It allows it to happen because it allows it to happen. It has nothing to do with FUD. Some of those toolbars are extremely nasty. The fact that the processes are running outside of windows and that registry keys are being created to start programs once the computer restarts is not FUD. This is the way WinXP and IE6 has been exploited. What it means is that no one is any the safer with IE7 if they are convinced to keep clicking or are annoyed so much that they just click by default--which will happen all the time. This is no different than telling a noob what a firewall is and what it does then prompting them 20 times a day to allow/deny certain things. Soon they'll be denying everying and when they do they'll no longer have access to certain aspects of their computer.
You sir are a moron. His posting shows that without any knowledge, being a noob user, someone who wouldn't know about the malware out there who will be prompted by the system to install this stuff, is allowed to do so. His post also shows that even tho he had some problems getting it done he was able to do so by manual steps (steps someone could easily guide a noob user to execute, with promises that this stuff is good for them). Then he shows that nothing done halts the execution of procesess outside of IE7. It also shows that these programs can still alter the registry. End result is that any toolbar or malicious software providor could get around the security even with a noob by promising great things if the noob just follows a more lengthy series of steps. The end result: programs running as processes seperate from IE that create startup entries in the registry. This is indicative of a system easily exploited and very insecure. I clean computers of these nasty things all day every day. Most people have no clue what you meanby angry anti-social microsoft fan.
This is not FUD. This is clearly a warning to everyone that they should not be trusting of what's been created to protect them because it is very easy to get past the protections.
Just because he reset IE7 which disabled many of the toolbars doesn't mean that his computer was cleaned of the bad guys. He allowed some of these programs to run applications, and he showed us processess running. Once you have a program running outside of IE resetting IE does nothing to ensure you are clean.
I clean computers of these infections day in and day out. Some of the programs he showed us is just nasty nasty stuff. There were so many malicious programs there I cringed every time I saw another added.
Just because the distributor says these aren't malicious doesn't make it so. It is like them telling everyone that these toolbars are worth $30.00. They are stupid fucks. Pardon my french. These guys are compeletely and utterly bastards trying to take over and control systems. If they can claim you get something for nothing that they value at $30.00 while you allow them to add advertisements to your system, then they or you or both of them are fucking nuts. Again, pardon my french.
I went into a daycare to get a computer that was having ads pop up and when I saw the screen it was filled with porn ads. The machine was heavily infected. It took alot of dedicated time to rid the computer of it. It wasn't about them putting ads on the computer or even providing easy steps to remove the software. All of this software downloads and installs bad programs in the background. There is no legitimate adware. All adware is malware. No one should read this posting with the thought that these are good solid toolbars from reputable companies. The two that I would say they could keep are the yahoo toolbar and the google toolbar. Every other one should be looked at and be believed to be malware. No MATTER WHAT!!!!!
Just remember that this guy allowed some programs to run as an exe. And he showed running processes. And more than one put entries in the registry to make the computer load the program at start up. All of these are now running or are going to be run outside of IE. It only takes one to create havoc on your computer.
They don't want you to give it up they want you to pay more. You pay for the os and then you pay rental fees. You will always need a computer with an OS.
You have to let microsoft know that moving applications to the internet is the worst idea. I'll never comply with it. I'll still be using my old outdated bloated versions long after Microsoft has started renting software to everyone else. Else, I'll be on the Macintosh or I'll be using Linux. I will never pay for software on a monthly basis, ever.
I will never fall to that model of distribution. It was tried years ago and it is a pathetic idea. Anyone falling for it is stupid. You buy a product and you are entitled to use it till the end of time. You never want to keep paying for software over a long period of time even if you think you are getting a deal because in the long run you pay exceptionally more and you get nothing for it in the end.
I decided not to go into programming for any company years ago due to the fact that it was obvious that programmers are not a machine that pumps out an assembly line item like you would find in a factory. Tremendous fortunes were made on programmer's knowledge that created a tremendously diverse industry. Few of those programmers made a fortune where as companies that they worked for made so much money it is hard for us to fathom.
My abilities, my knowledge, my talent is what made the product. It was my ability to make something from nothing that is key. Your opinions can and will vary but I think mine is most valid.
I now own my own business and I do very well. I will never program for anyone other than my own business. Any project I worked on in-house had to benefit me and I made sure that I retained all rights to any and all projects I worked on. I usually got an OK. I did not work as a professional programmer ever but I had various projects where I needed to code things to get the job done. I didn't want the company taking what I created and using that to make profit.
A programmer's job can be incredibly monotonous and boring and repetitive. It can also be very creative and rewarding. Those writing code in-house professionally are probably incredibly bored most of the time and the tools they use are the only things that may interact with for endless hours. Some variation on those tools and a sense of improvement are things that drive people. We can do alot of monotonous things if we feel thing are improving. Sometimes that is through salaries, other times through promotions, and other times through improvements in our tools, and most of the time all of that.
I could not imagine being a programmer where I had to get permission to view a web page or download a zip file or had some manager tell me my equipment is all that I will need. I would want the best tools. Working now I love to have my computer systems upgraded and I do so at every opportunity. I purchase tools and other nifty ideas just to try them out. I found one the other day that was a simple $30.00 item that has made working significantly easier. I didn't buy it for that purpose I bought it because I thought it might come in handy and looked nifty. Sure I have little things laying around that I will never use again or that have limited scope, but I love knowing that when I need them they are there.
Give them that extra 1 gig of ram. Prepare in advance and give them 3 or 4gigs. Give them solid music, a good bit of treats (sodas, crackers, chips, etc) and chock it up to oiling the wheels of the machinery. If they want a core 2 duo get them a quad core. If they want Vista basic get them Vista Platinum Plus Version 21. They are, after all, the people that produce the product that makes the company money. Without them you could not survive. Try producing that software product and having no programmers. It isn't like a where house where a manager can fill in if you loose key people.
This isn't to say that you give them everything. Just be prepared for what they may want. Don't be stingy. Those few upgrades without bitching and without the infighting could result in significantly greater savings to you in the long run and maybe you'll have programmers willing to put more into the product for you, since you are, afterall, making money directly from their labors.
None, but there are limitations on some aspects of any new OS under Mac.
Alot of people purchased $1,000-2,500 macs and can't run the latest OS. Apple tends to really limit which computers can run their latest copy. Sometimes it wants onboard USB. Other times it wants firewire installed, etc. Those are the checks that it may make. So, even if you paid a fortune for your computer it may not run the latest OS.
I've seen XP running on a k6-2 500 mhz and on p2 and p3 processors.
I own and use several macintoshes and can't believe how much people pay for these things. Inside say the imac sunflower computer is this utterly cheapo motherboard with a soldered on processor with two ram slots that one uses SDRAM and the other slot is notebook ram.
I love the mac. I love OSX. I can't see why apple doesn't release OSX for all PC hardware. It would seriously give Microsoft something to think about.
Not every install of a product is illegal even though it isn't activated. Essentially I take it that if you don't activate your product in 30 days you are to be considered illegal. The vast majority of users have no idea when and/or if their software is illegal.
Questions for me remain about how they will determine the illegal nature of the software. How often will they check. Looking back at their genuine advantage notification program it was a piece of shit that only the lowest form of life would have though up and/or sanctioned. That's my opinion. Your's may vary. It was deceptive in how they put it on and it was deceptive in what they were collecting and how they were operating. It also opened up the door for alot of other companies to copy Microsoft, hence you might have 10-20 different programs monitoring your computer software use and then reporting back to their servers. Microsoft is no more entitled to put their crap on my computer than any other software vendor is so that just opens a pandora's box. Give them license to do it and you give license to every other software vendor to do the same thing.
Microsoft isn't particularly bright. 40% of those identified as invalid were actually valid. How many of the Vista copies will be considered invalid and still be valid?
What Microsoft seems to forget is that there is no compelling reason to purchase or upgrade to Vista. XP is a solid OS which meets the requirements of the vast majority of the world's users. If Vista had some die for feature or they had some features that were critical or even compelling in some minor way maybe most people would be justified in opening their computers up to Microsoft's heavy handedness. The new version of the OS just has nothing of any real value for the average user to justify the exceptionally high cost of the software (even in upgrade), the enormous cost in hardware upgrades required, and then the repurchasing of software that is more than adequate for what we have today.
If you look at any software product that might be developed for Windows Vista you'll probably not find a single one that has any real upgrade value. What more can you do to an elephant other than feed it more and hope it grows? The beheamouth software of today doesn't need to torture our computers more in the future by adding bloat when everything is in them.
When we had the changeover from DOS to Win 3.x we had reason to upgrade. Protected mode applications, cooperative multitasking, memory management, consistent interface, etc. Everyone could learn the basics of a GUI and they'd have a chance at using any given software product that came out for the OS. When Windows 95 came out it gave us preemptive multitasking and a new interface with alot of major changes that helped in networking, and maintenance. You weren't forced to put up with any Microsoft bullshit about activation, DRM, lockouts, spyware, etc. It did have problems with the system resources, just as 98 and ME had that followed it.
2k and XP were great upgrades to the OS. Alot of existing hardware worked and worked well. It was well designed and it protected applications from crashing the whole OS. There were some seriously compelling reasons to upgrade to 95, 98, 2k, and XP. But Vista just doesn't have it. Even their security features beg the question about what will happen to XP's security once Vista is out. Will Microsoft extort our purchase of Vista by not protecting XP as well as they did Vista? It is mostly Microsoft's fault that XP has the problems they have today and by all measure the security in Vista has never been guaranteed to protect us any more. It hasn't even been hinted at. Right now Microsoft could say XP is the most secure OS on the market (whether that is true or not), just as they will say that Vista is the number one secured OS. Neither would be correct. The fact remains that if they believe it they will try to sell it.
From all that I have read people are able to hack the kernel already in Vista. T
I saw, and alot of people I know agree, a big reason to upgrade to xp and I liked the new interface. But I paid for my XP and I don't really see a reason to pay more for a reworking of the theme and some security enhancements that could have been added with an SP3. And if they don't add them in a SP3 then they are intentionally leaving us out to the wolves? Why is this an important question? It is important because XP is by no means obsolete and the vast majority of users have no reason to upgrade. XP is competent enough with today's available resources to last for a good 5 years more. Had Vista come out with some incredibly appealing new technology or technology that would damn those that didn't upgrade I could see people not asking that question.
Microsoft wants Vista so they have more control over your system. How many of you have made it important to let Microsoft know you don't want their DRM infections and you aren't interested in their facilties to keep you from using your computer the way you want? It is your computer. You can write letters, make phone calls, and generally cause a stir if you don't like a feature enough. You should speak up. Vista simply extends on what Microsoft has been doing for some time--making small incremental encroachments into your computer and just biting their tongue until the furor dies down. Then they add a bit more and bite their tongues again.
Vista is their chance to incorporate all that they have done--including the Genuine Advantage Notification program that we all complained about. They are adding features to make content use significantly more vendor protective. We want our content without DRM and without someone spying on us and without accusing us of being criminals because we want to do this stuff our way instead of theirs.
Microsoft has clearly stated that Windows has gone from content creation to content consumption and they are reacting to that. This version of Windows is meant for content consumption and protectionism of digital rights even if it is done in a way that destroys our choice--as most DRM schemes do.
Frankly, I want my computer and its contents protected from the content creators more than I want the mega corps content protected from me. I am not out stealing their content nor distributing it. I don't want protection schemes installed on my computer with or without my knowledge and I don't want it done any more than I would want them coming into my home and monitoring my content consumption. The computer is an extension of my home and not a platform for their content and advertising--that's what Microsoft doesn't understand.
Putting programs like the Genuine Advantage Notification program on people's computer is akin to calling us all thieves and it is a mechanism of monitoring that is prohibited in most forms--how would you like the government monitoring everyone's homes for potential criminal activity by putting cameras in every area of your home or by making you go through regular inspections? How would you like it if every software vendor out there created the same type of protection schemes--now you have 10 or 20 different programs all monitoring your computer use, checking you for theft of their content, etc? That would be like the federal government watching you, the state government with cameras in your home, the county government monitoring you on your property, and the city doing regular inspections of everyone's home at any time of the day or night? Included in this would be the DHS, NSA, CIA, FBI, IRS, and every other government agency being able to monitor you too. By allowing one company to do it--Microsoft--you are allowing everyone else to do it too.
Allowing Microsoft to put such a tool into your computer--as well as other DRM schemes--is doing essentially just that because when you allow Microsoft to justify that behavior/conduct you justify everyone that produces any sort of software to do that.
Why is that?
It is that way because Microsoft is no more entitled to
I have turned off only one special effect in OSX and that is the genie effect. I never turned on the icon zoom and i set the icons in their task bar to be a certain size. That's it. Other than that I keep everything on at full throttle and I enjoy the interface. I do not see Vista as a real competitor to OSX because it just doesn't have the pinache that OSX has. Look at feature additions and software development tools. OSX kicks Vista's butt in that regard.
Also, OSX features can be run on most G3 and up Macs whereas Microsoft's excessiveness in programming won't run AERO in on a video card with significantly more capabilities.
Why can my video card play most of the best games and some of the latest just fine but it isn't adequate for the Vista Aero Interface? What is Microsoft doing to ensure that cards such as the gforce4 ti cards which are 128mb of ram run the AERO interface being that nVidia doesn't provide modern drivers any more? Why is the interface the main selling point behind Vista (along with alleged security that has no promise from Microsoft actually about security) the Aero interface? How can this OS be anything more than just a pig with lipstick? Why try to pull the wool over everyone's eyes with security most commonly found in most other OSes with the AERO interface where the requirements are far too high? How come it seems the programmers don't seem to be writing optimized code to reduce the requirements? Why can't we be allowed for force the AERO interface on and live with the performance issues to our own detriment, if we so choose? Why can't we adjust features to allow us to run portions of the interface?
Vista is just XP with a new interface and security that could have been added to XP with a service pack. Why was XP not good enough? If it is security, what are you going to do for the next two years for XP users? What are you going to do, get the Department of Homeland Security to warn the American public to buy and upgrade to Vista?
They are not stepping down. That's misleading to say that they are stepping down. What happened was that the Chairperson named Patricia Dunn has simply moved into a director's position and the CEO is taking control of the board. No one else is out except the guy they were trying to find (and did). Nothing he said nor did was enough justify what they did to all those people.
Yes, people are being pursued by law enforcement except you know they are the ones thrown to the wolves that are going to get it not the top level decision makers who instigated the whole matter. I'm sure the guy in charge of their security feels pretty bad that he did his job as the board perscribed it and now he's being thrown out to the wolves. Employees do not just take unilateral action by themselves, they are directed by others above them.
I can't see how anyone would believe that more jobs will be created. What will happen are lateral moves. Sure there'll be a need to upgrade components to make the OS work at more than a snail's pace but those upgrades are one time things and will not be sustainable growth. Anyone taking even a simple unbiased look at Vista knows this. Vista is just WinXP with a new interface. The security updates could have been added to XP with a SP3. The look of the OS is all they have to sell this thing on. That's not enough. Vista ia pig with lipstick. Basing the sale of a non-necessary upgrade of the OS on the looks of it is litarally pulling the wool over our eyes.
There's no substantial reason to upgrade to Vista other than just to have the latest and greatest. Security could be a reason except that a SP3 could solve that and one must ask the question of whether Microsoft is going to hang XP users out high and dry if they don't upgrade. If they can I'm sure they'll get the Department of Homeland Security to tell everyone to upgrade just like they did with the service packs and patches--which did nothing more than get Microsoft's Genuine Advantage Notification Spyware program installed on their machine.
Any modification to the OS as far as the API goes has to be backwards compatible to XP. If not, then so many programs won't run and it will be a complete turn around of the way upgrades to Windows has been done in the past. The only reason to change that is due to them trying to force everyone to upgrade at the substantially higher price than XP.
Frankly, there's no need to upgrade. There's no compelling reason. All the stuff that was supposed to distinguish Vista from XP has been cut out. The interface change isn't enough. If you want your machine infected with Microsoft DRM madness that's your fault and your choice.
The jobs in Europe will be fleeting. There will be more lateral moves than anything as ppl simply switch jobs from supporting XP to supporting Vista, except you have to keep in mind that most everyone understands that there's nothing in Vista compelling enough to have ppl upgrade. The costs of upgrade for the OS is high (that'll drive people away) and the cost for upgrading their hardware is even more--even on machines less than 2 years old--and that'll drive people away. The upgrade path will be slow and you'll see alot of complaining when people realize they paid too much for nothing significant.
Linux has a long way to go. It is a good OS but there's still the attitude of "you suck because you won't compile your own kernel" attitude. It is still a big turn off for the vast majority of computer uers.
It is a solid OS. It can be customized for a solid and attractive interface. I used it for years. I loved the OS but hated the tremendous amount of time spent just keeping it straight and up to date along with dealing with the zealots that essentially attack people for asking questions. I would regularly read forums and see people attacked from far and wide.
The software just isn't there. Some is, but there's alot that isn't up to speed. Not only that many of those same free (as in beer) are available under Windows as well. I found most productivity applications quite acceptable although somewhat disorganized and counter-intuitive. Not all mind you but a good bit of it.
Gaming is still horrific even with the Transmedia product.
Online updating with yast, apt-get, and such is still too hit and miss--the repository manager decides what to put there and when so you can be left holding the bag if your distro and the repository doesn't contain the correct version.
I loved some of the software that is Linux only and I appreciate the efforts but to mislead so many about how good it is on the desktop. Combined with installation of end-user programs, the lack of refinement in much of the software, the problems with updates over the web, the dependency issues that still persist to this day, as well as the legal issues surrounding issues like DVD decoding, etc., I can't really see them writing articles that provide blanket statements such as Linux is ready for the desktop.
I think the thing that bothered me most was when simple people trying to install and use the products were harshly criticized for just asking questions. If you have ever read the "RTFM" responses you'll know what I mean.
Better end-user package installation that doesn't rely on the web to get dependencies resolved and when the support is there for those who just want to use linux instead of compliling and modifying every little aspect to their liking are treated with respect then linux will be ready for the desktop.
Be depressed at the answer because it is not correct. He's saying you have only rights to the plastic of the CD and nothing else, when clearly it's implicit in the agreement between you and the IP holder that you bought rights to hear the music. He's almost flat out lying to you--or he simply doesn't have enough information or he's not telling you that those issues have not been addressed by the courts. At best, if he is not lying he's misleading.
Of course you have listening rights. You bought the CD with the explict intent of listening. You would not have bought the plastic CD for any other reason. There are both implicit and explict recognition that you have the right to listen.
It's like the lemon laws for cars. If you bought the car, as a normal member of your community does, you bought it for the purpose of driving the car. By his logic you have no driving rights for that car and hence the car dealership has no responsibility to give you a car that actually drives.
There's other governing laws here, but lets just say you are intending to drive it on your farm regardless of what the state may say about them granting you the privelidge. You are still entitled to drive the car even if it is on your own property. The car industry has a lemon law that keeps them from selling you something that isn't suitable for the purpose.
You didn't buy the car to not drive it, as a normal person would. You didn't buy the plastic CD to look at it or hang it on your wall. You bought the car to drive it and you bought the CD to listen to it. IP rights should simply prohibit you from transferring any implicit right to others without the transfer and abandonment of your initial purchase right. In other words, you can't sell the car and expect to be able drive it no more than you should be able to sell your CD and continue to listen to it, unless of course you gave it or sold it to say a roommate or girl friend or something like that were you would have access to it and they gave you permission to listen.
Basically he's talking out his butt. He doesn't know if you have those rights or not and it hasn't been tested in the law as to whether you have the listening rights, but certainly there is fair use and your right to make a copy of the CD for purposes of protecting it.
This is what's wrong with the lawyers. You bought the CD with the implicit and explict purpose of listening to it. This lawywer would have you believe you have only the legal right to the plastic to which it is made. Common sense should appeal to you.
What I'm saying is that he's clueless about what your rights are--nearly as clueless as the person who asked the question in the first place.
I appreciate the time taken by these guys to answer some questions but some of their answers aren't exactly in tune with reality. Of course, some of the answers were literal and it takes a legal inclination to understand why they answered them the way they did. Even so, much of what they answered in terms of your rights as an owner of the CD is not precise and the lawyer is answering as if he's the jury and judge--in otherwords he's experssing more his views than what reality states.
There has be no jury that has stated that you don't have fair use rights and rights to make backup copies. We've seen here on/. more than once direct quotes of congressional (and related to congressional) documents regarding your rights to make backups and fair use.
What the lawyer stated isn't exactly spot on because he essentially told you that you had the rights to the plastic and that's it. In reality you know, just through common sense, that you have more rights than to just the plastic. That fair use allows you to copy that to your MP3 player, to back up the CDs and to convert them to MP3s if you wish. The only time you don't have these rights is when you acquiesce to some other agreement. If you did not have these rights Apple would have been sued long ago. So would Microsoft (Zune), Creative, and a slew of others. The examples are the same--P2P networks agreeing to 10s of millions of dollars in settlements. The P2P networks didn't legally copy those files to others, the others did that. But the P2P networks had to pay. One could argue that they didn't protect the rights holders, but they didn't pay the money to everyone they paid them to the RIAA. IP is not just tied to the music and video industry.
The implication is that he believe the recording industry and their sponsors have the legal right to put software on your computer without your knowledge and without your ability to remove it "at will". He probably also thinks that they have the right to pop up ads and you have no right to block them.
Bottom line, don't abandon your rights to what a lawyer says even though they may have good intentions. And, also, specifically, lawyers have a bad name because of what they do not because of what corporations do to protect themselves against lawyers. Corporate lawyers are the worst, they make the biggest most extreme non-average-person changes in the law. It wasn't a lawyer like this guy that prompts the RIAA, it is the corporate lawyer.
Settling doesn't deal with the whole problem. It is my understanding that even if he agrees to settlement lawsuits can still be brought against him by the actual copyright holders. In otherwords, the RIAA doesn't indemnify you if you settle it just gets them off your back. Also the terms used regarding P2P are too vague. What I take the settelement to mean is that you are admitting legally that the use of p2p is legally and morally wrong, even tho the use of p2p can still have legal applications.
I'm sure the settlement is more than just money, you have to promise never to do it again or the original suit can be brought back up.
It will be provided in xp and win2k. You'll have alot of pissed off people if they force their market share by limiting technologies to one version of their platform when it isn't necessary to do so.
What is being said in that article is nothing. The bulletted list lists nothing specific that could not have been included in XP. Essentially he's confirming that the 10000 programmers were wasting alot of our time, and theirs. Virtually everything listed could have been incorporated into windows xp and in fact a great many of them probably. The idea that we should upgrade because of dialog boxes or network discovery or ipv6 is downright insane.
99% of the stuff they promised to make into VISTA is gone. The compelling reason to upgrade is because Microsoft will make it non-compelling not to via whatever tactics they can find once they disciver that people are not willing to pay for new dialog boxes and a pretty interface.
Some of the things that guy wrote about in his prior slashdot article are obviously open to personal tastes. I've seen the new interface and I love how pretty it is but the fact remains that Microsoft's programmers don't know how to do 3d code well. They are using features that are unnecessary thus forcing you to buy a newer graphics card. Another major problem lies in that most of the machines that were sold from the likes of Dell (most particularly), HP/Compaq, Gateway, eMachines, etc aren't capable of using the Aero interface, specifically for that reason.
I installed Vista on a geforce 5200 card with 128mb of video ram and the OS refused to enable the interface. On a 6800gt it worked. The point is that even a card capable of playing most of the modern games in the past 3 years won't even display rather minor effects of a glass-style 3d interface which is a far cry from the number of polygons that geforce 5200 card could generate.
The drivers suck for this for alot of hardware. I wound up using old XP drivers because none were provided for components that were well provided for under XP. Copying a file or a series of files takes excessively long periods of time. Wireless cards essentially function a a fraction of their abilities. Any networking seems to take excessively long periods of time.
These are the compelling reasons--you give vendors something more to sell you.
The compelling reason is what Microsoft makes of it. They'll either deny installation of XP on any new box to force vendors to install Vista thus by attrition making it the defacto standard. Or, they'll get the Department of Homeland Security to declare that we need to upgrade to protect ourselves from terrorist viral infections.
I've said this a hundred times now since I looked at the beta of Vista (and the RC1 candidate). Vista is Windows XP with a new interface and that's pretty much it. Any security could have been upgraded in Vista by simply coming out with SP3. What will Microsoft do/say to us all about how good/bad XP is and about it's security down the road? In 6 months when they realize people aren't buying this non-compelling OS, or the new OSes' sales drop off, will they claim that no further enhancements will be made to XPs security?
XP is good enough right now and there is no real compelling reason to upgrade. Microsoft gutted the OS prior to the ship date, and promising us that feature X or Y will be available for download for genuine Vista customers is downright lame. Why would we believe them?
You know Microsoft was sued recently for stealing the IP used to implement the activation features of XP. They were further fined extra due to their abuse of the legal system by burying the plantiff and court in paperwork in an attempt to hide the proof that this guy owned the IP. The fact is, they stole the IP that was implemented to keep you from stealing their IP.
Why would we believe them about anything?
They implemented features into the OS that spies on you. They deceptively included it in the critical update and then tried to manipulate opinion by saying that if it was OK for the European and Asian continents then there's no reason that American's should complain about it.
We are to believe anything they say or do? On top of that they haven't quit. They knew they could ride the storm out and then continue to ship that update in the exact same way.
On top of that they are telling the support groups all around the world that those updates are for security reasons to keep you secure.
Microsoft started that mechanism to keep their revenues high. They wouldn't even pay the guy that invented it. Then they tried to bury him financially to keep from being caught. Then they implement these systems and almost make it mandatory to install. Then they manipulate the public into believing that if the europeans and asians can accept it we should too. Then they tell their support groups all around the world to sell this as if it was critical to security.
This is trustworthy behavior? We should believe them that there are future features that we'll get if we buy now? We should believe them that Vista is secure?
On top of that they have the gall to tell us that they are consulting with Mozilla in order to teach them to be more secure?
She knew it and she used the information. Only she could authorize the act from the top. HR departments don't give out personal stuff unless the top bosses say so.
She used the information and briefed the board on the tactics. She could have had her lawyers read the material first and only disclose if the procedures were legal and moral. She chose to use the material even though she knew it could not have been obtained in any other way. In other words, she knew the phone company didn't just give out that information to anyone, and she also had a board member who also was filing lawsuits against those using pretexting methods to fraudulently access his customer's records. She damn well knew what was happening and when. Then she damn well knew that it was illegal when she used the information. On top of that she disclosed it to the board which resulted in Perkin's resignation due to the illegal, unethical, and immoral acts and vilations of board and company procedures and codes of conduct.
Patricia Dunn is a done deal. She's gone. She just won't do it herself and rid HP of her tainted questional moral character. HP doesn't need her in that position. They don't need her at all. There are alot of other good people that can do what she's doing wthout breaking the law, breaching ethics, or acting in an immoral way.
Police can't hire private citizens to do those tasks that the laws prohibit law-enforcement from performing. If they do they become agents of the police and are subject to the same laws. This is longstanding in case law. If anything the question, for me, would be whether this makes those third parties agents of HP, and thus makes HP liable, and whether Patricia Dunn can be held criminally liable for their criminal acts.
Hell, Martha Stewart simply lied and went to jail. Patricia Dunn sanctioned these criminal acts. Even if her involvement was implicit she's still criminally liable because she knew they would not be able to gain access to this information without resorting to criminal activities.
She is a criminal now employed by the corporate foundations. Forever we'll remember HP as a criminal organization instead of the company that was founded for the employees.
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It allows it to happen because it allows it to happen. It has nothing to do with FUD. Some of those toolbars are extremely nasty. The fact that the processes are running outside of windows and that registry keys are being created to start programs once the computer restarts is not FUD. This is the way WinXP and IE6 has been exploited. What it means is that no one is any the safer with IE7 if they are convinced to keep clicking or are annoyed so much that they just click by default--which will happen all the time. This is no different than telling a noob what a firewall is and what it does then prompting them 20 times a day to allow/deny certain things. Soon they'll be denying everying and when they do they'll no longer have access to certain aspects of their computer.
You sir are a moron. His posting shows that without any knowledge, being a noob user, someone who wouldn't know about the malware out there who will be prompted by the system to install this stuff, is allowed to do so. His post also shows that even tho he had some problems getting it done he was able to do so by manual steps (steps someone could easily guide a noob user to execute, with promises that this stuff is good for them). Then he shows that nothing done halts the execution of procesess outside of IE7. It also shows that these programs can still alter the registry. End result is that any toolbar or malicious software providor could get around the security even with a noob by promising great things if the noob just follows a more lengthy series of steps. The end result: programs running as processes seperate from IE that create startup entries in the registry. This is indicative of a system easily exploited and very insecure. I clean computers of these nasty things all day every day. Most people have no clue what you meanby angry anti-social microsoft fan.
This is not FUD. This is clearly a warning to everyone that they should not be trusting of what's been created to protect them because it is very easy to get past the protections.
Just because he reset IE7 which disabled many of the toolbars doesn't mean that his computer was cleaned of the bad guys. He allowed some of these programs to run applications, and he showed us processess running. Once you have a program running outside of IE resetting IE does nothing to ensure you are clean.
I clean computers of these infections day in and day out. Some of the programs he showed us is just nasty nasty stuff. There were so many malicious programs there I cringed every time I saw another added.
Just because the distributor says these aren't malicious doesn't make it so. It is like them telling everyone that these toolbars are worth $30.00. They are stupid fucks. Pardon my french. These guys are compeletely and utterly bastards trying to take over and control systems. If they can claim you get something for nothing that they value at $30.00 while you allow them to add advertisements to your system, then they or you or both of them are fucking nuts. Again, pardon my french.
I went into a daycare to get a computer that was having ads pop up and when I saw the screen it was filled with porn ads. The machine was heavily infected. It took alot of dedicated time to rid the computer of it. It wasn't about them putting ads on the computer or even providing easy steps to remove the software. All of this software downloads and installs bad programs in the background. There is no legitimate adware. All adware is malware. No one should read this posting with the thought that these are good solid toolbars from reputable companies. The two that I would say they could keep are the yahoo toolbar and the google toolbar. Every other one should be looked at and be believed to be malware. No MATTER WHAT!!!!!
Just remember that this guy allowed some programs to run as an exe. And he showed running processes. And more than one put entries in the registry to make the computer load the program at start up. All of these are now running or are going to be run outside of IE. It only takes one to create havoc on your computer.
They don't want you to give it up they want you to pay more. You pay for the os and then you pay rental fees. You will always need a computer with an OS.
You have to let microsoft know that moving applications to the internet is the worst idea. I'll never comply with it. I'll still be using my old outdated bloated versions long after Microsoft has started renting software to everyone else. Else, I'll be on the Macintosh or I'll be using Linux. I will never pay for software on a monthly basis, ever.
I will never fall to that model of distribution. It was tried years ago and it is a pathetic idea. Anyone falling for it is stupid. You buy a product and you are entitled to use it till the end of time. You never want to keep paying for software over a long period of time even if you think you are getting a deal because in the long run you pay exceptionally more and you get nothing for it in the end.
A game that still has patches and expansions released regularly.
I decided not to go into programming for any company years ago due to the fact that it was obvious that programmers are not a machine that pumps out an assembly line item like you would find in a factory. Tremendous fortunes were made on programmer's knowledge that created a tremendously diverse industry. Few of those programmers made a fortune where as companies that they worked for made so much money it is hard for us to fathom.
My abilities, my knowledge, my talent is what made the product. It was my ability to make something from nothing that is key. Your opinions can and will vary but I think mine is most valid.
I now own my own business and I do very well. I will never program for anyone other than my own business. Any project I worked on in-house had to benefit me and I made sure that I retained all rights to any and all projects I worked on. I usually got an OK. I did not work as a professional programmer ever but I had various projects where I needed to code things to get the job done. I didn't want the company taking what I created and using that to make profit.
A programmer's job can be incredibly monotonous and boring and repetitive. It can also be very creative and rewarding. Those writing code in-house professionally are probably incredibly bored most of the time and the tools they use are the only things that may interact with for endless hours. Some variation on those tools and a sense of improvement are things that drive people. We can do alot of monotonous things if we feel thing are improving. Sometimes that is through salaries, other times through promotions, and other times through improvements in our tools, and most of the time all of that.
I could not imagine being a programmer where I had to get permission to view a web page or download a zip file or had some manager tell me my equipment is all that I will need. I would want the best tools. Working now I love to have my computer systems upgraded and I do so at every opportunity. I purchase tools and other nifty ideas just to try them out. I found one the other day that was a simple $30.00 item that has made working significantly easier. I didn't buy it for that purpose I bought it because I thought it might come in handy and looked nifty. Sure I have little things laying around that I will never use again or that have limited scope, but I love knowing that when I need them they are there.
Give them that extra 1 gig of ram. Prepare in advance and give them 3 or 4gigs. Give them solid music, a good bit of treats (sodas, crackers, chips, etc) and chock it up to oiling the wheels of the machinery. If they want a core 2 duo get them a quad core. If they want Vista basic get them Vista Platinum Plus Version 21. They are, after all, the people that produce the product that makes the company money. Without them you could not survive. Try producing that software product and having no programmers. It isn't like a where house where a manager can fill in if you loose key people.
This isn't to say that you give them everything. Just be prepared for what they may want. Don't be stingy. Those few upgrades without bitching and without the infighting could result in significantly greater savings to you in the long run and maybe you'll have programmers willing to put more into the product for you, since you are, afterall, making money directly from their labors.
None, but there are limitations on some aspects of any new OS under Mac.
Alot of people purchased $1,000-2,500 macs and can't run the latest OS. Apple tends to really limit which computers can run their latest copy. Sometimes it wants onboard USB. Other times it wants firewire installed, etc. Those are the checks that it may make. So, even if you paid a fortune for your computer it may not run the latest OS.
I've seen XP running on a k6-2 500 mhz and on p2 and p3 processors.
I own and use several macintoshes and can't believe how much people pay for these things. Inside say the imac sunflower computer is this utterly cheapo motherboard with a soldered on processor with two ram slots that one uses SDRAM and the other slot is notebook ram.
I love the mac. I love OSX. I can't see why apple doesn't release OSX for all PC hardware. It would seriously give Microsoft something to think about.
Not every install of a product is illegal even though it isn't activated. Essentially I take it that if you don't activate your product in 30 days you are to be considered illegal. The vast majority of users have no idea when and/or if their software is illegal.
Questions for me remain about how they will determine the illegal nature of the software. How often will they check. Looking back at their genuine advantage notification program it was a piece of shit that only the lowest form of life would have though up and/or sanctioned. That's my opinion. Your's may vary. It was deceptive in how they put it on and it was deceptive in what they were collecting and how they were operating. It also opened up the door for alot of other companies to copy Microsoft, hence you might have 10-20 different programs monitoring your computer software use and then reporting back to their servers. Microsoft is no more entitled to put their crap on my computer than any other software vendor is so that just opens a pandora's box. Give them license to do it and you give license to every other software vendor to do the same thing.
Microsoft isn't particularly bright. 40% of those identified as invalid were actually valid. How many of the Vista copies will be considered invalid and still be valid?
What Microsoft seems to forget is that there is no compelling reason to purchase or upgrade to Vista. XP is a solid OS which meets the requirements of the vast majority of the world's users. If Vista had some die for feature or they had some features that were critical or even compelling in some minor way maybe most people would be justified in opening their computers up to Microsoft's heavy handedness. The new version of the OS just has nothing of any real value for the average user to justify the exceptionally high cost of the software (even in upgrade), the enormous cost in hardware upgrades required, and then the repurchasing of software that is more than adequate for what we have today.
If you look at any software product that might be developed for Windows Vista you'll probably not find a single one that has any real upgrade value. What more can you do to an elephant other than feed it more and hope it grows? The beheamouth software of today doesn't need to torture our computers more in the future by adding bloat when everything is in them.
When we had the changeover from DOS to Win 3.x we had reason to upgrade. Protected mode applications, cooperative multitasking, memory management, consistent interface, etc. Everyone could learn the basics of a GUI and they'd have a chance at using any given software product that came out for the OS. When Windows 95 came out it gave us preemptive multitasking and a new interface with alot of major changes that helped in networking, and maintenance. You weren't forced to put up with any Microsoft bullshit about activation, DRM, lockouts, spyware, etc. It did have problems with the system resources, just as 98 and ME had that followed it.
2k and XP were great upgrades to the OS. Alot of existing hardware worked and worked well. It was well designed and it protected applications from crashing the whole OS. There were some seriously compelling reasons to upgrade to 95, 98, 2k, and XP. But Vista just doesn't have it. Even their security features beg the question about what will happen to XP's security once Vista is out. Will Microsoft extort our purchase of Vista by not protecting XP as well as they did Vista? It is mostly Microsoft's fault that XP has the problems they have today and by all measure the security in Vista has never been guaranteed to protect us any more. It hasn't even been hinted at. Right now Microsoft could say XP is the most secure OS on the market (whether that is true or not), just as they will say that Vista is the number one secured OS. Neither would be correct. The fact remains that if they believe it they will try to sell it.
From all that I have read people are able to hack the kernel already in Vista. T
I saw, and alot of people I know agree, a big reason to upgrade to xp and I liked the new interface. But I paid for my XP and I don't really see a reason to pay more for a reworking of the theme and some security enhancements that could have been added with an SP3. And if they don't add them in a SP3 then they are intentionally leaving us out to the wolves? Why is this an important question? It is important because XP is by no means obsolete and the vast majority of users have no reason to upgrade. XP is competent enough with today's available resources to last for a good 5 years more. Had Vista come out with some incredibly appealing new technology or technology that would damn those that didn't upgrade I could see people not asking that question.
Microsoft wants Vista so they have more control over your system. How many of you have made it important to let Microsoft know you don't want their DRM infections and you aren't interested in their facilties to keep you from using your computer the way you want? It is your computer. You can write letters, make phone calls, and generally cause a stir if you don't like a feature enough. You should speak up. Vista simply extends on what Microsoft has been doing for some time--making small incremental encroachments into your computer and just biting their tongue until the furor dies down. Then they add a bit more and bite their tongues again.
Vista is their chance to incorporate all that they have done--including the Genuine Advantage Notification program that we all complained about. They are adding features to make content use significantly more vendor protective. We want our content without DRM and without someone spying on us and without accusing us of being criminals because we want to do this stuff our way instead of theirs.
Microsoft has clearly stated that Windows has gone from content creation to content consumption and they are reacting to that. This version of Windows is meant for content consumption and protectionism of digital rights even if it is done in a way that destroys our choice--as most DRM schemes do.
Frankly, I want my computer and its contents protected from the content creators more than I want the mega corps content protected from me. I am not out stealing their content nor distributing it. I don't want protection schemes installed on my computer with or without my knowledge and I don't want it done any more than I would want them coming into my home and monitoring my content consumption. The computer is an extension of my home and not a platform for their content and advertising--that's what Microsoft doesn't understand.
Putting programs like the Genuine Advantage Notification program on people's computer is akin to calling us all thieves and it is a mechanism of monitoring that is prohibited in most forms--how would you like the government monitoring everyone's homes for potential criminal activity by putting cameras in every area of your home or by making you go through regular inspections? How would you like it if every software vendor out there created the same type of protection schemes--now you have 10 or 20 different programs all monitoring your computer use, checking you for theft of their content, etc? That would be like the federal government watching you, the state government with cameras in your home, the county government monitoring you on your property, and the city doing regular inspections of everyone's home at any time of the day or night? Included in this would be the DHS, NSA, CIA, FBI, IRS, and every other government agency being able to monitor you too. By allowing one company to do it--Microsoft--you are allowing everyone else to do it too.
Allowing Microsoft to put such a tool into your computer--as well as other DRM schemes--is doing essentially just that because when you allow Microsoft to justify that behavior/conduct you justify everyone that produces any sort of software to do that.
Why is that?
It is that way because Microsoft is no more entitled to
I have turned off only one special effect in OSX and that is the genie effect. I never turned on the icon zoom and i set the icons in their task bar to be a certain size. That's it. Other than that I keep everything on at full throttle and I enjoy the interface. I do not see Vista as a real competitor to OSX because it just doesn't have the pinache that OSX has. Look at feature additions and software development tools. OSX kicks Vista's butt in that regard.
Also, OSX features can be run on most G3 and up Macs whereas Microsoft's excessiveness in programming won't run AERO in on a video card with significantly more capabilities.
Why can my video card play most of the best games and some of the latest just fine but it isn't adequate for the Vista Aero Interface? What is Microsoft doing to ensure that cards such as the gforce4 ti cards which are 128mb of ram run the AERO interface being that nVidia doesn't provide modern drivers any more? Why is the interface the main selling point behind Vista (along with alleged security that has no promise from Microsoft actually about security) the Aero interface? How can this OS be anything more than just a pig with lipstick? Why try to pull the wool over everyone's eyes with security most commonly found in most other OSes with the AERO interface where the requirements are far too high? How come it seems the programmers don't seem to be writing optimized code to reduce the requirements? Why can't we be allowed for force the AERO interface on and live with the performance issues to our own detriment, if we so choose? Why can't we adjust features to allow us to run portions of the interface?
Vista is just XP with a new interface and security that could have been added to XP with a service pack. Why was XP not good enough? If it is security, what are you going to do for the next two years for XP users? What are you going to do, get the Department of Homeland Security to warn the American public to buy and upgrade to Vista?
Vaporware. It doesn't exist yet. It won't be in production for 10 years. It is a non-product and of no consequence at the moment.
They are not stepping down. That's misleading to say that they are stepping down. What happened was that the Chairperson named Patricia Dunn has simply moved into a director's position and the CEO is taking control of the board. No one else is out except the guy they were trying to find (and did). Nothing he said nor did was enough justify what they did to all those people.
Yes, people are being pursued by law enforcement except you know they are the ones thrown to the wolves that are going to get it not the top level decision makers who instigated the whole matter. I'm sure the guy in charge of their security feels pretty bad that he did his job as the board perscribed it and now he's being thrown out to the wolves. Employees do not just take unilateral action by themselves, they are directed by others above them.
Microsoft has threatened a non-lauch of Vista in the EU if the EU antitrust wins the battle regarding Microsoft's security.
This is Microsoft simply telling them that the EU will loose out on these ficticious 50,000 jobs if they interfere.
It is nothing else.
I can't see how anyone would believe that more jobs will be created. What will happen are lateral moves. Sure there'll be a need to upgrade components to make the OS work at more than a snail's pace but those upgrades are one time things and will not be sustainable growth. Anyone taking even a simple unbiased look at Vista knows this. Vista is just WinXP with a new interface. The security updates could have been added to XP with a SP3. The look of the OS is all they have to sell this thing on. That's not enough. Vista ia pig with lipstick. Basing the sale of a non-necessary upgrade of the OS on the looks of it is litarally pulling the wool over our eyes.
There's no substantial reason to upgrade to Vista other than just to have the latest and greatest. Security could be a reason except that a SP3 could solve that and one must ask the question of whether Microsoft is going to hang XP users out high and dry if they don't upgrade. If they can I'm sure they'll get the Department of Homeland Security to tell everyone to upgrade just like they did with the service packs and patches--which did nothing more than get Microsoft's Genuine Advantage Notification Spyware program installed on their machine.
Any modification to the OS as far as the API goes has to be backwards compatible to XP. If not, then so many programs won't run and it will be a complete turn around of the way upgrades to Windows has been done in the past. The only reason to change that is due to them trying to force everyone to upgrade at the substantially higher price than XP.
Frankly, there's no need to upgrade. There's no compelling reason. All the stuff that was supposed to distinguish Vista from XP has been cut out. The interface change isn't enough. If you want your machine infected with Microsoft DRM madness that's your fault and your choice.
The jobs in Europe will be fleeting. There will be more lateral moves than anything as ppl simply switch jobs from supporting XP to supporting Vista, except you have to keep in mind that most everyone understands that there's nothing in Vista compelling enough to have ppl upgrade. The costs of upgrade for the OS is high (that'll drive people away) and the cost for upgrading their hardware is even more--even on machines less than 2 years old--and that'll drive people away. The upgrade path will be slow and you'll see alot of complaining when people realize they paid too much for nothing significant.
Linux has a long way to go. It is a good OS but there's still the attitude of "you suck because you won't compile your own kernel" attitude. It is still a big turn off for the vast majority of computer uers.
It is a solid OS. It can be customized for a solid and attractive interface. I used it for years. I loved the OS but hated the tremendous amount of time spent just keeping it straight and up to date along with dealing with the zealots that essentially attack people for asking questions. I would regularly read forums and see people attacked from far and wide.
The software just isn't there. Some is, but there's alot that isn't up to speed. Not only that many of those same free (as in beer) are available under Windows as well. I found most productivity applications quite acceptable although somewhat disorganized and counter-intuitive. Not all mind you but a good bit of it.
Gaming is still horrific even with the Transmedia product.
Online updating with yast, apt-get, and such is still too hit and miss--the repository manager decides what to put there and when so you can be left holding the bag if your distro and the repository doesn't contain the correct version.
I loved some of the software that is Linux only and I appreciate the efforts but to mislead so many about how good it is on the desktop. Combined with installation of end-user programs, the lack of refinement in much of the software, the problems with updates over the web, the dependency issues that still persist to this day, as well as the legal issues surrounding issues like DVD decoding, etc., I can't really see them writing articles that provide blanket statements such as Linux is ready for the desktop.
I think the thing that bothered me most was when simple people trying to install and use the products were harshly criticized for just asking questions. If you have ever read the "RTFM" responses you'll know what I mean.
Better end-user package installation that doesn't rely on the web to get dependencies resolved and when the support is there for those who just want to use linux instead of compliling and modifying every little aspect to their liking are treated with respect then linux will be ready for the desktop.
Be depressed at the answer because it is not correct. He's saying you have only rights to the plastic of the CD and nothing else, when clearly it's implicit in the agreement between you and the IP holder that you bought rights to hear the music. He's almost flat out lying to you--or he simply doesn't have enough information or he's not telling you that those issues have not been addressed by the courts. At best, if he is not lying he's misleading.
Of course you have listening rights. You bought the CD with the explict intent of listening. You would not have bought the plastic CD for any other reason. There are both implicit and explict recognition that you have the right to listen.
It's like the lemon laws for cars. If you bought the car, as a normal member of your community does, you bought it for the purpose of driving the car. By his logic you have no driving rights for that car and hence the car dealership has no responsibility to give you a car that actually drives.
There's other governing laws here, but lets just say you are intending to drive it on your farm regardless of what the state may say about them granting you the privelidge. You are still entitled to drive the car even if it is on your own property. The car industry has a lemon law that keeps them from selling you something that isn't suitable for the purpose.
You didn't buy the car to not drive it, as a normal person would. You didn't buy the plastic CD to look at it or hang it on your wall. You bought the car to drive it and you bought the CD to listen to it. IP rights should simply prohibit you from transferring any implicit right to others without the transfer and abandonment of your initial purchase right. In other words, you can't sell the car and expect to be able drive it no more than you should be able to sell your CD and continue to listen to it, unless of course you gave it or sold it to say a roommate or girl friend or something like that were you would have access to it and they gave you permission to listen.
Basically he's talking out his butt. He doesn't know if you have those rights or not and it hasn't been tested in the law as to whether you have the listening rights, but certainly there is fair use and your right to make a copy of the CD for purposes of protecting it.
This is what's wrong with the lawyers. You bought the CD with the implicit and explict purpose of listening to it. This lawywer would have you believe you have only the legal right to the plastic to which it is made. Common sense should appeal to you.
What I'm saying is that he's clueless about what your rights are--nearly as clueless as the person who asked the question in the first place.
I appreciate the time taken by these guys to answer some questions but some of their answers aren't exactly in tune with reality. Of course, some of the answers were literal and it takes a legal inclination to understand why they answered them the way they did. Even so, much of what they answered in terms of your rights as an owner of the CD is not precise and the lawyer is answering as if he's the jury and judge--in otherwords he's experssing more his views than what reality states.
/. more than once direct quotes of congressional (and related to congressional) documents regarding your rights to make backups and fair use.
There has be no jury that has stated that you don't have fair use rights and rights to make backup copies. We've seen here on
What the lawyer stated isn't exactly spot on because he essentially told you that you had the rights to the plastic and that's it. In reality you know, just through common sense, that you have more rights than to just the plastic. That fair use allows you to copy that to your MP3 player, to back up the CDs and to convert them to MP3s if you wish. The only time you don't have these rights is when you acquiesce to some other agreement. If you did not have these rights Apple would have been sued long ago. So would Microsoft (Zune), Creative, and a slew of others. The examples are the same--P2P networks agreeing to 10s of millions of dollars in settlements. The P2P networks didn't legally copy those files to others, the others did that. But the P2P networks had to pay. One could argue that they didn't protect the rights holders, but they didn't pay the money to everyone they paid them to the RIAA. IP is not just tied to the music and video industry.
The implication is that he believe the recording industry and their sponsors have the legal right to put software on your computer without your knowledge and without your ability to remove it "at will". He probably also thinks that they have the right to pop up ads and you have no right to block them.
Bottom line, don't abandon your rights to what a lawyer says even though they may have good intentions. And, also, specifically, lawyers have a bad name because of what they do not because of what corporations do to protect themselves against lawyers. Corporate lawyers are the worst, they make the biggest most extreme non-average-person changes in the law. It wasn't a lawyer like this guy that prompts the RIAA, it is the corporate lawyer.
Settling doesn't deal with the whole problem. It is my understanding that even if he agrees to settlement lawsuits can still be brought against him by the actual copyright holders. In otherwords, the RIAA doesn't indemnify you if you settle it just gets them off your back. Also the terms used regarding P2P are too vague. What I take the settelement to mean is that you are admitting legally that the use of p2p is legally and morally wrong, even tho the use of p2p can still have legal applications.
I'm sure the settlement is more than just money, you have to promise never to do it again or the original suit can be brought back up.
It will be provided in xp and win2k. You'll have alot of pissed off people if they force their market share by limiting technologies to one version of their platform when it isn't necessary to do so.
What is being said in that article is nothing. The bulletted list lists nothing specific that could not have been included in XP. Essentially he's confirming that the 10000 programmers were wasting alot of our time, and theirs. Virtually everything listed could have been incorporated into windows xp and in fact a great many of them probably. The idea that we should upgrade because of dialog boxes or network discovery or ipv6 is downright insane.
99% of the stuff they promised to make into VISTA is gone. The compelling reason to upgrade is because Microsoft will make it non-compelling not to via whatever tactics they can find once they disciver that people are not willing to pay for new dialog boxes and a pretty interface.
Some of the things that guy wrote about in his prior slashdot article are obviously open to personal tastes. I've seen the new interface and I love how pretty it is but the fact remains that Microsoft's programmers don't know how to do 3d code well. They are using features that are unnecessary thus forcing you to buy a newer graphics card. Another major problem lies in that most of the machines that were sold from the likes of Dell (most particularly), HP/Compaq, Gateway, eMachines, etc aren't capable of using the Aero interface, specifically for that reason.
I installed Vista on a geforce 5200 card with 128mb of video ram and the OS refused to enable the interface. On a 6800gt it worked. The point is that even a card capable of playing most of the modern games in the past 3 years won't even display rather minor effects of a glass-style 3d interface which is a far cry from the number of polygons that geforce 5200 card could generate.
The drivers suck for this for alot of hardware. I wound up using old XP drivers because none were provided for components that were well provided for under XP. Copying a file or a series of files takes excessively long periods of time. Wireless cards essentially function a a fraction of their abilities. Any networking seems to take excessively long periods of time.
These are the compelling reasons--you give vendors something more to sell you.
The compelling reason is what Microsoft makes of it. They'll either deny installation of XP on any new box to force vendors to install Vista thus by attrition making it the defacto standard. Or, they'll get the Department of Homeland Security to declare that we need to upgrade to protect ourselves from terrorist viral infections.
I've said this a hundred times now since I looked at the beta of Vista (and the RC1 candidate). Vista is Windows XP with a new interface and that's pretty much it. Any security could have been upgraded in Vista by simply coming out with SP3. What will Microsoft do/say to us all about how good/bad XP is and about it's security down the road? In 6 months when they realize people aren't buying this non-compelling OS, or the new OSes' sales drop off, will they claim that no further enhancements will be made to XPs security?
XP is good enough right now and there is no real compelling reason to upgrade. Microsoft gutted the OS prior to the ship date, and promising us that feature X or Y will be available for download for genuine Vista customers is downright lame. Why would we believe them?
You know Microsoft was sued recently for stealing the IP used to implement the activation features of XP. They were further fined extra due to their abuse of the legal system by burying the plantiff and court in paperwork in an attempt to hide the proof that this guy owned the IP. The fact is, they stole the IP that was implemented to keep you from stealing their IP.
Why would we believe them about anything?
They implemented features into the OS that spies on you. They deceptively included it in the critical update and then tried to manipulate opinion by saying that if it was OK for the European and Asian continents then there's no reason that American's should complain about it.
We are to believe anything they say or do? On top of that they haven't quit. They knew they could ride the storm out and then continue to ship that update in the exact same way.
On top of that they are telling the support groups all around the world that those updates are for security reasons to keep you secure.
Microsoft started that mechanism to keep their revenues high. They wouldn't even pay the guy that invented it. Then they tried to bury him financially to keep from being caught. Then they implement these systems and almost make it mandatory to install. Then they manipulate the public into believing that if the europeans and asians can accept it we should too. Then they tell their support groups all around the world to sell this as if it was critical to security.
This is trustworthy behavior? We should believe them that there are future features that we'll get if we buy now? We should believe them that Vista is secure?
On top of that they have the gall to tell us that they are consulting with Mozilla in order to teach them to be more secure?
I think not.
She knew it and she used the information. Only she could authorize the act from the top. HR departments don't give out personal stuff unless the top bosses say so.
She used the information and briefed the board on the tactics. She could have had her lawyers read the material first and only disclose if the procedures were legal and moral. She chose to use the material even though she knew it could not have been obtained in any other way. In other words, she knew the phone company didn't just give out that information to anyone, and she also had a board member who also was filing lawsuits against those using pretexting methods to fraudulently access his customer's records. She damn well knew what was happening and when. Then she damn well knew that it was illegal when she used the information. On top of that she disclosed it to the board which resulted in Perkin's resignation due to the illegal, unethical, and immoral acts and vilations of board and company procedures and codes of conduct.
Patricia Dunn is a done deal. She's gone. She just won't do it herself and rid HP of her tainted questional moral character. HP doesn't need her in that position. They don't need her at all. There are alot of other good people that can do what she's doing wthout breaking the law, breaching ethics, or acting in an immoral way.
Police can't hire private citizens to do those tasks that the laws prohibit law-enforcement from performing. If they do they become agents of the police and are subject to the same laws. This is longstanding in case law. If anything the question, for me, would be whether this makes those third parties agents of HP, and thus makes HP liable, and whether Patricia Dunn can be held criminally liable for their criminal acts.
Hell, Martha Stewart simply lied and went to jail. Patricia Dunn sanctioned these criminal acts. Even if her involvement was implicit she's still criminally liable because she knew they would not be able to gain access to this information without resorting to criminal activities.
She is a criminal now employed by the corporate foundations. Forever we'll remember HP as a criminal organization instead of the company that was founded for the employees.