The Court of Appeals remanded the tying issue on the grounds that the wrong rule of law had been used, and more evidence was needed to determine what "tying" meant in the case of software. The Plaintiffs at that point chose not to pursue the matter. Thus, there is at present no law on the tying of software.
Even if there were, tying applies when an monopolist requires purchasers of the monopoly product (e.g. MSWindows) to also purchase a non-monopoly product (e.g. VFP). This is the other way around.
What you're probably thinking of is monopoly maintainence, which is certainly what this appears to be: the monopolist using another popular product (e.g. MSWindows) to reduce the utility of potential competitors.
Who knows? Assuming that the current administration isn't reelected next year, we could have a trial on the matter as soon as 2007 and a judgment as soon as 2010.
Well, they once worked. Of course, after the first few thousand complaints, even Hotmail and Yahoo pull the plug. Besides, they were over quota (it's not like anyone was actually reading them, after all.)
Who cares what they'll accept? If they don't like it, they can build their own computers and pay five times as much for them. About time they remembered their place in the world.
Why would I need a secure framebuffer exactly when I'm already in full control of the code executed on my machine?
You missed Part Two: you can't get your hardware approved if you don't agree to keep the operational specs under lock & key. So, in order to sell display devices to the monopoly market, they have to be Microsoft-only display devices. Et cetera.
I ask because of persistent rumors that "MSXML" is effectively an XML wrapper around a binary blob that only MSOffice components can read.
Before someone corks off that that wouldn't be legal XML, please note that XML can carry encrypted content. As an existence proof, please note that MS could encrypt parts of the file such that decryption requires an MS key. The result would be perfectly legal XML, and perfectly useless without the MS key.
For the last year, all of my contacts with IT have been damage control: I've been on the defensive, trying to keep some pitiful remnant of what was once a productive environment.
It's not easy in the face of policies that insist that all *nix machines be replace by Wintel, that e-mail be replaced by Bloated Goats, that site-to-site communications be firewalled to prevent CVS and FTP transfers, the removal (or "revision") of tools in the middle of projects, etc.
I don't see anything in the actual article or the page it's on to indicate whether the author is male or female and I don't know if the story submitter (overshoot) knows for sure or just assumed.
Tsu Dho Nimh has been posting to Usenet for a loooong time. Several posters to bot news.admin.net-abuse.email and comp.os.linux.advocacy have met her in person [1], and "tOSG" of the article is a known poster who works with her.
Keep in mind that tOSG volunteered to do exactly this, but she wanted to do it herself as an experiment. In fact, she tells us [1] that on several occasions tOSG knew from conversation exactly how to fix the problems she was having, but she rejected the offer of even advice in order to keep the test clean.
[1] She's been posting to comp.os.linux.advocacy for quite a while, and tOSG is also on there.
The most distressing part of the article to me is that it took the writer 18 months to figure this out.
She didn't take 18 months to figure it out. If immediate results had been the sole objective, she could have had tOSG set her up in a matter of hours [1]. The reason she didn't was that she was writing the article: it was a writing project.
[1] Example from private correspondence: once she found one of the distros that worked with her printer, she could copy the PPD to another installation. She actually tried this and it worked.
Yup, it's unfair. Worst of all, almost nobody actually installs Microsoft Windows: they get it preconfigured as an OEM preload. However, that's the way things are and that's the way people feel about it. Until Linux is readily available as an OEM preload, the installation asymmetry is just something that we'll have to deal with.
In other words, Linux installation has to be twice as good as Microsoft's in order to be perceived as half as good. Fortunately, that's not a very high bar.
Let's see 12 distro's tested. Of those 8 are red hat / mandrake and 2 were suse. To give linux / alternative operating systems a try there should be more choices. She never said that linux was her only choice she just thought it best met her requirements. Seems to be that FreeBSD or any other BSD would be a good choice to try at as they meet all the requirements.
Help me here -- she's having trouble with Mandrake's installer and you want her to try the BSDs?
Rather it is to say that if you cracked into the author's box, you'd find it didn't run Win95.
Except that I have it on very good authority (tOSG from the story) that she indeed runs Win95 at home, although at the office she runs whatever IT sets up. Right now IIRC that's Win2K and Solaris, but these things change.
Don't confuse knowing the language with having skills.
One way to protect trade secrets is to make certain that they are widely available but not legally available.
DVD-CSS aside, that's not how it's supposed to work. In theory the difference between trade secret and patent is that with a patent, the Government enforces your exclusive right to use the development in return for you telling everyone how it's done. With trade secret, you take the chance of independent discovery. So if an organization chooses to hide a development as a trade secret and the secret gets out, they've got no recourse other than to recover damages for breach of confidentiality. (That only works with those who have a duty of confidentiality in the first place, of course.) The genie doesn't go back in the bottle.
Of course, that's theory.
Still, MS would have a decidedly difficult time going after Tridge for "trade secret violation" based on a speculation that he found out about some SMB operation from leaked Chinese source.
if the Chinese can't recreate the shipping binaries from the source that MS shows them? The last time the question came up (the Caldera suit) Microsoft finally had to admit that even they couldn't reproduce the distribution binaries from source.
the publishers are proposing something that actually addresses copyright violation, rather than a rights grab. A tracking number has problems (what if someone steals your music collection?) but at least is targeted towards true "pirate" publication rather than those scoundrels who make copies to play in the car.
then I'm not worried. $EMPLOYER has worked with Wipro before, and basically all they do is transcribe standards (e.g. the 1394 spec) line-for-line into either HDL or C. The result may be functional, but it's rarely robust or maintainable and never efficient.
By the time we get the Wipro stuff into marketable form, we've spent more time and effort on it than it would have taken to do the job ourselves from scratch.
Our people in Bangalore are similar: good people, but pretty much turn-the-crank implementors. I'm glad we have them because so much of our work really is turn-the-crank work, but I'm quite happy making periodic trips to Bangalore to train them while spending most of my time doing Kewl Stuff at home.
According to the news item I saw, it wasn't internal PowerPoint that got banned, it was shipping the stuff worldwide via the DOD secure tactical network. That scrambled-and-encrypted-beyond-belief network hasn't got all that much bandwidth, and it was getting jammed by so much multimedia that real-time command messages were getting delayed or dumped. Thus, the order went out to keep the freaking desk-jockey multimedia slideware off of what is supposed to be a life-and-death real-time network.
This was so amazingly un-smart for everyone involved that I'm utterly stunned.
As others have noted, the middies had to have been smoking something to put anything on P2P from the Academy.
The Academy just qualified for the Pearl Harbor Memorial Security Award by actually having an wide-open network.
The Content Cartel just caused an entire year's worth of middies to get flushed down the tubes. People Who Count won't forget what this particular witch-hunt cost.
In the long run, this cost the Cartel so much good-will that it will take freaking million$ in bribes^Wcampaign contributions to repair the damage.
Big companies will have the resources to set up investigations even when they know it is unlikely to get anywhere, and business will go on as usual for them.
No, because
The only loophole is if there is an ongoing investigation and if the disclosure would harm the investigation.
API's are *not* protocols. I don't care what their API's are, I don't program under Win32.
Actually, an API is a protocol, it's just an internal one rather than an external one. After all, several *nix daemons operate by using network semantics to access local resources (a trivial example) and RPC goes the other direction.
I agree, though, that the Microsoft APIs, which aren't network transparent anyway, are uninteresting from an interoperation standpoint.
Slashdot Mirror
In other news, Microsoft announced that they had just been awarded a number of new Homeland Secuirity contracts.
- The Court of Appeals remanded the tying issue on the grounds that the wrong rule of law had been used, and more evidence was needed to determine what "tying" meant in the case of software. The Plaintiffs at that point chose not to pursue the matter. Thus, there is at present no law on the tying of software.
- Even if there were, tying applies when an monopolist requires purchasers of the monopoly product (e.g. MSWindows) to also purchase a non-monopoly product (e.g. VFP). This is the other way around.
What you're probably thinking of is monopoly maintainence, which is certainly what this appears to be: the monopolist using another popular product (e.g. MSWindows) to reduce the utility of potential competitors.Who knows? Assuming that the current administration isn't reelected next year, we could have a trial on the matter as soon as 2007 and a judgment as soon as 2010.
Well, they once worked. Of course, after the first few thousand complaints, even Hotmail and Yahoo pull the plug. Besides, they were over quota (it's not like anyone was actually reading them, after all.)
Cut them some slack, OK? Even Government bureaucrats have to use the can now and then.
Alas, it's not always easy to tell <troll> from <sarcasm>
Who cares what they'll accept? If they don't like it, they can build their own computers and pay five times as much for them. About time they remembered their place in the world.
You missed Part Two: you can't get your hardware approved if you don't agree to keep the operational specs under lock & key. So, in order to sell display devices to the monopoly market, they have to be Microsoft-only display devices. Et cetera.
Before someone corks off that that wouldn't be legal XML, please note that XML can carry encrypted content. As an existence proof, please note that MS could encrypt parts of the file such that decryption requires an MS key. The result would be perfectly legal XML, and perfectly useless without the MS key.
It's not easy in the face of policies that insist that all *nix machines be replace by Wintel, that e-mail be replaced by Bloated Goats, that site-to-site communications be firewalled to prevent CVS and FTP transfers, the removal (or "revision") of tools in the middle of projects, etc.
There's a picture of her from her "hippie chick days." It's not current, if you hadn't guessed.
Tsu Dho Nimh has been posting to Usenet for a loooong time. Several posters to bot news.admin.net-abuse.email and comp.os.linux.advocacy have met her in person [1], and "tOSG" of the article is a known poster who works with her.
Just in case it matters to anyone.
[1] Under another handle, I'm one of them.
[1] She's been posting to comp.os.linux.advocacy for quite a while, and tOSG is also on there.
She didn't take 18 months to figure it out. If immediate results had been the sole objective, she could have had tOSG set her up in a matter of hours [1]. The reason she didn't was that she was writing the article: it was a writing project.
[1] Example from private correspondence: once she found one of the distros that worked with her printer, she could copy the PPD to another installation. She actually tried this and it worked.
In other words, Linux installation has to be twice as good as Microsoft's in order to be perceived as half as good. Fortunately, that's not a very high bar.
Help me here -- she's having trouble with Mandrake's installer and you want her to try the BSDs?
Except that I have it on very good authority (tOSG from the story) that she indeed runs Win95 at home, although at the office she runs whatever IT sets up. Right now IIRC that's Win2K and Solaris, but these things change.
Don't confuse knowing the language with having skills.
DVD-CSS aside, that's not how it's supposed to work. In theory the difference between trade secret and patent is that with a patent, the Government enforces your exclusive right to use the development in return for you telling everyone how it's done. With trade secret, you take the chance of independent discovery. So if an organization chooses to hide a development as a trade secret and the secret gets out, they've got no recourse other than to recover damages for breach of confidentiality. (That only works with those who have a duty of confidentiality in the first place, of course.) The genie doesn't go back in the bottle.
Of course, that's theory.
Still, MS would have a decidedly difficult time going after Tridge for "trade secret violation" based on a speculation that he found out about some SMB operation from leaked Chinese source.
if the Chinese can't recreate the shipping binaries from the source that MS shows them? The last time the question came up (the Caldera suit) Microsoft finally had to admit that even they couldn't reproduce the distribution binaries from source.
the publishers are proposing something that actually addresses copyright violation, rather than a rights grab. A tracking number has problems (what if someone steals your music collection?) but at least is targeted towards true "pirate" publication rather than those scoundrels who make copies to play in the car.
By the time we get the Wipro stuff into marketable form, we've spent more time and effort on it than it would have taken to do the job ourselves from scratch.
Our people in Bangalore are similar: good people, but pretty much turn-the-crank implementors. I'm glad we have them because so much of our work really is turn-the-crank work, but I'm quite happy making periodic trips to Bangalore to train them while spending most of my time doing Kewl Stuff at home.
According to the news item I saw, it wasn't internal PowerPoint that got banned, it was shipping the stuff worldwide via the DOD secure tactical network. That scrambled-and-encrypted-beyond-belief network hasn't got all that much bandwidth, and it was getting jammed by so much multimedia that real-time command messages were getting delayed or dumped. Thus, the order went out to keep the freaking desk-jockey multimedia slideware off of what is supposed to be a life-and-death real-time network.
- As others have noted, the middies had to have been smoking something to put anything on P2P from the Academy.
- The Academy just qualified for the Pearl Harbor Memorial Security Award by actually having an wide-open network.
- The Content Cartel just caused an entire year's worth of middies to get flushed down the tubes. People Who Count won't forget what this particular witch-hunt cost.
In the long run, this cost the Cartel so much good-will that it will take freaking million$ in bribes^Wcampaign contributions to repair the damage.No, because
The only loophole is if there is an ongoing investigation and if the disclosure would harm the investigation.
Emphasis added.
Dang. That thing sounds like it was designed to send up every /. keyboard in the world out for cleaning.
API's are *not* protocols. I don't care what their API's are, I don't program under Win32.
Actually, an API is a protocol, it's just an internal one rather than an external one. After all, several *nix daemons operate by using network semantics to access local resources (a trivial example) and RPC goes the other direction.
I agree, though, that the Microsoft APIs, which aren't network transparent anyway, are uninteresting from an interoperation standpoint.