Links 19/05/2008: Important Windows Refund Precedence, Unbundling Near?
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2008-05-19 14:23:27 UTC
- Modified: 2008-05-19 14:23:27 UTC
GNU/Linux
- French court orders Windows refund [Not the first time]
In France, it is illegal to bundle software and to refuse to reimburse the customer for unwanted licences, under Article L.122-1 of the French Consumer Code. The Tribunal de Grande Instance ruled that offering an expensive refund option was tantamount to offering no refund option at all, hence finding for the consumer and requiring that Asus stump up.
- Uxi, a Cuban magazine dedicated to Free Software and Open Codes by the University of Information Sciences
- University of Havana Finally Switches to Free Software
- Avnet Electronics Marketing launches complete MicroBlaze Processor Linux Design Solution
- LM_Sensors 3.0.2 Released
- I swear, this is not another Unixfication post
Is Sun talking with Linus about moving ZFS to GPLv2, with the objective of fast tracking ZFS into a native Linux kernel implementation of the file system driver? Or is Linus considering moving the kernel to GPLv3, with Sun doing the same for OpenSolaris? Is Linux and Solaris DNA going to swap much quicker than previously thought?
- AMD FireGL V8600 On Linux
If we would have looked at the FireGL performance under Windows and Linux a year ago, the results would have been vastly different -- Linux would have lagged far behind the Windows driver. With the new OpenGL driver, however, these results are rather pleasing. In 3DS Max and UGS NX tests from SPECViewPerf, the Windows driver had a small performance lead over the Linux driver. However, in the CATIA, Maya, and Pro/Engineer tests, the Linux driver wound up on top.
- Mandriva 2008.1 KDE hits a sweet spot
Ubuntu
- Hate Ubuntu? It's normal!
The fact that many people dislike the top distribution is not really a problem. The problem is that many of these folks are extremely vocal on the Internet to express their opinions. While no intelligent reader will ever take them seriously, they do give the Linux community a bad name and discourage potential Linux users from joining us.
- [Ubuntu] Weekly Newsletter #91
F/OSS
User Security vs. Vendor 'Security'
- Microsoft confirms Windows adheres to broadcast flag
News that the world's largest software maker has voluntarily agreed to help broadcasters control the recording of their shows is bound to outrage enthusiasts of digital video recorders, as it represents the biggest threat to the practice known as time shifting since the FCC's attempt to require flag adherence.
- Microsoft Stockholder? Take Stock in This...
While we are passing along the subject of anti-virus and spyware, let me ask you this. While MS does offer a somewhat crippled product to protect Windows, they push me toward a subscription purchase to get the full monty. Why am I being cornered into purchasing a "fix" for a problem Microsoft created? Shouldn't the full application be offered as part of Windows? Let me ask you this as well. Why should I purchase and use a product that necessitates I purchase and use another product in order for the first product to work the way it is supposed to?
- Hackers compromise Red Cross earthquake relief site
- Spain arrests 'prolific' hackers
Law and Crime
Leftovers
Recent Techrights' Posts
- IBM Starts 2026 a Much Smaller Company (Not Homage to Gerstner)
- People who get bluewashed out of their job (or bluewashed into unemployment) are gagged by NDAs
- Microsoft XBox Having a "Dog Ate My Homework" Moment: No New Console Until 3 Years From Now... Because "RAM Prices"
- Who will ever remember this in 2028? Nobody.
- Gemini End of Year Capsules Tally (Based on Lupa) Shows About 10% Growth
- What a difference a year makes
- Dr. Andy Farnell Explains Why Chatbots Became Dishonesty on Top of Dishonesty (Hiding Usage of Dishonest Salads of Words)
- new article from CyberShow
- Jean-Slop Van Damme and the Art of Bull--- Code
- it's saving neither time nor money
-
- Enshittification of Postal Services Isn't Technological Advancement
- Societies that say the aim is to "go digital" and eliminate paper trail aren't advanced; they're moving backwards
- XBox is Likely Dead Already, But the Threat It Posed to Us All for Two Decades Isn't Over
- "the Xbox was never about gaming and merely served as a test bed for DRM in commodity systems."
- Ahead of 2026 Mass Layoffs at Microsoft the Tree Gets Shaken to See Who 'Falls' (Resigns/Retires)
- "We had a quiet meeting last week about budget realignment. No one said layoffs, but it’s clear where the focus is shifting."
- Almost 6,5000 Pages in 2025, Aiming Higher in 2026
- if we can keep focused, then quantity will increase
- Gemini Links 31/12/2025: New Resolution, Reverse Hexdump, and Programming Languages
- Links for the day
- Links 31/12/2025: Nvidia Faces Bubble-Bursting Moment, Saudi Oil Money Pumped Into Chatbots to Keep the Energy Waste Going (Circular Financing Again)
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman's First Talk in a U.S. College Since 2018
- Greetings from Georgia Tech!
- EPO People Power - Part XX - Why António Campinos Chose to Put His Cokehead Friend on 'Sick Leave'
- EPO Cocainegate will be covered for months to come
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 30, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, December 30, 2025
- Gemini Links 30/12/2025: FreeBSD, Gemlogs, and Xobaque
- Links for the day
- Get Ready for Gigantic XBox Layoffs at Microsoft (Much Bigger Than in 2025)
- he unionisation drive is a sign workers already expect this
- Concern Trolls: Stop Criticising Poor Gerstner Because Now He's Dead. Reality Check: Gerstner Has Found a Trick for Dodging Tax on His Hundreds of Millions in Wealth.
- Maybe even billions in wealth
- Samoa: GNU/Linux and ChromeOS Rose to Around 11%
- based on Web access data from Samoa
- DnD: Debian and Drugs
- There will soon be some interesting new information about Debian
- A Conundrum of Privacy/Surveillance: Will You Give Them a Stool Sample to "Feel Humane"?
- What if skinnerboxes in South Korea also required that people provide urine and stool samples?
- Nope, There's No Twitter "Successor"
- There's a lot of horrible abuse going on in social control media
- A Calm Year in IRC is a Good Year for IRC
- Next year IRC will turn 38 (in August) and in 2028 it'll turn 40, just like the FSF did a couple of months ago
- Slopfarms Covering Up for "Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella" After a Terrible Performance and a Terrible Year at Microsoft
- How to cause many to resign/retire, hence not be counted as "layoffs"
- IBM Was Never Saved, It Has Been a Downhill Journey for Decades Already
- Gerstner wasn't a tech person but a fiscal butcher
- Some GNU Joiners in Geminispace
- Jose E. Marchesi (known for GNU poke and a bunch of other things) adopted Gemini Protocol
- IBM Seems to be Doing to HashiCorp What It Did to Red Hat (Many Key People Leaving)
- "Today marks my last day at HashiCorp, wrapping up an incredibly rewarding 5-year journey"
- State of the Slop, Day 364
- How does Phoronix feel about Google promoting slopfarms that 'rewrite' its stories and slap slop images on top?
- Links 30/12/2025: "Durian Tsunami" and "Unneeded Surgeries"
- Links for the day
- Links 30/12/2025: Social Control Media Detox, Rage Against Slop Wasting People's Productive Capacities
- Links for the day
- Reality Check About IBM's Louis Grestner, Slopfarms Say He Was IBM CEO for 30 Years!
- It is "hallucinating" (lying)
- Debt as the New Currency?
- Rich people get richer because they take money from the rest of us, if not directly then by compelling us (collectively) to borrow money at a national level, then "invest" in them
- EPO People Power - Part XIX - "Berenguer Has Known of Campinos' Substance Abuse First Hand For a Long Time"
- "You rightfully claimed that Berenguer is Campinos' protegee"
- Gemini Links 30/12/2025: Quitting Coffee, Apartment by the Beach, and Strange Retail Ethics
- Links for the day
- Nintendo and Sony Outsold Microsoft XBox by 15:1!
- The mass layoffs indicate Microsoft is aware of this
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, December 29, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, December 29, 2025
- Slopfarm: Firing 35,000 Employee is "Saving the Company"
- "Big Blue" is getting smaller all the time
- Slopfarms About the "Linux CEO" Linus Torvaldos [sic]
- nowadays NVIDIA builds and helps build a giant Ponzi scheme
- Vista 11 is "10" (Ten Percent)
- Some months ago Microsoft openly admitted that it had lost (shed off) hundreds of millions of Windows users
- Dealing With Online Pogroms
- lawfare funded by third parties
- The Year Apple Would Rather Forget
- We await further stumbles and falls from Apple (in 2026)
- "EU's reform agenda threatens to erase a decade of digital rights"
- This is really sad for those of us who spent decades promoting and boosting/advocating the EU
- IBM Layoffs in India, More Coming Soon, Say Apparent Insiders
- Threads regarding IBM layoffs
- Gemini Links 29/12/2025: Earlier "Happy New Year 2026" and "Dead Archivist Society"
- Links for the day
- Links 29/12/2025: Putin Critic Sergei Udaltsov Imprisoned, Cloudflare’s Outages Discussed
- Links for the day
- LLMs Are Inherently Parasitic, We Need to Treat Them Accordingly
- a maintenance burden for those who possess actual intelligence
- Links 29/12/2025: Bottled Water Considered Harmful, Cheetos Promoting Nazis in Europe
- Links for the day
- EPO People Power - Part XVIII - European Patent Office "Paints Itself as Progressive While Literally Being Represented by Cokeheads"
- To what length/s will German authorities and media (not just in Germany) go to protect the EPO's "precious image"?
- What IBM Will Do to Red Hat in the Coming Year or Years
- This won't end up well for GNU/Linux as a whole
- Not Turning in His Grave: When People Die, Their Corporate Destruction Becomes a "Turnaround"
- All he did was mass layoffs - a tradition that has not ended since then
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 28, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, December 28, 2025
- Louis Gerstner Has Died, His Legacy of Mass Layoffs at IBM Hasn't
- Hagiographies will follow. They will say he "saved" IBM.
- Links 29/12/2025: The Sunday Routine, Limits of Memory, and Gemini Vocabulary
- Links for the day
Comments
fruit of the loon
2008-05-19 23:02:34
Roy Schestowitz
2008-05-19 23:09:41
So Fia lore Inn
2008-05-19 23:19:25
It should be argued, at least for PC gaming, they have a monopoly on the desktop with gaming, as most people need to use DirectX properly in order for the games to work. Sure Wine, Cedega, and other projects are making some progress and some games may work, and believe me I try every few weeks to see how it is coming along, but again Microsoft still continues its dirty deeds. They lie about Linux and Windows interoperability, "They said it couldn't be done!" Novell agreement bullshit just like the Corel agreement in 2000 or 2001, where Corel Linux was promptly spun off and money/support from Corel to Wine apparantly dried up. Time and time again they come in and either buy out or pollute the environment with thier proprietary crap, and we read another dismal Microsoft article after article every few weeks or more.
If Microsoft is so devoted to bringing Linux and Windows together, I don't see anything on their vast labrynth of shit at Microsoft.com indicating this. Where is the repository of interoperability Linux and Windows software on Microsoft.com? Oh, but you can still get their bullshit "Facts" on Windows and Linux, and that's about it. At least Google has a repository you can add to your Linux install for software from them. In my opinion, don't think Moonlight ("Ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight? I ask that of all my friends") will last much longer or work well for Linux users should Silverblight (Silverlight) suddenly become popular through payoffs and slight of hand corporate tricks.
If you ever want to have Microsoft come clean, no, I don't believe it would ever happen unless the DOJ finally came down hard and raided their offices, took their hardware and software and forced them to release the code and all of the various undiscovered backdoors waiting to be found, it just won't happen. IMO, Microsoft has demonstrated time and time again it will fight tooth and nail against any punishment against them.
We will all be cleansed if true justice were ever to prevail, but in the "United States of Advertising", most of the people in power are paid off, with big pharma and other corporate overlords always padding the handshakes and votes. It is a lost cause, you know it, I know it, but you'll still piss away your vote to one of the two parties who bend over for big pharma to slide in the money and the overpriced medications pop out the other end as we all struggle under the yoke of this dismal fucking world.
Come clean? Microsoft? The whole system is mired in filth.
Good luck.
We now return you to your normal life, ostrich head in the sand, millions of tokers/beer drinkers who raise their fist while watching Fight Club and return to their soap opera pitiful lives of slavery as the credits roll.
Vote for Wesley Snipes for President in 2008, neither one of the big parties will get anything done, they are a part of the problem.