"The N version should be forced as the only available version in Europe or they should be forced to sell it at a discount compared to "regular" XP."
This was proposed but nobody could come up with a reasonable forumla for what the discount should be. First of all, WMP is available for free at microsoft's site. So what should the discount be for an OS that's stripped of a free component? Logic would say that the discount should be zero.
Even if you don't accept that, how much should the discount be? Someone proposed that XP N's price should be lower than XP's by the same proportion that XP N's number of bytes is lower than XP's. Unfortunately, this would still result in a discount of (virtually) zero.
HP and Dell do pre-install other media players
on
Windows XP N a Bust
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· Score: 1
HP pre-installs iTunes as the default audio player. Dell (depending on the model and buying options) pre-installs their "Dell Medie Experience" app (which sucks) as the default DVD and CD player.
So OEMs can and do install other media players. But in neither of the above cases, do they remove WMP (by selling XP N), and why should they?
"With the intention of permanently depriving them?"
LOL. You must've made that up. You're actually claiming that if I take something from you without authorization with the intent of keeping it for ten years, you won't consider what I've done to be stealing? It's just unauthorized borrowing, eh? LOL
And oh, what do you consider "stealing trade secrets" from a rival company to be? That's not stealing either because the wronged party still has a copy of the secrets, right? LOL You're beyond belief.
I think piracy of intellectual property is similar to sneaking into a movie theater to watch a movie for free, but on a much larger scale. Whether either one is "theft" or not is immaterial. Both are wrong.
That said, "stealing" is defined as "Taking or misappropriating without right or leave, with intent to keep or use wrongly". Piracy seems to fit the bill, at least in spirit.
To directly address your point, that theft is action which denies others access to the stolen goods, is "stealing trade secrets" from a rival company "theft" even thouth wronged rival company retains a copy of its trade secrets?
That's just on example that disproves your nonsense.
On a larger point, generally all "wrongs" fall into one of five categories: lie, cheat, steal, injure, kill.
So, if piracy isn't "theft", which of the others is it? "Cheating"? Well, that's just as bad. So again, your point rings hollow.
You made an ignorant statement and got called on it. Now you're whining that someone took your statement "too literally". LOL
Besides that, your "with some exception" spin holds no water because even one of your cited languages, Python, disproves your point because Microsoft now controls Iron Python. The notion that they can't accept other languages is just ignorant ranting on your part. LOL
The underlying motivation for this thread's posts
on
Hackers, Meet Microsoft
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The funny thing is that the underlying motivation for most of the snide, derrogatory comments made to this thread is, "Please, please, don't let Microsoft improve its security!"
You guys are scared too death that Microsoft will kill off your security argument just like they did the stability argument. All of the negative posts regarding Blue Hat, the comments that it'll do no good, the assertions that only a complete rewrite from scratch will work, blah blah blah, are nothing more than wishful thinking. Many here hope, wish, and even pray for Windows to remain vulnerable, and it's clouding your thinking. Blue Hat (and other measures taken by Microsoft) is a good thing, and many of you just can't stand it. LOL
Yes, most users run as admin; a hold over situation from the Win9x days when users and apps had no concept of different user account levels. Longhorn (when it finally ships) will have the limited accounts as the default account setting. This is just one example that disproves the grandparents assertion that some things are too hard to be fixed.
Indeed, but will Microsoft still have a monopoly for "desktop operating systems for x86 processors" once the Intel Macs are released?;-) I could see Microsoft asking for the monopoly ruling to be reversed (I think that Windows' monopoly status is scheduled to be re-reviewed every so often anyway).
HP already bundles iTunes as the default audio player. Dell bundles the "Dell Media Experience" app as the default DVD and CD player (a disservice to the customers because that app sucks badly).
"If a module would break if the code NO-OPS, then it is badly written."
This is the height of absurdity. You're actually saying that if I make an app that has a video playing component that uses DirectShow, and the DirectShow apis are replaced with no-ops so that when the user uses my app to play a video nothing happens (i.e. my app is broken), it's because my code was badly written? Give me a break.
"What they SHOULD have done, is force Microsoft to expose APIs to replace this functionality with other browsers."
Why? Those components provide OS API. Are you maintaining that any API should be replaceable by a third party component that provides that same API? This would cause complexity to skyrocket. Particularly to devs. If I make an app that relies on a Windows API, I would now have to test my app against any third party component that the user might have installed that provides its own implementation of said API? This would be absurd and would lead to chaos.
Windows XP has the "Set Program Access and Defaults" control panel that allows the user to set the default web browser, email program, media player, instant message app, and JVM. It also allows the user to fully remove access to the Microsoft versions of those programs. The "Set Program Access and Defaults" control panel is available from the Start menu and available from the "Add or Remove Programs" control panel.
As for removing apps altogether, if you want to delete the.exes of those programs, go ahead and do it. The problem is that many demanded that the underlying dlls also get removed, which would do damage to the platform because other apps and other parts of the OS rely on the functionality provided by those dlls. Removing DirectShow, for example, would break almost all media players on Windows. It would be similar to removing the QT api from OSX.
Last I heard the appeals process was part of this nation's justice system. It's not the fault of Microsoft "whining" that your boy Jackson got slapped down by the appeals court.
You misunderstood the parent's point. Which is that patches are used to *replace* bad code rather than add new code on top of bad code. So if the original size of an app is M and over time 1000 "patches" of size cumulative size N are applied, the size of the app is not (necessarily and nor even likely) M+N. This was to answer the original "point" regarding when an app becomes more "patch" than "content". It's a nonsensical question because the "patch" replaces bad "content" with new "content" rather than adding new code on top of bad "content" in such a way that the bad content remains in place.
and they were released only one year apart. So why would anyone expect a huge adoption rate on the part of businesses that are on 2000? It stands to reason that a business that moved to Windows 2000 wouldn't move to an OS just one year newer that is essentially a UI update. Generally, the businesses that moved to XP were previously on NT4 (and/or Win98).
This article is a waste of time and the only reason it appeared on slashdot was to provide for more Microsoft bashing.
BTW, if slashdot wants to be taken seriously, the people that run this place should consider getting rid of the derrogatory icon used for Windows topics (same goes for the Bill Gates borg icon).
Slashdot Mirror
Canadian dollars? LOL I thought you were talking about real currency, not monopoly money. LOL
"The N version should be forced as the only available version in Europe or they should be forced to sell it at a discount compared to "regular" XP."
This was proposed but nobody could come up with a reasonable forumla for what the discount should be.
First of all, WMP is available for free at microsoft's site. So what should the discount be for an OS that's stripped of a free component? Logic would say that the discount should be zero.
Even if you don't accept that, how much should the discount be? Someone proposed that XP N's price should be lower than XP's by the same proportion that XP N's number of bytes is lower than XP's. Unfortunately, this would still result in a discount of (virtually) zero.
HP pre-installs iTunes as the default audio player.
Dell (depending on the model and buying options) pre-installs their "Dell Medie Experience" app (which sucks) as the default DVD and CD player.
So OEMs can and do install other media players. But in neither of the above cases, do they remove WMP (by selling XP N), and why should they?
"So once companies stop selling software like Windows for 400$ or Office for 800$..."
Hello? The prices that you cite are wildly overinflated, diluting whatever point you're trying to make.
"With the intention of permanently depriving them?"
LOL. You must've made that up. You're actually claiming that if I take something from you without authorization with the intent of keeping it for ten years, you won't consider what I've done to be stealing? It's just unauthorized borrowing, eh? LOL
And oh, what do you consider "stealing trade secrets" from a rival company to be? That's not stealing either because the wronged party still has a copy of the secrets, right? LOL You're beyond belief.
I think piracy of intellectual property is similar to sneaking into a movie theater to watch a movie for free, but on a much larger scale. Whether either one is "theft" or not is immaterial. Both are wrong.
That said, "stealing" is defined as "Taking or misappropriating without right or leave, with intent to keep or use wrongly". Piracy seems to fit the bill, at least in spirit.
To directly address your point, that theft is action which denies others access to the stolen goods, is "stealing trade secrets" from a rival company "theft" even thouth wronged rival company retains a copy of its trade secrets?
That's just on example that disproves your nonsense.
On a larger point, generally all "wrongs" fall into one of five categories: lie, cheat, steal, injure, kill.
So, if piracy isn't "theft", which of the others is it? "Cheating"? Well, that's just as bad. So again, your point rings hollow.
Must be a slow news day. This story was reported a month ago on May 23, 2005. At cnet, no less; not exactly an obscure news source.c y+check/2100-1002_3-5717127.html
h tml
http://news.com.com/Bypass+found+for+Windows+pira
And it was picked up by others, for example:
http://techrepublic.com.com/2100-1009_11-5717127.
Why is this story making the rounds again?
You made an ignorant statement and got called on it. Now you're whining that someone took your statement "too literally". LOL
Besides that, your "with some exception" spin holds no water because even one of your cited languages, Python, disproves your point because Microsoft now controls Iron Python. The notion that they can't accept other languages is just ignorant ranting on your part. LOL
The funny thing is that the underlying motivation for most of the snide, derrogatory comments made to this thread is, "Please, please, don't let Microsoft improve its security!"
You guys are scared too death that Microsoft will kill off your security argument just like they did the stability argument. All of the negative posts regarding Blue Hat, the comments that it'll do no good, the assertions that only a complete rewrite from scratch will work, blah blah blah, are nothing more than wishful thinking. Many here hope, wish, and even pray for Windows to remain vulnerable, and it's clouding your thinking. Blue Hat (and other measures taken by Microsoft) is a good thing, and many of you just can't stand it. LOL
Yes, most users run as admin; a hold over situation from the Win9x days when users and apps had no concept of different user account levels. Longhorn (when it finally ships) will have the limited accounts as the default account setting. This is just one example that disproves the grandparents assertion that some things are too hard to be fixed.
Indeed, but will Microsoft still have a monopoly for "desktop operating systems for x86 processors" once the Intel Macs are released? ;-) I could see Microsoft asking for the monopoly ruling to be reversed (I think that Windows' monopoly status is scheduled to be re-reviewed every so often anyway).
I call BS on that. HP bundles iTunes as the default audio player. Any more FUD you want try to spout only for me to shoot it down? :p
HP already bundles iTunes as the default audio player. Dell bundles the "Dell Media Experience" app as the default DVD and CD player (a disservice to the customers because that app sucks badly).
"If a module would break if the code NO-OPS, then it is badly written."
This is the height of absurdity. You're actually saying that if I make an app that has a video playing component that uses DirectShow, and the DirectShow apis are replaced with no-ops so that when the user uses my app to play a video nothing happens (i.e. my app is broken), it's because my code was badly written? Give me a break.
"What they SHOULD have done, is force Microsoft to expose APIs to replace this functionality with other browsers."
Why? Those components provide OS API. Are you maintaining that any API should be replaceable by a third party component that provides that same API? This would cause complexity to skyrocket. Particularly to devs. If I make an app that relies on a Windows API, I would now have to test my app against any third party component that the user might have installed that provides its own implementation of said API? This would be absurd and would lead to chaos.
Um, if you know how to use the file system to actually locate the .exes, then just delete them manually. Good grief...
Windows XP has the "Set Program Access and Defaults" control panel that allows the user to set the default web browser, email program, media player, instant message app, and JVM. It also allows the user to fully remove access to the Microsoft versions of those programs. The "Set Program Access and Defaults" control panel is available from the Start menu and available from the "Add or Remove Programs" control panel.
.exes of those programs, go ahead and do it. The problem is that many demanded that the underlying dlls also get removed, which would do damage to the platform because other apps and other parts of the OS rely on the functionality provided by those dlls. Removing DirectShow, for example, would break almost all media players on Windows. It would be similar to removing the QT api from OSX.
As for removing apps altogether, if you want to delete the
Office 12 is going to have publicly spec'ed file formats. This was announced two weeks ago.
;-)
And Office doesn't rely on "hidden" APIs (if you think otherwise, then prove it). Mac Office doesn't rely on hidden apis either.
Last I heard the appeals process was part of this nation's justice system. It's not the fault of Microsoft "whining" that your boy Jackson got slapped down by the appeals court.
The latest version of Windows available for retail is the SP2 version, so the service pack is pre-installed.
"It's crap like this that makes me wonder at the possibility of Apple eating Microsoft's lunch on the OS front."
t ml 1 528). The flaws include a healthy number of buffer overflows and integer overflows.
That's interesting considering that Mac OSX also has security updates released regularly.
http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA05-136A.h
US-CERT, 2005-05-16: "Apple Mac OS X is affected by multiple vulnerabilities" describes the ten vulnerabilities addressed in Apple's most recent security update for Panther (Apple Security Update 2005-005, released last month http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30
LOL
I don't know what's funnier, the degree to which you were thoroughly owned or your sad attempt to spin your way out if it. LOL
You misunderstood the parent's point. Which is that patches are used to *replace* bad code rather than add new code on top of bad code. So if the original size of an app is M and over time 1000 "patches" of size cumulative size N are applied, the size of the app is not (necessarily and nor even likely) M+N. This was to answer the original "point" regarding when an app becomes more "patch" than "content". It's a nonsensical question because the "patch" replaces bad "content" with new "content" rather than adding new code on top of bad "content" in such a way that the bad content remains in place.
and they were released only one year apart. So why would anyone expect a huge adoption rate on the part of businesses that are on 2000? It stands to reason that a business that moved to Windows 2000 wouldn't move to an OS just one year newer that is essentially a UI update. Generally, the businesses that moved to XP were previously on NT4 (and/or Win98).
This article is a waste of time and the only reason it appeared on slashdot was to provide for more Microsoft bashing.
BTW, if slashdot wants to be taken seriously, the people that run this place should consider getting rid of the derrogatory icon used for Windows topics (same goes for the Bill Gates borg icon).
The "corporate" version of XP doesn't have activation (you know, the version that many slashdotters pirate?), so WTH are you talking about?