Why a commercial company should be forced to dismantle and hand itself over to open source.
Simple: Microsoft has clearly established and abused a monopoly and there is no efficient market for the type of software sold by Microsoft.
Governments in a capitalist society have a duty to ensure efficient markets in those areas that are not natural monopolies (and to ensure natural monopolies are not abused).
Think of this as punishment for Microsoft's past abuses of its monopoly if you will, or think of it as governments acting to regulate companies that operate in a manner that is detrimental to a free market and hence to their citizens.
How about just donating it to a small number of the non-profit organizations that build the "basic" distributions (on which many others are based)? Like the Debian Foundation and the newly created Fedora foundation?
If the contractors didn't live up to their end of the contract, the burden's on them.
That's what audits are for: to make sure contractors are living up to the contract.
My point was that MS needs to provide the neccessary motivation to ensure the security procedutes are properly followed.
What's the phrase: "Trust but verify"?
Please don't interpret my remarks as saying that the contractors did not screw up: if the reports are correct they did; but ultimately it is was a MS website and MS's customers trusted MS to provide a secure website. MS chose the contractors and must take responsiblity for their failings.
I like how it's completely Microsoft's fault even though a.) some dickhead maliciously broke into their server b.) it could have been prevented by the non-MS people in charge by staying up to date.
It is MS's fault because MS did not do enough to ensure their subcontractor ran a secure system: It is MS' responsiblity to ensure that their contractors have the appropriate skills and motivation to run the website securely. Clearly MS failed.
The SCO Group's
deal with Cymphonix is an interesting one. Cymphonix apparently sells a Linux based appliance, using Squid, Netfilter, etc.
Especially of interest here is the use of Netfilter by Cymphonix, given Harald Welte involvement in both Netfilter and in the in dealing with GPL violations.
How many articles have we read that describe how difficult it is to get Linux installed. Apart from the truth or otherwise of this assertion, it makes a huge assumption that is simply not true: The majority of Windows users do not install Windows, ever. At most, the "average" Windows user may use the wipe-out and re-image CD that most OEMs provide nowadays.
Given that it is quite easy to buy a PC with Linux pre-installed, why should difficulty to installing Linux be an issue if it apparently not an issue that affects users of Windows?
Leaving aside your apparent confusion between emails and financial records, from TFA:
Banks and broker-dealers are obliged to retain e-mail and instant messaging documents for three years under U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules. But similar requirements will apply to all public companies from July 2006 under the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform measures.
This document discusses email archiving requirements, including an EU-wide requirement for ISPs to keep copies of emails for 1 year.
Why not just install some cameras that record the people using the computers? Not only would this provide police with identification in the cases cited, it would also provide proof of the "fondling".
"The appeal will be dismissed without prejudice to the plaintiffs' right to commence a further application for disclosure of the identity of the 'users' taking into account these reasons," Sexton wrote.
Dismissed without prejudice is almost meaningless with respect to the "rights" of the eventual targets (P2P users) -- it means nothing either way.
Also in the article:
In Thursday's decision, the three judge-panel turned down the appeal request but wrote that the earlier ruling should not have made conclusions about whether downloading or uploading music should be illegal.
When I was younger and poorer, I ran through a series of ancient Mercedes sedans. ** SNIP **
I would have occasional power steering failures, generally caused by the fluid leaking out of the pump. When this happened, there was no problem controlling the car at speed, but it was an absolute beast to get out of parking spaces.
Generally, front-wheel drive cars have significantly heavier steering than rear wheel drive cars, so your example may not be particularly relevant.
I just love those "computer errors". Did we jump intosome future world like that of of the Terminator, or The Matrix, where the robots are in control?
It was either a programming error (human) or an operator error (human) or some other cause. OK, clearly hardware faults can cause data corruption, but this is really pretty rare and it's hard to believe that a hardware fault could cause such a widespread fault.
Have to agree with you -- here in CA, I tried to get iDSL installed at my company's office. Thank goodness it was only for backup.
The problem is that there were 3 companies involved:
The retailer: Verio
The wholesale DSL provider (can't remember their name -- but they were the first to go bust)
The telephone company.
So, in my case, the telephone company botched the installation/configuration of the line (an ISDN line). The wholesaler did not seem to be able to get the telephone company to fix this, but they kept sending techs out to "install" my service. Some of these techs were good, some clueless. One pair of techs told me that when they had installed the magic socket (just a socket with their name on it), everything would work -- they blamed the problems on the prior techs who had kindly wired up the incoming line to the rack at the office. They shuffled off without saying anything after failing to get it to work.
Eventually, it worked, then the DSL wholesaler went bust and to really finish off the issue, we got a past due notice from Verio for service after they had terminated it (due to the wholesaler's BK).
Recently when travelling through Chicago, I saw the screen on a baggage scanner: it was running DOS. What's more, the operators seemed to need to power cycle it quite freqently (I saw this happen a couple of times while in line to have my bags scanned).
It's called taking a stand on principle versus taking the pragmatic approach
Or it could be called taking a long term view rather than a short term view.
I think the Bitkeeper episode shows that, over the long term, there is good reason to be concerned. Perhaps the best solution is is accelerate development of free (as in speech) JVMs. The advantage to this is that there is not presently a short-term problem -- so taking short term solutions is not appropriate.
The answer to this question is so obvious. From a legal definition:
A doctrine precluding the institution of a suit against the sovereign [government] without its consent.
Is he saying stealing from thieves (or unethical businesses) is not so bad?
No, he is saying that he should not expect any help in promoting the RIAA's agenda while the RIAA's members fail to pay the money owed to actual artists.
There is a big difference IMHO between actively supporting infringement (not theft) and merely failing to promote the RIAA's views and aims.
Slashdot Mirror
Simple: Microsoft has clearly established and abused a monopoly and there is no efficient market for the type of software sold by Microsoft.
Governments in a capitalist society have a duty to ensure efficient markets in those areas that are not natural monopolies (and to ensure natural monopolies are not abused).
Think of this as punishment for Microsoft's past abuses of its monopoly if you will, or think of it as governments acting to regulate companies that operate in a manner that is detrimental to a free market and hence to their citizens.
In Galeon, it does work across tabs.
How about just donating it to a small number of the non-profit organizations that build the "basic" distributions (on which many others are based)? Like the Debian Foundation and the newly created Fedora foundation?
That's what audits are for: to make sure contractors are living up to the contract.
My point was that MS needs to provide the neccessary motivation to ensure the security procedutes are properly followed.
What's the phrase: "Trust but verify"?
Please don't interpret my remarks as saying that the contractors did not screw up: if the reports are correct they did; but ultimately it is was a MS website and MS's customers trusted MS to provide a secure website. MS chose the contractors and must take responsiblity for their failings.
It is MS's fault because MS did not do enough to ensure their subcontractor ran a secure system: It is MS' responsiblity to ensure that their contractors have the appropriate skills and motivation to run the website securely. Clearly MS failed.
Especially of interest here is the use of Netfilter by Cymphonix, given Harald Welte involvement in both Netfilter and in the in dealing with GPL violations.
To add to the fun, it even appears that Cymphonix is either using or preparing to use 2.6.x versions of Linux.
... but the realy question is, when will we know what or if MS submitted a new proposal?
As I type, it is approx. 14:35 PST. Add 9 hours and one gets to 23:35.
Given that it is quite easy to buy a PC with Linux pre-installed, why should difficulty to installing Linux be an issue if it apparently not an issue that affects users of Windows?
Why not just install some cameras that record the people using the computers? Not only would this provide police with identification in the cases cited, it would also provide proof of the "fondling".
Also in the article:
Summary: a non-event.Yes, it is really useful to tell a recording where you are! If you RTFA:
I would have occasional power steering failures, generally caused by the fluid leaking out of the pump. When this happened, there was no problem controlling the car at speed, but it was an absolute beast to get out of parking spaces.
Generally, front-wheel drive cars have significantly heavier steering than rear wheel drive cars, so your example may not be particularly relevant.
Try this search, or to put it into the search box: "movie:movie". Enter your zip code for a full listing of locally showing movies.
It was either a programming error (human) or an operator error (human) or some other cause. OK, clearly hardware faults can cause data corruption, but this is really pretty rare and it's hard to believe that a hardware fault could cause such a widespread fault.
The problem is that there were 3 companies involved:
The retailer: Verio
The wholesale DSL provider (can't remember their name -- but they were the first to go bust)
The telephone company.
So, in my case, the telephone company botched the installation/configuration of the line (an ISDN line). The wholesaler did not seem to be able to get the telephone company to fix this, but they kept sending techs out to "install" my service. Some of these techs were good, some clueless. One pair of techs told me that when they had installed the magic socket (just a socket with their name on it), everything would work -- they blamed the problems on the prior techs who had kindly wired up the incoming line to the rack at the office. They shuffled off without saying anything after failing to get it to work.
Eventually, it worked, then the DSL wholesaler went bust and to really finish off the issue, we got a past due notice from Verio for service after they had terminated it (due to the wholesaler's BK).
Does this mean that it DOES apply to IPSEC VPNs that are configured with NAT Traversal?
Well the report actually mentions Athlon not AMD 64.
Early Athlon 32-bit processors are low end now.
Recently when travelling through Chicago, I saw the screen on a baggage scanner: it was running DOS. What's more, the operators seemed to need to power cycle it quite freqently (I saw this happen a couple of times while in line to have my bags scanned).
Or it could be called taking a long term view rather than a short term view.
I think the Bitkeeper episode shows that, over the long term, there is good reason to be concerned. Perhaps the best solution is is accelerate development of free (as in speech) JVMs. The advantage to this is that there is not presently a short-term problem -- so taking short term solutions is not appropriate.
The answer to this question is so obvious. From a legal definition: A doctrine precluding the institution of a suit against the sovereign [government] without its consent.
There is a big difference IMHO between actively supporting infringement (not theft) and merely failing to promote the RIAA's views and aims.
Sounds like peril sensitive sunglasses
Those dim-on-black pages are utterly unreadable with a monitor that is even slightly dimmer than when new.