This is not necessarily awful, however, for those who hope businesses will start looking toward open source options as the cost effective alternatives..."
Those looking for jobs, however, will continue to deem the situation to be awful.......
Sure, if you want to keep on keeping on with the derailed wintel upgrade train, pound sand.
Those providing real upgrades might do better. The typical small office has been needing Unix like services for years. Microsoft's ever more abusive licensing and pricing are putting them out of the market, just when cheaper and better services are available and easy to deploy.
In the worker's eutopia that is Microsoft, people have no need of superstitious beliefs such as religion. Everyone knows with scientific certianty that Chairman Gates will lead us all on to greater glory, if only our sacrifices match his. We do not need these elite people who publish their source code and undermine the secrets which keep Microsoft great. We need only apply binary patches and pay, and pay. We need no faith because we have money!
The thought criminal, Chris Barton, shall be shunned and punished. Users may be excused but he betrayed his costly training and has mislead many. It's outright sabotage of the sort only a superstitious mind could fathom! The New Zealand Herald shall also be punished for printing such inflamatory and false propaganda. Paladium will cure such problems and make such reform efforts unnecessary! When people can no longer be lead astray, we will all be better off.
The entertainment industry loves 15+ kids for their spending power, but loathe them for the grand scale theft of music and videos. However, they will pay for quality, ie. the fifth Harry Potter book, but won't spend the same kind of dough on an album with one hit and a lot of fillers. It's nice to finally see journalists getting the point so many in the Slashdot crowd have been trying to make for some time.
Wow, where to even begin?
First, online music is not theft it's industry evolution. The mass publication and broadcast industry are massively inefficient vehicles for artist promotion. No one is going to buy music they never hear and they will never hear much music on the radio. On line music gives people the ability to, gasp, try out new music. Mass publishers can't even keep up with the demand for the music people are exposed to this way yet they call it theft because they imagine they might have sold the music and think it might be taking a toll on the current boy band. No, online music is not theft because there's no possible way for people to get the music otherwise. I would buy CDs of stuff available online if I could because I like ogg format better than mp3. No sale, the music is not there.
Next, what makes you think the 5th Harry Potter book is anything but the latest "art" being pushed by mass publishers of pulp?
Finally, why do you care what some industry executive thinks of you? It's obvious from the crap they would have you buy that they have no respect for you.
It told me that "derivative works" copyright enforcement is out of hand. Time-Warner is shutting down any publication about a boy wizard with a four sylable name who's authors admit to using Hary Potter as a model. That's what does not work for me. Killing original storries is bogus.
The historical context of US copyright enforcement was also nice. I did not know that Franklin was a "Pirate", though I knew he was a publisher. Nor did I know that Dickens was widely "Pirated" in the US and that US laws alowed this, though I have read choice quotes from judges about US Citens not being bound by forgien copyright laws. Perspective like helps to chip away at the propaganda of absolute morality put out by big publishers. There's nothing moral about a lie and that's what big publishers are all about these days.
One thing I didn't note in the article is that later that year my salary made a HUGE jump... the hard work paid off.
Yeah, shit. I worked hard. I got fired. My former peers got a bigger bonus with my former salary. My former management can fuck itself.
try not to share the wealth.
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I work in 'management'....I don't get overtime at all, and haven't for the past 10 years. Last week I worked 4 days out of 5 0800 (8am) - 2300 (11pm).... I have the satisfaction of knowing that I helped get a major project up and running
That's nice for you, I'm glad you are happy with your life. Some of us, however, want the satisfaction of seeing our children grow up and have other intersts. So while you voluteer to bust your ass, please don't think that's normal and that you should force everone else into your lifestyle. One day, when the non-technical managers decide to screw you in some kind of SCO like blaze of bullshit and stock manipulation, you might have regrets.
Slave driving is a bad sign. Some fields really are competitive like this. Most are not and an honest day's work brings an honest day's profits. Management that tries to squeze normal occumpations to frenzies like this are simply greedy. If your management is willing to screw you, the stockholders and cutomers are next and it's time to go.
hardly working
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
just like the panic of 1929. I'm told that people are now working more than anytime since before then. Anyone know if that's true?
His assumption that all of us will share equal power and access to data, " this is something that corporations, nongovernmental organizations and individuals do as well, with greater and greater frequency." is flawed because it assumes we will all have software freedom. If Paladium goes through, that won't be true at all. As A. Smith asked, "How are you going to make a phone call when you don't have a mouth?" When you can't run your software because M$ did not authorize it, and you can go to jail for modding your xbox into something useful, you know that the new toys are not for you. The new Super DMCAs being pushed throught state legislatures will enable ISP to make it a crime to use the software of your choice when connecting to their network and your old hardware will be useless or get you put in jail.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems that Gates, being in the stratosphere as far as powerful men are concerned, doesn't have to concern himself with Orwellian government because he is above the fray.
It's not money so much as the fact that he flipped off the DoJ and got away with it. Government wants M$s invasive powers. What is Carnivore next to Palladium? Nothing. Gates is working for the state, they let him off so he could do their bidding.
It was most disturbing for her [Bonker's Mother] to have me read the contents of her 'My Documents' directory off to her over the phone. She immediately installed firewall software and the kind of virus scanning software I recommended.
So, did you recomend free software, or did you simply gimp up her Windoze box with eXPensive software that won't really protect her?
... setting up Orwelling controls for overzealous LEOs... . Is Microsoft doing that? Probably not intentionally,...
Microsoft has always been about control at your expense. That's what closed source is all about, you keep the user dependent on you and your "product". Microsoft has taken that control a few steps further with their OS by screwing other closed source companies. The registry was the first step towards Paladium, but they already had effectively blocked all others on their OS by control of that OS, even before the registry. Paladium will make sure that alternate software does not run at all, even a complete replacement for M$ crap. Windoze updater will insure that anything can be crushed instantly, not just software but whole social movements. Palladium + M$ is distributed Carnivore. You know that's how it's going to be used and so does Bill Gates. It's insane.
This has got to be the coolest thing I've seen in a while. Those guys are awsome! Thanks for the link. My basic stamp is obsoleted.
Still, when it comes to an in car server, it's tough to beat a full gnu/linux system. Networking, scripts make the little PC worth the extra $300. Those extras translate into ease of use with less effort. Those 8051 programming gizmos are really cool for dedicated control projects but being able to ssh -X into my car's music player by 802.11b sounds like a much easier way to program my music.
in the San Gabriel Valley... someone began circulating an email stating that several cases had been found locally and named specific restaurants and markets that had been closed.
The first time I read it I thought it was a hoax, but then a friend who worked at a local hospital called me and told me they were distributing it as a general alert at the hospital.
I ended up going to the Police Department, scared, to find out.
What irony! Had you gone to the Police station in China, your friend who sent you the message would go to jail. No problem for you, eh? Had you bothered to pick up the phone and CALL those supposedly closed places, you would have discovered the hoax.
Because your post makes so little sense, I suspect it's a hoax. Can you point to a news article from an orgainization that might, gasp, check their facts? If China wanted to combat such rumors, they would have a free press instead of trying to scare people into silence about dead relatives and co-workers.
The news here is, "SMS causes Party embarassment, Purge at 11." They lied and got busted when they could not refute the truth. They will purge a few people they don't like already to keep everyone from feeling rightous. More uglyness from a represive place. Please don't compare it to the US, where news agencies jumped on the epedimic before it arived and people are still free to say whatever they want and so be caught in their lie.
There can be no doubt what he felt when he said these things. In context, out of context, he believes that destroying people's physical property without due process is a legitimate way to gaurd entertainment revenues. He actually interupted someone to state this.
"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."
... He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."
"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said.
"There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws,"
Let's see:
100,000 shiny corporate computers destroyed.
$1,000 average replacement cost, exclusive of lost productivity.
$100,000,000 - one hundred million dollars in losses.
This is a conservative estimate. We would hope it never happens. But if it did, the indirect costs would likely be an order of magnitude or two greater than the direct costs and send the world into a depression. Indirect losses are multiply the dirrect losses and are always compound. The costs of not getting business done is always greater than equipment costs alone. Deadlines pass, contracts fail and everyone is unahppy. Compare this to the cost of 9/11, $80 billion, and Hurriane Andrew, $18 billion. Hey, but that's cheap next to four student's $97 billion in damages to the music industry, right?
Copyright law and it's proponents are either ignrorant, demented or stand to make a proffit. Advocating millions in dollars in damages to protect entertainment revenuse is criminal.
I mean really, how hard is it to make sure your computer is up to date with patches and has a good firewall installed. Preferably with an OpenBSD/Linux(with the bare minimum installed) box physically in between your home LAN and the internet.
Nothing could keep a determined and well funded attacker from causeing massive harm if this were legal. The first strike would be aimed at the same poor fools that got the p2p harrasment letter and other easy target windoze machines. It would cripple a large proportion of corporate computers and world industry. The first week might trigger the next great depression as small businesses cupmpled an larger ones dependent on Microsoft were injured directly and indirectly. Teams of crackers could find exploits in just about everything and cause harm to more rational systems as well. All systems can be cracked, it's just a matter of time and effort. Even OpenBSD has suffered one or two remote root expoits. All it takes is one hole, lots of bandwith, and a bad attitude. The first box dammaged is unacceptable loss.
Not that I'm in favor of destroying people's computers (I assume this means things like reformatting people's hard drives), that's just asinine. But I do think it's OK for record companies to spoof P2P networks and try to disrupt them.
No, no, no, no! Spoofing is every bit as obnoxious an offense as the actual copyright violations themselves. It consumes bandwith by simply forcing the downloader to look again. The remedy should not be worse than the dissease.
I love how the breathless author blew this by while talking about "piracy" of music and what industry is doing about it:
In the near future, e-mails, spread sheet programs and Webpage content alike will be secured with digital locks.
Why can't people see that an OS that blocks access to music you buy can also block access to your other files? You would think that a reporter would worry about not having control of their writing instruments. In the future, your emails complaining about poor service not only wont' be read, they will dissapear.
cnn has no clue for putting this on the web page:
Copyright 2003 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
You claim, " The only way to "switch them off" is with a pair of scissors on your power cable." That might be right. Let's look at the "features", shall we?
Windows Updater - they could make this the only way to keep your computer running. They did say they wanted to "obsolete" their administrators.
Web Content Features - totally confusing about what's activated by default, but this has the potential to make the web unveiwable.
Digital Certificates. Something called, "Auto Root" seems to be required for your computer to be trusted by Microsoft. Not using it may break all encryption schemes. Fully buzzword complient.
Windows Media Digital Rights Management. - If you play "secure content", Microsoft wants to know about it and put all sorts of third party files on your computer. It's so complicated sounding I doubt they will keep their promise of you being able to listen to or watch anyhing without them knowing. It's strange they would care, as they have been proven to.
Windows Media Player - content again! It wants to check for "codecs" that you might not have. As if! So, how much do you want to bet that the only way to get these magical codecs, you have to use all of the above "features".
If Microsoft actually did what it says, you would not have to turn your computer off to keep it from spying on you, but you would not be able to listen to music, bank, check school and government records, watch movies or just about anything. Of course, M$ is a dishonest company, so we can imagine it will store all the information until you say, "uncle root me!", and then send it all up.
This is a natural continuation of M$ practices. They already kept lists of songs and movies, now they will have your explicit permision to collect them. No, they did not really tell you what they were going to collect, they just told you that the features will have to talk to work. We can imagine they will say whatever M$ wants them to.
We think of this [SCO Unix] as a tree. We have the tree trunk, with Unix System 5 running right down the middle of the trunk. That is our core ownership position on Unix. Off the tree trunk, you have a number of branches, and these are the various flavors of Unix. HP-UX, IBM's AIX, Sun Solaris, Fujitsu, NEC--there are a number of flavors out there.... The System 5 source code, that is really the area that gives us incredible rights
I'm glad I'm an American, I'm glad I'm free, I wish I were a dog and SCO was a tree.
The OSI refutation is very good and has many technical merits. I've enjoyed reading it, really I have. The problem is that the US court system has proven irrational, especailly when dealing with patents, copyright and trademarks.
Just in case solid reasoning, documentation and expert opinion are defeated by maddness, I have made my own claims to modern computing. You see, by SCO reasoning, I own it. Not just some of it, all of it and more than most monkeys can dream of. I own the moon, the plannets, the astroid belt, the sun and all the stars. Modern computing is just another spin off of the first liquid fueled rocket. Now, I don't really own the patents and copyrights on Mr. Goodard's great invention, but neither does SCO own ATT's ancient code. So, if SCO owns all of Unix, I own all of SCO and hearby release all of their code under the terms of the GPL.
Don't get any fresh ideas about metalurgy patents or anything else that might have lead to that first fateful 2.5 second flight of my ownership. Mr. Goodard's acomplishment stands out in the field of human endevors and my claims to it are absolute. He could have used any material to get where he was going, and that's all I need to get where I'm going. The space shuttle is like a bicycle when compared to Goddard's craft, and I intend to drive it all the way and punish those unpatriotic no goods who have been helping the Chinese improve their vastly inferior solid fuel, fire-cracker technology.
Microsoft, through it's demented mouthpiece, has said it, "All your base are belong to us." Nuts, they think they own everything. Applying the M$ way of thought to the situation, they think they own the data carried by Unix too. I'd be worried if it were not so transparent and insane that not even the US court system will go for it.
Still, it's all gravy for M$. All this talk about Unix being "destroyed" by evil Linux and threats on all still shelling out money for licensed Unix, it's all FUD M$ is loving. Having failed to compete on technical merits and abandoned their "Unix killer", NT, this is the best they can do? Pathetic, but the FUD might just keep Linux numbers down long enough for them to implement Paladium and lock everyone else out.
Right, and I own the moon and will license it to the Chinese because I bought the patents on the first liquid fueled rocket. It's mine, bitches! Everything flows from it and all of you are theives of my Intelectual Property, -burp-.
You miss the big picture. Bandwith that onec was negelected due to poor quality can now be used to send reasonable quality sound around the world. There is NO radio technology currently used who's transmision has not been well understood since Maxwell. The change is in frequency hopping and digital encoding. It is doing neat stuff and provign over and over that there is no scarcity of available broadcast specturm. Whey you grok this, you might condlude that satellite is an expensive way to get the message around the world. If you don't grok it, I doubt anyone will miss your input.
I have yet to see a tool that does 100% of what a person needs. Even if you are paying for the software development, it never works just right. In the end, you wind up changing your process to match what the tool can provide.
Nope. People in the free software world modify their software to do exactly what they want. This is one of those reasons there's so much good quality free software available. If you can't find exacly what you need, which is rare if you break the task into it's parts, you can make the tool you lack.
The 'best tool' term can always be used to fit whatever system you're trying to push.
If that's true, you don't really know what you want. When a function is specified, the best tool emerges. These days, it's mostly free software that does it.
The 20% remainder will be more than enough for the rare case where the best tool for a job is not only non-free but also won't run on a non-free platform. Drafting is the only tricky area I can think of for free software, but ProE runs on Linux and QCAD is free software. How many draftsmen does government really need? In Engineering firms, fewer than 20% of desktops are used for CAD. Most general computing needs, text editing and simple data mainipulation, are well met by free software. As this is mostly what government offices do, free software is what they really need. For now, 20% is more than enough and it will only get better in the future.
Microsoft has painted itself into a corner by not playing nice with the rest of the world. Central organization can't compete with distributed efforts. By screwing any and all who would make programs that run on M$, M$ has left it's OS devoid of excellence. Very few Best Tools can be found on Microsoft platforms anymore. Brazil is doing itself a huge favor by dumping inferior and eXPensive software.
Then of course there is that whole, 'whats good the goose is good for the gander issue' with IE vs Netscape and underlying code knowlage advantages.... it all just makes MS look very very dumb.
Netscape? I suppose it's still there, though most of the comercial bits are slowly being replaced by the Mozilla project. Oh yeah, that's a hoot too, Mozilla works better on w2k than IE does, despite M$'s advantageous position as owner of the OS. MicroSoft always did sound sort of shrivled and powerless.
Slashdot Mirror
Those looking for jobs, however, will continue to deem the situation to be awful.......
Sure, if you want to keep on keeping on with the derailed wintel upgrade train, pound sand.
Those providing real upgrades might do better. The typical small office has been needing Unix like services for years. Microsoft's ever more abusive licensing and pricing are putting them out of the market, just when cheaper and better services are available and easy to deploy.
The thought criminal, Chris Barton, shall be shunned and punished. Users may be excused but he betrayed his costly training and has mislead many. It's outright sabotage of the sort only a superstitious mind could fathom! The New Zealand Herald shall also be punished for printing such inflamatory and false propaganda. Paladium will cure such problems and make such reform efforts unnecessary! When people can no longer be lead astray, we will all be better off.
So I did, thank you.
Wow, where to even begin?
First, online music is not theft it's industry evolution. The mass publication and broadcast industry are massively inefficient vehicles for artist promotion. No one is going to buy music they never hear and they will never hear much music on the radio. On line music gives people the ability to, gasp, try out new music. Mass publishers can't even keep up with the demand for the music people are exposed to this way yet they call it theft because they imagine they might have sold the music and think it might be taking a toll on the current boy band. No, online music is not theft because there's no possible way for people to get the music otherwise. I would buy CDs of stuff available online if I could because I like ogg format better than mp3. No sale, the music is not there.
Next, what makes you think the 5th Harry Potter book is anything but the latest "art" being pushed by mass publishers of pulp?
Finally, why do you care what some industry executive thinks of you? It's obvious from the crap they would have you buy that they have no respect for you.
The historical context of US copyright enforcement was also nice. I did not know that Franklin was a "Pirate", though I knew he was a publisher. Nor did I know that Dickens was widely "Pirated" in the US and that US laws alowed this, though I have read choice quotes from judges about US Citens not being bound by forgien copyright laws. Perspective like helps to chip away at the propaganda of absolute morality put out by big publishers. There's nothing moral about a lie and that's what big publishers are all about these days.
One thing I didn't note in the article is that later that year my salary made a HUGE jump... the hard work paid off.
Yeah, shit. I worked hard. I got fired. My former peers got a bigger bonus with my former salary. My former management can fuck itself.
That's nice for you, I'm glad you are happy with your life. Some of us, however, want the satisfaction of seeing our children grow up and have other intersts. So while you voluteer to bust your ass, please don't think that's normal and that you should force everone else into your lifestyle. One day, when the non-technical managers decide to screw you in some kind of SCO like blaze of bullshit and stock manipulation, you might have regrets.
Slave driving is a bad sign. Some fields really are competitive like this. Most are not and an honest day's work brings an honest day's profits. Management that tries to squeze normal occumpations to frenzies like this are simply greedy. If your management is willing to screw you, the stockholders and cutomers are next and it's time to go.
just like the panic of 1929. I'm told that people are now working more than anytime since before then. Anyone know if that's true?
His assumption that all of us will share equal power and access to data, " this is something that corporations, nongovernmental organizations and individuals do as well, with greater and greater frequency." is flawed because it assumes we will all have software freedom. If Paladium goes through, that won't be true at all. As A. Smith asked, "How are you going to make a phone call when you don't have a mouth?" When you can't run your software because M$ did not authorize it, and you can go to jail for modding your xbox into something useful, you know that the new toys are not for you. The new Super DMCAs being pushed throught state legislatures will enable ISP to make it a crime to use the software of your choice when connecting to their network and your old hardware will be useless or get you put in jail.
It's not money so much as the fact that he flipped off the DoJ and got away with it. Government wants M$s invasive powers. What is Carnivore next to Palladium? Nothing. Gates is working for the state, they let him off so he could do their bidding.
So, did you recomend free software, or did you simply gimp up her Windoze box with eXPensive software that won't really protect her?
Microsoft has always been about control at your expense. That's what closed source is all about, you keep the user dependent on you and your "product". Microsoft has taken that control a few steps further with their OS by screwing other closed source companies. The registry was the first step towards Paladium, but they already had effectively blocked all others on their OS by control of that OS, even before the registry. Paladium will make sure that alternate software does not run at all, even a complete replacement for M$ crap. Windoze updater will insure that anything can be crushed instantly, not just software but whole social movements. Palladium + M$ is distributed Carnivore. You know that's how it's going to be used and so does Bill Gates. It's insane.
This has got to be the coolest thing I've seen in a while. Those guys are awsome! Thanks for the link. My basic stamp is obsoleted.
Still, when it comes to an in car server, it's tough to beat a full gnu/linux system. Networking, scripts make the little PC worth the extra $300. Those extras translate into ease of use with less effort. Those 8051 programming gizmos are really cool for dedicated control projects but being able to ssh -X into my car's music player by 802.11b sounds like a much easier way to program my music.
The first time I read it I thought it was a hoax, but then a friend who worked at a local hospital called me and told me they were distributing it as a general alert at the hospital.
I ended up going to the Police Department, scared, to find out.
What irony! Had you gone to the Police station in China, your friend who sent you the message would go to jail. No problem for you, eh? Had you bothered to pick up the phone and CALL those supposedly closed places, you would have discovered the hoax.
Because your post makes so little sense, I suspect it's a hoax. Can you point to a news article from an orgainization that might, gasp, check their facts? If China wanted to combat such rumors, they would have a free press instead of trying to scare people into silence about dead relatives and co-workers.
The news here is, "SMS causes Party embarassment, Purge at 11." They lied and got busted when they could not refute the truth. They will purge a few people they don't like already to keep everyone from feeling rightous. More uglyness from a represive place. Please don't compare it to the US, where news agencies jumped on the epedimic before it arived and people are still free to say whatever they want and so be caught in their lie.
"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."
... He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."
"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said.
"There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws,"
Let's see:
This is a conservative estimate. We would hope it never happens. But if it did, the indirect costs would likely be an order of magnitude or two greater than the direct costs and send the world into a depression. Indirect losses are multiply the dirrect losses and are always compound. The costs of not getting business done is always greater than equipment costs alone. Deadlines pass, contracts fail and everyone is unahppy. Compare this to the cost of 9/11, $80 billion, and Hurriane Andrew, $18 billion. Hey, but that's cheap next to four student's $97 billion in damages to the music industry, right?
Copyright law and it's proponents are either ignrorant, demented or stand to make a proffit. Advocating millions in dollars in damages to protect entertainment revenuse is criminal.
Nothing could keep a determined and well funded attacker from causeing massive harm if this were legal. The first strike would be aimed at the same poor fools that got the p2p harrasment letter and other easy target windoze machines. It would cripple a large proportion of corporate computers and world industry. The first week might trigger the next great depression as small businesses cupmpled an larger ones dependent on Microsoft were injured directly and indirectly. Teams of crackers could find exploits in just about everything and cause harm to more rational systems as well. All systems can be cracked, it's just a matter of time and effort. Even OpenBSD has suffered one or two remote root expoits. All it takes is one hole, lots of bandwith, and a bad attitude. The first box dammaged is unacceptable loss.
Not that I'm in favor of destroying people's computers (I assume this means things like reformatting people's hard drives), that's just asinine. But I do think it's OK for record companies to spoof P2P networks and try to disrupt them.
No, no, no, no! Spoofing is every bit as obnoxious an offense as the actual copyright violations themselves. It consumes bandwith by simply forcing the downloader to look again. The remedy should not be worse than the dissease.
In the near future, e-mails, spread sheet programs and Webpage content alike will be secured with digital locks.
Why can't people see that an OS that blocks access to music you buy can also block access to your other files? You would think that a reporter would worry about not having control of their writing instruments. In the future, your emails complaining about poor service not only wont' be read, they will dissapear.
cnn has no clue for putting this on the web page:
Copyright 2003 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
No wonder they think this is a great idea.
If Microsoft actually did what it says, you would not have to turn your computer off to keep it from spying on you, but you would not be able to listen to music, bank, check school and government records, watch movies or just about anything. Of course, M$ is a dishonest company, so we can imagine it will store all the information until you say, "uncle root me!", and then send it all up.
This is a natural continuation of M$ practices. They already kept lists of songs and movies, now they will have your explicit permision to collect them. No, they did not really tell you what they were going to collect, they just told you that the features will have to talk to work. We can imagine they will say whatever M$ wants them to.
I'm glad I'm an American, I'm glad I'm free,
I wish I were a dog and SCO was a tree.
Just in case solid reasoning, documentation and expert opinion are defeated by maddness, I have made my own claims to modern computing. You see, by SCO reasoning, I own it. Not just some of it, all of it and more than most monkeys can dream of. I own the moon, the plannets, the astroid belt, the sun and all the stars. Modern computing is just another spin off of the first liquid fueled rocket. Now, I don't really own the patents and copyrights on Mr. Goodard's great invention, but neither does SCO own ATT's ancient code. So, if SCO owns all of Unix, I own all of SCO and hearby release all of their code under the terms of the GPL.
Don't get any fresh ideas about metalurgy patents or anything else that might have lead to that first fateful 2.5 second flight of my ownership. Mr. Goodard's acomplishment stands out in the field of human endevors and my claims to it are absolute. He could have used any material to get where he was going, and that's all I need to get where I'm going. The space shuttle is like a bicycle when compared to Goddard's craft, and I intend to drive it all the way and punish those unpatriotic no goods who have been helping the Chinese improve their vastly inferior solid fuel, fire-cracker technology.
Still, it's all gravy for M$. All this talk about Unix being "destroyed" by evil Linux and threats on all still shelling out money for licensed Unix, it's all FUD M$ is loving. Having failed to compete on technical merits and abandoned their "Unix killer", NT, this is the best they can do? Pathetic, but the FUD might just keep Linux numbers down long enough for them to implement Paladium and lock everyone else out.
Right, and I own the moon and will license it to the Chinese because I bought the patents on the first liquid fueled rocket. It's mine, bitches! Everything flows from it and all of you are theives of my Intelectual Property, -burp-.
You miss the big picture. Bandwith that onec was negelected due to poor quality can now be used to send reasonable quality sound around the world. There is NO radio technology currently used who's transmision has not been well understood since Maxwell. The change is in frequency hopping and digital encoding. It is doing neat stuff and provign over and over that there is no scarcity of available broadcast specturm. Whey you grok this, you might condlude that satellite is an expensive way to get the message around the world. If you don't grok it, I doubt anyone will miss your input.
Nope. People in the free software world modify their software to do exactly what they want. This is one of those reasons there's so much good quality free software available. If you can't find exacly what you need, which is rare if you break the task into it's parts, you can make the tool you lack.
If that's true, you don't really know what you want. When a function is specified, the best tool emerges. These days, it's mostly free software that does it.
The 20% remainder will be more than enough for the rare case where the best tool for a job is not only non-free but also won't run on a non-free platform. Drafting is the only tricky area I can think of for free software, but ProE runs on Linux and QCAD is free software. How many draftsmen does government really need? In Engineering firms, fewer than 20% of desktops are used for CAD. Most general computing needs, text editing and simple data mainipulation, are well met by free software. As this is mostly what government offices do, free software is what they really need. For now, 20% is more than enough and it will only get better in the future.
Microsoft has painted itself into a corner by not playing nice with the rest of the world. Central organization can't compete with distributed efforts. By screwing any and all who would make programs that run on M$, M$ has left it's OS devoid of excellence. Very few Best Tools can be found on Microsoft platforms anymore. Brazil is doing itself a huge favor by dumping inferior and eXPensive software.
Netscape? I suppose it's still there, though most of the comercial bits are slowly being replaced by the Mozilla project. Oh yeah, that's a hoot too, Mozilla works better on w2k than IE does, despite M$'s advantageous position as owner of the OS. MicroSoft always did sound sort of shrivled and powerless.