29 July 2005 - charged information

Jay Scott : Daily Whale : archive : 2005 : 29 July 2005

Official Attitudes, or, Charged Particulars

Information may want to be free, but it certainly wants to be charged. For positive information, Microsoft will charge you money, and for negative information, Cisco will charge you with crimes. Linux is neutral, uncharged information, so it passes through without comment.

clue:

References are to the “Windows Genuine Advantage” licensing program, where Microsoft makes sure you’ve paid up (which is genuinely to their advantage), and to an incident of Cisco legally attacking a security researcher who pointed out flaws. I have truly marvellous details of the latter, but they are too amazing to fit in this margin.

take oh take this clue away