To actually convince people to swap to Linux on the desktop it needs to be easy enough to use. Basically this means familiar enough - i.e. uses similar enough paradigms to Windows for users to get the hang of general use instantly. Whilst things like some management is going to be different, it should take only one article, if that, to get end users up and running with desktop Linux doing basic things such as surfing the web, using email, word processing. If it takes more, then Linux isn't there yet.
Having been using Unix for 15 years it is hard for me to tell if Linux is there yet as I am not a naieve user, but the likes of Lindows and Lycoris seem to be very usable, as do distributions with slightly less of a naieve user focus such as SuSe and Mandrake (and RedHat was going in that direction to before the Enterprise/Fedora split). So things are going in the right direction at least.
What would be interesting is to see a proper survey of users of a variety of levels who have never previously used Linux and see how they react to the latest distros on the desktop.
With Crossover office we more or less have Microsoft Office on Linux.
With regard to the zero-royalty licensing cost for the XML schemas, remember that Microsoft may not charge for it but can always refuse to licence to a particular project, thus meaning that it cannot interoperate with this part of the Office suite.
If they don't have the people to hand who have the expertise to do this they will take the path of least resistance and prebind instead. In the end for a desktop system most people just care that it is fast for them, not how it works (much like me and cars).
Configurability for specific purposes, should this be requiredexcellent
Choicegood
Too much choiceconsumers pick the simplest, most well-marketed option.
This goes for food as well as Linux, although there are always devotees that have loyalty to something unusual.
Linux would benefit from less brand confusion for desktop users, but benefits from the configurability for purposes not visible to desktop users (back end servers, set top boxes, embedded servers, mars rovers, etc).
As it is, there aren't that many well-known brands on the desktop: Linspire, Fedora, Suse, Debian, Knoppix, Gentoo, Lycoris, JDS, and for the Western world that is about it. In other parts of the world (e.g. TurboLinux, Star Linux) some of these are replaced by others, but the total number in any one market that have any great presence on the desktop are in the range of 5 to 10.
"Like nepolean, the russian winter beat the germans"
Naploean liked to blame "General Winter" for his failure against Russia. The truth is that he made military errors and the Russian forces beat him in straight battles. I am sure the winter didn't help, but blaming the winter is a bit of a Napoleonic cop out.
"The USSR was beaten, but not for the Russian winter"
That's a bit of a fallacy. It was more spring and autumn that were the problem. Transport in summer and winter was easy but mud slowed transport in spring and autumn. This complicated the rather poor German logistic system which was, during spring and autumn, incapable of providing sufficient ammunition and food to the frontline troops.
Essentially Barbarossa required a knock out blow to occur before the autumn rains. This might have been possible had it started on schedule in May but was difficult to achieve when starting in June. The delay caused by autumn rains allowed the USSR to ship factories away from the front via trains as factories tended to be closer to rail transport in those days, and the trains were less affected by rains. An army in the field needs to transport supplies from railheads to the troops which may be 100 or more miles from the nearest suitable rail transport, complicated further if partisans behind your lines are blowing them up!
Germany did not step up to full production until 1942 which meant that after failing to knock the USSR effectively out of the war in 1941 it was difficult to make up losses before the summer 1942 campaigns. The lack of strategic air forces meant that it was impossible for Germany to strike the relocated factories churning out massive amounts of Soviet artillery and T34s.
Finally the thing that allowed the USSR to win on the Eastern Front were large numbers of GMC trucks from the USA which allowed, when it wasn't raining, for the USSR to ship more supplies than the rather poorly organised German logistical forces could.
Whilst the Soviet winters caught the Germans unprepared and killed many German troops that should have survived, it wasn't the most critical factor. More it was a lack of thought preparing for a long drawn out war that required industrial production, strategic forces and good logistics.
"However take a look around you the next time you're riding the train, taking the bus or walking down a busy street: count how many people who are actually listening to ANYTHING, be it a MP3 player or even a portable CD player (excluding cell phones). Chances are it will be less than 1 in 10 (even for here in NYC)."
Seems to me that every other person is listening to some annoying tinny thing they call "music" these days. Of course it isn't proper music as you can't understand the words and it is just a repetitive beat and bleeping noises.
Maybe I am just getting old.
Anyway, must get back to writing a letter to the Telegraph complaining how everything round here used to be fields and young people used to be respectful and a haircut only cost 1 and 6.
"However take a look around you the next time you're riding the train, taking the bus or walking down a busy street: count how many people who are actually listening to ANYTHING, be it a MP3 player or even a portable CD player (excluding cell phones). Chances are it will be less than 1 in 10 (even for here in NYC)."
Seems to me that every other person is listening to some annoying tinny thing they call "music" these days. Of course it isn't proper music as you can't understand the words and it is just a repetitive beat and bleeping noises.
Maybe I am just getting old.
Anyway, must get back to writing a letter to the Telegraph complaining how everything round here used to be fields and young people used to be respectful and a haircut only cost 1 and 6.
From my perspective the worry is that I have a large collection of music that I have written, or original music performed by bands I have been in. I have backed various multitrack tapes up to CD in wav format, but I need to really redo it all in FLAC and multiply for security. The original tapes I have still play, of course, but I may not always have a tape player that works, and the tapes are much bulkier than now a handful of DVDs (with things backed up to more than one DVD in case a DVD fails).
Remember that Sony is essentially just rebadging players made in a comparatively few factories. A factory making Sony players one month may be making ones branded differently the next. (The same sort of thing goes on with laptops - essentially made in 5 factories, and guitars - many brands, few actual manufacturers).
"I don't think it's a coincidence that the market leader in "legal" music downloads (iTunes Music Store) is also the one with the least restrictive DRM."
The least restrictive DRM (and copyright) are those tracks released on the creative commons licence. They are not market leaders, but are the least restrictive.
That's all very well but if you are 1% of the market and buy 500 CDs then the 99% of the market that might only buy 10% of that number each are what the record industry will be interested in. The total market is larger. Look at the increase in ringtone sales, for example. If low quality hi fi for ringtones make lots of money due to the number of units sold then ringtone friendly music and music formats and DRM will be what the record industry will require.
On the other hand for bands that want to put out their own material and distribute it themselves the likes of mp3 and ogg are much more attractive than physical media as they represent a much smaller and less risky initial capital outlay for distribution.
SACD (or something similar) will probably live on in niche markets only (e.g. high quality classical recordings) unless semi-auutomatic mastering tools that can master a recording to SACD, CD, mp3, and even ring tones in more-or-less one pass become available.
I don't have a problem on one level with physical media vanishing, since it cuts down on waste from all those ephemeral CD singles from manufactured bands that end up as landfill within a year, but it does mean that when music is coupled with DRM then old recordings might essentially be lost to the people, except within large libraries of recordings. I.e. they will be preserved for posterity, but only as fossils, rather than as hotly traded old pieces of physical media between buffs as old 78s are today.
" That's nonsense. Many companies will not use Linux simply because of the GPL."
And they are free, as your company does, not to use GPL code and use code from other sources or created in-house. If the GPL did not exist then most likely the Linux kernel would not have been developed as much as it has been and would not be in a state to be even in contention for an embedded kernel, so noone has lost out from the GPL in this sense.
It is possible for the GPL to cause economic damage to particular companies, however, if a technology that competes with their own is available under the GPL. This is likely to be most damaging to small companies that do not have the resources to absorb blows such as these whilst they retarget their business.
On the other hand there may be benefits to industries in having such a GPLed technology available, as it may stimulate construction of systems using this, and this may offer the opportunity for other small companies to exist taking the base project and customising it for others (even if this requires releasing the changes back to the community) and offering services based on support of the customisations. It does rely much more on service-orientation, however, and this is probably a more worrisome position for businesses if there is no lock-in to ensure future revenue streams.
The philosophical question then becomes whether or not the damage that may be done to some companies is worth the benefit that may accrue to society as a whole by its consequent commoditisation of software and reliance on service-oriented revenue or hardware-based revenue rather than software-based revenue. If GPL continues to thrive then it may well force some changes in business practices to keep abreast of it and it means both exciting possibilities and worrisome times. It certainly throws the cat amongst the pigeons in some ways.
Current winners in the arena of GPL use might be the likes of the makers of the TiVo system, that use Linux, but sell hardware, or RedHat and SuSE, that essentially sell services. Losers would be those that find their product undermined by a release of a similar GPL product, although their business could also be undermined by the release of any commercial competitiors product.
Perhaps one of the more interesting opportunities is in mixing GPL-type licensed software and closed-source software in a supported package (provided there is no code linkage that offends the GPL licence). E.g. you could use a GPL installer for your closed-source system that runs on Linux, thus gaining benefit from not having to buy in or create your own installer, and the benefits from a GPL operating system that can be widely distributed.
" That's nonsense. Many companies will not use Linux simply because of the GPL."
And they are free, as your company does, not to use GPL code and use code from other sources or created in-house. If the GPL did not exist then most likely the Linux kernel would not have been developed as much as it has been and would not be in a state to be even in contention for an embedded kernel, so noone has lost out from the GPL in this sense.
It is possible for the GPL to cause economic damage to particular companies, however, if a technology that competes with their own is available under the GPL. This is likely to be most damaging to small companies that do not have the resources to absorb blows such as these whilst they retarget their business.
On the other hand there may be benefits to industries in having such a GPLed technology available, as it may stimulate construction of systems using this, and this may offer the opportunity for other small companies to exist taking the base project and customising it for others (even if this requires releasing the changes back to the community) and offering services based on support of the customisations. It does rely much more on service-orientation, however, and this is probably a more worrisome position for businesses if there is no lock-in to ensure future revenue streams.
The philosophical question then becomes whether or not the damage that may be done to some companies is worth the benefit that may accrue to society as a whole by its consequent commoditisation of software and reliance on service-oriented revenue or hardware-based revenue rather than software-based revenue. If GPL continues to thrive then it may well force some changes in business practices to keep abreast of it and it means both exciting possibilities and worrisome times. It certainly throws the cat amongst the pigeons in some ways.
Current winners in the arena of GPL use might be the likes of the makers of the TiVo system, that use Linux, but sell hardware, or RedHat and SuSE, that essentially sell services. Losers would be those that find their product undermined by a release of a similar GPL product, although their business could also be undermined by the release of any commercial competitiors product.
"Is it fair that corporate America can not even touch any gpl software that was funded by their tax dollars?"
There is absolutely nothing to stop them using GPL code funded by US tax dollars (and French tax Euros, UK tax pounds, and the donated work of individuals for that matter, all released under the GPL). Government funded bodies also contribute to BSD and similar licensed projects as well.
There are at least 4 major flavours of BSD out there - Free, Net, Open, and Darwin that are essentially incompatible at the low level. Although there is cross fertilisation, it is more difficult after forks and isn't quite the same as code merges of different versions/branches of the same fork. I suppose there is a continuum of change, however, and the distinction between a branch and a fork is, to a certain extent, arbitrary. A fork is, perhaps, just a code branch that has not been merged back for a long time and would be very hard to do so.
Linux has very few forks, but very many distributions. A distribution is a version of Linux (kernel), associated libraries (libc et al) and installers and applications. Strictly Linux is only the kernel, and the number of forks is small, although there are a number of different revisions (2.4.x, 2.6.x, etc) of these small number of forks.
BSD has a number of quite distinct and incompatible forks (versions of the kernel). BSD also has the kernel, supporting libraries, applications, etc., though. In theory, however, if you could have a distro of BSD and Linux on the same distribution medium (E.g. DVD) that had the application set as source, to be compiled, and for this application set to be the same source for both (with suitable configure scripts).
Fully 6% of recorded music sales in the USA are now in the form of DVD, and another significant proportion is now in the form of legal downloads and even ringtones. That the CD medium itself is suffering is not necessarily significant any more than the lack of sales of pre-recorded tapes would be. What is more at issue is the value of recorded music sales. With the advent of downloads what we might see is people being prepared to down load half a dozen ($6 worth) of tracks from diverse artists rather than wishing to buy a series of CD-based albumbs with 90% of the songs not being of interest to them, and which would cost more like $100.
Perhaps what we are seeing is the death of the CD as a medium for the single-artist fixed album for a significant proportion of the population. Perhaps in 20 years those of us who like albums of songs by a single artist will be seen as eccentric purists like people who like vinyl are being increasingly seen as?
In any case it could also represent a shift in interest from music to film/tv/games (DVD and game sales are up, film attendances are up, and maybe music isn't so good as it used to be?) as a form of entertainment, so it would be interesting to see whether Warner sales are down on music, visual media, and the combination of the two. We might be seeing a shift in the medium of choice, in which case it is bad for recording artists and the RIAA, but not necessarily a problem for big companies with wide media portfolios such as Warner, Sony, EMI, etc.
"35-49. Doing it over a network. Check. Now, here, a network seems to involve "hyperlinked documents creating a user interface." Certainly this idea is older than 2000. Check."
Sudo doesn't do this, but webmin might be something that is more infringing here, or at least the system that underlies webmin. (web sever - the process, web interface, commands running as root, etc).
Slashdot Mirror
Having been using Unix for 15 years it is hard for me to tell if Linux is there yet as I am not a naieve user, but the likes of Lindows and Lycoris seem to be very usable, as do distributions with slightly less of a naieve user focus such as SuSe and Mandrake (and RedHat was going in that direction to before the Enterprise/Fedora split). So things are going in the right direction at least.
What would be interesting is to see a proper survey of users of a variety of levels who have never previously used Linux and see how they react to the latest distros on the desktop.
Or is this the B ark?
With Crossover office we more or less have Microsoft Office on Linux.
With regard to the zero-royalty licensing cost for the XML schemas, remember that Microsoft may not charge for it but can always refuse to licence to a particular project, thus meaning that it cannot interoperate with this part of the Office suite.
If they don't have the people to hand who have the expertise to do this they will take the path of least resistance and prebind instead. In the end for a desktop system most people just care that it is fast for them, not how it works (much like me and cars).
, , , but not ... should have RTFM.
This goes for food as well as Linux, although there are always devotees that have loyalty to something unusual.
Linux would benefit from less brand confusion for desktop users, but benefits from the configurability for purposes not visible to desktop users (back end servers, set top boxes, embedded servers, mars rovers, etc).
As it is, there aren't that many well-known brands on the desktop: Linspire, Fedora, Suse, Debian, Knoppix, Gentoo, Lycoris, JDS, and for the Western world that is about it. In other parts of the world (e.g. TurboLinux, Star Linux) some of these are replaced by others, but the total number in any one market that have any great presence on the desktop are in the range of 5 to 10.
"Like nepolean, the russian winter beat the germans" Naploean liked to blame "General Winter" for his failure against Russia. The truth is that he made military errors and the Russian forces beat him in straight battles. I am sure the winter didn't help, but blaming the winter is a bit of a Napoleonic cop out.
That's a bit of a fallacy. It was more spring and autumn that were the problem. Transport in summer and winter was easy but mud slowed transport in spring and autumn. This complicated the rather poor German logistic system which was, during spring and autumn, incapable of providing sufficient ammunition and food to the frontline troops.
Essentially Barbarossa required a knock out blow to occur before the autumn rains. This might have been possible had it started on schedule in May but was difficult to achieve when starting in June. The delay caused by autumn rains allowed the USSR to ship factories away from the front via trains as factories tended to be closer to rail transport in those days, and the trains were less affected by rains. An army in the field needs to transport supplies from railheads to the troops which may be 100 or more miles from the nearest suitable rail transport, complicated further if partisans behind your lines are blowing them up!
Germany did not step up to full production until 1942 which meant that after failing to knock the USSR effectively out of the war in 1941 it was difficult to make up losses before the summer 1942 campaigns. The lack of strategic air forces meant that it was impossible for Germany to strike the relocated factories churning out massive amounts of Soviet artillery and T34s.
Finally the thing that allowed the USSR to win on the Eastern Front were large numbers of GMC trucks from the USA which allowed, when it wasn't raining, for the USSR to ship more supplies than the rather poorly organised German logistical forces could.
Whilst the Soviet winters caught the Germans unprepared and killed many German troops that should have survived, it wasn't the most critical factor. More it was a lack of thought preparing for a long drawn out war that required industrial production, strategic forces and good logistics.
They had U boats in WW1. Doenitz was a U boat captai n in WW1.
Seems to me that every other person is listening to some annoying tinny thing they call "music" these days. Of course it isn't proper music as you can't understand the words and it is just a repetitive beat and bleeping noises.
Maybe I am just getting old.
Anyway, must get back to writing a letter to the Telegraph complaining how everything round here used to be fields and young people used to be respectful and a haircut only cost 1 and 6.
"However take a look around you the next time you're riding the train, taking the bus or walking down a busy street: count how many people who are actually listening to ANYTHING, be it a MP3 player or even a portable CD player (excluding cell phones). Chances are it will be less than 1 in 10 (even for here in NYC)." Seems to me that every other person is listening to some annoying tinny thing they call "music" these days. Of course it isn't proper music as you can't understand the words and it is just a repetitive beat and bleeping noises. Maybe I am just getting old. Anyway, must get back to writing a letter to the Telegraph complaining how everything round here used to be fields and young people used to be respectful and a haircut only cost 1 and 6.
From my perspective the worry is that I have a large collection of music that I have written, or original music performed by bands I have been in. I have backed various multitrack tapes up to CD in wav format, but I need to really redo it all in FLAC and multiply for security. The original tapes I have still play, of course, but I may not always have a tape player that works, and the tapes are much bulkier than now a handful of DVDs (with things backed up to more than one DVD in case a DVD fails).
Remember that Sony is essentially just rebadging players made in a comparatively few factories. A factory making Sony players one month may be making ones branded differently the next. (The same sort of thing goes on with laptops - essentially made in 5 factories, and guitars - many brands, few actual manufacturers).
The least restrictive DRM (and copyright) are those tracks released on the creative commons licence. They are not market leaders, but are the least restrictive.
That's all very well but if you are 1% of the market and buy 500 CDs then the 99% of the market that might only buy 10% of that number each are what the record industry will be interested in. The total market is larger. Look at the increase in ringtone sales, for example. If low quality hi fi for ringtones make lots of money due to the number of units sold then ringtone friendly music and music formats and DRM will be what the record industry will require.
On the other hand for bands that want to put out their own material and distribute it themselves the likes of mp3 and ogg are much more attractive than physical media as they represent a much smaller and less risky initial capital outlay for distribution.
SACD (or something similar) will probably live on in niche markets only (e.g. high quality classical recordings) unless semi-auutomatic mastering tools that can master a recording to SACD, CD, mp3, and even ring tones in more-or-less one pass become available.
I don't have a problem on one level with physical media vanishing, since it cuts down on waste from all those ephemeral CD singles from manufactured bands that end up as landfill within a year, but it does mean that when music is coupled with DRM then old recordings might essentially be lost to the people, except within large libraries of recordings. I.e. they will be preserved for posterity, but only as fossils, rather than as hotly traded old pieces of physical media between buffs as old 78s are today.
Tapes were a case of portability winning over superior sound quality.
Some argue that the CD was the same.
So this is nothing new.
Solar cells, over their lifetime, with current technology, produce around 4 to 5 times the amount of energy required to produce them.
" That's nonsense. Many companies will not use Linux simply because of the GPL."
And they are free, as your company does, not to use GPL code and use code from other sources or created in-house. If the GPL did not exist then most likely the Linux kernel would not have been developed as much as it has been and would not be in a state to be even in contention for an embedded kernel, so noone has lost out from the GPL in this sense.
It is possible for the GPL to cause economic damage to particular companies, however, if a technology that competes with their own is available under the GPL. This is likely to be most damaging to small companies that do not have the resources to absorb blows such as these whilst they retarget their business.
On the other hand there may be benefits to industries in having such a GPLed technology available, as it may stimulate construction of systems using this, and this may offer the opportunity for other small companies to exist taking the base project and customising it for others (even if this requires releasing the changes back to the community) and offering services based on support of the customisations. It does rely much more on service-orientation, however, and this is probably a more worrisome position for businesses if there is no lock-in to ensure future revenue streams.
The philosophical question then becomes whether or not the damage that may be done to some companies is worth the benefit that may accrue to society as a whole by its consequent commoditisation of software and reliance on service-oriented revenue or hardware-based revenue rather than software-based revenue. If GPL continues to thrive then it may well force some changes in business practices to keep abreast of it and it means both exciting possibilities and worrisome times. It certainly throws the cat amongst the pigeons in some ways.
Current winners in the arena of GPL use might be the likes of the makers of the TiVo system, that use Linux, but sell hardware, or RedHat and SuSE, that essentially sell services. Losers would be those that find their product undermined by a release of a similar GPL product, although their business could also be undermined by the release of any commercial competitiors product.
Perhaps one of the more interesting opportunities is in mixing GPL-type licensed software and closed-source software in a supported package (provided there is no code linkage that offends the GPL licence). E.g. you could use a GPL installer for your closed-source system that runs on Linux, thus gaining benefit from not having to buy in or create your own installer, and the benefits from a GPL operating system that can be widely distributed.
" That's nonsense. Many companies will not use Linux simply because of the GPL." And they are free, as your company does, not to use GPL code and use code from other sources or created in-house. If the GPL did not exist then most likely the Linux kernel would not have been developed as much as it has been and would not be in a state to be even in contention for an embedded kernel, so noone has lost out from the GPL in this sense. It is possible for the GPL to cause economic damage to particular companies, however, if a technology that competes with their own is available under the GPL. This is likely to be most damaging to small companies that do not have the resources to absorb blows such as these whilst they retarget their business. On the other hand there may be benefits to industries in having such a GPLed technology available, as it may stimulate construction of systems using this, and this may offer the opportunity for other small companies to exist taking the base project and customising it for others (even if this requires releasing the changes back to the community) and offering services based on support of the customisations. It does rely much more on service-orientation, however, and this is probably a more worrisome position for businesses if there is no lock-in to ensure future revenue streams. The philosophical question then becomes whether or not the damage that may be done to some companies is worth the benefit that may accrue to society as a whole by its consequent commoditisation of software and reliance on service-oriented revenue or hardware-based revenue rather than software-based revenue. If GPL continues to thrive then it may well force some changes in business practices to keep abreast of it and it means both exciting possibilities and worrisome times. It certainly throws the cat amongst the pigeons in some ways. Current winners in the arena of GPL use might be the likes of the makers of the TiVo system, that use Linux, but sell hardware, or RedHat and SuSE, that essentially sell services. Losers would be those that find their product undermined by a release of a similar GPL product, although their business could also be undermined by the release of any commercial competitiors product.
"Is it fair that corporate America can not even touch any gpl software that was funded by their tax dollars?"
There is absolutely nothing to stop them using GPL code funded by US tax dollars (and French tax Euros, UK tax pounds, and the donated work of individuals for that matter, all released under the GPL). Government funded bodies also contribute to BSD and similar licensed projects as well.
There are at least 4 major flavours of BSD out there - Free, Net, Open, and Darwin that are essentially incompatible at the low level. Although there is cross fertilisation, it is more difficult after forks and isn't quite the same as code merges of different versions/branches of the same fork. I suppose there is a continuum of change, however, and the distinction between a branch and a fork is, to a certain extent, arbitrary. A fork is, perhaps, just a code branch that has not been merged back for a long time and would be very hard to do so.
Linux has very few forks, but very many distributions. A distribution is a version of Linux (kernel), associated libraries (libc et al) and installers and applications. Strictly Linux is only the kernel, and the number of forks is small, although there are a number of different revisions (2.4.x, 2.6.x, etc) of these small number of forks.
BSD has a number of quite distinct and incompatible forks (versions of the kernel). BSD also has the kernel, supporting libraries, applications, etc., though. In theory, however, if you could have a distro of BSD and Linux on the same distribution medium (E.g. DVD) that had the application set as source, to be compiled, and for this application set to be the same source for both (with suitable configure scripts).
" CD sales are down..."
Fully 6% of recorded music sales in the USA are now in the form of DVD, and another significant proportion is now in the form of legal downloads and even ringtones. That the CD medium itself is suffering is not necessarily significant any more than the lack of sales of pre-recorded tapes would be. What is more at issue is the value of recorded music sales. With the advent of downloads what we might see is people being prepared to down load half a dozen ($6 worth) of tracks from diverse artists rather than wishing to buy a series of CD-based albumbs with 90% of the songs not being of interest to them, and which would cost more like $100.
Perhaps what we are seeing is the death of the CD as a medium for the single-artist fixed album for a significant proportion of the population. Perhaps in 20 years those of us who like albums of songs by a single artist will be seen as eccentric purists like people who like vinyl are being increasingly seen as?
In any case it could also represent a shift in interest from music to film/tv/games (DVD and game sales are up, film attendances are up, and maybe music isn't so good as it used to be?) as a form of entertainment, so it would be interesting to see whether Warner sales are down on music, visual media, and the combination of the two. We might be seeing a shift in the medium of choice, in which case it is bad for recording artists and the RIAA, but not necessarily a problem for big companies with wide media portfolios such as Warner, Sony, EMI, etc.
"35-49. Doing it over a network. Check. Now, here, a network seems to involve "hyperlinked documents creating a user interface." Certainly this idea is older than 2000. Check."
Sudo doesn't do this, but webmin might be something that is more infringing here, or at least the system that underlies webmin. (web sever - the process, web interface, commands running as root, etc).
Christmas Story - the code found using the decoder pen!