step 1. Offer competing product step 2. sabotage competitors' integration step 3. spread fud step 4. pick the carcass at the fire-sale, or watch it rot for fun step 5. move on to new markets
so next step is: a)Acrobat plugins stop working in IE n+1 b)Acrobat distiller wont work properly with office that includes Xdocs (if you can't produce PDF, then someone has to get Xdoc to read versus acrobat reader. c)the clipboard standards change in a way what is incompatible with Acrobat (coincidental with "security changes to clipboard to prevent buffer overflows and execution of arbitrary code" ??) (acrobat document creation is probably pretty painful by this time!) d)create a "patch" that "supports" pdf, but creats PDF that is marginally worse than the HTML output of word. e)make fundamental OS incomaptibilities with Distiller (kernel32 faults?) and/or acrobat reader f)subtly changing the font coding so that Acrobat reader has rendering problems
for 3, we'd probably see commentary in major magazines that PDF is an antiquated format and Xdoc is fully XML compliant which provides unique integration within the backoffice suite etc etc etc...
BTW watch out for MSICC (Microsoft Standard Improved Character Coding) (to replace ASCII and enhance security by easing encryption...)
Actually, I care. For some reason I have visions of the palladium PC's following the Xbox architecture, with a few things to ensure that you cannot run a non-trusted OS on it. Besides, what happens when microsoft brings their antivirus out and marks anything that looks like a boot sector or an ELF binary as a virus, then denies reading it into memory?
How can you load data into your encrypted (trusted) HD?
How can you bypass the trusted supervisor and convince it to allow you to do the things we take for granted now?
The reason MickeySoft wants to trust the computer, is so they can tell the computer to not trust us....
Now I will admit, I 'balked' a bit at buying a ring.. for a second or so. My wife is a bit of a femininist (so she says...) and has pointed out that a ring does look a lot like "and this is how much I am worth to someone else"...
Anyhow some thoughts:
A diamond isn't a BAD investment: that is
-A diamond does not drastically depreciate (like a car or a computer does)
-It is small and portable
-It is relatively liquid (ie you can sell them most anywhere if you had to...)
-Many places will buy a diamond.
Now this will probably remain true for quite a while, since no one seems to be planning a 'raid' or 'invasion' of south africa to 'break up' the 'evil cartel' that fixes the prices.
That said, I will say that I did buy a ring, but I will also admit a bit of a non-traditional approach, and let me first tell you why; I knew that she would be looking at this ring for years potentially, so I wanted her happy with it. The approach was more or less discuss budgetary limits for a while, then we went looking to see what sorts of things she liked. Well, we didnt find anything we loved, but she had a good idea of what she wanted, which was good, because I will admit i didn thave a fork()ing clue;)
So eventually we contacted a diamond merchant (see if any of your friends or family know one... you can save a BUNCH this way!)... Having a general idea of what she wanted, there were about three or four PAGES (at about 100 settings per page) of 'standard' (ie not custom-made) bare settings to choose from. (remember: real hackers are pragmatic: custom steel is nice and sexy and all that, but gerber made some darn nice blades for a lot less;). Having chose the setting, then you can go pick out the stone(s) you want.
I can tell you that I am suprised, spending money on clarity can make a diamond look much more impressive. I can also tell you that truely good (deep color) emeralds are MORE expensive than a diamond of the same weight. (and much more delicate)... Anyhow, to make the story short, she is happy with the ring, and loves it (everyone who sees it also likes it and thinks it is unique).. and we took a similar approach for her wedding band (which incidentally cost LESS than my band, which was stock from a jeweler (37-40% discount negotiated!), and has no stones (but does have fancier 'metalwork).
To sum it up, She's happy, I'm happy, the ring is still worth more than what I paid for it, and probably will be for a while. Meanwhile my used jeep is worth about 1/3 the value of what I paid for it (used) 3 yrs ago, and I dont even want to think about the computer hardware that I have bought in the past 18 mos, or what it is worth now! Try communicating, it may suprise the heck out of you (humans are pretty bad at shared memory interfacing, as a generalization, but you might find a good mentalist who can help you!)... I'd bet that she would love a diamond, but that she might not object to having some more choice over what she gets. (IIRC arent some women buying themselves large caliber stones just because?)
Actually about a year (or two)ago Microsoft had a little meeting with Dell, and afterwards Dell liquidated their Linux division (and the options to purchase RedHat preinstalled on Dells dissapeared from their web order forms...) I suspect that this may have something to do with the choice of FreeDOS.
On another train of thought, isnt this sort of "licensing contract" generally referred to as "restraint of trade" ? (IANAL...)
Isnt it/supposed/ to be frowned upon to make one-sided contracts?
It is easy enough to predict that: - Microsoft will produce a "OfficeWorks" package for the Xbox that permits people to use it as a computer, drastically undercutting the PC market - Microsoft will 'adhere' to the 'protections' it 'agreed' to in the 'settlement' and muscle out Freedos (since it sells so little as to not be covered in the competitive protection stipulations) -and/or- (last but not least)
- Microsoft will add DRM or Security or some other BS as a BIOS module which has to be 'licensed' by the OEMs and motherboard makers.. then 'bundle' the module with the OS at a cost of $1 (or less) more than the module alone costs (A la Xbox 'security' to lock out other OS's)... IIRC this sort of 'bundling' is legal. (else they simple make XP+ 'work better with' proper BIOS extensions, or not work at all without them. I mean Office won't work very well at all without a MS OS so why shouldnt an MS OS work without a MS BIOS?)
Anything like this could be a potential mechanism used to 'legally' spank non-compliant PC manufacturers into bankruptcy. IIRC Netscape and Novell are pretty much gone from the top of the heap. Now that MS is 'not a monopoly' it can feel free to use strongarm tactics to become a monopoly. These sorts of decisions are brought to you by the Do(I)J (a wholly owned subsidiary of MS?)
Let us hope that no one in the Federal Government has installed 2000 SP3 or XP SP1, with the requisite license agreements, else their 'criticism' of Microsoft might be a reason to 'audit' their licenses remotely and invoke the UITCA and remotely disable 'non-compliant' machines pending 'resolution' of the 'dispute' (with the requisite fines paid to the software manufacturer and the public apologies (ie dropping of all charges?))
Call me paranoid, but it does seem that Microsoft has been greasing us all for a while.
An EULA is a contract.. which does have terms which survive the expiration of the contract, however if the contract was never accepted/executed then i dunno if they woudl apply...
BUT
Many of these software companies license their software to the government... FIFA anyone ?
I wonder if the government/commercial EULAs differ from the consumer ones (possible discrimination issues?)
Also, if one owns the software it should be legitimate to view the EULA, no matter the source of it.
Also most of the EULAs include "shrink wrap terms" (such as installing indicates acceptance, but only presenting the EULA after installation...) which would probably not hold up in court... But that probably wont stop some company from displaying a "press any key to accept EULA/any other key to accept EULA" dialog that then decrypts the EULA for your pleasure... and they would then have to add triggers for the next generation digtal cameras that refuse to photograph copyrighted material;) (those are the ones with the lens cap welded on right?)
And i thought Morgan State university was going to have problems with inappropriate usage of network resources that increased operating costs!
[we are moving to pure-fabric 6513 cores, pure-fabric 6509 distribution in the academic buildings, 6509 distribution in the dorms, (all of the above native IOS) and 4006/3500xl access layer... gige from access to dist, gige back to dual cores from every academic building, a couple of pixen 535 to handle firewalling, etc.]
After migrating most of the academic/administrative buildings, the cores have et to offer any indication of traffic on the load graphs...
why does anyone need gig to the desk everywhere? and what are they aggregating it back to the distribution/core with ? (i smell MASSIVE oversubscription) (like i can talk about that:P) and can forsee a raesonable number of people cooperating to DOS the core or strategic servers (just because they can). Am I alone in this foresight?
Actually microsoft licensed spyglass mosiac.. The product was initially a separate product, with a separate price tag.. Then they finally gave it away for free....
When you pay for something then give it away for MUCH less than its worth, in order to force rivals to cut prices or go out of business, isn't this caled "DUMPING" ?
Isn't sumping something that has typically been viewed as a "bad thing" ?
Anyhow how about we go FURTHER back, to win3.1 and look at how windows 3.0 would install on top of any dos, but 3.1 would only install on top of genuine MS-DOS, generating an error if you were not using MS-DOS (ie DR-DOS) (that indicated compatibility problems.) Strangely enough if you installed DR-DOS after win 3.1 there were zero issues and the combination seemed more stable than ms-dos and windows.
misc thoughts, but im not a lawyer....
on
Abusing the GPL?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm not an expert with legalese, but:
First arent all the copyright notices inside comments ?
Removing comments with the copyright notices would immediately violate T&C section 1. (while indicating acceptance of the whole document as per section 5), but then you aren't allowed to remove the comments. The obfusciation is seemingly permitted so long as the copyright comments still remain along with additional comments documenting the changes as required by section 2.
The obfusciation is seemingly a process of derivation, that is you start with GPL product and do some M-x replace-string's... This derivation process means that the "proprietary intellectual property" is still GPL'ed...
The GPL does NOT apply to sections not derived from GPL code, but only when they are published apart from the GPL portion. when the whole package is published it is still GPL'ed by inclusion of the GPL code (does anyone remember the Nvidia driver issues?)
Also according to section 5 the fact that you edited the GPL code at all indicates acceptance of GPL terms and conditions. Failure to accept prohibits you from making modifications (such as the string search and replace described)
The whole process seems expressly in violation of section 4, but i am no expert...
What I fail to see is how anyone can avoid GPL except by producing clean-room-code. I seem to recall Nvidia having this problem with their drivers a while back.
As an aside, isnt "chicken noodle soup" less than 30% chicken by volume? (but it is still considered a chicken product.) Your company's project might be 30% GPL code that was heavily edited (IMHO the only real weakness in the GPL is no "real" definition of "derived", however the common meanings of derive include "to trace the deveolpment of", which has been done...)
A couple of questions: Is it possible to write a perl/awk/sed script (or otherwise algorithmically describe the obfusciation? (since global replaces are used i would dare way yes...) If this is true then an argument can certainly be made that the work was "translated" from "ANSI c++" to "ANSI c++" (hasnt anyone done english-to-english translation between say a lawyer and an engineer? or perhaps heard of such things?). This translated copy would seemingly be covered by section 0 and all other sections (as incorporated into the defitition of modification)
Slashdot Mirror
The ads running in the baltimore sun specifically say in the fine print that it "excludes devices used as modems"
so there will probably be per minute charges!
-j
I see you don't study history much.
step 1. Offer competing product
step 2. sabotage competitors' integration
step 3. spread fud
step 4. pick the carcass at the fire-sale, or watch it rot for fun
step 5. move on to new markets
so next step is:
a)Acrobat plugins stop working in IE n+1
b)Acrobat distiller wont work properly with office that includes Xdocs (if you can't produce PDF, then someone has to get Xdoc to read versus acrobat reader.
c)the clipboard standards change in a way what is incompatible with Acrobat (coincidental with "security changes to clipboard to prevent buffer overflows and execution of arbitrary code" ??)
(acrobat document creation is probably pretty painful by this time!)
d)create a "patch" that "supports" pdf, but creats PDF that is marginally worse than the HTML output of word.
e)make fundamental OS incomaptibilities with Distiller (kernel32 faults?) and/or acrobat reader
f)subtly changing the font coding so that Acrobat reader has rendering problems
for 3,
we'd probably see commentary in major magazines that PDF is an antiquated format and Xdoc is fully XML compliant which provides unique integration within the backoffice suite etc etc etc...
BTW watch out for MSICC (Microsoft Standard Improved Character Coding) (to replace ASCII and enhance security by easing encryption...)
-j
Actually this seems in the same vein as the MS visual studio license....
and as MS has shown us recently, you can use monopolistic tactics if you aren't a monopoly.... and it is perfectly legal!
Actually, I care. For some reason I have visions of the palladium PC's following the Xbox architecture, with a few things to ensure that you cannot run a non-trusted OS on it. Besides, what happens when microsoft brings their antivirus out and marks anything that looks like a boot sector or an ELF binary as a virus, then denies reading it into memory?
How can you load data into your encrypted (trusted) HD?
How can you bypass the trusted supervisor and convince it to allow you to do the things we take for granted now?
The reason MickeySoft wants to trust the computer, is so they can tell the computer to not trust us....
Now I will admit, I 'balked' a bit at buying a ring.. for a second or so. My wife is a bit of a femininist (so she says...) and has pointed out that a ring does look a lot like "and this is how much I am worth to someone else"... Anyhow some thoughts: A diamond isn't a BAD investment: that is -A diamond does not drastically depreciate (like a car or a computer does) -It is small and portable -It is relatively liquid (ie you can sell them most anywhere if you had to...) -Many places will buy a diamond. Now this will probably remain true for quite a while, since no one seems to be planning a 'raid' or 'invasion' of south africa to 'break up' the 'evil cartel' that fixes the prices. That said, I will say that I did buy a ring, but I will also admit a bit of a non-traditional approach, and let me first tell you why; I knew that she would be looking at this ring for years potentially, so I wanted her happy with it. The approach was more or less discuss budgetary limits for a while, then we went looking to see what sorts of things she liked. Well, we didnt find anything we loved, but she had a good idea of what she wanted, which was good, because I will admit i didn thave a fork()ing clue ;)
So eventually we contacted a diamond merchant (see if any of your friends or family know one... you can save a BUNCH this way!)... Having a general idea of what she wanted, there were about three or four PAGES (at about 100 settings per page) of 'standard' (ie not custom-made) bare settings to choose from. (remember: real hackers are pragmatic: custom steel is nice and sexy and all that, but gerber made some darn nice blades for a lot less ;). Having chose the setting, then you can go pick out the stone(s) you want.
I can tell you that I am suprised, spending money on clarity can make a diamond look much more impressive. I can also tell you that truely good (deep color) emeralds are MORE expensive than a diamond of the same weight. (and much more delicate)... Anyhow, to make the story short, she is happy with the ring, and loves it (everyone who sees it also likes it and thinks it is unique).. and we took a similar approach for her wedding band (which incidentally cost LESS than my band, which was stock from a jeweler (37-40% discount negotiated!), and has no stones (but does have fancier 'metalwork).
To sum it up, She's happy, I'm happy, the ring is still worth more than what I paid for it, and probably will be for a while. Meanwhile my used jeep is worth about 1/3 the value of what I paid for it (used) 3 yrs ago, and I dont even want to think about the computer hardware that I have bought in the past 18 mos, or what it is worth now! Try communicating, it may suprise the heck out of you (humans are pretty bad at shared memory interfacing, as a generalization, but you might find a good mentalist who can help you!)... I'd bet that she would love a diamond, but that she might not object to having some more choice over what she gets. (IIRC arent some women buying themselves large caliber stones just because?)
Actually about a year (or two)ago Microsoft had a little meeting with Dell, and afterwards Dell liquidated their Linux division (and the options to purchase RedHat preinstalled on Dells dissapeared from their web order forms...) I suspect that this may have something to do with the choice of FreeDOS.
/supposed/ to be frowned upon to make one-sided contracts?
On another train of thought, isnt this sort of "licensing contract" generally referred to as "restraint of trade" ? (IANAL...)
Isnt it
It is easy enough to predict that:
- Microsoft will produce a "OfficeWorks" package for the Xbox that permits people to use it as a computer, drastically undercutting the PC market
- Microsoft will 'adhere' to the 'protections' it 'agreed' to in the 'settlement' and muscle out Freedos (since it sells so little as to not be covered in the competitive protection stipulations)
-and/or- (last but not least)
- Microsoft will add DRM or Security or some other BS as a BIOS module which has to be 'licensed' by the OEMs and motherboard makers.. then 'bundle' the module with the OS at a cost of $1 (or less) more than the module alone costs (A la Xbox 'security' to lock out other OS's)... IIRC this sort of 'bundling' is legal. (else they simple make XP+ 'work better with' proper BIOS extensions, or not work at all without them. I mean Office won't work very well at all without a MS OS so why shouldnt an MS OS work without a MS BIOS?)
Anything like this could be a potential mechanism used to 'legally' spank non-compliant PC manufacturers into bankruptcy. IIRC Netscape and Novell are pretty much gone from the top of the heap. Now that MS is 'not a monopoly' it can feel free to use strongarm tactics to become a monopoly. These sorts of decisions are brought to you by the Do(I)J (a wholly owned subsidiary of MS?)
Let us hope that no one in the Federal Government has installed 2000 SP3 or XP SP1, with the requisite license agreements, else their 'criticism' of Microsoft might be a reason to 'audit' their licenses remotely and invoke the UITCA and remotely disable 'non-compliant' machines pending 'resolution' of the 'dispute' (with the requisite fines paid to the software manufacturer and the public apologies (ie dropping of all charges?))
Call me paranoid, but it does seem that Microsoft has been greasing us all for a while.
An EULA is a contract.. which does have terms which survive the expiration of the contract, however if the contract was never accepted/executed then i dunno if they woudl apply... BUT Many of these software companies license their software to the government... FIFA anyone ? I wonder if the government/commercial EULAs differ from the consumer ones (possible discrimination issues?) Also, if one owns the software it should be legitimate to view the EULA, no matter the source of it. Also most of the EULAs include "shrink wrap terms" (such as installing indicates acceptance, but only presenting the EULA after installation...) which would probably not hold up in court... But that probably wont stop some company from displaying a "press any key to accept EULA/any other key to accept EULA" dialog that then decrypts the EULA for your pleasure... and they would then have to add triggers for the next generation digtal cameras that refuse to photograph copyrighted material ;) (those are the ones with the lens cap welded on right?)
*lol* now i want me an auto-loading oven!
Kitchen Robot Utility device (KRUD) will be a logical next step; loads the microwave burrito from the freezer into the microwave, and autonukes it.
*hmm*
-j.
And i thought Morgan State university was going to have problems with inappropriate usage of network resources that increased operating costs!
:P) and can forsee a raesonable number of people cooperating to DOS the core or strategic servers (just because they can). Am I alone in this foresight?
[we are moving to pure-fabric 6513 cores, pure-fabric 6509 distribution in the academic buildings, 6509 distribution in the dorms, (all of the above native IOS) and 4006/3500xl access layer... gige from access to dist, gige back to dual cores from every academic building, a couple of pixen 535 to handle firewalling, etc.]
After migrating most of the academic/administrative buildings, the cores have et to offer any indication of traffic on the load graphs...
why does anyone need gig to the desk everywhere? and what are they aggregating it back to the distribution/core with ? (i smell MASSIVE oversubscription) (like i can talk about that
Actually microsoft licensed spyglass mosiac.. The product was initially a separate product, with a separate price tag.. Then they finally gave it away for free....
When you pay for something then give it away for MUCH less than its worth, in order to force rivals to cut prices or go out of business, isn't this caled "DUMPING" ?
Isn't sumping something that has typically been viewed as a "bad thing" ?
Anyhow how about we go FURTHER back, to win3.1 and look at how windows 3.0 would install on top of any dos, but 3.1 would only install on top of genuine MS-DOS, generating an error if you were not using MS-DOS (ie DR-DOS) (that indicated compatibility problems.) Strangely enough if you installed DR-DOS after win 3.1 there were zero issues and the combination seemed more stable than ms-dos and windows.
I'm not an expert with legalese, but:
First arent all the copyright notices inside comments ?
Removing comments with the copyright notices would immediately violate T&C section 1. (while indicating acceptance of the whole document as per section 5), but then you aren't allowed to remove the comments. The obfusciation is seemingly permitted so long as the copyright comments still remain along with additional comments documenting the changes as required by section 2.
The obfusciation is seemingly a process of derivation, that is you start with GPL product and do some M-x replace-string's... This derivation process means that the "proprietary intellectual property" is still GPL'ed...
The GPL does NOT apply to sections not derived from GPL code, but only when they are published apart from the GPL portion. when the whole package is published it is still GPL'ed by inclusion of the GPL code (does anyone remember the Nvidia driver issues?)
Also according to section 5 the fact that you edited the GPL code at all indicates acceptance of GPL terms and conditions. Failure to accept prohibits you from making modifications (such as the string search and replace described)
The whole process seems expressly in violation of section 4, but i am no expert...
What I fail to see is how anyone can avoid GPL except by producing clean-room-code. I seem to recall Nvidia having this problem with their drivers a while back.
As an aside, isnt "chicken noodle soup" less than 30% chicken by volume? (but it is still considered a chicken product.) Your company's project might be 30% GPL code that was heavily edited (IMHO the only real weakness in the GPL is no "real" definition of "derived", however the common meanings of derive include "to trace the deveolpment of", which has been done...)
A couple of questions: Is it possible to write a perl/awk/sed script (or otherwise algorithmically describe the obfusciation? (since global replaces are used i would dare way yes...) If this is true then an argument can certainly be made that the work was "translated" from "ANSI c++" to "ANSI c++" (hasnt anyone done english-to-english translation between say a lawyer and an engineer? or perhaps heard of such things?). This translated copy would seemingly be covered by section 0 and all other sections (as incorporated into the defitition of modification)
just a few cents worth
-j.