But I just tryed this with an invalid version of Windows, and no dice.
I just downloaded the MGADiag.exe file from TFA and ran in under wine on Ubuntu. It ran and gave me a hash key, I then followed the steps in TFA and wham, it worked as advertised and I was then "validated" to download IE7 if I wanted to.
What can I say except I'd hate to live in your isolated little made up "omg MS is coming to get me" world.
And I am glad I do not live in your Microsoft apologist world.
No matter what the society turns to be, there'll be always people to build inexplicably complex and ridiculous conspiracy theories that all link to the same "ultimate" enemy.
Who said anything about a conspiracy? MS has been very consistent for more than a decade now about shafting their customers and their "partners". When the US govt. recently asked for user search queries, MS (and Yahoo) handed them over without a thought. Google said "get lost". So, gee, I wonder what company I would trust with my personal data?
Does it make you feel smarter that you saw this intricate plan of Microsoft to ban your blog noone gives a damn about either way?
Huh? Who said anything about a blog? I don't have a blog and don't care to for one.
But it's really not that cool to throw unsubstantiated FUD around as it used to be. We call it trolling, and it's mostly unwelcome.
Unsubstantiated FUD? So it is unsubstantiated that Microsoft handed over customer search queries to the govt. without even trying to fight the request to protect their customers privacy?
You are free to have your own opinion on Microsoft just as I am to have mine. My opinion is Microsoft is a nasty company that has a lot of things for more than a decade not to lose my trust in them.
Of course, if people as a whole acted in an honest manner, none of this would be an issue. But, in the "lala" land that I live on, people aren't.
So you buy in to the FUD/misinformation of the media companies? If so many people are "bad" and no honoring copyright, then why in the world have the media companies been posting record sales, year-over-year?
The truth is, it is the media companies that broke the copyright contract by trying to restrict content further than what copyright allows and by bribing politicians to continually expand copyright terms. If the copyright owners do not want to uphold their end of the copyright terms, then why in the world should the people who use those copyrighted works uphold them?
If copyright went back to a fair system where the terms were more limited than they are now and there was no DRM to try to prevent fair-use, first-sale, etc, I guarantee that "piracy" would go down. People like to spend money, especially here in the USA. There is only so much you can take away from "consumers" before "consumers" find a way around the restrictions.
The technology will not patch plain text content, it'll patch vulnerabilities.
So are you suggesting that vulnerabilities coming in over the web will not be plain text? Did you read the FA? Here is a quote:
BrowserShield, described by Wang as a tool for deleting embedded scripts before a Web page is displayed on a browser, can inspect and clean both static and dynamic content.
Hmm, so I should trust MS to know what content I want them to "clean"? No thanks. MS has a lot to do to earn back my trust and I would bet the same goes for many other computer users.
Of course this is obvious to most people worth a damn out there
That is a great attitude to have. I disagree with your statement. Most people who would use something like this would be the non-techy users, most of which won't know they are using it or what it does. But according to you I guess they are not "worth a damn", eh?
For more than a decade now, Microsoft has show that they just cannot be trusted. Do you work for Microsoft?
DRM is a set of technology which enforces rules governing the access or use of content...
And exactly what is "content"? IMO, content is just about anything on your computer. Maybe in your world content is just what the media companies put out, but in my world, any output from a program is content. Who gets to create these "rules" that governs access to content? We already have _laws_ that govern access to content, those laws are copyright laws and we don't need any arbitrary "rules" on top of copyright laws.
...typically in a manner enforcing a contract previously agreed upon by both parties. Nothing more, nothing less.
Boy, what la-la-land do you live in? Or are you an employee of a media company trying to spread misinformation? DRM is not used how you suggest at all. Go in to a music store and buy a music CD. During that purchase you do not agree to any explicit contract. You do agree to an implicit contract called copyright. However, the way DRM is used on those CD's is to actully break the copyright contract in favor of the content owner by preventing uses that copyright allows such as fair-use, the ability to back up, format shift, etc. I have not seen on instance of DRM being used to only make sure that copyright laws are followed. Every instance of DRM use I have seen has shown me that the purpose of the DRM is to restrict users beyond what normal copyright laws allow.
I have Adblock plus 0.7.1.2 and flashblock 1.5.1 installed with FF 2b2 just fine. Here is how I set it up under Ubuntu.
I moved my ~/.mozilla directory to ~/.mozilla-1.5 and I moved/usr/lib/firfox to/usr/lib/firfox-1.5. I then extracted the tarball to/usr/lib and ran firfox to create a new clean profile. I moved the new ~/.mozilla directory to ~/.mozilla-2.0 and made a symlink ~/.mozilla -> ~/.mozilla-2.0. So if I need to switch back to FF 1.5, I just change the symlink.
I use Google Browser Sync which keeps all my passwords, cookies and bookmarks stored in my GMail account so I just reinstalled that extension and I am back up and running with FF 2b2. Here is the list of extension I have running with FF 2b2.
Adblock Plus 0.7.1.2
Flashblock 1.5.1
Google Browser Sync 1.2.20060802.0
Greasemonkey 0.6.5.20060727
Image Zoom 0.2.6
JSView 1.1.7
MediaPlayerConnectivity 0.6.3
QuickJava 0.4.2.1
StumbleUpon 2.83
The only two extensions that didn't want to install were Greasemonkey and Image Zoom. To get those to install, download the xpi and unzip the contents. Open up the install.rdf file and look for an XML tag that has maxversion. Just increase that to 3.0 or something and put the changed install.rdf back in the xpi. Then just drag-n-drop the xpi on FF and they both will install and run fine.
For MS windows, you can do similar steps. Under Program Files, rename Firfox to Firefox-1.5. Go in your user directory C:\Doucument and settings\USERNAME\application data\ you should see a firefox or mozilla directory. Rename that. Install FF 2.0b2 and run it to get a new profile. If you want to go back to FF 1.5, just uninstall FF 2.0b2 and rename the two folders that you changed above.
Oh, and before you do any of these steps, you should install Google Browser Sync so that all your passwords, cookies and bookmarks are saved in a safe place.
I did mean "I am not into the whole pr0n thing". I have nothing against pr0n being used in marriage. My wife and I tried it a few times, and it didn't do anything for us. It was like we were watching people do stuff when we could be doing the stuff instead:-)
The first-sale doctrine is limitation upon copyright recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1908 and subsequently codified in the US Copyright Act, section 109, as a limitation to which all copyrights are subject. The doctrine of first sale allows the purchaser to transfer (i.e. sell or give away) a particular, lawfully made copy of the protected work without permission once it has been obtained. That means the distribution rights of a copyright holder end on that particular copy once the copy is sold. Originally (back in 1909), the codification applied to copies that had been sold (hence the "first sale doctrine"), but in the 1976 Act it was made to apply to any "owner" of a lawfully made copy or phonorecord regardless whether it was first sold. So, for example, if the copyright owner licenses someone to make a copy (such as by downloading), then that copy (meaning the tangible medium of expression onto which it was copied under license, be it a hard drive or removable storage medium) may lawfully be sold, lent, traded or given away.
You betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what Apple is licencing to you. You are not buying transferrable property, you are paying for a licence.
Apple is not licensing anything to me. The copyright owner is and Apple is just being the medium to facilitate that transaction. What Apple says has no weight on what copyright nor the first-sale doctrine grants. We are still a nation of laws, no matter what big corps my try to make you believe about copyright and/or "IP".
My point, which you obviously missed, remains that you either have to subscribe to it 100% to participate in any way.
No you don't. There are a bunch of different Open Source licenses. Use which one you like. A little more than 75% of Open Source developers feel that one of the GPL licenses are best.
Things are no different in the proprietary world. You either play by the proprietary vendors rules or you don't get to play. The proprietary rules usually include paying a license fee, signing an NDA and other possibilities like maybe not being able to modify the code or even being able to see the code (you only get a lib or something).
You seem to be saying you should be able to license Open Source code for proprietary purposes. Some Open Source projects let you do that (MySQL), however most do not for a reason. It goes against what Free Software is all about. You wouldn't expect to be able to license closed proprietary code and then release the source, so why would you expect to be able to license Open/Free code and then close the source?
No, violent people hurt people. I am happily married so I am not in to the whole pr0n thing. The only pr0n that should be illegal is pr0n of children who are not consenting adults. If two sickos want to shove gerbils up their bums, then that is their right IMO (just stay away from me:). Please stop this dumb mentality that puts the blame everywhere but with the actual criminal. "Violent" pr0n did not make this sicko kill. He killed because his is a sicko. I grew up watching the Road Runner blow up Wile Coyote, and you know what, I have never wanted to go out and blow people up.
As a parent I really feel bad for this women. It must be a terrible way to lose a daughter (I have a daughter). However society cannot just keep outlawing everything just because there was some sicko that committed a crime. There are sickos that have killed with baseball bats, do we outlaw bats? There are sickos that have killed with shovels, do we outlaw them? There are sickos that have killed with cars, do we outlaw them? Etc, etc...
You're not allowed to copy them. You're allowed to back them up...
Exactly how do you backup without making a copy? You are allowed to copy a copyrighted work for _personal_ fair use. Copyright laws prohibit _distribution_. Have you ever heard of anyone being sued for downloading a copyrighted work? No. All of the cases have been because someone has distributed that copyrighted work without permission.
You do not own the song. Can you sell it?
While you do not own the _copyright_ to the song, you do own your copy. Yes you can sell it. Have you never been to a used CD store?
Can you bequeath it to your heirs?
Yes, you can give a copyrighted work that you do not own the copyright to, to an heir. If you owned an expensive painting that is still under copyright you cannot duplicate that work, however you can certainly sell it if it has value or you can leave it to an heir.
It is not property. You own nothing.
It is not property? Hmm, you might want to tell that to all the copyright owners who claim "Intellectual Property" rights. With music you do own that _one_ copy that you purchased and you are allowed to sell that _one_ copy. If you buy two copies, you can sell two copies, etc.
Stop paying for iPods and eventually they'll "stop playing" for you portably.
No they won't because you _own_ that copy. You are allowed to burn an audio CD and from there you can convert to whatever the new audio codec is to work on whatever device you want.
I don't personally buy any music with DRM so I am not saying Apple's method is "better". I am just stating that with Apple and iTMS you actually own your copy and you don't have to pay an MS-Tax/AOL-Tax/Napster-Tax/Etc to continue to listen to your purchased audio.
As a father of 1 girl and 2 boys, I think all sicko pedophiles should go down.
With that out of the way I can respond to your statement:
So how is this different from someone saying "I saw so and so" and ask the cops to come check it out
It is very different. This guy broke in to someones computer. The equivalent would be me breaking into your house and then calling the cops and saying I found child porn, and "come check it out". How would the cops know if I planted it or not? Granted, if the cops find child porn with you in the picture or hard evidence showing that you created the child porn, then the case would be strong. However, what if the only evidence were a few directories of child porn that couldn't 100% be linked back to you? There is a good chance you will be charged and even if you are found not guilty, you can bet your life and career are over.
I hate to see a criminal get away, however that has to be the only option when evidence is obtained illegally. We are a nation of laws. If the citizens are expected to follow those laws, then so too should the law makers and law enforcers.
What is Indix based on? It would stink if Kerala used a poorly done and poorly supported Linux distro. I hope they go with one of the bigger ones with Unicode support like Ubuntu or Fedora. At least that way there is a very large community that can help to make sure that the roll-out in Kerala is as smooth as possible.
Did you happen to look at some of the screenshot of Indix? Take a look here. They look _really_ bad. It looks like GTK 1.x and Gnome 1.x both of which are _very_ old and outdated. Gtk 1.x is really bad compared to the latest Gtk 2.x. Gtk 1.x has horrible font support, very poor copy and paste and tons of other problems from being such old technology. I really hope Kerala doesn't go with some old and out-dated crap Linux.
I agree, why is everyone against software patents except when the judgement is against Microsoft?
Not just Microsoft, but all large companies with enough money to actually change the patent system. See, here in the USA our crooked politicians only bow down to one master. The mighty US dollar (or not so mighty). Mega-corps have enough money to bribe politicians to actually get laws made and/or changed.
I personally hope to see tons of software patent suits against Microsoft and other big corps with a lot of software patents. If these big corps pay out enough money, they might just send some money to our crooked politicians to buy some laws.
The only negative to my "theory" is that I wouldn't put it past the mega-corps to try to "reform" software patents by making software patents available to big corps, but make it real hard for small/medium companies to get them.
Do Asian people work harder because they have a much higher work ethic than Westerners, or do they have a much higher work ethic because the only jobs available for them are ones in which they have to work insane amounts of hours with little pay in order to provide Americans with luxury items (such as iPods)?
This is just silly. Do a little studying of Asian cultures. For example, you will find that for thousands of years, the Japanese have always had very strict (can't think of a better word right now) work ethics. So many of the activities of Japanese culture use to revolve around doing things with a goal of perfection. Even things like the way tea was prepared had a goal of perfection. There are tons of Japanese traditions where it is a "do" or "way of", a spiritual journey. For exmaple, Kyudo (Way of the Bow), Kendo (way of the sword), Bushido (way of the warrior) and Kado (way of flowers). Trying to say that the work ethics of Asians is because of us greedy Americans is just stupid and ignorant.
Your one sided argument makes it sound like you work for the [RI|MP]AA. Not all use of a copyrighted work should be considered infringing. There is something called fair use that lets me use a small portion of a work. For example, I can put a small blurb from the book "Inkheart" in this post:
Rain fell that night, a fine, whispering rain. Many years later, Meggie had
only to close her eyes and she could still hear it, like tiny fingers tapping on
the windowpane. A dog barked somewhere in the darkness, and however
often she tossed and turned Meggie couldn't get to sleep.
The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover
against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages. "I'm sure it must
be very comfortable sleeping with a hard, rectangular thing like that under
your head," her father had teased the first time he found a book under her
pillow. "Go on, admit it, the book whispers its story to you at night."
it's a system fair to all parties
Correction. The system use to be fair. Bribes to corrupted politicians have led to a continual increase of copyright terms. The system now favors the copyright holder in an unfair way. Make copyright 20 years and the I would agree with you about the system being "fair to all parties"
Why nVidia or ATI should bother? The Linux gaming sector is plain dead when compared to its Windows counterpart
Because Open Source drivers for NVidia and ATI on MS Windows would be a good thing as well. ATI has a history of poor drivers. If there were a community effort behind the ATI drivers, I am willing to bet that the issue would have been fixed a lot sooner.
I will have to second this. My laptop has an Intel 915GM that dynamically allocates 8MB - 128MB of memory. I threw in 2GB of memory and don't notice the memory use at all. The card works well under Linux and is accelerated and also works well under XP. Under XP I have been able to play Doom 3, Far Cry and Call of Duty without any issues. I have also been able to play Call of duty and Doom 3 under Linux with no issues. I am not a l33t gamer so this list of games may not be impressive to some. However the Intel 915 has worked well for me for some gaming, 2D use and OpenGL use like stellarium.
especially in the medical area. Pharmaceuticals would be prohibitive to develop (without direct state involvement) without patent protection.
Go do a little research on Google. All the big pharma companies in the USA spend _more_ on advertising than on R&D. If R&D were such a burden to these big pharma companies, why would _all_ of them be spending more on advertising? Also Google for the amount of our tax dollars went toward R&D for pharma through universities/etc that the big pharmas were able to directly benefit from. I think it was close to 50%. The pharma companies have some of the highest profit margins of any industry. If R&D was such a huge part of pharma business, we would not see more spent on advertising and we would certainly not see such huge profit margins.
then use their huge existing resources to cheaply mass produce his invention before he has a chance to make a dime off it.
Exactly how would that happen? Why would the inventor shout from the rooftop all the key details of his invention? You come up with an invention. You start your own company and get VC backing and make them sign an NDA before you give out any details. Or, you take your idea to big companies trying to get it purchased. Again, you get that NDA legal agreement before any details are shown to the big company that may buy your invention.
It is so easy to blame someone else when people fail to keep their system updated and use a little common sense.
I thought Microsoft Windows was "easy to use", "secure" and that it "just works"? If these were true, then why are 87 percent of consumer PCs infected with spyware and
more than half (55 percent) of enterprise computers? If corporations that spend millions on technology and have dedicated admins cannot keep spyware, adware, etc off their desktops, how are consumers expected to? I think the problem is that MS apologists constantly blame every one _but_ Microsoft for these issues. It is time MS is held responsible for their software issues.
IMO, the big problem with Microsofts' automatic updates is that often you will get a new EULA that you have to agree to in order to get the update. I just did a fresh WinXP install that already had SP2 on it. There were a ton of post-sp2 updates and during those updates, I had to agree to a new EULA if I wanted to be patched. It is pretty sad that MS uses their auto update to force users to new licensing agreements.
Doh! I wish you told me this a while ago. I sent an email at work that was meant for certain eyes only. However, after hitting send, I noticed the nice long list of people in the CC: and TO: fields. My attempted recall of the message failed for all but one person. I basically ripped into another programming team for their incompetence. Oh well, you live and learn. Hey and I didn't get fired either!
Slashdot Mirror
WGA seems to be some pretty broken code IMO
Who said anything about a conspiracy? MS has been very consistent for more than a decade now about shafting their customers and their "partners". When the US govt. recently asked for user search queries, MS (and Yahoo) handed them over without a thought. Google said "get lost". So, gee, I wonder what company I would trust with my personal data?
Huh? Who said anything about a blog? I don't have a blog and don't care to for one.
Unsubstantiated FUD? So it is unsubstantiated that Microsoft handed over customer search queries to the govt. without even trying to fight the request to protect their customers privacy?
You are free to have your own opinion on Microsoft just as I am to have mine. My opinion is Microsoft is a nasty company that has a lot of things for more than a decade not to lose my trust in them.
The truth is, it is the media companies that broke the copyright contract by trying to restrict content further than what copyright allows and by bribing politicians to continually expand copyright terms. If the copyright owners do not want to uphold their end of the copyright terms, then why in the world should the people who use those copyrighted works uphold them?
If copyright went back to a fair system where the terms were more limited than they are now and there was no DRM to try to prevent fair-use, first-sale, etc, I guarantee that "piracy" would go down. People like to spend money, especially here in the USA. There is only so much you can take away from "consumers" before "consumers" find a way around the restrictions.
That is a great attitude to have. I disagree with your statement. Most people who would use something like this would be the non-techy users, most of which won't know they are using it or what it does. But according to you I guess they are not "worth a damn", eh?
For more than a decade now, Microsoft has show that they just cannot be trusted. Do you work for Microsoft?
Boy, what la-la-land do you live in? Or are you an employee of a media company trying to spread misinformation? DRM is not used how you suggest at all. Go in to a music store and buy a music CD. During that purchase you do not agree to any explicit contract. You do agree to an implicit contract called copyright. However, the way DRM is used on those CD's is to actully break the copyright contract in favor of the content owner by preventing uses that copyright allows such as fair-use, the ability to back up, format shift, etc. I have not seen on instance of DRM being used to only make sure that copyright laws are followed. Every instance of DRM use I have seen has shown me that the purpose of the DRM is to restrict users beyond what normal copyright laws allow.
I moved my ~/.mozilla directory to ~/.mozilla-1.5 and I moved
I use Google Browser Sync which keeps all my passwords, cookies and bookmarks stored in my GMail account so I just reinstalled that extension and I am back up and running with FF 2b2. Here is the list of extension I have running with FF 2b2.
- Adblock Plus 0.7.1.2
- Flashblock 1.5.1
- Google Browser Sync 1.2.20060802.0
- Greasemonkey 0.6.5.20060727
- Image Zoom 0.2.6
- JSView 1.1.7
- MediaPlayerConnectivity 0.6.3
- QuickJava 0.4.2.1
- StumbleUpon 2.83
The only two extensions that didn't want to install were Greasemonkey and Image Zoom. To get those to install, download the xpi and unzip the contents. Open up the install.rdf file and look for an XML tag that has maxversion. Just increase that to 3.0 or something and put the changed install.rdf back in the xpi. Then just drag-n-drop the xpi on FF and they both will install and run fine.For MS windows, you can do similar steps. Under Program Files, rename Firfox to Firefox-1.5. Go in your user directory C:\Doucument and settings\USERNAME\application data\ you should see a firefox or mozilla directory. Rename that. Install FF 2.0b2 and run it to get a new profile. If you want to go back to FF 1.5, just uninstall FF 2.0b2 and rename the two folders that you changed above.
Oh, and before you do any of these steps, you should install Google Browser Sync so that all your passwords, cookies and bookmarks are saved in a safe place.
I did mean "I am not into the whole pr0n thing". I have nothing against pr0n being used in marriage. My wife and I tried it a few times, and it didn't do anything for us. It was like we were watching people do stuff when we could be doing the stuff instead :-)
First-sale doctrine
Apple is not licensing anything to me. The copyright owner is and Apple is just being the medium to facilitate that transaction. What Apple says has no weight on what copyright nor the first-sale doctrine grants. We are still a nation of laws, no matter what big corps my try to make you believe about copyright and/or "IP".
Things are no different in the proprietary world. You either play by the proprietary vendors rules or you don't get to play. The proprietary rules usually include paying a license fee, signing an NDA and other possibilities like maybe not being able to modify the code or even being able to see the code (you only get a lib or something).
You seem to be saying you should be able to license Open Source code for proprietary purposes. Some Open Source projects let you do that (MySQL), however most do not for a reason. It goes against what Free Software is all about. You wouldn't expect to be able to license closed proprietary code and then release the source, so why would you expect to be able to license Open/Free code and then close the source?
As a parent I really feel bad for this women. It must be a terrible way to lose a daughter (I have a daughter). However society cannot just keep outlawing everything just because there was some sicko that committed a crime. There are sickos that have killed with baseball bats, do we outlaw bats? There are sickos that have killed with shovels, do we outlaw them? There are sickos that have killed with cars, do we outlaw them? Etc, etc...
I don't personally buy any music with DRM so I am not saying Apple's method is "better". I am just stating that with Apple and iTMS you actually own your copy and you don't have to pay an MS-Tax/AOL-Tax/Napster-Tax/Etc to continue to listen to your purchased audio.
With that out of the way I can respond to your statement: It is very different. This guy broke in to someones computer. The equivalent would be me breaking into your house and then calling the cops and saying I found child porn, and "come check it out". How would the cops know if I planted it or not? Granted, if the cops find child porn with you in the picture or hard evidence showing that you created the child porn, then the case would be strong. However, what if the only evidence were a few directories of child porn that couldn't 100% be linked back to you? There is a good chance you will be charged and even if you are found not guilty, you can bet your life and career are over.
I hate to see a criminal get away, however that has to be the only option when evidence is obtained illegally. We are a nation of laws. If the citizens are expected to follow those laws, then so too should the law makers and law enforcers.
What is Indix based on? It would stink if Kerala used a poorly done and poorly supported Linux distro. I hope they go with one of the bigger ones with Unicode support like Ubuntu or Fedora. At least that way there is a very large community that can help to make sure that the roll-out in Kerala is as smooth as possible.
Did you happen to look at some of the screenshot of Indix? Take a look here. They look _really_ bad. It looks like GTK 1.x and Gnome 1.x both of which are _very_ old and outdated. Gtk 1.x is really bad compared to the latest Gtk 2.x. Gtk 1.x has horrible font support, very poor copy and paste and tons of other problems from being such old technology. I really hope Kerala doesn't go with some old and out-dated crap Linux.
Not just Microsoft, but all large companies with enough money to actually change the patent system. See, here in the USA our crooked politicians only bow down to one master. The mighty US dollar (or not so mighty). Mega-corps have enough money to bribe politicians to actually get laws made and/or changed.
I personally hope to see tons of software patent suits against Microsoft and other big corps with a lot of software patents. If these big corps pay out enough money, they might just send some money to our crooked politicians to buy some laws.
The only negative to my "theory" is that I wouldn't put it past the mega-corps to try to "reform" software patents by making software patents available to big corps, but make it real hard for small/medium companies to get them.
This is just silly. Do a little studying of Asian cultures. For example, you will find that for thousands of years, the Japanese have always had very strict (can't think of a better word right now) work ethics. So many of the activities of Japanese culture use to revolve around doing things with a goal of perfection. Even things like the way tea was prepared had a goal of perfection. There are tons of Japanese traditions where it is a "do" or "way of", a spiritual journey. For exmaple, Kyudo (Way of the Bow), Kendo (way of the sword), Bushido (way of the warrior) and Kado (way of flowers). Trying to say that the work ethics of Asians is because of us greedy Americans is just stupid and ignorant.
Correction. The system use to be fair. Bribes to corrupted politicians have led to a continual increase of copyright terms. The system now favors the copyright holder in an unfair way. Make copyright 20 years and the I would agree with you about the system being "fair to all parties"
I will have to second this. My laptop has an Intel 915GM that dynamically allocates 8MB - 128MB of memory. I threw in 2GB of memory and don't notice the memory use at all. The card works well under Linux and is accelerated and also works well under XP. Under XP I have been able to play Doom 3, Far Cry and Call of Duty without any issues. I have also been able to play Call of duty and Doom 3 under Linux with no issues. I am not a l33t gamer so this list of games may not be impressive to some. However the Intel 915 has worked well for me for some gaming, 2D use and OpenGL use like stellarium.
IMO, the big problem with Microsofts' automatic updates is that often you will get a new EULA that you have to agree to in order to get the update. I just did a fresh WinXP install that already had SP2 on it. There were a ton of post-sp2 updates and during those updates, I had to agree to a new EULA if I wanted to be patched. It is pretty sad that MS uses their auto update to force users to new licensing agreements.