True. But it's probably worth more to Microsoft than it is to the recipients of these donations.
Umm, it's currently not getting Microsoft any money, and won't in future. Might stop them getting negative PR, and might even get them some good PR. The recipients will have less of a chance of going to jail on trumped up charges.
Yeah, I can see how you might think the recipients aren't getting much value from this compared to Microsoft
You know, sometimes even bad companies do good things (or at least stop doing bad things), and they should be commended in such cases, instead of this churlish suspicion and ill will.
"We are terribly sorry to hear that a tiny number itworld reader have misinterpreted their misreporting of our original statement and unfortunately came to the mistaken conclusion that we had given this license worldwide. In order to rectify this horrible mistake (since it's unfair that we gain any advantage from people's misunderstanding), we will be cutting our marketing budget to compensate. But when people mistake what we're saying in a NEGATIVE light, then that's okay, and we must just take that on the chin"
Oh lordie, do they teach kids nothing in school these days?
Inflation is where prices rise in the economy at a somewhat variable rate. If that rate is small but appreciable it means that storing your money in a mattress (where it does nothing for anyone) means that you effective LOSE spending power. Thus, inflation encourages people to INVEST their money, in shares, bonds, the money market, or even a good old savings account. This means that the money is USED, which grows the economy.
So, to carry on your grandfather example, if he had "kept" $10,000 in an mattress for the last 100 years, he'd be dirt poor. If he'd invested it in the S&P 500 on the other hand, he'd have about $86,260,000. If you adjust for inflation; a growth in wealth of 400 times.
So, a little bit more than "half a year's rent on an apartment". Even if he'd just put the money in a bank account with a decent interest rate.
It is not your Central Banks fault that you are incompetent to manage your money: it's yours.
America has started about 14 wars of aggression, and vastly many more military strikes, against non-nuclear nations since World War II, and none against nuclear ones.
Or maybe it won't. Prior art is nowhere near as wonderful defence as Slashdotters would like to believe. In fact it's almost impossible to win a patent fight alleging prior art.
The patent has been granted, it's very difficult to revoke it, so they'd have to fight it on it's merits, which means trying to show it doesn't apply to them, not coming up with hypothetical prior art.
Copyright is not exactly theft, no, as mentioned elsewhere it is more akin to trespass on chattels. Nonetheless it is serious, and not a minor misdemeanor as you are trying to imply. Copyright DOES increase societal good, since it ensures (along with patents) that information in our society is not lost in desperate attempts to keep monopolies via trade secrets, such as used to happen in the Middle Ages.
I agree completely that the duration of copyright is far too long. 7-14 years seems like an adequate duration for most scenarios. I guess there could be some cases where an exception might be made, but that's what the courts are for. I don't see why a copyright holder shouldn't have to argue in front of a judge for an extension. There are also many abuses, and a reform of copyright is a good idea, absolutely.
Nonetheless, we are not discussing a case of a 50 year copyright, nor are we discussing a case of a corporate claiming for someone else's copyright. Nor are we discussing a case rife with abuses, or rivers or any other pretty analogy.
We are discussing an artist who wants to be paid for hard work he has performed, and, without such payment, wants people to stop using his work. THAT is the issue at hand in this case, and flying off into tangents on which we all agree does not address the central point of this argument: SHOULD this artist be allowed to enforce his will in this case?
My point was around the comments on this thread. The RIAA and MPAA claim that many people are outright thieves, who would NEVER pay for work, and thus deserve to be prosecuted. This thread validates that claim. When faced with an outright wrong, an artist who is struggling to be compensated for his work, the comments attack the artist and support the thieves.
The rest of the RIAA and MPAA can go hang, but this is a fundamental point that Slashdotters always say they're mistaken about; claiming that people WOULD pay if it was clearcut case involving a struggling artist. When such a case is presented, Slashdotters rally AGAINST the artist and for the thieves. Hypocrisy, and playing right into the hands of these vile organisations.
Not necessarily. Myself and my business partner have laboured for three years on a software product. Should someone take it without paying us, it would be many orders of magnitude more damage than someone sleeping on my lawn.
If you don't want people using your stuff, don't release it. Don't write it down, don't publish it.
And this is exactly why we have copyright and patents.
To ensure that when a creative person dies, they don't take their "trade secrets" with them. In the Middle and Dark Ages, it was common for tradesmen who came up with a new process to keep it secret, often taking it to the grave with them.
This resulted in continual reinvention of the same
ideas, the inability to "stand on the shoulders of giants". The fact that you consider that a better solution than copyright is mindboggling.
Completely wrong. The fact that copying is free does not make it okay to copy. That was his point. He was discussing HIS property that was being taken without recompense. The fact that he still has a copy is irrelevant. Getting pendantic about his examples and coming up with completely incorrect strawmen is fudging the issue.
I love the fact that Slashdotters all say that the reason they steal stuff is because they support the artists, and want to protest the big corps. Here we have a real example of an artists struggling to make a living because his work is being stolen, and the comments attack him, revealing the truth, despite all the protestations to the contrary: the reality is hypocrisy, you use the corporations and other excuses to justify outright theft. When your excuses are stripped bare, as in this example, instead of reevaluating your position honestly, you instead attack the complainant.
I have always despised the MPAA and RIAA, but the comments on this article have done more to convince me that they may have a point than anything else in 10 years.
You're wrong. Our transmissions will gradually get weaker and weaker, but there is nothing that stops them. Each photon emitted by our transmissions will travel forever until it hits something. Some of them may hit dust grains close by, some may make it to other galaxies, some may travel on till the end of Time/Big Bang/Insert Apocalypse of your choice here.
And I for one am tired of hysterically anti-Microsoft bigots. Microsoft USED to play the games you indicated around security issues and it got them smacked by security researchers and the public at large. Since then they have been remarkably forthright about security issues, and probably have one of the most open and transparent security disclosure policies of any browser company. Not as open as an OSS browser, sure, but LOT better than Apple as an example.
Claim: MS is leaving major vulnerabilities unpatched. Reality: No evidence to back up your assertion. All major vulnerabilities discovered by the "outside" world are patched swiftly, and there appears to be no good motive to support such behaviour on the part of MS
Claim: MS are fudging the patch notes. Reality: No evidence to back up your assertion. Do you think that if notes were being "gamed" in this way it would have remained unnoticed for so long? Conspiracy theory logic.
Claim: A single recent vulnerability, swiftly patched proves that IE is overall more insecure than Firefox. Reality: Anecdotal evidence is not significant over large data sets. Do you also use magnets to remove pain? Cast horoscopes?
Claim: Cenzic is being paid by Microsoft. Reality: No evidence to back up your assertion. Requires a reputable security company to put its reputation on the line for a potential tiny uptick in IE acceptance. Conspiracy theory logic.
The reality is that the "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" law is not totally true for security. Dedicated and trained people doing comprehensive end to end security analysis is required to make a truly secure product. This is tricky to arrange in OSS development, since security work is boring grunt work, developers do not relish it and rarely volunteer for it. Admittedly, such work is also normally not done in proprietary companies either, due to the cost implications. When it IS done however, we should expect that the proprietary product will be tend to be more secure than the OSS one, simply because of the dedicated focus that can be applied.
Microsoft has a lot of backlog to overcome in terms of security, so given that we should expect to see it's products become more and more secure until they begin to overtake the OSS competition. Assuming their focus remains, of course. This is precisely what we are seeing for browsers, and seeing the beginnings of with operating systems as well.
Do I use IE? Nope, hate it with a passion. I find it buggy, it renders poorly, and it's slow. But it appears I can no longer call it insecure, because the evidence suggests that it's not anymore.
I have been uninfected for at least 5 years too, and have been running Windows without an antivirus. So have a great many others. The problem is not an operating system one, it's a user issue. As long as users ignore security practices they will get hit by malware. Nowadays it rarely gets elevated privileges in any of the operating systems, but that doesn't nullify the very real damage they do to users.
The only truly effective ways to truly stop malware is to deny execute rights to anything originating from an untrusted source or to not allow programs from an untrusted source to edit or manipulate files created by trusted sources. Which is also known as a sandbox.
Even if that were possible or feasible, the problem comes with the definition of a "trusted source". Should it only be programs created by certain companies? Only those signed with a VeriSign certificate? Or how about those that the user decides to trust? The last seems to be the only one that will work, but unfortunately leaves us exactly where we are right now.
Some programs take advantage of users gullibility in order to do things the users don't expect. This is a user issue and always will be. Other malware accesses holes in software to infect a machine. This is ALSO somewhat of a user issue, since usually it is because the machines are unpatched or because the user was accessing dodgy sites.
Finally, it is important to note that those operating systems with a low incidence of malware targeted at them also have a small distribution. This is a p=1 correlation. The reason for this is a matter of opinion, and it may not even be a sign of any causation. There are those, such as me, who believe that Windows these days is just as secure as Mac or even Linux, and that those OS's are protected by their relative obscurity. Then there are those who believe that Windows is inherently insecure and that Macs or Linux are inherently more secure. The reality if you look at some recent hacking competitions is that the real vulnerability problem that all of these operating systems have is not the OS itself, but rather third party applications installed on the system.
My contention is that any of the major operating systems is secure enough these days to run without antivirus, as long as you are careful about what to install and execute, and if you're not then none are.
I run Windows XP SP 3 on my laptop and now Windows 7 on my desktop without antivirus, and have not been infected for years, so it's not a "install Linux" thing, it's a "don't run an executable from an untrusted source" thing.
I get so sick and tired of Linux zealots telling the world how secure their bloody OS is if you follow good security practices. Hell, even a Mac is secure in such a scenario. It's like saying "my new diet will make you lose 30 kg, if you also exercise like mad". Sure, of course it will, but I don't need your diet, and I sure don't need your OS.
Clinton forgot there was a rest of the world until he finally woke up and realized that his "legacy" was going to be Al Gore and Monica Lewinsky.
Bush's ENTIRE term was a vile disaster for the entire planet. If by "later years were pretty mellow" you mean "didn't actually start any major wars of aggression", I guess you're right, although if you recall there were some rumblings that he wanted to attack Iran, and was dissuaded by the armed forces.
Now you have to know that when the US Armed Services think you're being over the top on your aggression, you're in a pretty bad place. Oh, and don't forget his stupid sabre rattling against the Russians too. He made America look like a wimp because he swaggered about making threats he couldn't back up.
There is some doubt as to where Bush ranks as a US President. Is he the worst, in the bottom 5? I think as far as the rest of the world is concerned, he is without any doubt at all the absolute worst in history. Usually the ineffectual presidents don't cause many international problems. Bush was a bull in a china shop, and his approach to international relations was "fuck you, do it our way, even if we're wrong.".
Obama might not have accomplished much, but speaking as someone who has lived on a planet wracked by 8 years of Bush's moronic brutality, he makes a nice change. If he accomplishes 10% of what he wants, he'll deserve the Peace Prize, because that will be a 100 times more than Bush ever did for world peace and stability.
My company specifically hands out pens TO be taken home, I do print, fax and photocopy small amounts of personal material but then, that is allowed by my employer. If it was not, I wouldn't. As has been mentioned before there is a thing called integrity. When you're a contractor in a sensitive position your actions must be beyond reproach. Once you lose your reputation, you can never get it back, and it's worth far more to me than some small pieces of paper.
I also disagree that most would break the law for a reward, given said guarantee. Those people whose ethics are internally sited in their own decisions and mind would not. The idea that people only follow laws due to fear of punishment is a standard tactic used by religious people to attack the non-religious, and it's a load of horse manure.
I would hope that all desktop OS's are used by enthusiasts
What tripe. Most desktop OS's are used by people who need them to get something done, that by no means makes them enthusiasts. This attitude is a sterling example of what so many in the Linux community don't grok. Most people couldn't give a continental about the OS. They just want it to do what they need it to do.
That's not so amazing as the fact that they've managed to maintain it for ten years...
Well, I've always been constantly amazed by the people parroting that Linux in going to take off on the desktop "any day now"; for well over a decade.
I'm unaware of any objective that an OS should have... that would require other operating systems to run the same API as me
Umm, then you have very little idea about what a modern OS does. Providing access to the hardware is a tiny portion of the job. An OS is only truly useful when it provides a consistent and reliable ecosystem for programs to operate within. Linux does not provide such reliability, at least enough for desktop apps. Windows does. Therefore, as you say, use Windows. At least for desktop apps.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm, it's currently not getting Microsoft any money, and won't in future. Might stop them getting negative PR, and might even get them some good PR. The recipients will have less of a chance of going to jail on trumped up charges.
Yeah, I can see how you might think the recipients aren't getting much value from this compared to Microsoft
You know, sometimes even bad companies do good things (or at least stop doing bad things), and they should be commended in such cases, instead of this churlish suspicion and ill will.
What should they do exactly?
Oh lordie, do they teach kids nothing in school these days?
Inflation is where prices rise in the economy at a somewhat variable rate. If that rate is small but appreciable it means that storing your money in a mattress (where it does nothing for anyone) means that you effective LOSE spending power. Thus, inflation encourages people to INVEST their money, in shares, bonds, the money market, or even a good old savings account. This means that the money is USED, which grows the economy.
So, to carry on your grandfather example, if he had "kept" $10,000 in an mattress for the last 100 years, he'd be dirt poor. If he'd invested it in the S&P 500 on the other hand, he'd have about $86,260,000. If you adjust for inflation; a growth in wealth of 400 times.
So, a little bit more than "half a year's rent on an apartment". Even if he'd just put the money in a bank account with a decent interest rate.
It is not your Central Banks fault that you are incompetent to manage your money: it's yours.
Tech CEOs explain how government can spend more money on tech companies.
I can think of a compelling reason:
America has started about 14 wars of aggression, and vastly many more military strikes, against non-nuclear nations since World War II, and none against nuclear ones.
Or maybe it won't. Prior art is nowhere near as wonderful defence as Slashdotters would like to believe. In fact it's almost impossible to win a patent fight alleging prior art.
The patent has been granted, it's very difficult to revoke it, so they'd have to fight it on it's merits, which means trying to show it doesn't apply to them, not coming up with hypothetical prior art.
Copyright is not exactly theft, no, as mentioned elsewhere it is more akin to trespass on chattels. Nonetheless it is serious, and not a minor misdemeanor as you are trying to imply. Copyright DOES increase societal good, since it ensures (along with patents) that information in our society is not lost in desperate attempts to keep monopolies via trade secrets, such as used to happen in the Middle Ages.
I agree completely that the duration of copyright is far too long. 7-14 years seems like an adequate duration for most scenarios. I guess there could be some cases where an exception might be made, but that's what the courts are for. I don't see why a copyright holder shouldn't have to argue in front of a judge for an extension. There are also many abuses, and a reform of copyright is a good idea, absolutely.
Nonetheless, we are not discussing a case of a 50 year copyright, nor are we discussing a case of a corporate claiming for someone else's copyright. Nor are we discussing a case rife with abuses, or rivers or any other pretty analogy.
We are discussing an artist who wants to be paid for hard work he has performed, and, without such payment, wants people to stop using his work. THAT is the issue at hand in this case, and flying off into tangents on which we all agree does not address the central point of this argument: SHOULD this artist be allowed to enforce his will in this case?
Do YOU believe he should?
My point was around the comments on this thread. The RIAA and MPAA claim that many people are outright thieves, who would NEVER pay for work, and thus deserve to be prosecuted. This thread validates that claim. When faced with an outright wrong, an artist who is struggling to be compensated for his work, the comments attack the artist and support the thieves.
The rest of the RIAA and MPAA can go hang, but this is a fundamental point that Slashdotters always say they're mistaken about; claiming that people WOULD pay if it was clearcut case involving a struggling artist. When such a case is presented, Slashdotters rally AGAINST the artist and for the thieves. Hypocrisy, and playing right into the hands of these vile organisations.
Not necessarily. Myself and my business partner have laboured for three years on a software product. Should someone take it without paying us, it would be many orders of magnitude more damage than someone sleeping on my lawn.
If a hobo chooses to sleep on your lawn, then you have not lost it, so why should you be entitled to have him booted off?
If you don't want people using your stuff, don't release it. Don't write it down, don't publish it.
And this is exactly why we have copyright and patents.
To ensure that when a creative person dies, they don't take their "trade secrets" with them. In the Middle and Dark Ages, it was common for tradesmen who came up with a new process to keep it secret, often taking it to the grave with them.
This resulted in continual reinvention of the same ideas, the inability to "stand on the shoulders of giants". The fact that you consider that a better solution than copyright is mindboggling.
She was asking for it in that dress...
Completely wrong. The fact that copying is free does not make it okay to copy. That was his point. He was discussing HIS property that was being taken without recompense. The fact that he still has a copy is irrelevant. Getting pendantic about his examples and coming up with completely incorrect strawmen is fudging the issue.
I love the fact that Slashdotters all say that the reason they steal stuff is because they support the artists, and want to protest the big corps. Here we have a real example of an artists struggling to make a living because his work is being stolen, and the comments attack him, revealing the truth, despite all the protestations to the contrary: the reality is hypocrisy, you use the corporations and other excuses to justify outright theft. When your excuses are stripped bare, as in this example, instead of reevaluating your position honestly, you instead attack the complainant.
I have always despised the MPAA and RIAA, but the comments on this article have done more to convince me that they may have a point than anything else in 10 years.
You're wrong. Our transmissions will gradually get weaker and weaker, but there is nothing that stops them. Each photon emitted by our transmissions will travel forever until it hits something. Some of them may hit dust grains close by, some may make it to other galaxies, some may travel on till the end of Time/Big Bang/Insert Apocalypse of your choice here.
And I for one am tired of hysterically anti-Microsoft bigots. Microsoft USED to play the games you indicated around security issues and it got them smacked by security researchers and the public at large. Since then they have been remarkably forthright about security issues, and probably have one of the most open and transparent security disclosure policies of any browser company. Not as open as an OSS browser, sure, but LOT better than Apple as an example.
Reality: No evidence to back up your assertion. All major vulnerabilities discovered by the "outside" world are patched swiftly, and there appears to be no good motive to support such behaviour on the part of MS
Reality: No evidence to back up your assertion. Do you think that if notes were being "gamed" in this way it would have remained unnoticed for so long? Conspiracy theory logic.
Reality: Anecdotal evidence is not significant over large data sets. Do you also use magnets to remove pain? Cast horoscopes?
Reality: No evidence to back up your assertion. Requires a reputable security company to put its reputation on the line for a potential tiny uptick in IE acceptance. Conspiracy theory logic.
The reality is that the "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" law is not totally true for security. Dedicated and trained people doing comprehensive end to end security analysis is required to make a truly secure product. This is tricky to arrange in OSS development, since security work is boring grunt work, developers do not relish it and rarely volunteer for it. Admittedly, such work is also normally not done in proprietary companies either, due to the cost implications. When it IS done however, we should expect that the proprietary product will be tend to be more secure than the OSS one, simply because of the dedicated focus that can be applied.
Microsoft has a lot of backlog to overcome in terms of security, so given that we should expect to see it's products become more and more secure until they begin to overtake the OSS competition. Assuming their focus remains, of course. This is precisely what we are seeing for browsers, and seeing the beginnings of with operating systems as well.
Do I use IE? Nope, hate it with a passion. I find it buggy, it renders poorly, and it's slow. But it appears I can no longer call it insecure, because the evidence suggests that it's not anymore.
I have been uninfected for at least 5 years too, and have been running Windows without an antivirus. So have a great many others. The problem is not an operating system one, it's a user issue. As long as users ignore security practices they will get hit by malware. Nowadays it rarely gets elevated privileges in any of the operating systems, but that doesn't nullify the very real damage they do to users.
The only truly effective ways to truly stop malware is to deny execute rights to anything originating from an untrusted source or to not allow programs from an untrusted source to edit or manipulate files created by trusted sources. Which is also known as a sandbox.
Even if that were possible or feasible, the problem comes with the definition of a "trusted source". Should it only be programs created by certain companies? Only those signed with a VeriSign certificate? Or how about those that the user decides to trust? The last seems to be the only one that will work, but unfortunately leaves us exactly where we are right now.
Some programs take advantage of users gullibility in order to do things the users don't expect. This is a user issue and always will be. Other malware accesses holes in software to infect a machine. This is ALSO somewhat of a user issue, since usually it is because the machines are unpatched or because the user was accessing dodgy sites.
Finally, it is important to note that those operating systems with a low incidence of malware targeted at them also have a small distribution. This is a p=1 correlation. The reason for this is a matter of opinion, and it may not even be a sign of any causation. There are those, such as me, who believe that Windows these days is just as secure as Mac or even Linux, and that those OS's are protected by their relative obscurity. Then there are those who believe that Windows is inherently insecure and that Macs or Linux are inherently more secure. The reality if you look at some recent hacking competitions is that the real vulnerability problem that all of these operating systems have is not the OS itself, but rather third party applications installed on the system.
My contention is that any of the major operating systems is secure enough these days to run without antivirus, as long as you are careful about what to install and execute, and if you're not then none are.
I run Windows XP SP 3 on my laptop and now Windows 7 on my desktop without antivirus, and have not been infected for years, so it's not a "install Linux" thing, it's a "don't run an executable from an untrusted source" thing.
I get so sick and tired of Linux zealots telling the world how secure their bloody OS is if you follow good security practices. Hell, even a Mac is secure in such a scenario. It's like saying "my new diet will make you lose 30 kg, if you also exercise like mad". Sure, of course it will, but I don't need your diet, and I sure don't need your OS.
Precisely!
And also why nobody needs to run anti-virus on Linux or Mac OS X.
Welcome to the real world kid. Sad when Linux, despite 10 years of trying can't beat prerelease samples of Windows on the desktop.
But don't worry, it'll take over the desktop "Any day now (C) 1992"./
Because if gravity randomly affected photons differently, our night sky would look a LOT different than it does.
Bush's ENTIRE term was a vile disaster for the entire planet. If by "later years were pretty mellow" you mean "didn't actually start any major wars of aggression", I guess you're right, although if you recall there were some rumblings that he wanted to attack Iran, and was dissuaded by the armed forces.
Now you have to know that when the US Armed Services think you're being over the top on your aggression, you're in a pretty bad place. Oh, and don't forget his stupid sabre rattling against the Russians too. He made America look like a wimp because he swaggered about making threats he couldn't back up.
There is some doubt as to where Bush ranks as a US President. Is he the worst, in the bottom 5? I think as far as the rest of the world is concerned, he is without any doubt at all the absolute worst in history. Usually the ineffectual presidents don't cause many international problems. Bush was a bull in a china shop, and his approach to international relations was "fuck you, do it our way, even if we're wrong.".
Obama might not have accomplished much, but speaking as someone who has lived on a planet wracked by 8 years of Bush's moronic brutality, he makes a nice change. If he accomplishes 10% of what he wants, he'll deserve the Peace Prize, because that will be a 100 times more than Bush ever did for world peace and stability.
My company specifically hands out pens TO be taken home, I do print, fax and photocopy small amounts of personal material but then, that is allowed by my employer. If it was not, I wouldn't. As has been mentioned before there is a thing called integrity. When you're a contractor in a sensitive position your actions must be beyond reproach. Once you lose your reputation, you can never get it back, and it's worth far more to me than some small pieces of paper.
I also disagree that most would break the law for a reward, given said guarantee. Those people whose ethics are internally sited in their own decisions and mind would not. The idea that people only follow laws due to fear of punishment is a standard tactic used by religious people to attack the non-religious, and it's a load of horse manure.
What do they teach kids in school these days?
Now, that's an ad-hominem. You can tell because I didn't address the substance of the argument.
What tripe. Most desktop OS's are used by people who need them to get something done, that by no means makes them enthusiasts. This attitude is a sterling example of what so many in the Linux community don't grok. Most people couldn't give a continental about the OS. They just want it to do what they need it to do.
Well, I've always been constantly amazed by the people parroting that Linux in going to take off on the desktop "any day now"; for well over a decade.
Umm, then you have very little idea about what a modern OS does. Providing access to the hardware is a tiny portion of the job. An OS is only truly useful when it provides a consistent and reliable ecosystem for programs to operate within. Linux does not provide such reliability, at least enough for desktop apps. Windows does. Therefore, as you say, use Windows. At least for desktop apps.
Except for one little caveat. Visual Studio's regular expressions are it's own bastardised syntax.