I am familiar with soft costs, at least the concept, not that phrase. I'm not saying it's not annoying. It is. It's a dumb policy and I dislike it. However the commenter thought he needed to pay to buy an entirely separate copy of Windows when in reality he needed to call Microsoft and they would give him a free reactivation code.
Microsoft support does not charge for activation issues. It's free minus the long distance phone call. It's the same policy they use for virus and security issues. It will probably take you less than 15 minutes.
You can say that its annoying (which it is) but its not like they've simply said you can't possibly reactivate it because there's nothing preventing you from doing so.
Or you could just call their support number and explain your issue and they'll give you an Activation Code at no cost... but that wouldn't fit the Slashdot hatred of MS:)
You must be joking... Someone actually implied that Ted Stevens was anything but a corrupt, arrogant, senile jack-ass. This is the man who threatened to resign from the Senate if they took any bit of money from his stupid bridge to nowhere and used it for Katrina aid. I only wish they had took money and he had gone back to Alaska to bask in his own love. (No I don't need to give references for all the stupid things he did, google it.)
I like that George Bush encourages community service. It doesn't mean I want him to be my president. Same thing applies to Teddy Stevens.
No that's not at all what Microsoft does. Google is claiming because its hard to disable the built-in search (I can't see how anyone could imagine a consumer OS without a built-in search nowadays) that it's taking resources away from Google indexer. What Google ignores is that if you deselect all indexing locations, the indexer will almost never run and when it does it will take a minimal amount of resources. In addition the Windows search indexer runs as a low-priority application, in regards to memory, processor usage and I/O usage... In other words if there is another application doing anything, the indexer will wait until memory, processor or I/O usage decreases.
Google is making up an issue that never existed. A built-in search is fundamental to any modern desktop operating system (which is why OS X, KDE and Gnome all come with them).
Actually its not clear that Jamie himself is violating the contract. The way it's written sounds like it might apply solely to the end user who uses Jamie's product. That's if this clause in the EULA is enforceable of course.
What's more, the way its written could put people who use published APIs in legal jeopardy. (Provided no other part of the EULA deals with APIs, I haven't read it). Granted Microsoft would be insane to sue people for that, well more insane than they would be to sue for this but if you want to go by the book, that's what it could mean.
Ya no kidding. The parental controls in Vista are tame compared to some of the programs that the feds anti-drug website suggest. The one's recommended by the feds run in the background without indicating to the target that they are being tracked. Vista's parental controls always has an icon on the taskbar so a person knows the parental controls are on and their actions are being recorded. Anytime an action is blocked a window pops up to explain what is happening.
I don't think parental controls are a great solution but if they have to exist Microsoft seems to have found the right balance.
Read my post again. As I explained, any OS that allows you to run programs as root allows people to run programs that can damage their OS or files. Even if you run something as a standard user you still risk any files that your user account has available to it. Anti-virus isn't designed to protect the OS, its designed to protect people from themselves.
Again as long as users can execute unsafe code, you are guaranteed that some users will. People will download executable files and run them no matter the system and will damage the files that the user has access to. Windows has been moronic to allow everyone to have admin privileges but on Linux you can still mess up your own files, files that a lot of people consider very valuable. AV software can prevent people from running that type of software and losing those valuable files. I don't think anti-virus software is great by any means, I don't use it but if there were enough systems running Linux with average users, people would try to run the types of programs that anti-virus software blocks.
In the end, this story has nothing to do with any particular OS. We're talking about one company who are entrusted to protect their customers property from damage but end up making their customer's systems unusable. If you weren't so busy making your stupid "Monkeysoft" puns, you might realize that.
What does any of this have to do with good design? If a program can be downloaded and run from the internet, it can be a virus. It's part of the risk of having a networked world. When you are using the most common OS, you will need some form of anti-virus software. If OS X or Linux were the most common OS, they would need anti-virus software as well. As long as people have the ability to run unsafe code (and yes that can be done on Linux and OS X), they can get viruses. This is Symantec being incredibly irresponsible. Failing to find something like this in pre-update testing (or the failure to test updates) is insane and they should be required to pay for repairs.
Actually its not approved because Microsoft hasn't submitted them. There was an incident a while back where an independent developer submitted Ms-PL to OSI for review. OSI decided not to review it because the people that wrote the license (Microsoft) didn't actually submit it. Microsoft also said that at this point they're not interested in submitting it to the OSI.
That's not to say that your points are invalid but OSI has never ruled that the Ms-PL should or shouldn't be approved.
I don't think the second one is near as big an exception as people are making it out to be. A software vendor is allowed to not abide by the act if they are solely (meaning the ONLY purpose) determining whether a user is authorized to use that specific software and its only in the legally prescribed scenarios. I don't necessarily like the idea but its not really that broad an exception. They should just require that the company inform the user what they are doing.
The first one is rather broad because it allows an ISP to detect or prevent fraudulent activities without defining (at least as far as I know) what fraudulent activities are. If it includes every posssible fraudulent activity, that means the ISP has the right to everything on your computer. That is a serious issue that goes well beyond any current legal activity.
What is excepted should be better defined as well. If these two exceptions are included, (and I hope they're not, at the very least the first one) they should still provide notice to the user that what will happen and why it's happening.
I agree on this. For example, Nvidia had literally a year and a half with a stable driver API and they are still working on getting a decent driver for Vista. We knew this thing was coming, some companies just didn't feel customer satisfaction was a good enough reason to put in the work.
Don't give me the crap that its because Vista is so different/hard that no one can they shouldn't need to make drivers for it. It's just an issue of business not prioritizing customer satisfaction.
I always like when people say anything they don't like is "bloat". Lots of my non-computer geek friends think those animated cursors are neat. I find them moronic but that's my opinion. Quit calling things you don't like "bloat".
Have you called Microsoft? At least on retail products I think they provide a 45 day money back guarantee. Don't know how it works with OEM version but its worth a shot.
I saw something in this announcement (or a blog entry from Dell about the announcement) that noted that most of the people who wanted Linux were with current forum support services. That they mentioned that implies to me they're looking to not actually provide support to the OS.
While I don't think Windows is the most secure OS, its not fair to compare the number of patches released by a Linux packaging system to the number released by Microsoft for their base OS. The various repositories include every conceivable type of software for Linux and updates for that software while I assume Symantec (no I didn't read the article) is referring to updates just for Windows, not every piece of software on Windows. Your comparison only makes sense if you compare the SUSE repository software updates with every Windows software update.
Yes because I'm totally qualified to evaluate on my own time every possible decision the government makes. There's a reason we have a republic. If we had a pure democracy, everybody's full time jobs would be debating and making decisions. Even with the issues we have in our modern republic, I shudder to think of how much worse a democracy would be.
Well we're supposed to separate government and religion but the Christian fundamentalists don't see it like that exactly. They feel that eliminating teacher led prayer in government funded schools for example is discriminating against Christians. The US Constitution provides for the free exercise of religion and restricts the government from recognizing a religion (separation of church and state). I happen to think that teachers leading a prayer is government recognizing a religion, they happen to disagree. Of course there's going to be a balancing act on this issue between protecting the free exercise of religion and not recognizing religion but they don't seem to want a balance. Which is why I can't stand them.
Signing statements don't have any legal authority but they're an explanation of how the President will interpret the law. For example with the anti-torture bill, Bush said the bill only applies in ways that don't infringe upon his power as Commander in Chief as he sees it. I did pick a poor example in the first place but anyways the gist of the whole thing is that the President is given great deference when it comes to the military. The classic example of something Congress can't do is say "send 100 troops to that ledge" or "move those ships into that harbor".
I'm not sure about the 180 day limit but I doubt Congress has the authority to do that (it may, I don't know if courts have ruled on this). Congress' has the power of the purse. They ended the Vietnam War by defunding it, not by telling the President to end the war. If they wanted to end a war, that's how they do it; they just don't.
Congress can't really do much about the war. Under the current understanding of the constitution (whether right or not), the President has pretty much unfettered power regarding combat tactics in his position as Commander In Chief. That's why the President signed the anti-torture bill with the understanding that he doesn't need to abide by it because restricting the military in that way infringes on the power of the President. (I'm pretty sure that the Framers didn't think a President should be able to authorize torture but I digress)
Congress' main power is that they control the budget and decide what the President can spend (if anything). In theory they could completely defund the military and the President wouldn't have the legal authority to stop them (if they overrode his veto of course). In reality this won't happen and that's why Congress won't be able to stop the President. They don't want to look like they're taking money away from troops and endangering them.
How does this apply to this fingerprinting? Outside of the military the President's main duty is to execute and enforce acts of congress. Congress passes the laws and sets the level of funding and Congress has defunded really bad ideas in the past (Total Information Awareness program is a perfect example). Congress does get pretty involved in small parts of programs so there's nothing really preventing them from eliminate our fixing this program. The question is will they?
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I am familiar with soft costs, at least the concept, not that phrase. I'm not saying it's not annoying. It is. It's a dumb policy and I dislike it. However the commenter thought he needed to pay to buy an entirely separate copy of Windows when in reality he needed to call Microsoft and they would give him a free reactivation code.
Microsoft support does not charge for activation issues. It's free minus the long distance phone call. It's the same policy they use for virus and security issues. It will probably take you less than 15 minutes.
You can say that its annoying (which it is) but its not like they've simply said you can't possibly reactivate it because there's nothing preventing you from doing so.
Or you could just call their support number and explain your issue and they'll give you an Activation Code at no cost... but that wouldn't fit the Slashdot hatred of MS :)
OH be fair... its not a billion dollars! It's only $315 Million... To serve a total of 9,000 people.
You must be joking... Someone actually implied that Ted Stevens was anything but a corrupt, arrogant, senile jack-ass. This is the man who threatened to resign from the Senate if they took any bit of money from his stupid bridge to nowhere and used it for Katrina aid. I only wish they had took money and he had gone back to Alaska to bask in his own love. (No I don't need to give references for all the stupid things he did, google it.)
I like that George Bush encourages community service. It doesn't mean I want him to be my president. Same thing applies to Teddy Stevens.
No that's not at all what Microsoft does. Google is claiming because its hard to disable the built-in search (I can't see how anyone could imagine a consumer OS without a built-in search nowadays) that it's taking resources away from Google indexer. What Google ignores is that if you deselect all indexing locations, the indexer will almost never run and when it does it will take a minimal amount of resources. In addition the Windows search indexer runs as a low-priority application, in regards to memory, processor usage and I/O usage... In other words if there is another application doing anything, the indexer will wait until memory, processor or I/O usage decreases.
Google is making up an issue that never existed. A built-in search is fundamental to any modern desktop operating system (which is why OS X, KDE and Gnome all come with them).
Actually its not clear that Jamie himself is violating the contract. The way it's written sounds like it might apply solely to the end user who uses Jamie's product. That's if this clause in the EULA is enforceable of course.
What's more, the way its written could put people who use published APIs in legal jeopardy. (Provided no other part of the EULA deals with APIs, I haven't read it). Granted Microsoft would be insane to sue people for that, well more insane than they would be to sue for this but if you want to go by the book, that's what it could mean.
Ya no kidding. The parental controls in Vista are tame compared to some of the programs that the feds anti-drug website suggest. The one's recommended by the feds run in the background without indicating to the target that they are being tracked. Vista's parental controls always has an icon on the taskbar so a person knows the parental controls are on and their actions are being recorded. Anytime an action is blocked a window pops up to explain what is happening.
I don't think parental controls are a great solution but if they have to exist Microsoft seems to have found the right balance.
Read my post again. As I explained, any OS that allows you to run programs as root allows people to run programs that can damage their OS or files. Even if you run something as a standard user you still risk any files that your user account has available to it. Anti-virus isn't designed to protect the OS, its designed to protect people from themselves.
Again as long as users can execute unsafe code, you are guaranteed that some users will. People will download executable files and run them no matter the system and will damage the files that the user has access to. Windows has been moronic to allow everyone to have admin privileges but on Linux you can still mess up your own files, files that a lot of people consider very valuable. AV software can prevent people from running that type of software and losing those valuable files. I don't think anti-virus software is great by any means, I don't use it but if there were enough systems running Linux with average users, people would try to run the types of programs that anti-virus software blocks.
In the end, this story has nothing to do with any particular OS. We're talking about one company who are entrusted to protect their customers property from damage but end up making their customer's systems unusable. If you weren't so busy making your stupid "Monkeysoft" puns, you might realize that.
What does any of this have to do with good design? If a program can be downloaded and run from the internet, it can be a virus. It's part of the risk of having a networked world. When you are using the most common OS, you will need some form of anti-virus software. If OS X or Linux were the most common OS, they would need anti-virus software as well. As long as people have the ability to run unsafe code (and yes that can be done on Linux and OS X), they can get viruses. This is Symantec being incredibly irresponsible. Failing to find something like this in pre-update testing (or the failure to test updates) is insane and they should be required to pay for repairs.
Actually its not approved because Microsoft hasn't submitted them. There was an incident a while back where an independent developer submitted Ms-PL to OSI for review. OSI decided not to review it because the people that wrote the license (Microsoft) didn't actually submit it. Microsoft also said that at this point they're not interested in submitting it to the OSI.
That's not to say that your points are invalid but OSI has never ruled that the Ms-PL should or shouldn't be approved.
I don't think the second one is near as big an exception as people are making it out to be. A software vendor is allowed to not abide by the act if they are solely (meaning the ONLY purpose) determining whether a user is authorized to use that specific software and its only in the legally prescribed scenarios. I don't necessarily like the idea but its not really that broad an exception. They should just require that the company inform the user what they are doing.
The first one is rather broad because it allows an ISP to detect or prevent fraudulent activities without defining (at least as far as I know) what fraudulent activities are. If it includes every posssible fraudulent activity, that means the ISP has the right to everything on your computer. That is a serious issue that goes well beyond any current legal activity.
What is excepted should be better defined as well. If these two exceptions are included, (and I hope they're not, at the very least the first one) they should still provide notice to the user that what will happen and why it's happening.
I agree on this. For example, Nvidia had literally a year and a half with a stable driver API and they are still working on getting a decent driver for Vista. We knew this thing was coming, some companies just didn't feel customer satisfaction was a good enough reason to put in the work. Don't give me the crap that its because Vista is so different/hard that no one can they shouldn't need to make drivers for it. It's just an issue of business not prioritizing customer satisfaction.
That was what I was referring to as well
I always like when people say anything they don't like is "bloat". Lots of my non-computer geek friends think those animated cursors are neat. I find them moronic but that's my opinion. Quit calling things you don't like "bloat".
Have you called Microsoft? At least on retail products I think they provide a 45 day money back guarantee. Don't know how it works with OEM version but its worth a shot.
I saw something in this announcement (or a blog entry from Dell about the announcement) that noted that most of the people who wanted Linux were with current forum support services. That they mentioned that implies to me they're looking to not actually provide support to the OS.
While I don't think Windows is the most secure OS, its not fair to compare the number of patches released by a Linux packaging system to the number released by Microsoft for their base OS. The various repositories include every conceivable type of software for Linux and updates for that software while I assume Symantec (no I didn't read the article) is referring to updates just for Windows, not every piece of software on Windows. Your comparison only makes sense if you compare the SUSE repository software updates with every Windows software update.
Hmmm maybe its because they like being in business. But that's just a wild guess.
Yes because I'm totally qualified to evaluate on my own time every possible decision the government makes. There's a reason we have a republic. If we had a pure democracy, everybody's full time jobs would be debating and making decisions. Even with the issues we have in our modern republic, I shudder to think of how much worse a democracy would be.
To be fair, the government doesn't deliver the mail anymore. Sure its a government created monopoly but its not a government agency.
My gestapo scares me too so that makes two of us.
Well we're supposed to separate government and religion but the Christian fundamentalists don't see it like that exactly. They feel that eliminating teacher led prayer in government funded schools for example is discriminating against Christians. The US Constitution provides for the free exercise of religion and restricts the government from recognizing a religion (separation of church and state). I happen to think that teachers leading a prayer is government recognizing a religion, they happen to disagree. Of course there's going to be a balancing act on this issue between protecting the free exercise of religion and not recognizing religion but they don't seem to want a balance. Which is why I can't stand them.
Signing statements don't have any legal authority but they're an explanation of how the President will interpret the law. For example with the anti-torture bill, Bush said the bill only applies in ways that don't infringe upon his power as Commander in Chief as he sees it. I did pick a poor example in the first place but anyways the gist of the whole thing is that the President is given great deference when it comes to the military. The classic example of something Congress can't do is say "send 100 troops to that ledge" or "move those ships into that harbor".
I'm not sure about the 180 day limit but I doubt Congress has the authority to do that (it may, I don't know if courts have ruled on this). Congress' has the power of the purse. They ended the Vietnam War by defunding it, not by telling the President to end the war. If they wanted to end a war, that's how they do it; they just don't.
I have no idea on the bye part but...
Congress can't really do much about the war. Under the current understanding of the constitution (whether right or not), the President has pretty much unfettered power regarding combat tactics in his position as Commander In Chief. That's why the President signed the anti-torture bill with the understanding that he doesn't need to abide by it because restricting the military in that way infringes on the power of the President. (I'm pretty sure that the Framers didn't think a President should be able to authorize torture but I digress)
Congress' main power is that they control the budget and decide what the President can spend (if anything). In theory they could completely defund the military and the President wouldn't have the legal authority to stop them (if they overrode his veto of course). In reality this won't happen and that's why Congress won't be able to stop the President. They don't want to look like they're taking money away from troops and endangering them.
How does this apply to this fingerprinting? Outside of the military the President's main duty is to execute and enforce acts of congress. Congress passes the laws and sets the level of funding and Congress has defunded really bad ideas in the past (Total Information Awareness program is a perfect example). Congress does get pretty involved in small parts of programs so there's nothing really preventing them from eliminate our fixing this program. The question is will they?