Never said IE is the best. I certainly agree that other browsers are either more compliant or are working towards getting there. I'm merely saying that IE has its own merits, and deserves its lead ahead of Netscape.
With computer software, there's alot to be said for "It's preinstalled so I don't have to do anything to get it". Otherwise, I'm positive their share would be much smaller.
Nevermind the fact that IE is one of the best browsers out there. It helps when you actually keep adding functionality and streamlining your to your browser, rather adding bloat and commercial addons. I stopped using Netscape as soon as it was clear that there were no significant advances since 4.7 and that they were more concerned with adding a special AIM button to their browser rather than fixing their HTML implementations. Sure, being preinstalled helps, but all in all, IE is a *much* better browser than Netscape (not to mention being the most w3c-compliant browser for the Mac). Microsoft may not have won the browser market fairly, but that doesnt take away from IE's strength.
somebody should go stick that "theme song" up on Gnutella! Tell everybody who has a link on their site to share the theme song out. Hopefully the shame and awfulness of this song will make up fo rhte free advertising they're getting.
You're working at the National Institutes of Health and you don't want there to be bag searches? Can you think of a terrorist wouldn't want to attack there? Do the reports that the capitol is filled with Anthrax not bother you? Let me ask you something: you are working in a high profile government lab dealing with health issues, and you don't want to be hassled with having your bag searched? Sure, fourth amendment and all that, but can you honestly say you would rather trade your bag searches for the possible threat of Anthrax or whatever else the terrorists decide to use next? I know this sounds like trolling, but you have to realize that there is the very real threat of your life being at stake. Who would have thought that software comapnies would have been targeted, but they were! Put your pride aside now, so you can live knowing that nobody is walking in with Anthrax to your very tempting lab.
I think that anybody who champions IBM as one of the bastions of open source amongst real corportations needs to take a good long look at their actions. Is this a company who really supports open source philosophy? Is a patent like this somehow in that same spirit? Or is IBM merely a corporation trying to flag down as many supporters as it can by speaking out of both sides of its mouth?
We can't be pissed that they applied for the patent and still say that they're better than most companies in the computer biz, cause you can't have both. If Microsoft were to release a few open source apps, would that make them an open source friendly copnany? Make no mistake: IBM is a corporation too (a big one at that) and will do whatever it can to increase shareholder value, even if that means switching strategies whenever its convenient.
Watch CNN's special: "Beneath the Veil: Inside the Taliban's Afghanistan". Saira Shah is a freelance journalist who was born in Britain, of an Afghan family. She went back to Afghanistan in order to chronicle the absolute terror that the Taliban is causing. She filmed the story under cover, under pain of death, because the Taliban has forbidden anyone from filming the country. She documents the plight of women who are unable to work or find education or even apply makeup. How do widows survive? They cannot work, so they must beg in an already impoverished nation. Music is banned, and public executions are carried out in the football stadium that the international community built for Afghanistan. Never have I seen such moving footage, and it is deeply disturbing to me that the world community has done nothing about it until now. Unfortunately I can't find a web page on the site that corresponds to this special report, though CNN does have a transcript of a chat she gave in August: click here for the chat. This report is something that everyone must see, and everyone must act on.
Speaking of fanatics, here is a response from Noam Chomsky, an "intellectual" who should have stopped at linguistics. Is "The terrorist attacks were major atrocities." the most he can say about the attack? I think he needs to leave academia and live in the real world for awhile.
vena writes: "CNN reported on television broadcast earlier today that the NSA was now going through volumes of recorded cellular calls for calls made by passengers on the planes. Clear admission." --part of this slashdot article
I know this is a bit off topic, and I can't substantiate it at all, but at one point during the news coverage yesterday, a reporter mentioned that the government will be using a "Black Hole" to capture thousands and thousands of phone conversations and will begin processing them, looking for information. Did anyone else hear/see this report? Is it an admission of Echelon?
I'm sorry that I can't substantiate this at all, but during one of the news reports, a reporter mentioned that the US will be using what he called a "Black hole" that will capture thousands and thousands of phone call conversations which they will then go on to analyze for specific keywords. Did anyone else see this? Is this an admission of Echelon?
Those three things are the best things you can do to ensure a smooth transition for all the students. As an ITA (Information Technology Advisor) at the University of Pennsylvania, I have handled Fall Crush (or Dorm Storm) for two years in a row now. The best thing you can do is to get teams for each dorm together, and get them in a week early so that they can go through training. Teach them how to take apart the computer, put it back together, install ram, ethernet, etc. Give them screwdrivers, cover your ass clips... I mean static clips, and pamphlets with the most common ip addresses (like mail servers, etc) Show them how to set up outlook, install anti-virus, SecureCRT, etc.
The second thing you should do is implement a structure that goes from novice tech support students to medium skill students to paid staff helpers. When the first level person doesn't know how to do soemthing, have them escalate the problem to the second tier. 95% of all problems should be handled by the first 2 tiers. If it is a really difficult or unusual case, escalate it to the staff.
The other part of the structure is to ahve a web site that people can access easily to add themselves to a queue. Give your tech support peeps access to this and use it as a way to get in touch with the cases, make notes about them, and escalate the problem if necessary. Put up posters advertising the website in all dorms and computer labs, and make it the point of contact for all tech support.
I personally think UPenn's model is very good, and apparently they have been voted one of the best Residential Computing services in the nation. For more information, check out http://www.rescomp.upenn.edu Hope this helps!
(here's a hint: make CDs full of essential software (secureCRT, Eudora, Anti-virus, etc) and distribute it to all the students. Also, give out free ethernet cables if you can... it makes everything much smoother.)
Wow, we're hypocritical! It's not Napster that's infringing, it's the users! It's not DeCSS that's infringing, its the users! Prosecute the users, not the code!
One minute its that, now its Microsoft's fault because somebody else wrote a worm for their system. Placing blame where it isn't due doesn't help the matter--even non-monopolistic companies are vulnerable to hacking. Hell, maybe Yahoo!, CNN, eBay and all the other websites dDOSed last year should be held legally responsible for their hacking. Come on, let's try to be adults here.
If the government should sit up and take notice of anything, it should be along the lines of eligible reciver, realizing how vulnerable our country is to electronic attack.
Of course they didn't check up on the article
on
Web Bug Detector
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· Score: 2
That would mean:
a) Michael would actually have to do some investigating b) he would have to use IE.
Everytime something happens with Napster or the MPAA, someone on Slashdot says "well stop sitting there talking about it on Slashdot and actually *do* something! Go boycott them or donate to the EFF" blah blah blah. So maybe instead of just talking about privacy issues or the tyranny of gif patents, Slashdot could actually get off its duff and do it. I know how much time it takes to convert a whole website, but its something that could be done incrementally.
Okay, here seems to be great way to prove that algorithms must be copyrightable, therefore a form of expression. We allow cookbooks containing nothing but recipes to be copyrighted. Where would the Joy of Cooking be if this were not the case? But here's a question: what are recipes? They are merely a set of simple procedures that if followed correctly will produce the desired result (ie a tasty cake). How is this any different from an algorithm? In fact Daniel C. Dennett in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea says
The standard textbook analogy notes that algorithms are recipes of sorts, designed to be followed by novice cooks. A recipe book written for great chefs might include the phrase "Poach the fish in a suitable wine until almost done," but an algorithm for the same process might begin, "Choose a white wine that says 'dry' on the label; take a corkscrew and open the bottle; pour an inch of wine in the bottom of a pan; turn the burner under the pan on high;..."--a tedious breakdown of the process into dead-simple steps, requiring no wise decisions or delicate judgments or intuitions on the part of the recipe-reader. (p. 51)
How can we look at algorithms as any different from recipes? Recipes are valued for their beauty, effectiveness, complexity, and so on. We don't say that recipes are not expressive because they merely state a fact that if you add such and such ingredients and bake at such and such a temperature, you will get a cake. How would chefs feel if their prize winning chilli recipe was deemed not creative or not worthy of being called his expression?
What somebody should do is publish a cookbook that has all of its recipes written in code. You can even add in comments talking about it
/* this is a little thing that I whip up every time my inlaws are in town--*/
This seems to be one of the best defenses of code becuase it makes one form of expression identical to it in nature. How can they then be different?
btw, good thing we can still use fair use excepts from books, otherwise I couldn't have quoted you the passage from the book!
I agree that it is important to bring to light the values that are being implied by the Mastercard commercial (consumerism is good, money == happiness, materialism is a source of happiness, etc) but I don't think that it should be done at the expense of children who did not deserve to lose their lives. Yes, satire is very insightful, and I think this parody shatters the image that mastercard is trying to build, but it is also very unfortunate and disrespectful that it has to be done at the cost of making fun these victims. Just imagine how their parents feel. Or how the families in Oklahoma would feel if it had been talking about the priceless expressions on the vicitms faces as the building blew up on them. Its so easy to abstract this issue away from what really happened -- this article was posted because of free speech and parody vs. copyright blah blah blah. Typical slashdot fare to talk about the technicalities of how something occured rather than dealing with what is important. Nevermind that these CHILDREN are DEAD. Keep posting it! It's free speech.
My friend just upgraded his Mac to OSX this past weekend, and suddenly discovered that his AIM client stopped working. We just assumed that AOL was doing its typical blocking of AIM clones (aren't they supposed to open it up because of their FCC agreement?). The only problem is that as of yet, there IS NO AOL IM CLIENT FOR OSX. My roomate has no problem using AOL's client, but they haven't made one yet for him to use! He's forced to use AOL's java version which is slow and very much on the crappy side. It's ok to protect your network from unwanted outside users, but you gotta support the users you do have!
...does it make sense for the government to make something illegal that it won't be able to enforce? I'm not saying that I'm advocating the willful infringement of copyright, but I am looking at the situation pragmatically and from a purely practical point of view. P2P file-sharing systems will continue to be made, and they'r eonly going to become more and more unstoppable. (again, not a specific wish, just pointing out a fact). With systems like Gnutella, Freenet, and other future systems that will be better written than even these systems, what will happen? It seems to me that eventually it will be impossible to stop or track down these systems, and then what?
If this is to become the case, the government is left with two very clear choices. Either keep fighting these systems in vain and tying up the courts, or create a new conception of copyright. Perhaps copyright will no longer have its meaning. I don't know what the ramifications are for this, and I'm not sure its the best course, but it seems like it could very well be inevitable. Part of the government and supreme court's job is to evaluate the relevancy of laws, and update them to match the times. A perfect example of this is the DMCA, trying to update copyright for the digital age. We all know the short sighted and fair-use problems with it, but the real problem is that it will be obsolete within 5 years. Can copyright survive into the next few decades?
I think I'm getting the idea of this, with the encryption and all, but one thing isn't quite clear to me. Is the reason the DMCA defense seems plausible is because each Aimster account is essentially a closed system? Would this work on a file system where you can see everybody's computers, like on napster? Or does it need to run on a closed system because then you can't just do a search and find someone's files, you'd have to actually target their transfers and try to break the encryption?
Perhaps this tool is what will help the whole peer-2-peer idea gain legality. This tool is technically not doing anything that people couldn't do themselves. If i'm on a windows networking subnet, I can see all the shares just by going to network neighborhood, and if I wasn't on a subnet, I'd just do \\xxx.xx.xxx.xxx and see what they have. The key element in this situation is the Windows Networking, because that is what is allowing everybody to share files in the first place.
The whole situation is akin to webservers and search engines. Webservers serve content, and search engines allow you to find the content. Once you have the link however, it is the webserver software that allows you to access the content, not the search engine. One might say that the difference is that the majority of websites are put up specifically so that other people can download, while sharing is not for internet-wide public sharing. This is true, but not relavent--google catalogues all sorts of webservers/pages that their owners don't want other people to find. (for an example check out their "secret server" faq). In this case, the Sharesniffer software is not involved at all in the file transfer, which is a very different situation from Napster.
Anyway, the reason this might be the turning point for p2p is because for years, millions of mp3s and other files have been illegally copied on college networks, with the full knowledge of the RIAA/MPAA. Windows Networking (and whatever small percentage of Linux Samba that exists on campuses) has been facilitating file transfers and literally nothing has been done about it. If anybody wants to challenge Sharesniffer, they're going to have to tackle windows networking, and Microsoft is not necessarily going to just give in to RIAA/MPAA. Windows networking is too valuable of an asset to the OS to simply give it up. And this may be the first time that Microsoft's lawyers and money may benefit the little people -- they may be the only company who can successfully stand up the RIAA/MPAA.
Distributed.net released today the Beta version of its newest distributed code-cracking project. Code-name Get Lucky, it will help millions of men whose sperm has been encrypted by malicious bacteria. "This is a very important project" the team leader said Thursday, "this isn't just cracking encryption to see if we can do it. THis is a race against time." Apparently the winning team will split a $50 million reward, reportedly sponsored by anonymous sources.
in order to finally come to some decisions about copyright in the digital age. Libraries are *not* going to go out of business, and we are not going to change the system that they have been using for so many years (lending, etc). Therefore, there must be a decision made about this that will legally allow multi-copy useage of material, and perhaps (*perhaps*) this will be extended to other copyright domains.
as preventing confusion among consumers. True, anybody installing a theme/skin that emulates OSX's look will NOT be confused and think that they're actually getting OSX. But that is not the point of Trade Dress.
The Supreme Court has defined trade dress as the "'total image and overall appearance'" of a good, further specifying that it "'may include features such as size, shape, color or color combinations, texture, graphics, or even particular sales techniques.'" Furthermore, evaluation of trade dress infringement claims requires the court to focus on the plaintiff's entire selling image, rather than the narrower single facet of trademark.
The part that I'm concerned about, the selling image, is why I believe Apple has the right to go after these people. True, they are not losing customers to this, but what happens, I believe is an overall dilution of their product. People are buying the cube not necessarily because it's the latest Mac, but because it's a CUBE. I know tons of PC users who want it, and they want it solely for the design of it. Now imagine if three other companies release cube shaped computers. How special will Apple's be? How much R&D will go to waste because you can pick one up anywhere? The same thing goes for the Aqua look. True, there's a whole lot more to OSX than Aqua, but at the same time, its just another aspect of it, and if every operating system looks like it, then its not so special. Aqua's look is Apple's property, and it will hurt sales to have everything start look like it.
Slashdot Mirror
Never said IE is the best. I certainly agree that other browsers are either more compliant or are working towards getting there. I'm merely saying that IE has its own merits, and deserves its lead ahead of Netscape.
Nevermind the fact that IE is one of the best browsers out there. It helps when you actually keep adding functionality and streamlining your to your browser, rather adding bloat and commercial addons. I stopped using Netscape as soon as it was clear that there were no significant advances since 4.7 and that they were more concerned with adding a special AIM button to their browser rather than fixing their HTML implementations. Sure, being preinstalled helps, but all in all, IE is a *much* better browser than Netscape (not to mention being the most w3c-compliant browser for the Mac). Microsoft may not have won the browser market fairly, but that doesnt take away from IE's strength.
somebody should go stick that "theme song" up on Gnutella! Tell everybody who has a link on their site to share the theme song out. Hopefully the shame and awfulness of this song will make up fo rhte free advertising they're getting.
You're working at the National Institutes of Health and you don't want there to be bag searches? Can you think of a terrorist wouldn't want to attack there? Do the reports that the capitol is filled with Anthrax not bother you? Let me ask you something: you are working in a high profile government lab dealing with health issues, and you don't want to be hassled with having your bag searched? Sure, fourth amendment and all that, but can you honestly say you would rather trade your bag searches for the possible threat of Anthrax or whatever else the terrorists decide to use next? I know this sounds like trolling, but you have to realize that there is the very real threat of your life being at stake. Who would have thought that software comapnies would have been targeted, but they were! Put your pride aside now, so you can live knowing that nobody is walking in with Anthrax to your very tempting lab.
We can't be pissed that they applied for the patent and still say that they're better than most companies in the computer biz, cause you can't have both. If Microsoft were to release a few open source apps, would that make them an open source friendly copnany? Make no mistake: IBM is a corporation too (a big one at that) and will do whatever it can to increase shareholder value, even if that means switching strategies whenever its convenient.
Watch CNN's special: "Beneath the Veil: Inside the Taliban's Afghanistan". Saira Shah is a freelance journalist who was born in Britain, of an Afghan family. She went back to Afghanistan in order to chronicle the absolute terror that the Taliban is causing. She filmed the story under cover, under pain of death, because the Taliban has forbidden anyone from filming the country. She documents the plight of women who are unable to work or find education or even apply makeup. How do widows survive? They cannot work, so they must beg in an already impoverished nation. Music is banned, and public executions are carried out in the football stadium that the international community built for Afghanistan. Never have I seen such moving footage, and it is deeply disturbing to me that the world community has done nothing about it until now. Unfortunately I can't find a web page on the site that corresponds to this special report, though CNN does have a transcript of a chat she gave in August: click here for the chat. This report is something that everyone must see, and everyone must act on.
Noam Chomsky on the Attacks Against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
Sick.
I know this is a bit off topic, and I can't substantiate it at all, but at one point during the news coverage yesterday, a reporter mentioned that the government will be using a "Black Hole" to capture thousands and thousands of phone conversations and will begin processing them, looking for information. Did anyone else hear/see this report? Is it an admission of Echelon?
I'm sorry that I can't substantiate this at all, but during one of the news reports, a reporter mentioned that the US will be using what he called a "Black hole" that will capture thousands and thousands of phone call conversations which they will then go on to analyze for specific keywords. Did anyone else see this? Is this an admission of Echelon?
The second thing you should do is implement a structure that goes from novice tech support students to medium skill students to paid staff helpers. When the first level person doesn't know how to do soemthing, have them escalate the problem to the second tier. 95% of all problems should be handled by the first 2 tiers. If it is a really difficult or unusual case, escalate it to the staff.
The other part of the structure is to ahve a web site that people can access easily to add themselves to a queue. Give your tech support peeps access to this and use it as a way to get in touch with the cases, make notes about them, and escalate the problem if necessary. Put up posters advertising the website in all dorms and computer labs, and make it the point of contact for all tech support.
I personally think UPenn's model is very good, and apparently they have been voted one of the best Residential Computing services in the nation. For more information, check out http://www.rescomp.upenn.edu Hope this helps!
(here's a hint: make CDs full of essential software (secureCRT, Eudora, Anti-virus, etc) and distribute it to all the students. Also, give out free ethernet cables if you can... it makes everything much smoother.)
One minute its that, now its Microsoft's fault because somebody else wrote a worm for their system. Placing blame where it isn't due doesn't help the matter--even non-monopolistic companies are vulnerable to hacking. Hell, maybe Yahoo!, CNN, eBay and all the other websites dDOSed last year should be held legally responsible for their hacking. Come on, let's try to be adults here.
If the government should sit up and take notice of anything, it should be along the lines of eligible reciver, realizing how vulnerable our country is to electronic attack.
a) Michael would actually have to do some investigating
b) he would have to use IE.
Two things that the Slashdot crew will never do.
Everytime something happens with Napster or the MPAA, someone on Slashdot says "well stop sitting there talking about it on Slashdot and actually *do* something! Go boycott them or donate to the EFF" blah blah blah. So maybe instead of just talking about privacy issues or the tyranny of gif patents, Slashdot could actually get off its duff and do it. I know how much time it takes to convert a whole website, but its something that could be done incrementally.
The standard textbook analogy notes that algorithms are recipes of sorts, designed to be followed by novice cooks. A recipe book written for great chefs might include the phrase "Poach the fish in a suitable wine until almost done," but an algorithm for the same process might begin, "Choose a white wine that says 'dry' on the label; take a corkscrew and open the bottle; pour an inch of wine in the bottom of a pan; turn the burner under the pan on high; ..."--a tedious breakdown of the process into dead-simple steps, requiring no wise decisions or delicate judgments or intuitions on the part of the recipe-reader. (p. 51)
How can we look at algorithms as any different from recipes? Recipes are valued for their beauty, effectiveness, complexity, and so on. We don't say that recipes are not expressive because they merely state a fact that if you add such and such ingredients and bake at such and such a temperature, you will get a cake. How would chefs feel if their prize winning chilli recipe was deemed not creative or not worthy of being called his expression?
What somebody should do is publish a cookbook that has all of its recipes written in code. You can even add in comments talking about it
/* this is a little thing that I whip up every time my inlaws are in town--*/
This seems to be one of the best defenses of code becuase it makes one form of expression identical to it in nature. How can they then be different?
btw, good thing we can still use fair use excepts from books, otherwise I couldn't have quoted you the passage from the book!
I agree that it is important to bring to light the values that are being implied by the Mastercard commercial (consumerism is good, money == happiness, materialism is a source of happiness, etc) but I don't think that it should be done at the expense of children who did not deserve to lose their lives. Yes, satire is very insightful, and I think this parody shatters the image that mastercard is trying to build, but it is also very unfortunate and disrespectful that it has to be done at the cost of making fun these victims. Just imagine how their parents feel. Or how the families in Oklahoma would feel if it had been talking about the priceless expressions on the vicitms faces as the building blew up on them. Its so easy to abstract this issue away from what really happened -- this article was posted because of free speech and parody vs. copyright blah blah blah. Typical slashdot fare to talk about the technicalities of how something occured rather than dealing with what is important. Nevermind that these CHILDREN are DEAD. Keep posting it! It's free speech.
'nuff sed.
My friend just upgraded his Mac to OSX this past weekend, and suddenly discovered that his AIM client stopped working. We just assumed that AOL was doing its typical blocking of AIM clones (aren't they supposed to open it up because of their FCC agreement?). The only problem is that as of yet, there IS NO AOL IM CLIENT FOR OSX. My roomate has no problem using AOL's client, but they haven't made one yet for him to use! He's forced to use AOL's java version which is slow and very much on the crappy side. It's ok to protect your network from unwanted outside users, but you gotta support the users you do have!
If this is to become the case, the government is left with two very clear choices. Either keep fighting these systems in vain and tying up the courts, or create a new conception of copyright. Perhaps copyright will no longer have its meaning. I don't know what the ramifications are for this, and I'm not sure its the best course, but it seems like it could very well be inevitable. Part of the government and supreme court's job is to evaluate the relevancy of laws, and update them to match the times. A perfect example of this is the DMCA, trying to update copyright for the digital age. We all know the short sighted and fair-use problems with it, but the real problem is that it will be obsolete within 5 years. Can copyright survive into the next few decades?
So when the RIAA banned all those users last year from Napster, it was because they were able to see the actual file transfers in progress?
I think I'm getting the idea of this, with the encryption and all, but one thing isn't quite clear to me. Is the reason the DMCA defense seems plausible is because each Aimster account is essentially a closed system? Would this work on a file system where you can see everybody's computers, like on napster? Or does it need to run on a closed system because then you can't just do a search and find someone's files, you'd have to actually target their transfers and try to break the encryption?
The whole situation is akin to webservers and search engines. Webservers serve content, and search engines allow you to find the content. Once you have the link however, it is the webserver software that allows you to access the content, not the search engine. One might say that the difference is that the majority of websites are put up specifically so that other people can download, while sharing is not for internet-wide public sharing. This is true, but not relavent--google catalogues all sorts of webservers/pages that their owners don't want other people to find. (for an example check out their "secret server" faq). In this case, the Sharesniffer software is not involved at all in the file transfer, which is a very different situation from Napster.
Anyway, the reason this might be the turning point for p2p is because for years, millions of mp3s and other files have been illegally copied on college networks, with the full knowledge of the RIAA/MPAA. Windows Networking (and whatever small percentage of Linux Samba that exists on campuses) has been facilitating file transfers and literally nothing has been done about it. If anybody wants to challenge Sharesniffer, they're going to have to tackle windows networking, and Microsoft is not necessarily going to just give in to RIAA/MPAA. Windows networking is too valuable of an asset to the OS to simply give it up. And this may be the first time that Microsoft's lawyers and money may benefit the little people -- they may be the only company who can successfully stand up the RIAA/MPAA.
Distributed.net released today the Beta version of its newest distributed code-cracking project. Code-name Get Lucky, it will help millions of men whose sperm has been encrypted by malicious bacteria. "This is a very important project" the team leader said Thursday, "this isn't just cracking encryption to see if we can do it. THis is a race against time." Apparently the winning team will split a $50 million reward, reportedly sponsored by anonymous sources.
in order to finally come to some decisions about copyright in the digital age. Libraries are *not* going to go out of business, and we are not going to change the system that they have been using for so many years (lending, etc). Therefore, there must be a decision made about this that will legally allow multi-copy useage of material, and perhaps (*perhaps*) this will be extended to other copyright domains.
The Supreme Court has defined trade dress as the "'total image and overall appearance'" of a good, further specifying that it "'may include features such as size, shape, color or color combinations, texture, graphics, or even particular sales techniques.'" Furthermore, evaluation of trade dress infringement claims requires the court to focus on the plaintiff's entire selling image, rather than the narrower single facet of trademark.
The part that I'm concerned about, the selling image, is why I believe Apple has the right to go after these people. True, they are not losing customers to this, but what happens, I believe is an overall dilution of their product. People are buying the cube not necessarily because it's the latest Mac, but because it's a CUBE. I know tons of PC users who want it, and they want it solely for the design of it. Now imagine if three other companies release cube shaped computers. How special will Apple's be? How much R&D will go to waste because you can pick one up anywhere? The same thing goes for the Aqua look. True, there's a whole lot more to OSX than Aqua, but at the same time, its just another aspect of it, and if every operating system looks like it, then its not so special. Aqua's look is Apple's property, and it will hurt sales to have everything start look like it.