we license Doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants... heck even auto mechanics and hair stylists... we even license TOYS for safety now... You'll note we don't license Executives, we don't license Wall Street investment bankers... I think software will have to have some minimum licensing... or companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Sony will simply lobby to have their platforms legally locked down and hacking enforced by law... with guns.
seriously though, from the point of view of somebody that makes software this is still blackmail.
Imagine if we held home builders to the same standard... I'm going to run around your neighborhood with tire irons, deer grill on my 4x4, and a lock pick set and if I get into your house (by ripping out the porch or windows) , it's still YOUR fault?
If we're going to play that way, then just allow companies like Apple and Microsoft to hire Blackwater for some anti-hacker work! Much like bounty hunters, give them an international license and something so they can tag their kills and drop the bodies off at the authorities no questions asked. Let's even the playing field. If no laws apply on-line let's get rid of the pesky laws that keep corporations and information owners from fighting back!!!
Somebody should make a book about this...online/offline wars over hacking... it'd be a big seller.
let's face it... China has 1.3 Billion people so you're 4x less important there than in the USA. It's not much to get to the point where the average well paid (and the foxconn folks are fairly well paid compared to other Chinese factories) realizes they're just a cog and they've got it "as good as it's gonna get". Life is hard and then you die... a logical person would realize they'd avoid pain and get to the dead part sooner.
they didn't "have" to sign it.... just like you don't "have" to have a job that decides they don't want you to smoke... at all. They're more than free to get another job. There's only 1.3 BILLION other people competing! In many ways the US labor rules are at the far end of the "civilized" countries when it comes to what we allow "by the books".
I don't see what's wrong with the 12 hours, 6 days. During peak auto season most UAW workers work those kind of hours... sometimes even 7 days. I work at a steel company and guys in the mills do that all the time. Many, many jobs in the USA work those kind of hours... in fact it's the norm... nursing, steel mills, auto makers, cops. That's in the USA with Union jobs, what's the big deal. The only real difference in the USA that these people have nice houses with big mortgages and drive 45 minutes each way to work. Oh, and after working all those hours your cut-rate health insurance blames "your lifestyle" on all the health problems you have, not to mention the huge divorce rate in those jobs.
Realize when you hear nurses or steel workers get those big paychecks they really are SAVING their companies tons of money. Companies in the US should be hiring 1/3 more workers in a lot of cases.. but having existing workers work 1/2 more comes out cheaper because "fixed costs" per employee (Health, workman's comp, vacation, etc) all are based on a 40 hour week. Sure they get time and a half, or even double time... and how much is just health insurance rising? weigh that against consistently working massive overtime and even the spikes in insurance costs are trivial to what the company is making per employee. Don't believe a word of the "US Unions are ruining things".... remember non-union tech employees got "reclassified" so WE can work those kinds of hours for "salary"...
Don't see what all the outrage is because it happens in China... the only reason so much work goes there is that their hourly wage is less... and their countries have national health insurance so the companies don't have to pay it. By the time they get employees that can work like Americans though, they are getting close to paying the same kind of money once language and shipping come into account.
Right now there's no place to STAY up there. So the colonies don't have anything to worry about...
I propose several rules for space: No manufacturing Giant Robots from Super-Space Alloy No dropping things down the gravity well Humanoid replicants are not allowed (back) on the planet. No searching for xeno-forms after they destroy more than 1 spaceship full of people. No Tribbles No Bugs
Yes to latex-painted space suits and anti-gravity boobies.
but they have jurisdiction of airspace from 1000 to 50,000 feet. It's kind of hard to get to space without that "first mile". Well I guess you can get there... it's when you get back that you get in trouble.
but a 16GB memory card is nearly as cheap as the burnable media for that $100 burner. There's really no need for "burnable" media anymore... I burn CDs for my car and that's about it. DVDs are useless for today's media... I'm pushing 50GB of legitimately bought stuff backing all that up to DVDs would be a huge waste of time. 500GB drives are like $50 now at Walmart... just grab another when you need it. You get into "time costs money" where flash memory is faster and hard drives are cheaper.... the act of BURNING DVDs is a huge time sink compared to other ways of backing up... when your time is even $15 per hour how many dollars are you wasting "babysitting" a computer?
Blu-ray is starting to take over the retail and rentals. That's mostly because they're starting to bundle DVD's with the Blu-ray to get people to migrate sooner. You just have to remember, you can only use ONE of the pieces of media at a time (ha, ha) Also, I was never big on buying movies anyway, I don't have anyplace to store them properly. I find that things like Cable On Demand or Apple TV, Netflix, Hulu do much better, even if they have rental costs or ads.
I think the main issue is that nobody really cares... we all watch crappy YouTube video. All the "HD" cable channels are still only 1/2 resolution (compressed from 1920 to 1400 or so) of true Broadcast quality antenna HDTV and nobody cares. You have to have a pretty large HDTV for HD to matter. I have a 30" that's technically capable of 1080i, but at best 720p is useable because it's just too small to matter. I don't have a living room capable of holding a much bigger TV anyway, let alone surround sound and stuff like that. All that stuff is nice, but in any house built much before 1990 it's totally useless unless you carve out the whole basement or something.
Their idea was probably to respond with tens of thousands of pages of logs at $2+ per page copy fees.... and ship it all via Fed Ex Overnight. Great play by the police... scummy but clever. Microsoft did the same in their antitrust trial. It's how you make research into corruption really, really expensive.
except it's the POLICE are the ones saying YOU don't need guns. Remember the FBI only allows proper "collectors" to have lots of guns.. Guys like Charles Heston ("Moses" and "Ben Hur".. fine upstanding citizen there)
Since we're talking about Michigan, getting a carry license in the state used to be a police-pals-only club... until the courts said if you passed all the background checks you had a RIGHT to have one. Of course actually ask an officer and they'll tell you the same... they're just there to "file the paperwork" and "investigate". But that's not what the FBI, Homeland Security, NYPD sit in the legislature and say when they need more laws is it?
I don't get to point a gun at people legally, stop random strangers on the street, and take them to JAIL either....
With power comes responsibility. Law Enforcement has too much leeway to claim they "believe" a crime is committed. It used to take two witnesses, then one, now they demand your phone "just to be sure" you're not doing something bad.... If they want more power, the bar for being wrong has to go up proportionally.
the courts are getting tired of enforcing sloppy patents... it's not really their problem. Patent law is addressed by Congress and the President... they have chosen to grant as many as possible for political reasons and to use the patent office as a piggy bank for extra spending money. In other cases mentioned on slashdot the courts are getting ready to simply to throw the whole mess back at Congress and tell all these companies to go use their Lobby money for something useful!! Otherwise, Patents are The Law... to the letter, deal with it!
All this mess is an "unfunded mandate" on the courts and it's the Supreme Court's job to manage it's staff and budget and the load from poor oversight and bad operating rules of the PTO is crushing it.
the game is to be in groups. One person with nothing going on stays away from the rest of the group so you're not seen together. THEY get in line by you and THEY cause problems, but have absolutely no connection and nothing actually bad on their person. somebody who's honestly angry is almost always honestly angry... OR they're the DISTRACTION.
Like the mom on a routine flight that wanted to take breast milk. She followed all of the rules they would tell her until she finally had to file a formal complaint... then they played the "we can change the rules game". If I was looking for an opportunity to smuggle something, that would be it. Be the NEXT passenger in line when you KNOW the agent is going to pick on her. While all the staff and passengers were watching HER they weren't watching what they should have been.... she was a regular flier on that route, and the agent had a PERSONAL agenda to pick on her... THAT is the kind of weakness that "bad guys" exploit.
Frankly, if we really wanted airline security, we'd go back to more tiered system of airports. Certain airports would ONLY be international and completely separate. Other cross country airports would be only for big airlines and have no "consumer" parking... you'd fly in from another small regional airport. Security and bomb scanners would be constant... rather than the dog and pony show, the passenger shouldn't KNOW where the scanners are. You have to take a page from Disney's book about keeping people MOVING so they don't know their waiting. Our airports were designed essentially as large public malls, a place to hang out for business and meet, greet, have dinner, etc.
but the point is they will be "properly dressed" and have a few plants in the line in full "scary arab" garb changing Koran and drawing attention. While those guys miss their flight (which is about to be blown up!) the well behaved guys with nothing visibly wrong sail right through. We still haven't addressed the basic fact that the 9/11 terrorists would have passed all of TODAY'S strict TSA screenings... they bribed low-paid food tray and cleaning staff to leave a few extra box cutters where they could find them.
The TSA has not actually addressed the Social Engineering part of terrorism. The current system of long lines and getting in your face is perfect for social engineers to get anything they want through while the TSA is taking away the candy they just gave that baby behind them. The only thing it's creating is a bunch of angry AMERICAN CITIZEN travelers... and like another poster said, maybe that is the entire point... to get the sheep practiced at being walked through the gates while being stripped and prodded.
except when being searched is MANDATORY, then the tables are turned and YOU are INCONVENIENCING THEM for not making being searched go quickly enough.... the handful of times I've traveled got more nasty looks from not being quick enough to unload my swag into the plastic containers... even though I tried to keep it simple. Like other posters have said, it's becoming "suspicious" to be upset about hauling all your carefully packed shit out for display... and "suspicious" to react to other people wanting you to hurry up.
on the other hand, that exactly the response THOSE tyrants are looking for.... tell all your friends, your example will make them get the hell away from YOU!
On the other hand, the USA is supposed to have freedom to travel without harassment as a civil right. The TSA's entire purpose is to harass everybody, and see if the criminals flinch... which is about as unpatriotic as you can get... the folks that wrote the Constitution would be VERY upset that you have to take your shoes off to be searched just to travel... they'd be the "arrogant assholes" contesting TSA policy!!
so this is just like what that teen did to Palin, right....
that teen who was sentenced to a long time in JAIL!!! Depending on the countries of the reporters and the public officials, this could easily be "espionage" which is against US and UK laws and carries BIG trouble... maybe they can put them on the same boat with the Brit who hacked the DOD... it's that serious.
the definition of "prior art" to the PTO is published academic documents, certain trade publications, and US registered Patents.... it's not really "ever used anywhere" and the Patent office and courts have routinely said "tough luck" to those not filing a patent to protect their invention when somebody else did first.
the Patent Office is actually an extension of the President authorized by Congress. Patents are a fairly narrow executive power under the law, and there is nothing Constitutional that they have to be FAIR it just says Congress can make a law to grant them. Patents are basically limited "titles of nobility" with rights to EXCLUDE other people from doing something.
I got a feeling this is going to be like when Lessing argued copyright needed to be more "fair" and the Supreme Court said ems the law, tough apples.... But then again, this involves companies willing to spend millions on the case... not the "people's rights" so it will get different attention.
various versions of MICROSOFT Word don't have good formatting between them... how could anybody ELSE do better when the format's own creators can't seem to get it right.
To be blunt, I don't even know why this got to the Supreme Court. There's little "constitutional" merit to the case. Microsoft is used to companies they can buy our bully.. in this case i4i sold the product TO the patent office so the patent office was in a unique position to know much more about the invention than other ones. Previously, the Supreme Court has said that the Patent Office has the final say... lower Appeals courts have backed that up. This is consistent with the prior ruling on Copyright (from the same clause in the Constitution) that Congress is the one that sets those rules. If you don't like them, talk to Congress.
Back on the topic of Microsoft, they find themselves in the spot that Microsoft has NOTHING these guys want other than to watch Microsoft STOP SELLING something. So for all the games Microsoft plays, they've found themselves at the wrong end of the stick they've enjoyed berating "piracy" for decades. The courts are getting loath to keep allowing endless appeals in these patent cases... many of the lower courts and even other Supreme Court cases point to a trend that the courts want to wash their hands and tell folks to get Congress to fix the rules... also, Bush put into place a lot of "unitary executive" believers, and the Patent Office is an "Executive" department... so the current court is leaning highly toward "em's the Apples" and that's the Law as it stands.
but Snow Leopard will run on every Intel Mac. Apple priced it very cheaply to get everybody up to speed so there's really no reason to complain and there's no reason NOT to be running it as Intel Macs have only been out 5 years or so.
of course "deep integration" is EXACTLY the problem with Microsoft's browsers. Browsers should treat any "OS integration" requested by web pages as HOSTILE intent. Microsoft still hasn't figured that out, neither has Adobe. The OS should be as sandboxed as possible because the Internet is a hostile place.
we all know they bought VirtualPC to move Xbox games to Xbox360... the Windows team has probably never touched it.
Microsoft's Windows is decidedly un-modular in the way needed to use visualization like that so essentially they have to run a full copy of the older OS. Good on Quad Core machines, but wasteful of resources. Now that Apple is pushing forward, Microsoft has a little room to just drop older versions.. at the point IE10 comes out Vista will be 5 years old, plenty old enough to drop support... and for somebody else to pick it up. Of course that leaves a LOT of perfectly good hardware unsupported and abandon. I still regularly use computers from before Vista was released and they're just fine for everything except high end games. Of course the fact that Intel's low end atom chips are are actually lower performing than a medium end chip 5 years old doesn't really help Microsoft's case.
Slashdot Mirror
we license Doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants... heck even auto mechanics and hair stylists ... we even license TOYS for safety now... You'll note we don't license Executives, we don't license Wall Street investment bankers... I think software will have to have some minimum licensing... or companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Sony will simply lobby to have their platforms legally locked down and hacking enforced by law... with guns.
but they do have cookies!
the light side has milk... bummer.
seriously though, from the point of view of somebody that makes software this is still blackmail.
Imagine if we held home builders to the same standard... I'm going to run around your neighborhood with tire irons, deer grill on my 4x4, and a lock pick set and if I get into your house (by ripping out the porch or windows) , it's still YOUR fault?
If we're going to play that way, then just allow companies like Apple and Microsoft to hire Blackwater for some anti-hacker work! Much like bounty hunters, give them an international license and something so they can tag their kills and drop the bodies off at the authorities no questions asked. Let's even the playing field. If no laws apply on-line let's get rid of the pesky laws that keep corporations and information owners from fighting back!!!
Somebody should make a book about this...online/offline wars over hacking... it'd be a big seller.
let's face it... China has 1.3 Billion people so you're 4x less important there than in the USA. It's not much to get to the point where the average well paid (and the foxconn folks are fairly well paid compared to other Chinese factories) realizes they're just a cog and they've got it "as good as it's gonna get". Life is hard and then you die... a logical person would realize they'd avoid pain and get to the dead part sooner.
they didn't "have" to sign it.... just like you don't "have" to have a job that decides they don't want you to smoke ... at all. They're more than free to get another job. There's only 1.3 BILLION other people competing! In many ways the US labor rules are at the far end of the "civilized" countries when it comes to what we allow "by the books".
I don't see what's wrong with the 12 hours, 6 days. During peak auto season most UAW workers work those kind of hours... sometimes even 7 days. I work at a steel company and guys in the mills do that all the time. Many, many jobs in the USA work those kind of hours... in fact it's the norm... nursing, steel mills, auto makers, cops. That's in the USA with Union jobs, what's the big deal. The only real difference in the USA that these people have nice houses with big mortgages and drive 45 minutes each way to work. Oh, and after working all those hours your cut-rate health insurance blames "your lifestyle" on all the health problems you have, not to mention the huge divorce rate in those jobs.
Realize when you hear nurses or steel workers get those big paychecks they really are SAVING their companies tons of money. Companies in the US should be hiring 1/3 more workers in a lot of cases.. but having existing workers work 1/2 more comes out cheaper because "fixed costs" per employee (Health, workman's comp, vacation, etc) all are based on a 40 hour week. Sure they get time and a half, or even double time... and how much is just health insurance rising? weigh that against consistently working massive overtime and even the spikes in insurance costs are trivial to what the company is making per employee. Don't believe a word of the "US Unions are ruining things".... remember non-union tech employees got "reclassified" so WE can work those kinds of hours for "salary"...
Don't see what all the outrage is because it happens in China... the only reason so much work goes there is that their hourly wage is less... and their countries have national health insurance so the companies don't have to pay it. By the time they get employees that can work like Americans though, they are getting close to paying the same kind of money once language and shipping come into account.
Right now there's no place to STAY up there. So the colonies don't have anything to worry about...
I propose several rules for space:
No manufacturing Giant Robots from Super-Space Alloy
No dropping things down the gravity well
Humanoid replicants are not allowed (back) on the planet.
No searching for xeno-forms after they destroy more than 1 spaceship full of people.
No Tribbles
No Bugs
Yes to latex-painted space suits and anti-gravity boobies.
but they have jurisdiction of airspace from 1000 to 50,000 feet. It's kind of hard to get to space without that "first mile". Well I guess you can get there... it's when you get back that you get in trouble.
but a 16GB memory card is nearly as cheap as the burnable media for that $100 burner. There's really no need for "burnable" media anymore... I burn CDs for my car and that's about it. DVDs are useless for today's media... I'm pushing 50GB of legitimately bought stuff backing all that up to DVDs would be a huge waste of time. 500GB drives are like $50 now at Walmart... just grab another when you need it. You get into "time costs money" where flash memory is faster and hard drives are cheaper.... the act of BURNING DVDs is a huge time sink compared to other ways of backing up... when your time is even $15 per hour how many dollars are you wasting "babysitting" a computer?
Blu-ray is starting to take over the retail and rentals. That's mostly because they're starting to bundle DVD's with the Blu-ray to get people to migrate sooner. You just have to remember, you can only use ONE of the pieces of media at a time (ha, ha) Also, I was never big on buying movies anyway, I don't have anyplace to store them properly. I find that things like Cable On Demand or Apple TV, Netflix, Hulu do much better, even if they have rental costs or ads.
I think the main issue is that nobody really cares... we all watch crappy YouTube video. All the "HD" cable channels are still only 1/2 resolution (compressed from 1920 to 1400 or so) of true Broadcast quality antenna HDTV and nobody cares. You have to have a pretty large HDTV for HD to matter. I have a 30" that's technically capable of 1080i, but at best 720p is useable because it's just too small to matter. I don't have a living room capable of holding a much bigger TV anyway, let alone surround sound and stuff like that. All that stuff is nice, but in any house built much before 1990 it's totally useless unless you carve out the whole basement or something.
Baffle them with bullshit!
Their idea was probably to respond with tens of thousands of pages of logs at $2+ per page copy fees.... and ship it all via Fed Ex Overnight. Great play by the police... scummy but clever. Microsoft did the same in their antitrust trial. It's how you make research into corruption really, really expensive.
except it's the POLICE are the ones saying YOU don't need guns. Remember the FBI only allows proper "collectors" to have lots of guns.. Guys like Charles Heston ("Moses" and "Ben Hur".. fine upstanding citizen there)
Since we're talking about Michigan, getting a carry license in the state used to be a police-pals-only club... until the courts said if you passed all the background checks you had a RIGHT to have one. Of course actually ask an officer and they'll tell you the same... they're just there to "file the paperwork" and "investigate". But that's not what the FBI, Homeland Security, NYPD sit in the legislature and say when they need more laws is it?
I don't get to point a gun at people legally, stop random strangers on the street, and take them to JAIL either....
With power comes responsibility. Law Enforcement has too much leeway to claim they "believe" a crime is committed. It used to take two witnesses, then one, now they demand your phone "just to be sure" you're not doing something bad.... If they want more power, the bar for being wrong has to go up proportionally.
the courts are getting tired of enforcing sloppy patents... it's not really their problem. Patent law is addressed by Congress and the President... they have chosen to grant as many as possible for political reasons and to use the patent office as a piggy bank for extra spending money. In other cases mentioned on slashdot the courts are getting ready to simply to throw the whole mess back at Congress and tell all these companies to go use their Lobby money for something useful!! Otherwise, Patents are The Law... to the letter, deal with it!
All this mess is an "unfunded mandate" on the courts and it's the Supreme Court's job to manage it's staff and budget and the load from poor oversight and bad operating rules of the PTO is crushing it.
the game is to be in groups. One person with nothing going on stays away from the rest of the group so you're not seen together. THEY get in line by you and THEY cause problems, but have absolutely no connection and nothing actually bad on their person. somebody who's honestly angry is almost always honestly angry... OR they're the DISTRACTION.
Like the mom on a routine flight that wanted to take breast milk. She followed all of the rules they would tell her until she finally had to file a formal complaint... then they played the "we can change the rules game". If I was looking for an opportunity to smuggle something, that would be it. Be the NEXT passenger in line when you KNOW the agent is going to pick on her. While all the staff and passengers were watching HER they weren't watching what they should have been.... she was a regular flier on that route, and the agent had a PERSONAL agenda to pick on her... THAT is the kind of weakness that "bad guys" exploit.
Frankly, if we really wanted airline security, we'd go back to more tiered system of airports. Certain airports would ONLY be international and completely separate. Other cross country airports would be only for big airlines and have no "consumer" parking... you'd fly in from another small regional airport. Security and bomb scanners would be constant... rather than the dog and pony show, the passenger shouldn't KNOW where the scanners are. You have to take a page from Disney's book about keeping people MOVING so they don't know their waiting. Our airports were designed essentially as large public malls, a place to hang out for business and meet, greet, have dinner, etc.
but the point is they will be "properly dressed" and have a few plants in the line in full "scary arab" garb changing Koran and drawing attention. While those guys miss their flight (which is about to be blown up!) the well behaved guys with nothing visibly wrong sail right through. We still haven't addressed the basic fact that the 9/11 terrorists would have passed all of TODAY'S strict TSA screenings... they bribed low-paid food tray and cleaning staff to leave a few extra box cutters where they could find them.
The TSA has not actually addressed the Social Engineering part of terrorism. The current system of long lines and getting in your face is perfect for social engineers to get anything they want through while the TSA is taking away the candy they just gave that baby behind them. The only thing it's creating is a bunch of angry AMERICAN CITIZEN travelers... and like another poster said, maybe that is the entire point... to get the sheep practiced at being walked through the gates while being stripped and prodded.
except when being searched is MANDATORY, then the tables are turned and YOU are INCONVENIENCING THEM for not making being searched go quickly enough.... the handful of times I've traveled got more nasty looks from not being quick enough to unload my swag into the plastic containers... even though I tried to keep it simple. Like other posters have said, it's becoming "suspicious" to be upset about hauling all your carefully packed shit out for display... and "suspicious" to react to other people wanting you to hurry up.
we're being oppressed!
on the other hand, that exactly the response THOSE tyrants are looking for.... tell all your friends, your example will make them get the hell away from YOU!
On the other hand, the USA is supposed to have freedom to travel without harassment as a civil right. The TSA's entire purpose is to harass everybody, and see if the criminals flinch... which is about as unpatriotic as you can get... the folks that wrote the Constitution would be VERY upset that you have to take your shoes off to be searched just to travel... they'd be the "arrogant assholes" contesting TSA policy!!
so this is just like what that teen did to Palin, right....
that teen who was sentenced to a long time in JAIL!!! Depending on the countries of the reporters and the public officials, this could easily be "espionage" which is against US and UK laws and carries BIG trouble... maybe they can put them on the same boat with the Brit who hacked the DOD... it's that serious.
the definition of "prior art" to the PTO is published academic documents, certain trade publications, and US registered Patents.... it's not really "ever used anywhere" and the Patent office and courts have routinely said "tough luck" to those not filing a patent to protect their invention when somebody else did first.
the Patent Office is actually an extension of the President authorized by Congress. Patents are a fairly narrow executive power under the law, and there is nothing Constitutional that they have to be FAIR it just says Congress can make a law to grant them. Patents are basically limited "titles of nobility" with rights to EXCLUDE other people from doing something.
I got a feeling this is going to be like when Lessing argued copyright needed to be more "fair" and the Supreme Court said ems the law, tough apples.... But then again, this involves companies willing to spend millions on the case... not the "people's rights" so it will get different attention.
various versions of MICROSOFT Word don't have good formatting between them... how could anybody ELSE do better when the format's own creators can't seem to get it right.
To be blunt, I don't even know why this got to the Supreme Court. There's little "constitutional" merit to the case. Microsoft is used to companies they can buy our bully.. in this case i4i sold the product TO the patent office so the patent office was in a unique position to know much more about the invention than other ones. Previously, the Supreme Court has said that the Patent Office has the final say... lower Appeals courts have backed that up. This is consistent with the prior ruling on Copyright (from the same clause in the Constitution) that Congress is the one that sets those rules. If you don't like them, talk to Congress.
Back on the topic of Microsoft, they find themselves in the spot that Microsoft has NOTHING these guys want other than to watch Microsoft STOP SELLING something. So for all the games Microsoft plays, they've found themselves at the wrong end of the stick they've enjoyed berating "piracy" for decades. The courts are getting loath to keep allowing endless appeals in these patent cases... many of the lower courts and even other Supreme Court cases point to a trend that the courts want to wash their hands and tell folks to get Congress to fix the rules... also, Bush put into place a lot of "unitary executive" believers, and the Patent Office is an "Executive" department... so the current court is leaning highly toward "em's the Apples" and that's the Law as it stands.
but Snow Leopard will run on every Intel Mac. Apple priced it very cheaply to get everybody up to speed so there's really no reason to complain and there's no reason NOT to be running it as Intel Macs have only been out 5 years or so.
of course "deep integration" is EXACTLY the problem with Microsoft's browsers. Browsers should treat any "OS integration" requested by web pages as HOSTILE intent. Microsoft still hasn't figured that out, neither has Adobe. The OS should be as sandboxed as possible because the Internet is a hostile place.
we all know they bought VirtualPC to move Xbox games to Xbox360... the Windows team has probably never touched it.
Microsoft's Windows is decidedly un-modular in the way needed to use visualization like that so essentially they have to run a full copy of the older OS. Good on Quad Core machines, but wasteful of resources. Now that Apple is pushing forward, Microsoft has a little room to just drop older versions.. at the point IE10 comes out Vista will be 5 years old, plenty old enough to drop support... and for somebody else to pick it up. Of course that leaves a LOT of perfectly good hardware unsupported and abandon. I still regularly use computers from before Vista was released and they're just fine for everything except high end games. Of course the fact that Intel's low end atom chips are are actually lower performing than a medium end chip 5 years old doesn't really help Microsoft's case.