Larry’s Last Big Speech

” I have been doing this for about two years–more than 100 of these gigs. This is about the last one. One more and it’s over for me. So I figured I wanted to write a song to end it. But then I realized I don’t sing and I can’t write music. But I came up with the refrain, at least, right? This captures the point. If you understand this refrain, you’re gonna’ understand everything I want to say to you today. It has four parts: * Creativity and innovation always builds on the past. * The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it. * Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past. * Ours is less and less a free society.” [More…]

How downloading Microsoft ‘security updates’ gradually erodes your freedom

Nice piece in The Register. Includes a close reading of the Microsoft fine print, viz:

“You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management (‘Secure Content’), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer. If we provide such a security update, we will use reasonable efforts to post notices on a web site explaining the update.”