Are you aware that, with default setup, IE goes via an MSN host to resolve your www.google.com in the address bar? I wonder how long it will be before you get back a 'wouldn't you prefer to use MSN Search?' message.
IE already implements search, by default, via a redirect though an MSN host. They are steadily making it harder to change this default in IE. It is only a matter of time before MS improves the average user's browsing experience by breaking use of search engines not approved by MS.
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.
Is this what you refer to? I do not see anything here that says all software should use this license. RMS may have his views, but whether to use the GPL should depend on its conditions. What people may say in whatever context cannot change what is written in a license (at least under US and UK law).
Over the last few days I have been becoming increasingly concerned as I consider the legal teams involved on the SCO side
Consider that Boies must have been a party to whatever secret agreement MS forged to get out from under the Justice Department suit. What better go between when MS and SCO were dreaming this all up? Also, consider his contacts with the US establishment. Next...
SCO has made no secret in recent months that it hired high-profile attorney David Boies to spearhead its case against IBM, but the company's legal representation in Utah courts is also noteworthy. The company retained Brent O. Hatch and Mark F. James of the law firm Hatch, James & Dodge. Hatch is the son of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a spokesman for SCO confirmed Monday. according to
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1017965.html
Now, consider a scary scenario. What if the CIA and the Pentagon wanted the ability to control more or less every computer in the world? With open source, this would be impossible. However, they could make a sweet deal with MS: fix the courts to eliminate Linux, BSD etc.; create a computer architecture that will mandate use of closed source software with backdoors built in.
In the US of today, I think subverting the legal process is a very real possibility. I think this occurred in the MS v. Justice Department suit. Given the ludicrous US court decisions of the past, there would be no way to prove that this has occurred. There are those who would argue it justified by the enhanced ability it will give the US to ensure freedom and democracy, deal with international terrorism and protect our children.
Do I really believe this is happening? I am not sure, but I really think it may be.
Microsoft innovates nothing, not even underhanded business tactics.
They learned everything from IBM.
This is sort of amusing, but not actually accurate. IBM certainly was a very tough competitor and they certainly made full use of FUD tactics. However, they never deliberately acted in an illegal manner (as MS does regularly). I would even argue that they have always been, for the most part, a pretty ethical (albeit hard nosed) organisation.
Regelous created Massive, the special-effects program behind the colossal battles in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
See for instance http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,56778,00.html
Q: What platforms does Massive run on?
A: Massive runs under Linux and Irix.
Many interesting details at http://www.massivesoftware.com/
Our primary means of revenue is licensing of our source code. The jokes are the only significant value of this source. As events of the last few months have shown, ridicule and laughter are what makes our company great. By shamefully incorporating the jokes into an open source product, IBM has removed the only rational reason why anyone would pay to license our IP. Our copying of large sections of the Linux code into our own products is irrelevent to the discussion because we deliberately removed any good jokes in the process.
To be honest I hope IBM counter-sues and sues Microsoft for being a party to this lawsuit by their blatant money-injection. That must be illegal in some way.
I wish that too, but it will not happen, unless direct collusion can be proven. I doubt it ever will. Remember, MS has the best, most experienced legal team in the business (they need it). There is no way to prove that they gave SCO money to pursue the case, even though that is almost certainly true.
You are right, actually. But be sympathetic. It is true that MS's shenanigans (aided and abetted by the US authorities) are too well understood to be news, but many (most?) of us are a bit emotional about it and need to let off steam.
Is ANYONE suprised by this move ? M$ have also just bought some AV software, umm will they bundle theirs into the OS to drive other people away, its a shot in the dark, and against the DoJ settlement but it might just be true.
I also found their purchase of an AV interesting. They would need a pretty major incentive to enter that business given possible liability issues. What might that incentive be? Well, AV products need low level hooks in Windows that MS may want to restrict (starting with Longhorn) to themselves or other (heavily paying) partners. This would allow them to block development of future products to weaken customer reliance on MS. Even MS cannot block other vendor's AV products without creating one themselves. Paranoid? I do not think so.
What about the larger question of why they are being allowed to ignore the terms of the DOJ settlement? I think all the evidence suggests that there was a secret agreement behind the real settlement. Who was involved in negotiating that agreement? Will future administrations honour it?
20 years from now, a significant percentage of us could suffer from things like back aches and bad eyesight.
Very likely. But the backaches will be much more a function of lack of exercize and being overweight than because of computer use. Eyesight is another matter. There are ways to mitigate damage resulting from continuous monitor use but, whatever one does, there is an undoubted effect.
rather than dumping. IANAL, but I thought most countries had laws that are supposed to prevent the kind of practice alleged here: offering substantial incentives only to a specific competitors customers in an attempt to drive that competitor out of business.
I shall tell you who ought to be next logically. There is a system used by over 90% of desktop PC users that contains capabilities identical to those the RIAA sued the kid over. It's called MS Windows. It allows you to share disks across a network (insofar as the owners permit it) and has a search tool to allow users to search for files using criteria such as name, date modified, size and content.
Now, if the RIAA wanted in one swoop to dramatically improve its public popularity, they have a perfect method. Trouble is, of course, they would have no chance of winning the case although their legal case would be stronger.
And why in the world are you saying that 'the terrorists' won? What the US is becoming is the opposite of what terrorists would want. How could a group of terrorists want us to invade their home countries?
To say the terrorists won is overstating things. However, inducing the US into overreaction is the only way they might ever achieve their goals. Terrorists are rarely happy with the status quo in their own countries. Take the example of Northern Ireland. Did the IRA want the military intervention by the British government in the 1960s? Absolutely. It was only by totally polarising catholic opinion that they were able to gain significant support for their cause.
I believe the same applies today. Saddam Hussain's Iraq was not a supporter of terrorism, except in the case of Israel/Palestine where it allowed him to gain strong support in the Arab world. However, his overthrow did increase militant opposition to the US, even among many who opposed him. What about the terrorists he supported? Are the terrorists in Isreal/Palestine weakened by the overthrow of Saddam Hussain? I do not think so. And the more the Israeli government carries out state sponsored terrorism of its own, the more intractable the situation there becomes.
The final outcome in the battle between militant Islam and the US is unknown. Normally, the terrorists should have little chance. But, by inducing the US to overreact, they have given themselves a longterm chance.
If there is any real accounting irregularity involved here (and I still doubt it based on IBM's track record) I predict that it was without the knowledge of the top management and the board. While IBM can be a real hard nosed competitor, it always acts legally. On the other hand, there must be some reason for this investigation. Come on, where are the expert conspiracy theorists when we need them? Did they fail to pay enough towards the George Bush election fun?
Well, the U.S. is pussyfooting around North Korea. You can take this as evidence that the U.S. believes they have nuclear weapons, or that the U.S. doesn't care about them because they don't have oil, or both, depending on your political persuasion.
All of the above. The U.S. has nothing to gain except a massive headache from an invasion of North Korea. The possibility that they may have functional nuclear weapons is an additional deterrent. North Korea is an economic basketcase, relying for years on remittances from overseas Koreans to prevent total collapse. It is quite unlikely that they could successfully mount a nuclear attack. That said, the possibility cannot be completely excluded. Rightly or wrongly, they believe that a nuclear deterrent is the only way they can prevent a U.S. invasion (I think they are wrong -- as already indicated, there is a strong economic disincentive to such an action). Regardless, development of nuclear weapons is a key priority for the North Korean leadership.
how many corporate (or otherwise) IT admins would actually trust a system that enables someone beyond their control to remotely wipe their hard drive clean?
would you allow the United States to sink into the ocean 500 years after your death in exchange for an ATM card that can remove money from any ATM without taking money from your account.
As long as it does not affect the ATM card, the U.S. can sink into the ocean right now! Is this a trick question?
..people will point to the dire predictions of Y2K problems back in the 20th century and claim the whole issue of an impending asteroid collision is invented by unscrupulous consultants trying to sell their unnecessary services. The question is: will they be right?
Realistically, by then it will be of academic interest as the human race will have succeeded in eliminating every living creature on earth except for cockroaches (and consultants, of course) anyway.
A question that comes to my mind is how much it costs to print a note with all these features and how long the note will last. I can imagine this being cost effective for very high denomination notes, but the cost may be prohibitive on lower denomination notes.
Time was when I would have loved playing with programs like this. I must be getting old, but I guess I'll wait for Microsoft Visual PostScript before getting stuck in!
Slashdot Mirror
but I really would like to know. Has anyone tried these tools under cygwin?
Are you aware that, with default setup, IE goes via an MSN host to resolve your www.google.com in the address bar? I wonder how long it will be before you get back a 'wouldn't you prefer to use MSN Search?' message.
IE already implements search, by default, via a redirect though an MSN host. They are steadily making it harder to change this default in IE. It is only a matter of time before MS improves the average user's browsing experience by breaking use of search engines not approved by MS.
Is this what you refer to? I do not see anything here that says all software should use this license. RMS may have his views, but whether to use the GPL should depend on its conditions. What people may say in whatever context cannot change what is written in a license (at least under US and UK law).
Consider that Boies must have been a party to whatever secret agreement MS forged to get out from under the Justice Department suit. What better go between when MS and SCO were dreaming this all up? Also, consider his contacts with the US establishment. Next...
SCO has made no secret in recent months that it hired high-profile attorney David Boies to spearhead its case against IBM, but the company's legal representation in Utah courts is also noteworthy. The company retained Brent O. Hatch and Mark F. James of the law firm Hatch, James & Dodge. Hatch is the son of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a spokesman for SCO confirmed Monday.
according to http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1017965.html
Now, consider a scary scenario. What if the CIA and the Pentagon wanted the ability to control more or less every computer in the world? With open source, this would be impossible. However, they could make a sweet deal with MS: fix the courts to eliminate Linux, BSD etc.; create a computer architecture that will mandate use of closed source software with backdoors built in.
In the US of today, I think subverting the legal process is a very real possibility. I think this occurred in the MS v. Justice Department suit. Given the ludicrous US court decisions of the past, there would be no way to prove that this has occurred. There are those who would argue it justified by the enhanced ability it will give the US to ensure freedom and democracy, deal with international terrorism and protect our children.
Do I really believe this is happening? I am not sure, but I really think it may be.
This is sort of amusing, but not actually accurate. IBM certainly was a very tough competitor and they certainly made full use of FUD tactics. However, they never deliberately acted in an illegal manner (as MS does regularly). I would even argue that they have always been, for the most part, a pretty ethical (albeit hard nosed) organisation.
See for instance http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,56778,0
Q: What platforms does Massive run on? A: Massive runs under Linux and Irix.
Many interesting details at http://www.massivesoftware.com/
Our primary means of revenue is licensing of our source code. The jokes are the only significant value of this source. As events of the last few months have shown, ridicule and laughter are what makes our company great. By shamefully incorporating the jokes into an open source product, IBM has removed the only rational reason why anyone would pay to license our IP. Our copying of large sections of the Linux code into our own products is irrelevent to the discussion because we deliberately removed any good jokes in the process.
I wish that too, but it will not happen, unless direct collusion can be proven. I doubt it ever will. Remember, MS has the best, most experienced legal team in the business (they need it). There is no way to prove that they gave SCO money to pursue the case, even though that is almost certainly true.
You are right, actually. But be sympathetic. It is true that MS's shenanigans (aided and abetted by the US authorities) are too well understood to be news, but many (most?) of us are a bit emotional about it and need to let off steam.
I also found their purchase of an AV interesting. They would need a pretty major incentive to enter that business given possible liability issues. What might that incentive be? Well, AV products need low level hooks in Windows that MS may want to restrict (starting with Longhorn) to themselves or other (heavily paying) partners. This would allow them to block development of future products to weaken customer reliance on MS. Even MS cannot block other vendor's AV products without creating one themselves. Paranoid? I do not think so.
What about the larger question of why they are being allowed to ignore the terms of the DOJ settlement? I think all the evidence suggests that there was a secret agreement behind the real settlement. Who was involved in negotiating that agreement? Will future administrations honour it?
Very likely. But the backaches will be much more a function of lack of exercize and being overweight than because of computer use. Eyesight is another matter. There are ways to mitigate damage resulting from continuous monitor use but, whatever one does, there is an undoubted effect.
... would this be able to reach Mars?
rather than dumping. IANAL, but I thought most countries had laws that are supposed to prevent the kind of practice alleged here: offering substantial incentives only to a specific competitors customers in an attempt to drive that competitor out of business.
Opera 7.11 -- perfect
Mozilla 1.3.1 -- perfect
Netscape 7.02 -- perfect
IE6 SP1 -- totally broken
No surprises here.
Now, if the RIAA wanted in one swoop to dramatically improve its public popularity, they have a perfect method. Trouble is, of course, they would have no chance of winning the case although their legal case would be stronger.
To say the terrorists won is overstating things. However, inducing the US into overreaction is the only way they might ever achieve their goals. Terrorists are rarely happy with the status quo in their own countries. Take the example of Northern Ireland. Did the IRA want the military intervention by the British government in the 1960s? Absolutely. It was only by totally polarising catholic opinion that they were able to gain significant support for their cause.
I believe the same applies today. Saddam Hussain's Iraq was not a supporter of terrorism, except in the case of Israel/Palestine where it allowed him to gain strong support in the Arab world. However, his overthrow did increase militant opposition to the US, even among many who opposed him. What about the terrorists he supported? Are the terrorists in Isreal/Palestine weakened by the overthrow of Saddam Hussain? I do not think so. And the more the Israeli government carries out state sponsored terrorism of its own, the more intractable the situation there becomes.
The final outcome in the battle between militant Islam and the US is unknown. Normally, the terrorists should have little chance. But, by inducing the US to overreact, they have given themselves a longterm chance.
If there is any real accounting irregularity involved here (and I still doubt it based on IBM's track record) I predict that it was without the knowledge of the top management and the board. While IBM can be a real hard nosed competitor, it always acts legally. On the other hand, there must be some reason for this investigation. Come on, where are the expert conspiracy theorists when we need them? Did they fail to pay enough towards the George Bush election fun?
All of the above. The U.S. has nothing to gain except a massive headache from an invasion of North Korea. The possibility that they may have functional nuclear weapons is an additional deterrent. North Korea is an economic basketcase, relying for years on remittances from overseas Koreans to prevent total collapse. It is quite unlikely that they could successfully mount a nuclear attack. That said, the possibility cannot be completely excluded. Rightly or wrongly, they believe that a nuclear deterrent is the only way they can prevent a U.S. invasion (I think they are wrong -- as already indicated, there is a strong economic disincentive to such an action). Regardless, development of nuclear weapons is a key priority for the North Korean leadership.
I think it's just going to take someone to be loud. Any New Yorkers out there?
Have you read the Microsoft EULA lately?
As long as it does not affect the ATM card, the U.S. can sink into the ocean right now! Is this a trick question?
Realistically, by then it will be of academic interest as the human race will have succeeded in eliminating every living creature on earth except for cockroaches (and consultants, of course) anyway.
A question that comes to my mind is how much it costs to print a note with all these features and how long the note will last. I can imagine this being cost effective for very high denomination notes, but the cost may be prohibitive on lower denomination notes.
Time was when I would have loved playing with programs like this. I must be getting old, but I guess I'll wait for Microsoft Visual PostScript before getting stuck in!