MS goes above and beyond this though. I personally, while I was running my own business, have gotten threatening letters from Microsoft "advising" me they were sending people to audit my machines to ensure every copy of Windows I had was licensed. I've logged numerous probes from their servers as well. Oddly, (in their mind I guess), I had 0 copies of Windows on my machines (all OS/2, eComStation and MacOS - and a Linux box off and on), owned 30 licenses (from OEM bundled versions that were wiped and removed in favor of OS/2 and eComStation as well as numerous purchased (by us) but unsold retail versions). I reminded them (1) they are not a law enforcement agency, (2) advised them any entry by their personnel would be refused and any successful attempt to do so would be considered criminal tresspass, and (3) advised them that IBM can verify all licenses to the OS I run on all Intel based hardware - none of which being Windows of any flavor even though I own numerous unused licenses.
MS Followup - a threat letter with exhorbitant dollar amounts for each machine they find *when* they come to do their audit considering I wouldnt willingly allow them to (ie: "we are auditing you anyway"). My response (1) You ARENT doing your audit - period - so your stated fines are as irrelevant as your belief you will be provided entry into my building, (2) I dont run Windows - and you dont administer the licenses to OS/2 or eComStation - talk to IBM if you have complaints so they too can tell you where you can put your audit, and (3) any MS employee entering my store without my written permission whether for the purpose of a formal or informal audit or otherwise will be arrested for tresspass as you have already been advised you are not permitted entry or access to my store, and finally (4) any legal claims made that initiate a legal entity's carrying out of your audit will result in a suit for all lost time, frivoulous charges (as you have already been advised we do not run Windows and have provided proof of license for numerous unused copies that WE have not requested credit for as we are entitled to) as well as suit for claims that infer, imply or outright state (as in the case of your 2 last letters) that we are pirating your software.
No response after that.
Earlier, a major vendor of mine was sued by them for installing illegal copies of Windows and numerous of their customers (me included) received letters advising us that the software we were receiving was stolen. MS lost the suit as every copy was authentic - and the company later went out of business due to lost revenue because of lost customers and legal fees that had yet to be recouped (and purchsed by a few employees for next to nothing). MS sent them an "apology" (more like a "we are glad that we have found all your copies of Windows are being purchased legitimately and thus will levy no fines against you" letter). Did they send a followup or retraction to my vendor's customers that they had advised were receiving illegal copies? No. A letter to the vendor, and a news bulletin buried on MS's site.
MS goes well overboard in its attempts to find illegal software - often using illegal means (attempted hacking into others computers, letters that state "we are going to come into your business and conduct an audit" (as opposed to requesting cooperation in allowing them to), et al.
It's been a very sad time when companies like MS/BSA and Sony/RIAA are not being held accountable for their actions, damages caused (fighting them, winning, trying to survive long enough to recoup legal fees - much less sue for damages is an impossibility for most small to mid sized companies), allowing evidence obtained under threat, misrepresentation of the powers granted a company (that properly belong to law enforcement agencies), admission of illegally obtained logs, records and information from peoples machines into court.
"The quality of our search and the relevance of our search from a solution perspective to the consumer will be more relevant,"
Dunno about you, but to me this sounds like they're giong to be force feeding paid ads to the consumer as search results... or this is the only time MS talks about "from a solution perspective" that they aren't trying to cram a new and not yet released or not yet working MS product down someone's throat as the answer to everyone's prayers.
It is - it's called eComStation - and version 2 is in beta now. Version 1.2 is available for purchase with support for up to 64CPUs and support for dual core chips including the AMD64 line.
It makes an amazing web scripting language - especially since you can have globally shared modules (sorta like DLLs) that are loaded in REXX MacroSpace (REXX's special memory space for them), shared variables and memory spaces across different REXX processes, threads and apps (as well as of course private vars and memory spaces). REXX also is a non-typed langauge... ie:
MyVar.1=1
MyVar.2="Hi"
MyVar.3= (some hex value) is all valid as well as doing math functions (to any user settable precision) on MyVar.1 and then later reassigning MyVar.1 like this
MyVar.1=MyVar.1 || " some string"
(ie: MyVar.1 now is "1 some string" )
You can of course at any time check the assumed data type of a variable to ensure you aren't trying to add a string to a number, etc.
Also, under OS/2 REXX vars are limited only by OS/2's memory REXX space limits (2GB var length).
Its text parsing and handling routines are amazing, it can be compiled to NetREXX (Java like), C, an exe, a DLL or just ran and interpreted.
It can call other EXEs, functions in DLLs, other REXX scripts, functions in REXX scripts, virtually any OS/2 subsystem, the entire OS/2 multimedia, networking, socket and TCP/IP subsystems, any other script and/or call many OS/2 apps, control virtually any OS/2 app (from user IO to app IO and much more - even if the app isnt REXX enabled), any MacroSpace function, itself, Perl scripts, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc... and the list of add-on DLLs for REXX is enormous - covering the entire gamut of app and server functionality.
Wonderfully, There are generic wireless drivers now that support almost every wireless out there under OS/2 as well as a wrapper that allows the use of many windows drivers for the wireless nics that OS/2 doesnt support (same with printer support via a wrapper driver).
OS/2 (eComStation SMP version and Warp Server for e-Business) currently support up to 64 CPUs in the same box - whether it's a combination of dual core CPUs (each core registers as a CPU) or single core. Also, since much of any true OS/2 app's processing is handled by parts of OS/2 (a lot less custom DLLs needed) and any good OS/2 app has DLLs that are re-entrant and SMP capable, OS/2 scales very well on multiple CPU's or multiple core CPUs.
SMP Support for the OS/2 line is well tested and quite time tested as well (considering it first came out in 1996 - with 64CPU support - check out the IBM x430 Netfinity 64 CPU computer - designed for OS/2 and Microsoft's never delivered promise of NT with 64CPU support).
A new APIC driver for the AMD64 dual core line was being tested and has been released already dealing with some issues in installing eComStation on an AMD64 2 core.
- Rob
Where Did IE7 Come From, Why and Who Cares?
on
A History of Firefox
·
· Score: 5, Funny
February 06, 2006 Where Did IE7 Come From, Why and Who Cares?
The story of Internet Explorer is long but yet lacking in detail or any real value. There are many perspectives. This is mine. IE was of course written by Spry and acquired by us at Microsoft.
Since then, we've added many new bugs (I mean features), security holes (err... features), stolen and duplicated ideas (umm... innovations). Even more importantly, we added tons of new code to work around things in the original Spry browser we didn't understand... tons... and since bigger is better, that alone makes IE7 the best browser on the market.
IE7 keeps Windows users working twice as productively (doing System Restores and removing viruses) on their machines - what other browser forces (I mean allows) a user to sit in front of their computers doing (recovery and restore) work?
Such amazing new security ideas like sandbagging (umm.. sandboxing) IE will force IE to write files and such to only the temp directories (though since so many viruses and spyware already write themselves there and then execute this is another item our Marketing Department needs to spin as an improvement).
All in all, our newest browser is bigger, (bloatier), (borrowed and outdated) feature rich and far more (or less) secure!
Footnotes
1. Some people claimed we didn't create all the new innovations in IE7 like tabbed browsing,
but you need to remember that Time is relative. Besides, even though we were the last ones
to come out with these innovations, our amazing Marketing Team can still convince the world
we are first - we call it our "Leading the Pack From the Rear" methodology.
2. "How to Secure & Stabilize your browser(TM)", or "The Mozilla Advantage" as it is more commonly
known as.
3. "Module Owners" - Microsoft, Microsoft and only Microsoft - where we "borrowed" the ideas, code
and technology is irrelevant.
4. "Moving Target" or "Barely Crawling Target" as we prefer to call it.
Ooops... well, at least he supposedly wrote the code, even if he couldnt come up with a single unique idea of his own... tho then again, its not like I know he wrote the code... and he has "borrowed" code for so many other projects of his.
Well, at least he did innovate in the areas of randomly inexplicable crashes and in marketing. I dont know a single other company who has created such a creative marketing engine as to be capable of pawning off 5 year old software innovations as if they were brand new and MS's idea....:-)
Reality and perception are often quite different. The DOJ, Bush and others (including various news pundits supporting it) trying to ab(use) the president's "wartime powers" have already cited the "fact" that we are "at war" as "reasons" for such greivous disregards of people's civil liberties. Whether *they* percieve us to be at war - by the appropriate definition allowing the executive branch such powers is irrelevant when they are trying to persuade the public that such is the case while blatantly with much disregard for the common citizen utilizing such powers. And before the stink gets too high, more and more attempts to pass legislation enacting some of those powers in peacetime. Many of the public, for lack of a better understanding, are equating our current wars (which they are) as congressionally mandated and approved wars.
If you convince the populace to believe the world is flat, that created perception drives people's actions and what they allow of their government based off that belief - reality is irrelevant for much of the populace. Oh wait, that already happened in human history... and our current situation is the same game. Get enough people misinformed, fill them with misperceptions until the legal reality is changed to support the current administration's ambitions of greater power with less checks and balances.
Does that now clarify my point? I'd resort to namecalling right back atcha, but then again, I'm not a "think I know-it-all kid" (and if you aren't, dont act like one) who thinks that just because I believe something, the rest of the world does as well - and thus totally gloss over the fact that whatever your or my beliefs... they aren't necessarily (or likely) the beliefs of the rest of the US populace. I may be biased in this, but I believe that/. readers are a bit above average when it comes to cognitive reasoning and a lack of lemming like qualities that make many others in the masses nod their head and agree to whatever they hear on tv/in the news (though my bias is more based on the intelligence-level of most of the posts here as opposed to my own self opinion).
Hey, BillyBoy did write EdLin!!! Gotta give him some credit for actually writing software. Amazing what innovative and user friendly software he can create when he really puts his mind to it - and even more so that this is possibly one of 2 packages (equally as useless) that they actually wrote instead of "acquired".
Because as long as the Bush Administration can claim that we are at war, the government is permitted various additional authorities that suspend numerous privacy and citizen protection laws. The current laws and pending laws (IMHO) are only there to make this (1) a permanent reality and (2) to (through the created legality) minimize the number of people who challenge the government's "right" to suspend the various laws that would normally protect US citizens by not having to openly invoke the use of the government's extended wartime powers.
Slashdot Mirror
MS goes above and beyond this though. I personally, while I was running my own business, have gotten threatening letters from Microsoft "advising" me they were sending people to audit my machines to ensure every copy of Windows I had was licensed. I've logged numerous probes from their servers as well. Oddly, (in their mind I guess), I had 0 copies of Windows on my machines (all OS/2, eComStation and MacOS - and a Linux box off and on), owned 30 licenses (from OEM bundled versions that were wiped and removed in favor of OS/2 and eComStation as well as numerous purchased (by us) but unsold retail versions). I reminded them (1) they are not a law enforcement agency, (2) advised them any entry by their personnel would be refused and any successful attempt to do so would be considered criminal tresspass, and (3) advised them that IBM can verify all licenses to the OS I run on all Intel based hardware - none of which being Windows of any flavor even though I own numerous unused licenses.
MS Followup - a threat letter with exhorbitant dollar amounts for each machine they find *when* they come to do their audit considering I wouldnt willingly allow them to (ie: "we are auditing you anyway"). My response (1) You ARENT doing your audit - period - so your stated fines are as irrelevant as your belief you will be provided entry into my building, (2) I dont run Windows - and you dont administer the licenses to OS/2 or eComStation - talk to IBM if you have complaints so they too can tell you where you can put your audit, and (3) any MS employee entering my store without my written permission whether for the purpose of a formal or informal audit or otherwise will be arrested for tresspass as you have already been advised you are not permitted entry or access to my store, and finally (4) any legal claims made that initiate a legal entity's carrying out of your audit will result in a suit for all lost time, frivoulous charges (as you have already been advised we do not run Windows and have provided proof of license for numerous unused copies that WE have not requested credit for as we are entitled to) as well as suit for claims that infer, imply or outright state (as in the case of your 2 last letters) that we are pirating your software.
No response after that.
Earlier, a major vendor of mine was sued by them for installing illegal copies of Windows and numerous of their customers (me included) received letters advising us that the software we were receiving was stolen. MS lost the suit as every copy was authentic - and the company later went out of business due to lost revenue because of lost customers and legal fees that had yet to be recouped (and purchsed by a few employees for next to nothing). MS sent them an "apology" (more like a "we are glad that we have found all your copies of Windows are being purchased legitimately and thus will levy no fines against you" letter). Did they send a followup or retraction to my vendor's customers that they had advised were receiving illegal copies? No. A letter to the vendor, and a news bulletin buried on MS's site.
MS goes well overboard in its attempts to find illegal software - often using illegal means (attempted hacking into others computers, letters that state "we are going to come into your business and conduct an audit" (as opposed to requesting cooperation in allowing them to), et al.
It's been a very sad time when companies like MS/BSA and Sony/RIAA are not being held accountable for their actions, damages caused (fighting them, winning, trying to survive long enough to recoup legal fees - much less sue for damages is an impossibility for most small to mid sized companies), allowing evidence obtained under threat, misrepresentation of the powers granted a company (that properly belong to law enforcement agencies), admission of illegally obtained logs, records and information from peoples machines into court.
-Robert
"The quality of our search and the relevance of our search from a solution perspective to the consumer will be more relevant,"
Dunno about you, but to me this sounds like they're giong to be force feeding paid ads to the consumer as search results... or this is the only time MS talks about "from a solution perspective" that they aren't trying to cram a new and not yet released or not yet working MS product down someone's throat as the answer to everyone's prayers.
It is - it's called eComStation - and version 2 is in beta now. Version 1.2 is available for purchase with support for up to 64CPUs and support for dual core chips including the AMD64 line.
http://www.ecomstation.com/
- Rob
It makes an amazing web scripting language - especially since you can have globally shared modules (sorta like DLLs) that are loaded in REXX MacroSpace (REXX's special memory space for them), shared variables and memory spaces across different REXX processes, threads and apps (as well as of course private vars and memory spaces). REXX also is a non-typed langauge... ie:
MyVar.1=1
MyVar.2="Hi"
MyVar.3= (some hex value)
is all valid as well as doing math functions (to any user settable precision) on MyVar.1 and then later reassigning MyVar.1 like this
MyVar.1=MyVar.1 || " some string"
(ie: MyVar.1 now is "1 some string" )
You can of course at any time check the assumed data type of a variable to ensure you aren't trying to add a string to a number, etc.
Also, under OS/2 REXX vars are limited only by OS/2's memory REXX space limits (2GB var length).
Its text parsing and handling routines are amazing, it can be compiled to NetREXX (Java like), C, an exe, a DLL or just ran and interpreted.
It can call other EXEs, functions in DLLs, other REXX scripts, functions in REXX scripts, virtually any OS/2 subsystem, the entire OS/2 multimedia, networking, socket and TCP/IP subsystems, any other script and/or call many OS/2 apps, control virtually any OS/2 app (from user IO to app IO and much more - even if the app isnt REXX enabled), any MacroSpace function, itself, Perl scripts, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc... and the list of add-on DLLs for REXX is enormous - covering the entire gamut of app and server functionality.
Nothing else I've tried compares or is as easy.
- Rob
Wonderfully, There are generic wireless drivers now that support almost every wireless out there under OS/2 as well as a wrapper that allows the use of many windows drivers for the wireless nics that OS/2 doesnt support (same with printer support via a wrapper driver).
OS/2 (eComStation SMP version and Warp Server for e-Business) currently support up to 64 CPUs in the same box - whether it's a combination of dual core CPUs (each core registers as a CPU) or single core. Also, since much of any true OS/2 app's processing is handled by parts of OS/2 (a lot less custom DLLs needed) and any good OS/2 app has DLLs that are re-entrant and SMP capable, OS/2 scales very well on multiple CPU's or multiple core CPUs.
SMP Support for the OS/2 line is well tested and quite time tested as well (considering it first came out in 1996 - with 64CPU support - check out the IBM x430 Netfinity 64 CPU computer - designed for OS/2 and Microsoft's never delivered promise of NT with 64CPU support).
A new APIC driver for the AMD64 dual core line was being tested and has been released already dealing with some issues in installing eComStation on an AMD64 2 core.
- Rob
February 06, 2006
Where Did IE7 Come From, Why and Who Cares?
The story of Internet Explorer is long but yet lacking in detail or any real value. There are many perspectives. This is mine. IE was of course written by Spry and acquired by us at Microsoft.
Since then, we've added many new bugs (I mean features), security holes (err... features),
stolen and duplicated ideas (umm... innovations). Even more importantly, we added tons of
new code to work around things in the original Spry browser we didn't understand... tons...
and since bigger is better, that alone makes IE7 the best browser on the market.
IE7 keeps Windows users working twice as productively (doing System Restores and removing viruses)
on their machines - what other browser forces (I mean allows) a user to sit in front of their
computers doing (recovery and restore) work?
Such amazing new security ideas like sandbagging (umm.. sandboxing) IE will force IE to write
files and such to only the temp directories (though since so many viruses and spyware already
write themselves there and then execute this is another item our Marketing Department needs
to spin as an improvement).
All in all, our newest browser is bigger, (bloatier), (borrowed and outdated) feature rich and
far more (or less) secure!
Footnotes
1. Some people claimed we didn't create all the new innovations in IE7 like tabbed browsing,
but you need to remember that Time is relative. Besides, even though we were the last ones
to come out with these innovations, our amazing Marketing Team can still convince the world
we are first - we call it our "Leading the Pack From the Rear" methodology.
2. "How to Secure & Stabilize your browser(TM)", or "The Mozilla Advantage" as it is more commonly
known as.
3. "Module Owners" - Microsoft, Microsoft and only Microsoft - where we "borrowed" the ideas, code
and technology is irrelevant.
4. "Moving Target" or "Barely Crawling Target" as we prefer to call it.
Well, at least he did innovate in the areas of randomly inexplicable crashes and in marketing. I dont know a single other company who has created such a creative marketing engine as to be capable of pawning off 5 year old software innovations as if they were brand new and MS's idea.... :-)
Reality and perception are often quite different. The DOJ, Bush and others (including various news pundits supporting it) trying to ab(use) the president's "wartime powers" have already cited the "fact" that we are "at war" as "reasons" for such greivous disregards of people's civil liberties. Whether *they* percieve us to be at war - by the appropriate definition allowing the executive branch such powers is irrelevant when they are trying to persuade the public that such is the case while blatantly with much disregard for the common citizen utilizing such powers. And before the stink gets too high, more and more attempts to pass legislation enacting some of those powers in peacetime. Many of the public, for lack of a better understanding, are equating our current wars (which they are) as congressionally mandated and approved wars. If you convince the populace to believe the world is flat, that created perception drives people's actions and what they allow of their government based off that belief - reality is irrelevant for much of the populace. Oh wait, that already happened in human history... and our current situation is the same game. Get enough people misinformed, fill them with misperceptions until the legal reality is changed to support the current administration's ambitions of greater power with less checks and balances. Does that now clarify my point? I'd resort to namecalling right back atcha, but then again, I'm not a "think I know-it-all kid" (and if you aren't, dont act like one) who thinks that just because I believe something, the rest of the world does as well - and thus totally gloss over the fact that whatever your or my beliefs... they aren't necessarily (or likely) the beliefs of the rest of the US populace. I may be biased in this, but I believe that /. readers are a bit above average when it comes to cognitive reasoning and a lack of lemming like qualities that make many others in the masses nod their head and agree to whatever they hear on tv/in the news (though my bias is more based on the intelligence-level of most of the posts here as opposed to my own self opinion).
Hey, BillyBoy did write EdLin!!! Gotta give him some credit for actually writing software. Amazing what innovative and user friendly software he can create when he really puts his mind to it - and even more so that this is possibly one of 2 packages (equally as useless) that they actually wrote instead of "acquired".
Because as long as the Bush Administration can claim that we are at war, the government is permitted various additional authorities that suspend numerous privacy and citizen protection laws. The current laws and pending laws (IMHO) are only there to make this (1) a permanent reality and (2) to (through the created legality) minimize the number of people who challenge the government's "right" to suspend the various laws that would normally protect US citizens by not having to openly invoke the use of the government's extended wartime powers.