Sorry, no contract is legally binding if you're not allowed to read it before purchasing. With a music even after you buy it you never agree to their terms since they are never presented to you. Besides that, it's a license not a contract which has to be signed by an individual one way or another. What if I'm a company and buy a bunch of cds with a company credit card. No identity ever signed a contract, no person is responsible.
DRM does intrinsically interfere with fair use as I'm explicity allowed to format shift and resample. The minute I have to break DRM to accomplish either of those then my fair use is comprimised without my consent.
Bold statements considering you couldn't put such a clause in contracts. Believe it or not there are limits to what a contract can do. The one exception is military service but that contract isn't your standard intellectual property license. They do not have the right to restrict my fair use of their product no matter what their license agreement is. I never signed a contract for any music I've ever bought so we don't even have to worry about that.
The solution to the problem would be pretty simple if everyone would just stop purchasing content that is DRM protected. This is not a realistic goal however so please, find another method. Getting 300 million people to agree is impossible. Hell, even getting a million people to agree on something is quite difficult. This method would never work here in the real world. The solution is to break the DRM time and time again until they realize the method won't work and they actually need to give people an incentive to move to new formats when the old format is not deficient. Why should I pay for music in digital format when I already have a cd with music stored in a digital format? It doesn't make sense. If I vegetable oil I am not required to use it to grease a pan or use in a cake. I can do whatever I want with it including throwing it into a diesel engine. I don't need their permission to render in into another substance. It's a reasonably bad example in terms of copyright but fair use exists and DRM is a blatant violation of that fair use.
Fair enough, but this is often done by protecting us from ourselves like getting a ticket for speeding on an empty road. Still, as I said, fair enough, I think that is the rule and protecting us from ourselves is the exception.
The article is all about the Air Force, they don't mention police or any other body that would be qualified to do this to our own people. The military is never used against our own people. They are only used to help us in flood situations and whatnot. The minute our military is strolling through my town with guns in hand shooting people is a very sad day for the U.S.A. I say it's a sad day because this would and should only happen in an extreme emergency.
I will admit that the article didn't specifically state who would be testing this equipment, only that it would be tested on citizens. Still seems pointless, if it's non-lethal then they should test it on themselves and then we don't have to worry about any citizens dying by accident.
If an officer does this to a civilian citizen of the U.S.? They would be thrown in jail regardless of circumstance. So it's a violation of established law. The military and the citizenry are never meant to tangle with each other as it is deemed unfair especially if a death occurs.
Again it seems you don't understand the constitution. It's easy to forget. It's quite hard to grasp the concept that I have unlimited freedom under the constitution so long as my freedom does not degrade the freedom of another person. Government is deemed a necessary evil and should be checked and tightly regulated to ensure government does not take away my rights except under the circumstance of an ammendment the people voted for which grants the government more power. I'm unaware of ever signing up to be a guinea pig.
Americans get nervous when the military is used to control a crowd. We have police for this, we have the national guard as a last reserve. I don't think it would even be an issue if the air force gave police these non-lethal weapons to try out. This has become common practice with the bean bag guns and the use of tasers.
That is my main objection is that the military shouldn't be doing anything to the citizens of this country, they are not here to protect us from ourselves, that is what police are for.
I understand the need to make damn sure the non-lethal weapons are indeed non-lethal. I'm with the parent though, they should just try on themselves and then they will know.
I think you misunderstand the constitution. A better question would be, where in the constitution is it granted that the government can do this to a citizen?
Since the constitution doesn't grant me rights as a citizen, it grants the government rights and this is clearly not something I'd say is supported in any ammendment and certainly not the constitution in general. Using our military on our own people flies in the spirit of the constitution as well.
I'm not sure you know how right you are here. I have a friend that worked in a maximum security prison as a sniper. He learned about pressure points and whatnot and the chief requirement for learning is that you have to allow the instructor to do it to you so you understand how it feels. That way you understand the level of pain your inflicting on your opponent. If it's non-lethal then they should go right ahead!
Not sure where you got your information on that. That is not what is happening with Vista at all. You can still shut-off the Vista firewall and use the McAfee firewall without any penalty. You can choose to disable the malware protection as well and choose to rely on Mcafee as well if you deemed it was necessary. So it's not like welding the tires or even just the rims. It's about standardizing the axle which is different on the newer model. This happens all the time.
I don't think anyone was saying their weren't problems with the model. But a comprehensive one does exist. The model works if employed properly which means playing with permissions. This is the job of a systems administrator such as myself. I have no problem running most software as a local user because I under how it works and how I can grant access to users without compromising the whole thing. It's far from perfect but it is a lot more than the parent poster made it out to be just the grand parent shorted security on Linux.
I guess I agree is not a "training the user" point but a training the admin point. I've not seen any platform properly deployed with an admin that had no training on the platform they were administering. Microsoft's biggest problem is trying to appease everyone, they grasp the concepts just fine but their policies of appeasing home users as well as corporate users with the same basic OS is what is getting in the way. It supposedly makes development easier since they can concentrate on one OS but in reality it adds complexity because you're trying to please everyone with the same OS even though their needs are inherently different.
Apple fails at this as well, if you ever try to do something with OS X that Apple didn't deam obvious then you're shell scripting your way out of the problem.
Sorry, your analog seems apt but I don't think you understand what you're applying it too. Microsoft hasn't locked out security companies and 3rd party tools can and do exist to extend the functionality of Vista. What deliberate move by MS are you referring to? Closing a lot of the gaping holes in the previous OS? Punishing someone for improving their product really doesn't seem like a bright idea even if they do have a near monopoly. I think if fines are to be dulled out they should at least choose a valid reason and not just make up reasons that are completely absurd.
From a Microsoft point of view they are trying to improve their product so corporate customers remain happy and corporate customers have long known the risks associated with running Windows. The thing has had security problems in the past. It makes perfect and ethical business sense to close these holes. Sorry if the AV companies can no longer rely on the same exploits. Perhaps they will have to create proper installers now. Ever tried to remove the Mcafee security suite from a computer? It ain't easy.
Let me know when a company does this and then your statement will be relevant. Complaining that current products don't work on Vista? Complaining AV broke when Microsoft released SP2 for XP? They didn't remove the ability for these companies to operate, they changed the way this worked and as a result they had to modify their code. This is par for the course, even happens with security products on Linux or any other platform. APIs change and especially Microsoft's case they need to change. No one is preventing security software companies from installing products, they are changing the way this happens and possibly negating the need for the existance of said security software. Since they exist because MS has traditionally had a security problem it only makes sense that they are scared when MS implements new technology that has the potentional of reducing the need for said 3rd party products. It's not a crime and breaks no laws even in the screwy EU. It is clear they just want to punish MS and will grasp any reason they can to do it. That's not to say that MS doesn't deserve it but let's not base decision on false-pretenses as that doesn't actually help anyone.
Your knowledge of Windows security is just as ignorant. If security stopped with the Security Center which is just a tool users can check to see if something got turned off by accident then Microsoft would be going backrupt tomorrow. That's just way off base and ignores even basic file permissions. If you want all of the security features in one place then you open up the Security policy by running the mmc and either apply a template or modify the policies that the system is governed by. These policies also affect firewall rules and application level permissions. It's far more than you make it out to be.
You are correct about the ignorance of the parent poster however, that is equally as absurd.
I do, dual opteron 275;) Works beautifully with virtual dub, about 40% utilization while compressing to mpeg2 across all four streams. The biggest trick is io, gotta write in larger chunks to conserve. It works! I'll try out the cat deal with a knoppix cd and see how it goes. They are a regular device that you can reference through/dev/video/video0-3 although I don't know how you'd select which input.
The problem is that we're using Osprey cards which output raw video, not mpeg2 unfortunately so I have to have some encode it otherwise I'm looking at an incredible storage overhead. Although with something that simple I could probably do that and pipe it into ffmpeg to re-encode it.
Do you know of a site that references this kind of stuff? I haven't found any resources that tend to give me specific examples, only vague ones.
Thanks for advice though, it does help as I could easily write a shell script for that, the only problem is then getting the proper information from the database. Fortunately it's an Oracle database so linux tools for are easy to come by.
I'm a little curious if anyone has had any experience with scripting the recording of live content with MythTV? I have a database that I want to use that will determine what the file should be called. Any pointers on this would be greatly appreciated. I thought about doing it with ffmpeg and a perl script but I'm new to both and can't find syntax that will work with more than one tuner at a time. I am trying to capture, encode, and catalog 4 video streams all at once. I've done it with virtual dub but I can't script virtual dub so that won't work for me since I can't catalog them.
The problem here is that we've both made assumptions about one another and have tried to interpret one another. I never suggested that you thought everything should be free I was referring specifically to MS opening up the format to providers that wish to provide a product which performs all of the same functions as their existing product. It's business suicide for Microsoft to do that and you've given no reason how this wouldn't be the case if they did open it up. Other companies would rejoice, individiual consumers gain additional choice and all is well in the world at the expensive of a large corporation.
As I said, I don't expect this to happen and from a business perspective I see nothing MS would gain by it. As for Apple, Quicktime is an example of a proprietary file format that they hold on to. There is nothing invalid about my statement except for the assumption I made about your stance on it which is thankfully not in step with what I've seen the majority of slashdotters possess. Personally, I agree that they are both as bad as eachother and I can see business sense in what they are doing so I don't hold it against them.
Your counterpoint that Office was available first is valid and an additional reason for the uptake. Can debate the merits as to which is more important or if both are equally important at another time.
As for Vendor lockin Office supports a great many file formats, if the odd occasion comes up Microsoft does give you a facility to share with them as well. I didn't know you could open up ODF files in notepad and edit them effectively. Probably because you can't unless you know XML. Yes, its better than the binary approach of Microsoft but it's the same result to the average consumer.
As for my original point responding to someone other than yourself I was stating that Office was created not just to sell Windows as it is available for OS X. Microsoft saw a business need for it so it happened. As neighborly as it would be for them to share this format you can't expect them to and you can't really give them a good reason to. I'll admit I had the wrong focus while writing earlier, largely due to people complaining to me all day about problems that aren't problems and are by design to enforce business rules. Funny how people like the ability to do what they want but when given the opportunity they tend to corrupt everything and make needless and gross mistakes. So we employ business rules to ensure that they don't make mistakes and then they gripe that they aren't allowed to make mistakes anymore. Oh well. I apologize if I came off overly critical.
You completely missed my argument with the three types of screws example. Choices between Shampoo and Soaps are fine, the different choices are different products with different strengths and weaknesses. With screws, they are all there, they all do exactly the same thing and they all do it exactly as well as eachother. The choice doesn't help anyone. Different companies can still make flat-head screws, some with stronger materials than others for special purposes. The choices still exist but choosing between three types of products that do exactly the same thing doesn't help anyone.
As for Office Products, Word Perfect is still around, works with MS Office documents and has strengths in page formatting very useful for lawyers. This is an instance where the choice is good because the two products perform different functions even though they do have some crossover. OpenOffice is simply an attempt to duplicate what is already out there and provide for free what another company charges for. That is fine, they are free to do that but it is absurd to expect the company they are trying to put out of business to help them accomplish this task is simply ludicrous.
Now that your rant about choices went no where and I think I clearly explained why, we'll talk about how a business would benefit from Microsoft opening up the format to competition would help me as a consumer and as a business owner in a non-development field. I would have the option to use a free product that does all the same things as the product I used to have to spend $250 on. Hey, that sounds great! You've completely changed my mind. Oh wait, no you didn't. As great as everything in the world being free is Microsoft still has the right to keep their format closed since opening would obviously seriously affect their bottom line. I will not hold it against them for keeping this the way it is and I honestly don't think you would either. It's fun to say Microsoft is big and should share but that really isn't fair to them nor anyone in any business where they are deal with proprietary data as a core function of their business. Customers adopted Office at a time when it wasn't the only player, at a time when Word Perfect was dominant and they liked it. Over the years more and more people liked it. Why should Microsoft give it away just because it became a success?
Vendor lock-in sucks but guess what? Apple does it too. You get your Mac, you have you iLife, iPhoto, Ifilm and the iTunes. Sure you can remove them all with ease but they are there, Apple provides you with perfectly valid tools and no one complains because it makes sense for them to supply their customers with these tools even though it reduces the marketshare for competitors. Microsoft is doing the exact same thing trying to provide everything to their customers and their customers seem to like it! Imagine that, I'm not locked into Windows and neither are you. You said yourself you're running Gentoo as am I coincidentally. I use it for routers, mail servers, my database servers are SUSE but that's because of Oracle and the fact that I want Oracle support for the platform I'm running on. I can also run Oracle on Windows and receive full support but I don't because I SUSE was far less expensive and better suited for the particular task. It's a different product with different strengths and weaknesses. My application servers run on Windows because deploying ASP.net application is vastly simpler, I run Exchange and sharepoint because a lot of remote collaboration is required and I've found it to be a very reliable and robust system. I'm not locked into a Vendor on the server side. On the desktop side I'm waiting for things to be as easy to use and administer. Most distros can be made to be easy for the end users but I still find software installation easier on Windows and things like itunes will work as well. I don't have to go looking for small tools all over the Internet to get what I want. This is not speaking ill of any Linux since Gentoo is simple, just a simple emerge and I get pretty much whatever I want. Then I have to configure it of course. All besides the point as I'm not locked into a particular vendor. The choices exist already and I don't expect Microsoft to help their competition be competitive.
Actually, I argued that it would do businesses a service. You're taking a logical leap assuming that this would help customers as it may just confuse them and make the problem worse. How many formats for any media have gone from proprietary to open without a fundimental change to the business model? Would you expect anyone to undergo such a drastic change for little or no monetary gain? As a publically traded business that doesn't sound like something shareholders would like at all.
The choice addition is the recognition that is could do end-users some good but it is not a direct impact as it would only impact them if other businesses took the format and did something different with it. If they did the same thing with it then what's the point? It's kind of like, why do we have three different kinds of screws when they all do the same thing? Who does this choice help? The answer is... not the customers, only the businesses.
Make more sense now? I acknowledge I was a little vague earlier.
Wow, are you that deluded? First off, MS sells Office for OS X so your point is already invalid. Visual Studio is a huge application and it is no small task to port it to Linux. Of course, why should they? The vast vast vast majority of their developers run Windows because they are targeting their software at Windows.
Opening up the Office file formats wouldn't do their customers a service, it would do other businesses a service and give users more choice which would be nice but not something many companies are likely to do. Imagine if Tivo did this, wouldn't it be great? Yeah it would, is it going to happen? I highly doubt it.
Although XP home can't join a domain you can indeed control which users can access which files on an XP Home machine. You just need to disable Simple File Sharing which is on by default on an XP Pro install as well. It is automatically disabled when the Pro machines joins a domain which is why most people don't see it. XP home can still talk to domains however so as far as networking is concerned it will get the job done. You just won't have the remote management capabilities you get with XP Pro. This is fairly reasonable I would think for the majority of HOME users who probably don't have a domain in their house to begin with.
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Sorry, no contract is legally binding if you're not allowed to read it before purchasing. With a music even after you buy it you never agree to their terms since they are never presented to you. Besides that, it's a license not a contract which has to be signed by an individual one way or another. What if I'm a company and buy a bunch of cds with a company credit card. No identity ever signed a contract, no person is responsible.
DRM does intrinsically interfere with fair use as I'm explicity allowed to format shift and resample. The minute I have to break DRM to accomplish either of those then my fair use is comprimised without my consent.
Bold statements considering you couldn't put such a clause in contracts. Believe it or not there are limits to what a contract can do. The one exception is military service but that contract isn't your standard intellectual property license. They do not have the right to restrict my fair use of their product no matter what their license agreement is. I never signed a contract for any music I've ever bought so we don't even have to worry about that.
The solution to the problem would be pretty simple if everyone would just stop purchasing content that is DRM protected. This is not a realistic goal however so please, find another method. Getting 300 million people to agree is impossible. Hell, even getting a million people to agree on something is quite difficult. This method would never work here in the real world. The solution is to break the DRM time and time again until they realize the method won't work and they actually need to give people an incentive to move to new formats when the old format is not deficient. Why should I pay for music in digital format when I already have a cd with music stored in a digital format? It doesn't make sense. If I vegetable oil I am not required to use it to grease a pan or use in a cake. I can do whatever I want with it including throwing it into a diesel engine. I don't need their permission to render in into another substance. It's a reasonably bad example in terms of copyright but fair use exists and DRM is a blatant violation of that fair use.
This is just another phase of the war on heart disease man. They are only trying to protect you from yourself.
Fair enough, but this is often done by protecting us from ourselves like getting a ticket for speeding on an empty road. Still, as I said, fair enough, I think that is the rule and protecting us from ourselves is the exception.
The article is all about the Air Force, they don't mention police or any other body that would be qualified to do this to our own people. The military is never used against our own people. They are only used to help us in flood situations and whatnot. The minute our military is strolling through my town with guns in hand shooting people is a very sad day for the U.S.A. I say it's a sad day because this would and should only happen in an extreme emergency.
I will admit that the article didn't specifically state who would be testing this equipment, only that it would be tested on citizens. Still seems pointless, if it's non-lethal then they should test it on themselves and then we don't have to worry about any citizens dying by accident.
If an officer does this to a civilian citizen of the U.S.? They would be thrown in jail regardless of circumstance. So it's a violation of established law. The military and the citizenry are never meant to tangle with each other as it is deemed unfair especially if a death occurs.
Again it seems you don't understand the constitution. It's easy to forget. It's quite hard to grasp the concept that I have unlimited freedom under the constitution so long as my freedom does not degrade the freedom of another person. Government is deemed a necessary evil and should be checked and tightly regulated to ensure government does not take away my rights except under the circumstance of an ammendment the people voted for which grants the government more power. I'm unaware of ever signing up to be a guinea pig.
Americans get nervous when the military is used to control a crowd. We have police for this, we have the national guard as a last reserve. I don't think it would even be an issue if the air force gave police these non-lethal weapons to try out. This has become common practice with the bean bag guns and the use of tasers.
That is my main objection is that the military shouldn't be doing anything to the citizens of this country, they are not here to protect us from ourselves, that is what police are for.
I understand the need to make damn sure the non-lethal weapons are indeed non-lethal. I'm with the parent though, they should just try on themselves and then they will know.
I think you misunderstand the constitution. A better question would be, where in the constitution is it granted that the government can do this to a citizen?
Since the constitution doesn't grant me rights as a citizen, it grants the government rights and this is clearly not something I'd say is supported in any ammendment and certainly not the constitution in general. Using our military on our own people flies in the spirit of the constitution as well.
Dude, that's some scary yogurt you're eating.
Yeah, I agree with you completely. It's scary as all hell and smacks the face of the constitution.
I'm not sure you know how right you are here. I have a friend that worked in a maximum security prison as a sniper. He learned about pressure points and whatnot and the chief requirement for learning is that you have to allow the instructor to do it to you so you understand how it feels. That way you understand the level of pain your inflicting on your opponent. If it's non-lethal then they should go right ahead!
Not needed, if they are toking up they won't be going crazy so they will have little opportunity to use their weapons in this scenario.
Not sure where you got your information on that. That is not what is happening with Vista at all. You can still shut-off the Vista firewall and use the McAfee firewall without any penalty. You can choose to disable the malware protection as well and choose to rely on Mcafee as well if you deemed it was necessary. So it's not like welding the tires or even just the rims. It's about standardizing the axle which is different on the newer model. This happens all the time.
I don't think anyone was saying their weren't problems with the model. But a comprehensive one does exist. The model works if employed properly which means playing with permissions. This is the job of a systems administrator such as myself. I have no problem running most software as a local user because I under how it works and how I can grant access to users without compromising the whole thing. It's far from perfect but it is a lot more than the parent poster made it out to be just the grand parent shorted security on Linux.
I guess I agree is not a "training the user" point but a training the admin point. I've not seen any platform properly deployed with an admin that had no training on the platform they were administering. Microsoft's biggest problem is trying to appease everyone, they grasp the concepts just fine but their policies of appeasing home users as well as corporate users with the same basic OS is what is getting in the way. It supposedly makes development easier since they can concentrate on one OS but in reality it adds complexity because you're trying to please everyone with the same OS even though their needs are inherently different.
Apple fails at this as well, if you ever try to do something with OS X that Apple didn't deam obvious then you're shell scripting your way out of the problem.
Sorry, your analog seems apt but I don't think you understand what you're applying it too. Microsoft hasn't locked out security companies and 3rd party tools can and do exist to extend the functionality of Vista. What deliberate move by MS are you referring to? Closing a lot of the gaping holes in the previous OS? Punishing someone for improving their product really doesn't seem like a bright idea even if they do have a near monopoly. I think if fines are to be dulled out they should at least choose a valid reason and not just make up reasons that are completely absurd.
From a Microsoft point of view they are trying to improve their product so corporate customers remain happy and corporate customers have long known the risks associated with running Windows. The thing has had security problems in the past. It makes perfect and ethical business sense to close these holes. Sorry if the AV companies can no longer rely on the same exploits. Perhaps they will have to create proper installers now. Ever tried to remove the Mcafee security suite from a computer? It ain't easy.
Let me know when a company does this and then your statement will be relevant. Complaining that current products don't work on Vista? Complaining AV broke when Microsoft released SP2 for XP? They didn't remove the ability for these companies to operate, they changed the way this worked and as a result they had to modify their code. This is par for the course, even happens with security products on Linux or any other platform. APIs change and especially Microsoft's case they need to change. No one is preventing security software companies from installing products, they are changing the way this happens and possibly negating the need for the existance of said security software. Since they exist because MS has traditionally had a security problem it only makes sense that they are scared when MS implements new technology that has the potentional of reducing the need for said 3rd party products. It's not a crime and breaks no laws even in the screwy EU. It is clear they just want to punish MS and will grasp any reason they can to do it. That's not to say that MS doesn't deserve it but let's not base decision on false-pretenses as that doesn't actually help anyone.
Your knowledge of Windows security is just as ignorant. If security stopped with the Security Center which is just a tool users can check to see if something got turned off by accident then Microsoft would be going backrupt tomorrow. That's just way off base and ignores even basic file permissions. If you want all of the security features in one place then you open up the Security policy by running the mmc and either apply a template or modify the policies that the system is governed by. These policies also affect firewall rules and application level permissions. It's far more than you make it out to be.
You are correct about the ignorance of the parent poster however, that is equally as absurd.
I do, dual opteron 275 ;) Works beautifully with virtual dub, about 40% utilization while compressing to mpeg2 across all four streams. The biggest trick is io, gotta write in larger chunks to conserve. It works! I'll try out the cat deal with a knoppix cd and see how it goes. They are a regular device that you can reference through /dev/video/video0-3 although I don't know how you'd select which input.
Hopefully I won't need luck, but thanks!
The problem is that we're using Osprey cards which output raw video, not mpeg2 unfortunately so I have to have some encode it otherwise I'm looking at an incredible storage overhead. Although with something that simple I could probably do that and pipe it into ffmpeg to re-encode it.
Do you know of a site that references this kind of stuff? I haven't found any resources that tend to give me specific examples, only vague ones.
Thanks for advice though, it does help as I could easily write a shell script for that, the only problem is then getting the proper information from the database. Fortunately it's an Oracle database so linux tools for are easy to come by.
I'm a little curious if anyone has had any experience with scripting the recording of live content with MythTV? I have a database that I want to use that will determine what the file should be called. Any pointers on this would be greatly appreciated. I thought about doing it with ffmpeg and a perl script but I'm new to both and can't find syntax that will work with more than one tuner at a time. I am trying to capture, encode, and catalog 4 video streams all at once. I've done it with virtual dub but I can't script virtual dub so that won't work for me since I can't catalog them.
The problem here is that we've both made assumptions about one another and have tried to interpret one another. I never suggested that you thought everything should be free I was referring specifically to MS opening up the format to providers that wish to provide a product which performs all of the same functions as their existing product. It's business suicide for Microsoft to do that and you've given no reason how this wouldn't be the case if they did open it up. Other companies would rejoice, individiual consumers gain additional choice and all is well in the world at the expensive of a large corporation.
As I said, I don't expect this to happen and from a business perspective I see nothing MS would gain by it. As for Apple, Quicktime is an example of a proprietary file format that they hold on to. There is nothing invalid about my statement except for the assumption I made about your stance on it which is thankfully not in step with what I've seen the majority of slashdotters possess. Personally, I agree that they are both as bad as eachother and I can see business sense in what they are doing so I don't hold it against them.
Your counterpoint that Office was available first is valid and an additional reason for the uptake. Can debate the merits as to which is more important or if both are equally important at another time.
As for Vendor lockin Office supports a great many file formats, if the odd occasion comes up Microsoft does give you a facility to share with them as well. I didn't know you could open up ODF files in notepad and edit them effectively. Probably because you can't unless you know XML. Yes, its better than the binary approach of Microsoft but it's the same result to the average consumer.
As for my original point responding to someone other than yourself I was stating that Office was created not just to sell Windows as it is available for OS X. Microsoft saw a business need for it so it happened. As neighborly as it would be for them to share this format you can't expect them to and you can't really give them a good reason to. I'll admit I had the wrong focus while writing earlier, largely due to people complaining to me all day about problems that aren't problems and are by design to enforce business rules. Funny how people like the ability to do what they want but when given the opportunity they tend to corrupt everything and make needless and gross mistakes. So we employ business rules to ensure that they don't make mistakes and then they gripe that they aren't allowed to make mistakes anymore. Oh well. I apologize if I came off overly critical.
You completely missed my argument with the three types of screws example. Choices between Shampoo and Soaps are fine, the different choices are different products with different strengths and weaknesses. With screws, they are all there, they all do exactly the same thing and they all do it exactly as well as eachother. The choice doesn't help anyone. Different companies can still make flat-head screws, some with stronger materials than others for special purposes. The choices still exist but choosing between three types of products that do exactly the same thing doesn't help anyone.
As for Office Products, Word Perfect is still around, works with MS Office documents and has strengths in page formatting very useful for lawyers. This is an instance where the choice is good because the two products perform different functions even though they do have some crossover. OpenOffice is simply an attempt to duplicate what is already out there and provide for free what another company charges for. That is fine, they are free to do that but it is absurd to expect the company they are trying to put out of business to help them accomplish this task is simply ludicrous.
Now that your rant about choices went no where and I think I clearly explained why, we'll talk about how a business would benefit from Microsoft opening up the format to competition would help me as a consumer and as a business owner in a non-development field. I would have the option to use a free product that does all the same things as the product I used to have to spend $250 on. Hey, that sounds great! You've completely changed my mind. Oh wait, no you didn't. As great as everything in the world being free is Microsoft still has the right to keep their format closed since opening would obviously seriously affect their bottom line. I will not hold it against them for keeping this the way it is and I honestly don't think you would either. It's fun to say Microsoft is big and should share but that really isn't fair to them nor anyone in any business where they are deal with proprietary data as a core function of their business. Customers adopted Office at a time when it wasn't the only player, at a time when Word Perfect was dominant and they liked it. Over the years more and more people liked it. Why should Microsoft give it away just because it became a success?
Vendor lock-in sucks but guess what? Apple does it too. You get your Mac, you have you iLife, iPhoto, Ifilm and the iTunes. Sure you can remove them all with ease but they are there, Apple provides you with perfectly valid tools and no one complains because it makes sense for them to supply their customers with these tools even though it reduces the marketshare for competitors. Microsoft is doing the exact same thing trying to provide everything to their customers and their customers seem to like it! Imagine that, I'm not locked into Windows and neither are you. You said yourself you're running Gentoo as am I coincidentally. I use it for routers, mail servers, my database servers are SUSE but that's because of Oracle and the fact that I want Oracle support for the platform I'm running on. I can also run Oracle on Windows and receive full support but I don't because I SUSE was far less expensive and better suited for the particular task. It's a different product with different strengths and weaknesses. My application servers run on Windows because deploying ASP.net application is vastly simpler, I run Exchange and sharepoint because a lot of remote collaboration is required and I've found it to be a very reliable and robust system. I'm not locked into a Vendor on the server side. On the desktop side I'm waiting for things to be as easy to use and administer. Most distros can be made to be easy for the end users but I still find software installation easier on Windows and things like itunes will work as well. I don't have to go looking for small tools all over the Internet to get what I want. This is not speaking ill of any Linux since Gentoo is simple, just a simple emerge and I get pretty much whatever I want. Then I have to configure it of course. All besides the point as I'm not locked into a particular vendor. The choices exist already and I don't expect Microsoft to help their competition be competitive.
Actually, I argued that it would do businesses a service. You're taking a logical leap assuming that this would help customers as it may just confuse them and make the problem worse. How many formats for any media have gone from proprietary to open without a fundimental change to the business model? Would you expect anyone to undergo such a drastic change for little or no monetary gain? As a publically traded business that doesn't sound like something shareholders would like at all.
The choice addition is the recognition that is could do end-users some good but it is not a direct impact as it would only impact them if other businesses took the format and did something different with it. If they did the same thing with it then what's the point? It's kind of like, why do we have three different kinds of screws when they all do the same thing? Who does this choice help? The answer is... not the customers, only the businesses.
Make more sense now? I acknowledge I was a little vague earlier.
Wow, are you that deluded? First off, MS sells Office for OS X so your point is already invalid. Visual Studio is a huge application and it is no small task to port it to Linux. Of course, why should they? The vast vast vast majority of their developers run Windows because they are targeting their software at Windows.
Opening up the Office file formats wouldn't do their customers a service, it would do other businesses a service and give users more choice which would be nice but not something many companies are likely to do. Imagine if Tivo did this, wouldn't it be great? Yeah it would, is it going to happen? I highly doubt it.
Although XP home can't join a domain you can indeed control which users can access which files on an XP Home machine. You just need to disable Simple File Sharing which is on by default on an XP Pro install as well. It is automatically disabled when the Pro machines joins a domain which is why most people don't see it. XP home can still talk to domains however so as far as networking is concerned it will get the job done. You just won't have the remote management capabilities you get with XP Pro. This is fairly reasonable I would think for the majority of HOME users who probably don't have a domain in their house to begin with.