I always leave my WAPs open for this simple reason: the downsides of securing are much higher than the upsides. If I don't secure, what might I lose? 802.11 is pretty constrained geographically, and as long as people don't cause me to lose performance when I am connected to it, who cares. On the other hand, if I secure the dumb thing, everytime I take my laptop somewhere else, I have to reconfigure, along with lots of other junk. In essence, the cost of having it secured is very high, for very low in return.
If I read the article correctly, they are not saying they like efax.com. Rather they are saying that the rules are so broad that if you dial a wrong number, you could be sued too. That's why they mention, towards the end, about the FCC rule that you have to have written permission to fax someone (and how do you get the written permission? Hey fax it... oh wait) Maybe I'm being too soft of them though.
It is my understanding that if you publish something (ie, in a trade journal or such), it becomes part of the public domain. It then cannot be patented by anyone.
I completely agree with this statement, but would like to add one other point. If I am given the choice between a free, illegal copy, and a legal copy which has a low cost, I will pay for the legal version, without any enforcement. Maybe I'm nieve, but I believe most people are the same way. This is the model shareware always worked under. You could always get software for free and not license it, but it was technically illegal under the contract terms. I was always willing to pay $5-15 for a good program and have a clear conscience (plus getting rid of an annoying message at the beginning that says... "not registered yet, do you want to register).
I guess what it comes down to is that with digital information, there are always going to be ways to get copies for free. If the corporations price low enough though, consumers will always prefer the corporations for (1) product support, (2) centralized location, and (3) conscience.
So, how I see it is that corporations will still make products, and people will still pay for those products from the corporations for the reasons mentioned above. There may still be some small copy protection "for the masses", but it won't be the extremely complex schemes people are thinking of now.
Microsoft's newest monopoly is not the operating system. They know the operating system could go away very quickly with new mobile and wireless devices (palm, cell phones, etc), and most people who have used Windows in any serious way would love to see it go away. However, Microsoft will not die because of their office suite. There is so much momentum behind Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, that Microsoft continues to sell their operating system(s) (see recent news of Ipaq vs. Palm). If somebody could come out with an Office suite that makes MS start to lose some of that market, then MS might start porting their Office suite to other OS's, and we would all benefit. We could run a decent office suite on a decent operating system. That would be a joy!
A "supercomputer" with only 64MBytes of RAM! Wow, I wonder what other nifty words the PR department will try to use to describe the cube, that have no significance...
>> And as we see the net (or stockholders) sniveling for more protection from governments (not just in terms of Janet Reno, but in terms of auction fraud, spam and other unpleasantries of internet life) people will need to realize that it ain't free. A team of tech guys to track down hackers costs money, and if you aren't paying your taxes, don't expect legislators to fork over cash to protect you.
That's why the companies recently told Washington, no, we don't want more anti-hacker (though it should be anit-cracker) laws. They know that the market is sufficient to force them to use decent security systems, and that they'll do it twice as efficiently without the governement's help (a.k.a. intervention and policies and bureacracies, etc)
It's got a nifty little (international I might add) petition you can sign to show that you don't like this taxation stuff. -- Words are meaningless. Action counts.
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I always leave my WAPs open for this simple reason: the downsides of securing are much higher than the upsides. If I don't secure, what might I lose? 802.11 is pretty constrained geographically, and as long as people don't cause me to lose performance when I am connected to it, who cares. On the other hand, if I secure the dumb thing, everytime I take my laptop somewhere else, I have to reconfigure, along with lots of other junk. In essence, the cost of having it secured is very high, for very low in return.
My 2 cents.
If I read the article correctly, they are not saying they like efax.com. Rather they are saying that the rules are so broad that if you dial a wrong number, you could be sued too. That's why they mention, towards the end, about the FCC rule that you have to have written permission to fax someone (and how do you get the written permission? Hey fax it... oh wait) Maybe I'm being too soft of them though.
It is my understanding that if you publish something (ie, in a trade journal or such), it becomes part of the public domain. It then cannot be patented by anyone.
I completely agree with this statement, but would like to add one other point. If I am given the choice between a free, illegal copy, and a legal copy which has a low cost, I will pay for the legal version, without any enforcement. Maybe I'm nieve, but I believe most people are the same way. This is the model shareware always worked under. You could always get software for free and not license it, but it was technically illegal under the contract terms. I was always willing to pay $5-15 for a good program and have a clear conscience (plus getting rid of an annoying message at the beginning that says... "not registered yet, do you want to register).
I guess what it comes down to is that with digital information, there are always going to be ways to get copies for free. If the corporations price low enough though, consumers will always prefer the corporations for (1) product support, (2) centralized location, and (3) conscience.
So, how I see it is that corporations will still make products, and people will still pay for those products from the corporations for the reasons mentioned above. There may still be some small copy protection "for the masses", but it won't be the extremely complex schemes people are thinking of now.
My two cents.
Microsoft's newest monopoly is not the operating system. They know the operating system could go away very quickly with new mobile and wireless devices (palm, cell phones, etc), and most people who have used Windows in any serious way would love to see it go away. However, Microsoft will not die because of their office suite. There is so much momentum behind Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, that Microsoft continues to sell their operating system(s) (see recent news of Ipaq vs. Palm). If somebody could come out with an Office suite that makes MS start to lose some of that market, then MS might start porting their Office suite to other OS's, and we would all benefit. We could run a decent office suite on a decent operating system. That would be a joy!
Personal opinion.
A "supercomputer" with only 64MBytes of RAM! Wow, I wonder what other nifty words the PR department will try to use to describe the cube, that have no significance...
>> And as we see the net (or stockholders) sniveling for more protection from governments (not just in terms of Janet Reno, but in terms of auction fraud, spam and other unpleasantries of internet life) people will need to realize that it ain't free. A team of tech guys to track down hackers costs money, and if you aren't paying your taxes, don't expect legislators to fork over cash to protect you.
That's why the companies recently told Washington, no, we don't want more anti-hacker (though it should be anit-cracker) laws. They know that the market is sufficient to force them to use decent security systems, and that they'll do it twice as efficiently without the governement's help (a.k.a. intervention and policies and bureacracies, etc)
Hey, if you think that internet taxation is as stupid as I do, check out this web site:
http://www.NoMoreNetTax.com
It's got a nifty little (international I might add) petition you can sign to show that you don't like this taxation stuff.
--
Words are meaningless. Action counts.