Botnets became a problem as full-time internet access by unsophisticated home users became more ubiquitous, and Windows was the primary target because it was the main OS used by the targeted users
M$ marketing historical revisionism. M$ was irresponsible enough to put a totally unprotected OS onto the wider net. Most early viruses were not social engineered. M$ should've been sued. They only got away with it because of lying marketers covering up. Only with NT did they even start doing any security at all and only with XPSP2 did they actually start doing anything real and start catching up to Unix standards that had been in accepted practice 30 years before.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion.
That's classic, coming from somebody who should know that the larger the corporation the more creative the accounting is likely to be, particularly in ill-defined areas like software, research, marketing or drugs.
As just one example according to the web site MSR has 700 employees worldwide. Lets say they cost an average of USD275,000 each per annum or $200 million total per annum or $50 million per quarter. That leaves $1.750 billion of the quoted figure (97%) unaccounted for. I'd say quotes were entirely justified.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
All you've described is a seal of approval. Redefining publishers to that limited and very low cost role might be reasonable however it can equally be done by more general internet friend and acquaintance networks (e.g. stumbleupon etc.), as long as those networks have not been too compromised by fraudulent astroturfers.
---
Windows and closed source software. The US intelligence agencies back door to every network connected country and business on earth.
A) A phone book did not have on-line information in 1996
Blah blah blah, on the internet.
B) A phone book is not connected to a computer network.
Blah blah blah, on the internet.
C) A phone book does not duplicate items into different regions.
Duplicate = caching, on the internet.
D) This is definately not a software patent. Claim 1 clearly states that they are patenting a sytem comprising a network and a organizer (server).
Putting a specific piece of software on a general purpose computer is not a software patent?!
You can get a patent on a system running software, just not on the software itself. A CD or hard disk with the code is also patentable.
Not a software patent only in the PTO's twisted world.
I'm not saying this was novel at the time, but it most certaintly was not anticipated by a phone book.
Of course it was. All you've proven is that the PTO is incompetent at recognizing at whether something is truly innovative and deserving of protection; whether the innovative elements of an idea are the same of different. Automating pretty much any well codified real world process on a computer/the internet is obvious.
Just remember, to reject a claim, you need a document published before the filing of the application which teaches every limitation, or, multiple documents which when combined, teach the limitations and explicit motivation (known at the time of filing) for doing so.
Please don't confuse the PTO's self serving hand waving with the real world. An invention is little to do with a patent. Those of us who create "intellectual property" every day know that the emperor has no clothes.
Most of what the PTO does is at it's base about how things are categorized into the same or different. Often the difference is just semantic word games and those word games get particularly harmful in something as amorphous as software.
---
The patent mafia: When all they've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Now, let's be honest: there's no such thing as an alternative to Adobe's creative suite.
I'd like to see some honesty from people like you. You sound like marketing parasite. Different people have different needs.
Every time there's an article on slashdot that even peripherally mentions photoshop etc. there are dozens of people popping out of the woodwork saying how gimp and assorted other graphics programs are useless. Half of them are probably astroturfing scum.
Well guess what? They're not useless and many people get a lot out of them. They're not for you. Fine. Don't pretend everybody is a clone of you.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion.
Please, do the numbers. You're showing incompetence or willful marketing deception. For a well written program on modern hardware for the vast majority of documents the difference is milliseconds. Work it out - just how many milliseconds is needed to read in a typical document on a typical disk? And how many operations can a modern GHz CPU perform on the document in that time? And the standard disk block size?
For a competently written program and document format pretty much the only thing that matters are how many disk blocks it is on disk and whether those blocks are contiguous. For complex documents possibly how much rendering needs to be done on the display (a bitmapped display typically has many bytes for each character byte). Yes, you could random access disk blocks with a more scalable organization but different disks and file systems have different block sizes and layouts, random access is often slower than serial access due to relatively long disk seek times and you reduce simplicity and maintainability to improve support for a small fraction of documents. Not to mention the fact that most wordprocessors open on the first page anyway and you can process the rest of the file in the background.
The amount of misinformation that naive programmers spread about binary v. text formats, disk speed v. memory speed v. CPU speed, peephole code optimization v. algorithm optimization, just for starters, let alone almost complete ignorance about the dramatic impact of memory cache performance effects and OS paging effects is just mind blowing. It's a large part of why much modern application software is so bloated and slow.
Please, use numbers rather than hand waving when talking about software performance.
---
Windows and closed source software. The US intelligence agencies' back door to every network connected country and business on earth.
the whole plugin thing was definitely novel at the time when Eolas was busy inventing
Nonsense. The idea of adding software to other software at runtime, as needed, to increase functionality is basic. Very basic, and was being done very early on.
Naive people who think that giving a software blob a new name somehow mystically gives it new functionality are a large part of the patent mess and you're contributing to that mess by calling this name change an "invention".
Until the PTO can actually cope intelligently with language they will continue to be a sad joke. They're forever confusing language and reality, particularly in software. Patent proponents frequently don't even realize all they're talking about is a name change.
---
Windows and closed source software. The US intelligence agencies' back door to every network connected country and business on earth.
It's likely the US government has strong armed M$ into putting a hidden back door into windows. And possibly Linux NVidia+ATI closed source drivers also. It's just too easy and the payoff is just too big. A back door into every network connected Windows and Linux PC on earth? Automatically updated as needed? It's an intelligence agency's wet dream.
CC all emails, communications and documents. Delay or even lose critical emails. Turn on the microphone and listen to people talking. Turn on the camera and identify people. Get previews of critical diplomatic and business documents and the thinking behind them.
It'd be dormant most of the time because they wouldn't want to endanger such a prize asset without good reason but it's very good odds they're using it selectively even now. The malware epidemic would provide cover for such actions.
If you are a government or commercial organization competing in any way with US interests you should be very wary of this fifth column in your midst. The US has a long history of spying for it's own commercial and government advantage so don't assume they won't play dirty. More so if you are perceived as evil and the current terrorism hysteria only makes it worse. Cryptography, conventional anti-virus and conventional anti-rootkit are useless if they have the keys to your computer.
To a fanatic the ends justify the means and some US nationalists are pretty damn fanatical.
---
Treacherous Computing. The vendor is your administrator.
It's called a free market. Like most every other market on the planet. There's nothing stopping you or a new user making [shudder] choices for all of the things you mention. In all the things you mention there's only a limited number of mainstream choices.
Sure it's inefficient having multiple projects competing in slightly different ways. It's called capitalism. Maybe you'd prefer communism?
If you want a true standards mess forget about linux, just look at web technologies, particularly flash interfaces. I don't see many people avoiding those.
There's nothing wrong with encouraging standards, but not at the expense of a competitive free market. Just like every other market.
---
WGA. Guilty until proven innocent. For millions. Again and again.
No, it's absolutely not "his word against theirs" unless he's examined MS patents.
Nonsense, your zealotry is showing. Until M$ identifies the patents concerned and independent third parties can judge them it is exactly his word against their's.
M$ probably contravenes some of the Open Invention Network's patents. Most real-world software contravenes the idiotic patents currently being released. It's all hot air without examining the individual patents.
should we be giving them a computer that gives them the potential to learn the systems in use by a majority of the world?
The same could be said about Vista. Why doesn't the world stick with XP? Or MSDOS? Or even Multics?
Any reasoning based on the premise that because it's been used yesterday and today it should be used tomorrow and so on forever is bogus. Every change starts somewhere and the OLPC is going to be distributed to sufficient people to create their own market.
The OLPC has been designed specifically for them. M$Windows hasn't. Assuming the design is good no other reason is needed.
---
Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
ut I'm totally confused by this constant recent desire to tie every space mission to popular sci-fi.
Some of these story submissions and associated comments are likely to be SF marketing parasites. It gives them mindshare and by associating their fiction with real world accomplishment they give themselves legitimacy./. is likely to be an primary SF demographic.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
TV, like magazines, newspapers, and radio are financed through ads and sponsors. While I realize that it is convenient and preferable to not have to watch all those damned "Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean, do dah dah do dah dah" ads, sometimes back to back, in between sections of your favourite show, that is what finances your show.
No, I'm still paying for the show. The marketing industry is largely just a parasitic intermediary obscuring the true cost of the show and engaged in an incredibly wasteful arms race to get mindshare. Everybody loses except the marketing "industry".
With ad's I'm paying twice, once in time and attention to watch the ad (costing trillions when you work out how many people and how much time is being wasted watching and avoiding useless ad's) and second in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
---
Free speech is compromised by too much noise as well as too little message. Most advertising is content free noise.
You would like to think so but the reality is more likely is they will tell you get lost
Nonsense, an insulting and meaningless generalization.
The actual reality is that every developer is different, most developers enjoy the attention their projects attract and while they might not help a lot due to time constraints they are likely to at least point somebody like this in the right direction.
Millions of PC's have been compromised and are in botnets. To talk about using M$ PC's, and to a lesser extent even non-M$ PC's, for something as important as voting right now is insane.
It doesn't matter how "secure" the voting software is if it's run on an insecure PC. In many elections changing the vote by a few percent is all you need to get a new winner.
Odds on organized crime will get involved. Until botnets and significant PC compromise is a thing of the past internet voting is impossible.
(You mathematically prove that this increases what is called consumer surplus which is the equivalent to the consumers "profit" on the purchase and the seller's profit)
This cannot be true. Take it to the limit, where the vendor can set a different price for every customer. If it's a monopoly they set the price to a tiny fraction less than whatever it's worth to the customer and all customer surplus is close to zero. If it's a competitive market with no price fixing going on then they must set the price to cost+margin (to undercut or at least be competitive with the competition) and all customers get the same price.
To emphasize, in a free, competitive market the price is controlled by costs and competition and differential pricing is theoretical only. Particularly when on-selling is possible.
Differential pricing is pretty good indication of market failure and should be red flag to lawmakers.
In a truly free market the people who bought the software for $100 would be able to on-sell it to the business for $110, meaning the original vendor would be out of a sale.
The fancy documentation and support contract is a different product that some companies are willing to pay more for. It's also bundling. It's not differential pricing on the same product.
I'd like to see both differential pricing and all on-selling restrictions made illegal. This would promote a more free, fair and optimal market. Not simple to implement though.
Spending money is orthogonal to openness. Mainstream money has simply increased the size of the pie.
As open source becomes more mainstream more mainstream companies more money will get involved. No surprises there.
Niche programmers with free time will continue to scratch their itch. No surprises their either.
The two groups exist together quite happily. Most open source programmers want their work to become more mainstream.
It's only when companies try to do an end-run around open licenses that there's problems and that's exactly the same issue as proprietary software licenses being abused.
But the level of hatred that is showing up is disturbing.
And entirely appropriate for somebody who was a prime mover in taking away the rights and culture of millions of people.
Some of those giving him "respect" need look in the mirror and think a little about their own fanaticism, why they think it's reasonable that a very small fraction of the population should be able to perpetually control a non-rivalrous good and endlessly profit from the cultural heritage of millions. It's feudalism all over again.
---
"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
The wheel seems utterly obvious to all of us alive today, but it obviously wasn't when it was invented (or it would have been invented sooner).
Do you realize how silly this sentence makes you sound? Non-obviousness is just one of many reasons why something might not be invented sooner. Patent proponents love to ignore that simple fact. At the risk of sounding like a broken record they need to get it into their thick skulls that no prior art is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for something being non-obvious. To argue that no prior art directly implies non-obviousness is dishonest. Not that such dishonesty stops assorted patent proponents from trying.
Another thing that patent proponents are dishonest about: obviousness can indeed be judged after the fact. In fact it it can be judged better. After the fact a person has more relevant facts at their disposal and can put things in historical context. They can make a better judgment about whether something was non-obvious or simply that all the precursors were there, the invention's time had come and was going to be independently invented by many people. People don't suddenly lose their mental faculties when they have more facts at that their disposal as patent proponents love to imply.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
... you have to stick a gun in someone's back. That is not true of capitalism.
You're mistaken. Capitalism without government is warlordism, might makes right. Using a gun to steal is almost always going to be cheaper and more profitable than trading.
People voluntarily cooperating to stop thieves? That's what democratic government actually is.
Keep in mind that professional warlords will be better and more talented at fighting/stealing than the producers, simply because the producers are busy spending more time on producing than on fighting.
Democratic government is imperfect but like Winston Churchill says:
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe.
No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy
is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.
Slashdot Mirror
M$ marketing historical revisionism. M$ was irresponsible enough to put a totally unprotected OS onto the wider net. Most early viruses were not social engineered. M$ should've been sued. They only got away with it because of lying marketers covering up. Only with NT did they even start doing any security at all and only with XPSP2 did they actually start doing anything real and start catching up to Unix standards that had been in accepted practice 30 years before.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion.
"Magic math"?
That's classic, coming from somebody who should know that the larger the corporation the more creative the accounting is likely to be, particularly in ill-defined areas like software, research, marketing or drugs.
As just one example according to the web site MSR has 700 employees worldwide. Lets say they cost an average of USD275,000 each per annum or $200 million total per annum or $50 million per quarter. That leaves $1.750 billion of the quoted figure (97%) unaccounted for. I'd say quotes were entirely justified.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
All you've described is a seal of approval. Redefining publishers to that limited and very low cost role might be reasonable however it can equally be done by more general internet friend and acquaintance networks (e.g. stumbleupon etc.), as long as those networks have not been too compromised by fraudulent astroturfers.
---
Windows and closed source software. The US intelligence agencies back door to every network connected country and business on earth.
A) A phone book did not have on-line information in 1996
Blah blah blah, on the internet.
B) A phone book is not connected to a computer network.
Blah blah blah, on the internet.
C) A phone book does not duplicate items into different regions.
Duplicate = caching, on the internet.
D) This is definately not a software patent. Claim 1 clearly states that they are patenting a sytem comprising a network and a organizer (server).
Putting a specific piece of software on a general purpose computer is not a software patent?!
You can get a patent on a system running software, just not on the software itself. A CD or hard disk with the code is also patentable.
Not a software patent only in the PTO's twisted world.
I'm not saying this was novel at the time, but it most certaintly was not anticipated by a phone book.
Of course it was. All you've proven is that the PTO is incompetent at recognizing at whether something is truly innovative and deserving of protection; whether the innovative elements of an idea are the same of different. Automating pretty much any well codified real world process on a computer/the internet is obvious.
Just remember, to reject a claim, you need a document published before the filing of the application which teaches every limitation, or, multiple documents which when combined, teach the limitations and explicit motivation (known at the time of filing) for doing so.
Please don't confuse the PTO's self serving hand waving with the real world. An invention is little to do with a patent. Those of us who create "intellectual property" every day know that the emperor has no clothes.
Most of what the PTO does is at it's base about how things are categorized into the same or different. Often the difference is just semantic word games and those word games get particularly harmful in something as amorphous as software.
---
The patent mafia: When all they've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Now, let's be honest: there's no such thing as an alternative to Adobe's creative suite.
I'd like to see some honesty from people like you. You sound like marketing parasite. Different people have different needs.
Every time there's an article on slashdot that even peripherally mentions photoshop etc. there are dozens of people popping out of the woodwork saying how gimp and assorted other graphics programs are useless. Half of them are probably astroturfing scum.
Well guess what? They're not useless and many people get a lot out of them. They're not for you. Fine. Don't pretend everybody is a clone of you.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion.
This isn't just a minor little speed difference.
Please, do the numbers. You're showing incompetence or willful marketing deception. For a well written program on modern hardware for the vast majority of documents the difference is milliseconds. Work it out - just how many milliseconds is needed to read in a typical document on a typical disk? And how many operations can a modern GHz CPU perform on the document in that time? And the standard disk block size?
For a competently written program and document format pretty much the only thing that matters are how many disk blocks it is on disk and whether those blocks are contiguous. For complex documents possibly how much rendering needs to be done on the display (a bitmapped display typically has many bytes for each character byte). Yes, you could random access disk blocks with a more scalable organization but different disks and file systems have different block sizes and layouts, random access is often slower than serial access due to relatively long disk seek times and you reduce simplicity and maintainability to improve support for a small fraction of documents. Not to mention the fact that most wordprocessors open on the first page anyway and you can process the rest of the file in the background.
The amount of misinformation that naive programmers spread about binary v. text formats, disk speed v. memory speed v. CPU speed, peephole code optimization v. algorithm optimization, just for starters, let alone almost complete ignorance about the dramatic impact of memory cache performance effects and OS paging effects is just mind blowing. It's a large part of why much modern application software is so bloated and slow.
Please, use numbers rather than hand waving when talking about software performance.
---
Windows and closed source software. The US intelligence agencies' back door to every network connected country and business on earth.
the whole plugin thing was definitely novel at the time when Eolas was busy inventing
Nonsense. The idea of adding software to other software at runtime, as needed, to increase functionality is basic. Very basic, and was being done very early on.
Naive people who think that giving a software blob a new name somehow mystically gives it new functionality are a large part of the patent mess and you're contributing to that mess by calling this name change an "invention".
Until the PTO can actually cope intelligently with language they will continue to be a sad joke. They're forever confusing language and reality, particularly in software. Patent proponents frequently don't even realize all they're talking about is a name change.
---
Windows and closed source software. The US intelligence agencies' back door to every network connected country and business on earth.
It's likely the US government has strong armed M$ into putting a hidden back door into windows. And possibly Linux NVidia+ATI closed source drivers also. It's just too easy and the payoff is just too big. A back door into every network connected Windows and Linux PC on earth? Automatically updated as needed? It's an intelligence agency's wet dream.
CC all emails, communications and documents. Delay or even lose critical emails. Turn on the microphone and listen to people talking. Turn on the camera and identify people. Get previews of critical diplomatic and business documents and the thinking behind them.
It'd be dormant most of the time because they wouldn't want to endanger such a prize asset without good reason but it's very good odds they're using it selectively even now. The malware epidemic would provide cover for such actions.
If you are a government or commercial organization competing in any way with US interests you should be very wary of this fifth column in your midst. The US has a long history of spying for it's own commercial and government advantage so don't assume they won't play dirty. More so if you are perceived as evil and the current terrorism hysteria only makes it worse. Cryptography, conventional anti-virus and conventional anti-rootkit are useless if they have the keys to your computer.
To a fanatic the ends justify the means and some US nationalists are pretty damn fanatical.
---
Treacherous Computing. The vendor is your administrator.
It's called a free market. Like most every other market on the planet. There's nothing stopping you or a new user making [shudder] choices for all of the things you mention. In all the things you mention there's only a limited number of mainstream choices.
Sure it's inefficient having multiple projects competing in slightly different ways. It's called capitalism. Maybe you'd prefer communism?
If you want a true standards mess forget about linux, just look at web technologies, particularly flash interfaces. I don't see many people avoiding those.
There's nothing wrong with encouraging standards, but not at the expense of a competitive free market. Just like every other market.
---
WGA. Guilty until proven innocent. For millions. Again and again.
No, it's absolutely not "his word against theirs" unless he's examined MS patents.
Nonsense, your zealotry is showing. Until M$ identifies the patents concerned and independent third parties can judge them it is exactly his word against their's.
M$ probably contravenes some of the Open Invention Network's patents. Most real-world software contravenes the idiotic patents currently being released. It's all hot air without examining the individual patents.
---
Monopolies = Industrial feudalism
should we be giving them a computer that gives them the potential to learn the systems in use by a majority of the world?
The same could be said about Vista. Why doesn't the world stick with XP? Or MSDOS? Or even Multics?
Any reasoning based on the premise that because it's been used yesterday and today it should be used tomorrow and so on forever is bogus. Every change starts somewhere and the OLPC is going to be distributed to sufficient people to create their own market.
The OLPC has been designed specifically for them. M$Windows hasn't. Assuming the design is good no other reason is needed.
---
Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
ut I'm totally confused by this constant recent desire to tie every space mission to popular sci-fi.
Some of these story submissions and associated comments are likely to be SF marketing parasites. It gives them mindshare and by associating their fiction with real world accomplishment they give themselves legitimacy. /. is likely to be an primary SF demographic.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
Anything is cooler when you integrate Star Trek into it.
Not really. Anybody who confuses the coolness of real accomplishment with a childish fantasy like startrek really needs to get out more.
---
Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.
TV, like magazines, newspapers, and radio are financed through ads and sponsors. While I realize that it is convenient and preferable to not have to watch all those damned "Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean, do dah dah do dah dah" ads, sometimes back to back, in between sections of your favourite show, that is what finances your show.
No, I'm still paying for the show. The marketing industry is largely just a parasitic intermediary obscuring the true cost of the show and engaged in an incredibly wasteful arms race to get mindshare. Everybody loses except the marketing "industry".
With ad's I'm paying twice, once in time and attention to watch the ad (costing trillions when you work out how many people and how much time is being wasted watching and avoiding useless ad's) and second in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
---
Free speech is compromised by too much noise as well as too little message. Most advertising is content free noise.
You would like to think so but the reality is more likely is they will tell you get lost
Nonsense, an insulting and meaningless generalization.
The actual reality is that every developer is different, most developers enjoy the attention their projects attract and while they might not help a lot due to time constraints they are likely to at least point somebody like this in the right direction.
---
You communist! Breathing shared air!
That's good. But where is the second number? The one where the bank authenticates themselves to me?
So that I know I'm not at a phishing site. One-way authentication is not good enough in any situation where both parties can be spoofed.
Bricks-and-mortar banks are hard to spoof but not so web sites or telephone numbers.
---
DRM. You don't control it means you don't own it.
Millions of PC's have been compromised and are in botnets. To talk about using M$ PC's, and to a lesser extent even non-M$ PC's, for something as important as voting right now is insane.
It doesn't matter how "secure" the voting software is if it's run on an insecure PC. In many elections changing the vote by a few percent is all you need to get a new winner.
Odds on organized crime will get involved. Until botnets and significant PC compromise is a thing of the past internet voting is impossible.
---
Terrorism. The all-purpose excuse.
(You mathematically prove that this increases what is called consumer surplus which is the equivalent to the consumers "profit" on the purchase and the seller's profit)
This cannot be true. Take it to the limit, where the vendor can set a different price for every customer. If it's a monopoly they set the price to a tiny fraction less than whatever it's worth to the customer and all customer surplus is close to zero. If it's a competitive market with no price fixing going on then they must set the price to cost+margin (to undercut or at least be competitive with the competition) and all customers get the same price.
To emphasize, in a free, competitive market the price is controlled by costs and competition and differential pricing is theoretical only. Particularly when on-selling is possible.
Differential pricing is pretty good indication of market failure and should be red flag to lawmakers.
---
DRM. You don't control it means you don't own it.
Your reasoning only applies to a non-free market.
In a truly free market the people who bought the software for $100 would be able to on-sell it to the business for $110, meaning the original vendor would be out of a sale.
The fancy documentation and support contract is a different product that some companies are willing to pay more for. It's also bundling. It's not differential pricing on the same product.
I'd like to see both differential pricing and all on-selling restrictions made illegal. This would promote a more free, fair and optimal market. Not simple to implement though.
---
Monopolies = industrial feudalism
Spending money is orthogonal to openness. Mainstream money has simply increased the size of the pie.
As open source becomes more mainstream more mainstream companies more money will get involved. No surprises there.
Niche programmers with free time will continue to scratch their itch. No surprises their either.
The two groups exist together quite happily. Most open source programmers want their work to become more mainstream.
It's only when companies try to do an end-run around open licenses that there's problems and that's exactly the same issue as proprietary software licenses being abused.
---
DRM. You don't control it means you don't own it.
But the level of hatred that is showing up is disturbing.
And entirely appropriate for somebody who was a prime mover in taking away the rights and culture of millions of people.
Some of those giving him "respect" need look in the mirror and think a little about their own fanaticism, why they think it's reasonable that a very small fraction of the population should be able to perpetually control a non-rivalrous good and endlessly profit from the cultural heritage of millions. It's feudalism all over again.
---
"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
You can't read about any software that isn't under the gpl without seeing a page that's been hijacked by GPL zealots time after time.
You're an anti-GPL zealot.
People, choose some of your favourite commercial software packages and look them up on wikipedia. You'll see this guy is flat out wrong.
The whole thing is overrun by GPL Zealots, anti corporate hippies, immature kids, obssessed fans, bible thumpers, etc.
Yep, you're the zealot. It isn't overrun by anybody. Millions have found the online wikipedia a useful resource.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion.
Vista's DRM doesn't prevent you from doing anything that you could have done on XP.
Except do whatever you want with your own computer.
---
DRM. You don't control it means you don't own it.
The wheel seems utterly obvious to all of us alive today, but it obviously wasn't when it was invented (or it would have been invented sooner).
Do you realize how silly this sentence makes you sound? Non-obviousness is just one of many reasons why something might not be invented sooner. Patent proponents love to ignore that simple fact. At the risk of sounding like a broken record they need to get it into their thick skulls that no prior art is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for something being non-obvious. To argue that no prior art directly implies non-obviousness is dishonest. Not that such dishonesty stops assorted patent proponents from trying.
Another thing that patent proponents are dishonest about: obviousness can indeed be judged after the fact. In fact it it can be judged better. After the fact a person has more relevant facts at their disposal and can put things in historical context. They can make a better judgment about whether something was non-obvious or simply that all the precursors were there, the invention's time had come and was going to be independently invented by many people. People don't suddenly lose their mental faculties when they have more facts at that their disposal as patent proponents love to imply.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
You're mistaken. Capitalism without government is warlordism, might makes right. Using a gun to steal is almost always going to be cheaper and more profitable than trading.
People voluntarily cooperating to stop thieves? That's what democratic government actually is.
Keep in mind that professional warlords will be better and more talented at fighting/stealing than the producers, simply because the producers are busy spending more time on producing than on fighting.
Democratic government is imperfect but like Winston Churchill says:
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.---
DRM. You don't control it means you don't own it.