Microsoft may realize this, but they won't do it. They rely on license revenue. If they opened their source, they would lose control over who would pay for their licenses vs. outright stealing the code.
They could enforce their licensing against most businesses, but they would have a hard time enforcing it against home users where hackers could remove/disable whatever licensing components Microsoft put in.
OSS of course doesn't need to worry about any of that, since there is no need to pay to use the code.
For commercial OSS (e.g., Red Hat), people pay for support, but for the most part not for the software itself. If Microsoft tried that model, I imagine that they would be cutting their revenues dramatically (most people get Microsoft "support" from outside Microsoft anyway).
They would also be making themselves look a lot more like Linux, which might lead to losses in market share.
Finally, by going "open", they would quite possibly lose control over their products. If they wanted to change direction or revamp the OS for the next release, they would not only need to worry about their own code, but all of the extensions and modifications that the community has made. Getting cooperation from these non-employees might prove difficult, and "breaking" the community contributions might be rough on the PR.
I suspect that Sitefinder and the sale of Network Solutions are related in some way. The "voluntary" suspension of Sitefinder might have been an attempt to maximize the sale price.
More significantly, they may have anticipated the negative reaction to Sitefinder, and decided that one way to prevent people from taking out their anger on the registrar (through lost sales/renewals) would be to make the registrar a separate, "innocent" company.
I hope that someone can stop Verisign, but like spam, I suspect that the technical folks will have to find a way to block it rather than hoping for some governmental body or lawsuit to intervene.
I've been trying to figure out a good solution to this question myself, and I think I'm just going to have to make one I like. It's hard to find something someone else has programmed that suits your own needs for such a personalized usage, in my opinion.
Have you tried Info Select? It handles e-mail and just about any other type of information, and the "killer" feature is that the whole thing is searchable and *fast*.
You organize things in an outline format (similar to nested folders), but the searching lets you find just about anything quickly using keywords.
The one criticism I have so far is that when I imported several GB of old e-mails, it slowed things down a fair amount. However, I suspect that if I stripped the attachments (or ideally converted them to file references instead of embedded files) it would handle it a lot better.
This does happen unofficially, but there are a lot of problems posed if a game wants to support this officially.
1) Taxation on profits. If people were making a living in this virtual world, the tax collectors would want their take. Just like casinos, the game companies would end up with some responsibility for collecting witholding for states, federal, and maybe even foreign countries. And just like casinos, they would probably need to somehow allow players to track losses as well for tax purposes. This is complicated by the fact that most of what is going on can easily be disguised with "gifts", "barter" transactions, with cash being exchanged on the side.
2) If a bug "poofs" a valuable item, and they support the idea that the item can have a real cash value, then they just became liable for the loss. Same with dupe bugs as has already been mentioned. The same idea would apply to "fraudulent" trades made by players, making the game company potentially liable for the players' loss.
3) Suspending or banning a player could potentially lead to a lawsuit based on loss of income, and the game company might have to prove to a court that the suspension/banning was justified, almost like an employment related lawsuit.
4) Can you say money laundering? Think a game company wants their name on that?
5) Any change to the game that affected the economy (which would probably be most of them) could end up screwing certain players. If you thought of the items and virtual money as stocks and real cash, the game company basically has the power to screw prices however they want. If they're officially supporting these cash equivalents, they would most likely be accused of corruption on a daily basis.
The list could go on, I think you get the idea. I'm sure companies will continue to try this idea, but as someone already mentioned, the other effect is that if a significant number of people are in it for the money, it will basically suck most of the fun out of the game for the people who are "just playing", and the whole model would likely collapse because no one would play so the economy would never get off the ground (basically you'd have a big lack of consumers).
By *not* supporting it officially and at least discouraging the idea if not strictly policing it, I think it actually can "work" better, because the company shifts all the liability to the players, and minimizes the effect of it on the game so that players don't feel like they're surrounded by ripoff artists.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the headline should focus on the government, because the government is the one with the responsibility to protect the information.
Sure, the person who posted the information was wrong to do so, but it is still the government's job to prevent this sort of thing from happening.
They could enforce their licensing against most businesses, but they would have a hard time enforcing it against home users where hackers could remove/disable whatever licensing components Microsoft put in.
OSS of course doesn't need to worry about any of that, since there is no need to pay to use the code.
For commercial OSS (e.g., Red Hat), people pay for support, but for the most part not for the software itself. If Microsoft tried that model, I imagine that they would be cutting their revenues dramatically (most people get Microsoft "support" from outside Microsoft anyway).
They would also be making themselves look a lot more like Linux, which might lead to losses in market share.
Finally, by going "open", they would quite possibly lose control over their products. If they wanted to change direction or revamp the OS for the next release, they would not only need to worry about their own code, but all of the extensions and modifications that the community has made. Getting cooperation from these non-employees might prove difficult, and "breaking" the community contributions might be rough on the PR.
I use Outclass, an extension to PopFile, with Outlook and it works great with both IMAP and native Exchange (I download from both).
More significantly, they may have anticipated the negative reaction to Sitefinder, and decided that one way to prevent people from taking out their anger on the registrar (through lost sales/renewals) would be to make the registrar a separate, "innocent" company.
I hope that someone can stop Verisign, but like spam, I suspect that the technical folks will have to find a way to block it rather than hoping for some governmental body or lawsuit to intervene.
Have you tried Info Select? It handles e-mail and just about any other type of information, and the "killer" feature is that the whole thing is searchable and *fast*.
You organize things in an outline format (similar to nested folders), but the searching lets you find just about anything quickly using keywords.
The one criticism I have so far is that when I imported several GB of old e-mails, it slowed things down a fair amount. However, I suspect that if I stripped the attachments (or ideally converted them to file references instead of embedded files) it would handle it a lot better.
Then again, who would want to sit there for two hours watching someone reverse engineer things...
Seeing the trailer though, it looks like a stock action escape movie, with reverse engineering as the flavor-of-the-month.
Between that and The-Rocky-of-InsertThemeHere, Hollywood never seems to run out of recycling ideas.
What are some of the best sci-fi flicks you've seen?
Umm, ok, here's one. Pretty advanced 1987 technology.
1) Taxation on profits. If people were making a living in this virtual world, the tax collectors would want their take. Just like casinos, the game companies would end up with some responsibility for collecting witholding for states, federal, and maybe even foreign countries. And just like casinos, they would probably need to somehow allow players to track losses as well for tax purposes. This is complicated by the fact that most of what is going on can easily be disguised with "gifts", "barter" transactions, with cash being exchanged on the side.
2) If a bug "poofs" a valuable item, and they support the idea that the item can have a real cash value, then they just became liable for the loss. Same with dupe bugs as has already been mentioned. The same idea would apply to "fraudulent" trades made by players, making the game company potentially liable for the players' loss.
3) Suspending or banning a player could potentially lead to a lawsuit based on loss of income, and the game company might have to prove to a court that the suspension/banning was justified, almost like an employment related lawsuit.
4) Can you say money laundering? Think a game company wants their name on that?
5) Any change to the game that affected the economy (which would probably be most of them) could end up screwing certain players. If you thought of the items and virtual money as stocks and real cash, the game company basically has the power to screw prices however they want. If they're officially supporting these cash equivalents, they would most likely be accused of corruption on a daily basis.
The list could go on, I think you get the idea. I'm sure companies will continue to try this idea, but as someone already mentioned, the other effect is that if a significant number of people are in it for the money, it will basically suck most of the fun out of the game for the people who are "just playing", and the whole model would likely collapse because no one would play so the economy would never get off the ground (basically you'd have a big lack of consumers).
By *not* supporting it officially and at least discouraging the idea if not strictly policing it, I think it actually can "work" better, because the company shifts all the liability to the players, and minimizes the effect of it on the game so that players don't feel like they're surrounded by ripoff artists.
1) Superman Hack - shows you zooming around the world every few seconds.
2) Bouncy Ball Hack - Shows you bouncing around the country, hundreds of miles every few seconds.
3) Speed Demon Hack - zoom down your city's experssways at 150mph.
4) The Sims Hack - Shows you talking to the neighbors, taking a nap, walking your dog, sleeping, using the bathroom.
Sounds like a great reason to have an open source, fully programmable cell phone!
If you're going to lie, might as well make it a REALLY BIG ONE!