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Palladium, 'Trusted PCs' in the News
Reuters is carrying a fairly lengthy article on Palladium and 'Trusted Computing'. Worth reading - remember that what the Reuters/AP wires carry is all that most people will ever know about any particular issue.
How does replacing silicon with palladium transform open hardware into trusted hardware?
I'd say that its a pretty good article. I'm not an extremely savvy computer user, especially compared to the typical /. reader. I do know more than my parents and wife, undoubtedly, and think that the article is a fine synopsis of the two sides. It also seemed to give a bit more column space to the critics and talked more about control of your computer and restriction of fair use than the 'advantages' of virus control. It would have been nice to see a link to the Palladium FAQ and perhaps a comment from a critic pointing out that Microsoft's inherent software inadequacies are the root of the problem.
All in all a good article for the masses. Just needs more followup for those interested.
Etc, etc, ad nauseam, and so on and so forth.
The article is much more critical than I would have imagined. I've always seen Reuters as being in the pockets of big corporations like Microsoft, but there seems to be more criticism than praise.
Maybe there's hope for Palladium being struck down after all?
The future isn't what it used to be.
Since when was a two page research paper fairly lengthy? Most English Comp 101 classes require 2+ pages on the first assignment...
I'm not sure if this is a sign of the sad state of popular media, or the sad state of all populus.
I live in a giant bucket.
Palladium involves new security components to be built into Windows, but it also depends heavily on hardware makers--including Intel and AMD--building in Palladium functionality to their products.
And a nice big ad for MS Visual Studio in the story too, how ironic.
As proof, Anderson points to a patent called "Digital Rights Management Operating System," for which Microsoft has rights
One of the first times a software patent might actually be a good thing. At least stifling competition and innovation in this area will give us a chance to focus our efforts on what is inevitably going to be a fundamentally flawed MS implementation of DRM.
Biddle and a TCPA spokesman deny the assertions, saying that no monitoring, reporting or censoring capabilities are designed into the systems, and people will be able to choose whether they want to use the security features, or not.
Talk about bullshit. DRM is useless if the user can turn it off.
To some, the TCPA plan is reminiscent of Intel's proposal in the mid-1990s to put a serial number on its Pentium chips. Public backlash caused Intel to abandon the plan.
Last I checked, the serial numbers are still there, and even though you can turn them off in the CMOS on some motherboards, software can turn them back on, so I hear.
By contrast, in trusted computing, special security chips and other hardware will work with software to verify the source of data and that it has not been changed, and to create safe zones within the computer for storing information.
Talk about a stupid solution to a simple problem. It doesn't require special hardware to protect the integrity of files, just proper software design. The earlier story on microBSD showed an implementation of software based integrity verification.
Technology companies must carefully balance individual rights and corporate interests, says Bruce Schneier, cryptography expert and chief technology officer at Counterpane Internet Security, a network monitoring firm.
Consumers used to vote with their dollars, no "balancing" was necessary. MS is betting on using monopoly power, and ignorant consumers to pull this one over on the public. Educated consumers are a necessary part of the free market, with technology becoming so complex, and specialization at an all time high, this may point to a larger problem, a complete breakdown of the free market, due to the lack of educated consumers.
"Microsoft wants the Chinese to pay for software," said Ross Anderson, head of computer security at the University of Cambridge in England and a renowned software expert.
Yeah, cause we all know those fucking chinks just leech off westerners. That is a pretty controversial thing to tell an AP reporter. To be fair, it was probably taken out of context.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
could be either the salvation of electronic commerce or the bane of consumers, who view the Internet as their digital information playground.
*emphasis mine
I think the implicit meaning here is that consumers think the internet is theirs. when in fact it is not.
What will happen when corporate america convinces the world that it owns the internet?
And to most people, it makes total sense then to ban those anonymous, crime-friendly pc's. I suppose the silver lining is, we could at least free ourselves of spammers. So it's a tough call ;-)
I think it's pretty lengthy, but unfortunately it'll no doubt fly right over the heads of any normal person. If you skim the article you get the impression it's mainly a method for helping users protect their data, and incidentally also helps those poor fellows in Hollywood eak out a meagre living by helping them stop you becoming a criminal...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Is that such a bad thing? You wouldn't see a story that well balanced on TV. TV news offers nothing except one sided stories. Then of course you have specialty news sites like Slashdot or The Register. Can you tell me with a straight face that The Register offers fairly balanced articles?
Reuters, the Associated Press, and local newspaper staff writers are the last bastion of fair reporting. You have to admit that this article was very fairly written. It offered no opinions of it's own, and reported both sides of the argument without trying to say which one was "right". If Joe Sixpack were to read this, he would be free to make his own opinion based on the facts, not have one shoved down his throat. I think we should be thankful that fair reporting still exists in this corporation dominated society.
Exactly how are the Chinese pushing Linux? IBM has invested a billion dollars in Linux development in China (In the form of 4 huge college like development centers).
But China has Sourceforge blocked.
China has Sourceforge blocked.
So China is pushing a non GPL Fork of Linux that we will NEVER see the benifit from except as a retail product from IBM.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
In 1998 during an interview with Money Magazine, Bill Gates said, "Althought three million computers are sold in China each year, people don't pay for their software. They will soon though. They will get sort of adicted to it and we will have to find a way to collect in the next decade."
Needless to say, this is extremely offensive to the Chinese for historical reasons (think Opium War). Lol, between Gates and "Our products just aren't engineered for security" Valentine, I wonder how Microsoft stays in business...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Ugh, Dave, the majority of people who put content on the 'Net are getting their reward: they're sharing their thougths, dreams, ideas, projects, photos, songs, etc. with the world. And the vast majority of them, virally enough, aren't charging for it. Go figure.
Of course, Palladium has absolutely nothing to do with DRM. Microsoft just patented it by accident. And if DRM happens to be built in to your OS, well it's just 'unfortunate'.
Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft are on the steering comittee.
National Semicinductor, Novell, Nvidia and AMD are members along with 180 other spineless companies.
Notably absent are VIA and Sony
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Hey, I'm as much a copyright infringer as the next guy, but if you think war3zing XP is subversive, you're wrong. You want to be subversive? Get regular users up and running with free software--for example, Linux, Star Office, and mplayer (no DRM there!).
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
I give my time to 5-7 different projects at once, most of which have my name on the about dialog or -v switch.
What do I get in exchange? I get hundreds of thousands of programs as part of my Linux distrobution on my server.
Is it a good arrangement? I think so.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
When Microsoft came to talk to us about Palladium, Seth took some notes and did this write up.
-- Are you an EFF member yet?
So, what about the screwdriver-shack white box PCs? Is Intel going to make CPUs only for the new "trusted" computers? If so then will we have only HP and crew to make our hardware? Please tell me VIA isn't on the list. If they are not, then all is ok, we'll still have the DIY computers. I'd take a slow CPU Cyrix/Via made over one that sends my keystrokes to the feds "just in case". And even worse, what if some cool-arse-must-have-new-game comes out that only runs on this new crap from MS. May the flees of a thousand camels come to nest in the genitalia of the people responsible for that mess.
Then again, I'm known for my xfiles style paranoia.
The only serious threat is legislation or legal precedent: if running your favorite OS on an embedded chip becomes defined as "circumvention" under the DMCA, then there is real trouble. But then we'd be heading for the technological dark ages anyway: a DRM world simply cannot support a rapid pace of technological innovation.
It's a bit bland, but that's about all you can expect form mainstream. I just loved this paragraph, though:
"While Palladium is still a long way off, an uproar has arisen over how technologies might be used to curtail consumer "fair use" rights to make personal copies of movies and music and to more tightly control software use."
Why on earth did they put the term "fair use" in quotes? It sounds almost like they're trying to discredit the notion.
Other than this one glaring exception, not a bad piece. Not a good piece, but not bad either.
BlackGriffen
Excuse me, but this "Chinese" that Bill wants to pay for his stuff, does that include the Taiwanese who manufacture half the hardware used to run his stuff?
And what happens when America locks down its computers? Does Taiwan sit back and say, "Yeah, okay" - or do they start building boxes without the Palladium hardware and maybe even their own CPUs and start selling them worldwide (and smuggling them into America will be the next big "Drug War" issue!) and take over the computer industry from Intel? While Linux is taking over the software market from Windows by ignoring the issue?
Go ahead, Bill! Feel free! Don't let the door hit your butt on the way to the poor house!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
IMHO, Microsoft is going to lose with Palladium big time. Consumers, even non-tech savy consumers, don't like crippled products. As soon as Joe User installs a new version of Media Player or what have you, and finds out he can't play his mp3 collection, that software is outta there. Bells and whistles notwithstanding.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
"If we're going to get content on the 'Net, somehow we're going to have to reward the people who put it on there"
Interesting, I thought that the CIC handled that...
Karma: Non-Heinous
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I must have been entirely too used to reading articles on CNN, Salon, etc. which look entirely too much like press releases for Microsoft
Salon?!?
Does this look like a Microsoft press release?
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I see trustworthy computing as a reaction to legislation (DMCA et al) by an industry (technology) that pumps 500 billion dollars a year into the economy.
The industry that is stifleing the tech industy, content producers, is barely a 30 billion dollar a year industry.
The content producers are leveraging legislation to raise their profits at the expence of the technology companies.
That is not legitimate. If the content producers double their profits while the tech industry gets theirs cut in half, the economy has lost 220 billion in revenue.
Kill the computer to save Mickey Mouse.
Bullshit
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
If entertainment is the killer application, and DRM is going to be the critical enabling technology, then the PC has to do DRM or risk being displaced in the home market.
You know what I say? LET IT. Let's face the facts:
PC sales have leveled off. The market is at saturation. There is no "killer app" that will make anyone who does not presently own a PC go out and get one. If they don't own a PC by now, they DON'T want one and nothing will change that. The majority of PC sales are now replacements for existing obsolete/older machines and machines for new population members. It's the same situation the car manufacturers face, and they're used to it. The IT companies are just freaked because it's no longer a growth market and they're having to adjust.
Interactive TV, network appliances, video phones and flying cars. All ideas that sound good and futuristc, all without mainstream acceptance. It is quite possible "The PC as an entertainment appliance" is just as doomed to becoming a niche market as any other anticipated "killer app" that awaits over the horizon.
Tivos aren't exactly flying off the shelves. Yes the Tivo is a neat geek toy. The public at large doesn't care. They already own a VCR.
I don't want to wait for a movie to download that I can only watch on one PC. I want the DVD that I can play in my DVD player, my friend's DVD player or bring it with me and watch it on the TV in my boat.
I don't want to wait for an entire album to download that I can only listen to on one PC. Just like DVDs, I want the actual disc.
There is a place I can already get what I want, and it's nearby where I shop for food and they also sell clothes - it's very convienent, it's called the local department store. If the digital intellectual property the media companies are so interested in protecting was only less expensive, they wouldn't have to worry about protecting it. I'd much rather buy it.
How many people are actively boycotting the MPAA/RIAA because of this shit?
Taken a step further, how many people actually feel good starting up the ol' P2P client and ripping the media companies a new one?
I'm not advocating piracy, what I'm merely pointing out is that maybe the increase in piracy is due to the fact that all this digital rights stuff is making people feel a little bit better about not paying for music and movies. Instead of decreasing piracy, all they (the media companies) might really cause is MORE rampant piracy and the rise of prices of "open" hardware on eBay.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Before reading this article, I knew little about Palladium. Since reading this article, I know little about Palladium. It was a whole lot of nothing. Like .Net, I still don't know what Palladium is, and suspect that I won't want any part of it when I do. It is probably part of the dark conspiracy to spy on us, and bring about the New World Order with things like webcams, bugged ceiling fans,
the V-chip, and mind control software.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Playing music or movies on my PC is a neat trick, but I sure as hell don't need it.
I play movies all the time on my Linux PC with MPlayer. You have to compile it yourself since it's illegal according to the DMCA, but it works great. Try it out. If you want to watch Sorensen-encoded Quicktime movies, Codeweavers' Crossover plugin is supposed to work nicely here.
I also have no trouble playing music (in MP3 or OGG) using any of the countless music players available for Linux. I recommend XMMS the most though.
Switching to Linux doesn't necessarily mean you'll be missing out on anything.
Now the question is if RICO statutes could be applied. Then every one involved with the damn thing could lose big bucks. Really big bucks.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
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It's already begun! http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =2051153825
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
"If we're going to get content on the 'Net, somehow we're going to have to reward the people who put it on there," said Dave Farber
Yeah, this is such a problem. I mean, right now, the Internet contains more content than me or even a large group of people could possibly hope to consume in a lifetime. And don't even start to say that most of the content now is garbage. That's (one) very much a matter of personal taste and (two) ignoring the fact that an essentially infinite amount of good information plus an essentially infinite amount of garbage still supplies you with plenty of good content...and search engines help us tune out the garbage.
media companies complained they wouldn't release high-quality versions of their published content to personal computers because of piracy concerns
Books and movies are available from libraries. I'm sure they hate that too. But I think the reason they complain about the Internet so much is it's an unbelievably large library without even so much as a librarian to regulate the usage of anything. Corporations want to start commercializing the information content of the Internet, instead of settling for selling physical products online. They are blinded by the opinion that if there is a way they can make money, then they have a right to make money that way. Thus they feel we must start to regulate all the information on the Internet. Bastards.
"I like to call this controlled computing rather than trusted computing," said Chris Hoofnagle
I like to call this crippled computing rather than controlled computing.
What may be perceived as minor intrusions in a Western corporate setting might have Big Brother consequences for computer users in countries with more controlled environments like China and Saudi Arabia.
Huh? WTF does this mean? That we can trust the Western corporations not to abuse power? That Western citizens are apathetic to the notion of a Big Brother? Any way that I read this it makes no sense.
"[DRM is] not something that really is part and parcel of what Palladium is," Biddle says, adding that it is related to optional add-on features that customers could elect to use.
This is tantamount to saying here is our new computer product, which you can use with this set of optional handcuffs. Go ahead, try them on, you'll like them. What? You don't want to use them? Hmm. Okay guys, bring in the service pack! Now it's mandatory.
"Security is more social than technical," Schneier said. "There are a lot of good technical controls in Palladium, but it's unclear whether they'll be used to protect personal privacy or limit personal freedom.
Finally someone with a clue. I might add that convincing the general public that the Internet lacks content, that they need Palladium, that they should use the "optional" features -- is all social engineering. There is no technical justification for any of it, but since the gap between someone who understands the true potential of a computer and someone who just uses email is so huge, it may not be that difficult for them to convince Joe User that his computer should be "secured" for his own protection. If people are ignorant of what they're losing, they won't cry foul when they lose it.
*Sigh* Back to searching for the scarce crumbs of useful content on the Internet...
Or rather, they would have created something like Palladium much sooner and/or had tighter control over hardware sooner.
Probably a much worse situation, I would think.
You've made a good point.
Any (IMO) "trusted" security system can be broken, given sufficient resources and access to the hardware. Palladium looks like it'd take the resources of a major nation to crack.
Umm... China is a major nation, y'know.
Most people don't like to read serious newspapers... they don't have enough pie charts and they use big, headache-inducing words like "president" and "Gorbachev." So a lot of people read USA Today or tabloids which use catchy, easy-to-swallow words like "prez" and "Gorby." Those papers dumb the news down and cut out critical information their readers don't want to think about anyway.
A far larger portion of the population gets its news from television, which is not news at all. It's entertainment, soundbites, hype, ads and then one to four sentences about the news. Even the most well-intentioned copy writer cannot encapsulate "Trusted Computing" fairly in four spoken sentences, so everyone who watches the broadcast will be very poorly informed.
Then there's the largest group: the people whose news consists of the watered-down, telephone-game-tainted rumors they hear from the people they know. They don't watch/read the news because they don't want to.
Reuters is often trash compared to the AP or a good newspaper reporter's story, but it's far better than what most people will hear about this issue.
But what about all the well meaning parents that buy the computer for their kids?
"Look honey, we bought you a nice new computer. See, it's got shiny parts and blinking lights, and it even is approved by that nice company that writes our software for us.... what was their name? Oh yeah, microsoft/
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I'm serious, talk to your less-geeky friends and family. This is not a rant. Spread the word in plain english, then the common folk know they don't need to upgrade to an operating system that will simply restrict what they do.
ON the other hadn, that's all you see. The only other thing they have to try to stop the evil pirates is you're not supposed to be able to copy from the iPod to a mac. But that "bug" was "fixed" a few weeks after the iPod debuted.
(Quotes added for the less intelligent among us)
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
We all know it's Al Gore's Internet
No sig for you!!
With all thios effort to constrain creativity and innovation, there needs to be effort and work being done to create laws (plenty of licenses are already available) that protect our right to be creative and innovative with what is the most versatile tool we have yet created, the computer.
The constraints being proposed in DRM and such are a contridiction of such creativity and innovation freedom, not to mention the taking away of far use. But if these constraints are chosen to be applied by such a collective, then as product producers they have every right.
HOWEVER, They DO NOT Have the Right to Suppress Competition for Comsumer Choice. It is wrong to try and shut out open systems which contribute to creativity and innovation, not to mention far use.
I should have a choice, not be forced to buy one or the other but have a choice as to whether I am buying a genuine computer or some constrained to the level of dedicated applicance, device.
These are two different items!!! And it should be made clear, made very clear.
On one hand you have appliances and that which will only run on such appliances. On the other hand, the choice of versatility open for being creative and innovative with, limited only by not being able to access products designed specifically for the constrained appliances.
TWO different general Lines of Products.
One Constrained, the other NOT.
Those pursuing constraints need the hell to stop infringing upon genuine computers system which were here before they came up with a lessor systems. They need to make it clear to the buying public that they are not taking away consumer choice, but making a different product.
The Consumer has a right to have choice!!
Why has this difference not been identified and made clear to the general public?
It seems very clear to me that there is a great deal of consumer deception going on here.
I don't see what the big deal with palladium is. Maybe I haven't become as scared[dual meaning, rule] as your typical /. reader over the years, but I personally have the following view: If MS seeks to control every aspect of the desktop, the masses will rebel. Unless, of course they do it in such a way that a great majority are happy with it. In which case it comes down to best tool for the job. If that's MS, use MS, if that's linux, use linux. If more people just thought that way, instead of MS is evil, Linux is great, or MS is good, Linux is too hard to use... etc. etc. then I think we could put all these wars to rest. It all comes down to that... best tool for the job.
Then again, *nix is an OS by developers, for developers, so I'm just a weee bit biased towards those variants...
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Fails at the first fence. If they're on someone else's computer, they're not his bits anymore...
Cheers,
Ian
Consumers used to vote with their dollars, no "balancing" was necessary
The problem is that the media and some technology corporations (like MS and Intel) are getting laws such as the DMCA passed that make voting with your dollars moot.
If it was not illegal to circumvent digital copy protection mechanisms, then there would be more such programs and devices available, and more people would have a taste of what will be taken away by something like palladium.
As it is, the DMCA makes it difficult to distribute mechanisms to bypass current DRM, so the huddled masses will see less of a difference when palladium arrives on their desktops. Most non-technical users already can't copy DRM-protected materials. Palladium will not mean much difference to them, so why should they bother voting against it with their dollars.
In addition to that, certain content will only be available on palladium, so in many cases, average non-technical users may actually have a reason to prefer it.
Ironically, it may be corporations who end up balking at palladium and potentially turning off some of the "security" features. Companies are likely to be very concerned with the idea of outside organizations having any type of "enforcement" accesss (or any other kind of access) to their computers.
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- SMJ - (It's not just a name: it's a bad aftertaste.)
I speculated about this a bit, and realised that it's probably the same kind of thing that the MPAA is trying to do to consumer home entertainment systems. From what I know, it means that if you choose NOT to use DRM features, you either lose the really high-quality (high-quality as in resolution, not high-quality as in content) stuff, or you are denied from viewing certain things.
[insert witty comment here]
And to most people, it makes total sense then to ban those anonymous, crime-friendly pc's. I suppose the silver lining is, we could at least free ourselves of spammers. So it's a tough call ;-)
It isn't a tough call at all, as there are already ways of freeing yourself from SPAMMERs that don't require you to give up your basic freedoms.
Besides, do you really think Palladium is going to 'free' you from SPAM. Given the track record of Microsoft's email services (hotmail, etc) I think it is more likely you are going to be receiving SPAM adverts from Microsoft "strategic" partners, and perhaps anyone who pays the piper appropriately, and with 'trusted' computing, maybe what won't be trusted won't be the SPAM, it will be the SPAM assissin software that otherwise would have let you filter the crap out of your inbox.
One thing is absolutely certain. Whichever way that particular battle on your Palladium Trusted Computer goes, it won't be your choice. It will be Microsoft's choice.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
actually, no. you can have open source software, you just can't compile and run it yourself. the binary has to be signed by the appropriate authority. this is what is so insidious about palladium. it doesn't stop open source software from existing, it just makes it useless.
The worst of all is that people will be forced to use Palladium or TCPA machines, when laws like CBDTPA (the former SSSCA) will be passed.
Thus, sooner or later, the right to share will be outlawed, and people will no longer be able to "turn DRM off".
When no TCPA-free or Palladium-free hardware will be available and the ISPs will only allow TCPA machines to be connected to the Internet, there will be no alternative.
The worst of all, most of the people are totally unaware that many of their freedoms are about to be stolen.
For an introduction see:
http://action.eff.org/tinseltown/
http://www.eff.org/IP/SSSCA_CBDTPA/
TCPA / Palladium Frequently Asked Questions
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tcpa-faq.html
"The Right to Read" by Richard M. Stallman.
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
(The important thing about this story is that it was written before the DMCA was even proposed!)
"What's Wrong With Copy Protection" by John Gilmore.
http://cryptome.org/jg-wwwcp.htm
$ ifconfig eth1 down
$ ifconfig eth1
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:DE:AD:BE:EF
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x7e00
$ ifconfig eth1 hw ether 00:00:ab:ad:1d:ea
$ ifconfig eth1
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:AB:AD:1D:EA
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x7e00
Everyone needs to start referring to Palladium
as "restricted" computing, rather than "secure" or "trusted". It is more accurate, and will
better serve to explain to people in a word what they are getting railroaded into accepting.
People need to understand the power of words in this battle. This is a battlefield of ideas, and we are losing the battle, because of the massive PR machine of Microsoft and Hollywood.
When laws such as CBDTPA will be passed, you will not be able to "disable" TCPA and install anything but a TCPA compliant OS, like Palladium or maybe some DRM Linux from HP http://cryptome.org/tcpa-rja2.htm
Read the GPL. Yes trolls, whine about the GPL being viral, but the GPL is designed exactly to prevent this kind of things! There's no way anybody can get away with this legally.
The government can use the software internally, but if they want to distribute it, then they must GPL and release the source code of any modified GPL'ed program!
It's like "fair abd balanced story" about, say, KKK. Some things just should be never encouraged.
... the list I think could include just about everyone not a part of that particular fringe) would express their opinion, all against a factual context of what is being discussed.
You seem to suffer from the mistaken notion that 'fair and balanced' must yield an appearance of equal legitimacy, or must include equal promotion of both sides of an issue.
While that is often the case for issues that are complex, or where one side is about as correct as the other, or both sides have good points on some issues, it is just as often not the case for issues where one side is clearly out of social or ethical bounds.
A fair and biased report will allow both sides to express their opinions, with best results achieved when those opinions are set against undisputed facts, or disputed facts with the disputes (and evidence pro and con) clearly presented. Scientific programs on Discovery and PBS often do this quite well.
To use your example of the KKK, a fair and unbiased report would allow the KKK to express their philosophy and opinion, a counter group (the NAACP, the ACLU, or others
Unless the factual data are deliberately manipulated (in which case the reporting is no longer fair and unbiased), in the KKK case they are almost certain to come off looking like the rascist dolts that they are, while whoever is arguing against them is likely to appear to be a saint. Why? Because all of the factual information about humanity, all of the historical information we have, in short, just about anything and everything that could be cited in providing a factual context for the discussion, will almost certainly tend to repudiate the KKK perspective and underscore the opposing perspective.
So, as you can no doubt see, providing fair and unbiased coverage of the KKK is probably the last thing a proponent of the KKK would want to see. Such vermin are certainly no excuse for making an exception in a critical aspect of journalistic ethics, one that already is all too often ignored.
Indeed (disclosure: I am speaking as an athiest) I suspect one of the prominent reasons for the erosion of "fair and unbiased" reporting is that, whenever it is done in a scientific or religious context, some very powerful organizations, and their followers, have their world views challenged and perhaps even debunked when presented in a fair and unbiased manner. Whether it is war time politics, the exposure of monsanto's latest poison in our food chain, or simple religious ferver, I think the political price for fair and unbiased reporting has become the primary cause of journalistic decay, moreso even than the inherent 'decline' of journalistic ethics, if indeed the latter is the case. Of course, something like this is purely supposition, and quickly decays into a chicken and egg argument, but it is a point worth pondering nonetheless.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
1. China may be able to ignore the GPL within their own country, but if IBM or any other company ever offers it as a retail product in a country that enforces copyright treaties, they'll still have to release source under the GPL.
2. Lack of copyright protection cuts both ways. The Chinese may be able to ignore the GPL and not release their source code, but all it takes is one disgruntled coder smuggling their source to a public place. Any such code would be free for the taking; and it'd be completely legal to do so.
3. The Chinese would be foolish to fork their Linux project too far away from the rest of the world. As long as it remains closely related to our Linux, they can take advantage of all of the work being done internationally. Make it too different and they begin to lose those resources. See (2) for why this eventually benefits us.
I think my thoughts on this matter can be described with the following quote.
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that".
I live in a giant bucket.
Where did you get this from? Apple sure haven't gone out of their way to make this position public... I haven't heard or seen a mumblin' word about it. Got a link? I'd be happy to hear it, but I don't believe that Apple has made any such statement.
Well, I was to a Microsoft campus once and saw posters up asking users to please use software to look for culturally offensive words. These posters were being pushed by, guess who? Microsoft China ;)
My point is that Bill's choice of words ("addicted") was far worse that a simple poor choice of words and has really hurt Microsoft in that region with respect to anti-piracy enforcement (that and the fact that they were fighting their bigest anti-piracy case in history when the US accidently bombed the Chinese embassy in Serbia).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
... But the real sea change will come when your age group eventually become managers in significant numbers. I own my own small business and am also an employee of another consulting firm, and we use Linux in both businesses, but my high level of interest in alternative OS's is not all that common for my age group (45). Most just prefer the status quo, if they even care about computers at all.
The good thing is that today's recent graduates have much more of an interest OSS and alternative operating systems, and when they enter management, it will almost certainly coincide with Linux being much more "desktop ready" than it currently is, and this should help the trend accelerate even faster.
By US copywrite law, a fork in a GPL'd application is also GPL'd.
They have passed some intellectual property laws in order to join the world trade organization but have a long history of simply using other people's patents and copywritten works. 4 years of laws do not break 50 years of history.
So they have found another way: They have blocked sourceforge. How do they publish source? Interestingly, IBM's Linux development center is not blocked.
Yes, by copywrite law, any fork of a GPL product is automatically a GPL product. But only by law.
For instance, China is a full democracy by law. But there is only one candidate in any election.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
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The fairness of the article is another story. Was it fair to quote Dave Farber as supporting Paladium,
"If we're going to get content on the 'Net, somehow we're going to have to reward the people who put it on there," ? I doubt it. He's a member of the EFF and no one paid him to put HIS web page up. Yet the article quotes him as above and then mixes that up with Pladium as if it had his blessing.
Is it fair to portray the whole debate as one over "protecting" crap like movies and mass produced music on set top boxes? No, it's not but that's what the silly article does. By confusing many trivial things with more serious issues the article makes it look like free software and privacy advocates are simply paranoid. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The truth is that powerful corporate intersts are proposing the most unAmerican set of laws ever. Paladium and other "secure" computing platforms pushed by law will result in the most powerful censorship system ever devised by any tyrant ever. All future communications will be electronic. "Secure" computing will insure that all electronic publications will be controled. As the means already exist for document control when needed and those means can be used without coersion, the goals of new "secure" computing laws can not be as stated. Journalists who don't realize this have not done their homework and are incapable of presenting anything in a "fair and balanced" manner.
I'm not a consumer, I'm a citizen. Whenever you see an article about "consumer rights" you know the author is an idiot.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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Actually that is a good comparison. When the Social Security Act was originally passed it was against the law to use the SSN for anything else because so many people feared the things that would come from a universal number on everyone. And now you can't exist without one.
This crap will be the same. When introduced it is 'totally optional' and 'totally in the control of the owner.' Five years later, somehow Bill becomes the 'owner' and you can't actually use your PC for much without opting into the DRM. Give em half a chance and most ISP's will be running a new & improved PPP that uses DRM so nobody connect to MSN^H^H^H The Internet without Palladium.
btw, now you DO have to get the kids an SSN or you can't claim them as dependents on your tax return or get them admitted to a public school. I hear the hospitals have to start the paperwork before they can allow you take a kid home these days. So much for optional.
Democrat delenda est