You obviously have no clue about how the criminal justice system works.
The key difference is that the defendant here hasn't been found "guilty" beyond all appeal. Even in criminal law you have plea bargains where the defendant will plead guilty to the crime in exchange for a favorable sentence. Law enforcement gets to save the cost of a trial as well as avoid the uncertainty of being unable to prove the case.
It's the same situation here: The DoJ wants to save the cost of the trial and avoid the risk. It's _possible_ that if they fought the case, the previous ruling might get overturned and MS let off scot free. Here they're cutting a deal.
So while you in your narrow mind have already found MS guilty and decided on the sentence, other people go by things like facts, evidence, what you can prove, etc.
Follow the links from the inquirer link and you will see this statement:
"METHODOLOGY: The numbers on this page are based on contributions from PACs, soft money donors, and individuals giving $200 or more. (Only those groups giving $5,000 or more are listed here.) In many cases, the organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organization's PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates. All donations took place during the 1999-2000 election cycle and were released by the Federal Election Commission on Monday, October 01, 2001. Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics. "
This is money contributed by people. MS employs a lot of wealthy people (stock rich) who have a variety of agendas to pursue. Note that a contribution to a "Save the salmon" fund is also considered a political contribution in this measurement.
You seem to be suggesting that Microsoft is either too naieve, too forthright, or too cash-strapped to make political donations in an effort to influence the party in power. Evidence [theinquirer.net] suggests [go.com] otherwise [cnet.com].
If you read the links you provide you will notice that they actually prove my point. Microsoft didn't give any significant amount of money to political parties until well after 1995 (which was when the suit was filed). Notice how disproportionately small (compared to MS's size at the time) the percentage of MS's contributions to that of the industry at large was. Compare the contributions to the size of contributions made by Sun, Oracle, etc. and draw the appropriate conclusions.
Yes, they were naive. Their competitors were not. The Clinton whitehouse brought this case at the behest of the competitors who couldn't compete based on the strength of their products and needed that little "something else".
Look, what part of "abusive monopoly" are you not understanding?
Improvements to the operating system are not "abusive". They provide a greater value to customers. The improvements to the OS are required as a competitive tool with other Operating Systems. It is ridiculous to suggest that Microsoft can't improve its operating system and provide features that consumers want in order to protect whiny competitors with inferior products.
On the day Windows XP shipped, it had no monopoly. The product was competing with the other operating systems out there: Win98, Win95, MacOS (I won't mention Linux) which it has to compete with. Features are an important competitive edge. Of course some dingbats would rather all of us lived in a dark world lest some individuals should get rich for providing features and services everyone wants.
If you have over 70% market share and you're abusive, the law steps in to protect the market and restore competition. It's really that simple. I can't put it in shorter words.
Or in this case: If you have a lot of money and you don't give any of it to the party in power and all your competitors do, then the party in power is going to send lawyers after you.
If the vendors don't include free Linux images for dual boot on their computers, that the user can allow to remain or delete when they first start the box, I'll be suspicious. I'll still suspect that MS is intimidating vendors if some don't opt to bundle in Linux.
... or the more logical conclusion: that consumers don't care about Linux and manufacturers don't want to take on the huge added costs of configuring and supporting it for the small percentage that do.
But don't let logic get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.
DOS is an operating system. A command line is a utility or program that runs on TOP of an operating system. DOS just happened to come with the command line which was the only UI to the OS.
Just like Linux is not the bash shell, DOS is not the command line.
The command line is also available on XP as an interface to the OS.
What's the prize and where can I claim it?
Re:Does Micrsoft still license DOS?
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
·
· Score: 2
On my new DELL Latitude laptop, I don't need to create a floppy disk to update the BIOS anymore.
Windows XP/the DELL bios are capable of doing BIOS upgrades without requiring a boot disk.
You are a moron. That's called escrow and XP passed through it. Escrow is typically about a week - which is the time it takes for all the automated tests as well as stress tests to pass through the product.
Mature development processes don't depend on monkeys manually testing things at random. They have automated tests which test all the scenarios. Everytime someone comes up with a new scenario, an automated test is written to test it so that it is always verified for every build.
Also, in mature development processes, the product is pretty much locked down for the last several months. Only a limited number of changes are allowed to be checked in and whenever a change is allowed, all possible fallouts of that change - however irrational - are considered and tested for.
You don't actually believe that the RTM date was the day when everyone finished writing their code, do you?
And then after that one month has expired, should they wait another month to wait and see if any more critical update issues have been found? Then another month?
You obviously have no clue about a mature development process. You work your code until there are no major issues found in CURRENT tests. You will always find issues in the future and that's what updates are for.
Please read the article before you post. The charge is for plugging into.NET My Services.
Developers are free to write and develop.NET apps as they please. The charge is simply to plug into the notification and authentication mechanism formerly known as Hailstorm.
To argue your case, you will first need to prove that Qwest has a monopoly as far as DSL is concerned. You haven't done that and I honestly see no way of doing that. Remember, the DSL provider is different from the ISP so even if you have Qwest DSL, you don't have to get Qwest/MSN as an ISP.
How about you look at their financial statement from the last quarter or look at news reports like this before asserting that they didn't spend that much money?
Actualy, for Microsoft, the biggest cost is Marketing. You want to read this article [cnet.com] and learn about the cost of launching WindowsXP ($1 billion!!!!!!).
No, you moron. Microsoft spent nearly $5 billion on R&D last year. And if you think about the fact that the WindowsXP launch is a once-in-a-few-years event, you will quickly realize that marketing is not even close to being the biggest cost.
Have in mind that WindowsXp has no real new features. Just some outrageous theme ontop of Windows2000 core and then some code merginf from the WindowsME tree. Really.
Only on/. would an uninformed flamebait like that get modded up as insightful. I use XP on a daily basis and there are several features I don't want to do without.
How does this crap get modded up as "Insightful"? Try "Uninformed".
As a previous poster pointed out, the GPS features is required by the FCC for the cases where several lives could have been saved if the dispatcher only knew where the caller was.
1) Paper maps don't help you when you're dying of a heart-attack and can barely stand up.
2) Paper maps don't help you when your house is on fire and you'd rather the dispatcher just figured where you were and sent help there.
3) Being able to buy a paper map doesn't help you when you can barely stand up because you've been stabbed in the back.
Its not the bundling, its the bloody undocumented interfaces....
That's the difference between what MS does and what car manufacturers do - and don't get bitched at. The interfaces are bloody well documented. You CAN write your own mail software, MP3 player, browser etc. on top of the OS - nothing is preventing you from doing that. The interfaces are there and documented well enough that others have used them to do so.
Compare this to what other OSes have been doing all along - Mac, Linux all come with bundled applications. Do you want to require Windows to not do what its competition does and thereby force it to be at a disadvantage to them?
No, it only means that if they were bought, it was by someone on your side of this particular debate - Like Sun, or Oracle.
Remember that politicians and political appointees do very little unless it is influenced by either their constituents or campaign contributors. I don't see the greater public up in arms about the bunling (heck, they don't even seem to know what it means or why it is bad) so it's probably the campaign contributions. Microsoft contributed little or no money until a couple of years ago and now they're paying for it.
You started in the right direction by pointing out that copyright and patent law were not the same.
However, you failed to complete your analysis. Of course, having a copyright on those tones doesn't prevent any normal usage of DTMF. Why that is, I'll leave as an exercise to the reader.
They demonize you and criminalize you and then ask for your help. What's a hacker to do?
If this is a reference to the proposed measures against "hacking offences", then you need to re-read the laws that are being proposed. They are neither as bad or as radical as the Slashdot article about it like to make it to be.
As far as what's a hacker to do, it's very simple: Do your part to protect the lives of innocent people and fight the war against those who don't respect the rights of humans to live.
It seems to me that that stuff is put there to cover their legal asses in case someone is offended by a website that was created using Frontpage.
I could totally see someone deciding that the website creator was not enough money and deciding to sue MS instead for creating the software that allows it.
Suing a software maker where there is an express disclaimer is an example of a frivolous lawsuit.
For example, if Oracle markets its database with the intent of it being viable for mission-critical applications and the database fails, then they ARE liable - however a piece of software expressly marketed with a disclaimer about its use for such things should NOT be liable if it is used that way.
The big difference is that it won't kill Microsoft to fight off some of these frivolous lawsuits but it will kill a smaller company - even when the lawsuits are found to be without basis.
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously have no clue about how the criminal justice system works.
The key difference is that the defendant here hasn't been found "guilty" beyond all appeal. Even in criminal law you have plea bargains where the defendant will plead guilty to the crime in exchange for a favorable sentence. Law enforcement gets to save the cost of a trial as well as avoid the uncertainty of being unable to prove the case.
It's the same situation here: The DoJ wants to save the cost of the trial and avoid the risk. It's _possible_ that if they fought the case, the previous ruling might get overturned and MS let off scot free. Here they're cutting a deal.
So while you in your narrow mind have already found MS guilty and decided on the sentence, other people go by things like facts, evidence, what you can prove, etc.
Follow the links from the inquirer link and you will see this statement:
"METHODOLOGY: The numbers on this page are based on contributions from PACs, soft money donors, and individuals giving $200 or more. (Only those groups giving $5,000 or more are listed here.) In many cases, the organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organization's PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates. All donations took place during the 1999-2000 election cycle and were released by the Federal Election Commission on Monday, October 01, 2001. Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics. "
This is money contributed by people. MS employs a lot of wealthy people (stock rich) who have a variety of agendas to pursue. Note that a contribution to a "Save the salmon" fund is also considered a political contribution in this measurement.
You seem to be suggesting that Microsoft is either too naieve, too forthright, or too cash-strapped to make political donations in an effort to influence the party in power. Evidence [theinquirer.net] suggests [go.com] otherwise [cnet.com].
If you read the links you provide you will notice that they actually prove my point. Microsoft didn't give any significant amount of money to political parties until well after 1995 (which was when the suit was filed). Notice how disproportionately small (compared to MS's size at the time) the percentage of MS's contributions to that of the industry at large was. Compare the contributions to the size of contributions made by Sun, Oracle, etc. and draw the appropriate conclusions.
Yes, they were naive. Their competitors were not. The Clinton whitehouse brought this case at the behest of the competitors who couldn't compete based on the strength of their products and needed that little "something else".
Look, what part of "abusive monopoly" are you not understanding?
Improvements to the operating system are not "abusive". They provide a greater value to customers. The improvements to the OS are required as a competitive tool with other Operating Systems. It is ridiculous to suggest that Microsoft can't improve its operating system and provide features that consumers want in order to protect whiny competitors with inferior products.
On the day Windows XP shipped, it had no monopoly. The product was competing with the other operating systems out there: Win98, Win95, MacOS (I won't mention Linux) which it has to compete with. Features are an important competitive edge. Of course some dingbats would rather all of us lived in a dark world lest some individuals should get rich for providing features and services everyone wants.
If you have over 70% market share and you're abusive, the law steps in to protect the market and restore competition. It's really that simple. I can't put it in shorter words.
Or in this case: If you have a lot of money and you don't give any of it to the party in power and all your competitors do, then the party in power is going to send lawyers after you.
If the vendors don't include free Linux images for dual boot on their computers, that the user can allow to remain or delete when they first start the box, I'll be suspicious. I'll still suspect that MS is intimidating vendors if some don't opt to bundle in Linux.
... or the more logical conclusion: that consumers don't care about Linux and manufacturers don't want to take on the huge added costs of configuring and supporting it for the small percentage that do.
But don't let logic get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.
I prefer: -R -> cmd
DOS is an operating system. A command line is a utility or program that runs on TOP of an operating system. DOS just happened to come with the command line which was the only UI to the OS.
Just like Linux is not the bash shell, DOS is not the command line.
The command line is also available on XP as an interface to the OS.
What's the prize and where can I claim it?
On my new DELL Latitude laptop, I don't need to create a floppy disk to update the BIOS anymore.
Windows XP/the DELL bios are capable of doing BIOS upgrades without requiring a boot disk.
You are a moron. That's called escrow and XP passed through it. Escrow is typically about a week - which is the time it takes for all the automated tests as well as stress tests to pass through the product.
Mature development processes don't depend on monkeys manually testing things at random. They have automated tests which test all the scenarios. Everytime someone comes up with a new scenario, an automated test is written to test it so that it is always verified for every build.
Also, in mature development processes, the product is pretty much locked down for the last several months. Only a limited number of changes are allowed to be checked in and whenever a change is allowed, all possible fallouts of that change - however irrational - are considered and tested for.
You don't actually believe that the RTM date was the day when everyone finished writing their code, do you?
Get a clue.
And then after that one month has expired, should they wait another month to wait and see if any more critical update issues have been found? Then another month?
You obviously have no clue about a mature development process. You work your code until there are no major issues found in CURRENT tests. You will always find issues in the future and that's what updates are for.
That's weird. My Shut down menu has the options:
Logoff
Shutdown
Restart
StandBy
Hibernate
I'm using the default theme so it might be the difference between XP Professional and XP Home (I'm on the former)
Please read the article before you post. The charge is for plugging into .NET My Services.
.NET apps as they please. The charge is simply to plug into the notification and authentication mechanism formerly known as Hailstorm.
Developers are free to write and develop
However, the logical challenge is not that great.
Only if you're logically challenged yourself.
To argue your case, you will first need to prove that Qwest has a monopoly as far as DSL is concerned. You haven't done that and I honestly see no way of doing that. Remember, the DSL provider is different from the ISP so even if you have Qwest DSL, you don't have to get Qwest/MSN as an ISP.
It is not illegal to have a monopoly. It is illegal to leverage a monopoly in one area to extend it into other spaces.
How about you look at their financial statement from the last quarter or look at news reports like this before asserting that they didn't spend that much money?
MSN is not a monopoly. MSN can require the use of certain software in pretty much the same way that AOL does.
I know you want to make an anti-trust issue of this, but there is a big logical chasm to cross first.
Actualy, for Microsoft, the biggest cost is Marketing. You want to read this article [cnet.com] and learn about the cost of launching WindowsXP ($1 billion!!!!!!).
No, you moron. Microsoft spent nearly $5 billion on R&D last year. And if you think about the fact that the WindowsXP launch is a once-in-a-few-years event, you will quickly realize that marketing is not even close to being the biggest cost.
Have in mind that WindowsXp has no real new features. Just some outrageous theme ontop of Windows2000 core and then some code merginf from the WindowsME tree. Really.
Only on /. would an uninformed flamebait like that get modded up as insightful. I use XP on a daily basis and there are several features I don't want to do without.
How does this crap get modded up as "Insightful"? Try "Uninformed".
As a previous poster pointed out, the GPS features is required by the FCC for the cases where several lives could have been saved if the dispatcher only knew where the caller was.
1) Paper maps don't help you when you're dying of a heart-attack and can barely stand up.
2) Paper maps don't help you when your house is on fire and you'd rather the dispatcher just figured where you were and sent help there.
3) Being able to buy a paper map doesn't help you when you can barely stand up because you've been stabbed in the back.
Gee whiz.
Its not the bundling, its the bloody undocumented interfaces....
That's the difference between what MS does and what car manufacturers do - and don't get bitched at. The interfaces are bloody well documented. You CAN write your own mail software, MP3 player, browser etc. on top of the OS - nothing is preventing you from doing that. The interfaces are there and documented well enough that others have used them to do so.
Compare this to what other OSes have been doing all along - Mac, Linux all come with bundled applications. Do you want to require Windows to not do what its competition does and thereby force it to be at a disadvantage to them?
No, it only means that if they were bought, it was by someone on your side of this particular debate - Like Sun, or Oracle.
Remember that politicians and political appointees do very little unless it is influenced by either their constituents or campaign contributors. I don't see the greater public up in arms about the bunling (heck, they don't even seem to know what it means or why it is bad) so it's probably the campaign contributions. Microsoft contributed little or no money until a couple of years ago and now they're paying for it.
You started in the right direction by pointing out that copyright and patent law were not the same.
However, you failed to complete your analysis. Of course, having a copyright on those tones doesn't prevent any normal usage of DTMF. Why that is, I'll leave as an exercise to the reader.
They demonize you and criminalize you and then ask for your help. What's a hacker to do?
If this is a reference to the proposed measures against "hacking offences", then you need to re-read the laws that are being proposed. They are neither as bad or as radical as the Slashdot article about it like to make it to be.
As far as what's a hacker to do, it's very simple: Do your part to protect the lives of innocent people and fight the war against those who don't respect the rights of humans to live.
It seems to me that that stuff is put there to cover their legal asses in case someone is offended by a website that was created using Frontpage.
I could totally see someone deciding that the website creator was not enough money and deciding to sue MS instead for creating the software that allows it.
Suing a software maker where there is an express disclaimer is an example of a frivolous lawsuit.
For example, if Oracle markets its database with the intent of it being viable for mission-critical applications and the database fails, then they ARE liable - however a piece of software expressly marketed with a disclaimer about its use for such things should NOT be liable if it is used that way.
The big difference is that it won't kill Microsoft to fight off some of these frivolous lawsuits but it will kill a smaller company - even when the lawsuits are found to be without basis.
You own the physical copy - you don't own the rights to the content on it. It's the same with books. Nothing has changed.