Why shouldn't companies slap whatever restrictions they want on their products?
There are really two reasons against this.
The first, and more important one, is that these agreements are not agreements. There is no contractual process going on here. There is only a sale. To make matters worse, the contents of the "agreement" is hidden from the purchaser until AFTER the sale has been completed. The fact is, the "contract" is attempting to force a consumer to abrogate rights that the consumer doesn't have the right to give away. Only a court of law can decide these things.
Second is that there are laws that companies have to follow. When Microsoft signed the papers that made them a Corporation they traded a certain amount of "freedom" for a certain amount of protection. Specifically the process of incorporating a company allows the owners and investors to be shielded from the actions of the company to a great extent. So, they have to take the bad (consumer protection laws) with the good (corporate shield laws).
Finally (thirdly, something about the Spanish Inquisition...), the companies make no effort to ensure that they are actually entering into a legally binding contract with these EULA's. Think about it. In most homes it is the kids that know the most about the computers and thus do the software purchasing and installation. So, if the 16 year old son is opening and installing all of the software on the box then how can the EULA be binding? (After all, the kid can't legally enter into a contract at that age.) Also, there's no effort on the company's behalf to obtain proof of the person who actually entered into the contract. Finally, there is patently illegal language in those contracts that violate both the first amendment (the no benchmarking clauses) and the doctrine of first sale (the no resale clauses).
I make a product, I can design it to work however I want. If I build the thing to play advertisements, and you still want to buy the thing, that's my decision.
Ahh, the old "I built it so I can do whatever I want" argument.
Strangely enough, that's simply not true. You cannot simply build a product and arbitrarily decide its features. You have to obey certain consumer safety laws and truth in advertising regulations and the such.
The problem/debate with the DVD's is that many of the mechanisms put in place for them were "piracy prevention" techniques that are being abused by the people who make the media that run on the players. The whole concept of Region Encoding is an artificial trade restraint. (If the idea is to keep first run movies from being shown where they haven't been out in theaters then why is the Grease DVD that was just released region locked? Better yet, why can't a Region 1 player play movies from every other region? Or a Region 2 player play movies from every region except 1?)
b) Would you rather watch TV that costs $50/mo to make? Trust me, it would suck. You mean like the BBC? The BBC gets its revenues (or at least used to) from license fees and government support. This gave them an incredible amount of freedom to explore areas of television that would not have garnered the financial support of the corporate sponsors that American TV has to pander too. Another good example would be the various documentaries produced by Ken Burns for Public Television. In hind sight a number of companies would have been proud to sponsor them, but that was only after they had been created and aired to such wide critical and public acclaim. Right now we've got a ton of ER and CSI cloans because that's what attracts eyeballs. There's no really unique new shows coming out because of the need to get those corporate dollars.
TCPA/Palladium does *not* do this, dammit. You can use Linux and do whatever you want to with it. No one is forcing you to use Windows, and no one will ever force you to use Windows. Actually, if Palladium uses/requires hardware support then you will not be able to create a dual-boot system. You'll have to decide at the start point whether you want to be able to run Windows at all. The other interesting thing would be if Windows suddenly becomes a secure OS with access control mechanisms then projects like WINE and SAMBA could suddenly run into DMCA violations if they attempt to interoperate with the new version.
I fail to see how this is relevant. You can load CDs to friends all you want. You just can't make copies of them. You said "loan" the book, not "mass-fucking Xerox" it. Actually it was maintained that you in fact can give copies to friends (as long as no money changes hands). Additionally, look at the various cases against copy centers for "course books" and you can see that mass xeroxing of copyrighted materials is permissable under certain circumstances.
MS would be strongly against a government mandated DRM system.
Why?
Simple, standards. If the government says how DRM will work then everyone will be able to write to that and have DRM. If MS gets to make their own DRM system they'll be able to ensure that only the companies they want can play along.
Here's some information from the DoI site concerning physical resources/inventory: http://www.doiu.nbc.gov/orientation/physical.cfm Give that a good read over. Then tell me how you would go about creating a "conformance system" for a group that widely varied.
Interesting points to know: 1) The DoI includes the US Geological Survey. They'll be a fun group to migrate. (The U.S. Geological Survey rents 4.4 million square feet of space in about 220 GSA buildings nationwide; owns 35 installations with Power plant in Big Thompson Canyon, part of the Colorado Big Thompson Project.1.2 million square feet of space in 287 buildings. In addition, the USGS maintains and operates an earthquake monitoring network comprising a global seismographic network of 120 stations located worldwide and national and regional networks located throughout states and territories, 14 geomagnetic observatories, one landslide network, one volcano hazards network to monitor 44 U.S. volcanoes, 17 science centers and associated field stations, a center for biological informatics, and 7,000 streamgauges.) 2) The Bureau of Reclamation administers or operates 348 reservoirs, 58 hydroelectric power plants, and more than 308 recreation sites. Don't forget all those control and monitoring systems at the reservoirs.
From the FAQ: The shortest legitimate name for this system is "GNU", but we call it "GNU/Linux" for the reasons given below.
So, the kernel is almost barely worth mentioning? Strangely, this is the part of the "GNU Operating System" that they still have been unable to produce.
Yeah! You now have 50,000 machines (assuming you have approximately 50,000 network connections and appropriate electrical supply) configured and ready to go.
So the whole reboxing them, shipping them, getting them unboxed, and users migrated to them is merely a "worker drones" task to you?
Well guess what, those tasks take time. Significant amounts of time. That's the problem. You need to get all of the resources together to buy, receive, configure, ship, AND deploy those boxes before you'll get ANY benefits from "conformance".
That was my whole point. The time involved to get to that point is too prohibitive for a going concern. By mindlessly standardizing on one OS and claiming the benefits of "conformance" they're making a justification that just won't pan out in the real world.
In other words, the claimed benefit will not materialize and they will have accepted the cost anyway.
So, how about all those restauraunts that hand us plates and say "look out, it's hot."
I suppose we should instantly outlaw fajitas (served on a skillet so hot the meat's still cooking). We sell people paint strippers and acitone. There are products on the market that we're not supposed to get on our skin or in our eyes. Remember the ol' "happy fun ball" skit from SNL? That was only a slight exagerration of where we've gotten to today.
You're undercooked chicken example misses the point. In that case the company was actually negligent and didn't perform proper safety in preparing the food.
In this particular case someone ordered a beverage that is served hot. They then proceeded to have an accident. People get injured in accidents all the time. The true lesson to learn from that is to pay more attention and be careful, not that you might get a couple hundred thousand dollars from your own mistake. (Remember, she spilled the coffee.)
And its not that hard. I can install 50,000 Win2k machines in about 10% more time than I can install 10
Bull! Unless you take a REAL long time to install 10 machines. Just getting those other 49,990 machines out of boxes and set up on peoples' desks takes a huge amount of time. Not to mention ordering them in the first place, receiving them, inventorying them...
How about those servers? Migrating the user's data from the old box to the new one?
The issue isn't whether maintaining a nice homogenous system is easier. Of course it is.
The issue is that you can never get to that homogenous system. Tell me how long you think it would take to upgrade 50,000 machines so that they're all running 2K or XP? Additionally, you have to upgrade all of the servers as well.
Throw in migrating the domain and user structure (if you have that) to Active Directory. Also, any applications currently running on non-MS platforms that won't get a waiver...
If you're starting from square one then standardizing on one OS might be useful. As for a retrofit of a country-wide organization? It'll never happen.
The issue isn't whether or not McDonald's kept their coffee too hot. The issue is what did the consumer do that led to the accident that led to the spilled coffee?
Now, if a drive-thru attendant dropped the coffee in her lap while handing it to her then there's definitely a case for negligence. If instead, which I believe to be the case, the woman chose to use her lap as the holder for said cup of coffee then you really have to wonder about things.
Life is inherently a dangerous game. People take risks and should be aware that their are consequences for the risks that they take. Our current judicial system has eliminated that calculation and now the idea is that there are only potential rewards for your actions. (Look at all those ads, "Were you in an accident? You may be entitled to monetary compensation..."
Maybe the McDonald's case isn't the best one to hold up for this. There are plenty of other cases that show how bad this is too. I had a coworker whose farther worked for Coleco (remember them?). He was a lawyer whose job it was to go around the country defending Coleco in law suits related to their pools. One suit was about a man who had paralyzed himself after setting up one of these pools (they're little 4' deep above ground numbers), installing a diving board and then diving into the pool and breaking his neck. Despite all of the "No Diving" warnings and the fact that the problem was created by a user modification (installing the diving board) Coleco still had to defend itself from a lawsuit.
We need a "you shouldn't have been doing that" clause for these suits.
First off, I'll point out that your list of steps is much longer than that 1.5 hours figure you threw out to begin with.
Second, how many boxes are you running on this setup? How long did it take to get all of the boxes up to Win 2K and convert all of your servers to Win 2K and get Active Directory going?
Sure once you get your entire infrastructure up to a level like this it becomes much easier to administer (and you could even do it easier using something like Novell's ZenWorks). The problem is getting to a point like that. Given the DoI's current track record with technology I don't see them ever reaching this point.
Wow, what did you test? How many different software configurations did you test against? What problems did you encounter? Did you hit that Office 2000 issue?
Again, I continue to find your time estimates unbelievable.
So, first you still have to get all of your machines up to Win 2K/XP. Then you have to have a sufficient number of test machines to test those patches against. (2K SP 3 breaks Office 2000 install. NT 4 SP 6 disabled Notes. NT 4 SP 2 completely hosed NTFS machines when installed over the network.)
Now, let's look at a modern WAN. You've got regional offices scatterred all across the US. Do you need local servers to redistribute those patches down to? Maybe you want the 5 XP machines in the little RI office to completely flood their 128K frame relay connection back to the main office pulling down the latest Microsoft VM patch? How about that travelling guy with a laptop and a dial-in connection?
Now, how about provisioning that new box in the RI office? Are you going to be constantly updating a stream-lining patch set so that they don't have to download 20 seperate patches and reboot after many of them?
It takes a hell of a lot more time than your 5-10 minutes *per week*.
There is a strong case to be made for conformance of systems.
One problem, conformance of systems usually means that you have to use older systems to ensure conformance. To get conformance right now you'd have to throw out most of your current PC's and buy/upgrade all of the desktops to the latest version of Windows XP. Additionally, you'd have to migrate all of your servers to Windows 2000. With that accomplished you would now have a conformant layout.
Then, you'd have to avoid making any upgrades to the systems. All you could do is patch and make sure every box had all the patches. Sounds great. So, this whole process gets completed somewhere around Q3 2003 (being generous time-wise).
Windows.NET Server 2003 comes out then. What do you do? You either have to upgrade all of your servers (and probably patch your desktops) or stay with a now old server OS.
BTW, this part hasn't even started to go into the actual applications being run on the desktops and servers let alone the hardware being used by them.
Basically, "conformance" is impossible. Hardware changes too quickly. Software changes too quickly. You'll either need to freeze everyone in time or just deal with the fact that everyone will be running different OS's.
Finally, considering the DoI's current track record with security (couldn't even put the Indian records into a DB) I find it very hard to believe they would be able to stay up with the patch-wave that is MS.
I believe the issue came up when MS filed their "compliance update" with the court. At that point MS came forward with a document trying to claim that the Service Packs in question met requirements for their compliance with the proposed settlement.
This is what triggers the counterclaim/complaint from the ProComp group. The beta process for the Service Pack is to determine if there are any technical problems with it. It certainly isn't the forum for seeing if it complies with legal issues related to a proposed settlement.
Although Microsoft released the technology long after signing the proposed settlement, the Common Language Runtime meets the standard set by the agreement for determining what future middleware products would be covered by the deal, ProComp said.
See?.NET is a new middleware component according to the definitions of the proposed settlement. All new middleware components would need to be included in this control. Say Borland creates a better.NET VM and I wanted to use that one instead of MS's?
So, yes,.NET isn't Java (after all, Java is much more mature), but it is a middleware component.
First I'd direct you to the final part of your quoted excerpt: Although Microsoft released the technology long after signing the proposed settlement, the Common Language Runtime meets the standard set by the agreement for determining what future middleware products would be covered by the deal, ProComp said.
Second, I'd point out that Java isn't included with XP (though they've added it to SP1, complete with a nice juicy bug) yet it is in the control. The point is that the proposed settlement states that all middleware products need to be covered.
Sony's recent marketing studies show that too much information about upcoming albums is being leaked by their sales staff.
In order to curtail this problem they have instituted a new policy of placing a large amount of glue on top of each salesman's head. Having them drop their pants. Bend over...
Slashdot Mirror
An deth 2 those dam dikshunry things 2.
*grin*
I think he agrees with you. Didn't he say "Death to librarians"?
Why shouldn't companies slap whatever restrictions they want on their products?
There are really two reasons against this.
The first, and more important one, is that these agreements are not agreements. There is no contractual process going on here. There is only a sale. To make matters worse, the contents of the "agreement" is hidden from the purchaser until AFTER the sale has been completed. The fact is, the "contract" is attempting to force a consumer to abrogate rights that the consumer doesn't have the right to give away. Only a court of law can decide these things.
Second is that there are laws that companies have to follow. When Microsoft signed the papers that made them a Corporation they traded a certain amount of "freedom" for a certain amount of protection. Specifically the process of incorporating a company allows the owners and investors to be shielded from the actions of the company to a great extent. So, they have to take the bad (consumer protection laws) with the good (corporate shield laws).
Finally (thirdly, something about the Spanish Inquisition...), the companies make no effort to ensure that they are actually entering into a legally binding contract with these EULA's. Think about it. In most homes it is the kids that know the most about the computers and thus do the software purchasing and installation. So, if the 16 year old son is opening and installing all of the software on the box then how can the EULA be binding? (After all, the kid can't legally enter into a contract at that age.) Also, there's no effort on the company's behalf to obtain proof of the person who actually entered into the contract. Finally, there is patently illegal language in those contracts that violate both the first amendment (the no benchmarking clauses) and the doctrine of first sale (the no resale clauses).
I make a product, I can design it to work however I want. If I build the thing to play advertisements, and you still want to buy the thing, that's my decision.
Ahh, the old "I built it so I can do whatever I want" argument.
Strangely enough, that's simply not true. You cannot simply build a product and arbitrarily decide its features. You have to obey certain consumer safety laws and truth in advertising regulations and the such.
The problem/debate with the DVD's is that many of the mechanisms put in place for them were "piracy prevention" techniques that are being abused by the people who make the media that run on the players. The whole concept of Region Encoding is an artificial trade restraint. (If the idea is to keep first run movies from being shown where they haven't been out in theaters then why is the Grease DVD that was just released region locked? Better yet, why can't a Region 1 player play movies from every other region? Or a Region 2 player play movies from every region except 1?)
b) Would you rather watch TV that costs $50/mo to make? Trust me, it would suck.
You mean like the BBC? The BBC gets its revenues (or at least used to) from license fees and government support. This gave them an incredible amount of freedom to explore areas of television that would not have garnered the financial support of the corporate sponsors that American TV has to pander too. Another good example would be the various documentaries produced by Ken Burns for Public Television. In hind sight a number of companies would have been proud to sponsor them, but that was only after they had been created and aired to such wide critical and public acclaim. Right now we've got a ton of ER and CSI cloans because that's what attracts eyeballs. There's no really unique new shows coming out because of the need to get those corporate dollars.
TCPA/Palladium does *not* do this, dammit. You can use Linux and do whatever you want to with it. No one is forcing you to use Windows, and no one will ever force you to use Windows.
Actually, if Palladium uses/requires hardware support then you will not be able to create a dual-boot system. You'll have to decide at the start point whether you want to be able to run Windows at all. The other interesting thing would be if Windows suddenly becomes a secure OS with access control mechanisms then projects like WINE and SAMBA could suddenly run into DMCA violations if they attempt to interoperate with the new version.
I fail to see how this is relevant. You can load CDs to friends all you want. You just can't make copies of them. You said "loan" the book, not "mass-fucking Xerox" it.
Actually it was maintained that you in fact can give copies to friends (as long as no money changes hands). Additionally, look at the various cases against copy centers for "course books" and you can see that mass xeroxing of copyrighted materials is permissable under certain circumstances.
MS would be strongly against a government mandated DRM system.
Why?
Simple, standards. If the government says how DRM will work then everyone will be able to write to that and have DRM. If MS gets to make their own DRM system they'll be able to ensure that only the companies they want can play along.
Here's some information from the DoI site concerning physical resources/inventory: http://www.doiu.nbc.gov/orientation/physical.cfm
Give that a good read over. Then tell me how you would go about creating a "conformance system" for a group that widely varied.
Interesting points to know:
1) The DoI includes the US Geological Survey. They'll be a fun group to migrate. (The U.S. Geological Survey rents 4.4 million square feet of space in about 220 GSA buildings nationwide; owns 35 installations with Power plant in Big Thompson Canyon, part of the Colorado Big Thompson Project.1.2 million square feet of space in 287 buildings. In addition, the USGS maintains and operates an earthquake monitoring network comprising a global seismographic network of 120 stations located worldwide and national and regional networks located throughout states and territories, 14 geomagnetic observatories, one landslide network, one volcano hazards network to monitor 44 U.S. volcanoes, 17 science centers and associated field stations, a center for biological informatics, and 7,000 streamgauges.)
2) The Bureau of Reclamation administers or operates 348 reservoirs, 58 hydroelectric power plants, and more than 308 recreation sites. Don't forget all those control and monitoring systems at the reservoirs.
So, where's the cost savings in this project?
From the FAQ:
The shortest legitimate name for this system is "GNU", but we call it "GNU/Linux" for the reasons given below.
So, the kernel is almost barely worth mentioning? Strangely, this is the part of the "GNU Operating System" that they still have been unable to produce.
Gee, you mean like how everyone calls the x86 platform a Windows box? Or I've got an AMD or and Intel?
Heaven forbid we should give IBM any credit for creating the standard eh?
Yeah! You now have 50,000 machines (assuming you have approximately 50,000 network connections and appropriate electrical supply) configured and ready to go.
So the whole reboxing them, shipping them, getting them unboxed, and users migrated to them is merely a "worker drones" task to you?
Well guess what, those tasks take time. Significant amounts of time. That's the problem. You need to get all of the resources together to buy, receive, configure, ship, AND deploy those boxes before you'll get ANY benefits from "conformance".
That was my whole point. The time involved to get to that point is too prohibitive for a going concern. By mindlessly standardizing on one OS and claiming the benefits of "conformance" they're making a justification that just won't pan out in the real world.
In other words, the claimed benefit will not materialize and they will have accepted the cost anyway.
So, how about all those restauraunts that hand us plates and say "look out, it's hot."
I suppose we should instantly outlaw fajitas (served on a skillet so hot the meat's still cooking). We sell people paint strippers and acitone. There are products on the market that we're not supposed to get on our skin or in our eyes. Remember the ol' "happy fun ball" skit from SNL? That was only a slight exagerration of where we've gotten to today.
You're undercooked chicken example misses the point. In that case the company was actually negligent and didn't perform proper safety in preparing the food.
In this particular case someone ordered a beverage that is served hot. They then proceeded to have an accident. People get injured in accidents all the time. The true lesson to learn from that is to pay more attention and be careful, not that you might get a couple hundred thousand dollars from your own mistake. (Remember, she spilled the coffee.)
And its not that hard. I can install 50,000 Win2k machines in about 10% more time than I can install 10
Bull! Unless you take a REAL long time to install 10 machines. Just getting those other 49,990 machines out of boxes and set up on peoples' desks takes a huge amount of time. Not to mention ordering them in the first place, receiving them, inventorying them...
How about those servers? Migrating the user's data from the old box to the new one?
The issue isn't whether maintaining a nice homogenous system is easier. Of course it is.
The issue is that you can never get to that homogenous system. Tell me how long you think it would take to upgrade 50,000 machines so that they're all running 2K or XP? Additionally, you have to upgrade all of the servers as well.
Throw in migrating the domain and user structure (if you have that) to Active Directory. Also, any applications currently running on non-MS platforms that won't get a waiver...
If you're starting from square one then standardizing on one OS might be useful. As for a retrofit of a country-wide organization? It'll never happen.
The issue isn't whether or not McDonald's kept their coffee too hot. The issue is what did the consumer do that led to the accident that led to the spilled coffee?
Now, if a drive-thru attendant dropped the coffee in her lap while handing it to her then there's definitely a case for negligence. If instead, which I believe to be the case, the woman chose to use her lap as the holder for said cup of coffee then you really have to wonder about things.
Life is inherently a dangerous game. People take risks and should be aware that their are consequences for the risks that they take. Our current judicial system has eliminated that calculation and now the idea is that there are only potential rewards for your actions. (Look at all those ads, "Were you in an accident? You may be entitled to monetary compensation..."
Maybe the McDonald's case isn't the best one to hold up for this. There are plenty of other cases that show how bad this is too. I had a coworker whose farther worked for Coleco (remember them?). He was a lawyer whose job it was to go around the country defending Coleco in law suits related to their pools. One suit was about a man who had paralyzed himself after setting up one of these pools (they're little 4' deep above ground numbers), installing a diving board and then diving into the pool and breaking his neck. Despite all of the "No Diving" warnings and the fact that the problem was created by a user modification (installing the diving board) Coleco still had to defend itself from a lawsuit.
We need a "you shouldn't have been doing that" clause for these suits.
First off, I'll point out that your list of steps is much longer than that 1.5 hours figure you threw out to begin with.
Second, how many boxes are you running on this setup? How long did it take to get all of the boxes up to Win 2K and convert all of your servers to Win 2K and get Active Directory going?
Sure once you get your entire infrastructure up to a level like this it becomes much easier to administer (and you could even do it easier using something like Novell's ZenWorks). The problem is getting to a point like that. Given the DoI's current track record with technology I don't see them ever reaching this point.
1.5 hrs to test and deploy SP3?!?
Wow, what did you test? How many different software configurations did you test against? What problems did you encounter? Did you hit that Office 2000 issue?
Again, I continue to find your time estimates unbelievable.
So, first you still have to get all of your machines up to Win 2K/XP. Then you have to have a sufficient number of test machines to test those patches against. (2K SP 3 breaks Office 2000 install. NT 4 SP 6 disabled Notes. NT 4 SP 2 completely hosed NTFS machines when installed over the network.)
Now, let's look at a modern WAN. You've got regional offices scatterred all across the US. Do you need local servers to redistribute those patches down to? Maybe you want the 5 XP machines in the little RI office to completely flood their 128K frame relay connection back to the main office pulling down the latest Microsoft VM patch? How about that travelling guy with a laptop and a dial-in connection?
Now, how about provisioning that new box in the RI office? Are you going to be constantly updating a stream-lining patch set so that they don't have to download 20 seperate patches and reboot after many of them?
It takes a hell of a lot more time than your 5-10 minutes *per week*.
There is a strong case to be made for conformance of systems.
.NET Server 2003 comes out then. What do you do? You either have to upgrade all of your servers (and probably patch your desktops) or stay with a now old server OS.
One problem, conformance of systems usually means that you have to use older systems to ensure conformance. To get conformance right now you'd have to throw out most of your current PC's and buy/upgrade all of the desktops to the latest version of Windows XP. Additionally, you'd have to migrate all of your servers to Windows 2000. With that accomplished you would now have a conformant layout.
Then, you'd have to avoid making any upgrades to the systems. All you could do is patch and make sure every box had all the patches. Sounds great. So, this whole process gets completed somewhere around Q3 2003 (being generous time-wise).
Windows
BTW, this part hasn't even started to go into the actual applications being run on the desktops and servers let alone the hardware being used by them.
Basically, "conformance" is impossible. Hardware changes too quickly. Software changes too quickly. You'll either need to freeze everyone in time or just deal with the fact that everyone will be running different OS's.
Finally, considering the DoI's current track record with security (couldn't even put the Indian records into a DB) I find it very hard to believe they would be able to stay up with the patch-wave that is MS.
Sorry, couldn't resist as this question almost always gets modded up as 5, insightful...
But...
Man, that hurts my head.
When he flips off cyclops with his middle claw after setting off, and destroying, the metal detector.
That was the one thing Marvel has always wanted to do with Wolverine.
Hmmmm, the hi-tech $20 Million version of the guy standing behind you going, "ZOOOM, Zip, WHOOSH!"?
ProComp's complaint about the download times is because this is the only method for getting the new control. This should be a seperate download.
I believe the issue came up when MS filed their "compliance update" with the court. At that point MS came forward with a document trying to claim that the Service Packs in question met requirements for their compliance with the proposed settlement.
This is what triggers the counterclaim/complaint from the ProComp group. The beta process for the Service Pack is to determine if there are any technical problems with it. It certainly isn't the forum for seeing if it complies with legal issues related to a proposed settlement.
Although Microsoft released the technology long after signing the proposed settlement, the Common Language Runtime meets the standard set by the agreement for determining what future middleware products would be covered by the deal, ProComp said.
.NET is a new middleware component according to the definitions of the proposed settlement. All new middleware components would need to be included in this control. Say Borland creates a better .NET VM and I wanted to use that one instead of MS's?
.NET isn't Java (after all, Java is much more mature), but it is a middleware component.
See?
So, yes,
First I'd direct you to the final part of your quoted excerpt:
Although Microsoft released the technology long after signing the proposed settlement, the Common Language Runtime meets the standard set by the agreement for determining what future middleware products would be covered by the deal, ProComp said.
Second, I'd point out that Java isn't included with XP (though they've added it to SP1, complete with a nice juicy bug) yet it is in the control. The point is that the proposed settlement states that all middleware products need to be covered.
*putting on my middle-america editor's hat*
"Major problems from the many things that just don't go together"
or, *putting on my talk show editor's hat*
"Hillary Rosen: RIAA peace maker or victim of child abuse?"
I'll have to agree with you though - that sentence required at least a high school level reading ability.
Sony's recent marketing studies show that too much information about upcoming albums is being leaked by their sales staff.
In order to curtail this problem they have instituted a new policy of placing a large amount of glue on top of each salesman's head. Having them drop their pants. Bend over...
Well, I guess we could hope that this was true.