people still need and want small cheap computers and having huge RAM running two or more virtual machines is not small and it’s not cheap. The “proprietary” part kills that
Licensing costs kill the deal on everything from cell phones to supercomputers. If non free software makers could magically reduce their costs to free software levels, people and companies should still avoid it to keep control, privacy and security.
"We [Microsoft] may change or discontinue certain apps or content offered in the Windows Store at any time, for any reason. ... we may refund to you the amount you paid for the license... If the Windows Store, an app, or any content is changed or discontinued, your data could be deleted or you may not be able to retrieve data you have stored. We have no obligation to return data to you."
This kind of language is always in non free software licenses but is rarely reported. People who don't understand the nature of computers and non free software are constantly mislead and surprised. Later reported exceptions for "Open Source" mostly prove the rule. Like Apple, Microsoft will decide what and under what software can be installed on user's computers regardless of what users or developers want.
[Their advertising assault] trajectory continued its inexorable decline and they started tampering with the actual download process, inserting promotional messages and actions which they sold to whoever wanted them. The result today is that many of the packages on Download.com are mediated in a downloader or installer that does things to your computer that you would be very unlikely to accept if they were explained to you first.
Sites like Download.com have long served the interests of non-free software owners by making non free software users more comfortable in slavery and artificial scarcity. Today, every piece of that market is imploding. Free software avoids these problems and is sustainable.
The article revolves around Cisco but the concepts are interesting.
Tens of thousands of children a year and wildlife are needlessly poisoned because one company has successfully fought off reasonable regulation of rat poison over the last 20 years.
The U.S. House of Representatives votes soon on a series of deregulatory bills that, according to the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards (CSS), "threaten vital health, environmental, safety and financial regulations."
The REINS Act would practically neuter already captured regulatory bodies by requiring congressional votes for each new rule change. The Regulatory Accountability Act is actively hostile to environmental and health considerations. The Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act requiring additional and wasteful analysis that effectively eliminate new rules against nasty new processes.
The man who's company once famously called Linux Communist cancer now has lots of good things to say about Communist China. He wants to sell them nuclear reactors with promises that eerily echo Microsoft's software pitch, safe, clean never crashes. What's really amazing is that export restriction alarms are not triggered.
People should boycott big publishers and instead stick to CC and public domain music at archive.org. "Internet radio" providers are under an entirely different screw in the US that makes it impossible to avoid paying fees to big publishers that may never make it to musicians.
"They were talking out of both sides of their mouth," Peterson said. In writing applications for Windows, he said, WordPerfect followed rules set down by Microsoft only to find out later Microsoft took shortcuts to make its products run faster. Asked if WordPerfect developers were adept at following rules, Peterson said, "Unfortunately, yes. They were rule followers."
Writing software to run under Windows is a mistake no developer or company should make today.
I wonder if this is how Microsoft convinced HP not to ditch their "low margin" PC business.
The now-defunct GSP at Wisconsin provided but a glimpse into the workings of an increasingly militarized research university, which is but one of many similar programs wedded to the national security state and its imperial projects.
It's amusing that the leading figure at UW ultimately left due to budget cuts he championed.
many large corporations end up paying far less than the statutory federal rate (so much less that their rates often become negative), ITEP and CTJ now demonstrate that the story is the same at the state level. Their study, Corporate Tax Dodging in the Fifty States, lists 68 Fortune 500 companies that managed to pay no state income tax at all in at least one year during the period from 2008 through 2010 despite posting a total of nearly $117 billion in pre-tax U.S. profits during those no-tax years.
Intel and HP are listed with the worst and Intel is highlighted for having betrayed states that gave them a break or otherwise subsidized. Apple, EMC, Google and Microsoft are called "liars" for obviously ridiculous geographic allocations..
US Cable networks still refuse to carry the network.
This would be a great initiative if lawyers could use their own devices and keep their software freedom. Non free software gives government and non free software owners unjust power over lawyers and the clients they represent. Non free software also has several critical GUI efficiency shortcomings, such as lack of virtual desktops, that will make it difficult to substitute paper. Perhaps this is what HP wants, spy power and lots of extra printing.
an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals will sort out whether the CFAA allows for the federal prosecution of employees who so much as check a ballgame score on a work computer or fib on Facebook in violation of a terms of use agreement...
See, The Right to Read
How to share wifi access with others.
I confess that reading the transcript made me feel profoundly depressed, in that I can't believe they are even arguing over this patent, or that it even issued in the first place. At what point can you patent the application of a law of nature?
Nestlé did not acquire an ownership stake in Prometheus Labs until after litigation started. Businessweek did a story on Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s wife being forced to sell a few thousand dollars in Nestlé stock so he didn’t have to recuse himself. Though the purchase took place in July, it wasn’t revealed to the court until this week that Nestlé was the new owner. Which is chilling, because if there is any company I do not trust with the care and enrichment of human lives, it is Nestlé.
We had no idea about the iPad, nor the patents, and I would consider us to be ordinary observers, and the design we came up with is exactly like what iPad became, including the points discussed above.
Something strange happened to the Crunchpad before it could be launched. That something should be investigated by the inventors for ties back to Apple and Microsoft.
"When you pick these big patent fights, the winners are the lawyers," Schmidt said at the Innovation Convention in Brussels organized by the European Commission."As much as I like lawyers, I'd rather be hiring engineers.
William Patry is no copyright radical. He's the author of some of the major reference texts on copyright, books that most copyright lawyers would have on their bookcases, books like Patry on Copyright. But Patry -- once copyright counsel to the US House of Representatives and policy planning advisor to the US Register of Copyrights -- is furious with the current state of copyright law ...