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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J.B.C. who wrote (263952)	12/9/2005 8:24:19 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572916

"The company's explanation is that their machines contain Microsoft software, which they have no right to make available to state election officials. This seems disingenuous, as it is hard to imagine Microsoft suing Diebold for complying with the law. It would hardly be Diebold's fault if it released MS code to a lawful authority on demand; that issue would be something for MS and North Carolina to work out." This argument is disingenuous for several reasons. For one, WinCE is an OS, the software in question is the application that Diebold wrote. In addition, WinCE is not Windows. Many developers for WinCE have access to the sources, you need them if you are writing a driver. So if the authorities needed access to the WinCE sources, they just register as a developer and they have access too. Microsoft has been really anxious to get developers, so the process is really easy. In fact, Platform Builder, the tool chain needed for compiling the sources was free, at least it was a couple of years ago. As far as Woz's software credentials, he is very good at low level code. Who do you think wrote the code that made the Apple I work? It certainly wasn't Jobs. All of Woz's designs for Apple were a mix of quirky hardware and software, the designer had to understand both.