Monday, March 10, 2003

Real Irony: Gates & IP protection Microsoft and Intel have set on a course to release a version of the Windows platform that allows for Big Media to control what we do with the content we buy. It will give them the ability to take away our "Fair Use" rights. They will claim that it is all about Intellectual Property and Copyright, but the truth is, that it's really all about maintaining a cash cow. It's about protecting a business model that died two years ago, it's just taking a long time for the signal to reach the industries brain. You have to find it ironic, that the entire Bill Gates empire is based on one thing: Intellectual Property theft. You may have heard the story of how Gary Kidall's ex-wife, and business partner threw out the IBM suits over their request that she sign a (then rare, now common) non-disclosure agreement. IBM went back to Bill Gates and asked him if he had an OS they could use, he said yes even though he didn't (you have to love the audacity of Gates to lie to IBM). So Bill went off and bought QDOS from Seattle Computer Products. Where did SCP get the software from? They claimed that one of their employees, Tim Paterson, wrote it. In six weeks... That's pretty amazing considering that it took Kidall three years to write CP/M! For proof of the fact that Peterson stole the code look no further then the fact that the first 36 DOS system calls mirror the original CP/M calls EXACTLY. Nearly 20 years after the fact, Caldera (the last owner of CP/M) won an out of court settlement from Microsoft over that theft, too little, too late. "Ask Bill (Gates) why the string in function 9 (in DOS) is terminated by a dollar sign. Ask him, because he can't answer. Only I know that". -- Gary Kildall (1942-1994) Kidall died in a seedy bar on July 8, 1994 of a massive heart attack. He died a broken man, still believing that his ex-wife and Gates had denied him his destiny...mj 12:24:55 PM

radio beowulf
jardeen.com
my world
my art
my quotes
macandy
macslug
beowulf design
email me

categories
rant, rattle & roll
mac, x and me
one OS to rule them all!

themes
beowulf themes

blogrolling
paul andrews
scripting news
adam curry
doc searls
phil wolff
chris pirillo
wil wheaton
u2 log

misc links
macintouch
macsurfer
macfixit
digital blasphemy
ars technica



cool links
belle and blade
quarlo -- photos ny city
sftv schedule
'24' episode guide
ellis island
eef
anti-dmca
Sincere Choice
jakob nielsen
michael moore