This is a disservice to their loyal customers because they'll have just bought a computer from WalMart but won't understand why they can't walk down the software isle and pick up a game for the kids.
They'll just have bought a computer from WalMart.com, not from Wal-Mart. It's a different demographic; if they go to the web store then they already have at least minimal exposure to computers, and probably are aware that there are two different OSs, and thus that Linux won't run Windows games (usually).
Wal-Mart announced recently (dead-tree article, no link) that they are going to start selling cars.
Specifically, they'll be selling "program" cars from a major national rental chain (the article didn't say which one), no trade-ins, no haggling, 90-day return policy.
"5. Infogrames' and BioWare's Use of Variations. If you Distribute, or permit others to Distribute, your Variations, you hereby grant back to Infogrames and BioWare an irrevocable royalty-free right to use and distribute such Variations by any means, and to make such modifications thereto as Infogrames and/or BioWare deem are necessary to package, combine, and otherwise distribute such Variations. If you do not wish to grant these rights to Infogrames and BioWare, you must not Distribute your Variations (although you may Serve your Modules). Infogrames and BioWare will make a reasonable effort to provide credit to you in the event it uses or distributes your Variations, but you acknowledge that identifying you and/or other Variation creators may be difficult, and any failure by Infogrames and/or BioWare to provide credit to any person shall not be a breach of this License and shall not limit Infogrames' or BioWare's rights to use and distribute any Variation. "
It appears that you do turn over your copyright with respect to NWN modules if you distribute, although you'd retain it for other purposes. Again, that's if software is licensed and not bought, and if clicking an EULA is a valid way to sign a contract.
I question the part of the EULA where Bioware "implies" that I assign my copyright rights to them exclusively for distribution at their option.
I suspect that the courts would strike that part of the EULA since there would not have been any "consideration" between the two parties, as the lawyers like to say.
There has been consideration, though; you have supplied your original content, they have licensed the use of the toolkit to you. If the toolkit were actually sold to you when you first... uh, let's say "legally obtained" the game;)... then there would be no consideration, true. If you are only licensing the use of the software, then there is.
If it is settled in the courts that a)software is indeed licensed and not bought, and b)EULAs are a legally enforceable contract, both of which conditions could easily go either way, then this would be legitimate, if odious, condition (IMHO, IANAL).
I've got to say it... the only way you can be sure you're not giving up your copyright in this specific application is not to accept the EULA, and the only ironclad way not to do that is not to distribute modules you wrote using it. That's obviously not an argument that most people want to hear, though, they just want to find a way to use the software & distribute modules without handing over any rights under the EULA.
So okay, here is one:). Write yourself a novel, screenplay, or other recognized IP with clearly described settings and characters, preferably artwork. Publish the work, or register it with the Copyright office (strictly speaking this isn't a necessary step, but it'd make things easier in a legal slugfest). NOW create and distribute your modules.
Bioware could probably still stop you from selling or maybe even distributing (iffier) those modules because of their IP, but they could NOT sell the modules themselves without your permission, because you have already established the copyright independently.
Of course, it could be argued that your original content is original and therefore copyright even if its first use was in a NWN module, and I think that was your point (an excellent one, BTW). If the copyright existed before the module, though, it would (again, IMHO & IANAL) be completely bulletproof.
The average PC User had enough trouble transitioning from MS-DOS and Win3.11 to Win9x - you expect them to just jump to your elitest OS "...within an hour or two..."???
Yes, I'm an example myself; I'm not a programmer, just an average PC user, and I've only been a "Penguin Fetishist" as you put it for a few months. Before that, almost my sole experience was with MicroSoft OS's.
My personal system was trashed by a virus and I was curious, so I bought a SuSE disk set. It installed with no difficulty, and I found the KDE desktop every bit as easy to use as the Windows desktop. The only task which was significantly more complex was installing new programs, and that wasn't so hard; I downloaded, read the instructions on the websites, followed them, and succeeded nicely - without training. (The only exception was the Linux port of Doom, which I haven't yet been able to install. That's 1 program out of about 20 attempted). In any case, in most offices users wouldn't be installing their own software.
I did reinstall the Windows as well, but I rarely use it any more because the bootup defaults to Linux and I can do everything I want to there, except play a couple of games. None of the office productivity software has given me any trouble.
My experience with office productivity software was almost as limited, though I had used WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Guess what? It took me less than an hour to start using StarOffice productively. I've since created all manner of documents, several spreadsheets and a slide presentation on it, and I've brought or emailed them in to work, where I had no problem opening and using them in MicroSoft Office. With no retraining at all. I'll admit I haven't had occasion to create a database yet, but I doubt it would present any major hurdles compared to Access.
Since then several of my friends and co-workers have tried Linux out, only one of them being a computer geek by any stretch of the phrase (and he is an MS guru, had no prior exposure to Linux or Unix either). Average users. None of them had any major difficulties.
Take those rose-colored glasses and toss them in the nearest trash-can.
Take off your dung-colored glasses. The average PC user is not nearly as dumb as you seem to think.
Fortunately they don't need to "learn linux" per se. They need to learn how to use a new office suite, usually. Office workers don't normally care about the underlying codebase - they're not coders. They just know that when you click on the icon, X happens.
Most people who are productive using MS Office on a Windows desktop can switch to being productive in StarOffice on a KDE desktop within an hour or two. They simply aren't that different, and the spectre of businesses/governments screeching to a halt and/or going bankrupt from retraining costs is, well, just that - a spectre.
Within a couple of weeks most will be as productive in the one as they are in the other; 90% of the functionality of any office productivity software goes unused. The power users who do use advanced functionalities are (in my experience) usually the ones who pick up a new interface the quickest.
Actually, there are doubtless several alternative solutions, some OSS and some not. It's certainly feasible to begin a shift away from all MicroSoft products, anyway, and an honest, open look at the technical merits of all the alternatives is certainly in everybody's best interests.
Since I don't live in Maricopa County any more (Gawd help me, I'm in Senator Disney's stompin' grounds), what I would hope for would simply be that another government entity showed the practicality of such a move. If enough local governments do this kind of thing, MS FUD will be harder to keep up and fewer people would take it seriously when they tried.
Who knows, MicroSoft might even go over to trying to make their software compete on the merits - that would be a Good Thing, and it could happen...
Now tell them that in order to reduce the amount of money local government is paying for proprietary software studies are being initiated to look into alternatives. Explain to them that there is serious potential for reducing their taxes. Point out the obvious fact that it is not necessary to change over every computer in the county on the same day; explain the concept of using dual-boot machines during training periods. Explain to them that there is serious potential for reducing their taxes. Arrange demonstrations to show how similar in ease-of-use OSS office suites are to their proprietary kin, and explain that the average government office worker has usually already been exposed to more than one user interface in his or her career and isn't going to require much retraining at all. Explain to them that there is serious potential for reducing their taxes. Show case studies in which local governments have already made similar transitions successfully, and saved taxpayers money in the process.Explain to them that there is serious potential for reducing their taxes.
Watch the torches being turned to burning away the mists of FUD, and the pitchforks turned to removing manure.
It doesn't make any difference what MS has been charged with or convicted of, because they haven't been sentenced. No court has told microsoft that they can't sell their product anymore, so why should a county not be allowed to buy from them?
It's Maricopa County's own policy which states that they're not allowed to buy from MicroSoft, or any other company following a federal conviction for unethical business practices. Nobody's picking on the Maricopa County comptroller and forcing them to do something against their wishes; residents of the county are trying to get their own local government to follow its own stated policy.
Local Residents Urge Local Government to Follow Local Government Policy.
Yes, I suppose it does sound absurd, at that - it wouldn't look out of place in the Onion, anyway.
From what I've seen of the thread so far it would appear that they're mostly talking about server-side software. Linux desktop may still be arguable (and I mean exactly that - arguable), but Linux for servers is technically way ahead from what I read almost anywhere but at MicroSoft itself and its closely allied sites.
As the initial post on the PLUG group said, > [Is there any technology that is Microsoft exclusive? I believe there
are sites that explain how to replace Exchange Server completely using
Linux/OSS; and SQL Server is replaceable with mySQL; IIS & ASP is
replaceable with Apache & PHP, right?]
If using this law simply gets Maricopa County to examine the software on the merits as opposed to blindly following the nobody-ever-got-fired-for-choosing-MS meme, that will be a victory for OSS right there.
Heck, that should be trivial. A slightly different POV into each visual stream, kind of like the way Ma Nature did it.
(Sigh). Unfortunately, those of us who grew up with amblyopia (or just one eye, for that matter - monopia? Cyclopia?) don't have the visual processing capability even if you fix the eye.
I've often wondered what stereoscopic vision is like...
With any luck it won't be long before we can regrow nerve connections, maybe using stem cells. The old meme that nerve cells were so inherently different they couldn't be regrown has been shown to be false in any number of particular circumstances (heck, the nerves in your olfactory bulb regrow every few months!).
...but what does it actually mean on a practical level?
This means very little on a practical level at the moment; it's more an indication of what's possible than anything we're going to see actually used in the next few years (IMHO). It's an ongoing question just how small a transistor can get and still be functional, and this seems to be an answer to that: it can get molecule-sized. Whether a molecule-sized transistor can or will be actually be usefully incorporated in any practical device is another question (well, technically it's two other questions).
At the very least a practical device using transistors that small would have to have a radically different design from present-day circuits, including vastly larger error-checking capabilities and probably some self-repairing abilities. Heat is a problem even now, and in circuits on this scale it wouldn't take much for the circuitry to literally shake itself apart. Quantum effects, which are negligible on today's scale, would introduce all kinds of errors into both the input and output of such small circuits if you tried to simply copy the same structure onto the smaller scale.
Speaking of which, the issue of actually hooking in I/O at such a scale is both a major hurdle for some applications, and a major possibility for practical use in others. For example, this is the kind of scale you'd want if you're going to try to splice more-or-less traditional electronic circuitry directly into fine nerves; when the electronic eyes currently just coming into being become fine-grained enough to support normal vision, they'd probably need extremely fine connections to individual nerve fibres in the retina.
This is a real wowser of a breakthrough, and major kudos rightfully go to both teams. It shows that there's a long way to go before transistor-type circuits can't be made smaller. By the time we actually get that far down the Rabbit Hole it's likely that we'll also have other information-processing techniques available, such as quantum computing (and this technology, once developed, might be just what is needed to usefully access the output of qubit-based systems).
I disagree. What if you want to relace a broken PC, or replace a non-broken but outdated one? Why force the customer to buy a new monitor when they already have one? If it's a first-time purchase, you can buy a cheapo ($100-odd) monitor in Wal-Mart at the same time, or shell out a bit more to buy yourself a nicer one.
1. The SA government wants to form a committee to control the.za domain
2. which consists of some 200 lines of code
3. apparently in the public domain and quite easily available
4. but currently controlled by an unpaid SA individual, Mike Lawrie,
5. who was authorized by ICANN to administer said domain,
6. who now wants to quit but refuses to hand it over without following ICANN's rules,
7. which expressly require the SA governments blessing on any transfer,
6. and this individual has maliciously "moved" this code "offshore" to protect it from the SA government.
SO fine, somebody copy the 200 lines of code and email them to everybody in the SA government. I mean, really, what does the 200 lines of code have to do with it?
It's the authority to assign names which is important, not a miniscule file containing the current structure, and the only entity which can assign that authority within the current structure is ICANN.
If the SA government want to actually "control" names with South Africa then they would have to "control" the DNS servers, of which they have none at the moment. I'm sure a dozen people have pointed out by now that if they really want to they can set up a DNS of their own, and if they convince their citizens to use that one then they "control" not only the.za domain but the entire world!
If, on the other hand, they want to play with ICANN's bat and ball and backyard, they're going to have to play by ICANN's rules. Those rules give them a voice in choosing administrators equal to ICANN's own, so they're not exactly groaning under the lash here.
I wasn't aware that cell phones are "never totally off" - where did you get that information? Why would they not turn off when the power is switched off?
As for GPS in all new cell phones, the only thing that bugs me is why don't the damn things have a "Display GPS position" mode? I haven't seen a one with this feature, and I can't see why the phone manufacturers wouldn't turn it into a feature, since it's hardly a secret... then again I haven't phone-shopped in the last few months.
The fact that John Law can physically locate my phone doesn't bother me - that's true of land lines too, and I can always yank the battery;). Or just leave it home. If I want to communicate without being locatable I wouldn't consider a cell phone of the current generation my weapon of choice, either. GPS might be a tad more specific, but any cell phone can be located pretty closely just through node tracking - obviously, since that's what the technology in the article depends upon!
I don't have any problem with them using my cellphone's location like this - that information is already out there (or the phone wouldn't work), so this is simply a matter of an ancillary benefit. As long as nobody's actually tracking me, personally... and if I were worried about that I'd turn the cell phone off.
But in a number of EULAs it specifically states that the Agreement can be updated at any time, usually on a website, and that users agree to periodically check with Mama to see if they're still allowed to use the software they're licensing. You're agreeing to be bound that way.
If you're able to swallow the elephant of EULAs being enforceable you shouldn't strain at the gnat of mutating terms.
The original Olypics were generally performed naked (and incidentally included "sports" such as competitive poetry reading, though I doubt that the poetry slams were performed naked). Indecency is in the mind of the beholder.
There's nothing inherently fair about naked wrestling, though, nor inherently unfair about using more advanced equipment. All other things being equal, including skill level, a large muscular person will win a wrestling match with a smaller slighter person. That's why weight classes were invented, to try and make sure that it was the skill that won out. This logic still only partially levels the field though; some people have inherently, genetically faster reflexes than others. What are you going to do, force them to bely down a couple of shots of reflex inhibitor (flavor optional) before competing?
The competition in sports is between two or more people, under some arbitrary set of rules. If you want to make sure everybody uses the same equipment, then you specifiy it in the rules; bats may or may not be made of aluminum, players may or may not ride an electric cart to the next stage of the competition.
Personally, I'd like to see both a naked olympics (not necessarily actually naked, but not technically assisted) AND a total free-for-all - not only are you allowed to be "professional" under the ridiculously convoluted Olympic rules regarding acceptance of money, but you can take drugs, train in a 3G centrifuge, be surgically cyborged into a totally transhuman state, et cetera... It'd only be a decade or so before all US objection to genetic engineering faded away once ESPN started lobbying, I betcha!
Guess what? Not all users of Broadband are computer geeks, any more than all users of plumbing are plumbers, of electricity are electricians. "Internetworking these grids would be a relatively trivial task" to you, perhaps, and maybe to all your close circle of friends, but it would not be a trivial task to me or to mine.
It would be a tremendously difficult task even to organize a beginning to such a network, because while most of my friends are geeks of some nature NONE of us are hard-core electronic geeks; I'm the closest to such that I know, and thus far I'm only scratching the surface.
Wake up and take a look at the world around you, for the love of Mike; in a complex society we all depend on someone else to take care of some aspect of society's infrastructure.. We can't all be master plumbers, as well as civil engineers, as well as primary school teachers, as well as lawyers, as well as InterNet protocol designers. Kudos to you if you've found enough kindred souls to avoid the problem, but to most of us it isn't a trivial task to create such an alternative and the problem is a real one we can't sidestep.
AIM is available for Linux. It's a bit more primitive than the latest & greatest Windoze version (no DirectConnect or BuddyIcons) but all the core functionality is there, and its those fancy DirectConnects that tend to crash systems anyway, when Jluser tries to send a copy of britannica.com over a chat connection.
You seem to be assuming that Slashdot readers are all American in this post. I'm sure the German readers consider it a Good Thing that the money stays in the German economy; for that matter, it's a Good Thing for the members of all EU countries, particularly the Euro-currency members.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean it's a "nonstandard" word. So what? Many words start off that way and grow up to become standard English.
They'll just have bought a computer from WalMart.com, not from Wal-Mart. It's a different demographic; if they go to the web store then they already have at least minimal exposure to computers, and probably are aware that there are two different OSs, and thus that Linux won't run Windows games (usually).
you animale food-trough whoppere! Or I shell taunt you a secont tam!!!
Specifically, they'll be selling "program" cars from a major national rental chain (the article didn't say which one), no trade-ins, no haggling, 90-day return policy.
"5. Infogrames' and BioWare's Use of Variations. If you Distribute, or permit others to Distribute, your Variations, you hereby grant back to Infogrames and BioWare an irrevocable royalty-free right to use and distribute such Variations by any means, and to make such modifications thereto as Infogrames and/or BioWare deem are necessary to package, combine, and otherwise distribute such Variations. If you do not wish to grant these rights to Infogrames and BioWare, you must not Distribute your Variations (although you may Serve your Modules). Infogrames and BioWare will make a reasonable effort to provide credit to you in the event it uses or distributes your Variations, but you acknowledge that identifying you and/or other Variation creators may be difficult, and any failure by Infogrames and/or BioWare to provide credit to any person shall not be a breach of this License and shall not limit Infogrames' or BioWare's rights to use and distribute any Variation. "
It appears that you do turn over your copyright with respect to NWN modules if you distribute, although you'd retain it for other purposes. Again, that's if software is licensed and not bought, and if clicking an EULA is a valid way to sign a contract.
There has been consideration, though; you have supplied your original content, they have licensed the use of the toolkit to you. If the toolkit were actually sold to you when you first... uh, let's say "legally obtained" the game ;)... then there would be no consideration, true. If you are only licensing the use of the software, then there is.
If it is settled in the courts that a)software is indeed licensed and not bought, and b)EULAs are a legally enforceable contract, both of which conditions could easily go either way, then this would be legitimate, if odious, condition (IMHO, IANAL).
I've got to say it... the only way you can be sure you're not giving up your copyright in this specific application is not to accept the EULA, and the only ironclad way not to do that is not to distribute modules you wrote using it. That's obviously not an argument that most people want to hear, though, they just want to find a way to use the software & distribute modules without handing over any rights under the EULA.
So okay, here is one :). Write yourself a novel, screenplay, or other recognized IP with clearly described settings and characters, preferably artwork. Publish the work, or register it with the Copyright office (strictly speaking this isn't a necessary step, but it'd make things easier in a legal slugfest). NOW create and distribute your modules.
Bioware could probably still stop you from selling or maybe even distributing (iffier) those modules because of their IP, but they could NOT sell the modules themselves without your permission, because you have already established the copyright independently.
Of course, it could be argued that your original content is original and therefore copyright even if its first use was in a NWN module, and I think that was your point (an excellent one, BTW). If the copyright existed before the module, though, it would (again, IMHO & IANAL) be completely bulletproof.
Yes, I'm an example myself; I'm not a programmer, just an average PC user, and I've only been a "Penguin Fetishist" as you put it for a few months. Before that, almost my sole experience was with MicroSoft OS's.
My personal system was trashed by a virus and I was curious, so I bought a SuSE disk set. It installed with no difficulty, and I found the KDE desktop every bit as easy to use as the Windows desktop. The only task which was significantly more complex was installing new programs, and that wasn't so hard; I downloaded, read the instructions on the websites, followed them, and succeeded nicely - without training. (The only exception was the Linux port of Doom, which I haven't yet been able to install. That's 1 program out of about 20 attempted). In any case, in most offices users wouldn't be installing their own software.
I did reinstall the Windows as well, but I rarely use it any more because the bootup defaults to Linux and I can do everything I want to there, except play a couple of games. None of the office productivity software has given me any trouble.
My experience with office productivity software was almost as limited, though I had used WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Guess what? It took me less than an hour to start using StarOffice productively. I've since created all manner of documents, several spreadsheets and a slide presentation on it, and I've brought or emailed them in to work, where I had no problem opening and using them in MicroSoft Office. With no retraining at all. I'll admit I haven't had occasion to create a database yet, but I doubt it would present any major hurdles compared to Access.
Since then several of my friends and co-workers have tried Linux out, only one of them being a computer geek by any stretch of the phrase (and he is an MS guru, had no prior exposure to Linux or Unix either). Average users. None of them had any major difficulties.
Take those rose-colored glasses and toss them in the nearest trash-can.
Take off your dung-colored glasses. The average PC user is not nearly as dumb as you seem to think.
Most people who are productive using MS Office on a Windows desktop can switch to being productive in StarOffice on a KDE desktop within an hour or two. They simply aren't that different, and the spectre of businesses/governments screeching to a halt and/or going bankrupt from retraining costs is, well, just that - a spectre.
Within a couple of weeks most will be as productive in the one as they are in the other; 90% of the functionality of any office productivity software goes unused. The power users who do use advanced functionalities are (in my experience) usually the ones who pick up a new interface the quickest.
Since I don't live in Maricopa County any more (Gawd help me, I'm in Senator Disney's stompin' grounds), what I would hope for would simply be that another government entity showed the practicality of such a move. If enough local governments do this kind of thing, MS FUD will be harder to keep up and fewer people would take it seriously when they tried.
Who knows, MicroSoft might even go over to trying to make their software compete on the merits - that would be a Good Thing, and it could happen...
Watch the torches being turned to burning away the mists of FUD, and the pitchforks turned to removing manure.
It's Maricopa County's own policy which states that they're not allowed to buy from MicroSoft, or any other company following a federal conviction for unethical business practices. Nobody's picking on the Maricopa County comptroller and forcing them to do something against their wishes; residents of the county are trying to get their own local government to follow its own stated policy.
Local Residents Urge Local Government to Follow Local Government Policy.
Yes, I suppose it does sound absurd, at that - it wouldn't look out of place in the Onion, anyway.
As the initial post on the PLUG group said, > [Is there any technology that is Microsoft exclusive? I believe there are sites that explain how to replace Exchange Server completely using Linux/OSS; and SQL Server is replaceable with mySQL; IIS & ASP is replaceable with Apache & PHP, right?]
If using this law simply gets Maricopa County to examine the software on the merits as opposed to blindly following the nobody-ever-got-fired-for-choosing-MS meme, that will be a victory for OSS right there.
Heck, that should be trivial. A slightly different POV into each visual stream, kind of like the way Ma Nature did it.
(Sigh). Unfortunately, those of us who grew up with amblyopia (or just one eye, for that matter - monopia? Cyclopia?) don't have the visual processing capability even if you fix the eye.
I've often wondered what stereoscopic vision is like...
With any luck it won't be long before we can regrow nerve connections, maybe using stem cells. The old meme that nerve cells were so inherently different they couldn't be regrown has been shown to be false in any number of particular circumstances (heck, the nerves in your olfactory bulb regrow every few months!).
This means very little on a practical level at the moment; it's more an indication of what's possible than anything we're going to see actually used in the next few years (IMHO). It's an ongoing question just how small a transistor can get and still be functional, and this seems to be an answer to that: it can get molecule-sized. Whether a molecule-sized transistor can or will be actually be usefully incorporated in any practical device is another question (well, technically it's two other questions).
At the very least a practical device using transistors that small would have to have a radically different design from present-day circuits, including vastly larger error-checking capabilities and probably some self-repairing abilities. Heat is a problem even now, and in circuits on this scale it wouldn't take much for the circuitry to literally shake itself apart. Quantum effects, which are negligible on today's scale, would introduce all kinds of errors into both the input and output of such small circuits if you tried to simply copy the same structure onto the smaller scale.
Speaking of which, the issue of actually hooking in I/O at such a scale is both a major hurdle for some applications, and a major possibility for practical use in others. For example, this is the kind of scale you'd want if you're going to try to splice more-or-less traditional electronic circuitry directly into fine nerves; when the electronic eyes currently just coming into being become fine-grained enough to support normal vision, they'd probably need extremely fine connections to individual nerve fibres in the retina.
This is a real wowser of a breakthrough, and major kudos rightfully go to both teams. It shows that there's a long way to go before transistor-type circuits can't be made smaller. By the time we actually get that far down the Rabbit Hole it's likely that we'll also have other information-processing techniques available, such as quantum computing (and this technology, once developed, might be just what is needed to usefully access the output of qubit-based systems).
I disagree. What if you want to relace a broken PC, or replace a non-broken but outdated one? Why force the customer to buy a new monitor when they already have one? If it's a first-time purchase, you can buy a cheapo ($100-odd) monitor in Wal-Mart at the same time, or shell out a bit more to buy yourself a nicer one.
2. which consists of some 200 lines of code
3. apparently in the public domain and quite easily available
4. but currently controlled by an unpaid SA individual, Mike Lawrie,
5. who was authorized by ICANN to administer said domain,
6. who now wants to quit but refuses to hand it over without following ICANN's rules,
7. which expressly require the SA governments blessing on any transfer,
6. and this individual has maliciously "moved" this code "offshore" to protect it from the SA government.
SO fine, somebody copy the 200 lines of code and email them to everybody in the SA government. I mean, really, what does the 200 lines of code have to do with it?
It's the authority to assign names which is important, not a miniscule file containing the current structure, and the only entity which can assign that authority within the current structure is ICANN.
If the SA government want to actually "control" names with South Africa then they would have to "control" the DNS servers, of which they have none at the moment. I'm sure a dozen people have pointed out by now that if they really want to they can set up a DNS of their own, and if they convince their citizens to use that one then they "control" not only the .za domain but the entire world!
If, on the other hand, they want to play with ICANN's bat and ball and backyard, they're going to have to play by ICANN's rules. Those rules give them a voice in choosing administrators equal to ICANN's own, so they're not exactly groaning under the lash here.
As for GPS in all new cell phones, the only thing that bugs me is why don't the damn things have a "Display GPS position" mode? I haven't seen a one with this feature, and I can't see why the phone manufacturers wouldn't turn it into a feature, since it's hardly a secret... then again I haven't phone-shopped in the last few months.
The fact that John Law can physically locate my phone doesn't bother me - that's true of land lines too, and I can always yank the battery ;). Or just leave it home. If I want to communicate without being locatable I wouldn't consider a cell phone of the current generation my weapon of choice, either. GPS might be a tad more specific, but any cell phone can be located pretty closely just through node tracking - obviously, since that's what the technology in the article depends upon!
I don't have any problem with them using my cellphone's location like this - that information is already out there (or the phone wouldn't work), so this is simply a matter of an ancillary benefit. As long as nobody's actually tracking me, personally... and if I were worried about that I'd turn the cell phone off.
The architecture framework and service enablers are independent of Operating Systems (OS)
Let's see if it actually happens, though
If you're able to swallow the elephant of EULAs being enforceable you shouldn't strain at the gnat of mutating terms.
There's nothing inherently fair about naked wrestling, though, nor inherently unfair about using more advanced equipment. All other things being equal, including skill level, a large muscular person will win a wrestling match with a smaller slighter person. That's why weight classes were invented, to try and make sure that it was the skill that won out. This logic still only partially levels the field though; some people have inherently, genetically faster reflexes than others. What are you going to do, force them to bely down a couple of shots of reflex inhibitor (flavor optional) before competing?
The competition in sports is between two or more people, under some arbitrary set of rules. If you want to make sure everybody uses the same equipment, then you specifiy it in the rules; bats may or may not be made of aluminum, players may or may not ride an electric cart to the next stage of the competition.
Personally, I'd like to see both a naked olympics (not necessarily actually naked, but not technically assisted) AND a total free-for-all - not only are you allowed to be "professional" under the ridiculously convoluted Olympic rules regarding acceptance of money, but you can take drugs, train in a 3G centrifuge, be surgically cyborged into a totally transhuman state, et cetera... It'd only be a decade or so before all US objection to genetic engineering faded away once ESPN started lobbying, I betcha!
It would be a tremendously difficult task even to organize a beginning to such a network, because while most of my friends are geeks of some nature NONE of us are hard-core electronic geeks; I'm the closest to such that I know, and thus far I'm only scratching the surface.
Wake up and take a look at the world around you, for the love of Mike; in a complex society we all depend on someone else to take care of some aspect of society's infrastructure.. We can't all be master plumbers, as well as civil engineers, as well as primary school teachers, as well as lawyers, as well as InterNet protocol designers. Kudos to you if you've found enough kindred souls to avoid the problem, but to most of us it isn't a trivial task to create such an alternative and the problem is a real one we can't sidestep.
AIM is available for Linux. It's a bit more primitive than the latest & greatest Windoze version (no DirectConnect or BuddyIcons) but all the core functionality is there, and its those fancy DirectConnects that tend to crash systems anyway, when Jluser tries to send a copy of britannica.com over a chat connection.
You seem to be assuming that Slashdot readers are all American in this post. I'm sure the German readers consider it a Good Thing that the money stays in the German economy; for that matter, it's a Good Thing for the members of all EU countries, particularly the Euro-currency members.