I'm a die-hard Linux geek as well, and all for preloaded Linux (especially if it solves driver issues!), but if a computer is cheaper with Windows, why not buy the cheaper computer and get a refund for not accepting the EULA? You then save money on both fronts, and get your Linux computer.
At the end of the day, I always decide that the hassle isn't worth it and that I'd also rather send the message to the company that there is a market for selling computers preloaded with Linux.
Just my $0.02.
Yes, me too. I loth the idea of sitting on a phone for $50, yet the insult of having to pay MicroSoft Franchise Tax did irk me enough to write my last PC vendor. Went something like:
Vista is below par to my....
I would return the PC for credit but it is a nice piece of hardware. So I loaded Ubuntu and it worked just great.
But will admit, next time I will try the phone in credit method.
There is a different argument as to whether you should pay more to Dell et al, or buy the cheaper machine and donate the extra to a FOSS project. I'm not sure which option is preferable there.
I don't deal with Dell because of their pricing and configuration games. There is no reason I can think of why Linux or no-OS costs more at Dell than Microsoft Tax paid ones. And only stripped down over priced basic business models offer the OS as an option.
Just bought an Aspire, walked into the retailer with a live CD of Linux, booted up and everything worked. Put a cheap 8500 GT in it that I knew was Linux friendly. So I paid the Microsoft Taxed PC and saved many hundreds.
Got it home, installed Ubuntu. Everything worked. But then I wanted Compiz. I had to load some drivers for the video, and had Compiz in 15 minutes. And it is nice. Now everything works. Sent Ubuntu $25. Microsoft gets to brag about Vista copies sold and I run Ubuntu.
I am a bit skeptical. If AMD's experimentation with combining the CPU and GPU bears fruit it might actually mean the end for the traditional GPU's. nVidia doesn't have a CPU that can compete with AMD and Intel so I think nVidia is the one in trouble here. But I suppose nVidia has to keep up appearances to keep the stocks from plummeting.
I would concur with that. But add nVidia is also missing an OS and applications. While it is an extension of not having a traditional binary compatible CPU to Intel and AMD, nVidia is totally void here.
My guess is Intel has the weakest video, perhaps is talking to nVidia and nVidia is trying to pump the value. While AMD is trying to see how to best integrate the CPU and GPU. That is, this is about politics and price for nVidia.
Some problems today's GPUs have are: they run too hot, take too much power and cost too much. And GPU needs to work on these. Only games are going to put 100 watts into gaming cards, the rest of us want fanless, low power and low cost. nVidia seems to be ignoring this and it is going to come with a backlash.
Looking at a hard drive, it's got lots of moving parts, the need for sealing, etc. One would think that in the long run a solid state drive that is just a few chips and connecting logic would be cheaper to produce once you have the facilities.
Given sufficient amount of time, solid state SSD will likely overtake hard drives. But I think many industry analysts are far too quick to estimate wide adoption if the SSD media over hard drives. It will be slow. And I have heard those predictions 10 years ago.
Problems exist in SSD adoption, 3 huge ones.
density, hard drives seem to be always many steps ahead in density
costs, a $100 hard drive w. 1TB version the SSD 1TB cost?
write speed/reliability issues with SSD
Oh, the SSD will creep in, but I don't expect it to wipe out hard drives any time soon. I will say when the 640GB SSD is under $250 it's adoption will soar for laptops. By that time, the 1TB mechanical hard drives will be under $100 and 2 or perhaps 3TB drives may exist as well. But we are optimistically 4-5 years from this point. For the data center, even longer. The write and cost issues must be totally resolved for that, as some drives in busy systems go nuts on writes and can't afford a hit. If I want to buy 10PB of storage, and SSD is twice the price, it will loose.
What you might see in widespread adoption first is say affordable 64GB versions of SSD for the OS, and a adjunct 1TB hard drive for raw storage.
I do not understand why these mega data centers are mostly situated in hot areas. Not only is 1500 watts per square foot a lot of electricity, it takes a lot of cooling to counter the wattage.
And Hoover Dam, last time I saw it was near idle only running one turbine and the lake water was low.
It makes more sense to pick a location like Revelstoke BC. Near the Mica Dam. I have reasons:
1/2 the year, cool air is cheap
Electricity is cheap, Mica @ 1800MW is comparable to Hoover without a city like Vega using it.
Not all technical and support staff want to live in a concrete jungle
There are fiber thought he area for Vancouver and Calgary NAPs and response is good for the mid-west and the east cost.
Ya, I know I am dreaming. Would be nice to drive 5-10 miles from work on a open not crowded highway to the boat launch on the way home. Ski-do in the winters. Maybe catch a Dolly Varden or Kokanee salmon. Maybe call it Google City, BC -- ah dreaming.
What happened to this man is despicable. However, we need to remember that Google is a company, not a judge in a court of law. It is not their place to decide if a court-issued subpoena is "worth" complying with or not, especially not in a democratic country (eat trolls, eat!). The big question is if they were responding to a court order in the first place, or the lean of some jackass in the government.
OK, lets go with that. Now lets ponder this.
If the physical logs of that IP were in a country with privacy laws. Did not then google break the law of the country the servers are in?
Or is the law on the client side of the connection?
Or is it a mater of convenience?
Or for that mater, lets go one step further. Google, here is a list of IPs, I want to know what they searched for, no warrant. Just trying to get something on them. Maybe find out what medical conditions they might have and what religious sites they look for. Perhaps a list of contacts via email, or... whatever I can use against them that I don't know. An email for/feed wouldn't hurt either.
Well, I'm glad that google abides by the law here in canada. Clearly their motto of 'do no evil' is region specific; on one hand, I applaud their help in stopping crime, on the other hand, I detest the violation of privacy.
What crime, the crime of exercising freedom of speech?
While we don't have to agree with what is posted, by allowing free speech you in fact guarantee your own freedoms. We can express opinion, joke or criticize Jews, Catholics, Christians, of various sorts, politicians even but the Hindu and Muslims are off limits? Not a very level playing field.
I can understand giving out the IP in certain circumstances where threats and violations to humanity are concerned, but options, jokes, differing viewpoints are different. It then becomes a tool to coerce and intimidate.
I guess Google has no moral code. And we also learn about the intolerance to other view points that some specific religions have. And I would not put too much credence to being in Canada, I am quite sure CSIS can get IP addresses for the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. A Macleans article like this one made the commission, which is turning out to be the minority ( 2%) using them to hunt down differing opinions.
How do you allow "proper competition" in the ISP market? How many sets of wires will you run to every house? How many antennas will you have to erect and satellites to put into orbit? How many data centers and backbone hubs can you build?
As many wires that are needed. Satellites are already there. At least one antenna per home I suspect. Wireless in a mesh network makes the most sense.
The problem is no competition to access to the home. Impediments include city franchising right up to the CRTC itself. There is no reason 4, 8 or even 12 companies could not operate mesh networks if they had economical and legal access to the right of ways needed.
Bell doesn't have a monopoly on internet access in Canada. Correct, but they own the infrastructure and have been throttling the competition, which is effectively circumventing CRTC regulations requiring them to lease lines to competitors.
And the same thing happened in the US with companies like Rhythms. In a nut shell the people who owned the wire tripped on power cables, disconnected networks by accident. Always took day to fix and harassed Rhythms out of business. And I can say, they had good service until the games with SBC. It was good while the government assured it was fair, but decayed immediately when the government left the scene.
The real solution is to say the home owner owns the wire and _anyone_ to the pole can use it for no charge. Take away the dominance and open up competition. Make it illegal for any city to limit franchise access to less than say 4 companies. Allow wireless to the pole for rapid deployment. Make it easy to compete against these Bells and Telus companies. Maybe even broaden this up and include Rogers and Shaw.
I knew of a case in a small community where Telus said internet, ISDN was $250 mo. plus a hefty install charge. They stated they couldn't do it cheaper. Some entrepreneurs did high speed for $79 month. All of a sudden Telus could do it for $29 and put them out of business. The rates are now back up to $79 in that community. A typical story in this business. It is also why savvy investors don't invest in alternatives, they know Bell/Telus/MTS in their regions are monopolies.
If I tried to offer US satilitte TV and a wireless Internet in my neighborhood with a mesh network, how long would it be before I needed a good lawyer?
This isn't the US nor is it the EU, it's Canada. And the CRTC is here to protect consumers, etc. And guess what. They actually do there job some of the time. Welcome to a country where corruption isn't total in government orgs (at least yet).
CRTC is a double edge sword, I can't legally get SciFi in Canada and Space sucks. I swear the Canadian production of Outer Limits, we control what you see and hear...had a certain inside meaning in Canada.
But I hear you on this one, I hope the CRTC nails Bell for discriminatory business practices.
We have to figure out how to tame the chaos. Enterprises are shying away from Linux now because of the churn. All the value that is gained by using cheap x86 hardware is lost in the Engineering churn. I think vendors just talking to each other would solve half the problem. I don't know what the rest of the solution is.
Not quite sure of that. A fortune 500 company I know has ceased new orders for Microsoft and investing in a Linux desktop. It is at the tender stage where where if the CIO gets a massive pricing cut the program could be nixed an not unixed.
Microsoft is under sever pressure to get it's pricing down and quality up. They falter much more, knowing Linux will be the next fad want to have skill. And those that know Linux, getting Ubuntu, RedHat and SUSE working together is much easier than a NT to AD migration, plain and simple.
Just push Open Office and FireFox to the desktops first, nice and immediate MS-Office savings and a nice prep for the conversion. And if the MS salesperson says "Linux what?" You say the OS we are using to replace MS-Windows. Gets a pretty hefty discount if you can show you mean business. Your company wins either way.
claiming that it 'is no more than a wish to benefit from a lot of work that Novell and Red Hat are already doing in the Enterprise space.'
Red Hat has not provided a consumer desktop distribution in over 5 years. It used to be that most new comers were introduced to Linux via Red Hat. I would wager that today most new comers are introduced to Linux via Ubuntu. When those people who are introduced to Ubuntu have an opportunity to influence decisions in the enterprise, I would expect that many (or most, depending on the environment) are recommending RHEL because of the tremendous brand recognition within the IT world. (I know that Red Hat is not the only game in town, but they are far more prevalent in the enterprise and any other distro.) After all "it's all Linux."
So, I would say that Red Hat has already benefited from Ubuntu's run away popularity in the space the Red Hat vacated 5 years ago. What's wrong with a little reciprocity?
Insightful is deserved. Or own the desktop at home, will drag Linux into the enterprise. Something RedHat and Novell have missed completely. If they continue to do so, many might just drag in Ubuntu... I would and will.
If anything, they should put out a home distro cheap and capitalize on Vista's shortcomings.
I'm American. I was thinking more about Labatt. Much better than Miller. If you get away from pilsner, from what I remember when I drank it, Moosehead was pretty good also.
Moosehead, we send that down south for a reason;) Labatts, never drink that stuff warm, same with Budweiser. Now Miller and Big Rock...yum. MGD is good with a twist of lime when it is above 30C and when it gets cold a full bodied Big Rock hits the spot. Labatts 50, Old Stock and Brador, give that to my American friends when they come and visit. Nicely chilled and high test, gets them going fast.
Wish Miller still made Lowenbrau, was a nice amber lager. Something like Molson Golden before it was screwed up.
Miller time? I don't think you are a real Canuck.
Also, a few beers?
You have to know me why I said that.
Love the USA. I am not one of those inbreed types following the bullshit politics out of Ottawa. Don't follow NDP hatred of NAFTA, Americans and Canadians in my view are kissing cousins with stupid political spats in between.
While it isn't business, it is life. My virtual world has never failed me. Especially six. I live in it now. I deviate and fork when I dream. Dream I do. If I don't like things, I change it. I live two instances of virtuality, my dreams state and my outwardly facing persona.
Best part, it works without a computer. Requires no electricity, although a few beers helps.
I know you were trying to be funny, but it's quite sad that these things are taken for granted and put to waste. Please visit the following link for what I think to be the best use of your laptops:
http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/index.php
I chose something similar.
Loaded Ubuntu, made everything work just right and gave them to a local shelter as ready to go network browsers. They were happy, no shipping charges and helps my community.
"It seems the flag only triggered copy protection measures in Vista, as one of our staffers with a DirecTV HD DVR recorded Gladiators as usual, and a TiVo spokesperson told CNet that the company had not received any complaints."
The vintage of the device and the date it makes a difference. It was only recently legislated that new devices sold must comply. Vista being newer, must comply. So if the HD PVR was made say in early 2005 it would not need to look at the flag.
But you could probably get the program on bit torrent. Your best bet is to write your representatives and complain. And find out their past stand on fair use, RIAA, broadcast flag etc. And then vote accordingly. Or organize a bittorrent day where everyone in the US watches illegal programs for a week and flood the courts until they toss it out.
Linux is free. Windows users paid to have their machines screwed up.
Never had a main line top of the line PC screw up on an update until XP SP3. Yes, I am a AMD X2 user, screwed me around for such an obvious flaw in the update, makes me wonder if Microsoft does not give a crap any more. Just wonder how many suckers will buy Vista after their XP craps out. Microsoft must be either desperate or out of control. Take your pick.
At least with Linux, I don't have to be pay to be screwed around and they haven't screwed me like SP3. Take a Linux update any day. And Vista SP1, while it didn't crash me, it didn't fix a damn thing. Microsoft is over the hill.
In fact, you are being kind. I know of commercial products that do worse, put the hashes in an open socket with no access controls or on a custom attribute in LDAP, world/anonymous readable no less.
Their security fix in the LDAP case was to move the service to port 1389....still anonymous and open.
Plus how easy would it be to guess this key with this defect? I haven't seen much on that. So what if it takes an average of 10 years instead of 1000 years on a high speed 1000BT network for a 50/50 chance of getting the key... So how easy is it to crack the key for real?
The best part is this is open source, it will be patched quickly I suspect.
You know what's funny, is that just today I took a mandatory online training course on anti-trust regulations, just like everyone in my company does. It was funny reading the article, because like at least 3 or 4 things were specifically mentioned:
Predatory pricing to prevent a new entrant into a market by a company with market dominance
Limitations on what resellers can do with the product purchased (only on low-end PCs)
Arbitrary discounts to some distributors over others
Agreements between different members of the supply chain to limit customer choice
If the EU is at all consistent with the policies explained in my training today, MS should be forced to either sell low-cost XP to everyone, regardless of the hardware, or not sell XP at all. Who do I write in the EU to get an injunction?
Very nice synopsis. But it is clear Microsoft is above the law in North America.
I too had to take those courses for SOX compliance. What a joke. They tell you these points are criminal acts and could disbar you from government contracts. But Microsoft seems to be able to run with impunity. And no signs of changes in sight.
I often wonder if the US government does not enforce the law because of _NSAKEY. Say the US government really does have a back door into MS-Windows, the agreement is simple, dominate the market and you will be exempt on law as long as we have the access.
While I generally do not subscribe to the conspiracy theories, in the lack of prosecution of Microsoft -- what other explanation is there? Or could it be just bribes?
More and more, it seems like the simplest DOJ remedy would've been the most effective. No preferential pricing. All OEM's pay the same price whether and however they decided to deploy Windows on their product lines.
Too bad the DOJ wouldn't enforce the law with Microsoft and anti-trust. They sure went after foreign RAM chip makers. Double standard?
Really bugs me to hear Micro$oft brag about 140M Vista sold. I would bet they don't want to come clean on how many are OEM and how many are not. That bundling practice is making them billions for a PoC Vista. Sad day for the consumer.
Slashdot Mirror
At the end of the day, I always decide that the hassle isn't worth it and that I'd also rather send the message to the company that there is a market for selling computers preloaded with Linux.
Just my $0.02.
Yes, me too. I loth the idea of sitting on a phone for $50, yet the insult of having to pay MicroSoft Franchise Tax did irk me enough to write my last PC vendor. Went something like:
Vista is below par to my....
I would return the PC for credit but it is a nice piece of hardware. So I loaded Ubuntu and it worked just great.
But will admit, next time I will try the phone in credit method.
I don't deal with Dell because of their pricing and configuration games. There is no reason I can think of why Linux or no-OS costs more at Dell than Microsoft Tax paid ones. And only stripped down over priced basic business models offer the OS as an option.
Just bought an Aspire, walked into the retailer with a live CD of Linux, booted up and everything worked. Put a cheap 8500 GT in it that I knew was Linux friendly. So I paid the Microsoft Taxed PC and saved many hundreds.
Got it home, installed Ubuntu. Everything worked. But then I wanted Compiz. I had to load some drivers for the video, and had Compiz in 15 minutes. And it is nice. Now everything works. Sent Ubuntu $25. Microsoft gets to brag about Vista copies sold and I run Ubuntu.
MicroSoft F#$%ing Tax
I would concur with that. But add nVidia is also missing an OS and applications. While it is an extension of not having a traditional binary compatible CPU to Intel and AMD, nVidia is totally void here.
My guess is Intel has the weakest video, perhaps is talking to nVidia and nVidia is trying to pump the value. While AMD is trying to see how to best integrate the CPU and GPU. That is, this is about politics and price for nVidia.
Some problems today's GPUs have are: they run too hot, take too much power and cost too much. And GPU needs to work on these. Only games are going to put 100 watts into gaming cards, the rest of us want fanless, low power and low cost. nVidia seems to be ignoring this and it is going to come with a backlash.
Given sufficient amount of time, solid state SSD will likely overtake hard drives. But I think many industry analysts are far too quick to estimate wide adoption if the SSD media over hard drives. It will be slow. And I have heard those predictions 10 years ago.
Problems exist in SSD adoption, 3 huge ones.
Oh, the SSD will creep in, but I don't expect it to wipe out hard drives any time soon. I will say when the 640GB SSD is under $250 it's adoption will soar for laptops. By that time, the 1TB mechanical hard drives will be under $100 and 2 or perhaps 3TB drives may exist as well. But we are optimistically 4-5 years from this point. For the data center, even longer. The write and cost issues must be totally resolved for that, as some drives in busy systems go nuts on writes and can't afford a hit. If I want to buy 10PB of storage, and SSD is twice the price, it will loose.
What you might see in widespread adoption first is say affordable 64GB versions of SSD for the OS, and a adjunct 1TB hard drive for raw storage.
I do not understand why these mega data centers are mostly situated in hot areas. Not only is 1500 watts per square foot a lot of electricity, it takes a lot of cooling to counter the wattage.
And Hoover Dam, last time I saw it was near idle only running one turbine and the lake water was low.
It makes more sense to pick a location like Revelstoke BC. Near the Mica Dam. I have reasons:
Ya, I know I am dreaming. Would be nice to drive 5-10 miles from work on a open not crowded highway to the boat launch on the way home. Ski-do in the winters. Maybe catch a Dolly Varden or Kokanee salmon. Maybe call it Google City, BC -- ah dreaming.
No, Ballmer uses chairs to break Windows.
OK, lets go with that. Now lets ponder this.
If the physical logs of that IP were in a country with privacy laws. Did not then google break the law of the country the servers are in?
Or is the law on the client side of the connection?
Or is it a mater of convenience?
Or for that mater, lets go one step further. Google, here is a list of IPs, I want to know what they searched for, no warrant. Just trying to get something on them. Maybe find out what medical conditions they might have and what religious sites they look for. Perhaps a list of contacts via email, or ... whatever I can use against them that I don't know. An email for/feed wouldn't hurt either.
What crime, the crime of exercising freedom of speech?
While we don't have to agree with what is posted, by allowing free speech you in fact guarantee your own freedoms. We can express opinion, joke or criticize Jews, Catholics, Christians, of various sorts, politicians even but the Hindu and Muslims are off limits? Not a very level playing field.
I can understand giving out the IP in certain circumstances where threats and violations to humanity are concerned, but options, jokes, differing viewpoints are different. It then becomes a tool to coerce and intimidate.
I guess Google has no moral code. And we also learn about the intolerance to other view points that some specific religions have. And I would not put too much credence to being in Canada, I am quite sure CSIS can get IP addresses for the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. A Macleans article like this one made the commission, which is turning out to be the minority ( 2%) using them to hunt down differing opinions.
I just had to say you wrote that up eloquently. I would make your article insightful though. Interesting does not reflect it's accuracy.
Brought to you by WeSaySo Corporation, ooops, MSNBC and Microsoft.
As many wires that are needed. Satellites are already there. At least one antenna per home I suspect. Wireless in a mesh network makes the most sense.
The problem is no competition to access to the home. Impediments include city franchising right up to the CRTC itself. There is no reason 4, 8 or even 12 companies could not operate mesh networks if they had economical and legal access to the right of ways needed.
And the same thing happened in the US with companies like Rhythms. In a nut shell the people who owned the wire tripped on power cables, disconnected networks by accident. Always took day to fix and harassed Rhythms out of business. And I can say, they had good service until the games with SBC. It was good while the government assured it was fair, but decayed immediately when the government left the scene.
The real solution is to say the home owner owns the wire and _anyone_ to the pole can use it for no charge. Take away the dominance and open up competition. Make it illegal for any city to limit franchise access to less than say 4 companies. Allow wireless to the pole for rapid deployment. Make it easy to compete against these Bells and Telus companies. Maybe even broaden this up and include Rogers and Shaw.
I knew of a case in a small community where Telus said internet, ISDN was $250 mo. plus a hefty install charge. They stated they couldn't do it cheaper. Some entrepreneurs did high speed for $79 month. All of a sudden Telus could do it for $29 and put them out of business. The rates are now back up to $79 in that community. A typical story in this business. It is also why savvy investors don't invest in alternatives, they know Bell/Telus/MTS in their regions are monopolies.
If I tried to offer US satilitte TV and a wireless Internet in my neighborhood with a mesh network, how long would it be before I needed a good lawyer?
CRTC is a double edge sword, I can't legally get SciFi in Canada and Space sucks. I swear the Canadian production of Outer Limits, we control what you see and hear...had a certain inside meaning in Canada.
But I hear you on this one, I hope the CRTC nails Bell for discriminatory business practices.
Not quite sure of that. A fortune 500 company I know has ceased new orders for Microsoft and investing in a Linux desktop. It is at the tender stage where where if the CIO gets a massive pricing cut the program could be nixed an not unixed.
Microsoft is under sever pressure to get it's pricing down and quality up. They falter much more, knowing Linux will be the next fad want to have skill. And those that know Linux, getting Ubuntu, RedHat and SUSE working together is much easier than a NT to AD migration, plain and simple.
Just push Open Office and FireFox to the desktops first, nice and immediate MS-Office savings and a nice prep for the conversion. And if the MS salesperson says "Linux what?" You say the OS we are using to replace MS-Windows. Gets a pretty hefty discount if you can show you mean business. Your company wins either way.
claiming that it 'is no more than a wish to benefit from a lot of work that Novell and Red Hat are already doing in the Enterprise space.'
Red Hat has not provided a consumer desktop distribution in over 5 years. It used to be that most new comers were introduced to Linux via Red Hat. I would wager that today most new comers are introduced to Linux via Ubuntu. When those people who are introduced to Ubuntu have an opportunity to influence decisions in the enterprise, I would expect that many (or most, depending on the environment) are recommending RHEL because of the tremendous brand recognition within the IT world. (I know that Red Hat is not the only game in town, but they are far more prevalent in the enterprise and any other distro.) After all "it's all Linux."
So, I would say that Red Hat has already benefited from Ubuntu's run away popularity in the space the Red Hat vacated 5 years ago. What's wrong with a little reciprocity?
Insightful is deserved. Or own the desktop at home, will drag Linux into the enterprise. Something RedHat and Novell have missed completely. If they continue to do so, many might just drag in Ubuntu... I would and will.
If anything, they should put out a home distro cheap and capitalize on Vista's shortcomings.
Moosehead, we send that down south for a reason ;) Labatts, never drink that stuff warm, same with Budweiser. Now Miller and Big Rock...yum. MGD is good with a twist of lime when it is above 30C and when it gets cold a full bodied Big Rock hits the spot. Labatts 50, Old Stock and Brador, give that to my American friends when they come and visit. Nicely chilled and high test, gets them going fast.
Wish Miller still made Lowenbrau, was a nice amber lager. Something like Molson Golden before it was screwed up.
You have to know me why I said that.
Love the USA. I am not one of those inbreed types following the bullshit politics out of Ottawa. Don't follow NDP hatred of NAFTA, Americans and Canadians in my view are kissing cousins with stupid political spats in between.
America is great.
While it isn't business, it is life. My virtual world has never failed me. Especially six. I live in it now. I deviate and fork when I dream. Dream I do. If I don't like things, I change it. I live two instances of virtuality, my dreams state and my outwardly facing persona.
Best part, it works without a computer. Requires no electricity, although a few beers helps.
Miller time!
I chose something similar.
Loaded Ubuntu, made everything work just right and gave them to a local shelter as ready to go network browsers. They were happy, no shipping charges and helps my community.
The vintage of the device and the date it makes a difference. It was only recently legislated that new devices sold must comply. Vista being newer, must comply. So if the HD PVR was made say in early 2005 it would not need to look at the flag.
But you could probably get the program on bit torrent. Your best bet is to write your representatives and complain. And find out their past stand on fair use, RIAA, broadcast flag etc. And then vote accordingly. Or organize a bittorrent day where everyone in the US watches illegal programs for a week and flood the courts until they toss it out.
Never had a main line top of the line PC screw up on an update until XP SP3. Yes, I am a AMD X2 user, screwed me around for such an obvious flaw in the update, makes me wonder if Microsoft does not give a crap any more. Just wonder how many suckers will buy Vista after their XP craps out. Microsoft must be either desperate or out of control. Take your pick.
At least with Linux, I don't have to be pay to be screwed around and they haven't screwed me like SP3. Take a Linux update any day. And Vista SP1, while it didn't crash me, it didn't fix a damn thing. Microsoft is over the hill.
Exactly what I was thinking. But it could be interpreted multiple ways: (a) it was criminals; (b) it was terrorists; (c) it was Microsoft.
We should fix that:
You are not being cynical at all.
In fact, you are being kind. I know of commercial products that do worse, put the hashes in an open socket with no access controls or on a custom attribute in LDAP, world/anonymous readable no less.
Their security fix in the LDAP case was to move the service to port 1389....still anonymous and open.
Plus how easy would it be to guess this key with this defect? I haven't seen much on that. So what if it takes an average of 10 years instead of 1000 years on a high speed 1000BT network for a 50/50 chance of getting the key... So how easy is it to crack the key for real?
The best part is this is open source, it will be patched quickly I suspect.
- Predatory pricing to prevent a new entrant into a market by a company with market dominance
- Limitations on what resellers can do with the product purchased (only on low-end PCs)
- Arbitrary discounts to some distributors over others
- Agreements between different members of the supply chain to limit customer choice
If the EU is at all consistent with the policies explained in my training today, MS should be forced to either sell low-cost XP to everyone, regardless of the hardware, or not sell XP at all. Who do I write in the EU to get an injunction?Very nice synopsis. But it is clear Microsoft is above the law in North America.
I too had to take those courses for SOX compliance. What a joke. They tell you these points are criminal acts and could disbar you from government contracts. But Microsoft seems to be able to run with impunity. And no signs of changes in sight.
I often wonder if the US government does not enforce the law because of _NSAKEY. Say the US government really does have a back door into MS-Windows, the agreement is simple, dominate the market and you will be exempt on law as long as we have the access.
While I generally do not subscribe to the conspiracy theories, in the lack of prosecution of Microsoft -- what other explanation is there? Or could it be just bribes?
Too bad the DOJ wouldn't enforce the law with Microsoft and anti-trust. They sure went after foreign RAM chip makers. Double standard?
Really bugs me to hear Micro$oft brag about 140M Vista sold. I would bet they don't want to come clean on how many are OEM and how many are not. That bundling practice is making them billions for a PoC Vista. Sad day for the consumer.