The bundling is done by OEMs rather than Microsoft themselves. Even then, you either get Microsoft Works (an incompatible piece of crap) or a teaser version of MS Office that you have to feed a credit card to in order to unlock.
What's really ironic, though, is that, since the days of Windows 3.1, Write (or, "WordPad" since Win95) has more than enough features for average home use. Granted, that doesn't give you spreadsheet abilities. WordPad is even capable of reading most Microsoft Word documents.
Politicians, as a class, have always cared more about their contributors than their constituents.
I recall an 1870s-era cartoon from my history book that showed dinky, skinny congressmen in session, with huge, fat businessmen sitting in the back row. The businessmen had words emblazoned on them like "Steel trust", "rail trust", etc.
I remember reading in a 1970s-era issue of Analog a story about a couple men who developed a way to control a gigantic floating octopus-cattle by applying electrical current to its brain. Interesting to see something similar actually happen.
(No, I wasn't alive when the magazine was published...my step-dad had a huge collection of Analog magazines.)
I am amazed that people now a days think it's "pointless" when when someone takes a chance, puts national security before their own welfare and does "The Right Thing" - gray? I gave the guy credit. It was "gray" because it was in the interest of American national security. If it had been against US companies, it would have been plain black-hat activity, and he'd have had his ass handed to him.
I'll give you a clue that anyone who has watched the Red October should know, the primary source for noise on submarines is the engine, pumps and other machinery. Sure, the hull, propeller and what not can make noise - but you would have to be at significant speeds with an engine running fast enough to maintain them. Bull.;-)
I read that book years ago. Cliff Stoll's investigation led to the capture and trial of German spies. Once this guy turned his data over to the FBI, the investigation went nowhere.
Actually, GAAP, the core rules by which American public business accounting must operate, specifies that one treat a corporation as a "Going concern," meaning that one must assume the corporation will continue to be in business indefinitely.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if that assumption became embedded in the executive mindset.
(IANA CPA, but that's the next direction I want to go...)
It's nothing new. When the US Navy put the contract to develop a new screw(propellor) for US submarines, the specifications made it virtually silent. One company went so far as to build the machine to build the screw, but ended up not getting the contract. Rather than write the whole thing off, they sold the machine to the Chinese.
Long story short, Chinese subs are now just about as quiet as American subs.
What he did was arguably in a gray area...on his own time, he used "hacker techniques" (not my preferred wording, sorry. Read the article.) to track down stolen data on foreign sites. That he turned his results over to the FBI is good, even if it screwed over Sandia.
Of course, the judgement against Sandia will get passed on to the US Government in a "cost plus" contract...
It sounds like a supreme bluff for a software company. Neither company wants software patents to go away. With the Court of Appeals having decided in AT&T's favor, the only way Microsoft can get out of paying for violating their license is to get AT&T to back down.
AT&T will back down, long before this reaches a final decision. Not only does AT&T want software patents to stay in place, but so does every software company out there. And each one is going to be knocking on AT&T's door, threatening to cease business and license agreements if AT&T follows through.
To quote Snowman, "Welcome to the world's biggest game of chicken, boys!"
Visual Studio is an IDE, and is tied to Windows. Visual Basic 8 is a language tied to.NET. The Windows.Forms group of classes is fairly Windows-specific, but that doesn't mean it can't be implemented on other systems.
I use both Google Talk (and Yahoo, and Aim, and ICQ, and another Jabber service called Pronto) and Gmail. "Instant messaging" is good for one-to-one, extended conversations; Email is great for multi-party conversations (mailing lists) long-winded replies, and one-shot replies.
Every ten minutes? I've got Gmail open in its own tab. The moment I get an email, I know.
I've been described as the guy who "turns email into an instant-messaging system." I just wish Slashdot comment reply notification emails were sent out as they happened, instead of in batches every five minutes.
The copyright model dates back to the guild systems which Europe coined ages ago.
It's ironic that a country built by entrepreneurs escaping the guild systems is now the central figure in locking down the one product and resource which could be shared at virtually no cost.
Slashdot Mirror
I misread your post as saying Hurd 3 was here. Queue "WTF" reaction...
The bundling is done by OEMs rather than Microsoft themselves. Even then, you either get Microsoft Works (an incompatible piece of crap) or a teaser version of MS Office that you have to feed a credit card to in order to unlock.
What's really ironic, though, is that, since the days of Windows 3.1, Write (or, "WordPad" since Win95) has more than enough features for average home use. Granted, that doesn't give you spreadsheet abilities. WordPad is even capable of reading most Microsoft Word documents.
When he submitted the story, it was still "Today". I've seen it take as many as four days between when a story was submitted, and when it was posted.
/. subscriber, and you'll see what I mean.
Keep an eye on the Firehose, if you're a
Politicians, as a class, have always cared more about their contributors than their constituents.
I recall an 1870s-era cartoon from my history book that showed dinky, skinny congressmen in session, with huge, fat businessmen sitting in the back row. The businessmen had words emblazoned on them like "Steel trust", "rail trust", etc.
I remember reading in a 1970s-era issue of Analog a story about a couple men who developed a way to control a gigantic floating octopus-cattle by applying electrical current to its brain. Interesting to see something similar actually happen.
(No, I wasn't alive when the magazine was published...my step-dad had a huge collection of Analog magazines.)
Yeah...I figured that was the case. After two people mentioned Toshiba while providing non-working links, I looked it up on Wikipedia.
One other thing...Cliff worked largely by observing. Piping tty data to a printer isn't what I would call "hacking".
I don't know.
I read that book years ago. Cliff Stoll's investigation led to the capture and trial of German spies. Once this guy turned his data over to the FBI, the investigation went nowhere.
Actually, GAAP, the core rules by which American public business accounting must operate, specifies that one treat a corporation as a "Going concern," meaning that one must assume the corporation will continue to be in business indefinitely.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if that assumption became embedded in the executive mindset.
(IANA CPA, but that's the next direction I want to go...)
(Note: My brother's a submariner in the US Navy.)
It's nothing new. When the US Navy put the contract to develop a new screw(propellor) for US submarines, the specifications made it virtually silent. One company went so far as to build the machine to build the screw, but ended up not getting the contract. Rather than write the whole thing off, they sold the machine to the Chinese.
Long story short, Chinese subs are now just about as quiet as American subs.
He used "hacking techniques" against foreign hackers.
What he did was arguably in a gray area...on his own time, he used "hacker techniques" (not my preferred wording, sorry. Read the article.) to track down stolen data on foreign sites. That he turned his results over to the FBI is good, even if it screwed over Sandia.
Of course, the judgement against Sandia will get passed on to the US Government in a "cost plus" contract...
Given that my law education comes from Groklaw and Law & Order, I don't think so...But I'm clearly not a lawyer. :-)
The funny thing is that Linux has been capable of something similar for years.
If you format a flash drive as a linux swap partition, you can tell the kernel to use the flash drive for swap.
I'd like to test to see if this is worthwhile on modern flash drives, but I don't know how to benchmark swap.
Why bother? Just bring along the modified paintball guns, and reenact your favorite scenes.
(I call dibs on the Cacodemon costume. I'll bring along a couple HL2 players as Lost Souls.)
It sounds like a supreme bluff for a software company. Neither company wants software patents to go away. With the Court of Appeals having decided in AT&T's favor, the only way Microsoft can get out of paying for violating their license is to get AT&T to back down.
AT&T will back down, long before this reaches a final decision. Not only does AT&T want software patents to stay in place, but so does every software company out there. And each one is going to be knocking on AT&T's door, threatening to cease business and license agreements if AT&T follows through.
To quote Snowman, "Welcome to the world's biggest game of chicken, boys!"
Visual Studio is an IDE, and is tied to Windows. Visual Basic 8 is a language tied to .NET. The Windows.Forms group of classes is fairly Windows-specific, but that doesn't mean it can't be implemented on other systems.
I use both Google Talk (and Yahoo, and Aim, and ICQ, and another Jabber service called Pronto) and Gmail. "Instant messaging" is good for one-to-one, extended conversations; Email is great for multi-party conversations (mailing lists) long-winded replies, and one-shot replies.
Every ten minutes? I've got Gmail open in its own tab. The moment I get an email, I know.
I've been described as the guy who "turns email into an instant-messaging system." I just wish Slashdot comment reply notification emails were sent out as they happened, instead of in batches every five minutes.
...And then there's Duke3D at extremely high VESA resolutions. :-)
The copyright model dates back to the guild systems which Europe coined ages ago.
It's ironic that a country built by entrepreneurs escaping the guild systems is now the central figure in locking down the one product and resource which could be shared at virtually no cost.