It's bad because Novell is paying Microsoft for the use of Microsoft patents in Linux. Linux is free software. When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. The fact that Novell has effectively admitted that Microsoft holds some Intellectual Property leverage over Linux, implies that Linux is non-free. And that's not acceptable to the community. Worse, it implies that Linux is non-free and beholden to Microsoft, a convicted monopolist, the owner of Linux's principal competitor, a company with no love for Linux and one which is well known for shafting its partners and enemies alike.
It appears likely that the patent covenant which Novell signed violates the GPL - either Version 2, or certainly Version 3. If so, Novell loses its right to distribute affected code under the GPL. No other license permits it to do that, so Novell must cease distributing.
Also, the possibility that Novell has insider access to Microsoft Intellectual Property creates a risk that Novell's contributions to Linux will leak some of that Intellectual Property into Linux. Thus, the scenario described in the first paragraph, while Linux may not presently be tainted by Microsoft's IP, in future it may become so. I think it is purely common sense for the community to reject patches supplied by Novell.
So, people don't hate Novell, but by their actions they are putting Linux at risk, in order to line their own pockets (presumably funded by patents which Novell owns and which may be used in Windows). Novell aren't playing fair with the community.
But [the BBC trust] agreed with broadcasting watchdog Ofcom, which said earlier this month that the iPlayer could have a "negative effect" on commercial rivals
I think that's not the BBC's problem. The commercial rivals must take care of themselves - by, for example, providing higher quality content or different content. Is Ofcom asserting that there's a limit to the amount of classical music and TV shows which the economy can support? That having more choice will lead inevitably to commercial loss for these competitors? Perhaps the BBC should stop producing classical music and high quality TV programs altogether lest they damage the market share of commercial competitors? Perhaps we should limit access to the Public Domain too, since it can't be easily monopolised.
It wants the corporation to scale back plans to let downloaded "catch-up" episodes remain on users' hard drives for 13 weeks, suggesting that 30 days is enough.
Assuming (as devil's advocate) that their DRM is adequate, why limit the time that the content works? If somebody records one of these shows on their VCR, they are allowed to watch it again and again forever. Why limit a user's fair use rights for no better reason than "because it's technically possible"?
The trust also asked the BBC to explore ways of introducing parental controls to its on-demand services, as it is worried at the "heightened risk of children being exposed to post-watershed material".
TV doesn't require electronic "parental controls", so why should downloaded shows?
"There is a potential negative market impact if the BBC allows listeners to build an extensive library of classical music that will serve as a close substitute for commercially available downloads or CDs," it said.
I'm afraid they're several years too late on that point. It seems the BBC Trust hasn't been paying attention to recent events. Here are some facts to brighten your day:
DRM doesn't work. Cross-platform DRM doesn't work even more than ordinary DRM doesn't work. The media will be read (CDs), the encryption will be broken (DVDs), the keys will be recovered (HD-DVD and BluRay), or the audio will be captured (iTunes). All DRM does is annoy ordinary people.
All it takes is one person to remove the DRM from your content and upload to a P2P network, then the non-DRM file will spread because it's more convenient to people than the DRM file. For example, they will be able to play it in their favourite music player rather than having to use yours.
This content is already paid-for, by the British television-owning public.
Making the content easy to download from the source (BBC) will discourage people from making it available on P2P networks.
Making a wide range of content available on a permanent basis will earn the BBC a lot of respect.
The BBC is guilty of years of mismanagement of its legacy, losing historically priceless television footage. Opening up what's left (under, say, a non-commercial Creative Commons license) is one way that the BBC could make amends, as well as limiting the possibility of that travesty happening again.
Actually I'd suggest using a
Distributed Hash Table
to store and retrieve the keys. A centralised site can be attacked easily - legal threats
against the site owner, or the ISP may be coerced into taking the site down. The domain
could even be deleted. With a Distributed Hash Table however, the database is distributed
among many hosts, and the hosts can come and go over time; the lookup protocol finds
the closest host to the expected location of the data.
I don't know how problems such as verification of the correctness of the keys could be
solved.
I think preserving these things as artefacts is a dead end. Artefacts are too easily lost. It's fun to find artefacts, as we all know from reading about the Antikythera mechanism and the Da Vinci code. But we've surely lost forever much more from antiquity and even recent times (like the BBC's original footage of Monty Python and Dr Who) than we've found.
Replication is one part of the answer; the more copies of something that exist, the less likely it is that all will be destroyed or lost.
Another part of the answer is to keep the stuff online. That would require special services of course, don't expect your Geocities page to still be around 100 years hence, but if you can get it onto www.archive.org it has a much better chance of survival. I think there's a market nice for a "perpetual server" service, something which accepts a big upfront payment and promises to keep your data online "forever".
So let me guess, they won't be using this format to preserve the internals of Word documents or OOXML ?
I'm sure there's no place for such travesties as "useWord2002TableStyleRules" in a document format intended to
last thousands of years and be readable by future civilizations... nor in the tens-of-years timeframe which OOXML
pretends to address.
On the contrary - while the average joe may have no idea what "image-based install" means,
the huge speedup in install time makes a big impression on them. If it's quicker, they'll
think it was easier to do.
And in the case of vista, it's a selling point for MSFT - that is, except that MSFT is expecting to sell computers with Vista preloaded, in which case the end user doesn't install the OS.
Perhaps they are targeting the upgrade market from XP. I don't know how an image-based install
can be used to upgrade an existing system, perhaps it has a list of files to delete from previous
versions of Windows.
Image-based install is where you install by copying a filesystem of already-installed code.
I built a linux install CD a few years ago, and most tasks were automated, it had to:
Partition the disk
Make some filesystems
Untar the.tar.gz images from the CD onto the filesystems
Configure LILO
Reboot
Those 5 steps completed in under 5 minutes (I timed it) compared to half an hour or more
using the debian installer and apt to install one package at a time.
My "source" for the filesystem images, what I called the "pristine copy" was a virtual machine
under User-Mode Linux. Whenever I wanted to update my install CD I'd just boot it up, do
"apt-get upgrade" and use the tools to build a new install CD.
Machines installed from the install CD were naturally upgraded using normal "apt-get upgrade".
Image-based install only works for the initial installation.
Yet, the problems mentioned in the article are related to installation and integration, not game execution. The author does not say that Vista does not provide adequate facilities to execute the games.
Microsoft's response to the problem of unintentional malware installation is to make it onerous for users to install all software onto Vista - whether malware or not. The author correctly points out that this will be frustrating or tiresome for end users, who probably don't know whether software is malware or not. Perhaps the root cause of the problem is that there's no way to distinguish between malware and legitimate software. Maybe signed code is a solution to this. Or perhaps the solution is to provide a sandbox environment where all 3rd party code is considered untrusted.
The other problem pointed out by the author is the bizarre-sounding Game Explorer which sounds like a typical Microsoft "innovation" - poorly thought out, poorly executed - limiting rather than enabling.
I'm not actually saying that Project is "good software", but it's the only MS application that I don't mind using. It's quite possible that there are vastly better Project Management applications out there, I don't know.
I tried planner (still have it installed actually) but felt it to be a bit immature. The main feature I'd want to see is leveling resources to projects.
I can't comment on Visio. Have seen a few diagrams produced with it, they look okay. Have tried Dia, wasn't impressed.
To followup my own comment... Microsoft's lock-in is very effective; whether people hate Microsoft or not, they still keep buying the products (or buying computers with Windows preinstalled).
No, I think everybody hates microsoft at some level.
I hate Microsoft's products (except Project), their business practices, their monopoly, their DRM, their lack of ethics, their EULA which forces you to give up your freedom of speech, their proprietary file formats, their Microsoft Word specifically, and perhaps more reasons.
Regular computer users hate Microsoft for making them vulnerable to spyware, spam, viruses, being pwned, and so on.
Business users hate Microsoft for locking them in, for the BSA license compliance audits, the security holes, the endless patch/upgrade cycle, the high maintenance costs of their applications (like extensive downtime when machines need to be rebuilt due to some software failure).
Vendors hate Microsoft for releasing loss-leader products designed to kill the market (think Netscape, Windows Media, and soon antivirus products, BeOS) until Microsoft is the only one left standing.
Investors hate Microsoft (now) because their share price has nowhere to go but down (MSFT will not be able to continue growth unless they can find a new market to be in).
Music fans hate Microsoft for releasing the terminally broken Zune - and inventing the concept of squirting music files to your friends (3 plays or 3 days!);
Developing countries hate Microsoft for raping their economies (to the extent that the software isn't just pirated) because the funds flow to the USA. In many of these countries there's a visible shift towards open source and open standards.
I expect even Microsoft fanbois hate them for some reason, although I'm so different from the typical Microsoft fanboi that I can barely guess why, perhaps they got excited about some feature Microsoft trumpeted would be available in Vista (some feature so new and powerful that it will blow away the competition, like the advanced WINfs file system or the virtual folders) and then broke their promise before release date. I'm sure the fanbois hate when that happens.
Much as I love Jethro Tull, I can't agree with Ian Anderson's position on this issue.
Here's his webpage on the matter:
Anderson Speaks Out on Recorded Copyright Law in the UK
in which Ian considers that copyright on his recordings should be like owning a house - the owner can obtain revenue from the house indefinitely.
I think "painting a house" is a better analogy. Performing/recording music is like painting a house, it requires a fixed amount of effort to complete. The painter doesn't receive ongoing royalties from people who enjoy looking at the house, nor does the owner of the house have to pay the painter every year for the previous paint job.
In fact Ian goes on to say "I would have better protection as the bricks-and-mortar builder of my house than a builder of recorded music.". Well, the house builder doesn't receive ongoing royalties either.
Ian complains that "This Was" will be out of copyright in 12 years. I note that "This Was" requires exactly zero ongoing effort from the band. The only effort required is in reproduction and distribution, for which the record label is, ahem, more than adequately compensated.
Ian closes his argument by appealing to our compassion: "Why should we perhaps have to see these musicians struggle in old age without heat
for their homes or the wherewithal to pay their nursing home bills while their American counterparts are taken care of for life by ongoing royalty income?". Of course being an appeal to emotion, it isn't a terribly rational argument. Why should old artists be treated any differently to old painters? We expect the painters to provide for their own old age by investments, superannuation or, failing that, the Government pension. Why should old artists be treated differently, that they should not care to provide for their future while they are still earning money from their performances or compositions?
Can't we just vote for the policies directly, rather than vote for the people who will vote for the policies? The internet gives us the tool to become much more directly involved in the running of the country.
I'd rather answer 10 or 100 questions on my opinions and have them fed directly into the policymaking than have to choose between two major parties, one incompetent and the other dishonest.
That's the kind of thinking which almost doomed the modern Domesday book. They thought that preserving the retrieval hardware was enough. Wrong! It required a massive restoration effort to get the material off the laserdiscs and onto the web.
Ultimately, information only survives if it has been duplicated. The Domesday book laserdisc format wasn't easy to duplicate. It wasn't usable on home PCs, only on specially constructed reader machines in libraries. Consequently, it gathered dust in the "cathedral" it had been designed to inhabit.
The way to keep the information accessible is to keep migrating it to modern media, and modern formats. That, and duplication. Massive redundancy will ensure the survival of at least some copies of the information.
Although we may be creating too much information to continually transfer it to modern formats, if we at least keep it on modern media we have a chance to use emulation (or structural analysis) to use it in future.
If MSFT pulls out of China, Windows piracy may become (even more) rampant.
The best outcome for linux will be obtained if Microsoft continues to be evil,
stays in China, and aggressively enforces the Windows license conditions and
tracks down and prosecutes Windows pirates.
Slashdot Mirror
It's bad because Novell is paying Microsoft for the use of Microsoft patents in Linux. Linux is free software. When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. The fact that Novell has effectively admitted that Microsoft holds some Intellectual Property leverage over Linux, implies that Linux is non-free. And that's not acceptable to the community. Worse, it implies that Linux is non-free and beholden to Microsoft, a convicted monopolist, the owner of Linux's principal competitor, a company with no love for Linux and one which is well known for shafting its partners and enemies alike.
It appears likely that the patent covenant which Novell signed violates the GPL - either Version 2, or certainly Version 3. If so, Novell loses its right to distribute affected code under the GPL. No other license permits it to do that, so Novell must cease distributing.
Also, the possibility that Novell has insider access to Microsoft Intellectual Property creates a risk that Novell's contributions to Linux will leak some of that Intellectual Property into Linux. Thus, the scenario described in the first paragraph, while Linux may not presently be tainted by Microsoft's IP, in future it may become so. I think it is purely common sense for the community to reject patches supplied by Novell.
So, people don't hate Novell, but by their actions they are putting Linux at risk, in order to line their own pockets (presumably funded by patents which Novell owns and which may be used in Windows). Novell aren't playing fair with the community.
I think that's not the BBC's problem. The commercial rivals must take care of themselves - by, for example, providing higher quality content or different content. Is Ofcom asserting that there's a limit to the amount of classical music and TV shows which the economy can support? That having more choice will lead inevitably to commercial loss for these competitors? Perhaps the BBC should stop producing classical music and high quality TV programs altogether lest they damage the market share of commercial competitors? Perhaps we should limit access to the Public Domain too, since it can't be easily monopolised.
It wants the corporation to scale back plans to let downloaded "catch-up" episodes remain on users' hard drives for 13 weeks, suggesting that 30 days is enough.
Assuming (as devil's advocate) that their DRM is adequate, why limit the time that the content works? If somebody records one of these shows on their VCR, they are allowed to watch it again and again forever. Why limit a user's fair use rights for no better reason than "because it's technically possible"?
The trust also asked the BBC to explore ways of introducing parental controls to its on-demand services, as it is worried at the "heightened risk of children being exposed to post-watershed material".
TV doesn't require electronic "parental controls", so why should downloaded shows?
"There is a potential negative market impact if the BBC allows listeners to build an extensive library of classical music that will serve as a close substitute for commercially available downloads or CDs," it said.
I'm afraid they're several years too late on that point. It seems the BBC Trust hasn't been paying attention to recent events. Here are some facts to brighten your day:
I don't know how problems such as verification of the correctness of the keys could be solved.
Replication is one part of the answer; the more copies of something that exist, the less likely it is that all will be destroyed or lost.
Another part of the answer is to keep the stuff online. That would require special services of course, don't expect your Geocities page to still be around 100 years hence, but if you can get it onto www.archive.org it has a much better chance of survival. I think there's a market nice for a "perpetual server" service, something which accepts a big upfront payment and promises to keep your data online "forever".
I'm sure there's no place for such travesties as "useWord2002TableStyleRules" in a document format intended to last thousands of years and be readable by future civilizations ... nor in the tens-of-years timeframe which OOXML
pretends to address.
And in the case of vista, it's a selling point for MSFT - that is, except that MSFT is expecting to sell computers with Vista preloaded, in which case the end user doesn't install the OS.
Perhaps they are targeting the upgrade market from XP. I don't know how an image-based install can be used to upgrade an existing system, perhaps it has a list of files to delete from previous versions of Windows.
I built a linux install CD a few years ago, and most tasks were automated, it had to:
Those 5 steps completed in under 5 minutes (I timed it) compared to half an hour or more using the debian installer and apt to install one package at a time.
My "source" for the filesystem images, what I called the "pristine copy" was a virtual machine under User-Mode Linux. Whenever I wanted to update my install CD I'd just boot it up, do "apt-get upgrade" and use the tools to build a new install CD.
Machines installed from the install CD were naturally upgraded using normal "apt-get upgrade". Image-based install only works for the initial installation.
I call troll.
MPU!
Microsoft's response to the problem of unintentional malware installation is to make it onerous for users to install all software onto Vista - whether malware or not. The author correctly points out that this will be frustrating or tiresome for end users, who probably don't know whether software is malware or not. Perhaps the root cause of the problem is that there's no way to distinguish between malware and legitimate software. Maybe signed code is a solution to this. Or perhaps the solution is to provide a sandbox environment where all 3rd party code is considered untrusted.
The other problem pointed out by the author is the bizarre-sounding Game Explorer which sounds like a typical Microsoft "innovation" - poorly thought out, poorly executed - limiting rather than enabling.
I tried planner (still have it installed actually) but felt it to be a bit immature. The main feature I'd want to see is leveling resources to projects.
I can't comment on Visio. Have seen a few diagrams produced with it, they look okay. Have tried Dia, wasn't impressed.
I hate Microsoft's products (except Project), their business practices, their monopoly, their DRM, their lack of ethics, their EULA which forces you to give up your freedom of speech, their proprietary file formats, their Microsoft Word specifically, and perhaps more reasons.
Regular computer users hate Microsoft for making them vulnerable to spyware, spam, viruses, being pwned, and so on.
Business users hate Microsoft for locking them in, for the BSA license compliance audits, the security holes, the endless patch/upgrade cycle, the high maintenance costs of their applications (like extensive downtime when machines need to be rebuilt due to some software failure).
Vendors hate Microsoft for releasing loss-leader products designed to kill the market (think Netscape, Windows Media, and soon antivirus products, BeOS) until Microsoft is the only one left standing.
Investors hate Microsoft (now) because their share price has nowhere to go but down (MSFT will not be able to continue growth unless they can find a new market to be in).
Music fans hate Microsoft for releasing the terminally broken Zune - and inventing the concept of squirting music files to your friends (3 plays or 3 days!);
Developing countries hate Microsoft for raping their economies (to the extent that the software isn't just pirated) because the funds flow to the USA. In many of these countries there's a visible shift towards open source and open standards.
I expect even Microsoft fanbois hate them for some reason, although I'm so different from the typical Microsoft fanboi that I can barely guess why, perhaps they got excited about some feature Microsoft trumpeted would be available in Vista (some feature so new and powerful that it will blow away the competition, like the advanced WINfs file system or the virtual folders) and then broke their promise before release date. I'm sure the fanbois hate when that happens.
Here's his webpage on the matter: Anderson Speaks Out on Recorded Copyright Law in the UK in which Ian considers that copyright on his recordings should be like owning a house - the owner can obtain revenue from the house indefinitely.
I think "painting a house" is a better analogy. Performing/recording music is like painting a house, it requires a fixed amount of effort to complete. The painter doesn't receive ongoing royalties from people who enjoy looking at the house, nor does the owner of the house have to pay the painter every year for the previous paint job.
In fact Ian goes on to say "I would have better protection as the bricks-and-mortar builder of my house than a builder of recorded music.". Well, the house builder doesn't receive ongoing royalties either.
Ian complains that "This Was" will be out of copyright in 12 years. I note that "This Was" requires exactly zero ongoing effort from the band. The only effort required is in reproduction and distribution, for which the record label is, ahem, more than adequately compensated.
Ian closes his argument by appealing to our compassion: "Why should we perhaps have to see these musicians struggle in old age without heat for their homes or the wherewithal to pay their nursing home bills while their American counterparts are taken care of for life by ongoing royalty income?". Of course being an appeal to emotion, it isn't a terribly rational argument. Why should old artists be treated any differently to old painters? We expect the painters to provide for their own old age by investments, superannuation or, failing that, the Government pension. Why should old artists be treated differently, that they should not care to provide for their future while they are still earning money from their performances or compositions?
Quote from the video: Why don't they get some decent design people, to make things look better, I mean you know it's clunky, it's clunky ...
I see very little evidence of "grand plans" in the actions of the major parties.
I'd rather answer 10 or 100 questions on my opinions and have them fed directly into the policymaking than have to choose between two major parties, one incompetent and the other dishonest.
Ultimately, information only survives if it has been duplicated. The Domesday book laserdisc format wasn't easy to duplicate. It wasn't usable on home PCs, only on specially constructed reader machines in libraries. Consequently, it gathered dust in the "cathedral" it had been designed to inhabit.
The way to keep the information accessible is to keep migrating it to modern media, and modern formats. That, and duplication. Massive redundancy will ensure the survival of at least some copies of the information.
Although we may be creating too much information to continually transfer it to modern formats, if we at least keep it on modern media we have a chance to use emulation (or structural analysis) to use it in future.
What Bug-eyed Earl might say about that
The best outcome for linux will be obtained if Microsoft continues to be evil, stays in China, and aggressively enforces the Windows license conditions and tracks down and prosecutes Windows pirates.