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RE: Big Brother is Real


Günter,

At 09:56 2003-04-01, you wrote:
I missed out on that.. What does sp3 for win2k do?

It opens a back door for MS snooping. DRM indeed!



Btw. I only use amd cpu's. To my understanding they don't have the cpu id (I
don't trust a software that allows me to turn the id of because obviously
software can also turn it on ;)

Pentium IV has dispensed with the CPU ID, too. Bad PR, I guess...



If star office and open office can read/write Micro$oft documents there is
hope, otherwise don't hold your breath. Too much has been written over the
last 2 decades -and stored in word documents-. If you can't open it the tool
can't be used in production environments. If it can, a seamless transition
is possible. I just got a new laptop (birthday) and the first time of my
life I will install 2 (TWO) OS's on it. (you know which ones)

It's a constant battle since MS applications will continue to extend their file formats while giving out specs only under non-disclosure. This forces the Open Source community to reverse engineer the file formats. But they're not cryptographic after all. They're meant to be readily encoded and decoded by software, so it's a manageable problem.


Keep in mind that there's a world outside business, too, where things like TeX, PostScript and PDF are the linguas franca. Many communities either formally proscribe or informally eschew DOC and PPT files.


About the license policies integrated:

I know that's not the right newsgroup and I will be very careful:
The X box has highly sophisticated copy protection integrated in hard and
software. It took a whole half year until it got cracked, but the point is
that it cot hacked.

I think we have to work with the legal system, not try to subvert it. Microsoft has a right to set the licensing terms it wants. We have a right to tell them to go to hell. Currently however, and as you note, the power relationship is highly skewed. It ain't easy to "just say no" to Microsoft.



I heard/read that there are already a wealth of xp versions for download
that have the 'call bill back' inherently disabled. The same is true for MS
software. I haven't the latest statistics at hand, but the private
household; those who made a copy from the office and brought it home for
business and private use, won't pay extravagant prices if this is not
possible anymore. Those will 'get' the grey copies because of the internets
endless sources.

Some OEM versions are also excused from the call-back requirements.



A big problem seems to be the de facto standard of behavior by MS products.
I loved Sun One's debugger since the function keys are identical to Visual
Studio. I love JEDIT since the Ctrl-<char> functions are identical to the MS
way (Ctrl-X, Ctrl-K, Ctrl-V, etc.). If the main competitors can (and no
copyright can forbid that) emulate this functionality/behavior I see hope on
the horizon.

Many high-end applications, even jEdit, have user-configurable keyboard mappings.


In other words: "Have it your way!"


If, lastly Office 11 would not be backwards compatible with their previous
documents, I see the sun rise!

It's still cloudy here.



günter

Randall Schulz



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