The EU is a significant market. Pulling out - which would mean not only a huge loss of revenue but also the costs of closing down their various offices etc - simply isn't an option. It would also be an action based on egotistical rather than business motives, which would (I think) be illegal, as they have an obligation to their shareholders.
It's not as if there's anything particularly surprising here. If you're a monopoly, don't abuse your position or you may be found guilty according to anti-trust laws. If you're going to do a lot of business in a foreign country or countries, make sure you obey the law while you're there. If you go public, remember that you have an obligation to your shareholders. Etc etc etc.
You've got to wonder just what the motivations are for Microsoft to go up against both the US and EU justice systems. Personally I feel a large part of it is a control freak tendency on the part of Gates, Ballmer et al. It's a shame that the commissioner won't comment on the effects of Bill Gates stepping down from day-to-day involvement with M$. I'd be interested in hearing those views.
I call bollocks on your call on shenanigans on his call of BS. Mainly because I want to see how far the collective wit of Slashdot can take the "I call...." theme.
The fact that an individual's neglicence is the root cause is not overly relevant. So the guy rightly gets some comeback for the mistake, but likewise the organisation for allowing it to be so easy to let take the data offsite on an unproctected laptop. The VA doesn't need a special claim on incompentence to be held responsible for it.
(I'm from the UK, so I'm not familiar with the setup. But it seems like whoever has oversight responsibility for the VA should likewise get some heat. What's the point in giving them low scores for security if there's no consequence? And so the chain effect could go as far as reasonable).
The "given proper motivation" argument may be true but this is a truism that almost always applies to security issues; it rarely contributes to the debate.
Right, that's my attempt at pedantry. Anyone want to call gobbledygook on my call of bollocks on his call of... etc?
Well, much as I love winding up Yanks on the whole US-centric thing sometimes, for the record Google maps works extremely well in the UK. I may be biased because they've got a shot of my car parked in the driveway; I always like the personal touch. Actually, I have since moved. Shame, it was cool handing out photo directions. Although I never did find someone gullible enough to believe that I commissioned the photo personally at great expense.
Should you ever end up in the wrong block in a congested city because the map you had was accurate, but you felt compelled to compare it to an online satellite photo and move a further 20m, I can assure you it's not a navigation problem you've got.
And if Google Maps is a joke, it's not a sense of humour you've got there either...
The thing is that in the enterprise, software is not expected to be cheap, released fast and run on all kinds of platforms. Companies pay a lot of money for core infrastructure. They do not upgrade quickly, and are typically under restrictions as to the specific versions of OS on which they will be supported. For high end mission critical stuff, these restrictions may extend to the hardware layer. Vendors may provide certified configurations that they have tested thoroughly, although often instead the vendor or systems integrator effectively take on an obligation to sort out any issues with respect to hardware, a cost which the customer will usually end up paying for in some manner.
All of the "downsides" you mention would be considered good things by major banks, for instance. And as long as companies like Oracle want to play in that space, it makes sense that regulation comes in to keep them up to standard. I used to be a consultant for and implementer in enterprise software - I can assure you that major software vendors do not consistently deliver the kind of testing, documentation and security that their customers want.
Of course, in other markets your comments are absolutely correct. Perhaps the answer is regulation in certain markets, say finance, government / defense, etc, and certain kinds of software application e.g. those coming into contact with financial transactions or privacy-related data. Maybe the software company itself would need to have a certain minimum revenue. Not easy to define, but perhaps necessary - how many stories have there been of personal details being lost, including credit cards or bank accounts?
Couple of potential interesting side effects. First, smaller companies that do not invest big time in secure systems might need to use third parties for credit card transactions and the like. No bad thing. And leading on from that, the concept of federated identity systems might need to take off. That would require some real work on the part of the industry, and something rather more clued up than the MS Passport effort. There's a lot of work going on in that area, but not such that it's ready to roll out universally. But there's got to be some compromise between the small business who needs to take credit card payments, and me who doesn't want to use PayPal for everything or have my credit card number stored on a default configuration Windows 2000 box in a back room in Slovenia.
Hopefully if such things happened there would be a trickle down effect in terms of making commercial software (including open source software "sold" by a commercial operation) in general more secure without significant effect on price.
At the end of the day, multi-million dollar companies should not have the option of doing poor work, ignoring the resulting problems and absolving themselves of responsibility.
As to your last point, I very much doubt if the head of security for Oracle has your own personal needs in mind, as I'm guessing there would be no consequences of screwing up hundreds / thousands of people's bank accounts if your PC gets hacked. Your concern not having the latest graphics card supported suggests your overall concern is comparatively trivial. Of course, the problem here is that any such legislation would probably end up screwing up the video games market just like you say, while being found to have little effect in improving high end commercial systems with all our bank info...
It's a well known fact in large organisations that knowledge management is a bastard. All those people trying to figure out how best to share information, some of them trying out wikis, and it turns out all they have to do is design a website and maintain a documentation section! They're going to feel pretty foolish when they realise it was so simple!
Seriously, get over yourself. There will be many cases where the employees of a company are capable of providing more content than those responsible for the website or documentation are capable of handling. Wikis might just turn out to be the ideal tool for allowing that content to be shared.
It's all relative - Linux apps are less consistent with respect to the user interface that Windows apps, so if you think Windows is crap, presumably Linux is completely useless?
Criticising an article focused on the ease-of-use for the end user in a desktop environment issue by pointing out a lack of consistency at the GDI layer is, erm, an interesting approach to logic. Fortunately my mother seemed to survive the transition from 16 to 32 bit without a hitch - she must be better at handling exceptions from API calls than I gave her credit for at the time:)
Given that we also call the French "frogs", the Germans "huns", and the Poles.. erm, got me there.. I wouldn't want to get on a high horse about what others choose to call us. Speaking as a Scot (a.k.a. Jock from the frozen north), I've got no problems with being called a Brit. It's not perjorative, and it is in fact pretty accurate. And I know we've got more in common with the English than we do with any other nation on the planet. You're not one of those crazed nationalists who insists on seeing the world from your perspective rather than others, are you?
If you want to see a truly separate nationality, go to Texas...
I read it simply because it's a good read. There's a lot of useful learning experiences in there in the techology field. However, if you have trouble reading books, certainly you should save yourself the time and expense as well. Anyway, the point of the post was that everyone was reacting to the story based on prejudice that Kaplan was just being opportunistic, and I felt it should be pointed out that he has a valid motive and case. There's no need to read the book if you're willing to take my comments at face value.
It was written back in 1995 and there was no lawsuit at that time, as I mention in my post, so your guess is based on rather poor thinking. Your exaggeration also shows a complete lack of perspective. Kaplan has filed suit against a company that materially affected his business using illegal methods. How you get from there to violent revolution I don't know, although there's no reason at this stage to believe intelligence is a factor.
In the grand scheme of things, you're a pointless pile of molecules, unlikely to achieve anything that the rest of the world hears about, let alone cares. Not a particularly useful way of looking at things, is it?
People, don't just RTFA, RTF book. If you read Jerry Kaplan's Start Up, you see that he was on the receiving end of Microsoft's illegal practices e.g. forcing OEMs to pay licenses even on machines that did not have Windows installed. Go was a real company, not some opportunistic "my business model is a lawsuit" bunch of asshats. For all the obvious reasons, challenging Microsoft in a court of law was hardly an option.
The fact that Microsoft shafted them in the early nineties and it's only now that Go is suing is irrelvant (not sure when Kaplan got the rights back from AT&T/Lucent to do so), the fact that pen computing did not take off back then, all these are irrelevant facts. MS broke the law to ruin other people's businesses. Now that they have been convicted of doing so, it's open season for a few years yet for anyone with strong evidence that they were a genuine victim.
StartUp is kind of a heart breaking read as a technologist. When Go is unable to get proper funding or business deals (here's where MS's business practice screws them, for instance), and the company dies even as part of AT&T, MS quietly shuts down its own pen computing division, apparently happy that another potential competitor has been crushed before it could be a problem. The idea is we're supposed to be able to try and get innovations tried by the marketplace, not blocked by people with the vested interest to do so.
If MS is found guily or settles out of court, then that would be entirely appropriate. Yes, there are so many complaints like this that it's a cliche. Doesn't mean there aren't genuine cases, and given there's a published book on the facts from 1995 - well before anyone knew MS could be successfully to court - I would say this is one of them.
First off, I'm a big fan of Europe. I think getting the continent on the same basic human rights, and in a good trade zone, are all good things. I even like the euro (speaking as a Brit, we've yet to decide as a country). But I can't stand the behind-closed-doors, elitist attitude of the Commission and the European Central Bank.
"Patents will continue to be handled by national patent offices... as before, which means different interpretations as to what is patentable, without any judiciary control by the European Court of Justice," said EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, representing the EU head office at the vote.
At least the way I read it, the guy is saying that it was a bad decision, and if only those poor ignorant elected representatives had made the right choice and rubber stamped what the bureaucrats asked them to, everything could be a lot better under superior, central control with limited accountability. Just like the recent votes on the constitution, the idea that just maybe the "elite" are fucking up big time and need to get back in touch with what their citizens want simply doesn't seem to occur to them.
Pisses me off big time, I tell you. I want a Europe for all the people, not a bunch of wannabes who often seem to view the European project as a more acceptable alternative to war as a method to conquer, rather than a democratic opportunity.
Sorry, I'm ranting here. Congrats to all those that made our views heard. Yes, the pro-patent lobby also voted against the bill out of fear of the amendments, but those amendments may never have been there in the first place without the anti-software patent people doing their thing.
Sorry, you're making the fundamental error that is the root cause for Linux's slow adoption on the desktop. As an example, you think that a user should read the manual and understand what a mount point is prior to using Linux. Why? The file folder metaphor is a graphical way to avoid such technicalities, and has been around since before Linux came to be. The user doesn't need to know about mount points.
As other posters point out, until Linux developers and advocates develop a sense of reality about what the average user needs, Linux will struggle to do well on the desktop.
I don't understand what you need the EFF for in this case. You've always been free to give away your songs. The rule remains that as soon as you write something original, you have the copyright. While there are chargeable services around to help you establish said copyright, this is only to provide proof of copyright should it ever become a legal necessity to do so.
As for what the BBC did, those works aren't copyright! Copyright on old Beethoven's symphonies ended a long time ago. The BBC Symphony Orchestra's performance is copyrighted, but seeing as I'm a Brit paying the BBC's license fee, I think it's perfectly correct they should be publically available.
None of this addresses how an artist makes a living out by pursuing their art. You mention posting "little songs" - presumably you are not trying to make a full time living out of this? I respect the dedication of the pure artist (my login is testament to the fact that I've sold out to business get by, the obligatio part being that I had to give up partying and earn a living - ain't life a bitch?) and in particular the struggle it is to earn enough money to live on. For the EFF or anyone else to support businesses whose actual intent was to benefit from people breaking the law is ridiculous. So I don't have a problem with the recent ruling.
You want to give your songs away for free? Fine. You want to earn a living out of music? Great - and you deserve all the help and respect that can be given. You want to write some P2P software so that people can communicate, share free songs and Linux distros etc? Fantastic.
You want to benefit (get money/ friends/ contacts/ misguided respect/ whatever) from advertising a system with the intent and knowledge of infringing on other people's rights - well, you're basically being a selfish bastard at this point, aren't you? It's not as if Grokster has made any effort to support musicians, like providing a forum to sell music with a way to track what you've downloaded in order to pay the relevant artist. Anyone who's played in a band or watched someone try to set up an indie record label knows just how fucking hard it is to bring in the money to do so. If Grokster had some real decency, they'd have made a real effort to find out how to help all these kinds of people. Now as well as major labels always looking to keep the money for themselves, there's other bastards looking to make it impossible to get people to pay money in the first place.
If you don't want to or can't afford to buy music - don't. Go see a local artist. Download material deliberately released for free by the artist or even record label. The fact that this is legal isn't particularly relevent. There's more good and free music available via the internet than you could ever get hold of before. Rip CD's from your friends - not legal, but a nice little grey area that acts as an effective self throttle against using the power of the internet to dodge your obligations. Just show some respect to artists, and with any luck it would also contribute to the financial starvation of the commercial shit clogging up the charts and atmosphere...
Best post I've seen on Slashdot, which in my case is about six years. Wish I still had my original login and id no. to back that up. Anyway - brilliant. The first time I've ever been inspired to simply say, "good post" (and nothing else) in pure acknowledgement of the genius.
Does it let you have both NAMs live at the same time? When I looked into this a while back (a good two years ago, mind) you could get phones or battery packs that would let you have two SIM (I'm UK based) cards. However, the problem was you had to switch between them - you couldn't have both activated at the same time. So it was impossible to be ready to receive both work and personal calls on the same phone, with separate numbers.
So unless you're saying this has changed, it seems to me like the mobile phone industry is missing out on a trick here. I want friends and family to be able to call me any time, I need a mobile phone for work, and I'm simply not willing to carry two separate phones with me. Luckily, I can use my work phone for personal use. There's probably plenty of people like me. So, while I was willing to pay rent and bills for a personal phone, and I did put a reasonable amount of effort into trying to find a suitable way to have a personal line added to my work phone, it turned out this wasn't an option.
I suspect that what you're saying still has the "only one number can be live at a time" limitation. But that said, if this has changed I'd really like to know.
Slightly off topic, but I was intrigued to read about the origins of the smiley in UserFriendly's link of the day. I particularly liked the character sequence to indicate flame bait (think of a candle). Doesn't quite work in all fonts, like the subject, but good for plain text
Philantropic organisations are good things. This money being made available is a good thing. I don't mean to disparage a charitable foundation - but I can have a go at the founder. The question is, "does the end justify the means" and the answer is very definitely no.
In terms of what impresses me about people, it's not making a song and dance about how generous you are, particularly if such generosity coincided with the emerging public knowledge of what a calculating bastard you really are. Being a control freak, breaking the law, abusing your power over others to make so much money you're the richest man in the world, and then publicising how much you give away - makes my skin crawl.
Two things to consider:
1. The amount of money involved is roughly similar to the fine just set by the EU, and is spread over ten years. You could interpret that as Bill isn't giving away any more money than than he's earned by breaking the law. So it sounds impressive, but could a just be a cost-effective form of PR.
2. The Open Source movement is clearly never going to have a huge bank account to make such headline grabbing donations. But just think - free software for many IT requirements such as OS, email, office apps, research clusters, communication and access to world news for people living in repressed countries.
IT is changing the world, and open source makes it possible for many people that wouldn't other otherwise have access. And it makes things cheaper for researchers, hospitals and governments. Either it competes with MS, enabling a hospital trust for example to negotiate better prices, or is simply free should they adopt Linux.
Open Source is therefore contributing a huge financial boon to the world. And in some cases, saved money means saved lives.
It's a beautiful thing, no matter the flaws, disputes, arguments and court cases. In comparison, Microsoft is an ugly thing, precisely because of all the flaws, disputes etc... Giving away money doesn't justify things, it's just an easy way for a rich person to try to make amends. If Bill gave up something important, I'd be impressed. Even just a genuine apology for the monopoly thing would be a start (plus corrective actions), and that's free!
There's a lot of (good) commentary on the detail of what is and isn't an open format. And it would be good to get the detail right, because there are many ways to abuse the phrase "open format" and there are companies that will take advantage of them.
Nonetheless, requiring the use of open formats is a strong, defendable position in practise. like it or not, mandating the use of open source isn't possible, or at least highly unlikely. The reason for this is that open source might be good but it's not *necessary*. Not in the short term, and never in the minds of people with votes and money for lobbyists. A lot of good things have been done with proprietary systems (I'm an Apple fan) with a lot of openness. Open source is therefore a difficult argument to win in terms of *requiring* its use. Again, as a Mac fan, I wouldn't agree to it myself as a *requirement*.
Open formats (*real* open formates) produce a level playing field. Open source could win its argument in a fair fight in public, not a dogmatic argument conducted in courts between various zealots on both sides that many people fight it hard to really bother with.
I'm not interested in forcing organisations to drop Microsoft. Dictatorial approaches to solving problems never appeal to me. I'd be far happier with a situation where by legal documents and government documents (as some important examples)must be in an open format so that full featured editors could be available on a number of platforms e.g. Windows, Mac OS X, Debian, Red Hat, Suse, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX.
That list is deliberately composed primarily of commercial companies because a) that's the way the world still works - make use of it to your own advantage, and b) to get all those platforms (including a good open source distro) sharing some new equivalents of.doc,.xls and.ppt formats would really open up the desktop marketplace.
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The EU is a significant market. Pulling out - which would mean not only a huge loss of revenue but also the costs of closing down their various offices etc - simply isn't an option. It would also be an action based on egotistical rather than business motives, which would (I think) be illegal, as they have an obligation to their shareholders.
It's not as if there's anything particularly surprising here. If you're a monopoly, don't abuse your position or you may be found guilty according to anti-trust laws. If you're going to do a lot of business in a foreign country or countries, make sure you obey the law while you're there. If you go public, remember that you have an obligation to your shareholders. Etc etc etc.
You've got to wonder just what the motivations are for Microsoft to go up against both the US and EU justice systems. Personally I feel a large part of it is a control freak tendency on the part of Gates, Ballmer et al. It's a shame that the commissioner won't comment on the effects of Bill Gates stepping down from day-to-day involvement with M$. I'd be interested in hearing those views.
Hmm. Could I therefore sue advertising firms for breaking and entry when I get a jingle stuck in my head that I swear I didn't want or put there!
Anyone remember the old Far Side cartoon of slogans that just didn't take off?
I cuss, you cuss, we all cuss for asparagus!
I call bollocks on your call on shenanigans on his call of BS. Mainly because I want to see how far the collective wit of Slashdot can take the "I call...." theme.
The fact that an individual's neglicence is the root cause is not overly relevant. So the guy rightly gets some comeback for the mistake, but likewise the organisation for allowing it to be so easy to let take the data offsite on an unproctected laptop. The VA doesn't need a special claim on incompentence to be held responsible for it.
(I'm from the UK, so I'm not familiar with the setup. But it seems like whoever has oversight responsibility for the VA should likewise get some heat. What's the point in giving them low scores for security if there's no consequence? And so the chain effect could go as far as reasonable).
The "given proper motivation" argument may be true but this is a truism that almost always applies to security issues; it rarely contributes to the debate.
Right, that's my attempt at pedantry. Anyone want to call gobbledygook on my call of bollocks on his call of... etc?
Well, much as I love winding up Yanks on the whole US-centric thing sometimes, for the record Google maps works extremely well in the UK. I may be biased because they've got a shot of my car parked in the driveway; I always like the personal touch. Actually, I have since moved. Shame, it was cool handing out photo directions. Although I never did find someone gullible enough to believe that I commissioned the photo personally at great expense.
Should you ever end up in the wrong block in a congested city because the map you had was accurate, but you felt compelled to compare it to an online satellite photo and move a further 20m, I can assure you it's not a navigation problem you've got.
And if Google Maps is a joke, it's not a sense of humour you've got there either...
Perhaps you are being unintentionally cynical. I'm curious though - what are your experiences of small-time nobodies trying to enforce an EULA?
The thing is that in the enterprise, software is not expected to be cheap, released fast and run on all kinds of platforms. Companies pay a lot of money for core infrastructure. They do not upgrade quickly, and are typically under restrictions as to the specific versions of OS on which they will be supported. For high end mission critical stuff, these restrictions may extend to the hardware layer. Vendors may provide certified configurations that they have tested thoroughly, although often instead the vendor or systems integrator effectively take on an obligation to sort out any issues with respect to hardware, a cost which the customer will usually end up paying for in some manner.
All of the "downsides" you mention would be considered good things by major banks, for instance. And as long as companies like Oracle want to play in that space, it makes sense that regulation comes in to keep them up to standard. I used to be a consultant for and implementer in enterprise software - I can assure you that major software vendors do not consistently deliver the kind of testing, documentation and security that their customers want.
Of course, in other markets your comments are absolutely correct. Perhaps the answer is regulation in certain markets, say finance, government / defense, etc, and certain kinds of software application e.g. those coming into contact with financial transactions or privacy-related data. Maybe the software company itself would need to have a certain minimum revenue. Not easy to define, but perhaps necessary - how many stories have there been of personal details being lost, including credit cards or bank accounts?
Couple of potential interesting side effects. First, smaller companies that do not invest big time in secure systems might need to use third parties for credit card transactions and the like. No bad thing. And leading on from that, the concept of federated identity systems might need to take off. That would require some real work on the part of the industry, and something rather more clued up than the MS Passport effort. There's a lot of work going on in that area, but not such that it's ready to roll out universally. But there's got to be some compromise between the small business who needs to take credit card payments, and me who doesn't want to use PayPal for everything or have my credit card number stored on a default configuration Windows 2000 box in a back room in Slovenia.
Hopefully if such things happened there would be a trickle down effect in terms of making commercial software (including open source software "sold" by a commercial operation) in general more secure without significant effect on price.
At the end of the day, multi-million dollar companies should not have the option of doing poor work, ignoring the resulting problems and absolving themselves of responsibility.
As to your last point, I very much doubt if the head of security for Oracle has your own personal needs in mind, as I'm guessing there would be no consequences of screwing up hundreds / thousands of people's bank accounts if your PC gets hacked. Your concern not having the latest graphics card supported suggests your overall concern is comparatively trivial. Of course, the problem here is that any such legislation would probably end up screwing up the video games market just like you say, while being found to have little effect in improving high end commercial systems with all our bank info...
It's a well known fact in large organisations that knowledge management is a bastard. All those people trying to figure out how best to share information, some of them trying out wikis, and it turns out all they have to do is design a website and maintain a documentation section! They're going to feel pretty foolish when they realise it was so simple!
Seriously, get over yourself. There will be many cases where the employees of a company are capable of providing more content than those responsible for the website or documentation are capable of handling. Wikis might just turn out to be the ideal tool for allowing that content to be shared.
It's all relative - Linux apps are less consistent with respect to the user interface that Windows apps, so if you think Windows is crap, presumably Linux is completely useless?
Criticising an article focused on the ease-of-use for the end user in a desktop environment issue by pointing out a lack of consistency at the GDI layer is, erm, an interesting approach to logic. Fortunately my mother seemed to survive the transition from 16 to 32 bit without a hitch - she must be better at handling exceptions from API calls than I gave her credit for at the time :)
Given that we also call the French "frogs", the Germans "huns", and the Poles .. erm, got me there .. I wouldn't want to get on a high horse about what others choose to call us. Speaking as a Scot (a.k.a. Jock from the frozen north), I've got no problems with being called a Brit. It's not perjorative, and it is in fact pretty accurate. And I know we've got more in common with the English than we do with any other nation on the planet. You're not one of those crazed nationalists who insists on seeing the world from your perspective rather than others, are you?
If you want to see a truly separate nationality, go to Texas...
I read it simply because it's a good read. There's a lot of useful learning experiences in there in the techology field. However, if you have trouble reading books, certainly you should save yourself the time and expense as well. Anyway, the point of the post was that everyone was reacting to the story based on prejudice that Kaplan was just being opportunistic, and I felt it should be pointed out that he has a valid motive and case. There's no need to read the book if you're willing to take my comments at face value.
It was written back in 1995 and there was no lawsuit at that time, as I mention in my post, so your guess is based on rather poor thinking. Your exaggeration also shows a complete lack of perspective. Kaplan has filed suit against a company that materially affected his business using illegal methods. How you get from there to violent revolution I don't know, although there's no reason at this stage to believe intelligence is a factor.
In the grand scheme of things, you're a pointless pile of molecules, unlikely to achieve anything that the rest of the world hears about, let alone cares. Not a particularly useful way of looking at things, is it?
People, don't just RTFA, RTF book. If you read Jerry Kaplan's Start Up, you see that he was on the receiving end of Microsoft's illegal practices e.g. forcing OEMs to pay licenses even on machines that did not have Windows installed. Go was a real company, not some opportunistic "my business model is a lawsuit" bunch of asshats. For all the obvious reasons, challenging Microsoft in a court of law was hardly an option.
The fact that Microsoft shafted them in the early nineties and it's only now that Go is suing is irrelvant (not sure when Kaplan got the rights back from AT&T/Lucent to do so), the fact that pen computing did not take off back then, all these are irrelevant facts. MS broke the law to ruin other people's businesses. Now that they have been convicted of doing so, it's open season for a few years yet for anyone with strong evidence that they were a genuine victim.
StartUp is kind of a heart breaking read as a technologist. When Go is unable to get proper funding or business deals (here's where MS's business practice screws them, for instance), and the company dies even as part of AT&T, MS quietly shuts down its own pen computing division, apparently happy that another potential competitor has been crushed before it could be a problem. The idea is we're supposed to be able to try and get innovations tried by the marketplace, not blocked by people with the vested interest to do so.
If MS is found guily or settles out of court, then that would be entirely appropriate. Yes, there are so many complaints like this that it's a cliche. Doesn't mean there aren't genuine cases, and given there's a published book on the facts from 1995 - well before anyone knew MS could be successfully to court - I would say this is one of them.
First off, I'm a big fan of Europe. I think getting the continent on the same basic human rights, and in a good trade zone, are all good things. I even like the euro (speaking as a Brit, we've yet to decide as a country). But I can't stand the behind-closed-doors, elitist attitude of the Commission and the European Central Bank.
"Patents will continue to be handled by national patent offices ... as before, which means different interpretations as to what is patentable, without any judiciary control by the European Court of Justice," said EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, representing the EU head office at the vote.
At least the way I read it, the guy is saying that it was a bad decision, and if only those poor ignorant elected representatives had made the right choice and rubber stamped what the bureaucrats asked them to, everything could be a lot better under superior, central control with limited accountability. Just like the recent votes on the constitution, the idea that just maybe the "elite" are fucking up big time and need to get back in touch with what their citizens want simply doesn't seem to occur to them.
Pisses me off big time, I tell you. I want a Europe for all the people, not a bunch of wannabes who often seem to view the European project as a more acceptable alternative to war as a method to conquer, rather than a democratic opportunity.
Sorry, I'm ranting here. Congrats to all those that made our views heard. Yes, the pro-patent lobby also voted against the bill out of fear of the amendments, but those amendments may never have been there in the first place without the anti-software patent people doing their thing.
Sorry, you're making the fundamental error that is the root cause for Linux's slow adoption on the desktop. As an example, you think that a user should read the manual and understand what a mount point is prior to using Linux. Why? The file folder metaphor is a graphical way to avoid such technicalities, and has been around since before Linux came to be. The user doesn't need to know about mount points.
As other posters point out, until Linux developers and advocates develop a sense of reality about what the average user needs, Linux will struggle to do well on the desktop.
I don't understand what you need the EFF for in this case. You've always been free to give away your songs. The rule remains that as soon as you write something original, you have the copyright. While there are chargeable services around to help you establish said copyright, this is only to provide proof of copyright should it ever become a legal necessity to do so.
As for what the BBC did, those works aren't copyright! Copyright on old Beethoven's symphonies ended a long time ago. The BBC Symphony Orchestra's performance is copyrighted, but seeing as I'm a Brit paying the BBC's license fee, I think it's perfectly correct they should be publically available.
None of this addresses how an artist makes a living out by pursuing their art. You mention posting "little songs" - presumably you are not trying to make a full time living out of this? I respect the dedication of the pure artist (my login is testament to the fact that I've sold out to business get by, the obligatio part being that I had to give up partying and earn a living - ain't life a bitch?) and in particular the struggle it is to earn enough money to live on. For the EFF or anyone else to support businesses whose actual intent was to benefit from people breaking the law is ridiculous. So I don't have a problem with the recent ruling.
You want to give your songs away for free? Fine. You want to earn a living out of music? Great - and you deserve all the help and respect that can be given. You want to write some P2P software so that people can communicate, share free songs and Linux distros etc? Fantastic.
You want to benefit (get money/ friends/ contacts/ misguided respect/ whatever) from advertising a system with the intent and knowledge of infringing on other people's rights - well, you're basically being a selfish bastard at this point, aren't you? It's not as if Grokster has made any effort to support musicians, like providing a forum to sell music with a way to track what you've downloaded in order to pay the relevant artist. Anyone who's played in a band or watched someone try to set up an indie record label knows just how fucking hard it is to bring in the money to do so. If Grokster had some real decency, they'd have made a real effort to find out how to help all these kinds of people. Now as well as major labels always looking to keep the money for themselves, there's other bastards looking to make it impossible to get people to pay money in the first place.
If you don't want to or can't afford to buy music - don't. Go see a local artist. Download material deliberately released for free by the artist or even record label. The fact that this is legal isn't particularly relevent. There's more good and free music available via the internet than you could ever get hold of before. Rip CD's from your friends - not legal, but a nice little grey area that acts as an effective self throttle against using the power of the internet to dodge your obligations. Just show some respect to artists, and with any luck it would also contribute to the financial starvation of the commercial shit clogging up the charts and atmosphere...
Fantastic.
Best post I've seen on Slashdot, which in my case is about six years. Wish I still had my original login and id no. to back that up. Anyway - brilliant. The first time I've ever been inspired to simply say, "good post" (and nothing else) in pure acknowledgement of the genius.
Does it let you have both NAMs live at the same time? When I looked into this a while back (a good two years ago, mind) you could get phones or battery packs that would let you have two SIM (I'm UK based) cards. However, the problem was you had to switch between them - you couldn't have both activated at the same time. So it was impossible to be ready to receive both work and personal calls on the same phone, with separate numbers.
So unless you're saying this has changed, it seems to me like the mobile phone industry is missing out on a trick here. I want friends and family to be able to call me any time, I need a mobile phone for work, and I'm simply not willing to carry two separate phones with me. Luckily, I can use my work phone for personal use. There's probably plenty of people like me. So, while I was willing to pay rent and bills for a personal phone, and I did put a reasonable amount of effort into trying to find a suitable way to have a personal line added to my work phone, it turned out this wasn't an option.
I suspect that what you're saying still has the "only one number can be live at a time" limitation. But that said, if this has changed I'd really like to know.
Slightly off topic, but I was intrigued to read about the origins of the smiley in UserFriendly's link of the day. I particularly liked the character sequence to indicate flame bait (think of a candle). Doesn't quite work in all fonts, like the subject, but good for plain text
~=
Philantropic organisations are good things. This money being made available is a good thing. I don't mean to disparage a charitable foundation - but I can have a go at the founder. The question is, "does the end justify the means" and the answer is very definitely no.
In terms of what impresses me about people, it's not making a song and dance about how generous you are, particularly if such generosity coincided with the emerging public knowledge of what a calculating bastard you really are. Being a control freak, breaking the law, abusing your power over others to make so much money you're the richest man in the world, and then publicising how much you give away - makes my skin crawl.
Two things to consider:
1. The amount of money involved is roughly similar to the fine just set by the EU, and is spread over ten years. You could interpret that as Bill isn't giving away any more money than than he's earned by breaking the law. So it sounds impressive, but could a just be a cost-effective form of PR.
2. The Open Source movement is clearly never going to have a huge bank account to make such headline grabbing donations. But just think - free software for many IT requirements such as OS, email, office apps, research clusters, communication and access to world news for people living in repressed countries.
IT is changing the world, and open source makes it possible for many people that wouldn't other otherwise have access. And it makes things cheaper for researchers, hospitals and governments. Either it competes with MS, enabling a hospital trust for example to negotiate better prices, or is simply free should they adopt Linux.
Open Source is therefore contributing a huge financial boon to the world. And in some cases, saved money means saved lives.
It's a beautiful thing, no matter the flaws, disputes, arguments and court cases. In comparison, Microsoft is an ugly thing, precisely because of all the flaws, disputes etc... Giving away money doesn't justify things, it's just an easy way for a rich person to try to make amends. If Bill gave up something important, I'd be impressed. Even just a genuine apology for the monopoly thing would be a start (plus corrective actions), and that's free!
There's a lot of (good) commentary on the detail of what is and isn't an open format. And it would be good to get the detail right, because there are many ways to abuse the phrase "open format" and there are companies that will take advantage of them.
.doc, .xls and .ppt formats would really open up the desktop marketplace.
Nonetheless, requiring the use of open formats is a strong, defendable position in practise. like it or not, mandating the use of open source isn't possible, or at least highly unlikely. The reason for this is that open source might be good but it's not *necessary*. Not in the short term, and never in the minds of people with votes and money for lobbyists. A lot of good things have been done with proprietary systems (I'm an Apple fan) with a lot of openness. Open source is therefore a difficult argument to win in terms of *requiring* its use. Again, as a Mac fan, I wouldn't agree to it myself as a *requirement*.
Open formats (*real* open formates) produce a level playing field. Open source could win its argument in a fair fight in public, not a dogmatic argument conducted in courts between various zealots on both sides that many people fight it hard to really bother with.
I'm not interested in forcing organisations to drop Microsoft. Dictatorial approaches to solving problems never appeal to me. I'd be far happier with a situation where by legal documents and government documents (as some important examples)must be in an open format so that full featured editors could be available on a number of platforms e.g. Windows, Mac OS X, Debian, Red Hat, Suse, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX.
That list is deliberately composed primarily of commercial companies because a) that's the way the world still works - make use of it to your own advantage, and b) to get all those platforms (including a good open source distro) sharing some new equivalents of