A not guilty verdict simply means that the state failed to prove that defendant was guilty. It does not mean that the person is innocent, just that guilt was not proven, i.e., "not guilty".
This is 100% incorrect. You ARE presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. ipso facto, a not guilty verdict means you remain innocent of the crime you were accused of, and cannot be retried for the same offence.
Of course, new evidence may come to light, and you may eventually be found guilty of a different crime in the same incident;
but the fact remains that not guilty == innocent of the crime you're accused of.
Try explaining to any person why they can't use their computer to do something they want to. In the end, computers are not being licensed to their owners, and the owners will not settle for being treated like they are.
People are already treated like sheep by corporations like microsoft. When something doesn't work or crashes, the customers blame themselves for not doing it right.
When the music industry tells them that their DRM 'protected' plastic disk won't play because their in-car CD player doesn't adhere to the new 'standards', they believe them and blame their car maker.
When their browser allows popups to saturate their 'net experience, and their email client allows their computer to be infected by viruses, they blame themselves for not having a virus checker, or they blame those damn script kids for writing them, they do not blame their browser and email-software writer; or worse, just accept that 'that's how computers are'.
When their bank tells them they HAVE to run windows bighorn in order to access their account online, when they buy music they're told they MUST use DRM-enhanced media player or itunes, when they go shopping and are told they HAVE to use Secure Internet Explorer -
They will do what they're told, and use what's provided by their OEM, as they always, always do. And the few who want to access those services without paying apple or microsoft will be screwed.
I had 4 technicians from Cox over at my house yesturday because my parents couldn't figure out what was wrong with the cable modem. They were the most filthy, disgusting bunch I have ever seen and were dressed more like gas station attendants than professionals. Why? because that sort of work has become blue-collar and low-rent.
And you know WHY service technicians prefer to wear overalls rather than a suit? Same reason that plumbers do, they have to crawl around in your crap.
I used to work in the field, and believe me, a lot of people NEVER clean under their desks. So you're lying on your back in the dark checking the cabling, amongst the dust if you're lucky, the food debris and dead insects if your unlucky, amongst live insects if you're very unlucky.
Or there were the times you were squeezed behind the server cabinet, in with the cabling, and for some reason, there was always something sticking out slathered in grease.
I did wear a shirt and tie, because it was company policy, but it was a rare week when i didn't end up with at least one ripped shirt at the end of it. Not least because when you spend a lot of the day with your hands inside sharp metal cases, you slice up your fingers and your cuffs. And whoever thought working on live cases with spinning fans and electricity was a good place to wear a tie ought to be shot.
Cable/telecoms engineers have it even worse. They spend a large part of their day up poles or in cable maintentence shafts or even manholes for underground fibre.
So next time, try and judge your engineer by the quality of the work he does, rather than the clothes he has to wear going places that don't get cleaned by the maid.
I've just finished setting up an ICH5R based sata raid board.
Basically, there's an intel kernel patch to allow you to use the mainboards raid functions, but it's only available for the 2.4 series.
This is of use if you're dual-booting windows, and using the built in raid config (it's still software raid, as you need the driver support in windows, it just hands a bit of the work off to hardware)
If you're running a linux-only system, you can use the generic software raid (the md stuff) and it's supposedly faster than using the built in anyway.
Technically, you're right, in that 'media-shifting' or otherwise private copying is not included amongst our enumerated fair dealing rights, only 'time-shifting' for later use.
That said, transient or otherwise ephemeral copies which are required to actually use the content you're purchased are allowed, so it's arguable that in order to listen to the music on the device of your choice, in this case an iriver, you need to make a transient copy to mp3 in order to actually use the product, and thus are within your rights.
Making a CD-CD copy to stick in your car, so it doesn't matter if it gets scratched is definitely illegal though. CD-tape you might get away with under the law though...
I suspect though, the music companies are much happier corrupting CD's away from the red book standard, thus removing our ability to listen to said CD in whatever device we like, when we like - this back door method is far simpler for them than trying to prosecute the hardware companies in a court case they'd likely lose (see tape record buttons on radios and VCR's). Oh, and DRM'ing legal downloads to the hilt while they're at it.
Fortunately on the paranoia side, copyright infringement is primarily a civil matter, (you need to be in the big leagues before they hit you with criminal penalties) thus the CPS wouldn't prosecute you, the BPI (UK equivalent of the RIAA) would have to. Avoiding your taxes is a much more serious offence in the eyes of HMGov... until the newest bit of euro legislation gets drafted for the UK, anyway, at which point it doesn't matter if you're al copone or his neighbour's little daughter downloading britney, you can be hit with same criminal penalties, search and seizure, etc etc.
OD2 are the largest european online distributer, with at least some tracks from all the 'big 4' labels. They sell in germany through a number of resellers, or branded versions.
They're primarily a WMP9 shop, but I believe at least some of the resellers use mp3's, which should work on your ipod.
iTunes itself is coming to europe, in theory the first half of this year; but it's anyone's guess as to when they'll actually launch.
Personally speaking, I prefer to still buy CD's, as I get to choose the rip quality (high quality ogg's for my PC, 128vbr mp3 for my flash mp3 player).
I just refuse to buy the corrupt disks, and stick to the smaller labels, especially the indie's. If you do want to import (cheap) CD's, I can personally recommend CDBaby for non-label music, and cd-wow are insanely cheap for more well known artists.
It does indeed; but it uses winbind, including pam_winbind (both part of the samba project I believe)
It just does it automagically, after asking a couple of questions at install iirc.
Any distro can enable that, it's simply a case of adding winbind to nsswitch.conf
and auth sufficient/lib/security/pam_winbind.so account sufficient/lib/security/pam_winbind.so
to your pam.d auth files (gentoo links to system-auth for most services, so I just modified that in my case)
Modify your smb.conf to use your domain server, and bingo, you can treat domain users and groups as local accounts for everything!
http://home.t-online.de/home/c.ehbrecht/WebWiki/ Sa mbaWinBind.html should get you started.
Samba is the stable, older project; samba-tng is the fork doing much more radical redesign work, so has some different extra features, but I hear is more prone to breaking stuff.
1) speak to him when you're not pissed off with him. Try and speak to him quietly away from colleagues, and he may be more receptive. Politely ask him to bear in mind it's distracting you. Try and get some of your other colleagues to speak to him independantly. Doesn't sound like it'll work, but it's worth a shot.
2) speak to your supervisor. Point out he's is impacting your ability to work. It doesn't sound like you get on with him anyway, so it's not like carpeting him up will make your relationship much worse. Suggest rearranging the seating so he doesn't have to yell across the room to his buddy.
3) If your supervisor is unwilling to deal with him, then you should do what he suggested; listen to music. On big ass speakers. With the bass turned up. Everytime he starts jabbering, turn the volume up a few notches. He'll soon get the message.
Just make sure you've brought the problem up with your boss beforehand, because a) it's your boss' job to sort these problems out and b) it could well be your ass on the line if you haven't already made a complaint beforehand, especially in writing.
I received a new flash mp3 player and I bought a set of the MDR-EX71SL's to go with to replace my aging pair of 'buds.
I must admit, they're absolutely great at blocking out external sound, meaning lower volume's needed, and they're pretty comfortable to boot.
They stay on nicely too, given that they sit that bit deeper in the ear, far better than the freebie pair of clip-behind-the-ear I got with the player.
The very short lead, but with included long extension lead is a little annoying, as I rarely have the player that close to my ears, but I can see it being useful if you prefer to have the player in your breast pocket rather than at your hip, or if you're using it with a remote.
If you're after a pair in the UK, I got mine at curry's, but they're a fair bit cheaper on amazon...
I'm very torn on this issue. I'm no fan of MS. But at the same time, where do you draw the line and say, "you can integrate this into the OS, but you can't integrate that." What should be allowable and what shouldn't? Who should decide? This is not much different from the case brought years ago about the integration of the web browser. What about MS Paint? What about WordPad? And games?
The solution is simple. Including $APP as an optional install is not illegal.
Making $APP impossible to remove, making it take back the default position after security upgrades, bullying OEM vendors to not include $COMPETITOR_APP, deliberately making it hard for $COMPETITOR_APP to work on your OS, making all your OTHER_APPS dependent upon $APP,;
those steps are illegal, if you're doing it from a monopoly position.
If microsoft had a 25% market share, it would not be illegal. If microsoft makes such apps unnstallable, or even better, not installed by default, it would not be illegal.
Microsoft lost the browser case, it's just a change in the US government meant the penalties they were to suffer for the illegal acts were much reduced.
The problem comes when a) you have a monopoly b) AND you use that monopoly to gain a monopoly in another market
If you think about it, preventing one company from using it's position in one market to overwhelm other markets is defending free market capitalism, not destroying it.
Customers benefit from having a choice, as it forces vendors to compete on their merits, not just the fact that they are only vendor in town.
No, they don't. The majority do, and that's the important difference.
If windows media player, or more specifically, the microsoft codecs, were open and available for anybody to implement it wouldn't be a problem.
As it is, you have to be using windows, or microsoft's neutered media player on macs (which doesn't support the WM9 codecs IIRC).
Thus, they're leverging their desktop monopoly to gain a monopoly in another area.
If you want to be truly available to everyone, pick the very widely implemented mpeg-based codecs. I won't recommend ogg theora, as I hear it's still a bit sucky for video streaming, but in a year or two, that should provide a very nice royalty-free streaming solution, as ogg does now.
Otherwise, when microsoft DO get a codec monopoly, I can guarantee you won't like the DRM hoops you'll have to jump through to still publish your content.
You're right, it's not. Neither is a 3D engine (DirectX), a browser, an email client, a remote desktop protocol and program, a backup tool, a disk defragmenter, a paint program, a text editor, a solitaire game, a file zipper, and all those nice device and database (ODBC) drivers really aren't part of the OS either - after all, it's not like Microsoft makes most of the stuff that requires those drivers.
Well, I for one would like to remove the browser, the 3D engine, the email program, the solitaire and the media player from my server, cos you know, I'd rather not have the security holes and bloat.
Actually, while we're on the topic, I wouldn't mind removing them and replacing them on my desktop too as I have better alternatives. In fact, could I slim my desktop right down to select ONLY the components I need, instead of the components Bill Gates tells me I need?
Oh what, you mean I can't uninstall them any more because they are 'essential to the OS?' Oh well, guess I'll have to put up with the security holes and bloat then.
...5 years later...
Yes, I'd like to watch this video on the 'net on my non-microsoft media player please. Oh, you mean I can't because microsoft made their closed media player and closed codecs the impossible to remove default, thus using their 90% market share to illegally leverage a monopoly in another market? Thus meaning that major sites don't bother to support anything else (as there aren't any major competitors left in business any more) meaning I can no longer watch videos or listen to music, or watch DVD's unless I own a copy of windows bighorn??
So you think this won't happen? Well, look what happened to the browser market when microsoft did the same thing, and how many people cater for IE only.
In fact, look at how many people use directx instead of opengl, and look how many people are now using msn messenger rather than the alternatives they used to, like icq.
If microsoft want to make such things available as a download on their site, or as an optional install on the CD, fine. Let them compete on a level playing field with the other vendors. Make sure they don't force OEM's to not include their competitors, while you're at it.
It's when they use their desktop OS monopoly to give themselves an undeserved monopoly in other areas, such as directx, msn messenger, browsers, email clients and media codecs (all of which should be OPTIONAL) that is illegal. Of course, there aren't many competitors left in those areas able or willing to fight back...
(please ignore the previous one, missed the preview button!)
but I can tell you that despite the bad practices of printer manufacturers, using third party stuff could void your warranty.
That's flat out untrue, despite printer manufacturers' attempts to the contrary.
The only situation under which they are not required to support you under warranty is when the fault is actually IN the third party component.
Of course, this means that whenever a repair technician comes out, they will invariably diagnose the fault to be the cause of the third-party component, as you discovered, even when it's something else entirely.
Of course the ink is patented; but it's still just basic ink, and any reputable supplier will make stuff as good as, or better, than the original manufacturer.
My personal advice is to replace any third party toner with some near-empty-but-some-left cartridges before they come to visit. You'll find the number of times your tech blames the problem on your cartridges way down.
Failing that, when you suspect the problem is nothing to do with the toner, (i.e. it's anything other than a splotchy print issue)
write to to their legal department pointing out that you feel they have invalidated your warranty illegally. Threaten to take it up with trading standards or whoever else is responsible for business standards in your neck of the woods.
Kick up a fuss, and there's a fair chance they'll fold. If they don't, then it's probably not worth the legal costs to chase it. Just let that inform your business decisions in future, and let the orginial company know that's why you're no longer purchasing from them.
but I can tell you that despite the bad practices of printer manufacturers, using third party stuff could void your warranty.
That's flat out untrue, despite printer manufacturers' attempts to the contrary.
The only situation under which they are not required to support you under warranty is when the fault is actually IN the third party component.
Of course, this means that whenever a repair technician comes out, they will invariably diagnose the fault to be the cause of the third-party component, as you discovered, even when it's something else entirely.
Of course the ink is patented; but it's still just basic ink, and any reputable supplier will make stuff as good as, or better, than the original manufacturer.
My personal advice is to replace any third party toner with some near-empty-but-some-left cartridges before they come to visit. You'll find the number of times your tech blames the problem on your cartridges way down.
Failing that, when you suspect the problem is nothing to do with the toner, (i.e. it's anything other than a splotchy print issue)
write to to their legal department pointing out that you feel they have invalidated your warranty illegally. Threaten to take it up with trading standards or whoever else is responsible for business standards in your neck of the woods.
Kick up a fuss, and there's a fair chance they'll fold. If they don't, then it's probably not worth the legal costs to chase it. Just let that inform your business decisions in future, and let the orginial company know that's why you're no longer purchasing from them.
What if I DONT want BBC....WHY can't I watch any other channels or operate the TV without a license?
[rhetorical]
Why can't I opt out of that part of my taxes that goes to pay for social security for single mothers? Or public transport? Or NHS hip operations for grannies or any of the other 101 things I don't *personally* use?
[/rhetorical]
Because the purpose of general taxation is that we *all* pay for things considered to be in the public good, regardless of whether we actually benefit directly from them.
Be it roads, the military, health and social services, or a non-commercial public television, radio, news and education corporation like the BBC.
Personally, I think the licence fee is too high, and the methods of enforcement too strong - but I regularly listen to BBC radio if nothing else, and don't begrudge them money any more than I begrudge my money going on the health service. Hell, my local council stiff me for FAR more money than the TV licence, for far less apparent benefit....
1) bleeding edge releases. When I want to run the latest version of anything, there's almost always an ebuild available within hours. With the big releases like kde 3.2 recently, the ebuilds were ready well ahead of time. Even if it's an obscure package, and hasn't been updated yet, it's usually just a case of copy the current foo-1.2.ebuild to foo-1.3.ebuild, emerge, and it'll upgrade, stick it in package list for future upgrades etc.
Really beats waiting weeks or months for official distro binaries (i'm looking at you, SuSE, RedHat and debian) or trying to do it by hand from source and having to work out all the minor tweaks to make it fit with the distro's oddities of location.
2) The portage tree has two major advantages over the binary distros I've tried previously. First, it's trivial to uninstall software. I've lost count of how many times I ended up trying to remove something, and leaving half of it behind. Gentoo, unmerge something, it's gone. For example, I tried XFCE a while back, didn't like it. Not a trace left on my system now.
The second advantage of portage is that you never have to wipe the system and reinstall. (unless you rm -rf * by accident!) Trying to do a major stage upgrade on binary distros is a nightmare, several times I toasted my machine just doing a point release upgrade. With gentoo, just emerge sync, emerge -uDp world, and you'll have the latest of everything.
3) Finally, there's one thing that really, really puts gentoo head and shoulders above the rest. The forums. You won't meet a more helpful or polite or friendly bunch of fellow users on any other linux forum, bar none. Every time I've had a problem, someone's already posted the solution to the forums, or at least a work around while people find a solution. Seriously, forums.gentoo.org is the distro's biggest strength of all in my book.
And to answer my own question, apparently there's atomic oxygen in noticeable quantities in LEO's such as the ISS is in. You learn something every day.
The first thing is pick a kernel;
development-sources or mm-sources are the vanilla 2.6 kernel and one of the more expermental patch-sets respectively. Love sources ebuilds are also in the forums, and some people swear by them. Initially, I'd go for development-sources.
Without repeating everything in the forums guide, you'll need to emerge module-init-tools, and re-emerge the nvidia-kernel ebuild. You shouldn't need to recompile much else. You also can unmerge the alsa-drivers ebuild, as the drivers are built into the 2.6 kernel.
I upgraded to the 2.6 kernel back when it hit release candidate status, and it really is worth the upgrade for a desktop, the scheduler improvements mean my CPU is at 100% compiling right now, and has no visible impact to posting this, or to xmms in the background!
Not running any heavy cpu load servers, i've been in no rush to migrate them yet, but the couple I've migrated so far have been as stable as the 2.4 series.
Office 97, 2000 and XP all use the same file format, and can interchange documents seemlessly. Thus Word '97 support is defacto 2000 and XP support also.
The big changes were 95 to 97, and XP to 2003 (XML).
The one exception was Access, which changed it's database structure between 97 and 2000.
Nah, it's Colin Pilinger's secret plan. He's intercepted the communications link to the spirit rover, and is driving it at full speed to rescue Beagle 2!
Slashdot Mirror
*shrug* oddball driver issues. Every platform has a few.
This is 100% incorrect. You ARE presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. ipso facto, a not guilty verdict means you remain innocent of the crime you were accused of, and cannot be retried for the same offence.
Of course, new evidence may come to light, and you may eventually be found guilty of a different crime in the same incident; but the fact remains that not guilty == innocent of the crime you're accused of.
People are already treated like sheep by corporations like microsoft. When something doesn't work or crashes, the customers blame themselves for not doing it right.
When the music industry tells them that their DRM 'protected' plastic disk won't play because their in-car CD player doesn't adhere to the new 'standards', they believe them and blame their car maker.
When their browser allows popups to saturate their 'net experience, and their email client allows their computer to be infected by viruses, they blame themselves for not having a virus checker, or they blame those damn script kids for writing them, they do not blame their browser and email-software writer; or worse, just accept that 'that's how computers are'.
When their bank tells them they HAVE to run windows bighorn in order to access their account online, when they buy music they're told they MUST use DRM-enhanced media player or itunes, when they go shopping and are told they HAVE to use Secure Internet Explorer -
They will do what they're told, and use what's provided by their OEM, as they always, always do. And the few who want to access those services without paying apple or microsoft will be screwed.
In effect, objections were so numerous that they gave up, went away, and have now come back with a lot more friends to have another go.
And you know WHY service technicians prefer to wear overalls rather than a suit? Same reason that plumbers do, they have to crawl around in your crap.
I used to work in the field, and believe me, a lot of people NEVER clean under their desks. So you're lying on your back in the dark checking the cabling, amongst the dust if you're lucky, the food debris and dead insects if your unlucky, amongst live insects if you're very unlucky.
Or there were the times you were squeezed behind the server cabinet, in with the cabling, and for some reason, there was always something sticking out slathered in grease.
I did wear a shirt and tie, because it was company policy, but it was a rare week when i didn't end up with at least one ripped shirt at the end of it. Not least because when you spend a lot of the day with your hands inside sharp metal cases, you slice up your fingers and your cuffs. And whoever thought working on live cases with spinning fans and electricity was a good place to wear a tie ought to be shot.
Cable/telecoms engineers have it even worse. They spend a large part of their day up poles or in cable maintentence shafts or even manholes for underground fibre.
So next time, try and judge your engineer by the quality of the work he does, rather than the clothes he has to wear going places that don't get cleaned by the maid.
And hardware firewalls are SOOO practical when you're on a laptop with dialup.
I've just finished setting up an ICH5R based sata raid board.
Basically, there's an intel kernel patch to allow you to use the mainboards raid functions, but it's only available for the 2.4 series.
This is of use if you're dual-booting windows, and using the built in raid config (it's still software raid, as you need the driver support in windows, it just hands a bit of the work off to hardware)
If you're running a linux-only system, you can use the generic software raid (the md stuff) and it's supposedly faster than using the built in anyway.
Technically, you're right, in that 'media-shifting' or otherwise private copying is not included amongst our enumerated fair dealing rights, only 'time-shifting' for later use.
That said, transient or otherwise ephemeral copies which are required to actually use the content you're purchased are allowed, so it's arguable that in order to listen to the music on the device of your choice, in this case an iriver, you need to make a transient copy to mp3 in order to actually use the product, and thus are within your rights.
Making a CD-CD copy to stick in your car, so it doesn't matter if it gets scratched is definitely illegal though. CD-tape you might get away with under the law though...
I suspect though, the music companies are much happier corrupting CD's away from the red book standard, thus removing our ability to listen to said CD in whatever device we like, when we like - this back door method is far simpler for them than trying to prosecute the hardware companies in a court case they'd likely lose (see tape record buttons on radios and VCR's). Oh, and DRM'ing legal downloads to the hilt while they're at it.
Fortunately on the paranoia side, copyright infringement is primarily a civil matter, (you need to be in the big leagues before they hit you with criminal penalties) thus the CPS wouldn't prosecute you, the BPI (UK equivalent of the RIAA) would have to. Avoiding your taxes is a much more serious offence in the eyes of HMGov... until the newest bit of euro legislation gets drafted for the UK, anyway, at which point it doesn't matter if you're al copone or his neighbour's little daughter downloading britney, you can be hit with same criminal penalties, search and seizure, etc etc.
They're primarily a WMP9 shop, but I believe at least some of the resellers use mp3's, which should work on your ipod.
iTunes itself is coming to europe, in theory the first half of this year; but it's anyone's guess as to when they'll actually launch.
Personally speaking, I prefer to still buy CD's, as I get to choose the rip quality (high quality ogg's for my PC, 128vbr mp3 for my flash mp3 player).
I just refuse to buy the corrupt disks, and stick to the smaller labels, especially the indie's. If you do want to import (cheap) CD's, I can personally recommend CDBaby for non-label music, and cd-wow are insanely cheap for more well known artists.
Well, the dependecy checker is still cli only (coloured though!)
For managing your use flags, you can use 'ufed', an ncurses list of all the available use flags, what they do, allowing you to select/deselect them.
It does indeed; but it uses winbind, including pam_winbind (both part of the samba project I believe)
/lib/security/pam_winbind.so /lib/security/pam_winbind.so
/ Sa mbaWinBind.html
It just does it automagically, after asking a couple of questions at install iirc.
Any distro can enable that, it's simply a case of adding winbind to nsswitch.conf
and
auth sufficient
account sufficient
to your pam.d auth files (gentoo links to system-auth for most services, so I just modified that in my case)
Modify your smb.conf to use your domain server, and bingo, you can treat domain users and groups as local accounts for everything!
http://home.t-online.de/home/c.ehbrecht/WebWiki
should get you started.
Samba is the stable, older project; samba-tng is the fork doing much more radical redesign work, so has some different extra features, but I hear is more prone to breaking stuff.
Here's a couple of possible solutions -
1) speak to him when you're not pissed off with him. Try and speak to him quietly away from colleagues, and he may be more receptive. Politely ask him to bear in mind it's distracting you. Try and get some of your other colleagues to speak to him independantly. Doesn't sound like it'll work, but it's worth a shot.
2) speak to your supervisor. Point out he's is impacting your ability to work. It doesn't sound like you get on with him anyway, so it's not like carpeting him up will make your relationship much worse. Suggest rearranging the seating so he doesn't have to yell across the room to his buddy.
3) If your supervisor is unwilling to deal with him, then you should do what he suggested; listen to music. On big ass speakers. With the bass turned up. Everytime he starts jabbering, turn the volume up a few notches. He'll soon get the message.
Just make sure you've brought the problem up with your boss beforehand, because a) it's your boss' job to sort these problems out and b) it could well be your ass on the line if you haven't already made a complaint beforehand, especially in writing.
I received a new flash mp3 player and I bought a set of the MDR-EX71SL's to go with to replace my aging pair of 'buds.
I must admit, they're absolutely great at blocking out external sound, meaning lower volume's needed, and they're pretty comfortable to boot.
They stay on nicely too, given that they sit that bit deeper in the ear, far better than the freebie pair of clip-behind-the-ear I got with the player.
The very short lead, but with included long extension lead is a little annoying, as I rarely have the player that close to my ears, but I can see it being useful if you prefer to have the player in your breast pocket rather than at your hip, or if you're using it with a remote.
If you're after a pair in the UK, I got mine at curry's, but they're a fair bit cheaper on amazon...
I'm very torn on this issue. I'm no fan of MS. But at the same time, where do you draw the line and say, "you can integrate this into the OS, but you can't integrate that." What should be allowable and what shouldn't? Who should decide? This is not much different from the case brought years ago about the integration of the web browser. What about MS Paint? What about WordPad? And games?
;
The solution is simple. Including $APP as an optional install is not illegal.
Making $APP impossible to remove, making it take back the default position after security upgrades, bullying OEM vendors to not include $COMPETITOR_APP, deliberately making it hard for $COMPETITOR_APP to work on your OS, making all your OTHER_APPS dependent upon $APP,
those steps are illegal, if you're doing it from a monopoly position.
If microsoft had a 25% market share, it would not be illegal. If microsoft makes such apps unnstallable, or even better, not installed by default, it would not be illegal.
Microsoft lost the browser case, it's just a change in the US government meant the penalties they were to suffer for the illegal acts were much reduced.
The problem comes when
a) you have a monopoly
b) AND you use that monopoly to gain a monopoly in another market
If you think about it, preventing one company from using it's position in one market to overwhelm other markets is defending free market capitalism, not destroying it.
Customers benefit from having a choice, as it forces vendors to compete on their merits, not just the fact that they are only vendor in town.
Everybody has it
No, they don't. The majority do, and that's the important difference.
If windows media player, or more specifically, the microsoft codecs, were open and available for anybody to implement it wouldn't be a problem.
As it is, you have to be using windows, or microsoft's neutered media player on macs (which doesn't support the WM9 codecs IIRC).
Thus, they're leverging their desktop monopoly to gain a monopoly in another area.
If you want to be truly available to everyone, pick the very widely implemented mpeg-based codecs. I won't recommend ogg theora, as I hear it's still a bit sucky for video streaming, but in a year or two, that should provide a very nice royalty-free streaming solution, as ogg does now.
Otherwise, when microsoft DO get a codec monopoly, I can guarantee you won't like the DRM hoops you'll have to jump through to still publish your content.
Well, I for one would like to remove the browser, the 3D engine, the email program, the solitaire and the media player from my server, cos you know, I'd rather not have the security holes and bloat.
Actually, while we're on the topic, I wouldn't mind removing them and replacing them on my desktop too as I have better alternatives. In fact, could I slim my desktop right down to select ONLY the components I need, instead of the components Bill Gates tells me I need?
Oh what, you mean I can't uninstall them any more because they are 'essential to the OS?' Oh well, guess I'll have to put up with the security holes and bloat then.
Yes, I'd like to watch this video on the 'net on my non-microsoft media player please. Oh, you mean I can't because microsoft made their closed media player and closed codecs the impossible to remove default, thus using their 90% market share to illegally leverage a monopoly in another market? Thus meaning that major sites don't bother to support anything else (as there aren't any major competitors left in business any more) meaning I can no longer watch videos or listen to music, or watch DVD's unless I own a copy of windows bighorn??
So you think this won't happen? Well, look what happened to the browser market when microsoft did the same thing, and how many people cater for IE only.
In fact, look at how many people use directx instead of opengl, and look how many people are now using msn messenger rather than the alternatives they used to, like icq.
If microsoft want to make such things available as a download on their site, or as an optional install on the CD, fine. Let them compete on a level playing field with the other vendors. Make sure they don't force OEM's to not include their competitors, while you're at it.
It's when they use their desktop OS monopoly to give themselves an undeserved monopoly in other areas, such as directx, msn messenger, browsers, email clients and media codecs (all of which should be OPTIONAL) that is illegal. Of course, there aren't many competitors left in those areas able or willing to fight back...
(please ignore the previous one, missed the preview button!) but I can tell you that despite the bad practices of printer manufacturers, using third party stuff could void your warranty. That's flat out untrue, despite printer manufacturers' attempts to the contrary. The only situation under which they are not required to support you under warranty is when the fault is actually IN the third party component. Of course, this means that whenever a repair technician comes out, they will invariably diagnose the fault to be the cause of the third-party component, as you discovered, even when it's something else entirely. Of course the ink is patented; but it's still just basic ink, and any reputable supplier will make stuff as good as, or better, than the original manufacturer. My personal advice is to replace any third party toner with some near-empty-but-some-left cartridges before they come to visit. You'll find the number of times your tech blames the problem on your cartridges way down. Failing that, when you suspect the problem is nothing to do with the toner, (i.e. it's anything other than a splotchy print issue) write to to their legal department pointing out that you feel they have invalidated your warranty illegally. Threaten to take it up with trading standards or whoever else is responsible for business standards in your neck of the woods. Kick up a fuss, and there's a fair chance they'll fold. If they don't, then it's probably not worth the legal costs to chase it. Just let that inform your business decisions in future, and let the orginial company know that's why you're no longer purchasing from them.
but I can tell you that despite the bad practices of printer manufacturers, using third party stuff could void your warranty. That's flat out untrue, despite printer manufacturers' attempts to the contrary. The only situation under which they are not required to support you under warranty is when the fault is actually IN the third party component. Of course, this means that whenever a repair technician comes out, they will invariably diagnose the fault to be the cause of the third-party component, as you discovered, even when it's something else entirely. Of course the ink is patented; but it's still just basic ink, and any reputable supplier will make stuff as good as, or better, than the original manufacturer. My personal advice is to replace any third party toner with some near-empty-but-some-left cartridges before they come to visit. You'll find the number of times your tech blames the problem on your cartridges way down. Failing that, when you suspect the problem is nothing to do with the toner, (i.e. it's anything other than a splotchy print issue) write to to their legal department pointing out that you feel they have invalidated your warranty illegally. Threaten to take it up with trading standards or whoever else is responsible for business standards in your neck of the woods. Kick up a fuss, and there's a fair chance they'll fold. If they don't, then it's probably not worth the legal costs to chase it. Just let that inform your business decisions in future, and let the orginial company know that's why you're no longer purchasing from them.
What if I DONT want BBC....WHY can't I watch any other channels or operate the TV without a license? [rhetorical] Why can't I opt out of that part of my taxes that goes to pay for social security for single mothers? Or public transport? Or NHS hip operations for grannies or any of the other 101 things I don't *personally* use? [/rhetorical] Because the purpose of general taxation is that we *all* pay for things considered to be in the public good, regardless of whether we actually benefit directly from them. Be it roads, the military, health and social services, or a non-commercial public television, radio, news and education corporation like the BBC. Personally, I think the licence fee is too high, and the methods of enforcement too strong - but I regularly listen to BBC radio if nothing else, and don't begrudge them money any more than I begrudge my money going on the health service. Hell, my local council stiff me for FAR more money than the TV licence, for far less apparent benefit....
I run it for three reasons:
1) bleeding edge releases. When I want to run the latest version of anything, there's almost always an ebuild available within hours. With the big releases like kde 3.2 recently, the ebuilds were ready well ahead of time. Even if it's an obscure package, and hasn't been updated yet, it's usually just a case of copy the current foo-1.2.ebuild to foo-1.3.ebuild, emerge, and it'll upgrade, stick it in package list for future upgrades etc.
Really beats waiting weeks or months for official distro binaries (i'm looking at you, SuSE, RedHat and debian) or trying to do it by hand from source and having to work out all the minor tweaks to make it fit with the distro's oddities of location.
2) The portage tree has two major advantages over the binary distros I've tried previously. First, it's trivial to uninstall software. I've lost count of how many times I ended up trying to remove something, and leaving half of it behind. Gentoo, unmerge something, it's gone. For example, I tried XFCE a while back, didn't like it. Not a trace left on my system now.
The second advantage of portage is that you never have to wipe the system and reinstall. (unless you rm -rf * by accident!) Trying to do a major stage upgrade on binary distros is a nightmare, several times I toasted my machine just doing a point release upgrade. With gentoo, just emerge sync, emerge -uDp world, and you'll have the latest of everything.
3) Finally, there's one thing that really, really puts gentoo head and shoulders above the rest. The forums. You won't meet a more helpful or polite or friendly bunch of fellow users on any other linux forum, bar none. Every time I've had a problem, someone's already posted the solution to the forums, or at least a work around while people find a solution. Seriously, forums.gentoo.org is the distro's biggest strength of all in my book.
And to answer my own question, apparently there's atomic oxygen in noticeable quantities in LEO's such as the ISS is in. You learn something every day.
I'm intruiged. How can there be air resistance in LEO? I know it's not a perfect vacuum up there, but still...
The first thing is pick a kernel; development-sources or mm-sources are the vanilla 2.6 kernel and one of the more expermental patch-sets respectively. Love sources ebuilds are also in the forums, and some people swear by them. Initially, I'd go for development-sources.
Without repeating everything in the forums guide, you'll need to emerge module-init-tools, and re-emerge the nvidia-kernel ebuild. You shouldn't need to recompile much else. You also can unmerge the alsa-drivers ebuild, as the drivers are built into the 2.6 kernel.
I upgraded to the 2.6 kernel back when it hit release candidate status, and it really is worth the upgrade for a desktop, the scheduler improvements mean my CPU is at 100% compiling right now, and has no visible impact to posting this, or to xmms in the background!
Not running any heavy cpu load servers, i've been in no rush to migrate them yet, but the couple I've migrated so far have been as stable as the 2.4 series.
Office 97, 2000 and XP all use the same file format, and can interchange documents seemlessly. Thus Word '97 support is defacto 2000 and XP support also.
The big changes were 95 to 97, and XP to 2003 (XML).
The one exception was Access, which changed it's database structure between 97 and 2000.
Nah, it's Colin Pilinger's secret plan. He's intercepted the communications link to the spirit rover, and is driving it at full speed to rescue Beagle 2!