Jonathan Mills

Microsoft’s Ballmer Touts Vista-To-XP Downgrade Program

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer has a unique sales pitch for the company’s Windows Vista operating system — if you don’t like it, you can turn it into Windows XP.

Referring to Microsoft licensing policies that allow customers who purchase an operating system to legally install predecessor versions on their PCs, Ballmer noted that the program allows customers who aren’t satisfied with Vista to use XP.

“Customers get both,” said Ballmer, during a brief interview at an event Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

Ballmer was responding to a question about whether Microsoft would extend Window’s XP’s shelf life beyond its scheduled June 30 expiration for the broader PC market. The company earlier this week said it would give XP a reprieve for installations on ultra-low cost desktops.

Ballmer implied that an extension for mainstream PCs isn’t in the cards because customers who want XP past June 30 can simply purchase Vista and exercise the downgrade option. “I don’t know how you can do better than getting both,” he said.

Via InformationWeek

shameless.

EFF attacks foundation of entire RIAA lawsuit campaign:

By Nate Anderson | Published: June 22, 2008 – 09:03PM CT

The Electronic Frontier Foundation weighed in this week on the Jammie Thomas file-swapping case, where the judge has asked for public comment on whether just making a file available for download on a P2P network should count as copyright infringement. In its filing (PDF), the EFF goes for the jugular, seeking to show that the RIAA’s entire approach to file-swapping cases is flawed.

from the article:

So RIAA investigators just have to download the file instead of peeking into a shared folder, right? Sure, it’s a bit more resource intensive, but it’s not big deal.

Not quite, says the EFF in its brief; downloads by MediaSentry and other investigators don’t count, either.

“It is axiomatic that a copyright owner cannot infringe her own copyright,” says the brief in its concluding section. “By the same token, an authorized agent acting on behalf of the copyright owner also cannot infringe any rights held by that owner. Accordingly, where the only evidence of infringing distribution consists of distributions to authorized agents of the copyright owner, that evidence cannot, by itself, establish that other, unauthorized distributions have taken place.”

OUCH

Everything you were afraid to ask about “Donnie Darko”

With the release of the new director’s cut, there are even more questions about the 2001 cult fave. Who’s the fat guy in the track suit? What’s with the 6-foot rabbit? We answer them all.

Via Salon.com
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