darkonc - Slashdot User

Submission + - Microsoft Loses $142M Patent appeal

Submitted by

darkonc

on Monday November 26, 2007 @06:08PM

darkonc writes: "Groklaw points to an article about Microsoft losing their appeal on a $142M patent award. Ironically, Microsoft was found guilty of infringing a patent on piracy prevention.
Also of interest is that, at about 3% of their last quarterly profit, this award may not reportable to the SEC as 'a significant event'."

Submission + - HP: Load Linux, Lose Waranty

Submitted by

darkonc

on Tuesday March 27, 2007 @01:22AM

darkonc writes: "Currently highlighted on Groklaw's newsbytes is an article on linux.com about a woman who bought a Compaq laptop and loaded Ubuntu on it. When, some time later, the keyboard started acting up she called the Compaq for warranty repairs..
"Sorry, we do not honor our hardware warranty when you run Linux." she was told. Even an HP PR rep was unable to "do the right thing" when given a couple of weeks to work on it. It looks like HP could be an especially bad vendor for people hoping to avoid Microsoft's Monopoly Tax on arbitrary machines."

Submission + - NFL Blocks Church Superbowl Parties, Allows Bars.

Submitted by

darkonc

on Friday February 02, 2007 @02:03AM

darkonc writes: "It appears that the NFS doesn't want their fans praying for their teams, but they've got nothing against driving home drunk afterwards.
CNN/Sports Illustrated has the story of the NFL pouring cold water on churchs' plans for 'dry' Superbowl parties . When NFL officials saw the announcement for one such party, they told the church involved where to go with the idea. When the church turned the other cheek and resolved the initial issues (charging for the party and using the 'Superbowl' trademark), the NFL responded with more complaints ("Your TV is too big"). The Church then gave up. The NFL explained that, while it plans to treat all churches in this manner, they didn't plan to take action against bars engaging in similar activities."

Submission + - Vista Beta Users Get First Taste of DRM

Submitted by

darkonc

on Monday January 08, 2007 @02:09AM

darkonc writes: "Some people testing Microsoft's Windows Vista got an unexpected holiday surprise: their TVs stopped working.... Microsoft blames this on the fact that they only licensed the MPEG2 CODED for RC1 until the end of 2006 (Beta users were told that the software was good until April), but even people with third party decoders can't access their content (both live and stored). This is how "Trusted Computing" is supposed to work. If somebody in Redmond (or elsewhere) decides that you can't use certain content, nothing that you try to do should allow you access — Owning the content, or obtaining the rights by some other path, is no defense.

5 million people downloaded RC1, and some have access to Vista Final or RC2 (100K copies downloaded). The rest will have to wait until the end of January to access their suddenly banned content."

Submission + - YouTube Used to Solve Murder

Submitted by

darkonc

on Thursday December 21, 2006 @11:24PM

darkonc writes: "Police in Hamilton, Ont. Canada, say they now consider YouTube to be an effective crime-fighting tool after an online clip led to an arrest in a homicide case. The 72 second clip (removed after the arrest), which was viewed more than 34,000 times, is credited with encouraging a suspect in the stabbing death of a 22 year old man to turn himself in."

Submission + - Microsoft Squeezes Win2000 Users

Submitted by

darkonc

on Saturday December 16, 2006 @10:39PM

darkonc writes: "InformationWeek has a story on how Windows 2000 users are being squeezed by Microsoft as Vista and Office 2007 are being released. While some new software is legitimately unable to run on Windows 2000, other software (like MS' anti-spyware product) will install and run flawlessly — but only if you remove an explicit check for Windows 2000 in the installer.
(( Free software advocates will happily note how their legacy support issues are not necessarily beholden to their original distributor))"

Submission + - "I'd Buy A Mac..." Allchin

Submitted by

darkonc

on Monday December 11, 2006 @02:23AM

darkonc writes: "Groklaw has an article about the second day of the Iowa 'Comes v. Microsoft, Inc., ' class action antitrust case. One of the more interesting quotes from the second day of the case comes out of a 2004 email from Jim Allchin to Bill gates: "I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft.".
I wonder how that one got past Microsoft's apparent practice of destroying all emails as soon as practicable."

Submission + - MS/Novell Agreement Has Trap-Door Clause.

Submitted by

darkonc

on Monday December 04, 2006 @06:40AM

darkonc writes: "Groklaw has an article asking What Happens *After* the 5 Years, when the Microsoft/Novel deal expires? In trying to answer that question, however, she noticed something that may be even more disturbing for CIOs. The deal has what might be called an escape clause — or a trap-door clause, depending on which side of the subsequent lawsuit your company ends up on.
"Microsoft reserves the right to update (including discontinue) the foregoing covenant ....", or as PJ put it, "... one must assume that the covenant not to sue is actually a covenant not to sue unless Microsoft wants to sue. It's up to you whether you find such language reassuring." (emphasis mine)."

Submission + - Bev Harris Has Acknowleded the E&S Software.

Submitted by

darkonc

on Monday November 13, 2006 @07:26PM

darkonc writes: "Bev Harris, in a recent slashdot posting has announced that an acknowledgement of the legitimacy of the files has been posted as a front-page article on blackboxvoting.org. — This should satisfy those of us who (justifiably) questioned a third-party posting about binary files on a recently registered website."

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