The Most Oppressive Clause in Microsoft's EULA...

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democratix

....and typical of proprietary software in general:

*******
* Limitations on Reverse Engineering, Decompilation and
Disassembly. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or
disassemble the SOFTWARE, except and only to the extent that
such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law
notwithstanding this limitation.
*******

In effect:

If you want to get some end-use out of these instructions, you can run
them on your computer, but you're not allowed to figure out what your
computer is doing when it runs them.

Sorry, let me read that again to make sure I understood it...

You are not allowed to figure out what your computer is doing!

.... that's what I thought.

At any time now or in the future that you set your computer to run
these instructions, any parts of that computer which may reveal useful
information about what it's actually doing, become our sovereign
property, and we say you can't touch or look at them.

I hate to break it to the corporations, but it's my computer and I'll
learn whatever I want from it, and use that knowledge however I see
fit. The only reason I bought the hardware in the first place is to be
able to investigate what it does, and manipulate it to my own
purposes, and no one is going to convince me that they own an
instruction. I find it insulting they would even try.

Owning intsructions, ha, how absurd. Next we'll have copyrights that
persist even after the artist is dead.
 
We already have copyrights that persist.

The following is from this site:
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#noc

A work that is created (fixed in tangible form for the first time) on or
after January 1, 1978, is automatically protected from the moment of its
creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author's life plus
an additional 70 years after the author's death.

Rant as you will. If you had created something of value, you would certainly
want to collect a income base on its market value, you might even want your
ofspring to benefit.
 
democratix said:
...and typical of proprietary software in general:

*******
* Limitations on Reverse Engineering, Decompilation and
Disassembly. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or
disassemble the SOFTWARE, except and only to the extent that
such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law
notwithstanding this limitation.
*******

In effect:

If you want to get some end-use out of these instructions, you can run
them on your computer, but you're not allowed to figure out what your
computer is doing when it runs them.
Click to expand...
<snip>

Wow, someone who knows the instruction set for each Intel, AMD,
Motorola, and other processor that has been used in the consumer-grade
computers and can decipher the machine code for the compiled version of
a program. I'm impressed. There's not many Assembler programmers left
and even fewer that read machine code as comfortably and knowledgeably
as they read the newspaper.

And, of course, the politics newsgroups are so very appropriate to this
topic. How come you didn't include a newsgroup that promotes
retroactive abortion (so your parents could correct their mistake, say,
up to twenty years after making it)?
 
go de-evolve in alt.linux, if I wanted to spend my whole damn life
rebuilding my ****ing OS I'd use it more.
 
ever notice that copyrights have not expired for things
,ever since micky mouse was invented and copywrited.

big bussiness has big money for bribes and such.the truth
hurts, doesn't it?

imagine all the anti-spyware company people who would be
going to jail if the spyware scum went after them for
reverse engineering.
 
Spyware may be a poor example. Spyware that breaks the law cannot be
protected by copyright to the extent that taking security measures against
it is illegal.
 
Chuck Davis said:
We already have copyrights that persist.

The following is from this site:
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#noc

A work that is created (fixed in tangible form for the first time) on or
after January 1, 1978, is automatically protected from the moment of its
creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author's life plus
an additional 70 years after the author's death.
Click to expand...

Yeah that was by way of pointing out how absurd I consider the current
state of IP law to be.
Rant as you will. If you had created something of value, you would certainly
want to collect a income base on its market value, you might even want your
ofspring to benefit.
Click to expand...

Sure, and that is an argument for IP laws, but it doesn't address
arguments against them. If there are not arguments against them then
patents and copyrights should last forever. If there *are* arguments
against them they need to be addressed. The argument in this case was
a specific clause that forbids people who may be inclined, from
observing what their own machines are doing, or even figuring it out
from the observed results.

Also it should be noted that the market value of a creation is
inseperable from the laws that artificially restrict it's use. IOW if
the laws weren't the same, neither would the market value be as it's
based on supply and demand, and artificial monopolies affect that
dynamic to the extreme.
 
Hopefully, we all switch to Linux. I see no alternative in fighting the
oppressive Microsoft conditions.
 
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