It certainly is in the UK. It's called entrapment I believe.
The problem with entrapment is, where do you draw the line? Is it ok the leave the door unlocked? Is it ok to leave the keys in the ignition? Is it ok to have the engine running and $10,000 in used banknotes scattered around inside the car?
I'm sure everyone of us could be encouraged to do something illegal if the setup was correct.
You could actually use Microsoft's attitude against them. You could say that if a donated PC has a Microsoft Operating system, and does not come with all the necessary licences, the cheapest thing to do would be to install linux and free open source software packages on it Say that Microsoft might take legal action against you if you don't have the licences, so it's safer to install non-Microsoft software?
Why don't we set up a web site which tells schools how to accept donated PCs, but specify that if it does not come with all the necessary licences, the cheapest thing to do would be to install linux and free open source software packages on it?
Say that Microsoft might take legal action against you if you don't have the licences, so it's safer to install non-Microsoft software?
People, out of their good nature, give computers to schools to help educate children.
Microsoft lie to the schools to try to stop them accepting generous gifts that might make a tiny dent in their massive profits. This makes me so mad.
It is a legal requirement that pre-installed operating systems remain with a machine for the life of the machine. If a company or individual donates a machine to your school, it must be donated with the operating system that was installed on the PC.
Is this true? Even for Microsoft operating systems? They're saying it's illegal to remove an OS from a computer, any computer? F*ck*ng w**kers.
PC owners have to transfer their license rights to the operating system to your school along with the PC. They may do so as specified in their End-User License Agreement (received at the time of purchase) as part of a permanent sale or transfer of the PC.
Listen Microsoft. You've made it very difficult so that I, as a PC purchaser, can buy a new PC without buying a Microsoft OS. You know that. So, 99% of computers that are donated to schools are likely to have a legitimate, paid for, Microsoft OS on them. You bunch of complete t*ss*rs.
The following should be included with the donation of the PC.
Why? I'll tell you why! To make it difficult for people to donate PCs to schools, that's why. I ***king hate those money grabbing, selfish, **bhe*ds at Microsoft.
Microsoft recommends that educational institutions only accept computer donations that are accompanied by proper operating system documentation. If the donor cannot provide this documentation, it is recommended that you decline the donated PC(s).
Why? So Microsoft can profit at the expense of the education of our children? You absolute ****ing *i*si*ng i*i*tic bunch of *uc*ing a**eh*les! *an** *a*s*** of the *i*** *rd***! You ****p** **s** **e*s*s!!!
Remember how MS were caught with their pants down on the Internet, but they turned on a dime and now they are a very serious player in the space.
I find it funny when I come across this meme, which was originally put about by Microsoft itself. How, exactly, have Microsoft turned on a dime and become a very serious player in the Internet space?
They gave away their Internet Explorer, from which they make no profit. They failed in their attempt to squash AOL, even though they threw money at MSN - at one stage practically giving away $400 dollars a time to get people to sign up. They brought Hotmail for $400 million in January 1998, and over four years later are only just starting to get any revenue from it. They were wrong footed by Suns Java in 1998, and have only recently released a copycat solution. They've been wrongfooted by competition from Open Source, and have yet to come up with an effective strategy to it. Apache software is still installed on over 60% of all web servers. But most significantly, they don't make any serious revenue selling products or services over the web, nor are their products yet really integrated with the web.
Bearing in mind that the web started to take off exponentially about seven years ago, please tell me, how exactly has Microsoft "turned on a dime" with regards to the Internet?
So they got everyone to use a product (IE) by giving it away for free as part of the default install on 99% of PCs sold. Gosh. Well done Microsoft!
Car showrooms are being persuaded by car manufacturers not to sell both used and new cars. The manufacturers say that they do not make any profit from the sale of used cars, and which is not fair.
Realators are being persuaded not to sell old houses, and only new ones. Building companies complain that they don't profit from the resale of properties, which isn't fair.
I couldn't agree more. I've thought this for a while and still don't understand why such an obvious thing hasn't happened.
There are lots of office suites now available, both open source and proprietry. Some are very good. But everyone bitches that they can't shift Microsoft from its monopoly position. If they all got together and agreed to use a single format (Suns XML format for StarOffice/OpenOffice is a very good start) then we would quickly have hundreds of useful tools for manipulating document formats, and rather than chasing Microsoft's tail-lights, we would be setting the agenda and Microsoft might have to start following us or start to loose serious market share.
I believe this issue is the single most important one for getting Linux onto the desktop. So, all you people who develop office suites - get together and agree on a single XML format which you'll all use! It will do you all good in the long term.
Two layers doesn't seem very deep. Wouldn't it take a few more to create something resembling 3 dimensions?
It is amazing how effective parallax (a simple animation technique where planes further away move more slowly than closer planes) is at creating a 3D feeling. It would be even more effective on this type of monitor.
I think this could be extremely effective for fast games, although I agree that two planes probably isn't enough. Three might do it though.
One of the cheaper laptops could be modified to do all the same kind of stuff, and you would have a fancy colour screen to display the playlist. Add the Creativelabs external USB soundcard and you've got everykind of output connection you could possibly want.
And it would probably be smaller that than box. And look nicer too.
I can't believe that there aren't better products than this one about.
This actually fits in quite nicely something I've been thinking about.
One of the nice things about web pages is that you can just look at the source. Wouldn't it be great if you could look at the source for any widget in an application in the same way? Even make changes just by editing the source directly, if you wanted to. So, for instance, if I'm using a Word processor and there's a function I never use I can just delete it from the source script.
I'm really pleased Slashdotters are just talking about hacking the site, rather than actually doing it. After all, I'm sure lots of people at Microsoft read Slashdot, so now they have been altered to the fact that their box is insecure and are probably making plans to secure it. I'm really pleased that people aren't hacking this as soon as possible, and causing Microsoft a terrible PR disaster. It's great that Microsoft is being given time to put a firewall in place. We wouldn't want embarassing PR for them, would we?
I once read that book "The Diceman" and then did something bad, which resulted in one of my friends not speaking to me anymore. That was definately the books fault.
And didn't the guy who shot JFK read "Catcher in the Rye?". So that was the fault of a book too. And those insane terrorists were influenced by the Koran, weren't they? So books cause terrorism.
So, definately a warning label is required on books. "Warning: Reading books might make you do bad things". Something like that.
Now, wouldn't it be a terrible thing if that site got hacked and then the story got onto Cnet and Yahoo news!
Wouldn't that be terrible PR for Microsoft! Poor them! I do hope that doesn't happen. Especially bearing in mind that there must be a lot of people reading Slashdot who know how to do such a thing, and might be tempted to do it, or to post information about the open ports to mailing lists that black-hat hackers read. I do hope that doesn't happen, for Microsoft's sake. Poor them.
One way I think the site could be improved is to have a list of big companies that have converted to Linux/BSD recently. We could make a 'best of Linux users' listing from the following pages:
The 'We have the way in' site is a great riposte to the Microsoft/Unisys site, and the kind of activism that is great to see from the OSS community.
A few points:
1) Why don't we make a list of ways the site can be made better, to help the Linux Freak guys? Bear in mind that this is aimed at pointy haired bosses.
2) How can we make sure that this is seen by people? Improve it's ranking in Google etc.
3) Remember it's aimed at PHBs - they're sensitive types. I think the site as it is is done very well, but even things like linking to the linuxfreak site might upset a PHB.
Come on guys, let's help this postitive activism rather than moan about Microsoft all the time!
Then, if you know your PHB has been infected by the Microsoft anti-Unix marketing meme, you can point him towards this site.
It says Apache lost 4.75% to Microsoft in Web-site server marketshare. Its damn funny & can never happen
Actually if you read the site you would see that this change is just due to register.com and Network Solutions migrating their domain parking facilities to Windows. So it's not really as much of a gain for Microsoft as it seems. Apache still has around 64% of all active servers.
For people living in the U.S., it is easy to forget that most places in the world to not have a developed infrastructure.
Funnily enough, I talking to someone about exactly the same thing earlier today when I was queueing to use the electric telephone at the Post and Telegraph Office, here in Spain. I was talking to an Australian who had spent the last four months on a sailship, poor man, on his way back to England to see his dying mother, who has the pox. I consoled him by telling him the rumours I'd heard about the United States of America - about rocket ships, robots, and flying cars, a place where children play happily in the streets without fear of nefarious wrongdoers, a place of happy and content people governed by the just and true. We both looked forward to a day when we could afford the passage to that great nation, a true paradise on earth.
I wish we could see more positive activism on behalf of the Slashdot readers. Like, for instance, getting all these ideas together and setting up a web site to help Unix vendors (or at least their ad agencies) come up with good counter ads to Microsoft's rubbish.
Slashdot Mirror
It certainly is in the UK. It's called entrapment I believe.
The problem with entrapment is, where do you draw the line? Is it ok the leave the door unlocked? Is it ok to leave the keys in the ignition? Is it ok to have the engine running and $10,000 in used banknotes scattered around inside the car?
I'm sure everyone of us could be encouraged to do something illegal if the setup was correct.
Great idea.
You could actually use Microsoft's attitude against them. You could say that if a donated PC has a Microsoft Operating system, and does not come with all the necessary licences, the cheapest thing to do would be to install linux and free open source software packages on it Say that Microsoft might take legal action against you if you don't have the licences, so it's safer to install non-Microsoft software?
Now that I've calmed down, I've had an idea.
Why don't we set up a web site which tells schools how to accept donated PCs, but specify that if it does not come with all the necessary licences, the cheapest thing to do would be to install linux and free open source software packages on it?
Say that Microsoft might take legal action against you if you don't have the licences, so it's safer to install non-Microsoft software?
People, out of their good nature, give computers to schools to help educate children.
Microsoft lie to the schools to try to stop them accepting generous gifts that might make a tiny dent in their massive profits. This makes me so mad.
It is a legal requirement that pre-installed operating systems remain with a machine for the life of the machine. If a company or individual donates a machine to your school, it must be donated with the operating system that was installed on the PC.
Is this true? Even for Microsoft operating systems? They're saying it's illegal to remove an OS from a computer, any computer? F*ck*ng w**kers.
PC owners have to transfer their license rights to the operating system to your school along with the PC. They may do so as specified in their End-User License Agreement (received at the time of purchase) as part of a permanent sale or transfer of the PC.
Listen Microsoft. You've made it very difficult so that I, as a PC purchaser, can buy a new PC without buying a Microsoft OS. You know that. So, 99% of computers that are donated to schools are likely to have a legitimate, paid for, Microsoft OS on them. You bunch of complete t*ss*rs.
The following should be included with the donation of the PC.
Why? I'll tell you why! To make it difficult for people to donate PCs to schools, that's why. I ***king hate those money grabbing, selfish, **bhe*ds at Microsoft.
Microsoft recommends that educational institutions only accept computer donations that are accompanied by proper operating system documentation. If the donor cannot provide this documentation, it is recommended that you decline the donated PC(s).
Why? So Microsoft can profit at the expense of the education of our children? You absolute ****ing *i*si*ng i*i*tic bunch of *uc*ing a**eh*les! *an** *a*s*** of the *i*** *rd***! You ****p** **s** **e*s*s!!!
Great post. Thanks.
You have the seeds of a great comic novel there.
Remember how MS were caught with their pants down on the Internet, but they turned on a dime and now they are a very serious player in the space.
I find it funny when I come across this meme, which was originally put about by Microsoft itself. How, exactly, have Microsoft turned on a dime and become a very serious player in the Internet space?
They gave away their Internet Explorer, from which they make no profit. They failed in their attempt to squash AOL, even though they threw money at MSN - at one stage practically giving away $400 dollars a time to get people to sign up. They brought Hotmail for $400 million in January 1998, and over four years later are only just starting to get any revenue from it. They were wrong footed by Suns Java in 1998, and have only recently released a copycat solution. They've been wrongfooted by competition from Open Source, and have yet to come up with an effective strategy to it. Apache software is still installed on over 60% of all web servers. But most significantly, they don't make any serious revenue selling products or services over the web, nor are their products yet really integrated with the web.
Bearing in mind that the web started to take off exponentially about seven years ago, please tell me, how exactly has Microsoft "turned on a dime" with regards to the Internet?
So they got everyone to use a product (IE) by giving it away for free as part of the default install on 99% of PCs sold. Gosh. Well done Microsoft!
Car showrooms are being persuaded by car manufacturers not to sell both used and new cars. The manufacturers say that they do not make any profit from the sale of used cars, and which is not fair.
Realators are being persuaded not to sell old houses, and only new ones. Building companies complain that they don't profit from the resale of properties, which isn't fair.
Ok, so I made that up. Whatever.
I couldn't agree more. I've thought this for a while and still don't understand why such an obvious thing hasn't happened.
There are lots of office suites now available, both open source and proprietry. Some are very good. But everyone bitches that they can't shift Microsoft from its monopoly position. If they all got together and agreed to use a single format (Suns XML format for StarOffice/OpenOffice is a very good start) then we would quickly have hundreds of useful tools for manipulating document formats, and rather than chasing Microsoft's tail-lights, we would be setting the agenda and Microsoft might have to start following us or start to loose serious market share.
I believe this issue is the single most important one for getting Linux onto the desktop. So, all you people who develop office suites - get together and agree on a single XML format which you'll all use! It will do you all good in the long term.
Two layers doesn't seem very deep. Wouldn't it take a few more to create something resembling 3 dimensions?
It is amazing how effective parallax (a simple animation technique where planes further away move more slowly than closer planes) is at creating a 3D feeling. It would be even more effective on this type of monitor.
I think this could be extremely effective for fast games, although I agree that two planes probably isn't enough. Three might do it though.
God, that thing is big and ugly.
One of the cheaper laptops could be modified to do all the same kind of stuff, and you would have a fancy colour screen to display the playlist. Add the Creativelabs external USB soundcard and you've got everykind of output connection you could possibly want.
And it would probably be smaller that than box. And look nicer too.
I can't believe that there aren't better products than this one about.
Try it in IE. It's blank too.
If you try to look at the stats directory:
http://www.wehavethewayout.com/stats/
it asks for usename and password.
The site is just a blank page now.
How can we find out if the site has been hacked or not?
Something must have happened... Is there any way to tell if it's been hacked?
This actually fits in quite nicely something I've been thinking about.
One of the nice things about web pages is that you can just look at the source. Wouldn't it be great if you could look at the source for any widget in an application in the same way? Even make changes just by editing the source directly, if you wanted to. So, for instance, if I'm using a Word processor and there's a function I never use I can just delete it from the source script.
I'm really pleased Slashdotters are just talking about hacking the site, rather than actually doing it. After all, I'm sure lots of people at Microsoft read Slashdot, so now they have been altered to the fact that their box is insecure and are probably making plans to secure it. I'm really pleased that people aren't hacking this as soon as possible, and causing Microsoft a terrible PR disaster. It's great that Microsoft is being given time to put a firewall in place. We wouldn't want embarassing PR for them, would we?
Books make people do bad things too.
I once read that book "The Diceman" and then did something bad, which resulted in one of my friends not speaking to me anymore. That was definately the books fault.
And didn't the guy who shot JFK read "Catcher in the Rye?". So that was the fault of a book too. And those insane terrorists were influenced by the Koran, weren't they? So books cause terrorism.
So, definately a warning label is required on books. "Warning: Reading books might make you do bad things". Something like that.
Another addition to the site could be a list of all the security cock-ups Microsoft has had over the last year. Has anyone complied a list of these?
Is there a site anywhere that links to all the news articles on the web that Microsoft would rather PHBs didn't read?
Now, wouldn't it be a terrible thing if that site got hacked and then the story got onto Cnet and Yahoo news!
Wouldn't that be terrible PR for Microsoft! Poor them! I do hope that doesn't happen. Especially bearing in mind that there must be a lot of people reading Slashdot who know how to do such a thing, and might be tempted to do it, or to post information about the open ports to mailing lists that black-hat hackers read. I do hope that doesn't happen, for Microsoft's sake. Poor them.
To respond to myself:
One way I think the site could be improved is to have a list of big companies that have converted to Linux/BSD recently. We could make a 'best of Linux users' listing from the following pages:
SUSE ccasestudies
Lufthansa
RedHat casestudies
Oracle, Amazon, Merrill Lynch
IBM case studies
Shell, NCSA
HP Case studies
Dreamworks, Boeing
I guess NASA should go on the list somewhere.
Any more?
The 'We have the way in' site is a great riposte to the Microsoft/Unisys site, and the kind of activism that is great to see from the OSS community.
A few points:
1) Why don't we make a list of ways the site can be made better, to help the Linux Freak guys? Bear in mind that this is aimed at pointy haired bosses.
2) How can we make sure that this is seen by people? Improve it's ranking in Google etc.
3) Remember it's aimed at PHBs - they're sensitive types. I think the site as it is is done very well, but even things like linking to the linuxfreak site might upset a PHB.
Come on guys, let's help this postitive activism rather than moan about Microsoft all the time!
Then, if you know your PHB has been infected by the Microsoft anti-Unix marketing meme, you can point him towards this site.
Great work LinuxFreaks.
It says Apache lost 4.75% to Microsoft in Web-site server marketshare. Its damn funny & can never happen
Actually if you read the site you would see that this change is just due to register.com and Network Solutions migrating their domain parking facilities to Windows. So it's not really as much of a gain for Microsoft as it seems. Apache still has around 64% of all active servers.
Advertise with a story on Slashdot! Have hundreds of thousand of people read peoples opinions about why your company sucks and why your product sucks.
Even given bad quaility service? Advertise with a story on Slashdot! You'll have every instance of bad quaility service recounted in detail.
Does your product ever break? Bits fall off? Advertise with a story on Slashdot! Etc etc.
For people living in the U.S., it is easy to forget that most places in the world to not have a developed infrastructure.
Funnily enough, I talking to someone about exactly the same thing earlier today when I was queueing to use the electric telephone at the Post and Telegraph Office, here in Spain. I was talking to an Australian who had spent the last four months on a sailship, poor man, on his way back to England to see his dying mother, who has the pox. I consoled him by telling him the rumours I'd heard about the United States of America - about rocket ships, robots, and flying cars, a place where children play happily in the streets without fear of nefarious wrongdoers, a place of happy and content people governed by the just and true. We both looked forward to a day when we could afford the passage to that great nation, a true paradise on earth.
That's quite good.
I wish we could see more positive activism on behalf of the Slashdot readers. Like, for instance, getting all these ideas together and setting up a web site to help Unix vendors (or at least their ad agencies) come up with good counter ads to Microsoft's rubbish.