If a user can tell from searching for a file that the file one user has is the same as the file another user has, then the system can block those files based on the common attributes. If a user cannot tell from searching for a file that more then one user actually has the same file then the system collapses down to being a direct peer-to-peer system with no redundancy or nicety left at all! The question (as raised repeatedly throughout all the comments) is whether or not the network itself would co-operate in such a way and whether or not anyone is willing to invest the large amount of resources required to actually make such a system really work, system time on comparing and storing hashes, system/people time in finding potentially illegal copies and verifying that they are in fact illegal. I would suspect that if anyone invested in doing this they would simply find that the network they had changed would simply die, and a new network would spring from the ashes yet again which would not honour the restrictions.
As I suggested in my last post, if you want to have a file sharing system which cannot be prevented from distributing copyrighted materials, then you need to use a decentralised resilient network (as I understand freenet is). As I also said though, while I am interested in this at a technical level, as long as I am not prevented from doing things which are clearly legal (like sharing a debian iso or my home movies of me singing in the shower) I really don't care if the **AA manages to squash sharing of files for which there is no permission to share. The key as far as I am concerned is that the system defaults to assuming that all material is legal, and to prevent sharing of a file it must be proved that it is illegal to share it. Now do I belive the **AA and their buddies in the US government will ensure that my freedom to let people hear just how terrible my singing voice is is protected? Probably not. Do I believe they will be able to enforce this worldwide? Again probably not, so as I am not an American I am a little less concerned then perhaps I might be. That being said, I don't trust the current Irish government to protect my rights as an individual so I am aprehensive.
The bottom line for me is that as long as a commercial entity is attempting to make money by creating a file sharing network with no regard for the legality of what is happening on it's network then the ground is very shaky. When the system is no more and no less than the sum of what it's users contribute, that's different. Think of it this way, telling me I cannot visit my friends house because I may deliver drugs is an insane invasion of privacy/curtailment of basic freedom, but closing down a courier company which is proven to be little more than a front for drug deliveries is an entirely different story, even if they simply just set up their business in such a way that it suits drug dealers without explicitly attempting to traffic and profit from drugs! Fun arguments could be had for a long time about whether or not the "war on drugs" approach is correct to transfer to copyrighted materials (let alone whether it is appropriate or appropriately applied for drugs) but as things stand I see it as consistent to prevent a company from profiting from facilitating illegal acts. If you want a more generally acceptable example of where a company can do something seemingly legal which can/should be prevented, a tour operator which arranges anonimysed (is there a real word hiding behind my lack of spelling) holidays to Thailand where they will arrange for you to meet local children in secrecy without record! There is a point at which every company must take some responsibility for its actions and not simply say that they are simply providing a service and that it is their users fault if they do something illegal.
The other bottom line is that the old adage of the internet routing around censorship still applies, and probably always will. The battle will run for a long time t
You system fails. The reason is that the service decides how many people have a file based on the fact that their fingerprints match. So if you search for a film title, you will probably find that there are numerous versions of that film available, but only one or two of them are commonly held, the rest just have 1 or 2 copies out there. If you deny the system being able to recognise that NNN people actually all have the same file available, then each person will end up having to download the entire version of any file you want from one person alone, and if they disconnect, delete the file or block you then you will have to destroy what you have and start again! Of course you could say that they could assemble the packets you have, get the header from someone else and then figure out which of their packets they need, but to do that the first thing they need to know is who else has the indetical file available for download, otherwise you may as well just randomly try to complete it from anyone who says they have your film, and you wouldn't want to care about what you are getting playing back sanely.
The only way to avoid something like this is to have a decentralised network of peers which can't be injected with any sort of filtering mechanism, perhaps a hybrid of Freenet and bittorrent?
I was pretty much thinking like you until I started thinking about it. Let me outline the scenario as I see it.
New porn film is released, studio converts it to the most commonly shared formats with the most commonly used encoders and gets those fingerprints blocked.
Someone rips the film so that they get a different fingerprint.
The studio monitors the network for their files and when they find one they get it's fingerprint blocked also.
Someone alters the rip or creates a new rip with another new fingerprint.
Repeat 3&4 ad infinitum
The end result is that no rip ever reaches many people, and for a file to continue to be available people have to keep making new versions of the file. When you go searching for a file you are unlikely to discover a file with many sources. The greatest strength (imho) of Kazaa at present will be destroyed for illegal files, the fact that you can see how many people are sharing an identical file, providing redundancy which ensures you are actually likely to be able to download a complete file as opposed to being being left with half a file and no way to finish it.
I have no problem with people trying to provide a meaningful way of preventing piracy on filesharing networks as long as it does not interfere with my right to share a Linux iso or my home movies. As long as a fingerprinting system was good enough to not squash non-matching content (i.e. the possible fingerprint space is large enough that truly different content is extremely unlikely to match) then this system is fair, just a lot of work for the network (system time checking fingerprints) and the studios (people time finding matching content) if they actually want it to work to a menaingful level.
How can I create a derivative work of GPLed code without sharing my code?
Don't distribute it! The GPL gives you the right to distribute a copyrighted work to which you would otherwise have no rights to distribute. Take the software, ignore the GPL, use/modify it however you wish, just don't distribute it unless you are willing to hand over the source code.
If you develop on your own a program, you can license it however you want to whoever you want. If you accept submissions under a particulr license though you can only release those submissions under that license. So this guy only has the right to sell the software under a license other than the GPL if he/they have ensured all submitters have granted them permission to do so. Trying to really hold onto the rights to distribute GPL'd software otherwise is difficult unless you ignore one of the great benefits of the GPL: submissions, or else you can convince all submitters that you have a right to take their work to make money as you see fit! I'm quite sure Linus couldn't sell Linux to MS under a BSD license without talking to a whole lot of people!
Vulnerable (updates available): Cisco and Microsoft
Unknown: Avaya, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Lucent and Nortel
Safe: Apple, Hitachi, NetBSD, Red Hat and Symantec
Is that a point for Security through open source as the two open products are already in the safe pile?
Ireland has had the chance of widespread competitive bandwidth wiped out by an incompetent government!
The Irish national telephone network (Telecom Eireann) was planned for a big floatation as a public company, but first the semi-state company Cablelink (which had purchased over half the cable tv licenses in the country) was also to be sold off. To absolutely insure the maximum government revenue (or directors or someones), Cablelink rolled out a Cable modem trial and proceeded to manage to get the highest price per subscriber for a cable tv network anywhere in the world from NTL. Now NTLs problems worldwide are not because they bought Cablelink, but it sure didn't help as they are now sitting on a network, desperatley trying to extract more cash with a "digital" service (more crap channels, no digital advantages) and have done nothing as far as cable modems are concerned. End result, there is effectively no cable modem service in Ireland (NTL did roll out a cable modem service, but my attempts to find out where it was available led me to believe it probably covered less than 250 houses). Once NTL had handed over the astronomical amount of cash for Cablelink, the next scam started, selling Telecom Eireann.
First thing the name changed to Eircom and then every bank in the country was giving anyone who wanted it 1500 to buy their allotment of shares. The initial price was high, went up a little for a few days and then dropped leaving huge sections of the country sitting on shares they were down on. Then the mobile division was sold off to Vodafone, and now people had 2 sets of shares doing nothing for them, and ultimately Eircom was bought out into a private company leaving most people down on the deal. You know how much it stinks when one of the countrys most senior politicians (Dick Spring) who was sitting on the board of Eircom didn't buy any shares himself cause "he didn't have the funds" (though maybe the banks have sense and know a politician is not the sort to lend cash to). The bottom line being that broadband in Ireland was shelved until all this was dealt with and eventually ADSL appeared (well Eircom had been using various DSL technologies to deliver lines already, but they were all leased lines at leased line prices). Eircom had a complete monopoly on the capacity in the market (you were unlikely to be able to avoid giving them your cash indirectly no matter what you did) and had gone from a national owned company to a private company without any real changes to ensure fairness in the market. They released ADSL only after about 3 years of messing around in courts and only when they were already over 2 years late in "unbundling the local loop". End result is that now the country is actually being split between Eircom and Esat to enable DSL in exchanges and finally provide something bearing resemblence to a nationwide broadband network. ADSL will set you back from 45+ depending on the service you want, but as far as I am aware their is only one company who is offering an unmetered service at anything like that level. With Eircom you would have to pay about 160/month to get a 1mbit uncapped line, on any of the other lines they reserve the right to charge 30/Gbyte with limits of 3-6Gbytes/month! They can get away with all of this as the competition is leased lines, ISDN or Wireless (which are slowly springing up).
For me the bottom line is that Ireland will remain a backwater until NTL do something or get the hell out of the country and let someone else use the network they are squating on, the only network that can really show Eircom what competition is about! Thankfully my RADSL 512:128@48:1 (costing 45+VAT with Static IP and no service limitations) performs magically, though every day I expect my 50+kbyte/s download speed to divide by 10, and that I will have to go and look for yet another service (next stop would be satellite + DSL or just wireless).
What's needed is the equivalent of a carbon copy (or perhaps even a carbon copy). The machine has a large spool of double paper, and when it prints the users vote, one copy is rolled onto the internal spool and the other copy is fed out to the user. Then there is a complete trace in the machine of the days voting and each user can check that what it says for their vote is what they intended (and could go out to the supervisor and say "I pushed for Gore and got Buchanan, that's wrong!"). Just make sure the paper roll can be scanned in at high speed (can't be too hard) and then machines can be randomly or systematically checked. Now to get around this you could of course devise a hardware hack which fakes the "carbon copying" but that should be easy to prevent (showing the election officer what it's meant to look like inside and dropping in a small perspex window) should be sufficient. Mentioning the window makes me think you could even do away with the double copying and just feed the roll past a window so when you cast your vote you can see the paper with your vote and then confirm it (closes the window so the next voter can't see your vote). It's still easy to destroy votes (burn down the building/machine) but falsifying gets tricky.
I live in Ireland. I have yet to see the first Tivo like appliance in the stores for average consumers (the closest we come is Sky's Sky+ which only works with sky's satellite TV). I think that TV Listings are the primary issue for the slow roll out of these products into different countries. I personally suspect the PS3 will probably be the first real product to hit Ireland with this, Sony having "perfected" the system with the PSX in Japan will probably carry it forward worldwide.
Excuse me for still having some scepticism in my brain, but if I was running IBM, I would have already set as much of this up as feasible by the back door and then announce publically that I was going to do it on a quite short timeframe. Then when I succeed I can go to other companies "look, it's predictable and safe". Companies hate change, employees hate change, it's risky or just plain annoying so if you really want to get the huge organisations to take this sort of a change seriously, you are going to have to be able to provide serious evidence.
Leaving scepticism (which was fueled by a comment refering to a base desktop build which already exists in IBM) aside, this is so logical it's simple! If IBM transfer their own business over to IBM's own software across the board, then they have a constantly provable business environment which they can sell and support on their own hardware. They can return to selling one stop shops, but by basing the underlying systems (as far as they commit to) on Free software, they completely disarm the feeling of being forced to choose between evils, you can choose a potential evil and feel free to walk away (well you might be replacing lots of hardware if you completely drop them) with your system. IBM could effectively start getting end customers to foot the bill for Free software development by IBM and the more of that work they are doing, the more of the work they are likely to get. The rules (well the licenses of most software they would be likely to use) prevent a monopoly, but IBM's power is huge and hence it could attract business to a monopolistic level, at least until a new tiger appears which can take it on in the newly expanded market. IBM don't need software licensing revenue, IBM can exist for the rest of time on it's name provided they can provide people with dependable solutions (i.e. they can charge a profit margin others would dream of, just because it's IBM).
What dissappoints me is that this all makes me recall many moments while I worked for Corel International Linux Support when I tried making people see the benefits of eating our own dogfood. I truly felt (though I mattered squat) they should have moved the next (or following if already too late) version of their Office and Draw suites to QT (or gtk, I only really say qt as they had already committed to KDE on the desktop and had peeople working on it) and start consolidating on their work. They were deciding what system to buy for the Linux Support desk, and I asked why they didn't just adopt a free one! Moving over all their hosting to Linux was another issue and one that was more important in their minds (and judging by netcraft it seems they achieved something there I wasn't expecting anymore). It was interesting however to watch the various reactions from managers to administrators, support staff to developers when they realised they had a bit of a Free software zealot in their midst! I even managed to get in my digs at visiting big-wigs (something makes me think that isn't why Corel left the country though). Corel had an opportunity, but they didn't even try (in fact I wonder why they even bothered starting with Linux if they weren't going to go down this route).
IBM would have to be insane not to try this. Really it is a case of when they feel they should make the jump to best effect, and if IBM feel that now is the time to do it, you can be sure it is very doable (for them) because egg on the face here could cost IBM massively and for a long time. I can't help feel that this has been in the works ever since they lost out on OS/2 and if the MS V Linux "Get The Facts" can be taken as evidence that MS is scared, this should be taken as evidence that MS should be petrified! If IBM do follow through with this, the impact in having all the IBM employees worldwide proficient with GNU/Linux/X/??/?? would be significant apart from the developments you would be sure would be seen in each piece o
I certainly believe this tech is available right now, and remember seeing some Sony goggles that basically did what I am talking about (think they might not be available anymore). The price was about 800 I think, a lot of cash, but projectors, large screens and portable screens (not a 14" crt but a 15"+ LCD/TFT) are expensive things. Many people spend a thousand on a screen. The important thing to remember though is that in all of these areas prices are continuously falling, today's rich mans product is tomorrows middle class product and so on.
This is completely different to reading on a transport system. When reading, the seasickness is caused by the fact that your eyes are bouncing around differently to your hands (or wherever the book is). When looking through a pair of goggles anchored to the tops of the ears and the nose, the screen bounce will be the eye/head bounce, and hence while your head may be bobbing about all over the place, your eyes will still be focusing on the same point. The only thing the HUD would need to do is ensure that it is secure enough not to bounce of your nose (ears are easy) and that could be done a number of ways (from straps around your head to making the ear strap a loop which attaches to the "viweing area" twice, once from above and once from below). The real question is how our brains would react to watching a stable image overlaid on a bouncing train carraige and I don't think we have common experiences to determine that (though I would guess that the worlds air forces all know about this).
Portable Video on a tiny (even 6 inch) LCD is pretty useless. Portable video on a hud is what I want. Sony at least used to have some goggles where you could control the transparency of the screen so you could "multitask" with your eyes. Where could I see it really pay off? Well anyone doing a public transport commute to work could dump their favourite soaps over for daily viewing on the way in and out of work, all without having to take their eyes off where they are and who is trying to steal their bag! But really I think it goes beyond video once you use goggles, it becomes a HUD (especially if it also has a wireless link). People on the stock exchange could have tickers, news, messages from the office all available right in front of them at all times. I would expect to see the military as the driving force of this work, soldiers don't want to me looking away from target to acquire information and they don't want to carry excessive or restrictive devices, the question is how long before the tech they develop falls out into our hands?
My original story post included a short second paragraph with the above quote and my own opinion that perhaps a slashdotting for KISS might convince them that this is something they should respond to. I guess CowboyNeal thought it was unneccessary, but I though it was a vital part of the story (the failure of KISS to reply and hence the public name and shame by Mplayer).
Taking Debian as an example, it may be worthwhile looking at having a liveCD net-installer image, so you can boot up into a full-system and choose to kick off a net install at any time. But on a regular installation cd, you do not want a liveCD, why? Well the point of having a cd is so you don't have to download so many packages (if any), and if you use up space on the cd with the liveCD then you will likely send more people hitting the mirrors.
I recently had to install a system as a basic desktop. I did both types of knoppix-installer runs (debian and knoppix) and either way I felt I had a slightly mish-mashed system which I didn't really want to keep working with. So I got the latest daily image of the net-inst cd for debian-installer, experienced one minor problem (had to hand prod the network up) and had a system up under my control in no time. The old debian installer is just that, old! The new debian installer is looking great (providing the ports can come together) and while it may still be in development, asking why liveCD when compared to the old installer is a waste of time. Why liveCD Vs the new installer... well I think it's a matter of horses for courses. If you want a quick means to a certain setup, liveCDs should be great, but if you want to setup a system with what you want, it's probably never going to happen from a liveCD except where the liveCD is simply a glorified front-end to the regular installer and then your liveCD has the decreased space for packages that got me started!
If you want a MySQL implementation where ALL tables are transaction safe then simply recompile it with only support for transaction safe tables? Am I missing something here? Yes you lose out on any enhancements of the other table types, but that's your choice! You probably don't even need to recompile it, or if you do perhaps MySQL could add the option to only use transaction safe table types (perhaps on a per database level).
The way I see it is they have taken what seems to be a very weak position and are trying to use spin and publicity to make it pay off! The best way to counter that is... publicity! The stories, in particular those which can help to dismiss SCO arguments, are valuable as any good information discovered is likely to spread to other sources so more of the counter arguments are seen. Basically they are attacking a huge amount of people with this case so if they wish to have a trial in the court of public/shareholder opinion why stand down?
As for just "free" Linux or "pay to SCO" Linux, I think you miss the point that SCO have to be resisted at step 1 (Linux), rather than giving them any room to start trying to broaden it out (to BSD, OSX, Irix, *nix), and also that you never give in to terrorists, it sets a bad precedent which others will follow!
So how do you respond to his thoughts on UserLinux. Obviously it is nice that he recognises it's a bit early to be very decisive but otherwise his comments are negative. How will you counter his arguments that
1) it's a Debian thing, isn't it? 2) it's better to follow standardization processes such as Linux Standard Base because all major Linux distributions agree with it, and it's important to avoid the "Unix balkanisation syndrom" if we want to see Linux succeed in the long term.
Excuse me blatently calling you out like this, but you have been known to post on/. just once or twice and while I think I really like where UserLinux is going, these are the sort of issues that make me wonder if it is actually achievable in the current environment.
If the donor donates to a central group then whatever the central group does with it is the wishes of the user. I agree completely that this is a far nicer system than central groups, it's just I am pessimistic about this and believe that such random injections of money into the development communinty will likely lead to some big falling out and hence don't believe it is a better system. It is far easier for a user to have their money "missappropriated" if they are making small individual donations (think of the spamming potential) then if they are making a donation to someone who is big enough to likely have a number of people watching them as well as possible and publically kicking them. Of course there is always going to be room for both approaches, I just hope the money doesn't breed "corruption".
I am well aware of the reports on paypal, but I would seriously wonder wether they would risk messing with a sourceforge payment without extremely good reason. Why? Well, if you had a business based on Internet transactions would you provoke sourgeforge and it's followers?
The beauty of this system (as well as it's potential downfall) is the possibility of the projects to redirect the money. Where projects use other projects as the basis of their work (say a cdrecord front-end), the front-end is more likely to attract end-user cash then the back-end but should recognise the appropriatness of redistributing some of their donations to the back-end. If this works well you would see the cash going into all the systems valued by the end user. If it goes badly you will see warefare within projects as well as between projects who share code. So who thinks the people within each project in charge of the money distribution will be able to do the right thing? I don't though I really wish they could!
I would rather see donations going to a collection of groups like SPI, FSF, UserLinux, Mandrake, Lindows who can act as a front end to collect money and channel it out to places where they think it's going to get the best value for the donators (including giving it to themselves to keep working). This of course would not prevent warfare, but at least it would provide a handful of central decision making bodies to examine and evaluate so the community could bring to potential donators attention the history of how the bodies have acted and who therfore are the best choices depending on what you aim to promote. It is for this reason I see Mandrake and even Lindows as potential donation targets (and you could argue for most commercial linux offerings) as they both develop internally and by bringing in outside interests, Lindows going for the big publicity grabbing things (FrontPage replacement, XBoxLinux and of course the eponymous distro), Mandrake just looking to put together a good set of distros. Of course there is no means to make a donation to a US company (not sure around the world how this works) as Michael Moore delighted in by bringing around fat cheques to "give" to companies.
+4 Insightful ??? How is this insightful? It is a rant with plenty of SHOUTING. Now consider this, each country of the planet's governments (however they were (s)elected) appoints it's delegates to the UN. ICANN on the other hand holds public elections for positions, doesn't like who it gets, scraps the positions and then appoints whoever it wants instead which is obviously far more democratic. Not forgetting that one of it's public appointees had to sue them to even read neccessary documents!
Slashdot Mirror
If a user can tell from searching for a file that the file one user has is the same as the file another user has, then the system can block those files based on the common attributes. If a user cannot tell from searching for a file that more then one user actually has the same file then the system collapses down to being a direct peer-to-peer system with no redundancy or nicety left at all! The question (as raised repeatedly throughout all the comments) is whether or not the network itself would co-operate in such a way and whether or not anyone is willing to invest the large amount of resources required to actually make such a system really work, system time on comparing and storing hashes, system/people time in finding potentially illegal copies and verifying that they are in fact illegal. I would suspect that if anyone invested in doing this they would simply find that the network they had changed would simply die, and a new network would spring from the ashes yet again which would not honour the restrictions.
As I suggested in my last post, if you want to have a file sharing system which cannot be prevented from distributing copyrighted materials, then you need to use a decentralised resilient network (as I understand freenet is). As I also said though, while I am interested in this at a technical level, as long as I am not prevented from doing things which are clearly legal (like sharing a debian iso or my home movies of me singing in the shower) I really don't care if the **AA manages to squash sharing of files for which there is no permission to share. The key as far as I am concerned is that the system defaults to assuming that all material is legal, and to prevent sharing of a file it must be proved that it is illegal to share it. Now do I belive the **AA and their buddies in the US government will ensure that my freedom to let people hear just how terrible my singing voice is is protected? Probably not. Do I believe they will be able to enforce this worldwide? Again probably not, so as I am not an American I am a little less concerned then perhaps I might be. That being said, I don't trust the current Irish government to protect my rights as an individual so I am aprehensive.
The bottom line for me is that as long as a commercial entity is attempting to make money by creating a file sharing network with no regard for the legality of what is happening on it's network then the ground is very shaky. When the system is no more and no less than the sum of what it's users contribute, that's different. Think of it this way, telling me I cannot visit my friends house because I may deliver drugs is an insane invasion of privacy/curtailment of basic freedom, but closing down a courier company which is proven to be little more than a front for drug deliveries is an entirely different story, even if they simply just set up their business in such a way that it suits drug dealers without explicitly attempting to traffic and profit from drugs! Fun arguments could be had for a long time about whether or not the "war on drugs" approach is correct to transfer to copyrighted materials (let alone whether it is appropriate or appropriately applied for drugs) but as things stand I see it as consistent to prevent a company from profiting from facilitating illegal acts. If you want a more generally acceptable example of where a company can do something seemingly legal which can/should be prevented, a tour operator which arranges anonimysed (is there a real word hiding behind my lack of spelling) holidays to Thailand where they will arrange for you to meet local children in secrecy without record! There is a point at which every company must take some responsibility for its actions and not simply say that they are simply providing a service and that it is their users fault if they do something illegal.
The other bottom line is that the old adage of the internet routing around censorship still applies, and probably always will. The battle will run for a long time t
You system fails. The reason is that the service decides how many people have a file based on the fact that their fingerprints match. So if you search for a film title, you will probably find that there are numerous versions of that film available, but only one or two of them are commonly held, the rest just have 1 or 2 copies out there. If you deny the system being able to recognise that NNN people actually all have the same file available, then each person will end up having to download the entire version of any file you want from one person alone, and if they disconnect, delete the file or block you then you will have to destroy what you have and start again! Of course you could say that they could assemble the packets you have, get the header from someone else and then figure out which of their packets they need, but to do that the first thing they need to know is who else has the indetical file available for download, otherwise you may as well just randomly try to complete it from anyone who says they have your film, and you wouldn't want to care about what you are getting playing back sanely.
The only way to avoid something like this is to have a decentralised network of peers which can't be injected with any sort of filtering mechanism, perhaps a hybrid of Freenet and bittorrent?
I was pretty much thinking like you until I started thinking about it. Let me outline the scenario as I see it.
- New porn film is released, studio converts it to the most commonly shared formats with the most commonly used encoders and gets those fingerprints blocked.
- Someone rips the film so that they get a different fingerprint.
- The studio monitors the network for their files and when they find one they get it's fingerprint blocked also.
- Someone alters the rip or creates a new rip with another new fingerprint.
- Repeat 3&4 ad infinitum
The end result is that no rip ever reaches many people, and for a file to continue to be available people have to keep making new versions of the file. When you go searching for a file you are unlikely to discover a file with many sources. The greatest strength (imho) of Kazaa at present will be destroyed for illegal files, the fact that you can see how many people are sharing an identical file, providing redundancy which ensures you are actually likely to be able to download a complete file as opposed to being being left with half a file and no way to finish it.I have no problem with people trying to provide a meaningful way of preventing piracy on filesharing networks as long as it does not interfere with my right to share a Linux iso or my home movies. As long as a fingerprinting system was good enough to not squash non-matching content (i.e. the possible fingerprint space is large enough that truly different content is extremely unlikely to match) then this system is fair, just a lot of work for the network (system time checking fingerprints) and the studios (people time finding matching content) if they actually want it to work to a menaingful level.
If you develop on your own a program, you can license it however you want to whoever you want. If you accept submissions under a particulr license though you can only release those submissions under that license. So this guy only has the right to sell the software under a license other than the GPL if he/they have ensured all submitters have granted them permission to do so. Trying to really hold onto the rights to distribute GPL'd software otherwise is difficult unless you ignore one of the great benefits of the GPL: submissions, or else you can convince all submitters that you have a right to take their work to make money as you see fit! I'm quite sure Linus couldn't sell Linux to MS under a BSD license without talking to a whole lot of people!
Vulnerable (updates available): Cisco and Microsoft
Unknown: Avaya, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Lucent and Nortel
Safe: Apple, Hitachi, NetBSD, Red Hat and Symantec
Is that a point for Security through open source as the two open products are already in the safe pile?
Ireland has had the chance of widespread competitive bandwidth wiped out by an incompetent government!
The Irish national telephone network (Telecom Eireann) was planned for a big floatation as a public company, but first the semi-state company Cablelink (which had purchased over half the cable tv licenses in the country) was also to be sold off. To absolutely insure the maximum government revenue (or directors or someones), Cablelink rolled out a Cable modem trial and proceeded to manage to get the highest price per subscriber for a cable tv network anywhere in the world from NTL. Now NTLs problems worldwide are not because they bought Cablelink, but it sure didn't help as they are now sitting on a network, desperatley trying to extract more cash with a "digital" service (more crap channels, no digital advantages) and have done nothing as far as cable modems are concerned. End result, there is effectively no cable modem service in Ireland (NTL did roll out a cable modem service, but my attempts to find out where it was available led me to believe it probably covered less than 250 houses). Once NTL had handed over the astronomical amount of cash for Cablelink, the next scam started, selling Telecom Eireann.
First thing the name changed to Eircom and then every bank in the country was giving anyone who wanted it 1500 to buy their allotment of shares. The initial price was high, went up a little for a few days and then dropped leaving huge sections of the country sitting on shares they were down on. Then the mobile division was sold off to Vodafone, and now people had 2 sets of shares doing nothing for them, and ultimately Eircom was bought out into a private company leaving most people down on the deal. You know how much it stinks when one of the countrys most senior politicians (Dick Spring) who was sitting on the board of Eircom didn't buy any shares himself cause "he didn't have the funds" (though maybe the banks have sense and know a politician is not the sort to lend cash to). The bottom line being that broadband in Ireland was shelved until all this was dealt with and eventually ADSL appeared (well Eircom had been using various DSL technologies to deliver lines already, but they were all leased lines at leased line prices). Eircom had a complete monopoly on the capacity in the market (you were unlikely to be able to avoid giving them your cash indirectly no matter what you did) and had gone from a national owned company to a private company without any real changes to ensure fairness in the market. They released ADSL only after about 3 years of messing around in courts and only when they were already over 2 years late in "unbundling the local loop". End result is that now the country is actually being split between Eircom and Esat to enable DSL in exchanges and finally provide something bearing resemblence to a nationwide broadband network. ADSL will set you back from 45+ depending on the service you want, but as far as I am aware their is only one company who is offering an unmetered service at anything like that level. With Eircom you would have to pay about 160/month to get a 1mbit uncapped line, on any of the other lines they reserve the right to charge 30/Gbyte with limits of 3-6Gbytes/month! They can get away with all of this as the competition is leased lines, ISDN or Wireless (which are slowly springing up).
For me the bottom line is that Ireland will remain a backwater until NTL do something or get the hell out of the country and let someone else use the network they are squating on, the only network that can really show Eircom what competition is about! Thankfully my RADSL 512:128@48:1 (costing 45+VAT with Static IP and no service limitations) performs magically, though every day I expect my 50+kbyte/s download speed to divide by 10, and that I will have to go and look for yet another service (next stop would be satellite + DSL or just wireless).
And if you click on the link for more it takes you to the list of "Windows (Family) Products! Very odd and wrong!
What's needed is the equivalent of a carbon copy (or perhaps even a carbon copy). The machine has a large spool of double paper, and when it prints the users vote, one copy is rolled onto the internal spool and the other copy is fed out to the user. Then there is a complete trace in the machine of the days voting and each user can check that what it says for their vote is what they intended (and could go out to the supervisor and say "I pushed for Gore and got Buchanan, that's wrong!"). Just make sure the paper roll can be scanned in at high speed (can't be too hard) and then machines can be randomly or systematically checked. Now to get around this you could of course devise a hardware hack which fakes the "carbon copying" but that should be easy to prevent (showing the election officer what it's meant to look like inside and dropping in a small perspex window) should be sufficient. Mentioning the window makes me think you could even do away with the double copying and just feed the roll past a window so when you cast your vote you can see the paper with your vote and then confirm it (closes the window so the next voter can't see your vote). It's still easy to destroy votes (burn down the building/machine) but falsifying gets tricky.
I live in Ireland. I have yet to see the first Tivo like appliance in the stores for average consumers (the closest we come is Sky's Sky+ which only works with sky's satellite TV). I think that TV Listings are the primary issue for the slow roll out of these products into different countries. I personally suspect the PS3 will probably be the first real product to hit Ireland with this, Sony having "perfected" the system with the PSX in Japan will probably carry it forward worldwide.
Excuse me for still having some scepticism in my brain, but if I was running IBM, I would have already set as much of this up as feasible by the back door and then announce publically that I was going to do it on a quite short timeframe. Then when I succeed I can go to other companies "look, it's predictable and safe". Companies hate change, employees hate change, it's risky or just plain annoying so if you really want to get the huge organisations to take this sort of a change seriously, you are going to have to be able to provide serious evidence.
Leaving scepticism (which was fueled by a comment refering to a base desktop build which already exists in IBM) aside, this is so logical it's simple! If IBM transfer their own business over to IBM's own software across the board, then they have a constantly provable business environment which they can sell and support on their own hardware. They can return to selling one stop shops, but by basing the underlying systems (as far as they commit to) on Free software, they completely disarm the feeling of being forced to choose between evils, you can choose a potential evil and feel free to walk away (well you might be replacing lots of hardware if you completely drop them) with your system. IBM could effectively start getting end customers to foot the bill for Free software development by IBM and the more of that work they are doing, the more of the work they are likely to get. The rules (well the licenses of most software they would be likely to use) prevent a monopoly, but IBM's power is huge and hence it could attract business to a monopolistic level, at least until a new tiger appears which can take it on in the newly expanded market. IBM don't need software licensing revenue, IBM can exist for the rest of time on it's name provided they can provide people with dependable solutions (i.e. they can charge a profit margin others would dream of, just because it's IBM).
What dissappoints me is that this all makes me recall many moments while I worked for Corel International Linux Support when I tried making people see the benefits of eating our own dogfood. I truly felt (though I mattered squat) they should have moved the next (or following if already too late) version of their Office and Draw suites to QT (or gtk, I only really say qt as they had already committed to KDE on the desktop and had peeople working on it) and start consolidating on their work. They were deciding what system to buy for the Linux Support desk, and I asked why they didn't just adopt a free one! Moving over all their hosting to Linux was another issue and one that was more important in their minds (and judging by netcraft it seems they achieved something there I wasn't expecting anymore). It was interesting however to watch the various reactions from managers to administrators, support staff to developers when they realised they had a bit of a Free software zealot in their midst! I even managed to get in my digs at visiting big-wigs (something makes me think that isn't why Corel left the country though). Corel had an opportunity, but they didn't even try (in fact I wonder why they even bothered starting with Linux if they weren't going to go down this route).
IBM would have to be insane not to try this. Really it is a case of when they feel they should make the jump to best effect, and if IBM feel that now is the time to do it, you can be sure it is very doable (for them) because egg on the face here could cost IBM massively and for a long time. I can't help feel that this has been in the works ever since they lost out on OS/2 and if the MS V Linux "Get The Facts" can be taken as evidence that MS is scared, this should be taken as evidence that MS should be petrified! If IBM do follow through with this, the impact in having all the IBM employees worldwide proficient with GNU/Linux/X/??/?? would be significant apart from the developments you would be sure would be seen in each piece o
I certainly believe this tech is available right now, and remember seeing some Sony goggles that basically did what I am talking about (think they might not be available anymore). The price was about 800 I think, a lot of cash, but projectors, large screens and portable screens (not a 14" crt but a 15"+ LCD/TFT) are expensive things. Many people spend a thousand on a screen. The important thing to remember though is that in all of these areas prices are continuously falling, today's rich mans product is tomorrows middle class product and so on.
This is completely different to reading on a transport system. When reading, the seasickness is caused by the fact that your eyes are bouncing around differently to your hands (or wherever the book is). When looking through a pair of goggles anchored to the tops of the ears and the nose, the screen bounce will be the eye/head bounce, and hence while your head may be bobbing about all over the place, your eyes will still be focusing on the same point. The only thing the HUD would need to do is ensure that it is secure enough not to bounce of your nose (ears are easy) and that could be done a number of ways (from straps around your head to making the ear strap a loop which attaches to the "viweing area" twice, once from above and once from below). The real question is how our brains would react to watching a stable image overlaid on a bouncing train carraige and I don't think we have common experiences to determine that (though I would guess that the worlds air forces all know about this).
Portable Video on a tiny (even 6 inch) LCD is pretty useless. Portable video on a hud is what I want. Sony at least used to have some goggles where you could control the transparency of the screen so you could "multitask" with your eyes. Where could I see it really pay off? Well anyone doing a public transport commute to work could dump their favourite soaps over for daily viewing on the way in and out of work, all without having to take their eyes off where they are and who is trying to steal their bag! But really I think it goes beyond video once you use goggles, it becomes a HUD (especially if it also has a wireless link). People on the stock exchange could have tickers, news, messages from the office all available right in front of them at all times. I would expect to see the military as the driving force of this work, soldiers don't want to me looking away from target to acquire information and they don't want to carry excessive or restrictive devices, the question is how long before the tech they develop falls out into our hands?
- Alarm System: 2k
- Phone System: 1k
- Home Automation: 2k
- Entertainment: 5k
- Personal Computer: 10k
- Everything Running Linux: Priceless
Forgive me!They are distributing an seemingly offending binary ROM from their website so they would also have to answer requests from people who get the ROM!
My original story post included a short second paragraph with the above quote and my own opinion that perhaps a slashdotting for KISS might convince them that this is something they should respond to. I guess CowboyNeal thought it was unneccessary, but I though it was a vital part of the story (the failure of KISS to reply and hence the public name and shame by Mplayer).
Taking Debian as an example, it may be worthwhile looking at having a liveCD net-installer image, so you can boot up into a full-system and choose to kick off a net install at any time. But on a regular installation cd, you do not want a liveCD, why? Well the point of having a cd is so you don't have to download so many packages (if any), and if you use up space on the cd with the liveCD then you will likely send more people hitting the mirrors.
I recently had to install a system as a basic desktop. I did both types of knoppix-installer runs (debian and knoppix) and either way I felt I had a slightly mish-mashed system which I didn't really want to keep working with. So I got the latest daily image of the net-inst cd for debian-installer, experienced one minor problem (had to hand prod the network up) and had a system up under my control in no time. The old debian installer is just that, old! The new debian installer is looking great (providing the ports can come together) and while it may still be in development, asking why liveCD when compared to the old installer is a waste of time. Why liveCD Vs the new installer ... well I think it's a matter of horses for courses. If you want a quick means to a certain setup, liveCDs should be great, but if you want to setup a system with what you want, it's probably never going to happen from a liveCD except where the liveCD is simply a glorified front-end to the regular installer and then your liveCD has the decreased space for packages that got me started!
If you want a MySQL implementation where ALL tables are transaction safe then simply recompile it with only support for transaction safe tables? Am I missing something here? Yes you lose out on any enhancements of the other table types, but that's your choice! You probably don't even need to recompile it, or if you do perhaps MySQL could add the option to only use transaction safe table types (perhaps on a per database level).
The way I see it is they have taken what seems to be a very weak position and are trying to use spin and publicity to make it pay off! The best way to counter that is ... publicity! The stories, in particular those which can help to dismiss SCO arguments, are valuable as any good information discovered is likely to spread to other sources so more of the counter arguments are seen. Basically they are attacking a huge amount of people with this case so if they wish to have a trial in the court of public/shareholder opinion why stand down?
As for just "free" Linux or "pay to SCO" Linux, I think you miss the point that SCO have to be resisted at step 1 (Linux), rather than giving them any room to start trying to broaden it out (to BSD, OSX, Irix, *nix), and also that you never give in to terrorists, it sets a bad precedent which others will follow!
If the donor donates to a central group then whatever the central group does with it is the wishes of the user. I agree completely that this is a far nicer system than central groups, it's just I am pessimistic about this and believe that such random injections of money into the development communinty will likely lead to some big falling out and hence don't believe it is a better system. It is far easier for a user to have their money "missappropriated" if they are making small individual donations (think of the spamming potential) then if they are making a donation to someone who is big enough to likely have a number of people watching them as well as possible and publically kicking them. Of course there is always going to be room for both approaches, I just hope the money doesn't breed "corruption".
I am well aware of the reports on paypal, but I would seriously wonder wether they would risk messing with a sourceforge payment without extremely good reason. Why? Well, if you had a business based on Internet transactions would you provoke sourgeforge and it's followers?
The beauty of this system (as well as it's potential downfall) is the possibility of the projects to redirect the money. Where projects use other projects as the basis of their work (say a cdrecord front-end), the front-end is more likely to attract end-user cash then the back-end but should recognise the appropriatness of redistributing some of their donations to the back-end. If this works well you would see the cash going into all the systems valued by the end user. If it goes badly you will see warefare within projects as well as between projects who share code. So who thinks the people within each project in charge of the money distribution will be able to do the right thing? I don't though I really wish they could!
I would rather see donations going to a collection of groups like SPI, FSF, UserLinux, Mandrake, Lindows who can act as a front end to collect money and channel it out to places where they think it's going to get the best value for the donators (including giving it to themselves to keep working). This of course would not prevent warfare, but at least it would provide a handful of central decision making bodies to examine and evaluate so the community could bring to potential donators attention the history of how the bodies have acted and who therfore are the best choices depending on what you aim to promote. It is for this reason I see Mandrake and even Lindows as potential donation targets (and you could argue for most commercial linux offerings) as they both develop internally and by bringing in outside interests, Lindows going for the big publicity grabbing things (FrontPage replacement, XBoxLinux and of course the eponymous distro), Mandrake just looking to put together a good set of distros. Of course there is no means to make a donation to a US company (not sure around the world how this works) as Michael Moore delighted in by bringing around fat cheques to "give" to companies.
+4 Insightful ??? How is this insightful? It is a rant with plenty of SHOUTING. Now consider this, each country of the planet's governments (however they were (s)elected) appoints it's delegates to the UN. ICANN on the other hand holds public elections for positions, doesn't like who it gets, scraps the positions and then appoints whoever it wants instead which is obviously far more democratic. Not forgetting that one of it's public appointees had to sue them to even read neccessary documents!