"If eBay is refusing to allow them to be listed even after the owner can prove they have the right to re-sell (e.g. they have ownership of an authentic pair), then eBay could be in some trouble."
Bullshit. Ebay can choose to disallow items for action for any reason that they so choose, or no reason at all.
If true, then the guy has no case. If ebay's policy is to honor manufacturers' to requests not to have their items sold on ebay, then that's that. It's not illegal, and no judge is going to make ebay's policy illegal. Ebay doesn't have to auction items that they don't want to auction, regardless of the reason. They guy can sell his copy of autocad, but just not thru ebay.
According to comments posted to the Joe Wilcox "Microsoft Watch" story that is cited in the summary, Windows Update updates itself since at least XP SP1 (and the comments have a link to a Microsoft page that talks about this).
Disabling Automatic Updates using the Windows Update Control Panel apparently does not include disabling updating of the Windows Update software itself. There are reasons given in the comments and the referred Microsoft page, if you want to see them, but regardless, Microsoft should be more clear about this and should be taken to task for not doing so up till now.
If you want to disable even updating the Windows Update service itself, then you should use the Services control panel to turn that service off.
Broadcasting video over the air or even thru cable has a constant expense regardless of how many people actually watch the video. But the cost of internet bandwidth is directly proportional to the number of visitors to the site. Each visitor to a site increases the bandwidth cost, and if that visitor blocks the ads, then the visitor is "freeloading". If a TV viewer doesn't watch TV ads, it matters not because the TV viewer didn't add to the broadcast cost the way a web surfer adds to bandwidth cost.
I don't care if people block ads or not, but it's not the same as TV broadcasts.
If Adobe was threatening legal action in the US courts, that argument might work, but they were threatening to file a complaint with the EC, which despises MS with a passion.
The problem is that many existing spreadsheets were created with the Lotus bug in mind. Meaning that if a spreadsheet is dealing with dates 1900 thru 1904, then the spreadsheet creator has already added code to the spreadsheet to deal with the problem. If you "fix" the problem when converting to a new format, those spreadsheets that had coded around the problem become broken.
"A researcher not affiliated with the study stated, liberals 'could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.'"
Well, this is true by the very definitions of 'liberal' and 'conservative', but this axiom doesn't shed light on whether there are "brain differences". It contributes nothing to the article.
That said, there probably are "brain differences". Doesn't everything come down to chemical reactions anyway, which themselves are based on atomic and even sub-atomic reactions? Which would mean that Man has no "free will", but what can you do?.:p
More serously, from what I've experienced, "liberals" tend to be "smarter" than "conservatives". Not that they have a higher IQ, but liberals have a greater intellectual curiosity about the world and are more likely to approach matters from an intellectual standpoint than a "from-the-gut" standpoint (though doing such doesn't always lead to the "right" answer). Is it do to "brain differences"? Maybe. But it also could be due to environment (e.g. the influence of the parents (or guardians, whatever) that raised one as a child)). You know, the whole "nature vs nurture" thing.
In other words, anyone that dares step outside of the slashdot groupthink or the Microsoft-sucks groupthink is to be ostracized. How lovely! You guys are the most intolerant group of software devs in the world. Miguel as contributed more to OSS than his critics combined, and more than you, Lyle Howard Seave, will ever do in your whole lifetime. And you have the gall to call for his "exile" from the OSS community simply because he stepped outside of the groupthink?
"There is already a perfectly fine standard, ODF, "
Then why are OAISIS working on ODF 1.1, and why is ODF 1.2 already in the planning stage? If you think that ODF is "perfectly fine", then you've really drunk the kool-aid. Tell me, have you read even one paragraph from either the ODF or OOXML specs? I know that 99% of slashdotters haven't, yet all speak with such authority on these issues (while spouting complete falsehoods, as I *have* read much of the specs).
" although it's recently been discovered that OOXML refers to OLE objects which are undocumented in OOXML and in Office '07 these are stored as binaries:( ODF and OOo have their own problems of course, but nothing complex like this."
You're showing your ignorance. First, OO.o supports OLE embeddings (at least the Windows version does), and always stores those as blobs. Office 2007, on the other hand, supports OLE embeddings, but if the OLE server app supports OOXML, then the OLE embedding is stored as an OOXML file (within the same.zip archive). So, if you have for example, a Word document containing an embedded PowerPoint object containing an embedded Excel spreadsheet, you could use an XML parser (augmented with the code to understand the schema) to literally drill down into the hieracrcy of OLE embeddings. OO.o and ODF do NOT have that functionality, and their implementation of OLE is much more "closed" (i.e. black-boxed blobs) than Office 2007's implementation (when using OOXML).
Stephane Rodriguez is a FUDster who's pissed that OOXML threatens his business that is based on maintaining others' excel spreadsheets in the old binary format.
His complaint is ludicrous, as he complains that you can't willy-nilly alter XML source without regard to the schema and expect the result to remain a valid document (specifically, he complains that if you alter an excel OOXML document in a particular place, that you must make a corresponding change in another place in order for the document to remain consistent with itself). The argument he puts forward is idiotic. Anyway, Excel does warn you that the document may be corrupt, and gives you the option of letting Excel load the file and rebuild the "corrupt" "out-of-sync" portion.
"But if it can be ignored, will the document lay out the same in two different products? If layout is different, why have you gained?"
Are you serious? Browsers lay out HTML differently from one another. Hell, K-Office and OO.o lay out ODF differently from one another. Hell, frikkin plain text editors lay out ASCII text differently from one another (some use \r\n (or \n\r), others use \n, and others use \r for line-endings).
Same goes for any data-processing format you can think of.
These aren't print-layout formats like PDF. Content is the primary issue, "lay out" is a secondary concern.
According to Jody Goldberg's blog entry, implementing the fundamentals of OOXML took only a few days, and that implementing ODF "was significantly more difficult" than implementing OOXML. Jody also says, "ODF's model of 'chartness' didn't fit well with Gnumeric." Is this not contrary to ODF proponents' claim that ODF is equally suitable for all word processors and spreadsheets to implement? That it doesn't favor any particular spreadsheet implementation (i.e. OO.o) over any other? That it was built from the ground up to be app-neutral, and that this is app-neutrality is a virtue that OOXML lacks (since OOXML of course favors MS Office)? What say you to Jody Goldberg?
Not that Novell or former-Novell employees think that OOXML is perfect. But I think Miguel has it right, for in that same Google Groups post, he writes,
He [Novell's Michael Meeks] certainly would like clarification in various areas [of OOXML] and more details in some. But Michael's criticism (or for that matter, the Novell OpenOffice team working with that spec) seems to be incredibly different than the laundry list of issues that pass as technical reviews in sites like Groklaw.
The difference is that the Novell-based criticism is based on actually trying to implement the spec. Not reading the spec for the sake of finding holes that can be used in a political battle.
Finally, Michael sounded incredibly positive after the ECMA meeting last month when all of their technical questions were either answered or added to the batch of things to review....
I find it hilarious that the majority (not all) of the criticism for OOXML comes from people that do not have to write any code that interacts with OOXML. Those that know do not seem to mind (except those whose personal business is at risk because Microsoft moved away from a binary format to an XML format, which I also find hilarious).
(I'm guessing that the latter comment regarding persons whose business is at risk due to MS moving away from binary formats refers to often-quoted OOXML basher Stepen Rodriguez, who has been blasting/FUDing OOXML, but who has a business based on maintaining XL spreadheets in the old binary format.)
I slashdot so desperate for stories (at least those that will prompt endless Microsoft-bashing) that a simple post to Google Groups is worth the front page? Heaven help us.
Horrible controls is just ONE of the problems in Lair, according to reviews. The framerate sucks too. (BTW, IGN just reviewed Skate, and gave the 360 version the nod over the PS3 version due to framerate problems on the PS3, and bad aliasing, and blurry visuals (in attempt to hide the aliasing). We've seen this over and over again, all this after Sony talked of dual-1080p output at 120 frames per second. After all that boasting, PS3 can't even do single 720p output at 60 (and even sometimes 30) fps without sputtering).)
PS3's architecture is too complicated to program for. That's why 360 kicks PS3's rear up and down the street, despite having theoretically weaker hardware.
"music will become something people only pay for to go to live concerts. all other music will be freely traded, and musicians will make money from advertising and abovementioned concerts. no, it's not jayz money. as if that was ever a prerequisite for the desire to make music"
I'm curious, how do song writers that write songs for others to perform, but are not performers themselves, get paid in your scenario, in accordance with the popularity of the song?
As for relying on concerts, most concert tours *lose* money or barely break even. Concerts are used to promote sales of recordings, not the other way around.
Unfortunately, consumers brought DCMA on themselves. See, "fair use" is part of a bargain between creators and consumers. Consumers are free to do whatever they like with creations as long as the remain within fair use. But starting around 1995, consumers began to violate "fair use" on a scale previously unimagined. Consumers violated the bargain, so DCMA was created to try to restore some balance. If consumers didn't want DCMA to come along then they shouldn't have been (and shouldn't be now) uploading and downloading every piece of IP they can get their hands on.
"Could this be a reversal of Microsoft's prior stance on DRM, wherein they fellated the movie and music industries despite the consumer electronics industry being far larger and far more consumer-friendly?"
The "consumer electronics industry"? You do realize that the HD-DVD and BR players that the "consumer electronics industry" sells implement the very same DRM that Vista does don't you?
"Clearly the docs have already been written, since they are sharing them with Novell, no?"
If you've been in the industry any significant amount of time, you know that there's a big difference between internal docs and public specs. Public specs require much more work, everything detailed, proper grammar, etc, etc. Internal documentation, on the other hand can just be comments in a header file, or a group of emails, etc, whatever gets the job done. Miguel has stated that he's now able to call MS devs directly and ask questions to get info that might even be formally written down anywhere, and has access to developers notes, etc. That's the kind of internal "documentation" they're talking about.
It's like the difference between internal functions and public API. For internal functions, the only "documentation" might be the function comments themselves (if you're lucky). Public API has thorough documentation suitable for public use.
Microsoft cancelled Mac IE, not just because Safari was developed, but because it was bundled with the OS. Microsoft understands that concept well, as bundling IE with Windows did damage to Netscape. Rather than fight the bundling of Safari, it's easier to just cancel it and move on.
I wouldn't expect Microsoft to kill Mac Office unless Apple started *bundling* iWork with their OS and/or hardware so that it killed off the market. Is Apple doing that (I don't know)?
Ever wonder why there are so few 3rd-party entry-level multimedia creation tools on the Mac left? It's because Apple bundles iLife.
iWork is more akin to MS Works in functionality, so even if Apple did start bundling it, that doesn't mean Microsoft would kill off Mac Office, but the possibility does arise.
"Microsoft should put the money where their mouth is and fully support Silverlight for Linux. This looks like Microsoft Cheap way of doing things."
Part of the practical realities of the OSS business model is that if you can get OSS devs to do your work for free, you do it! Hell, many of you have been praising that sort of thing. The Mono devs know Linux a lot more than Microsoft's do. So let them handle the Linux version. And let them handle it for free, in the great tradition of the OSS.
"How many of the residents do you suppose will actually cash in? Are you required to be put on a spam list to collect? Probably. For the $16 dollars you get, what is being gotten from you? Could have windows been sold for $16 dollars less to begin with?"
If the California case is any indication, very few will bother to "cash in". But the reason is that the common fold don't give a damn about this case!! In the past few years, I've received class-action settlement notices for Dell (some laptop issue) and Apple iPod (applied to early versions of the iPod). I tossed them, not only because the "refund" was peanuts, but because I didn't believe in the case in the first place. I didn't feel ripped off by either Dell or Apple, and just because some lawyer says I was, doesn't mean I agree with it.
I'm not about collecting on a case I think is bullshit. And the MS-DOS portion of this Iowa case is indeed bullshit. MS-DOS wasn't declared a monopoly product, nor is there evidence of overcharging for it. I doubt you'll see very many Iowans collecting on MS-DOS. As for Windows, I might be inclined collect if I purchased a retail version (well, not really, since $16 is a waste of my time), but not OEM versions, as the OEM versions are very cheap; there's no evidence of overcharging there, and OEM versions make up the lion's share of Windows installations.
This case was simply a money-grab for lawyers, based on a peculiarity in Iowa law that allows MS to be sued for indirect purchases (i.e. OEM purchases; I think CA was the only other state that allowed that, and that case was over and done with years ago. For the other states, if you think you were overcharged for an OEM version, you have to sue the OEM itself). Iowans were not clamouring for this case to be brought at all.
Slashdot Mirror
"If eBay is refusing to allow them to be listed even after the owner can prove they have the right to re-sell (e.g. they have ownership of an authentic pair), then eBay could be in some trouble."
Bullshit. Ebay can choose to disallow items for action for any reason that they so choose, or no reason at all.
If true, then the guy has no case.
If ebay's policy is to honor manufacturers' to requests not to have their items sold on ebay, then that's that. It's not illegal, and no judge is going to make ebay's policy illegal. Ebay doesn't have to auction items that they don't want to auction, regardless of the reason.
They guy can sell his copy of autocad, but just not thru ebay.
According to comments posted to the Joe Wilcox "Microsoft Watch" story that is cited in the summary, Windows Update updates itself since at least XP SP1 (and the comments have a link to a Microsoft page that talks about this).
Disabling Automatic Updates using the Windows Update Control Panel apparently does not include disabling updating of the Windows Update software itself. There are reasons given in the comments and the referred Microsoft page, if you want to see them, but regardless, Microsoft should be more clear about this and should be taken to task for not doing so up till now.
If you want to disable even updating the Windows Update service itself, then you should use the Services control panel to turn that service off.
You guys used to rule the world, but you killed off much of your "importance" with WWI, and finished yourselves off with WWII. Hey, it happens.
Broadcasting video over the air or even thru cable has a constant expense regardless of how many people actually watch the video. But the cost of internet bandwidth is directly proportional to the number of visitors to the site. Each visitor to a site increases the bandwidth cost, and if that visitor blocks the ads, then the visitor is "freeloading". If a TV viewer doesn't watch TV ads, it matters not because the TV viewer didn't add to the broadcast cost the way a web surfer adds to bandwidth cost.
I don't care if people block ads or not, but it's not the same as TV broadcasts.
If Adobe was threatening legal action in the US courts, that argument might work, but they were threatening to file a complaint with the EC, which despises MS with a passion.
Did you reply to the wrong post? The post you replied to cites a Wired article saying that this is a hoax. Your reply makes no sense in that light.
So what? They've required "activation" for years. Since 2001. People that actually care moved to OSX or Linux years ago.
Back to the main issue: Slashdot posted a bogus story for the sole purpose of provoking Microsoft-bashing. Slashdot editors suck.
The problem is that many existing spreadsheets were created with the Lotus bug in mind. Meaning that if a spreadsheet is dealing with dates 1900 thru 1904, then the spreadsheet creator has already added code to the spreadsheet to deal with the problem. If you "fix" the problem when converting to a new format, those spreadsheets that had coded around the problem become broken.
"A researcher not affiliated with the study stated, liberals 'could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.'"
:p
Well, this is true by the very definitions of 'liberal' and 'conservative', but this axiom doesn't shed light on whether there are "brain differences". It contributes nothing to the article.
That said, there probably are "brain differences". Doesn't everything come down to chemical reactions anyway, which themselves are based on atomic and even sub-atomic reactions? Which would mean that Man has no "free will", but what can you do?.
More serously, from what I've experienced, "liberals" tend to be "smarter" than "conservatives". Not that they have a higher IQ, but liberals have a greater intellectual curiosity about the world and are more likely to approach matters from an intellectual standpoint than a "from-the-gut" standpoint (though doing such doesn't always lead to the "right" answer). Is it do to "brain differences"? Maybe. But it also could be due to environment (e.g. the influence of the parents (or guardians, whatever) that raised one as a child)). You know, the whole "nature vs nurture" thing.
In other words, anyone that dares step outside of the slashdot groupthink or the Microsoft-sucks groupthink is to be ostracized. How lovely! You guys are the most intolerant group of software devs in the world. Miguel as contributed more to OSS than his critics combined, and more than you, Lyle Howard Seave, will ever do in your whole lifetime. And you have the gall to call for his "exile" from the OSS community simply because he stepped outside of the groupthink?
"There is already a perfectly fine standard, ODF, "
Then why are OAISIS working on ODF 1.1, and why is ODF 1.2 already in the planning stage?
If you think that ODF is "perfectly fine", then you've really drunk the kool-aid.
Tell me, have you read even one paragraph from either the ODF or OOXML specs?
I know that 99% of slashdotters haven't, yet all speak with such authority on these issues (while spouting complete falsehoods, as I *have* read much of the specs).
" although it's recently been discovered that OOXML refers to OLE objects which are undocumented in OOXML and in Office '07 these are stored as binaries :( ODF and OOo have their own problems of course, but nothing complex like this."
.zip archive). So, if you have for example, a Word document containing an embedded PowerPoint object containing an embedded Excel spreadsheet, you could use an XML parser (augmented with the code to understand the schema) to literally drill down into the hieracrcy of OLE embeddings. OO.o and ODF do NOT have that functionality, and their implementation of OLE is much more "closed" (i.e. black-boxed blobs) than Office 2007's implementation (when using OOXML).
You're showing your ignorance.
First, OO.o supports OLE embeddings (at least the Windows version does), and always stores those as blobs.
Office 2007, on the other hand, supports OLE embeddings, but if the OLE server app supports OOXML, then the OLE embedding is stored as an OOXML file (within the same
Stephane Rodriguez is a FUDster who's pissed that OOXML threatens his business that is based on maintaining others' excel spreadsheets in the old binary format.
His complaint is ludicrous, as he complains that you can't willy-nilly alter XML source without regard to the schema and expect the result to remain a valid document (specifically, he complains that if you alter an excel OOXML document in a particular place, that you must make a corresponding change in another place in order for the document to remain consistent with itself). The argument he puts forward is idiotic. Anyway, Excel does warn you that the document may be corrupt, and gives you the option of letting Excel load the file and rebuild the "corrupt" "out-of-sync" portion.
"But if it can be ignored, will the document lay out the same in two different products? If layout is different, why have you gained?"
Are you serious?
Browsers lay out HTML differently from one another.
Hell, K-Office and OO.o lay out ODF differently from one another.
Hell, frikkin plain text editors lay out ASCII text differently from one another (some use \r\n (or \n\r), others use \n, and others use \r for line-endings).
Same goes for any data-processing format you can think of.
These aren't print-layout formats like PDF. Content is the primary issue, "lay out" is a secondary concern.
I notice that in the very same Google Groups thread, Miguel makes a post that refers to what Gnumeric dev Jody Goldberg has to say regarding ODF and OOXML.
According to Jody Goldberg's blog entry, implementing the fundamentals of OOXML took only a few days, and that implementing ODF "was significantly more difficult" than implementing OOXML. Jody also says, "ODF's model of 'chartness' didn't fit well with Gnumeric."
Is this not contrary to ODF proponents' claim that ODF is equally suitable for all word processors and spreadsheets to implement? That it doesn't favor any particular spreadsheet implementation (i.e. OO.o) over any other? That it was built from the ground up to be app-neutral, and that this is app-neutrality is a virtue that OOXML lacks (since OOXML of course favors MS Office)? What say you to Jody Goldberg?
Not that Novell or former-Novell employees think that OOXML is perfect. But I think Miguel has it right, for in that same Google Groups post, he writes,
(I'm guessing that the latter comment regarding persons whose business is at risk due to MS moving away from binary formats refers to often-quoted OOXML basher Stepen Rodriguez, who has been blasting/FUDing OOXML, but who has a business based on maintaining XL spreadheets in the old binary format.)
I slashdot so desperate for stories (at least those that will prompt endless Microsoft-bashing) that a simple post to Google Groups is worth the front page? Heaven help us.
Horrible controls is just ONE of the problems in Lair, according to reviews.
The framerate sucks too. (BTW, IGN just reviewed Skate, and gave the 360 version the nod over the PS3 version due to framerate problems on the PS3, and bad aliasing, and blurry visuals (in attempt to hide the aliasing). We've seen this over and over again, all this after Sony talked of dual-1080p output at 120 frames per second. After all that boasting, PS3 can't even do single 720p output at 60 (and even sometimes 30) fps without sputtering).)
PS3's architecture is too complicated to program for. That's why 360 kicks PS3's rear up and down the street, despite having theoretically weaker hardware.
"music will become something people only pay for to go to live concerts. all other music will be freely traded, and musicians will make money from advertising and abovementioned concerts. no, it's not jayz money. as if that was ever a prerequisite for the desire to make music"
I'm curious, how do song writers that write songs for others to perform, but are not performers themselves, get paid in your scenario, in accordance with the popularity of the song?
As for relying on concerts, most concert tours *lose* money or barely break even. Concerts are used to promote sales of recordings, not the other way around.
Unfortunately, consumers brought DCMA on themselves.
See, "fair use" is part of a bargain between creators and consumers. Consumers are free to do whatever they like with creations as long as the remain within fair use. But starting around 1995, consumers began to violate "fair use" on a scale previously unimagined. Consumers violated the bargain, so DCMA was created to try to restore some balance. If consumers didn't want DCMA to come along then they shouldn't have been (and shouldn't be now) uploading and downloading every piece of IP they can get their hands on.
"Could this be a reversal of Microsoft's prior stance on DRM, wherein they fellated the movie and music industries despite the consumer electronics industry being far larger and far more consumer-friendly?"
The "consumer electronics industry"? You do realize that the HD-DVD and BR players that the "consumer electronics industry" sells implement the very same DRM that Vista does don't you?
Slashdotters are so damn ignorant.
"Clearly the docs have already been written, since they are sharing them with Novell, no?"
If you've been in the industry any significant amount of time, you know that there's a big difference between internal docs and public specs. Public specs require much more work, everything detailed, proper grammar, etc, etc. Internal documentation, on the other hand can just be comments in a header file, or a group of emails, etc, whatever gets the job done. Miguel has stated that he's now able to call MS devs directly and ask questions to get info that might even be formally written down anywhere, and has access to developers notes, etc. That's the kind of internal "documentation" they're talking about.
It's like the difference between internal functions and public API. For internal functions, the only "documentation" might be the function comments themselves (if you're lucky). Public API has thorough documentation suitable for public use.
Microsoft cancelled Mac IE, not just because Safari was developed, but because it was bundled with the OS. Microsoft understands that concept well, as bundling IE with Windows did damage to Netscape. Rather than fight the bundling of Safari, it's easier to just cancel it and move on.
I wouldn't expect Microsoft to kill Mac Office unless Apple started *bundling* iWork with their OS and/or hardware so that it killed off the market. Is Apple doing that (I don't know)?
Ever wonder why there are so few 3rd-party entry-level multimedia creation tools on the Mac left? It's because Apple bundles iLife.
iWork is more akin to MS Works in functionality, so even if Apple did start bundling it, that doesn't mean Microsoft would kill off Mac Office, but the possibility does arise.
"Microsoft should put the money where their mouth is and fully support Silverlight for Linux. This looks like Microsoft Cheap way of doing things."
Part of the practical realities of the OSS business model is that if you can get OSS devs to do your work for free, you do it! Hell, many of you have been praising that sort of thing. The Mono devs know Linux a lot more than Microsoft's do. So let them handle the Linux version. And let them handle it for free, in the great tradition of the OSS.
"How many of the residents do you suppose will actually cash in?
Are you required to be put on a spam list to collect? Probably.
For the $16 dollars you get, what is being gotten from you?
Could have windows been sold for $16 dollars less to begin with?"
If the California case is any indication, very few will bother to "cash in". But the reason is that the common fold don't give a damn about this case!! In the past few years, I've received class-action settlement notices for Dell (some laptop issue) and Apple iPod (applied to early versions of the iPod). I tossed them, not only because the "refund" was peanuts, but because I didn't believe in the case in the first place. I didn't feel ripped off by either Dell or Apple, and just because some lawyer says I was, doesn't mean I agree with it.
I'm not about collecting on a case I think is bullshit. And the MS-DOS portion of this Iowa case is indeed bullshit. MS-DOS wasn't declared a monopoly product, nor is there evidence of overcharging for it. I doubt you'll see very many Iowans collecting on MS-DOS. As for Windows, I might be inclined collect if I purchased a retail version (well, not really, since $16 is a waste of my time), but not OEM versions, as the OEM versions are very cheap; there's no evidence of overcharging there, and OEM versions make up the lion's share of Windows installations.
This case was simply a money-grab for lawyers, based on a peculiarity in Iowa law that allows MS to be sued for indirect purchases (i.e. OEM purchases; I think CA was the only other state that allowed that, and that case was over and done with years ago. For the other states, if you think you were overcharged for an OEM version, you have to sue the OEM itself). Iowans were not clamouring for this case to be brought at all.