's Spain, Pinochet's Chile,etc.,etc) or are in the way down (North Korea, Cuba, VietNam).
The only cases were armed response was required to uphold freedom was when the freedom crusher used arms in the first place (WW2), but as far as I can tell, the Europen Union is not executing anybody relating to this matter.
So I guess the way towards progress is pretty clear.
So keep your guns safe and to yourself please, we don't need yet another sorry history about people killing each other for no reason. An yes, we knew you were American, you did not need to make it explicit.
That is completely untrue. As much as some British people hate "Continental Interference" (some people forget far too easily that there is always a British representative voting as well and also how important European aid has been for poor British regions, facts that of course are barely mentioned by most of the press an media) this is not one of those European rules.
The guy using only British Imperial measurements is breaking British law only.
The then British Empire adopted the metric system in the 1860s in exchange of Greenwich being nominated as meridian 0. Needless to say it has taken more than 140 years to begin to enforce that local legislation properly. Such legisltation was enacted most than centurty before the European Union was in the mind of anybody.
Taiwan is an invaluable trade partner, and if China were to conquer Taiwan, it would drastically raise prices on many goods, especailly compter parts, that come into the US.
Let me put it this way: tomorrow there is a Civil War in the US, lets say the governor of Texas leads one side and the current Vicepresident leads the other.
After a horrible war the VP looses and scapes to Hawaii, where he holds on thanks to the big distances and that the war effort left his enemy far too weak to attempt to conquer the islands.
Do you get my drift? Taiwan would not be conquered, because they are not and have never been an independent country, but a rebel province, The original inhabitants of the island were not asked if they wanted this situation which was imposed by the dictatorship of Chain Kan Shek and its Kou Mi Tang party, now thankfuly out of power. Taiwan is not Tibet and as despicable as the Chinese gov. is that does not mean they don't have a legitimate claim to the reunification of Taiwan with China.
That this should happen in a peaceful, democratic manner is another matter, but most countries today recognize the PRC as the legitimate goverment of all of China (and most of the same goverments condemn in general China's attitude in Tibet).
Unfortunately you forgot to mention desserts, unarable land swamps, jungle. etc. I have decided that your half acre is in the middle of the Namib desert, good luck.
You also forgot to mention that goods suplied by a certain land area can't suply all the needs of a family, specialy a modern one. People have to be were economic activity and trade make posible to earn a living, not in a utopian unrealistic half acre of land that is nice in thoeyr but says nothing in practice.
Do yo want cultivated flowers? Get in touch with Kenyans, jusy ignore that the overwhelming world demand is depleting water resources in their own country.
Do you want cod for lunch? That is OK, just remeber that overwhelming worldwide demand has forced Europe to stop fishing cod in the North Sea.
Do you want to a job in London, Kuala Lumpur, Mexico City or Calcutta? That is fine, just be prepared to cope wit the public transportation that can't handle so many people.
I don't know the US, but I am sure there are plenty of examples of how overexplotation of a resource is the consequence of far too many people trying to enjoy themselves without thinking that we are far too many in thie planet.
what about the "Vienna Convention on Consular Relations"
Maybe the Chinese tought that since the US does not give a damn about the convention (check cases about jailed people from countries like Mexico and Germany in Texas, where no representative of those countries was told about a citizen of their countries being detained, found guilty and senetenced to death penalty, which should happen under the rules of the convention) then they could do as they poleased as well?
You have to read the GPL and that should answer your question.
It is completely ethical because the owner of the copyright grants you permission to redistribute the software and modify it(as long as you release the sopurce code).
Red Hat doe not sell the software, any one can download it for free from their website, they add a series of conveniences (printed manuals, installer, support, etc) that make worht pay the money for the packaged product they release.
Nonsense. Please mod down that question, we don't need to ask things about non issues.
If the developer of a GPL app. wanted to get paid they would not release stuff using the GPL.
Who do you think you are to come here an pretend you know what grown up programmers would like to do with their own code? (your "question" amounts to that as far as I am concerned).
Clay Shirky is a savvy guy, and he has a point that P2P is a good idea, albeit a sloppy one just now. The main thesis of his article is that power resides not only in centered servers (this is Sun's doomed wishful thinking, exactly), but also exists and is growing on the edges
As a long time UNIX SA (I should say SunOS/Solaris SA;-) ) I want to take issue with this.
Do you remember Sun's slogan: "The network is the computer"? They said it and they meant it.
In all their manuals and literature they never made a differentiation between your desktop machine and the shinny E10000 in the computer room when it came to providing services.
To serve from a SparcClassic if you felt so inclined was not discouraged, as long you knew what you were doing.
When Sun began I remember the skeptical people doubting a computer newtork with small machines could ever replace a big fat centralized server, the rest, as the say, is history.
Sun did most than any other company to introduce a mentality in which you could (I would say you should) use the resources wherever you can find them in your network.
The sheer volumes of information that are handled today make it impossible for small machines to do all the work, but the implication that Sun has been all this time wating for centralization is unfair to say the least.
Terminal software is available in Palm as well (and has been for a long time), I have had the pleasure to do some basic stuff without having to pull a big fat terminal/PC/laptop all around the place(no, we did not have terminal servers then). Literlay all in the Palm of my hand;-)
If you want to. Countries like Namibia,Thailand and Malaysia drive in the left side and do use the metric system.
In another country that should remain nameless to avoid further shaming regarding this matter, people do drive in the left side but do weight themselves in *smile* stones, measure preasure in cubic feet, do sell milk in 1.241528712354123783214 litre bottles (I think that is two pints) and thankfully prosecute with all the might of the law the merchants that still do foolishly try to sell they fares measured in *grasp* pounds, ounces, pints and yards.
If the resources of this effort are contributed by people from all around the world then no corporation should be able to be the only profiter from the results.
I want to see where it is clearly stated that once the results are out, then company X in the Republic of Poorland can use this information to create drugs to fight cancer without paying royalties to anybody.
If bright people want to use other people's resources there should be a tangible banefit to all the participants.
As far as I can see that little very important detail of who owns the results and how they could be used without asking permission to anybody is nowhere to be found.
More clarity and everything would be OK.
Where is the info in Oxford University's website?
on
Philanthropy Redefined
·
· Score: 1
I wish the team at Oxford University would have more information about how it is going to be copyrighted, patented or licensed any posible medicamente, cure, medicine, vaccination or whatever they find based on this effort.
One would say for the lack of information in their website that this is completely unimportant for the team and for the University, or not as important as it would appear to be to the lay person.
I wish they would say where we can all see how the IP is going to be released and shared all in writing and signed....
Can somebody confirm who owns the results of this?
It would be absolutely unacceptable that Oxford University became the sole IP owner given the fact that they would be benefitting from CPU power from computers form all around the world.
-Many providers charge just for the phone call for speeds up to 56K.
-Some providers bundle free Internet (completely free, one can hang on for around 2 hours before being disconnected, one just dials in again) access if combined with other services like phone cable or digital TV.
-Affordable broadband is beginning, one company offers it for 40 GBP (1GBP=1.45US$)per month. Another offers DSL for 20.
Censorship: most stuff is OK, only the absolutely unacceptable is prosecuted by police, if there is censorship very often are ISPs taking preventive measures on their own, not necesarily goverment intervention.
In several court cases ISPs or message boards have been found liable for what people post in their services.
The UK goverment is aiming to be very intrusive in digital comunication (the old "we need to fight the criminals" stuff); one does not have any right of privacy at work when it comes to the Internet.
Promotion:
Mixed, in one hand the gov is trying to give access to all to the Internet, easing work permits for foreigner with IT skills but in the other hand they are pestering IT contractors with unecesary, hazzy, badly written regulations to close supossed "loopholes" when tax time comes.
All the internet access goes through a proxy server which censors everything according to what the goverment deems correct, which of course includes anti goverment stuff, p()rn, etc. but can also include lame stuff as Cosmopolitan for who knows which bizarre reasons.
People of oposition parties have been thrown in jail or legaly arrased (sued for something they said until they are out of money, in courts that surpise, surprise, always favour the gov.sg) for something that appeared in USENET attributed to them (i.e. who knows who put the name of oposition politician in post). Etc. ad nauseam.
I did not say that. What I said is that your knowledge of computing history is not good enough.
Ok I may be young but where was the internet before MS? It was used be a bunch of universities and the military.
Wrong. By 1994 there were plenty of companies using the Internet (email,ftp, gopher services) and Mosaic was giving acces to many people all around the world to the Web. All this on spite of MS strategy to lauch a propietary, AOL-like, service known as MSN that same year.
When the tide was unstopable MS changed direction, and they did so remarkably well, but the popularity of the Web was not due to MS but to Mosaic and e-mail. MS happened to produce Windows, but windows (3.x) had to be configured with extra software to make it TCP/IP aware. W95 (95!) was the first MS product with some degree of TCP/IP support and thus Internet capable. By then the Internet was perfectly established and growing at tremendous rates all around the World.
So sorry but you are wrong: MS did not popularize the Internet, the Internet was so popular that MS machines were adapted to use it.
But if it were not for MS I guarantee that the net would not be as popular as it is now.
You are deluding yourself. The Internet was so popular that MS was forced by reality to pay attention to it. There was no need for MS browser, there were plenty of non MS script languages, non MS techniques for providing Web services (CGI,php, etc), non MS ways to extend content (plug-ins).
So can you tell us what did MS do that helped spread the Internet? I am terribly curious about it, honest, because I am sure that would be new knowledge to all the Internet community, MS included.
I like NT. I wouldn't let it in my server room, but it makes a damn good workstation OS Agree and disagree;-) , but as they say mileage can vary.
I have to shutdown my NT workstation (forced to use it because is the company's standard....) once every week because it becomes unusable or it freezes. Our NT guys are the best you can find, they keep machines up to date, latest patches, bla,bla,bla. Still I think I will program the machine to reboot automaticaly once a week like the old UNICES 15 years ago.
And my UNIX boxes are never farther away than a telnet session.
Only a 10 year old person would utter such nonsense.
Go and read something about computing history, since you obviously did not have the privilege of see things happening.
Perhaps MS popularized the concept of ease of use (they did not invent it) and perhaps MS now wants to own the internet (they did not see it comming, the "visionary" Billy Boy wrote his infamous book "The road ahead" and Internet was not in his sight).
Why should I believe that.NET or MS SQL will play nice after the Java affair, after C# (poor VB old timers), after having to dump text files from a MS SQL Server because I can't talk to it with an standard query tool or after wishing I could see a Windows desktop remotely?
PS: (3rd party software does not count, we are talking about what MS does to enhance interoperatibility).
Slashdot Mirror
At least when it comes to music, static visual arts and writing nothing stop the artists to release their work in open formats. The same goes for video artists.
;-) ) and will never buy a single encrypted music CD.
Movies, unfortunately, is another matter, becuase the entr price to make any decent movie is far too high.
A world in which I have music in a open format as well as literature in an open format even if movies are not in an open format is far better.
So it is the artists who will have to decide if they want to sideline with these laws or not, and the only way they are going to do it is if they can make a living without the hideous middle man releasen their products in open formats for hardware that uses those formats.
I for once have bought my new shiny MP3 player and am stocking my CD collection for the next 20 years (not jocking guys, thankfully I prefer classical music to pop
I am an avid movie buyer in VHS format. I am not buying and will never buy a DVD in its cuyrrent format.
I hope you all guys are doing the same, not just babling about it.
Most important is that you should let know both your inept politician and the companies you are not buying from that you are doing so.
A propossed standard letter:
Dear :
I wish to inform you that during last year I did not buy a single one of your products because of the draconian technologies you have implanted and promoted to stop fair use of your copyrigthed material.
I will do the same next year unlees you provide adequate means to allow fair use, desist in promoting technologies that stop fair use and in general constraint the bility of users to use the material they have paid for in a lawful manner.
Also, have you checked you pension funds and stocks? Are you investing in companies that do and promote this kind of stuff?
There you are, there is a lot you can do, so what are you waiting for?
The most astounding victories for democracy during the XXth century came from unarmed people advocating no violence: Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi and even from jailed people that up to a degree advocated no violence like Nelson Mandela. The only arm they needed was the conviction that they were right and the others were wrong (and with the advantageous point we have several decades later, now we know they were correct).
Most of the goverments that came to power by violent means have fallen (USSR, Suharto's Indonesia, Franco's Spain, Pinochet's Chile,etc.,etc) or are in the way down (North Korea, Cuba, VietNam).
The only cases were armed response was required to uphold freedom was when the freedom crusher used arms in the first place (WW2), but as far as I can tell, the Europen Union is not executing anybody relating to this matter.
So I guess the way towards progress is pretty clear.
So keep your guns safe and to yourself please, we don't need yet another sorry history about people killing each other for no reason. An yes, we knew you were American, you did not need to make it explicit.
That is completely untrue. As much as some British people hate "Continental Interference" (some people forget far too easily that there is always a British representative voting as well and also how important European aid has been for poor British regions, facts that of course are barely mentioned by most of the press an media) this is not one of those European rules.
The guy using only British Imperial measurements is breaking British law only.
The then British Empire adopted the metric system in the 1860s in exchange of Greenwich being nominated as meridian 0. Needless to say it has taken more than 140 years to begin to enforce that local legislation properly. Such legisltation was enacted most than centurty before the European Union was in the mind of anybody.
Now try again with something else.
People like me that only use Windows stuff when forced to, discovered this long time ago.
Welcome to the club.
Taiwan is an invaluable trade partner, and if China were to conquer Taiwan, it would drastically raise prices on many goods, especailly compter parts, that come into the US.
Let me put it this way: tomorrow there is a Civil War in the US, lets say the governor of Texas leads one side and the current Vicepresident leads the other.
After a horrible war the VP looses and scapes to Hawaii, where he holds on thanks to the big distances and that the war effort left his enemy far too weak to attempt to conquer the islands.
Do you get my drift? Taiwan would not be conquered, because they are not and have never been an independent country, but a rebel province, The original inhabitants of the island were not asked if they wanted this situation which was imposed by the dictatorship of Chain Kan Shek and its Kou Mi Tang party, now thankfuly out of power. Taiwan is not Tibet and as despicable as the Chinese gov. is that does not mean they don't have a legitimate claim to the reunification of Taiwan with China.
That this should happen in a peaceful, democratic manner is another matter, but most countries today recognize the PRC as the legitimate goverment of all of China (and most of the same goverments condemn in general China's attitude in Tibet).
Unfortunately you forgot to mention desserts, unarable land swamps, jungle. etc. I have decided that your half acre is in the middle of the Namib desert, good luck.
You also forgot to mention that goods suplied by a certain land area can't suply all the needs of a family, specialy a modern one. People have to be were economic activity and trade make posible to earn a living, not in a utopian unrealistic half acre of land that is nice in thoeyr but says nothing in practice.
Do yo want cultivated flowers? Get in touch with Kenyans, jusy ignore that the overwhelming world demand is depleting water resources in their own country.
Do you want cod for lunch? That is OK, just remeber that overwhelming worldwide demand has forced Europe to stop fishing cod in the North Sea.
Do you want to a job in London, Kuala Lumpur, Mexico City or Calcutta? That is fine, just be prepared to cope wit the public transportation that can't handle so many people.
I don't know the US, but I am sure there are plenty of examples of how overexplotation of a resource is the consequence of far too many people trying to enjoy themselves without thinking that we are far too many in thie planet.
China is not a friend.
May I ask what has done China to the US?
Thanks
what about the "Vienna Convention on Consular Relations"
Maybe the Chinese tought that since the US does not give a damn about the convention (check cases about jailed people from countries like Mexico and Germany in Texas, where no representative of those countries was told about a citizen of their countries being detained, found guilty and senetenced to death penalty, which should happen under the rules of the convention) then they could do as they poleased as well?
My answer is simple: I'm a parent.
And that means what?
Humor is as beauty: in the eye of the beholder. What is funny for others is not funny for you and viceversa. Welcome to the real world.
"If God wanted us to fly, He'd have given us wings with which to soar...." William, 14:35
Lucky we are! We have got a brain to figure other ways to fly without wings. That Willie guy got it wrong me thinks.
You have to read the GPL and that should answer your question.
It is completely ethical because the owner of the copyright grants you permission to redistribute the software and modify it(as long as you release the sopurce code).
Red Hat doe not sell the software, any one can download it for free from their website, they add a series of conveniences (printed manuals, installer, support, etc) that make worht pay the money for the packaged product they release.
If you could incorporate 3 things from competing OSs at the desktop level (I am thinking Windows, MacOS, OS/2 and BeOS mainly) what would they be?
Nonsense. Please mod down that question, we don't need to ask things about non issues.
If the developer of a GPL app. wanted to get paid they would not release stuff using the GPL.
Who do you think you are to come here an pretend you know what grown up programmers would like to do with their own code? (your "question" amounts to that as far as I am concerned).
Clay Shirky is a savvy guy, and he has a point that P2P is a good idea, albeit a sloppy one just now. The main thesis of his article is that power resides not only in centered servers (this is Sun's doomed wishful thinking, exactly), but also exists and is growing on the edges
;-) ) I want to take issue with this.
As a long time UNIX SA (I should say SunOS/Solaris SA
Do you remember Sun's slogan: "The network is the computer"? They said it and they meant it.
In all their manuals and literature they never made a differentiation between your desktop machine and the shinny E10000 in the computer room when it came to providing services.
To serve from a SparcClassic if you felt so inclined was not discouraged, as long you knew what you were doing.
When Sun began I remember the skeptical people doubting a computer newtork with small machines could ever replace a big fat centralized server, the rest, as the say, is history.
Sun did most than any other company to introduce a mentality in which you could (I would say you should) use the resources wherever you can find them in your network.
The sheer volumes of information that are handled today make it impossible for small machines to do all the work, but the implication that Sun has been all this time wating for centralization is unfair to say the least.
Terminal software is available in Palm as well (and has been for a long time), I have had the pleasure to do some basic stuff without having to pull a big fat terminal/PC/laptop all around the place(no, we did not have terminal servers then). Literlay all in the Palm of my hand ;-)
If you want to. Countries like Namibia,Thailand and Malaysia drive in the left side and do use the metric system.
In another country that should remain nameless to avoid further shaming regarding this matter, people do drive in the left side but do weight themselves in *smile* stones, measure preasure in cubic feet, do sell milk in 1.241528712354123783214 litre bottles (I think that is two pints) and thankfully prosecute with all the might of the law the merchants that still do foolishly try to sell they fares measured in *grasp* pounds, ounces, pints and yards.
God save the Queen!
I don't agree.
If the resources of this effort are contributed by people from all around the world then no corporation should be able to be the only profiter from the results.
I want to see where it is clearly stated that once the results are out, then company X in the Republic of Poorland can use this information to create drugs to fight cancer without paying royalties to anybody.
If bright people want to use other people's resources there should be a tangible banefit to all the participants.
As far as I can see that little very important detail of who owns the results and how they could be used without asking permission to anybody is nowhere to be found.
More clarity and everything would be OK.
I wish the team at Oxford University would have more information about how it is going to be copyrighted, patented or licensed any posible medicamente, cure, medicine, vaccination or whatever they find based on this effort.
One would say for the lack of information in their website that this is completely unimportant for the team and for the University, or not as important as it would appear to be to the lay person.
I wish they would say where we can all see how the IP is going to be released and shared all in writing and signed....
Can somebody confirm who owns the results of this?
It would be absolutely unacceptable that Oxford University became the sole IP owner given the fact that they would be benefitting from CPU power from computers form all around the world.
Do they know about Public Domain????
A lot of choice, perhaps the best in the world:
-Many providers charge just for the phone call for speeds up to 56K.
-Some providers bundle free Internet (completely free, one can hang on for around 2 hours before being disconnected, one just dials in again) access if combined with other services like phone cable or digital TV.
-Affordable broadband is beginning, one company offers it for 40 GBP (1GBP=1.45US$)per month. Another offers DSL for 20.
Censorship: most stuff is OK, only the absolutely unacceptable is prosecuted by police, if there is censorship very often are ISPs taking preventive measures on their own, not necesarily goverment intervention.
In several court cases ISPs or message boards have been found liable for what people post in their services.
The UK goverment is aiming to be very intrusive in digital comunication (the old "we need to fight the criminals" stuff); one does not have any right of privacy at work when it comes to the Internet.
Promotion:
Mixed, in one hand the gov is trying to give access to all to the Internet, easing work permits for foreigner with IT skills but in the other hand they are pestering IT contractors with unecesary, hazzy, badly written regulations to close supossed "loopholes" when tax time comes.
This is the jewel of Internet access.
All the internet access goes through a proxy server which censors everything according to what the goverment deems correct, which of course includes anti goverment stuff, p()rn, etc. but can also include lame stuff as Cosmopolitan for who knows which bizarre reasons.
People of oposition parties have been thrown in jail or legaly arrased (sued for something they said until they are out of money, in courts that surpise, surprise, always favour the gov.sg) for something that appeared in USENET attributed to them (i.e. who knows who put the name of oposition politician in post). Etc. ad nauseam.
So lets see here... MS is bad and linux is good.
I did not say that. What I said is that your knowledge of computing history is not good enough.
Ok I may be young but where was the internet before MS? It was used be a bunch of universities and the military.
Wrong. By 1994 there were plenty of companies using the Internet (email,ftp, gopher services) and Mosaic was giving acces to many people all around the world to the Web. All this on spite of MS strategy to lauch a propietary, AOL-like, service known as MSN that same year.
When the tide was unstopable MS changed direction, and they did so remarkably well, but the popularity of the Web was not due to MS but to Mosaic and e-mail. MS happened to produce Windows, but windows (3.x) had to be configured with extra software to make it TCP/IP aware. W95 (95!) was the first MS product with some degree of TCP/IP support and thus Internet capable. By then the Internet was perfectly established and growing at tremendous rates all around the World.
So sorry but you are wrong: MS did not popularize the Internet, the Internet was so popular that MS machines were adapted to use it.
But if it were not for MS I guarantee that the net would not be as popular as it is now.
You are deluding yourself. The Internet was so popular that MS was forced by reality to pay attention to it. There was no need for MS browser, there were plenty of non MS script languages, non MS techniques for providing Web services (CGI,php, etc), non MS ways to extend content (plug-ins).
So can you tell us what did MS do that helped spread the Internet? I am terribly curious about it, honest, because I am sure that would be new knowledge to all the Internet community, MS included.
But you are male most probably.
if you were female maybe you would have a different opinion....
I like NT. I wouldn't let it in my server room, but it makes a damn good workstation OS ;-) , but as they say mileage can vary.
Agree and disagree
I have to shutdown my NT workstation (forced to use it because is the company's standard....) once every week because it becomes unusable or it freezes. Our NT guys are the best you can find, they keep machines up to date, latest patches, bla,bla,bla. Still I think I will program the machine to reboot automaticaly once a week like the old UNICES 15 years ago.
And my UNIX boxes are never farther away than a telnet session.
Are you using NT native telnet! Brave soul.
Only a 10 year old person would utter such nonsense.
Go and read something about computing history, since you obviously did not have the privilege of see things happening.
Perhaps MS popularized the concept of ease of use (they did not invent it) and perhaps MS now wants to own the internet (they did not see it comming, the "visionary" Billy Boy wrote his infamous book "The road ahead" and Internet was not in his sight).
Why should I believe that .NET or MS SQL will play nice after the Java affair, after C# (poor VB old timers), after having to dump text files from a MS SQL Server because I can't talk to it with an standard query tool or after wishing I could see a Windows desktop remotely?
PS: (3rd party software does not count, we are talking about what MS does to enhance interoperatibility).