Mike Mullikin wrote:

To top it all off, the wife's 4 year old Compaq notebook is toast and I'm seriously considering an Apple MacBook as a replacement. Talk about culture shock!

That's not a culture shock... OS X is Unix too ... :*) M.

Do they both use the virtualization in the newest Intel and AMD processors? IOW. what product do I need to utilize the Virtualization Technology of my Core2 Duo E6600?

Richie308 wrote:

but regarding DRM, I believe that content owners have a fair right to try to protect their property

Sure, but DRM won't help with that. If I can see it or hear it, I can copy it. It's as simple as that. All DRM does is increasing the price of the product for the people who actually pays. And then give them an inferior product that might not play in all their players, and they can't copy to their next computer. Ever since music was first delivered as recordings, it has been legal to make copies for family and close friends. And after some number of years, the recording will be free to use by the public. That's how the laws have been made. DRM is therefore also an attempt at stopping legal copying. IOW (if we limit this to the US, as you apparently are from that country, but other countries might have laws with similar effect, my country, Norway, has), DRM and DMCA prevents legal use and legal copying of copyrighted material. While the people already breaking laws (unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material) won't be affected. So, why is DRM a good thing? M.

Colin Angus Mackay wrote:

So, why don't you complain to the BBC for not being an accurate news organisation then?

I did. As well as to the webmaster of http://www.hopper.navy.mil/ Do you question my geekness? :-D M.

Grace Hopper did very important work. Her FLOW-MATIC language was the first english-like programming language. Most languages are english-like today, but in 1957 it was all machine-code and assembly. So, we can thank her for being able to name variables and use while-loops and such. However, she was *NOT* the creator of Cobol. Cobol was created by the CODASYL committee, of which she was *NOT* a member. She was credited as the "mother of Cobol" by the inventors of Cobol to honor her work. With all the available information online, I find it strange that people don't actually check the facts... M.

> Sure it's only .NET 2.0+WtF What? Do we really need more What The F*ck's in .net?

At this point I think we're pretty much nitpicking each other's arguments. We both see the danger, I think it's more urgent than you to try to stop it. Fair enough. That's not how I perceived you at first.

Christian Graus wrote:

If people obeyed the law, they wouldn't have done it at all.

I don't think this is correct. The record industry could have opened online music stores many years ago. That would have countered the perceived effect of file sharing. And, btw. the link between drop in music sales and increased file sharing is very difficult to find. I might seem like an obvious link, but a lot of people end up buying a lot of music they've downloaded. Whether it's illegal or not, is also up for debate, and at least vary from country to country. But I'll agree that it's immoral, just like most record contracts are. :)

Christian Graus wrote:

I don't think people whining on gnu.org is going to do much.

Oh, come on! RMS wrote Emacs! :) Kidding aside, the GPL, GCC, C-libraries and make-tools from Gnu have made a large impact. M.

Christian Graus wrote:

I still have my VC6 CDs, I will be keeping the CDs of every version I own. Worst case - I go back to the last non-subscription one.

Good plan, except you'll be writing code for what will compare to Windows 3.1 running on what would compare to a pentium with 240MB harddrive. :)

Christian Graus wrote:

But I DO own the Word CDs, and the CD's for every OS from 98 ( I lost the 95 one ).

Read the EULA. You don't really own it. Or at least Microsoft doesn't want you to own it. Same goes for most other companies, btw.

Christian Graus wrote:

So, so long as I have a PC, I can read my Word doc.

There are already a lot of old Word documents that won't work on the latest version. And none of the old versions will support the new XML-format.

Christian Graus wrote:

I have 850 CDs. I do not have *one* that I've failed to rip to mp3 as a backup. Including the ones that say they have DRM.

But of course! What I was pointing out was that the DRM actually removes the error correction on your CD's. So if you're unlucky and get even the smallest scratch, it could be ruined.

Christian Graus wrote:

Ozzy is on Sony, I can't buy his CDs via anyone else.

Well, you got good taste in music. :)

Christian Graus wrote:

They are selling content and locking it because of file sharing.

Nope, they're selling and locking so you can't play on the other guy's player.

Christian Graus wrote:

Wrong. You think that if Microsoft does this, creates a world where the books of the past are lost, that no-one will counter their efforts ? You think they will magically control our PCs so we can no longer write code for them ?

Excellent! But that someone should be us, you, me, the rest of the poeple here. We have to understand the threath and work to reduce it now. When it's too late, it's too late. Sitting back and doing nothing because the warning comes from a nutcase won't do us any good. M.

Christian Graus wrote:

Would YOU upgrade to that IDE ? I sure as hell wouldn't. And that's the point. None of these supposed products would survive in the marketplace. One major reason this just ain't gonna happen.

You wish. But remember the big players in the industry wants a subscription-based model. So that 2010-version of the IDE will simply stop working if you don't pay.

Christian Graus wrote:

How does that make sense ? If I wrote it in Word, I own Word, and I can still run it.

As above. You won't *own* Word. You don't even own Word today. Read the EULA.

Christian Graus wrote:

I buy it all on CD. I have a CD, no-one can take it from me.

Luddite! :-D But seriously, how can you claim this? All the record companies add all sorts of ugly DRM on the CD's these days, creating all sorts of ugly problems. I mean, they actually use the error correction algorithm to try to stop you from making a backup. Now the first little scratch destroys the album. No, DRM and Trusted Computing will make us pay more for stuff we take for granted today. It will lock us to single vendors where a markedplace exists today.

Christian Graus wrote:

The examples you give are silly, and the future vision you have is one that is never gonna happen, because no-one will buy into it.

No-one buying into it? What's iTunes doing these days? Zune? XBox? That future is already here.

Christian Graus wrote:

All of them can be read in 3006, I have no doubt of that.

The ones on paper? Maybe. The digital ones? No chance. Because you don't own it, you just have a lisence to read it. Once or thrice. M.

kulazfuk wrote:

Ridicule? Where? How?

RMS? M.

kulazfuk wrote:

That article was written either by an overly paranoid user or someone who is desperately trying to promote Linux

RMS dislikes Linux as well as Open Source. If you want to ridicule someone, at least get some of the facts straight. M.

Christian Graus wrote:

The tone of the article was building from what it regards as present day evils, and all of them related to software not being open source, and people who create intellectual property getting paid.

The point of the article was the trouble you get in when someone else controls your computer. When someone else can decide what you can do with *your* stuff, the things *you* create. F.x. a document that can't be read next month. Say you've written your code with Visual Studio 2010, and when version 2011 comes out, you just decide to go with Mono, or whatever. But, unfortunately, the code is stored 'safely', and without the key, which your computer controls, you can't read your own code. So it's upgrade or die, basically. Will Microsoft, or anyone else, do this? Well, they're doing it already. Want to read that 5-year-old Word document you wrote? Buy Word from Microsoft. Want to listen to that music you bougth before your computer crashed? Buy it again (http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34523). The format is secret, you have to pay someone to access your own stuff. Unless we, as citizens and consumers, stand up for our rights, someone else will control what we can do with our own stuff. And all the culture we create today will be lost in 10 years. Remember that we can read books that are thousand of years old today. How many of today's books can be read in 3006? M. PS. There's no relationship between 'open source', 'creating intellectual property' and 'not getting paid'. This can be combined in various ways. F.x. Red Hat makes money (open source, creates) as does Microsoft (not open source, creates). Most artists don't (not open source, creates), but the records companies does (not open source, not creates).