The computer market Permanent link to this item in the archive.

There's a news story that Microsoft is being sued over Windows Genuine Advantage. The issue at hand is that WGA is installed without giving the users a chance to make an informed choice about the installation (I don't even know if the user gets a chance to decline it) and does not disclose that it "phones home" with identifying computer information, to which the suit calls the app spyware. That's quite a stretch, but it's just another attempt to try a solidify some user rights into computing.

The problem with the legal battle today is that the majority still see a computer as just another tool for business. But they have become essential tools -- computers are now just as much a location of business as any physical one. Would you set up shop in a mall where the owners could make any modification to your space as they saw fit, without your consent? Would a lease like that even be legal? Doubtful... lease law is a beastly sum of obligations and requirements to ideally)protect both sides. The same kind of attention will be applied to the software space soon enough.

Software's going to go through a lot in the next 5 - 10 years, and I expect some massive regulation at the end of it. The irony of it all is that this is occuring right around the time when Web 2.0 is highlighting a strong client/server-inspired future, where apps run on the host and your computer is just a terminal to it. Unless we're luckly and these laws are written with foresight, by the time we get full control of our hardware, all the apps for it will be running on someone else's.

I was a bit surprised last night to find that Uncabled had gotten comment spam, even with CAPTCHA turned on. What's the next step in combating spam? And can we do it without damaging accessibility even further? (My guess is no.) Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Hmmm... when I select the "Today" view for my Lotus Notes email, I see messages dating all the way back to May, 2005. To quote the Princess Bride, "I do not think that word means what you think it means." Permanent link to this item in the archive.