Server products are a little different. New servers are usually shipped bare anyway. Desktop OS's, however, are limited to the upgrade license nonsense. The time limited licenses are actually rather rare -- I've only seen them a couple times. However, Microsoft keeps you on their payment plan by making it so that if you decide not to renew the Software Assurance, you get to pay for full licenses next time you want to upgrade, instead of just license version upgrades. The problem becomes, what do you do when you get another employee, and they need a computer with all the required software?
Sorry, wrong. Microsoft "Open" licenses for operating systems are upgrades. An Open License Agreement for Windows XP Pro would upgrade your machines from Win2000, WinNT4, or Win98. However, each machine still needs to have a valid OEM or retail license for Windows. The Open Licenses for their other products are different, and give you a full license instead of just an upgrade. Microsoft claims the agreements have always been this way and the new licensing just clarified it, others claim that it's new with Licensing 6.0 and Software Assurance.
Standard ROUND buttons? I was under the impression that most buttons on computers were square or rectangular. Even for a Mac, which has rounded buttons, they're still not circles. Quicktime Player, 4, 5 or even 6 are still skinned applications that are a usability problem. You can't make Quicktime out of the OS supplied widgets without making custom bitmaps, therefore it's still skinned. Apple, in this case, ought to take some notes from Microsoft's Windows Media Player 6.4 (not 7 or later). Aside from the extraneous stuff that is removed in "compact" mode, and the hot tracking buttons, the UI is clear and easy to use. A few more hotkeys would be nice (cursor key seeking ala MPlayer, for example), but it uses virtually no custom widgets.
Now, I admit I don't use a Macintosh, but if I did, I still wouldn't like Quicktime Player.
Except he's right. Video players on Linux do suck. The only real problem is, the brain damage isn't limited to Linux. Virtually every operating system is overrun by these monstrosities of application skinning. The blame probably should lay squarely on WinAMP, which pretty much pioneered the idea of skinning media applications. Everyone's doing it. Everyone from Apple and their Quicktime software, to Microsoft and their Media Player software are doing it. Is it any wonder that Linux developers are doing it, too?
Apple, above all else, should know better, but instead cave into customer demand, and produced Quicktime Player, with an interface that is neither uniform or intuitive. Older versions of Quicktime were not pleasant to use on Windows, but at least they didn't have these disgusting custom widgets.
Then there's Microsoft Media Player. The last useful version was 6.4, which still had a sane, native interface. 7, 8 and 9 all share the 'skinned html' interface, which is difficult to use and slow. Microsoft's only solution to this was to provide a skin that provides poor emulation of the old 6.4 features with non-functional menus and permanently stuck in the extended mode instead of compact.
Real has never been immune to the influence, with even early versions of RealPlayer using custom widgets. Things only got worse with the release of RealOne. Need I say more?
Now, there are applications for Linux, Windows, etc, that do have a decent interface. I'm sure old versions of Quicktime were great to use on MacOS, although they have always been a little cumbersome on Windows because of the menu issue. Windows Media Player 6.4 has served me well for some time when I'm using Microsoft Windows. I liked using XMPS (gnome user interface) on Linux until it stopped being developed. VLC doesn't have a terrible UI, but it doesn't have a great one either.
Perhaps it's just easier to make a pretty bitmap with clickable portions that developing a real usable UI for media applications? Perhaps there's something special about media players that make them immune to normal UI development research? Or have we just become so accustomed to the status quo, that we don't expect any different?
So, you're saying that he should move to Mac OS X because of usability. Then you continue by acknowleding that Apple completely fouled up THEIR media player. "Come to Mac OS X, our media player is even less usable!"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there another flaw in the implementation. IEEE OUIs are supposed to change the 23rd bit of the OUI portion of the MAC address based on if it's a locally administered address or a globally administered one. If an attacker can set all the bits of the network card MAC address, isn't that a mistake in the hardware?
Either way, wireless networks remain vulnerable...
Easy enough. Buy the $500 LCD and add on this Viewsonic device for about $150, and you have a complete television system, including remote control. Although a little bigger than that 13" TV, it still costs less. Or there's the next step up, which does more filtering for about $400. I'm sure other LCD manufacturers have similar products.
There's a little more involved with an LCD TV compared to a CRT TV. You have to deinterlace and filter the output, doing a 3:2 pulldown if needed, and so on. Unlike an interlaced CRT TV, interlaced images will look very bad on a progressive display like an LCD or computer monitor. That's one of the reasons most TV tuner cards tend to only capture one field of the frame instead of both.
Most of the features that AGP adds to a PCI slot aren't useful for other devices. Very little except a video card can use the GART, for example. Most normal devices are served just fine by the 33MHz PCI bus, and those that need more can use 66MHz 64-bit PCI to quadruple the maximum throughput. There's little chance of ever seeing a non video card for an AGP slot, especially since PCI-X, PCI Express, and the other competing technologies that are being developed now are much more suited for general use than AGP is.
Meanwhile, my GNU/Linux box routinely has crackers (unsuccessfully) attempt to do some well-known Apache exploits or attack my mail server.
Sure those aren't just the automated worms that make use of old, known flaws in those packages? There's plenty of things like Linux.Slapper.Worm,Linux.Lion.Worm, Linux.Adore.Worm and Linux.Ramen.Worm which actively seek out vulnerable systems to infect. Just like on Windows, the biggest security hole exploiter has got to be worms and viruses.
If you just want the convenience and safety though there are tons of plans for pay-as-you-go. Buy some minutes up front and leave it around for an emergency.
Most pay-as-you-go or prepaid plans I've seen make you pay for minutes up front, and if you don't use them within a given time period (usually one to three months), they expire, and you've got to pay again. I'd gladly have a prepaid cell phone if it wasn't for this tiny little problem.
Payphones carry diseases and god knows what else on them.
Do you use doors, gasoline pumps, or public bathrooms?
Uhm. No.
Office may have more profit per unit, but Windows sells far more copies. Nearly every computer ever sold has come with a copy of Windows. When Win95 and Win98 were the dominant platforms, that statement might've been true, but no longer. Now businesses are forced to buy the more expensive Windows 2000 or Windows XP to get access to their network resources, and even though they still buy through OEMs that get high discounts, it's obvious that it has become the more profitable division. The following is an exerpt from Microsoft's SEC filings available from Yahoo! Finance!: (note that "Desktop Applications" divisions include CALs for Microsoft server products)
Desktop Applications revenue was $9.30 billion, $9.54 billion, and $9.60 billion in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Desktop Applications includes revenue from Microsoft Office; Microsoft Project; Visio; client access licenses (CALs) for Windows NT Server and Windows 2000 Server, Exchange, and BackOffice; Microsoft Great Plains; and bCentral.
Desktop Platforms revenue was $7.02 billion, $8.04 billion, and $9.30 billion in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Desktop Platforms includes revenue from Windows XP Professional and Home, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows NT Workstation, Windows Me, Windows 98, and other desktop operating systems.
Enterprise Software and Services revenue was $4.08 billion, $4.83 billion, and $5.11 billion in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Enterprise Software and Services includes Server Platforms, Server Applications, Developer Tools and Services, and Enterprise Services.
Although, one has to wonder why the Microsoft server CAL sales numbers are lumped in with the Office products. One or both of them must be underperforming...
I'll bet it's just students installing NT/2K without an administrator password, and therefore all the administrative shares (\\computer\\c$, \\computer\admin$, etc) are wide open. I really don't believe those administrative shares should ever appear unless you're part of an NT domain, although I'm sure someone would complain if it were ever changed.
Why do I find this type of "insurance" deeply disturbing? If the legal system is indeed so fouled up that you can be sued without warning without realising it first, the system needs to be fixed, not insurance added.
But personally I can't think of any mail non-SMTP mail systems that don't include an SMTP gateway still.
Yes, but many of them produce incorrect or have proprietary extensions to them. Take Exchange for instance, you can connect Exchange sites via SMTP (or even Active Directory sites), but the messages they produce contain information in a proprietary format. And getting multiple mail systems to co-exist under a single public DNS name can be a difficult task at best.
Most of the legacy support you mention was added when Exchange was new and had to compete and integrate with these systems. I do however think it is important to write conversion tools that allow for easy migration from non-standards compliant systems.
Part of converting is first interoperating. You can't expect a company to just drop their existing software and completely convert to new stuff. Such changes are likely to happen slowly, a few users at a time, not all-of-a-sudden, boom, everyone's on a new system. During the transition, users on the new system can't be isolated from users on the old, and vice versa. This means, schedules, public folders, and directory all have to work in both directions. Now, it won't matter much if this interoperability is provided by a gateway, plugin or common protocol, but it must be present. Take Exchange, for instance. Most of the "interoperability" tools in the package tend to be rather one-sided, and aren't really for interoperability as they are for migration to Exchange. All I'm suggesting is that the same "services for interoperability" should be available for any groupware platform that wants to compete with MS Exchange.
Cyrus and OpenCap both use Berkley DB4, which has proven itself time and again. I feel comfortable sleeping at night knowing my data is in that format and I have good backups. That's the beauty of this system. It's a number of different projects, yet they all talk together using IETF standards. They reuse common pieces to achieve their specific needs and this makes it easier to understand all of the apps invloved once you understand one of them.
I was thinking that I was getting good backups, too. Only later, when it came time to restore the database, did I learn that I had been backing up corrupted database pages for weeks., and finally something got so badly corrupted that I couldn't even back up the database anymore. Problem was, there was just a single file that contained all the system data, along with all the mailbox information. The repair utilities couldn't fix it (and made things worse), and the backups were of little use. Now, given the fact Exchange still worked, the damage was clearly not as severe as it seemed. However, the only way we could fix the corruption was to add a new server to the network, and use the built-in move mailbox function to move it to the new server. Now, there are a few things to be learned from this.. Databases typically use log files to maintain integrity, however, the system could no longer trust the log files, as the RAID controller was re-ordering write operations, and when the power went out because of a bad UPS, the logs ended up just as corrupt as the database itself. Ever try to replay corrupt log files? Don't bother.
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't hate databases, but putting all your data (eggs) in one file (basket) seems like a very bad idea. I'd much rather have to roll back a single user's mailbox to a previous backup than an entire server. Disasters happen, and when they happen I'd much rather have the damage done be as minor as possible. I know with a qmail-style maildir system, recovering from damage is as simple as deleting the damaged message. However, maildirs are not space efficient, and depending on the underlying filesystem, may not be time efficient, either. mbox style mailboxes can be slightly more space efficient, but at the risk of losing the complete mailbox. Databases have the possible advantage (depending on implementation) of being the most space efficient, but at the possible risk of losing everything. I don't know which I'd prefer given those tradeoffs.
There's other features that this type of collection of software would lack compared to MS Exchange. There's things like the addressing support -- Exchange isn't limited to SMTP addressing, as it can handle groupwise addressing, ccmail addressing, X400 addressing (which it uses natively), or virtually any other addressing format with an appropriate plugin. While this isn't critical for single site installations, it makes multisite installations easier because SMTP addressing isn't tied to DNS. There are ways to do this with straight SMTP, but they are fairly complex.
Directory replication/address book: Exchange makes a copy of the directory of any connected "sites". This means they're always available in the global address list, and trying to send mail to a non-existant account instantly returns an error, even if the remote 'site' server is down.
"Single Instance Store": If you send a 3MB attachment to 100 people on an Exchange server, you don't consume 300MB, you consume little more than 3MB. Most MTAs can't handle multidelivery like this, and instead send an individual copy to each recipient. With ACLs and hard links, and a yet another mailbox format (separating headers and message body), you might be able to do it strictly with the file system. Lacking all of those options, the only other real alternative is to do it in a database like Exchange.
Plugins, etc: With Exchange, you can write plug-ins and addons that interoperate with all parts of the Exchange system. Using all these separate packages, each with a different configuration and method of doing things may mean you have to make several different plugins each with a different API and language preference. If I want to plug in a foreign mail system, things get much worse. Now, I have to write some kind of gateway, and try to encapsulate the foreign addressing system into SMTP addresses and convert the messages to MIME (which would have to be done anyway). Then, I've got to write some kind of gateway for LDAP, so the foreign users show up in the directory, and read the directory, and do the reverse for the foreign system. Now, before you try to tell me that no one uses these types of systems anymore, keep in mind that a foreign system could be a fax system, X.400, voicemail or virtually anything else.
Now, there are quite a few things that would be nice about what they've already decided on doing. For example, there's no single database to get corrupted in their system. And seeing how I've had to deal with a corrupted Exchange database twice in the three years we've been running Exchange, and both times it was PAINFUL to recover. A single corrupt page in an Exchange database makes it impossible to back up the database, and if the corruption is in the wrong place, the repair utilities can make things worse. So, storing stuff in the file system directly is basically a good thing, although it has drawbacks, as I mentioned above.
So, in summary:
Ignorance is bliss, and therefore, what you don't know won't hurt you. Let sleeping dogs lie, and never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Now, I'm sure every software vendor would love nothing more than to prevent security holes from being found in their products, but they're likely to try to accomplish this goal using the wrong method -- adding terms to the license that prohibit such activities. Instead we have to rely on those people who ignore the unenforcable restrictions on reverse engineering to find the holes, and keep these companies honest.
The problem with your logic is that you seem to be implying that only those who are publishing vulnerability reports are those who are capable of finding them. There are likely many that go unreported for ages until either the exploit gets widely distributed enough, or someone else finds it. Personally, I would find no moral problem with violating a license that dared to tell me what I can and cannot do with it, after I purchased it. After all, I may be violating the law, but am I Right or Wrong?
There is no absolute right, and absolute wrong. The law can't legislate right and wrong, and can't make us good people. All the law can do is provide punishment for those who harm others. Trying to get the law to distinguish between Right and Wrong is a recipe for disaster.
I was under the impression that laws for these sorts of things already exist. In cases where there is a loss of life, they should already be able to get you for manslaughter and the original intrusion that caused that. Something that might cause a great chance of loss of life would probably be reckless endangerment or something similar. The additional laws are just silly -- they promote a punishment that is not appropriate for the crime (life sentance), when resonable, time-tested laws already exist outlawing those actions. If there's problems with applying those other laws against people who use computers to commit crimes, the laws should be fixed, not new ones added.
The design of the kernel is designed to support B2 level security without multi-ring security support in the processor.
Okay, I have to admit this statement has confused me somewhat. Are you saying that NT doesn't use the security ring support of processors (it does), or that it could be made not to (which I can't see working). Most.sys drivers, and the kernel all run in Ring 0 on x86 processors, while apps, and printer drivers are segregated at Ring 3. Without the use of the rings, NT could not protect itself from corruption, or the corruption of any other program, and would be just as unreliable as Win95 or Win31. Short of building a sandbox VM like the JVM, I fail to see how a secure OS could exist without the use of a processor's privilege rings.
I have to wonder why Intel chose to use 4 rings, especially since no one ever really uses anything other than ring 0 and ring 3.
Then by your own description Windows NT wasn't designed from the ground up, either. Bits of Windows 3.x and BSD protocol stacks made it into NT. No modern OS has ever been developed secluded from the outside world. BeOS also shares many features, but not all, with UNIX OSs. Realtime and embedded OSs are probably the only ones that are even close to have been developed in a vacuum.
As for Sendmail: Yes, there are lots of more secure replacements for sendmail, but most have far few features. The few that don't suffer from the lack of features suffer from sucky licenses. Such as Dan Bernstein's license on all his software, where he's anal retentive about the directory structure and exact functionality of any binaries produced. Many replacements are licensed under the GPL, which many companies still fear. The same is true of DNS, and the venerable BIND. It's still vulnerable to attacks much as it's always been, and although you no longer need to run it as root constantly, there's still potential for trouble.
The movie industry obviously still resents the advent of recordable video media for consumers, and this is just another way they hope to kill it. They just barely tolerate VHS because they've figured out that they can sell lots of copies of the movies on VHS tape. They hope by preventing people from copying broadcasted movies they can increase profits on VHS and DVD sales.
Frankly, the article missed probably one of the other largest casualties that would be a result of this. I'm not worried about the Intels, Microsofts, and Ciscos of the world. Regardless of the DRM that would be enforced by the government, these large companies would continue to exist. It would be the small hardware and software companies and individuals that would be massacred by these kinds of laws. Multi-billion dollar companies like Microsoft can license any patents they might need, but do you think that Joe Programmer can afford a "RAND" patent license that demands $1,000,000 inital patent license, or even perhaps $50,000? The reason this law would cripple innovation isn't because it'll inhibit the large companies, it'll be because it'll kill the small companies that will be taking greater risks in hopes of hitting a market.
We should be thankful the large tech industry companies don't see these law proposals as only a method for killing their competitors.
LPTx, PRN, COMx, AUX, NUL, and several others are "reserved" if for DOS/Windows-based systems. If you load device drivers from config.sys you can have a large number of other devices as well.
There's a difference. You're comparing a simple action -- driving a car, to one that is not simple by any means -- administering a network. It's like saying that because everyone knows how to operate a television, they should be able to know how to operate television broadcast equipment. Most people these days can operate a computer, does that mean they'll ever be qualified to manage a network of computers with interdependent services? Probably not.
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Server products are a little different. New servers are usually shipped bare anyway. Desktop OS's, however, are limited to the upgrade license nonsense. The time limited licenses are actually rather rare -- I've only seen them a couple times. However, Microsoft keeps you on their payment plan by making it so that if you decide not to renew the Software Assurance, you get to pay for full licenses next time you want to upgrade, instead of just license version upgrades. The problem becomes, what do you do when you get another employee, and they need a computer with all the required software?
Sorry, wrong. Microsoft "Open" licenses for operating systems are upgrades. An Open License Agreement for Windows XP Pro would upgrade your machines from Win2000, WinNT4, or Win98. However, each machine still needs to have a valid OEM or retail license for Windows. The Open Licenses for their other products are different, and give you a full license instead of just an upgrade. Microsoft claims the agreements have always been this way and the new licensing just clarified it, others claim that it's new with Licensing 6.0 and Software Assurance.
Now, I admit I don't use a Macintosh, but if I did, I still wouldn't like Quicktime Player.
Apple, above all else, should know better, but instead cave into customer demand, and produced Quicktime Player, with an interface that is neither uniform or intuitive. Older versions of Quicktime were not pleasant to use on Windows, but at least they didn't have these disgusting custom widgets.
Then there's Microsoft Media Player. The last useful version was 6.4, which still had a sane, native interface. 7, 8 and 9 all share the 'skinned html' interface, which is difficult to use and slow. Microsoft's only solution to this was to provide a skin that provides poor emulation of the old 6.4 features with non-functional menus and permanently stuck in the extended mode instead of compact.
Real has never been immune to the influence, with even early versions of RealPlayer using custom widgets. Things only got worse with the release of RealOne. Need I say more?
Now, there are applications for Linux, Windows, etc, that do have a decent interface. I'm sure old versions of Quicktime were great to use on MacOS, although they have always been a little cumbersome on Windows because of the menu issue. Windows Media Player 6.4 has served me well for some time when I'm using Microsoft Windows. I liked using XMPS (gnome user interface) on Linux until it stopped being developed. VLC doesn't have a terrible UI, but it doesn't have a great one either.
Perhaps it's just easier to make a pretty bitmap with clickable portions that developing a real usable UI for media applications? Perhaps there's something special about media players that make them immune to normal UI development research? Or have we just become so accustomed to the status quo, that we don't expect any different?
Is there some logic here I'm failing to see?
Either way, wireless networks remain vulnerable...
There's a little more involved with an LCD TV compared to a CRT TV. You have to deinterlace and filter the output, doing a 3:2 pulldown if needed, and so on. Unlike an interlaced CRT TV, interlaced images will look very bad on a progressive display like an LCD or computer monitor. That's one of the reasons most TV tuner cards tend to only capture one field of the frame instead of both.
Most of the features that AGP adds to a PCI slot aren't useful for other devices. Very little except a video card can use the GART, for example. Most normal devices are served just fine by the 33MHz PCI bus, and those that need more can use 66MHz 64-bit PCI to quadruple the maximum throughput. There's little chance of ever seeing a non video card for an AGP slot, especially since PCI-X, PCI Express, and the other competing technologies that are being developed now are much more suited for general use than AGP is.
Office may have more profit per unit, but Windows sells far more copies. Nearly every computer ever sold has come with a copy of Windows. When Win95 and Win98 were the dominant platforms, that statement might've been true, but no longer. Now businesses are forced to buy the more expensive Windows 2000 or Windows XP to get access to their network resources, and even though they still buy through OEMs that get high discounts, it's obvious that it has become the more profitable division. The following is an exerpt from Microsoft's SEC filings available from Yahoo! Finance!: (note that "Desktop Applications" divisions include CALs for Microsoft server products) Although, one has to wonder why the Microsoft server CAL sales numbers are lumped in with the Office products. One or both of them must be underperforming...
I'll bet it's just students installing NT/2K without an administrator password, and therefore all the administrative shares (\\computer\\c$, \\computer\admin$, etc) are wide open. I really don't believe those administrative shares should ever appear unless you're part of an NT domain, although I'm sure someone would complain if it were ever changed.
Why do I find this type of "insurance" deeply disturbing? If the legal system is indeed so fouled up that you can be sued without warning without realising it first, the system needs to be fixed, not insurance added.
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't hate databases, but putting all your data (eggs) in one file (basket) seems like a very bad idea. I'd much rather have to roll back a single user's mailbox to a previous backup than an entire server. Disasters happen, and when they happen I'd much rather have the damage done be as minor as possible. I know with a qmail-style maildir system, recovering from damage is as simple as deleting the damaged message. However, maildirs are not space efficient, and depending on the underlying filesystem, may not be time efficient, either. mbox style mailboxes can be slightly more space efficient, but at the risk of losing the complete mailbox. Databases have the possible advantage (depending on implementation) of being the most space efficient, but at the possible risk of losing everything. I don't know which I'd prefer given those tradeoffs.
Directory replication/address book: Exchange makes a copy of the directory of any connected "sites". This means they're always available in the global address list, and trying to send mail to a non-existant account instantly returns an error, even if the remote 'site' server is down.
"Single Instance Store": If you send a 3MB attachment to 100 people on an Exchange server, you don't consume 300MB, you consume little more than 3MB. Most MTAs can't handle multidelivery like this, and instead send an individual copy to each recipient. With ACLs and hard links, and a yet another mailbox format (separating headers and message body), you might be able to do it strictly with the file system. Lacking all of those options, the only other real alternative is to do it in a database like Exchange.
Plugins, etc: With Exchange, you can write plug-ins and addons that interoperate with all parts of the Exchange system. Using all these separate packages, each with a different configuration and method of doing things may mean you have to make several different plugins each with a different API and language preference. If I want to plug in a foreign mail system, things get much worse. Now, I have to write some kind of gateway, and try to encapsulate the foreign addressing system into SMTP addresses and convert the messages to MIME (which would have to be done anyway). Then, I've got to write some kind of gateway for LDAP, so the foreign users show up in the directory, and read the directory, and do the reverse for the foreign system. Now, before you try to tell me that no one uses these types of systems anymore, keep in mind that a foreign system could be a fax system, X.400, voicemail or virtually anything else.
Now, there are quite a few things that would be nice about what they've already decided on doing. For example, there's no single database to get corrupted in their system. And seeing how I've had to deal with a corrupted Exchange database twice in the three years we've been running Exchange, and both times it was PAINFUL to recover. A single corrupt page in an Exchange database makes it impossible to back up the database, and if the corruption is in the wrong place, the repair utilities can make things worse. So, storing stuff in the file system directly is basically a good thing, although it has drawbacks, as I mentioned above.
Ignorance is bliss, and therefore, what you don't know won't hurt you. Let sleeping dogs lie, and never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Now, I'm sure every software vendor would love nothing more than to prevent security holes from being found in their products, but they're likely to try to accomplish this goal using the wrong method -- adding terms to the license that prohibit such activities. Instead we have to rely on those people who ignore the unenforcable restrictions on reverse engineering to find the holes, and keep these companies honest.
The problem with your logic is that you seem to be implying that only those who are publishing vulnerability reports are those who are capable of finding them. There are likely many that go unreported for ages until either the exploit gets widely distributed enough, or someone else finds it. Personally, I would find no moral problem with violating a license that dared to tell me what I can and cannot do with it, after I purchased it. After all, I may be violating the law, but am I Right or Wrong?
There is no absolute right, and absolute wrong. The law can't legislate right and wrong, and can't make us good people. All the law can do is provide punishment for those who harm others. Trying to get the law to distinguish between Right and Wrong is a recipe for disaster.
I was under the impression that laws for these sorts of things already exist. In cases where there is a loss of life, they should already be able to get you for manslaughter and the original intrusion that caused that. Something that might cause a great chance of loss of life would probably be reckless endangerment or something similar. The additional laws are just silly -- they promote a punishment that is not appropriate for the crime (life sentance), when resonable, time-tested laws already exist outlawing those actions. If there's problems with applying those other laws against people who use computers to commit crimes, the laws should be fixed, not new ones added.
Yes, then utility knives and razor blades would become circumvision devices under the DMCA.
The question, mister Guybrush, is if you think you can beat a pair.... A pair of blood thirsty pirates.
I have to wonder why Intel chose to use 4 rings, especially since no one ever really uses anything other than ring 0 and ring 3.
As for Sendmail: Yes, there are lots of more secure replacements for sendmail, but most have far few features. The few that don't suffer from the lack of features suffer from sucky licenses. Such as Dan Bernstein's license on all his software, where he's anal retentive about the directory structure and exact functionality of any binaries produced. Many replacements are licensed under the GPL, which many companies still fear. The same is true of DNS, and the venerable BIND. It's still vulnerable to attacks much as it's always been, and although you no longer need to run it as root constantly, there's still potential for trouble.
The movie industry obviously still resents the advent of recordable video media for consumers, and this is just another way they hope to kill it. They just barely tolerate VHS because they've figured out that they can sell lots of copies of the movies on VHS tape. They hope by preventing people from copying broadcasted movies they can increase profits on VHS and DVD sales.
We should be thankful the large tech industry companies don't see these law proposals as only a method for killing their competitors.
LPTx, PRN, COMx, AUX, NUL, and several others are "reserved" if for DOS/Windows-based systems. If you load device drivers from config.sys you can have a large number of other devices as well.
There's a difference. You're comparing a simple action -- driving a car, to one that is not simple by any means -- administering a network. It's like saying that because everyone knows how to operate a television, they should be able to know how to operate television broadcast equipment. Most people these days can operate a computer, does that mean they'll ever be qualified to manage a network of computers with interdependent services? Probably not.