You might be the first person ever to claim that Microsoft is an "innovative" company. Microsoft is a "copy" and/or "steal" company. They either copy or steal the ideas of others and implement them. They've been getting caught a lot lately on the stealing of IP and have been taken to court so many times where they have lost.
Let's get real. There are only so many Microsoft employees, there are only so many of those employees capable of writing software at that company, and there are only so many of those capable of inventing real "innovative" ideas. If you are like many other companies trying to develop IP you would not even permit those employees to look to see if the IP they are claiming to write is already out there because if they file for a patent, and later are found to be in violation of others IP, they can be sued for triple damages.
Microsoft has been known to be sued right and left for stealing IP and we all know they outright copy IP. We also know that they stated that they were against DRM (claiming about the same time Steve Jobs wrote the open letter about DRM) that they would like to rid themselves of it as well--the idea is that if it is gone they can break the lock on music that Apple has (Apple's DRM locks you into the iPod). This allows consumers access to play their music on Microsoft's products. But in reality Microsoft wants DRM badly. They ache for it. They want to have it everywhere. Just so long as it is their DRM. Because with DRM they can lock you into a platform, they can lock you into certain technologies which deny you a choice to move to another platform. They learned this with Office formats, with technologies such as DirectX, etc. They know that one lock isn't enough. Only through multiple locks do they keep you and force you to use their core money making products. This is why they so badly want to keep any other open format from taking center stage.
The only innovative thing they have become good at is finding ways to ensure that you are locked into their products to keep their profits up. Because if profits fall, stock falls, if stocks fall then employee stock options are far less valuable and this gives rise to employees leaving to work with their competitors.
Thanks for pointing out that there are "real" alternatives to Microsoft's products. Now please go home and clue in your family members, your neighbors, your co-workers, and anyone else you happen to talk to about Windows spying on you to protect the profits of big business.
No one is a criminal until the courts rule that you are a criminal. In the US you are innocent until proven guilty. This isn't an extremist country that we allow just some Joe tell everyone that they are criminals and that if they don't like the laws they can find another country to live in. That's what it sounds like here. If you don't like the laws nor how they are enforced, you can find another country to live in. There are bad laws, there are bad enforcement agencies, there are even bad prosecutors (think the La Cross team at Duke University). I guess we should have let this guy go do his own thing even though what he was doing was wrong because he is, after all, attempting to fulfill his charter.
Your computer is an extension of your home. Even in real "criminal" cases the police are not permitted to just enter your home and search it. We are smarter and wiser than to allow that. This is why we don't want companies, yes civilian entitites, doing the same thing. They enter your home and look in your computer and even effect what and how you conduct yourself in your own home.
Our laws do permit law enforcement to enter a home without a warrant to say "prevent a murder, or rape, etc". But our laws don't permit law enforcement to enter a home without a warrant to "prevent copyright infringement". So, why are you guys justifying Microsoft (and Hollywood/the recording industry) to enter your home to do that very same thing?
Clearly, they do not have the right to violate your privacy even if they can stop you from doing some alleged illegal act. Our laws still require agents of the law to use due process to gather evidence and to convict you on that evidence in a real court of law.
But clearly, the laws are here to protect the citizen and businesses. Even so, we don't allow our average citizen to enter the home of a neighbor to search it to determine if that neighbor stole something from them. It just doesn't happen. So, we should clearly, not be allowing any other civilian entity to do the same thing.
This is why you don't purchase software predicated on a closed OS that can be doing any number of things wrong (not moral and not ethical, and possibly not legal).
How does this affect other computers on the network? If, say, you work for a large business and you are playing back music does this affect the performance of other users on the net?
With Open Source software you'd know precisely what the cause is in an extremely short period of time. There'd be no excuse for someone not pinpointing it in a matter of hours. Because this is closed source we can't ever know except in very high level terms meant to reduce backlash from something like this.
If this is Microsoft using DRM against your own music library then shame on them. It is none of their business what you do on your computer, period. If some crime is being committed it is up to the law enforcement agencies to investigate and turn it over for prosecution once they collect enough info. If it is Microsoft or the RIAA involved in such a thing we need to ensure that the average person knows what's happening so we can get this monkey business stopped. I'm sure there'll be some class action against the likes of the RIAA and Microsoft it this turns out to be an issue of them stealing peeks at what you are doing within the confines of your own home.
GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEADS--THE COMPUTER YOU ARE USING IS AN EXTENSION OF YOUR OWN HOME AND TO SPY ON YOU IS AGAINST THE LAW AND ARE IMMORAL AND UNETHICAL.
I don't know why you guys can't seem to get your minds around that. You would no more allow Microsoft to enter your home (or the police for that matter) without a warrant searching for specific things. This computer is an extension of what you are day in and day out. These *companies* have no rights to enter your domain. A man is the king of his castle. For the sake of your family, friends, loved ones do not allow these companies to take one step closer. Force them to back off. Bring this stuff down to real world terms. Entering your computer is the same thing as entering your home.
Bottom line, free and open software is the only thing that will, in the end, protect you and your privacy as well as your legal rights. The good thing is that Open Source Software is high quality and very effective at doing the same things that closed source software does. There are enough product in Open Source to do those same tasks in the same way even creating the same document types that the closed source software does. Now with Open Document Format being an ISO standard we have much better chance at real interchangeability between different products.
So, why stay with closed source software designed to spy on you and violate your privacy and the sanctity of your homes?
This is the RIAA abusing the system. Only at this time they have to pay with more than just their bad name. I"m sure the courts have a penalty system to account for the situation where the court costs aren't paid for in an effort to further attempt to create financial hardship on the defendant and their lawyers.
I am no fan of Stallman and I have some gripes with him about demanding only and all free software. But he clearly had created GNU before Linux (the kernel) was introduced and they were working in that direction. Clearly Linux (the kernel) was better than what they were working on and it was adopted by the industry, but let's not forget to give credit where credit is due. Stallman and his followers were the ones that created this whole thing and it would be unfair to put the credit in someone else's lap.
I disagree with Linus. I think the whole partnership is an extremely negative thing and falls into the same trap that Microsoft pursued through partnerships of the 80s and 90s. The end result was/is always bad for everyone but Microsoft.
In fact, I believe we should be significantly more hostile toward Microsoft because Microsoft is a convicted predatory monopolist that has claimed earlier this year that every user has to pay some dues to Microsoft and they also threatened to kill Open Source, with one of their representatives stating that 2007 was the year of the death of Open Source.
I think Linus is falling into a trap, by virtue of his relationship to many high end corporates, particularly those paying his bills. This is a tremendous influence on him and it is beginning to clearly show.
Microsoft is not the "necessary evil" of the computing industry. I fervently believe that the industry has been stifled in the long run because of what Microsoft has done in being predatory and killing off competition while being a monopoly. It used its power in a criminal way and has created a path down which we may never be able to recover. The hopes are that we can branch and have a 50-50 choice in software or even a 30-30-30. But being 90-10 is not the way to go for any industry. Only through competition with lots of car companies have we been able to produce some exceptional cars that are praised world-wide. Having only one software company essentially stifles all that.
The good thing is that in the short and long term IP will eventually begin to stifle Microsoft because clearly their employees can only produce so much IP each year. The rest of the industry is producing against them in a significantly greater amount, though, maybe not through IP filings but at least through prior art and obviousness. This means that either Microsoft will hit a wall on IP because there are millions of programmers world wide while there are only so many people at Microsoft capable of producing IP worthy of being patented. They also only have so many employees and only so many of those have the jobs doing the development and only so many of those have the skills to create new IP that can be patented. The rest of the world has vastly more people all capable of competing on the IP front.
The other thing that will kill some of their hopes is Vista. Recent, and past, denunciations of that OS have come down hard branding it world-wide as a product that is hostile toward the customer--an adversary of the customer. It can't long endure. The next piece is that DRM in some media is going out the door which was an important locking technology to lock you into Windows. The next bit are that Linux and OSX are growing considerably. This means that people are understanding that there is a choice.
The key to winning this is to educate the people about the fact that there are some solid and wonderful alternatives to Windows. The other thing is to educate them about the DRM, spying, manipulation, and generally bad faith in which Windows has been built to hide the fact that so much spying is going on on the user. Listen, your computer is an extension of your home. You would no more allow Walmart to put a hidden camera in your home to monitor to ensure you are not using stolen merchandise--and hence you should not be allowing Microsoft to install 47+ program on your computer to monitor your usage to determine if you are using stolen merchandise.
When people are educated and understand we all will have a much safer and more protected world free of the nasty privacy stealing immoral and unethical software being installed.
Be loath to accept SP3 for XP as I am sure it also has a slew of technologies to force you to give up XP and move to Vista or live with the same spying nastiness that Microsoft has incorporated into Vista. Be forewarned.
The idea is that maybe 25% of those that download are active users. If you count the usage rate of Firefox that means that with it's already tremendously growing market share, if we focus on retention, then that number might be significantly higher (in a shorter amount of time). Essentially the 25% means nothing. It is the percentage of hits by that browser that mean everything.
The way to get retention is to train. To not set up Firefox as the default fugly interface but to customize it for those people who are thinking about it will provide the greatest incentive to move permanently to Firefox. There are some key add-ons that are incredible and really beneficial. Some of the skins can make using Firefox nearly indistinguishable from IE 7 except in website detection.
So, really this is a good thing. It means we have good growth in Firefox market share and we have the potential to retain more people if they only know the benefits of what they downloaded.
Freetards is quite entertaining until you think of the inverse which is even more entertaining: proprietards are defined as anyone promoting proprietary programs, most especially those acting to as shills of Microsoft especially when considering the cost of lock in of proprietary software and the lack of standards supported by those companies.
I am glad to know it is a Forbes guy because Forbes has always been at the low rung on the ladder when it comes to understanding the computer industry.
Well, now he's outed and we all can go back to our efforts to change the world to use open standards and non-proprietary software as a breaker to technologies that lock you into a platform and deny choice.
They are making this out like the money lost is lost from these mod chips. This is not true. This is absolutely an abuse of the system by these companies. As well, what does the department of homeland security have to do with this? Isn't their charter to stop terrorism from happening on our shores? Why are they being used to enforce the DMCA?
They imply that these mod chips are causing $3 billion in damages. No, I know this is not the case but the average reader would make that connection.
Now, if they are worried about such crimes then they would be raiding everyone's home because the computer is more powerful, faster, more flexible and more capable all round for doing the same thing.
This is completely insane to manipulate the system through the police authorities and the courts, and to maybe pervert the charter of the DHS.
The reason you disagree is that you don't believe in private ownership and he does. Once it is his it is his forever. Just like a shovel is his and is his forever. The only way to loose it is to have it stolen, given away, or taken away through due process, or it is destroyed. If he agreed to some EULA and then he gives the shovel away (or sells it) he's not obligated to ensure the transfer of the terms of that EULA nor would he. This is precisely what he's getting at.
I did not read contempt in any post except yours. He was simply responding.
The difference between your argument and his is that he's right and you are wrong.
What would make me covered if I bought it used? Nothing. I could never be considered covered by any contract because I purchased the unit at resale. Unless they are willing to say it is not possible to resell a piece of hardware. That'd be ridiculous. They also cannot create a contract with you because you need to agree to the contract before you purchase.
I can't understand how you think that someone selling mod chips are harming anyone. If they are using it to play stolen games then it is up to them to prove the games are stolen. This is an abuse of the DMCA. The DMCA was written with the intent of large domestic and foreign corporates from stealing in this manner. If a large corporate was reproducing the mod chips instead of some poor geeky guys working at home we'd have something to question but we'd also have a group capable of defending themselves from abuses such as these.
Bottom line, these are not big enough to do any harm to any industry. If you want to copy movies you can already do it, period. You don't even need a mod chip. Just download software from somewhere out of the US and you are good to go.
This is simply big fat corporate abusing the police authorities time and money--essentially the taxpayer's money.
We should be complaining more about their abuse than about some poor geeks using mod chips to run Linux or whatever.
Everyone has to ask a few important questions to themselves here. Are we really in danger from mod chips? Are they ruining our economy? Are there not more important matters to hold the attention of the police authorities? Are we willing to just ignore the fact that big fat corporate dollars are influencing the way in which crimes are handled (or rather real crimes are not handled due to perverted alternations in police priorities)? Are we willing to put into law the necessary laws to stop big corporate from taking away our police authorities from their normal jobs of fighting real crimes such as rape, murder, theft, assault, arson, kitty cats caught in trees (ohhh, sorry that's the fire department), drug dealing, etc?
No way could these guys have been stealing sufficient business away from anyone to justify this sort of raid and the manpower behind it necessary to carry it off. Did big corporate such as Microsoft pay the police authorities (directly or indirectly) to push to stop the sale and distribution of a few mod chips that could barely even create any noticeable impact of crime on any industry.
This raid was designed to make a statement to modders. It is that they are willing and capable of manipulating our police authorities for even the lowest of priority alleged crimes.
To top that off, no crime has really been committed. It is silly to even allow these raids to take place for something that is realistically question of a DMCA violation.
From what I understand the only mod chips are available for xboxes--and possibly not even for the new Xbox 360. So they are raiding these businesses and homes for a few mod chips for a specific machine produced by a huge criminally convicted monopolist that is known for stealing IP and destroying other companies.
By your command. Microsoft is the biggest threat to the industry because they are a monopoly, period. Ending that monopoly should be a big priority for everyone in the software industry specifically because it means a lack of competition and it also means a company with an arrogance willing to destroy the privacy of the average consumer in order to keep their profits high.
We are talking about a system that can be abused and yes Microsoft is the prime candidate for that abuse because they have a history of abuse, and beyond that, they are criminally convicted monopolist what used illegal predatory practices to kill their competition. If they had not be convicted and were ruled a monopolist that'd be one thing but they are a criminally convicted monopolist that harmed the economies of many a State and of the US as a whole. Luckily the minds in the EU are more astute and have taken measures to quell any attempt at the same there.
Unluckily I don't think the other parts of the world are as keen as the EU. Maybe someday we'll see the important changes there as well.
So, ask us to replace Apple with Microsoft and we have a much more severe picture being painted there. Very severe as a criminal monopolist will always abuse especially when they know that they won't be pursued by representatives of the current administration.
Luckily we are smart enough to know we are listening to corporate dogfish that are in it for the money. They are the reason for every incredibly ugly lawyer joke. Bottom line, the system sucks. Soon we are going to have patents covering the sounds of a song or the look of a picture so that no one can create that same sound or produce similar pictures.
Of course it is broken. Patents for real products made of real materials are one thing but patents for ethereal objects made from ideas are not valid and due to the complexity of software engineering it would be nearly impossible for a patent clerk to understand and apply all the rules of law accordingly. So, of course it is broken, because it is impossible.
What Microsoft and other patent holders are relying on is that the system that grants these don't have a clue about how to decipher them adequately in order to determine prior art or obviousness. The only saving grace is that the Supreme Court of the US adjusted the rules about how to determine those things granting a much broader examination across any industry.
The only other saving grace here is that the world is producing software at a much more rapid pace than Microsoft ever could and are ESTABLISHING a HUGE body of PRIOR ART. The end result will be patents that are easily over turned due to prior art and the obvious obiousness.
Ad laden, bin laden, all the same shit. Not in the best interest of the citizens/consumers.
I'll be the first to start removing this crap from people's computers. Hell, for a lot less time and energy they can get open office and it is a direct full featured competitor to Office 2007. Sheesh, that's a real no brainer. No reason to even consider Microsoft in the software equation if you are smart. Move on to more advanced features with more privacy protection and less harassment.
What ruined music for me, at least in part, and I know it isn't PC but it is true, is that Elton was writing these songs for his male lovers. That just destroys it for me.
This is just a Microsoft shill attempting to muddy the waters. He's learned from Microsoft how to do that. Who knows, he may make his living off Microsoft products, lots of people do, but at least most people listen to reason and don't attempt to demean others. I'd venture that he may be paid to do this. Has happened, who knows...just a guess.
Anyway, his attitude is one of untrustworthiness. What can I say. If he had his head on straight we wouldn't be having these conversations because he'd understand how having only one source and that source being a monopoly is a bad thing. As has been said by some notable industry pundits "a $500 office suit is outrageous".
Anyway move on.
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files
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Does ODF Have a Future?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
He sounds like a dork. Completely and utterly uninformed (or misinformed). Of course there's a future for ODF. Never has there been any question.
Our whole culture in America is based on free enterprise and a competitive market. Owning so much market share that that's virtually no competition is unhealthy for our economy and for the world.
This pursuit is nothing more than an attempt to divide. They know the open source community won't embrace them and they know they have every desire to kill open source, so they divide first, they take your IP from that code and use it on their own, and then they attempt to kill open source in any other form by claiming there's no need for other forms or other licenses. Who has the bigger wheel? Who squeaks more in the industry? So, when people hear that Microsoft's own open source is there and no other is necessary they'll believe it.
And why would a closed source proprietary company need anything open source? Someone needs to tell us why a company that has historically stolen IP, abused its market position, acted in a criminal way to gain a monopoly, would need to have any sort of open source initiative? Why would the richest men in the world worry about open source (their only competitor) in a world where they sell closed source products?
If you don't agree with the GPL (any version) don't use it. Don't use the code. Don't try to get something for nothing. It is the abuse of the GPL that has resulted in the changes to the GPL. Guess who has been abusing it? Microsoft.
No right minded programmer is going to join Microsoft unless they are just stupid.
Don't blame Microsoft's failing on the GPL. The GPL is a choice not a requirement. You choose to not support the contract of the GPL then don't try to get free code to use. What's so viral about that?
You never take a job that kills your career. That is utterly ridiculous that you would sign a 3 year non-compete. On top of that, some states don't allow that. You should look into whether they are breaking the law by making you sign that agreement.
It is not very very hard to trust. It is impossible to trust. It is a company with a history bad behavior and abusive behavior toward Linux.
On top of that they have threatened every Linux user with lawsuits. Do you really thing anyone can trust them after that?
Microsoft wants to kill Open Source. In fact, Microsoft's representatives clearly stated that 2007 was the year of the death of Open Source. You really trust that? The Microsoft representative should have been fired immediately. Most companies would have canned him on the spot, unless of course they agree with him.
To end this Microsoft needs to appologize to every user, and doubly to every Linux user for their incredibly bad behavior and their threats. The whole scenario is only one of absolute bad. There can be no good coming from any entry by Microsoft into OSS.
And it is insane of anyone to even be attempting to defend Microsoft in this manner. It's like trying to defend the person that just stole your car and went for a joyride and crashed it. You certainly would never allow them to into your home, you domain, or even remotely close to you.
More like living under a rock, kept in the dark, fed shit, and basically a mushroom in intellect.
FOSS just wants their freedom. They don't want to have to be shit upon by a criminally convicted monopolistic company that has a reputation of stealing other's intellectual property.
FOSS has not slammed anyone except to say that it makes no sense to pay money to a criminal monopolist is to continually bury your head in the sand. If you continue to use a product that locks you into continued purchases then it isn't FOSS that is shitting on others. It is Microsoft shitting on you. To continue to pay for something that locks you in is silly. To use a product that costs you money when there's a free nice alternative, well that's crazy. On top of that it was the Office zealots that dumped on Open Office (in prior threads on/.) claiming all sorts of missing features and crappy programming when in reality all the open source guys did was defend by correcting what was obviously wrong.
How on earth can you not see what they have done and how harmful that has been to the whole industry? The opportunities for strong competition in the OS market are essentially non-existent due to Microsoft's criminal behavior.
The FOSS movement has done absolutely nothing wrong. They've stolen from no one. They've hindered no one. All they want is to keep a criminal monopolist out of their home. I'm sure you would feel the same way about allowing a criminal into your home.
On top of that you fail completely to understand that Microsoft is spying on you. They have 47 programs in Vista that collect information about you and return that information to their servers for analysis. They also have programs that essentially search and can seize your computer (refuse to work if they believe it is pirated, even if it isn't). They do this without most people's knowledge. They spy on you after having stolen from you for so many years. And you let them continue while essentially attacking the benevolent group of people who just want to have a fair free competitive market. Something that Microsoft has denied so many for so long.
On top of that you also fail to understand some of the largest companies in the world support FOSS and Open Source. What the FOSS industry doesn't want is Microsoft tainting the waters. Microsoft is already extorting cross licensing from other companies upon threat about IP violations that have never been proven nor the IP ever been identified. How would you like it if I stood in your neighborhood and told your neighbors that you were stealing and that I had proof of X number of thefts. You, and they, would demand that I tell them what you stole (what crimes you committed). They wouldn't put up with it.
Microsoft is like the big oil company that threatens all car owners that drive because they buy gasoline from one of their competitors. They say that the gasoline is refined using IP that they own. On top of that they are threatening any large company even more so if they don't agree to not just pay them money but give up their own intellectual property. It doesn't seem to matter that no proof is offered nor evidence of any sort yet they still claim that all car drivers will have to pay a price to them.
Don't you think it is silly that they threaten their competitors customers because they aren't using their gasoline? They can't compete on their own merits?
And your attitude is appalling. You have no idea, you have no knowledge, you have no eduction in this matter and you have never taken the time to actually understand what is happening. Then you come here and abuse everyone else who differs in opinion to you. Its rather sad if you ask me.
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You might be the first person ever to claim that Microsoft is an "innovative" company. Microsoft is a "copy" and/or "steal" company. They either copy or steal the ideas of others and implement them. They've been getting caught a lot lately on the stealing of IP and have been taken to court so many times where they have lost.
Let's get real. There are only so many Microsoft employees, there are only so many of those employees capable of writing software at that company, and there are only so many of those capable of inventing real "innovative" ideas. If you are like many other companies trying to develop IP you would not even permit those employees to look to see if the IP they are claiming to write is already out there because if they file for a patent, and later are found to be in violation of others IP, they can be sued for triple damages.
Microsoft has been known to be sued right and left for stealing IP and we all know they outright copy IP. We also know that they stated that they were against DRM (claiming about the same time Steve Jobs wrote the open letter about DRM) that they would like to rid themselves of it as well--the idea is that if it is gone they can break the lock on music that Apple has (Apple's DRM locks you into the iPod). This allows consumers access to play their music on Microsoft's products. But in reality Microsoft wants DRM badly. They ache for it. They want to have it everywhere. Just so long as it is their DRM. Because with DRM they can lock you into a platform, they can lock you into certain technologies which deny you a choice to move to another platform. They learned this with Office formats, with technologies such as DirectX, etc. They know that one lock isn't enough. Only through multiple locks do they keep you and force you to use their core money making products. This is why they so badly want to keep any other open format from taking center stage.
The only innovative thing they have become good at is finding ways to ensure that you are locked into their products to keep their profits up. Because if profits fall, stock falls, if stocks fall then employee stock options are far less valuable and this gives rise to employees leaving to work with their competitors.
Thanks for pointing out that there are "real" alternatives to Microsoft's products. Now please go home and clue in your family members, your neighbors, your co-workers, and anyone else you happen to talk to about Windows spying on you to protect the profits of big business.
No one is a criminal until the courts rule that you are a criminal. In the US you are innocent until proven guilty. This isn't an extremist country that we allow just some Joe tell everyone that they are criminals and that if they don't like the laws they can find another country to live in. That's what it sounds like here. If you don't like the laws nor how they are enforced, you can find another country to live in. There are bad laws, there are bad enforcement agencies, there are even bad prosecutors (think the La Cross team at Duke University). I guess we should have let this guy go do his own thing even though what he was doing was wrong because he is, after all, attempting to fulfill his charter.
Your computer is an extension of your home. Even in real "criminal" cases the police are not permitted to just enter your home and search it. We are smarter and wiser than to allow that. This is why we don't want companies, yes civilian entitites, doing the same thing. They enter your home and look in your computer and even effect what and how you conduct yourself in your own home.
Our laws do permit law enforcement to enter a home without a warrant to say "prevent a murder, or rape, etc". But our laws don't permit law enforcement to enter a home without a warrant to "prevent copyright infringement". So, why are you guys justifying Microsoft (and Hollywood/the recording industry) to enter your home to do that very same thing?
Clearly, they do not have the right to violate your privacy even if they can stop you from doing some alleged illegal act. Our laws still require agents of the law to use due process to gather evidence and to convict you on that evidence in a real court of law.
But clearly, the laws are here to protect the citizen and businesses. Even so, we don't allow our average citizen to enter the home of a neighbor to search it to determine if that neighbor stole something from them. It just doesn't happen. So, we should clearly, not be allowing any other civilian entity to do the same thing.
Clearly, you should understand that.
You obviously haven't read enough to understand what they are talking about.
This is why you don't purchase software predicated on a closed OS that can be doing any number of things wrong (not moral and not ethical, and possibly not legal).
How does this affect other computers on the network? If, say, you work for a large business and you are playing back music does this affect the performance of other users on the net?
With Open Source software you'd know precisely what the cause is in an extremely short period of time. There'd be no excuse for someone not pinpointing it in a matter of hours. Because this is closed source we can't ever know except in very high level terms meant to reduce backlash from something like this.
If this is Microsoft using DRM against your own music library then shame on them. It is none of their business what you do on your computer, period. If some crime is being committed it is up to the law enforcement agencies to investigate and turn it over for prosecution once they collect enough info. If it is Microsoft or the RIAA involved in such a thing we need to ensure that the average person knows what's happening so we can get this monkey business stopped. I'm sure there'll be some class action against the likes of the RIAA and Microsoft it this turns out to be an issue of them stealing peeks at what you are doing within the confines of your own home.
GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEADS--THE COMPUTER YOU ARE USING IS AN EXTENSION OF YOUR OWN HOME AND TO SPY ON YOU IS AGAINST THE LAW AND ARE IMMORAL AND UNETHICAL.
I don't know why you guys can't seem to get your minds around that. You would no more allow Microsoft to enter your home (or the police for that matter) without a warrant searching for specific things. This computer is an extension of what you are day in and day out. These *companies* have no rights to enter your domain. A man is the king of his castle. For the sake of your family, friends, loved ones do not allow these companies to take one step closer. Force them to back off. Bring this stuff down to real world terms. Entering your computer is the same thing as entering your home.
Bottom line, free and open software is the only thing that will, in the end, protect you and your privacy as well as your legal rights. The good thing is that Open Source Software is high quality and very effective at doing the same things that closed source software does. There are enough product in Open Source to do those same tasks in the same way even creating the same document types that the closed source software does. Now with Open Document Format being an ISO standard we have much better chance at real interchangeability between different products.
So, why stay with closed source software designed to spy on you and violate your privacy and the sanctity of your homes?
This is the RIAA abusing the system. Only at this time they have to pay with more than just their bad name. I"m sure the courts have a penalty system to account for the situation where the court costs aren't paid for in an effort to further attempt to create financial hardship on the defendant and their lawyers.
I am no fan of Stallman and I have some gripes with him about demanding only and all free software. But he clearly had created GNU before Linux (the kernel) was introduced and they were working in that direction. Clearly Linux (the kernel) was better than what they were working on and it was adopted by the industry, but let's not forget to give credit where credit is due. Stallman and his followers were the ones that created this whole thing and it would be unfair to put the credit in someone else's lap.
You don't win by sleeping with the enemy.
I disagree with Linus. I think the whole partnership is an extremely negative thing and falls into the same trap that Microsoft pursued through partnerships of the 80s and 90s. The end result was/is always bad for everyone but Microsoft.
In fact, I believe we should be significantly more hostile toward Microsoft because Microsoft is a convicted predatory monopolist that has claimed earlier this year that every user has to pay some dues to Microsoft and they also threatened to kill Open Source, with one of their representatives stating that 2007 was the year of the death of Open Source.
I think Linus is falling into a trap, by virtue of his relationship to many high end corporates, particularly those paying his bills. This is a tremendous influence on him and it is beginning to clearly show.
Microsoft is not the "necessary evil" of the computing industry. I fervently believe that the industry has been stifled in the long run because of what Microsoft has done in being predatory and killing off competition while being a monopoly. It used its power in a criminal way and has created a path down which we may never be able to recover. The hopes are that we can branch and have a 50-50 choice in software or even a 30-30-30. But being 90-10 is not the way to go for any industry. Only through competition with lots of car companies have we been able to produce some exceptional cars that are praised world-wide. Having only one software company essentially stifles all that.
The good thing is that in the short and long term IP will eventually begin to stifle Microsoft because clearly their employees can only produce so much IP each year. The rest of the industry is producing against them in a significantly greater amount, though, maybe not through IP filings but at least through prior art and obviousness. This means that either Microsoft will hit a wall on IP because there are millions of programmers world wide while there are only so many people at Microsoft capable of producing IP worthy of being patented. They also only have so many employees and only so many of those have the jobs doing the development and only so many of those have the skills to create new IP that can be patented. The rest of the world has vastly more people all capable of competing on the IP front.
The other thing that will kill some of their hopes is Vista. Recent, and past, denunciations of that OS have come down hard branding it world-wide as a product that is hostile toward the customer--an adversary of the customer. It can't long endure. The next piece is that DRM in some media is going out the door which was an important locking technology to lock you into Windows. The next bit are that Linux and OSX are growing considerably. This means that people are understanding that there is a choice.
The key to winning this is to educate the people about the fact that there are some solid and wonderful alternatives to Windows. The other thing is to educate them about the DRM, spying, manipulation, and generally bad faith in which Windows has been built to hide the fact that so much spying is going on on the user. Listen, your computer is an extension of your home. You would no more allow Walmart to put a hidden camera in your home to monitor to ensure you are not using stolen merchandise--and hence you should not be allowing Microsoft to install 47+ program on your computer to monitor your usage to determine if you are using stolen merchandise.
When people are educated and understand we all will have a much safer and more protected world free of the nasty privacy stealing immoral and unethical software being installed.
Be loath to accept SP3 for XP as I am sure it also has a slew of technologies to force you to give up XP and move to Vista or live with the same spying nastiness that Microsoft has incorporated into Vista. Be forewarned.
The idea is that maybe 25% of those that download are active users. If you count the usage rate of Firefox that means that with it's already tremendously growing market share, if we focus on retention, then that number might be significantly higher (in a shorter amount of time). Essentially the 25% means nothing. It is the percentage of hits by that browser that mean everything.
The way to get retention is to train. To not set up Firefox as the default fugly interface but to customize it for those people who are thinking about it will provide the greatest incentive to move permanently to Firefox. There are some key add-ons that are incredible and really beneficial. Some of the skins can make using Firefox nearly indistinguishable from IE 7 except in website detection.
So, really this is a good thing. It means we have good growth in Firefox market share and we have the potential to retain more people if they only know the benefits of what they downloaded.
Freetards is quite entertaining until you think of the inverse which is even more entertaining: proprietards are defined as anyone promoting proprietary programs, most especially those acting to as shills of Microsoft especially when considering the cost of lock in of proprietary software and the lack of standards supported by those companies.
I am glad to know it is a Forbes guy because Forbes has always been at the low rung on the ladder when it comes to understanding the computer industry.
Well, now he's outed and we all can go back to our efforts to change the world to use open standards and non-proprietary software as a breaker to technologies that lock you into a platform and deny choice.
They are not films. They are simply photos from film. Big difference.
They are making this out like the money lost is lost from these mod chips. This is not true. This is absolutely an abuse of the system by these companies. As well, what does the department of homeland security have to do with this? Isn't their charter to stop terrorism from happening on our shores? Why are they being used to enforce the DMCA?
They imply that these mod chips are causing $3 billion in damages. No, I know this is not the case but the average reader would make that connection.
Now, if they are worried about such crimes then they would be raiding everyone's home because the computer is more powerful, faster, more flexible and more capable all round for doing the same thing.
This is completely insane to manipulate the system through the police authorities and the courts, and to maybe pervert the charter of the DHS.
The reason you disagree is that you don't believe in private ownership and he does. Once it is his it is his forever. Just like a shovel is his and is his forever. The only way to loose it is to have it stolen, given away, or taken away through due process, or it is destroyed. If he agreed to some EULA and then he gives the shovel away (or sells it) he's not obligated to ensure the transfer of the terms of that EULA nor would he. This is precisely what he's getting at.
I did not read contempt in any post except yours. He was simply responding.
The difference between your argument and his is that he's right and you are wrong.
What would make me covered if I bought it used? Nothing. I could never be considered covered by any contract because I purchased the unit at resale. Unless they are willing to say it is not possible to resell a piece of hardware. That'd be ridiculous. They also cannot create a contract with you because you need to agree to the contract before you purchase.
I can't understand how you think that someone selling mod chips are harming anyone. If they are using it to play stolen games then it is up to them to prove the games are stolen. This is an abuse of the DMCA. The DMCA was written with the intent of large domestic and foreign corporates from stealing in this manner. If a large corporate was reproducing the mod chips instead of some poor geeky guys working at home we'd have something to question but we'd also have a group capable of defending themselves from abuses such as these.
Bottom line, these are not big enough to do any harm to any industry. If you want to copy movies you can already do it, period. You don't even need a mod chip. Just download software from somewhere out of the US and you are good to go.
This is simply big fat corporate abusing the police authorities time and money--essentially the taxpayer's money.
We should be complaining more about their abuse than about some poor geeks using mod chips to run Linux or whatever.
Everyone has to ask a few important questions to themselves here. Are we really in danger from mod chips? Are they ruining our economy? Are there not more important matters to hold the attention of the police authorities? Are we willing to just ignore the fact that big fat corporate dollars are influencing the way in which crimes are handled (or rather real crimes are not handled due to perverted alternations in police priorities)? Are we willing to put into law the necessary laws to stop big corporate from taking away our police authorities from their normal jobs of fighting real crimes such as rape, murder, theft, assault, arson, kitty cats caught in trees (ohhh, sorry that's the fire department), drug dealing, etc?
No way could these guys have been stealing sufficient business away from anyone to justify this sort of raid and the manpower behind it necessary to carry it off. Did big corporate such as Microsoft pay the police authorities (directly or indirectly) to push to stop the sale and distribution of a few mod chips that could barely even create any noticeable impact of crime on any industry.
This raid was designed to make a statement to modders. It is that they are willing and capable of manipulating our police authorities for even the lowest of priority alleged crimes.
To top that off, no crime has really been committed. It is silly to even allow these raids to take place for something that is realistically question of a DMCA violation.
From what I understand the only mod chips are available for xboxes--and possibly not even for the new Xbox 360. So they are raiding these businesses and homes for a few mod chips for a specific machine produced by a huge criminally convicted monopolist that is known for stealing IP and destroying other companies.
By your command. Microsoft is the biggest threat to the industry because they are a monopoly, period. Ending that monopoly should be a big priority for everyone in the software industry specifically because it means a lack of competition and it also means a company with an arrogance willing to destroy the privacy of the average consumer in order to keep their profits high.
We are talking about a system that can be abused and yes Microsoft is the prime candidate for that abuse because they have a history of abuse, and beyond that, they are criminally convicted monopolist what used illegal predatory practices to kill their competition. If they had not be convicted and were ruled a monopolist that'd be one thing but they are a criminally convicted monopolist that harmed the economies of many a State and of the US as a whole. Luckily the minds in the EU are more astute and have taken measures to quell any attempt at the same there.
Unluckily I don't think the other parts of the world are as keen as the EU. Maybe someday we'll see the important changes there as well.
So, ask us to replace Apple with Microsoft and we have a much more severe picture being painted there. Very severe as a criminal monopolist will always abuse especially when they know that they won't be pursued by representatives of the current administration.
Luckily we are smart enough to know we are listening to corporate dogfish that are in it for the money. They are the reason for every incredibly ugly lawyer joke. Bottom line, the system sucks. Soon we are going to have patents covering the sounds of a song or the look of a picture so that no one can create that same sound or produce similar pictures.
Of course it is broken. Patents for real products made of real materials are one thing but patents for ethereal objects made from ideas are not valid and due to the complexity of software engineering it would be nearly impossible for a patent clerk to understand and apply all the rules of law accordingly. So, of course it is broken, because it is impossible.
What Microsoft and other patent holders are relying on is that the system that grants these don't have a clue about how to decipher them adequately in order to determine prior art or obviousness. The only saving grace is that the Supreme Court of the US adjusted the rules about how to determine those things granting a much broader examination across any industry.
The only other saving grace here is that the world is producing software at a much more rapid pace than Microsoft ever could and are ESTABLISHING a HUGE body of PRIOR ART. The end result will be patents that are easily over turned due to prior art and the obvious obiousness.
Ad laden, bin laden, all the same shit. Not in the best interest of the citizens/consumers.
I'll be the first to start removing this crap from people's computers. Hell, for a lot less time and energy they can get open office and it is a direct full featured competitor to Office 2007. Sheesh, that's a real no brainer. No reason to even consider Microsoft in the software equation if you are smart. Move on to more advanced features with more privacy protection and less harassment.
What ruined music for me, at least in part, and I know it isn't PC but it is true, is that Elton was writing these songs for his male lovers. That just destroys it for me.
This is just a Microsoft shill attempting to muddy the waters. He's learned from Microsoft how to do that. Who knows, he may make his living off Microsoft products, lots of people do, but at least most people listen to reason and don't attempt to demean others. I'd venture that he may be paid to do this. Has happened, who knows...just a guess.
Anyway, his attitude is one of untrustworthiness. What can I say. If he had his head on straight we wouldn't be having these conversations because he'd understand how having only one source and that source being a monopoly is a bad thing. As has been said by some notable industry pundits "a $500 office suit is outrageous".
Anyway move on.
He sounds like a dork. Completely and utterly uninformed (or misinformed). Of course there's a future for ODF. Never has there been any question.
Our whole culture in America is based on free enterprise and a competitive market. Owning so much market share that that's virtually no competition is unhealthy for our economy and for the world.
This pursuit is nothing more than an attempt to divide. They know the open source community won't embrace them and they know they have every desire to kill open source, so they divide first, they take your IP from that code and use it on their own, and then they attempt to kill open source in any other form by claiming there's no need for other forms or other licenses. Who has the bigger wheel? Who squeaks more in the industry? So, when people hear that Microsoft's own open source is there and no other is necessary they'll believe it.
And why would a closed source proprietary company need anything open source? Someone needs to tell us why a company that has historically stolen IP, abused its market position, acted in a criminal way to gain a monopoly, would need to have any sort of open source initiative? Why would the richest men in the world worry about open source (their only competitor) in a world where they sell closed source products?
Something is extremely fishy here.
If you don't agree with the GPL (any version) don't use it. Don't use the code. Don't try to get something for nothing. It is the abuse of the GPL that has resulted in the changes to the GPL. Guess who has been abusing it? Microsoft.
No right minded programmer is going to join Microsoft unless they are just stupid.
Don't blame Microsoft's failing on the GPL. The GPL is a choice not a requirement. You choose to not support the contract of the GPL then don't try to get free code to use. What's so viral about that?
You sound like a Microsoft shill, it is just sad.
You never take a job that kills your career. That is utterly ridiculous that you would sign a 3 year non-compete. On top of that, some states don't allow that. You should look into whether they are breaking the law by making you sign that agreement.
It is not very very hard to trust. It is impossible to trust. It is a company with a history bad behavior and abusive behavior toward Linux.
On top of that they have threatened every Linux user with lawsuits. Do you really thing anyone can trust them after that?
Microsoft wants to kill Open Source. In fact, Microsoft's representatives clearly stated that 2007 was the year of the death of Open Source. You really trust that? The Microsoft representative should have been fired immediately. Most companies would have canned him on the spot, unless of course they agree with him.
To end this Microsoft needs to appologize to every user, and doubly to every Linux user for their incredibly bad behavior and their threats. The whole scenario is only one of absolute bad. There can be no good coming from any entry by Microsoft into OSS.
And it is insane of anyone to even be attempting to defend Microsoft in this manner. It's like trying to defend the person that just stole your car and went for a joyride and crashed it. You certainly would never allow them to into your home, you domain, or even remotely close to you.
More like living under a rock, kept in the dark, fed shit, and basically a mushroom in intellect.
/.) claiming all sorts of missing features and crappy programming when in reality all the open source guys did was defend by correcting what was obviously wrong.
FOSS just wants their freedom. They don't want to have to be shit upon by a criminally convicted monopolistic company that has a reputation of stealing other's intellectual property.
FOSS has not slammed anyone except to say that it makes no sense to pay money to a criminal monopolist is to continually bury your head in the sand. If you continue to use a product that locks you into continued purchases then it isn't FOSS that is shitting on others. It is Microsoft shitting on you. To continue to pay for something that locks you in is silly. To use a product that costs you money when there's a free nice alternative, well that's crazy. On top of that it was the Office zealots that dumped on Open Office (in prior threads on
How on earth can you not see what they have done and how harmful that has been to the whole industry? The opportunities for strong competition in the OS market are essentially non-existent due to Microsoft's criminal behavior.
The FOSS movement has done absolutely nothing wrong. They've stolen from no one. They've hindered no one. All they want is to keep a criminal monopolist out of their home. I'm sure you would feel the same way about allowing a criminal into your home.
On top of that you fail completely to understand that Microsoft is spying on you. They have 47 programs in Vista that collect information about you and return that information to their servers for analysis. They also have programs that essentially search and can seize your computer (refuse to work if they believe it is pirated, even if it isn't). They do this without most people's knowledge. They spy on you after having stolen from you for so many years. And you let them continue while essentially attacking the benevolent group of people who just want to have a fair free competitive market. Something that Microsoft has denied so many for so long.
On top of that you also fail to understand some of the largest companies in the world support FOSS and Open Source. What the FOSS industry doesn't want is Microsoft tainting the waters. Microsoft is already extorting cross licensing from other companies upon threat about IP violations that have never been proven nor the IP ever been identified. How would you like it if I stood in your neighborhood and told your neighbors that you were stealing and that I had proof of X number of thefts. You, and they, would demand that I tell them what you stole (what crimes you committed). They wouldn't put up with it.
Microsoft is like the big oil company that threatens all car owners that drive because they buy gasoline from one of their competitors. They say that the gasoline is refined using IP that they own. On top of that they are threatening any large company even more so if they don't agree to not just pay them money but give up their own intellectual property. It doesn't seem to matter that no proof is offered nor evidence of any sort yet they still claim that all car drivers will have to pay a price to them.
Don't you think it is silly that they threaten their competitors customers because they aren't using their gasoline? They can't compete on their own merits?
And your attitude is appalling. You have no idea, you have no knowledge, you have no eduction in this matter and you have never taken the time to actually understand what is happening. Then you come here and abuse everyone else who differs in opinion to you. Its rather sad if you ask me.