So, as a libertarian, I have a problem here.. An inner conflict, if you will. One one hand, I believe (like a good libertarian should) that there should be less government. That the government should keep its hands out of just about everything. But on the otherhand, without the government, toysmart can violate my rights. Microsoft can crush my company. And I cannot stop them.
It's not so hard. Stop thinking that the government is evil. The government does have its uses, and one good use of this to protect and defend the public good. The ideal government is one that expresses the common will of the people.
Of course, the actuality and how it departs from the ideal should be examined with a keen eye.
Yes, that is what the FTC should try to do. They should try to establish a precendent that such lists of customer data are not assets. They are a liability and should be disposed of entirely. Any disks storoing the information should be wiped by a reputable company. Any hard copies shredded. The penalty for leaking of this information to any partty would be the the payment of say - $50 - to each and everyone on the list, by default.
This is the way to stem and break the trade in customer data.
The best and most innocuous way a system is penetrated and compromised is not from remote exploits, but from the inside. The careless SysAdmin who leaves a root console open; the stupid employee who writes his password on postit notes next to the monitor; the disgruntled and angry employee that did not get the raise he think he deserved.
If systems were just insured from outside cracking, then it would make more sense. But the vulnerability of MOST systems is from the users, and so the problem of insurance fraud cannot be avoided. Why can't the CEO and CTO collaborate to make more money for the company? The last time I heard, no audit can discover what a bunch of powerful and willing conspirators want to hide.
Well no. I am saying that the law should be very clear that such single actions are expressedly unlawful, in the wider context that anyone doing so is breaking the law, monopoly or not.
Somehow, framing it under the umbrella of antitrust does not make sense, because, IMHO, the action itself is despicable, nevermind who does it.
Why not? As far as they are concerned, I have transferred all my rights to my friend. If they don't honor this, then I have evidently not cleanly transferred my rights to him. I don't think RedHat, the GPL or anyone else should have the right to deny me of the right to make such a transaction. Certainly, if they do deny this right, they have denied the principle of first sale. Where in the GPL does it say that this right is removed? The GPL grants us some natural rights taken away by copyright! It removes us of the right to steal code, and only that. It is not it's wording or intention to strip us of any other right irrelevant to this. To do so would be to contravene its spirit!
Well you, since you unbundled the products on what is forbidden by the GPL. What was one product now becomes two becuase you unbundled it. Of course bundling is legal in Germany. But that does not mean that is always so. For legal, read not illegal, as long as no other laws or agreements are breached.
All those people attempting to raise the problem of GPL are just barking up the wrong tree. The GPL's intent is to reverse the imbalance in copyright law, by leveraging it to grant those rights that copyright law takes away by default.
The principle of first sale or in this case, unbundling simply relates to the transfer of ownership or rights. If I sell you my T-shirt, I give up my rights to it. I can't wash it, dry it, wear it, whatever becuase it is no longer my shirt. It is your shirt now and you can do anything you like with it, in the same way that I could have done anything with it when it was mine.
With my MS Office CD, I can copy it for backups, poke at it using a debugger, and so on. The only thing that copyright law prevents me from doing is to copy it and then Sell those copies. But I can transfer my ownership of that CD to someone else, thus giving up my rights to use it.
Same with GPLed software. NO DIFFERENCE. I can simply take that RedHat CD (which only has bionaries) and sell it to my friend cheap. If I keep no further copies around, I am not redistributing it, but transfering it to my friend. So I don't have to give sources. I can just tell the friend - go to ftp.redhat.com for the sources. RedHat's obligation of providing the source is now to my friend, not me. I am clean.
But since the GPL grants me the right to redistribute it, I can also choose to make copies of it to sell away! As long as I obey the conditions that I should give the binaries I must give the source. So if I make changes, if I make copies, then too bad, I am a reseller or distributor and must obey the GPL.
So the question of copyright or copyleft as the GPL attempts to be is is orthogonal to the idea of transfering ownership, regardless of whether it is for profit or not!
Does anyone somehow feel that this is the way Big Monopolies should be dealt with? A clear concise ruling yet far reaching ruling that prevents MS (and fture companies) from attempting to leverage its monopoly is far far better than an expensive anti-trust lawsuit. Germany seems to be getting it right, IMHO.
Good points. But I think you forget one thing. That 1-7 are all about money, thus in pursuit of goals 1-7, they have to streamline everything. 8 thus just left on the wayside.
It does not have to be this way of course. It just too bad that the record labels do not have enough competition amongst themselves for the good artists to be able to achieve goal 8.
Professor Kunikov believes that, as well as being fun, the shoes could be used by rescue services to reach quickly areas inaccessible to vehicles with wheels.
Much as I hate the RIAA and like MP3s, and think current Patent Office as being ineffective, I must say this time, I am impressed. The problem of protecting music by encryption is a genuine need for artists (this does not automatically have to be RIAA - just think about it!). The mathematicians came out with a brilliant scheme that apparently works, and they patented it. This mean that the ideas behind the music protection will never die and eventually, everyone can use it freely, the inventors get money in the interim, artists get protection, and selling music on the 'net can really take off. This is a case where all these ideas - patent law, public-key cryptography, music, capitalism all work. I may lose karma for this, but This is Good. So go ahead and flame me!
The only question I have is a technical one that concerns the rapid generation of keys. It claimed is that the keys are generated essentially randomly. But how true is this? To be put into players and software, the algorithm must be deterministics. After generating one key, the next one must follow, or else the playback would be screwed up. Why is it that someone cannot attempt to crack the first 1-minute block of music, and once successful, figure out the keys for the rest of the stream? Sorry - my math is not up to scratch, and I think this is a fair question. Anyone?
But ASPs are easier to clone into Free Software packages than traditional software. The interface can be cloned. And the equivalent networking/sharing functionality can be done with encryption+TCPIP networking. Alternatively, if users do not want this kind of cloning, we can go the other way: make a client clone. Then the network protocols can be monitored and reverse-engineered. Class action lawsuits can be filed against companies to keep the protocol open for interoperability. And they cannot sue for copyright violation becuase only they have the running binary, so how can we be copying anything?
MS should go ahead and make their.NET. Makes it easier for Open source/Free software to kill them off.
Ubiquitious computing sounds really good. And it might actually sweep our whole society towards it, what with MIT, Microsoft and other tech companies behind it.
This is the future? Can't we have something else? What are the alternatives?
For a very good, poetic rant against this vision, I recommend Dan Simmon's Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. Highly recommended reading. If you haven't read it, be warned of spoilers.
In brief, Dan Simmons paints a world where computers control everything, and are truly ubiquitious. With help of their invention, Mankind colonizes the stars, using farcaster portals. But there is a price for this technology. Humankind becomes enslaved, dependent on ubiquitious compuetrs. So much so that they cannot fight an interstellar war. What does the novel offer as an alternative? Real starships. "Real" tech in the form of FTL ships and weapons.
Regardless of whether you agree or not, this is but one of the many threads in the Hyperion story. For those overtly enamored about ubiquitious computing, thinking it will liberate us, this novel is a very good antidote against that.
But like all Sci-Fi, things will never truly happen this way. The novel may be presenting a false dilemma. A good read and interesting viewpoint, nevertheless.
I guess the mere fact that the chip consumes only 1 W of power compared to the 30-100 W of current chips is just irrelevant, right?
Sure the peripherals suck more juice than the chip. But the important thing about PC hardware is the modularity. Someone somewhere is going to make less power-hungry PCI boards or something. This is called progress!
Some of us are not as enamored of Linus as you think we are.
If someone from Transmeta's PR department is reading this: Hello?/please/ get your act together! Methinks you have forgotten that Transmeta has a non-existent PR department. Their way of hyping the release date was to hide that message in the html source, remember?
On one hand, it is not hard to laugh in glee over how AOL is getting sued.
But the lameness of the suit just begs to be flamed. Why are AOL customers expressing their software behaviour preferences through a lawsuit? 2000 years of civilization, and the only way a collective groups of AOL (l)users can figure out how to ask for the ads to be placed at the END of the session is through a lawsuit. Why could they not have learnt to talk to AOL in a civilized manner? Software is a flexible thing. It is plastic, programmable, not set in stone, and their relationship to AOL is valuable enough that some kind of bargaining can be set up. Why make lawyers rich?
Slashdot Mirror
It's not so hard. Stop thinking that the government is evil. The government does have its uses, and one good use of this to protect and defend the public good. The ideal government is one that expresses the common will of the people.
Of course, the actuality and how it departs from the ideal should be examined with a keen eye.
This is the way to stem and break the trade in customer data.
If systems were just insured from outside cracking, then it would make more sense. But the vulnerability of MOST systems is from the users, and so the problem of insurance fraud cannot be avoided. Why can't the CEO and CTO collaborate to make more money for the company? The last time I heard, no audit can discover what a bunch of powerful and willing conspirators want to hide.
Identical twins have identical DNA.
Malda: Hey, relax bud! I have nothing illegal upon me.
SO: I'll decide that, Mr Malda. Please step right into my office here.
Malda: I am on urgent business here!
SO: This won't take long, if you are clean.
Malda: It's really urgent okay? Oh alright!!
Steps into office. CO closes the door.
SO: Open your luggage please. And strip down to your underwear.
Malda: Yeah yeah - here y'go. There, I'm nekkid. Satisfied?
SO: What's this? Neoprene bras, underwear and dildo ...
Malda: Yeah. Are they illegal or something?
SO (leery smile): Err ... no. I guess that explains the plastic.
Malda: Can I go now?
SO: Oooh! What is that smell?!
Malda: I just farted, Okay? Is that illegal? I really go to go ...
SO: Hold on! There's still the ... yikes, you just shit in your pants man!
Malda: I did say I have urgent business didn't I?
SO: Ah that explains the nitrogen. God, get out of my office man!
Somehow, framing it under the umbrella of antitrust does not make sense, because, IMHO, the action itself is despicable, nevermind who does it.
Why not? As far as they are concerned, I have transferred all my rights to my friend. If they don't honor this, then I have evidently not cleanly transferred my rights to him. I don't think RedHat, the GPL or anyone else should have the right to deny me of the right to make such a transaction. Certainly, if they do deny this right, they have denied the principle of first sale. Where in the GPL does it say that this right is removed? The GPL grants us some natural rights taken away by copyright! It removes us of the right to steal code, and only that. It is not it's wording or intention to strip us of any other right irrelevant to this. To do so would be to contravene its spirit!
Well you, since you unbundled the products on what is forbidden by the GPL. What was one product now becomes two becuase you unbundled it. Of course bundling is legal in Germany. But that does not mean that is always so. For legal, read not illegal, as long as no other laws or agreements are breached.
The principle of first sale or in this case, unbundling simply relates to the transfer of ownership or rights. If I sell you my T-shirt, I give up my rights to it. I can't wash it, dry it, wear it, whatever becuase it is no longer my shirt. It is your shirt now and you can do anything you like with it, in the same way that I could have done anything with it when it was mine.
With my MS Office CD, I can copy it for backups, poke at it using a debugger, and so on. The only thing that copyright law prevents me from doing is to copy it and then Sell those copies. But I can transfer my ownership of that CD to someone else, thus giving up my rights to use it.
Same with GPLed software. NO DIFFERENCE. I can simply take that RedHat CD (which only has bionaries) and sell it to my friend cheap. If I keep no further copies around, I am not redistributing it, but transfering it to my friend. So I don't have to give sources. I can just tell the friend - go to ftp.redhat.com for the sources. RedHat's obligation of providing the source is now to my friend, not me. I am clean.
But since the GPL grants me the right to redistribute it, I can also choose to make copies of it to sell away! As long as I obey the conditions that I should give the binaries I must give the source. So if I make changes, if I make copies, then too bad, I am a reseller or distributor and must obey the GPL.
So the question of copyright or copyleft as the GPL attempts to be is is orthogonal to the idea of transfering ownership, regardless of whether it is for profit or not!
IANAL, but I should be!
Does anyone somehow feel that this is the way Big Monopolies should be dealt with? A clear concise ruling yet far reaching ruling that prevents MS (and fture companies) from attempting to leverage its monopoly is far far better than an expensive anti-trust lawsuit. Germany seems to be getting it right, IMHO.
It does not have to be this way of course. It just too bad that the record labels do not have enough competition amongst themselves for the good artists to be able to achieve goal 8.
A: Shouts Polly wants a cracker!
Hasn't he ever heard of the Pongo stick!!
Oh really? Does any Windows have a Steganographic Filesystem? Authored by Microsoft?
After all, the initials FIN should belong to our one true Finn, and nobody else!!
The only question I have is a technical one that concerns the rapid generation of keys. It claimed is that the keys are generated essentially randomly. But how true is this? To be put into players and software, the algorithm must be deterministics. After generating one key, the next one must follow, or else the playback would be screwed up. Why is it that someone cannot attempt to crack the first 1-minute block of music, and once successful, figure out the keys for the rest of the stream? Sorry - my math is not up to scratch, and I think this is a fair question. Anyone?
MS should go ahead and make their .NET. Makes it easier for Open source/Free software to kill them off.
This is the future? Can't we have something else? What are the alternatives?
For a very good, poetic rant against this vision, I recommend Dan Simmon's Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. Highly recommended reading. If you haven't read it, be warned of spoilers.
In brief, Dan Simmons paints a world where computers control everything, and are truly ubiquitious. With help of their invention, Mankind colonizes the stars, using farcaster portals. But there is a price for this technology. Humankind becomes enslaved, dependent on ubiquitious compuetrs. So much so that they cannot fight an interstellar war. What does the novel offer as an alternative? Real starships. "Real" tech in the form of FTL ships and weapons.
Regardless of whether you agree or not, this is but one of the many threads in the Hyperion story. For those overtly enamored about ubiquitious computing, thinking it will liberate us, this novel is a very good antidote against that.
But like all Sci-Fi, things will never truly happen this way. The novel may be presenting a false dilemma. A good read and interesting viewpoint, nevertheless.
Try puTTY. A nice, one-binary-only windows client that is Free!
Sure the peripherals suck more juice than the chip. But the important thing about PC hardware is the modularity. Someone somewhere is going to make less power-hungry PCI boards or something. This is called progress!
Some of us are not as enamored of Linus as you think we are.
Why is the DOJ so quick on its feet against the telcos, but such a dawdle-dodo when it comes to Microsoft?
All the more reason why they are cool!
But the lameness of the suit just begs to be flamed. Why are AOL customers expressing their software behaviour preferences through a lawsuit? 2000 years of civilization, and the only way a collective groups of AOL (l)users can figure out how to ask for the ads to be placed at the END of the session is through a lawsuit. Why could they not have learnt to talk to AOL in a civilized manner? Software is a flexible thing. It is plastic, programmable, not set in stone, and their relationship to AOL is valuable enough that some kind of bargaining can be set up. Why make lawyers rich?
Hmm - that sounds like Back Orifice.