Did you ever see the TV miniseries "Roots" from the late 70's? It's full of racism and brutality. It was also one of the highest rated shows ever. I don't recall there being a lot of racist attacks after Roots played.
...and this relates to our discussion how? This video game has a protagonist, with whom players are supposed to identify, committing brutal, violent acts based upon racism. Roots showed how horrible those acts are, in a historical context and did not exactly try to make viewers think they were "fun" or justified.
In any case, I support the right of anyone to speak out against something and try to organize a boycott. If some people believe Roots has a hidden message that worshipping Satan is the key to happiness, and they want to boycott it, good for them. There is nothing wrong with people boycotting businesses who do things they find unethical. In this particular case, from what I have read, I think they may have a very valid point.
Censorship is unethical, and I strongly support the rights of this video game publisher, to publish anything they want. They are also, however, responsible for what they publish and should be held accountable by purchasers for their actions.
I'm president of the local chapter of NORML. I was fired from my job as a DEA agent...
I know you're trying to be funny, and you're making this up. The sad thing is people like you believe this sort of thing is OK and legal. If you are fired from a government job for your political beliefs off the job, and not because you are failing to do the job, then a serious injustice has been done. This is one step away from firing any policemen who are members of the democratic party. It is unethical, incompatible with democracy, and illegal.
Hey, I work for the DEA, but in my spare time I an editor for High Times
If I was fired from a government job because of my hobby, which includes political activism to change certain laws, then I have every right to complain and probably very good grounds for a lawsuit (seeing as it was a government job). Political activism is the most highly protected from of free speech, for good reason.
Ah yes, politically correct idiots are trying to re-write history. Not that GUN is exactly history but it's set in a different time with different values. I guess next someone should go through Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to replace all instances of the word "nigger" with "African American". What will they call the character Nigger Jim; "James from Africa"?
No one is trying to rewrite history, but this game certainly is offensive and inaccurate and may very well promote racism. If someone publishes a game called, "Kill the Nigger" that feature KKK members torturing blacks in a historical context, I won't buy it and I'd probably join in a boycott. If some people find Tom Sawyer to be racist and detrimental, well they are free to boycott the publishing company. No one here is advocating censorship. No one is arguing that this company does not have the right to publish this game. What they are arguing is that no one should be willing to give money to people who behave this irresponsibly.
However, Safari doesn't do this, so you can't see the individual tabs in a safari window through expose.
And it is completely inconceivable to you that multiple UI designers, when looking for a way to make a whole series of grouped windows easy to sort through, would not look at one of the more prominent new ways of doing just that, and copy it for within their application? Any GUI designer that has not looked at expose and tabs and considered them as a model for their application, should probably be fired now.
"Quick tabs" just show how counterproducutive tabs are in the first place. One must ask, why not just have the pages in seperate windows?
Because the Windows task bar (and other task bars that copy it) absolutely suck at dealing with large numbers of windows at one time. Nicer Window managers utilizing virtual desktops, expose, etc. do a better job, but grouping windows as one tabbed window does make sense for certain applications. I mean, have you ever had thirty browser windows open at once and tried to find one particular one using the standard Windows interface? It is slow any annoying, thus tabs as a hack to work around it.
I shouldn't have to remind people on/. that beta software should not be ran/tested on a production machine whether it's made by Microsoft, Adobe, or even a game. Beta does not mean stable!
I'd agree for servers, but for workstations it is usually not a big deal at all. I don't even bother to use a separate account for most beta software. I mean, has anyone ever had problems with this on anything but Windows? The absolute worst case scenario I've seen in the last several years was the application coring and borking its associated daemon. On modern systems, applications just don't crash the OS, or even the GUI anymore.
This kind of thing doesn't happen overnight. It takes time to develop, the question is, which got the idea from whom?
Perhaps they both copied it from Apple's Expose feature which does the same thing, but for all windows in the GUI. I'd guess Foxpose at least was copied from there, given the name.
And M$ says to dev, please install IE7 Beta and test your pages... except that if I do that, it kills IE6, and I can't check my pages as they'll be seen by 90% of visitors...
This is part of the problem with the archaic install/uninstall system for programs on Windows. On OS X, most programs are completely self contained. They use a "folder is the application" metaphor, where double clicking on the folder (which ends in.app) launches the application, but at the same time you can open up the folder and see the different binaries and resources used by that application. Further, each program writes a preferences file in the appropriate user, or system library. That means you can easily install five versions of a program side by side as simply as dragging the programs where you want them. You can uninstall them by dragging them to the trash. You can copy them to another machine by dragging them onto a network volume or portable media. Since the preferences file lives independently of the application, different versions can share one file. All your instances of a browser can easily share the same bookmarks and settings. If you trash one version and then install another it will likely still have all of your preferences and settings.
The only drawback is a privacy one for users who share accounts for some reason and are not knowledgeable enough to know that preferences can live on without an application. I think it is well worth it though to be able to easily test all the different versions of web browsers and PDF readers without having to jump through hoops.
I am not saying I agree with them suing, I believe it is fair use. However, I do see why they're suing.
...except they don't actually seem to be suing, or even issuing Google with a notification that they believe Google is infringing (that I can see). What they are doing is paying lobbyists to write PR statements and bribe politicians into changing the laws, since they have little chance of winning given existing laws.
So spammers must have an opt-in, yet Google must have an opt-out?
Nope. Google does not need to have an opt out at all. Legally, they can just tell the news sites to go to hell. They provide the opt-out to be nice, and "not evil," and to generate goodwill. I'm sure politicians are being lobbied right now to pass laws to remove more of our fair-use rights and change this. Don't make it easier by perpetuating these myths. Google news being in Beta is irrelevant. Google hosting ads next to the content is irrelevant. Google providing an option for news sites to opt in or out is irrelevant.
If the newspapers believe their content is being illegally published then they can serve Google with a proper take-down notice. Then, after Google laughs at them, they can sue and try to overturn case-law precedent and get this sort of behavior ruled non-fair-use. Aside from that, this is all propaganda designed to make you think Google (and you) have fewer rights than you do, so that you don't complain or care when those rights are taken from you with the new laws they are trying to bribe politicians to pass. Or did you think the fact that this was about lobbyists meant something else?
I was under the impression that the copyright holders won in that case and it is specifically not okay to make any sort of profit from "fair use".
Originally the courts ruled completely in favor of Arribisoft stating all their actions were fair use. They later modified that decision to declare that it was illegal to provide a link to the entire work published on Arribisoft's servers (which is why everyone links to the original work not a full copy). The pertinent quote from the ruling summary, "On denial of rehearing, and withdrawing and superseding its prior opinion, 280 F.3d 934, the Court of Appeals, T.G. Nelson, Circuit Judge, held that operator's use of owner's images as "thumbnails" in its search engine was fair use." This was the precedent setting case, but this has been supported by numerous cases since.
Also, fair use says that companies that profit off of other's copyrighted work, and especially companies who diminish the profits of the copyright holders, is unlikely to have a judge rule in their favor.
Check out Kelly V. Arribisoft. Basically it is ok to copy an entire copyrighted work, for the purpose of republishing an excerpt of that work, in an automated fashion, even when providing those excerpts coupled with advertising is done in order to make a profit. Basically, this rules Google images+advertisements is legal.
An excerpt that is a thumbnail and a chunk of text, that is a piece of a larger worker is not qualitatively any different and it is unlikely this sort of precedent (including the the handful of other cases that have all reached this same precedent) is going to overturned. In fact every district court in the US, sans one has filed a supporting brief. (I might mention that was the one where those random publishing houses filed against Google books.) Most lawyers and certainly IP lawyers are very aware that Google will almost certainly win a challenge against them, which is partly why no one with a clue files suits against them on these grounds anymore.
There is a real question of law here, but I consider that there is a case against Google. Indexing does not fall into any of the protected classes of use, has obvious commercial value and a clear, negative effect upon the value of the copyrighted work.
The courts have already ruled that Google cache qualifies under this, and have ruled a system nearly identical to Google images is fair use. Providing a thumbnail and a few sentences so that people can find something is almost certainly fair use in keeping with existing precedent. That is why no one has bothered to sue them over it.
Basically what Blizzard are doing is trying to keep them quite as they are offering a safe haven , in case it offends some bigots.. instead of tracking down the bigots.
No, what they are saying is they don't want groups dedicated either to or against highly charged issues, since that defeats the purpose of the game, to escape from reality and have fun. Since their official policy forbids certain charged topics, simply report anyone making derogatory comments about race, political affiliation, sexual preference, etc. If they don't respond and do something, then you have a valid complaint. Until you have followed proper channels though, you're just being a rabble rouser.
Who in the world modded this a troll? This is a joke already. The previous comment was also a joke (I hope). The fluoride comment at the end should have tipped you off, if nothing else.
Disney/Pixar to buy out Nintendo so Apple can aquire a games console platform to move into the living room.
Before the announced switch to x86 I was hoping Apple would partner with Nintendo so that OS X included a revolution emulation environment and could play all Nintendo games, out of the box and even use the same game controllers. It would provide Nintendo with a larger market for games (the licensing of which is still most of their profit) and it would provide Apple with a counter to the argument that PCs are better because of the games. It would also merge two very loyal customer bases and provide Nintendo the possibility of integrating their handhelds with iTunes.
This seems a lot less likely now that Apple is moving to x86, and may not even be technically feasible for a year or so. Alas, it could have been a great deal for both companies.
Cisco would want to own a game device to help drive more traffic on its network. What network is that? I thought they made hardware. Wouldn't the traffic be carried by the DSL or cable providers?
New! New! New! all Nintendo revolutions double as WANs and provide NetFlow! And, erm, they all run IOS.
The company doing the threatening is in Russia! That means they are godless red commies, working to undermine the US freedom of speech and bring communism to the US. Supporting commies in anything they do makes you a terrorist! You even allude to "red-blooded" americans! My blood ain't red like you commie freaks, it's red, white, and blue....and keep your damn flouride out of my water supply you commie!
But they where not criminal cases. In all of them, EU and Korea, they where civil cases.
I believe you are mistaken. I read that the Korean case was a criminal, not civil case, and I believe the Japanese case is also criminal, insomuch as that term applies. It is always difficult trying to apply US standards of law overseas, and the translations I have read are always suspect. If you have any references to support your position I'd be quite interested to see them.
Whatever the reason, how does Google's OS overcome these? What about Google as a company makes us all think they could do any better?
Google and many people here on Slashdot would love for Linux to gain a larger market share. It will gain a larger marketshare if Google creates their own Linux version because Google will use it internally. It will also gain a larger market share because Google will demand vendors working with them support it and because Google will make improvements that make it more usable.
This is unlikely to gain them a lot of market share, but it will make a difference, and a lot of companies and organizations around the world are realizing that they too can save money by moving to Linux. Google brings the same thing that most of them are bringing, although in larger quantities, and they bring a lot of good PR.
That said, I don't think Google is planning to dethrone Windows. I think they are planning on saving money, and the potential to provide a strategic advantage versus one of their main competitors is just a minor side benefit.
Guys, Google is a smart company. How would creating a Linux distribution even come *close* to being a Windows killer? And, more importantly, how would that make them any money? They're a public company, so if it isn't making them money, then why would they do it.
A dead chinese guy once said, "let every action provide you with some advantage or remove a disadvantage." Open Source software is primarily developed by and for users. The license is designed as a feature that provides an advantage to users, rather than as an anti-feature that provides a disadvantage to customers, as with closed source software.
Google, like every other big contributor to open source software, probably wants to use it. Thus they take the work of others and improve it and customize it and give it back. They benefit by having a better OS to use internally and everyone else benefits from their changes. Google benefits from the features and bug fixes others contribute.
A Google sponsored Google desktop does not make money, it saves money. It is also a reasonable strategic move to help mitigate MS's potential to illegally leverage their desktop monopoly to dominate the online services market.
You're thinking of the U.S. case only. MS has been convicted in multiple jurisdictions including the European Union, two member states, and several Asian countries. As an aside, Bush signed into law an act criminalizing some antitrust actions in 2004, although I don't have any idea as to whether it will apply to new charges brought against MS.
There's only one mistake with the college teaching method that caused this. In a college setting, students are not treated like children, they can come and go as they please, and they don't get notes sent home to their parents when they skip classes or don't pay attention.
You can't teach people who don't show up. You can't teach people who adamantly refuse to pay attention. That said, if you put me in a room with 50 college students and three months later they walk out without having learned anything, I need to be fired.
This is only a mistake because it places too much faith in earlier education. It expects students to have the ability to pay attention and the foresight to know the consequences of not doing so. Clearly that is too high an expectation.
This is not a one-sided process. When your job is to teach, you bloody well should be doing what it takes to teach. If reading lectures all day is not succeeding, then that method needs to change otherwise they might as well record a lecture from ten years ago and save the money. "I followed the same lesson plan my prof did twenty years ago" is not an excuse for failing to teach.
Having taken more math classes than I care to remember from instructors who could barely communicate in english and who had no teaching skills or business being teachers, I can firmly assert that the students are certainly not the whole problem. If a significant number of students are not learning the material then the teacher has failed as much as the students.
but might this be a preventive move to avoid further troubles with the EU commission (and possibly the U.S. DoJ) for leveraging the existing semi-monopoly into related markets?
You don't think having the source code to Windows, access to the hidden APIs, and being the source of the security holes being plugged in the first place is not just another way of leveraging that monopoly? This market has an inherent conflict of interest with their existing monopoly. Legally, they should not be moving into the AV market at all.
Firewalls, media players and other stuff is generally included in distros and the other commercial desktop OS (MacOS X) now. AV isn't. Therefore, it could seem intrusive by MS to include it.
What other people include has nothing to do with what makes bundling illegal. Monopolies are defined by markets. Apple sells into the home computer market (where they do not have a monopoly) and can bundle AV, firewalls, bananas, and enriched uranium. It has no affect upon what is legal for MS to bundle. There is an existing market for AV software. People pay money for it. MS cannot move into that market by leveraging their current monopoly. They can't move into the orange juice market by leveraging their existing monopoly either. Bundling is one important way of leveraging a monopoly, but is certainly not the only way. For example, MS is being asked to document their interface between their server and desktop OS, because they were using a secret interaction between them to leverage their desktop OS monopoly in the server OS market. They were not bundling them, just using one to give themselves an unfair advantage in the other.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you ever see the TV miniseries "Roots" from the late 70's? It's full of racism and brutality. It was also one of the highest rated shows ever. I don't recall there being a lot of racist attacks after Roots played.
...and this relates to our discussion how? This video game has a protagonist, with whom players are supposed to identify, committing brutal, violent acts based upon racism. Roots showed how horrible those acts are, in a historical context and did not exactly try to make viewers think they were "fun" or justified.
In any case, I support the right of anyone to speak out against something and try to organize a boycott. If some people believe Roots has a hidden message that worshipping Satan is the key to happiness, and they want to boycott it, good for them. There is nothing wrong with people boycotting businesses who do things they find unethical. In this particular case, from what I have read, I think they may have a very valid point.
Censorship is unethical, and I strongly support the rights of this video game publisher, to publish anything they want. They are also, however, responsible for what they publish and should be held accountable by purchasers for their actions.
I'm president of the local chapter of NORML. I was fired from my job as a DEA agent...
I know you're trying to be funny, and you're making this up. The sad thing is people like you believe this sort of thing is OK and legal. If you are fired from a government job for your political beliefs off the job, and not because you are failing to do the job, then a serious injustice has been done. This is one step away from firing any policemen who are members of the democratic party. It is unethical, incompatible with democracy, and illegal.
Hey, I work for the DEA, but in my spare time I an editor for High Times
If I was fired from a government job because of my hobby, which includes political activism to change certain laws, then I have every right to complain and probably very good grounds for a lawsuit (seeing as it was a government job). Political activism is the most highly protected from of free speech, for good reason.
Ah yes, politically correct idiots are trying to re-write history. Not that GUN is exactly history but it's set in a different time with different values. I guess next someone should go through Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to replace all instances of the word "nigger" with "African American". What will they call the character Nigger Jim; "James from Africa"?
No one is trying to rewrite history, but this game certainly is offensive and inaccurate and may very well promote racism. If someone publishes a game called, "Kill the Nigger" that feature KKK members torturing blacks in a historical context, I won't buy it and I'd probably join in a boycott. If some people find Tom Sawyer to be racist and detrimental, well they are free to boycott the publishing company. No one here is advocating censorship. No one is arguing that this company does not have the right to publish this game. What they are arguing is that no one should be willing to give money to people who behave this irresponsibly.
However, Safari doesn't do this, so you can't see the individual tabs in a safari window through expose.
And it is completely inconceivable to you that multiple UI designers, when looking for a way to make a whole series of grouped windows easy to sort through, would not look at one of the more prominent new ways of doing just that, and copy it for within their application? Any GUI designer that has not looked at expose and tabs and considered them as a model for their application, should probably be fired now.
"Quick tabs" just show how counterproducutive tabs are in the first place. One must ask, why not just have the pages in seperate windows?
Because the Windows task bar (and other task bars that copy it) absolutely suck at dealing with large numbers of windows at one time. Nicer Window managers utilizing virtual desktops, expose, etc. do a better job, but grouping windows as one tabbed window does make sense for certain applications. I mean, have you ever had thirty browser windows open at once and tried to find one particular one using the standard Windows interface? It is slow any annoying, thus tabs as a hack to work around it.
I shouldn't have to remind people on /. that beta software should not be ran/tested on a production machine whether it's made by Microsoft, Adobe, or even a game. Beta does not mean stable!
I'd agree for servers, but for workstations it is usually not a big deal at all. I don't even bother to use a separate account for most beta software. I mean, has anyone ever had problems with this on anything but Windows? The absolute worst case scenario I've seen in the last several years was the application coring and borking its associated daemon. On modern systems, applications just don't crash the OS, or even the GUI anymore.
This kind of thing doesn't happen overnight. It takes time to develop, the question is, which got the idea from whom?
Perhaps they both copied it from Apple's Expose feature which does the same thing, but for all windows in the GUI. I'd guess Foxpose at least was copied from there, given the name.
And M$ says to dev, please install IE7 Beta and test your pages... except that if I do that, it kills IE6, and I can't check my pages as they'll be seen by 90% of visitors...
This is part of the problem with the archaic install/uninstall system for programs on Windows. On OS X, most programs are completely self contained. They use a "folder is the application" metaphor, where double clicking on the folder (which ends in .app) launches the application, but at the same time you can open up the folder and see the different binaries and resources used by that application. Further, each program writes a preferences file in the appropriate user, or system library. That means you can easily install five versions of a program side by side as simply as dragging the programs where you want them. You can uninstall them by dragging them to the trash. You can copy them to another machine by dragging them onto a network volume or portable media. Since the preferences file lives independently of the application, different versions can share one file. All your instances of a browser can easily share the same bookmarks and settings. If you trash one version and then install another it will likely still have all of your preferences and settings.
The only drawback is a privacy one for users who share accounts for some reason and are not knowledgeable enough to know that preferences can live on without an application. I think it is well worth it though to be able to easily test all the different versions of web browsers and PDF readers without having to jump through hoops.
I am not saying I agree with them suing, I believe it is fair use. However, I do see why they're suing.
...except they don't actually seem to be suing, or even issuing Google with a notification that they believe Google is infringing (that I can see). What they are doing is paying lobbyists to write PR statements and bribe politicians into changing the laws, since they have little chance of winning given existing laws.
So spammers must have an opt-in, yet Google must have an opt-out?
Nope. Google does not need to have an opt out at all. Legally, they can just tell the news sites to go to hell. They provide the opt-out to be nice, and "not evil," and to generate goodwill. I'm sure politicians are being lobbied right now to pass laws to remove more of our fair-use rights and change this. Don't make it easier by perpetuating these myths. Google news being in Beta is irrelevant. Google hosting ads next to the content is irrelevant. Google providing an option for news sites to opt in or out is irrelevant.
If the newspapers believe their content is being illegally published then they can serve Google with a proper take-down notice. Then, after Google laughs at them, they can sue and try to overturn case-law precedent and get this sort of behavior ruled non-fair-use. Aside from that, this is all propaganda designed to make you think Google (and you) have fewer rights than you do, so that you don't complain or care when those rights are taken from you with the new laws they are trying to bribe politicians to pass. Or did you think the fact that this was about lobbyists meant something else?
I was under the impression that the copyright holders won in that case and it is specifically not okay to make any sort of profit from "fair use".
Originally the courts ruled completely in favor of Arribisoft stating all their actions were fair use. They later modified that decision to declare that it was illegal to provide a link to the entire work published on Arribisoft's servers (which is why everyone links to the original work not a full copy). The pertinent quote from the ruling summary, "On denial of rehearing, and withdrawing and superseding its prior opinion, 280 F.3d 934, the Court of Appeals, T.G. Nelson, Circuit Judge, held that operator's use of owner's images as "thumbnails" in its search engine was fair use." This was the precedent setting case, but this has been supported by numerous cases since.
Also, fair use says that companies that profit off of other's copyrighted work, and especially companies who diminish the profits of the copyright holders, is unlikely to have a judge rule in their favor.
Check out Kelly V. Arribisoft. Basically it is ok to copy an entire copyrighted work, for the purpose of republishing an excerpt of that work, in an automated fashion, even when providing those excerpts coupled with advertising is done in order to make a profit. Basically, this rules Google images+advertisements is legal.
An excerpt that is a thumbnail and a chunk of text, that is a piece of a larger worker is not qualitatively any different and it is unlikely this sort of precedent (including the the handful of other cases that have all reached this same precedent) is going to overturned. In fact every district court in the US, sans one has filed a supporting brief. (I might mention that was the one where those random publishing houses filed against Google books.) Most lawyers and certainly IP lawyers are very aware that Google will almost certainly win a challenge against them, which is partly why no one with a clue files suits against them on these grounds anymore.
There is a real question of law here, but I consider that there is a case against Google. Indexing does not fall into any of the protected classes of use, has obvious commercial value and a clear, negative effect upon the value of the copyrighted work.
The courts have already ruled that Google cache qualifies under this, and have ruled a system nearly identical to Google images is fair use. Providing a thumbnail and a few sentences so that people can find something is almost certainly fair use in keeping with existing precedent. That is why no one has bothered to sue them over it.
Basically what Blizzard are doing is trying to keep them quite as they are offering a safe haven , in case it offends some bigots .. instead of tracking down the bigots .
No, what they are saying is they don't want groups dedicated either to or against highly charged issues, since that defeats the purpose of the game, to escape from reality and have fun. Since their official policy forbids certain charged topics, simply report anyone making derogatory comments about race, political affiliation, sexual preference, etc. If they don't respond and do something, then you have a valid complaint. Until you have followed proper channels though, you're just being a rabble rouser.
Who in the world modded this a troll? This is a joke already. The previous comment was also a joke (I hope). The fluoride comment at the end should have tipped you off, if nothing else.
Disney/Pixar to buy out Nintendo so Apple can aquire a games console platform to move into the living room.
Before the announced switch to x86 I was hoping Apple would partner with Nintendo so that OS X included a revolution emulation environment and could play all Nintendo games, out of the box and even use the same game controllers. It would provide Nintendo with a larger market for games (the licensing of which is still most of their profit) and it would provide Apple with a counter to the argument that PCs are better because of the games. It would also merge two very loyal customer bases and provide Nintendo the possibility of integrating their handhelds with iTunes.
This seems a lot less likely now that Apple is moving to x86, and may not even be technically feasible for a year or so. Alas, it could have been a great deal for both companies.
Cisco would want to own a game device to help drive more traffic on its network. What network is that? I thought they made hardware. Wouldn't the traffic be carried by the DSL or cable providers?
New! New! New! all Nintendo revolutions double as WANs and provide NetFlow! And, erm, they all run IOS.
The company doing the threatening is in Russia! That means they are godless red commies, working to undermine the US freedom of speech and bring communism to the US. Supporting commies in anything they do makes you a terrorist! You even allude to "red-blooded" americans! My blood ain't red like you commie freaks, it's red, white, and blue. ...and keep your damn flouride out of my water supply you commie!
But they where not criminal cases. In all of them, EU and Korea, they where civil cases.
I believe you are mistaken. I read that the Korean case was a criminal, not civil case, and I believe the Japanese case is also criminal, insomuch as that term applies. It is always difficult trying to apply US standards of law overseas, and the translations I have read are always suspect. If you have any references to support your position I'd be quite interested to see them.
Whatever the reason, how does Google's OS overcome these? What about Google as a company makes us all think they could do any better?
Google and many people here on Slashdot would love for Linux to gain a larger market share. It will gain a larger marketshare if Google creates their own Linux version because Google will use it internally. It will also gain a larger market share because Google will demand vendors working with them support it and because Google will make improvements that make it more usable.
This is unlikely to gain them a lot of market share, but it will make a difference, and a lot of companies and organizations around the world are realizing that they too can save money by moving to Linux. Google brings the same thing that most of them are bringing, although in larger quantities, and they bring a lot of good PR.
That said, I don't think Google is planning to dethrone Windows. I think they are planning on saving money, and the potential to provide a strategic advantage versus one of their main competitors is just a minor side benefit.
Guys, Google is a smart company. How would creating a Linux distribution even come *close* to being a Windows killer? And, more importantly, how would that make them any money? They're a public company, so if it isn't making them money, then why would they do it.
A dead chinese guy once said, "let every action provide you with some advantage or remove a disadvantage." Open Source software is primarily developed by and for users. The license is designed as a feature that provides an advantage to users, rather than as an anti-feature that provides a disadvantage to customers, as with closed source software.
Google, like every other big contributor to open source software, probably wants to use it. Thus they take the work of others and improve it and customize it and give it back. They benefit by having a better OS to use internally and everyone else benefits from their changes. Google benefits from the features and bug fixes others contribute.
A Google sponsored Google desktop does not make money, it saves money. It is also a reasonable strategic move to help mitigate MS's potential to illegally leverage their desktop monopoly to dominate the online services market.
It was a criminal case? I don't think so...
You're thinking of the U.S. case only. MS has been convicted in multiple jurisdictions including the European Union, two member states, and several Asian countries. As an aside, Bush signed into law an act criminalizing some antitrust actions in 2004, although I don't have any idea as to whether it will apply to new charges brought against MS.
There's only one mistake with the college teaching method that caused this. In a college setting, students are not treated like children, they can come and go as they please, and they don't get notes sent home to their parents when they skip classes or don't pay attention.
You can't teach people who don't show up. You can't teach people who adamantly refuse to pay attention. That said, if you put me in a room with 50 college students and three months later they walk out without having learned anything, I need to be fired.
This is only a mistake because it places too much faith in earlier education. It expects students to have the ability to pay attention and the foresight to know the consequences of not doing so. Clearly that is too high an expectation.
This is not a one-sided process. When your job is to teach, you bloody well should be doing what it takes to teach. If reading lectures all day is not succeeding, then that method needs to change otherwise they might as well record a lecture from ten years ago and save the money. "I followed the same lesson plan my prof did twenty years ago" is not an excuse for failing to teach.
Having taken more math classes than I care to remember from instructors who could barely communicate in english and who had no teaching skills or business being teachers, I can firmly assert that the students are certainly not the whole problem. If a significant number of students are not learning the material then the teacher has failed as much as the students.
but might this be a preventive move to avoid further troubles with the EU commission (and possibly the U.S. DoJ) for leveraging the existing semi-monopoly into related markets?
You don't think having the source code to Windows, access to the hidden APIs, and being the source of the security holes being plugged in the first place is not just another way of leveraging that monopoly? This market has an inherent conflict of interest with their existing monopoly. Legally, they should not be moving into the AV market at all.
Firewalls, media players and other stuff is generally included in distros and the other commercial desktop OS (MacOS X) now. AV isn't. Therefore, it could seem intrusive by MS to include it.
What other people include has nothing to do with what makes bundling illegal. Monopolies are defined by markets. Apple sells into the home computer market (where they do not have a monopoly) and can bundle AV, firewalls, bananas, and enriched uranium. It has no affect upon what is legal for MS to bundle. There is an existing market for AV software. People pay money for it. MS cannot move into that market by leveraging their current monopoly. They can't move into the orange juice market by leveraging their existing monopoly either. Bundling is one important way of leveraging a monopoly, but is certainly not the only way. For example, MS is being asked to document their interface between their server and desktop OS, because they were using a secret interaction between them to leverage their desktop OS monopoly in the server OS market. They were not bundling them, just using one to give themselves an unfair advantage in the other.