Reader's Open Letter to Bill Gates and more

I started work a few weeks ago at a Anglican Church's community centre, in one of Christchurch's poorer suburbs. I am to be the tutor for a class of adult learners and techie for the community centre.

They have five computers, three running Windows 95 and two running Windows 98. It's all kosher, since they got them from a computer recycler I know, which has a charity license setup with Microsoft.

But I tried printing from the three running Windows 95, at differing times, via the printer server running Windows 98. It didn't work. The problem was not in the network, as they could all see one another, the problem was in the way the later Windows product treated the earlier one's print request.

This comes as no great surprise to me, since Microsoft after all has had a settled policy of pushing businesses using Microsoft products off the earlier ones in order to maximize profit. (Which has the effect of pushing these products onto the poorer communities, who after all are the beneficiaries of businesses' donations.)

It is a great PITA, though, because I am now responsible for maintaining those machines, and Microsoft has declared them obsolete. Microsoft understandably doesn't want to spend vast amounts of money on supporting obsolete products. Particularly when the people wanting support can't afford it.

So I am asking you, would you consider off-loading the provision of that support onto those self-same people who can't afford the latest fancy machines to run the latest up-to-date Microsoft Operating Systems.

Yes; that's what I mean - open-source them. That way, you can wash your hands of them, and stop worrying about their support.

What license? BSD, of course. I've investigated the Shared-Source licenses and the Shared Source license for the CLI, C# and JScript looks a little too much like the GPL.

And you have alleged that the GPL is viral, pacmanlike, a cancer. Plus, each of the Shared Source licenses I have investigated leaves Microsoft with too many onerous duties in relation to obsolete End-Of-Line products. Admittedly, the .NET Passport Manager Source Licensing Program doesn't have the non-commercial sort of restriction, but it still leaves Microsoft with far too much to do, and the product in this case is obsolete and End-Of-Line. But since the BSD license has been praised by most Microsoft executives, that should mean something.

The objective is to shift the onus for maintaining obsolete End-Of-Line software products off Microsoft's shoulders onto the shoulders of those still using them. Because this problem is world-wide and it isn't going to go away any time soon.

Sincerely Yours
Wesley Parish

Just wanted to answer your question

"Popular consent is that the spammers then know they've got a live one and so redouble their efforts. It would have been nice to see some confirmation."

YES! Its true.. I setup a spam filter on my exchange server that identified spam, prevented it from entering the users inbox and sends a non-delivery report back to the spammer.

Here's the proof... the non-delivery report has a reply to address of mail-undeliverable-error@gisltd.com, This address has never existed anywhere in our organization prior to setting up the filter. Now every day we receive spam to that address! It started at a couple a week, now at about 10+ messages daily.

Also, I see a lot of harvesting from our WHOIS record for our domain.
Joe

Wendy Grossman is a unique woman (and an American too.) I could enjoy an evening with her as long I had enough of my favorite popcorn.

I think she's an asset to the Inq's reputation, but I wonder how many people will read the entirety of her articles. I suspect too many of the faithful are tech geeks, not politicians, psychiatrists and philosophers.

Usually, after a few of her paragraphs I'm exhausted. But I still enjoy her almost Emmental, and my self-image is always improved. I read her because I'm deep. I'm not concerned about defending my ego because the Inq pokes holes in my Linux. Wendy understands the real issues are government conspiracy and computer take-over. Not megahertz ratings and Intels' continued superiority.

There needs to be more concern for the forces of left-wing takeover, instead of the big issue dissecting benchmark FPS numbers. Misleading discrepancies with FPU capabilities is mindless when storage of data based id continues to consume the ultimate memory bank. No doubt those in the UN would be quite pleased if they read how our world citizens are wrapped up wondering if the Pentium M is really smaller than the Pentium 4.

Even if Wendy is beyond the capacity of most inquiring Inq minds, I intend on continuing to come here to take proper advantage and broaden my horizons. I may not escape inevitable tyranny, but I won't be one of the duped geek sheep either. When the anti-Freedom sits on his throne, transistor count will have become totally irrelevant.

Email address supplied

Re: "Unbreakable" watermark technology to debut

I think there is a strong correlation between this story and the "Unbreakable" watermark technology to debut story. The watermark technology by its self is virtually useless for preventing copying by its self for it needs something else in order to be of any value, software and hardware that responds to its presence and stops people from copying. I think you are right on the money in your belief MS is trying to sneak DRM management onto the masses by requiring retailers to carry only "Designed for Windows XP logo" products.

To be honest I think they are heading down a road that is likely to backfire for both MS and retailers that go along with them. First of all there are so many old computers out there that have virtually no form of control over what they can and can't copy it's not even funny. Along with that there is nothing that is going to prevent people from shopping at stores that tell MS what it can do with its Designed for Windows XP logo program, and since they won't be able to get what they want from the stores that participate chances are they will likely bypass them for the ones that chose not to participate.

Also this will only make more people receptive to looking at Linux as a replacement for windows, and even if the music industry managed to make US distributions carry DRM it will just make people download versions from other countries that don't require it, or cracks that will spring up every where to get rid of it, after all it is pretty close to imposable to lockdown an open source operating system. So any attempt to force DRM on Linux is destined to fail in the end.

To me to be honest downloading music over the Internet has never been that important because MP3's are noticeably inferior to CD's, but screwing around with the audio on CD's might change that. They are always eager to claim that what they are doing is inaudible, which it may be on cheap audio gear and PC's, but I know better. On quality equipment it's a different story and it doesn't really take golden ears to notice. So if they expect me to continue to pay them for CD's they had better start thinking about the people that continue to pay them for them before worrying about the ones that don't since I see little they can really do about it other than piss off every one in the end.

Email address supplied

Re: OSI calls for SCO sanctions

Dear Egan,

Thanks for your article on the OSI paper "OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint".

However, the truth is that myself and a number of Linux developers feel that any piece from Eric Raymond should be handled carefully, and with a truckload of salt. Sometimes, he can do more damage than good with his somehow unrespectful language and the various factual errors in his arguments.

His first rant on the subject, published earlier, suggested that the Court of Utah would not be able to begin to understand the issue at hand. That was insulting towards the Court and would not take a party very far in any lawsuit.

In this new paper Eric Raymond would like to enter the fray as a friend of the Court (¨amicus curiae¨). However, Courts tend to listen to people that are neutral about the issue at hand, and ESR is definitely NOT a neutral person. Also Courts hate to be told how they should rule. But now ESR is even recommending that the Court should punish the Plaintiff!

In few words, ESR´s approach was to first step in a lawsuit where he was not called or needed, insult the Court, then offer a ready-made ruling that punishes the Plaintiff.

Perhaps it would be a better idea if ESR could simply put down his more logical arguments, based on solid grounds, on paper, and send it to IBM's legal dept. And shut up.

I write this because I would prefer this to be a serious lawsuit about IP, and I would hate to see the Court making a mistaken ruling based on a knee-jerk reaction to ESR's paper.

Best regards,
Andrew D. Balsa

PS: I have had in the past to unsubscribe to two mailing lists in which Eric Raymond participated, because he would sign each and every one of his 20-words emails with a paragraph about his political opinions, including the ownership and use of firearms. It seemed at the time he used his aura of Linux contributor to give some legitimacy to his opinions. The truth of the matter, however, is that his single contribution to Linux (fetchmail) is at best marginal, if not insignificant.

Re: AMD claims Intel chipsets cause system crashes

Some information on this:

"The firm did not say which software applications caused the crashes nor did it provide evidence for its claim, but said: "If Intel technology can't handle the needs of today's applications, how will it manage to run the applications of tomorrow?".

A page on its web site captures a screen which claimed that the display device driver "was unable to complete a drawing operation."

I can tell you that the 845G integrated graphics does not work with World War II Online (www.wwiionline.com). Specifically, it does not draw any text in the game, which makes it unplayable. I test hardware configuartions for one of the top three personal computer manufacturers, and I've tested this game with many 845G configurations (hardware and software/drivers), and connot get the game to display text no matter what I try. In the tech support forums on wwiionline.com, this seems to be the only graphics solution that has this problem. The problem didn't exist when WWIIOL used DirectX 7 calls to the video, but started when WWIIOL upgraded to directX 8.1 calls. Intel has been informed of this and has released two driver versions for the 845G since I initially reported it. Neither of those drivers have fixed the problem. I assume that, to Intel, it's either too difficult or too insignificant to fix. The only solution to this problem for players of WWIIOL with the 845G has, unfortunately, been to recommend they "get a real video card".

Anyone wishing to test this can download the full version of WWIIOL from here.

This version is made publically available by Playnet. Since WWIIOL is an online game, the download is only useful in playing in "offline mode". You cannot play in online mode unless you have a registered username. However, offline mode will be evidence of this problem with the 845G and WWIIOL.

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