This bill is terrible, this bill is unconstitional, America is turning into a Police state. I imagine that these will be often stated responses to this story. On the whole I am quite inclined to agree. The problem here is not FBI, or other groups, it is us. We decry the unfairness of it all, yet few of us will actually do anything about it. Senators do not read Slashdot, geeks do.
Until we are willing to get politically involved, they won't even know we exist. If people don't tell them this is a problem, they won't know. Our input is just as important as anyone elses. On capital hill the prevelant attitude is, "If it's important enough, someone will tell me". There are some organizations that do excellent work (EFF comes to mind), but they need our help. I realize this is anti-thesical to our culture. Technical people have amazing ability to organize and work togethor on very complex issues, and do so all the time. It would be nice to see some of those same skills used to fight legislation like this.
Your absolutely right about copy protection at the hardware level. And this is exactly what companies are working on now. Sony has their new CD and Intel is working on a scheme that would interface for the monitor. It is even in the works to provide shutdown capability for license violations via satelite. You should start to see these features about 2002 if I understand correctly.
Their goal is to be able to remotely shut down license violators immeadiately. Without the proper decoder in your chipset or monitor and you can't play use that brand new game, program etc. And since you would buy a license to use your monitor/sound card etc, and not the hardware they can revoke this at will. In other words that brand new shiny monitor of yours could be a paperweight if someone makes that decision. Why are they working on satelite links? Simple, gets past firewalls everytime. And there isn't a damn thing a user can do about it. I imagine you'll see this unadvertised mandatory "feature" start to appear in chipsets rather soon, just to be "there and availabe". I don't know about VIA though, anyone out there have the scoop on them?
I know here in Minnesota several stores have gotten into legal trouble for advertising "discprencies". The one in particular that comes to mind is good old best buy. They advertised that nobody could beat their prices on any given model. Truth of the matter was they were right. The sticking point was the model #. They were big enough that they were able to get their own custom models from Sony etc. This along with several other similiar tactics got them sued by our Attorney General. They tried claiming "truth in advertising" and it did not hold up in court.
This is retail however, and I don't know how much carryover there would be. I know phone companies have gotten in trouble before for similiar things. There is a certain standard that things have to written to. You aren't allowed to try and claim everybody can consult a lawyer.
Name calling, hardly a way to prove your point. Opinions are fine, but state them as such. If you have a problem with the way an objective test is performed you should qualify your arguement with specifics.
As for both operating systems being designed for the same market, where did you get that? Even MS doesn't those kinds of claims. And last I checked you had different distributions of Linux, frequently customized to different markets (handheld vs server). I certainly hope your not going to make the claim that Linux is designed for mainstream use, even in office desktop environments. Last I checked, most *nix users took pride in the fact that their product was/not/ meant for mainstream use.
As for AIX and Solaris, why would those be brought up? They should have been tested that's why. Do you sincerely think that the only Sun web servers out there are the 6 figure high end very scalable variety? As for comparing Linux to Solaris, do you really think that MS is the only competition to Linux? You said it yourself, work is being done to make Linux more scalable. You can't say "next years version will squash everything". You have to compare to what exists now. Just because you did not see the results you wanted does not mean the test was invalid. Constructive criticism should be taken as just that. If something doesn't perform as expected, you learn and grow from it.
The situation is so bad that many business travelers that go to France must bring their own shredders. It seems the ones supplied in certain business hotels have cameras in them. They also bring with an interface for the powersupply. This is made to scramble carrier band signals. It seems that a "disproportionate" number of portable scanners break in France. There are also reported problems of listening devices in the headrests of certain airplanes.
I'm certainly no CIA agent or the like. But I can tell you about experiences certain industries deal with on a routine daily basis. Think pharmacueticals. Business people traveling there are briefed as if going into a hostile country, they are...
However, there had to be the will and organization (tactics) to use it.
Correct, and not in dispute, the point was that the tactics used required technology that took a very long time to develop.
Against middle eastern horsed bowmen, the flower of chivalry were commonly slaughtered by lighter, but better lead muslim soldiery who followed professional military leaders
Slaughtered? I don't think so. It was routine for knights to battle armies several times their size and win. I believe National Geographic (possibly Scientific American) quoted some historical references of odds up to 35 to 1. The inability to take on knights in even numbers had a direct influence on the development of the assasin.
professional military leaders rather than squabble amongst themselves
The various orders of the knighthood had professional military leaders. A person who was to become a knight would start training no later than 12 years of age. They received far more training than any modern army. As for squabbling among themselves, I don't dispute that. But that is certainly not a culture in history that has bypassed that.
Knights were a class of people who did not simply evolve into different categories of military units.
Yes, they were certainly a class of people, almost exclusively nobles. I don't question that their was discrimination. But to say that they did not evolve is incorrect. The skills they had (horsemanship was considered as important as swordsmanship) devloped as knights were what was to become the backbone of the cavalry. Even modern horseshows owe much to this history. As history progress it was quite common for the cavalry to consist of nobles. This had as much to do with access to training, and horses that came through wealth as anything else. Even up through the US civil war it was common to have large numbers of officers in the cavalry. FYI, modern US armored brigades quite often have the word "cavalry" in their name. Like the 11th cavalry brigade that gaurds Fort Knox.
A modern army does not ideally send armour against armour. Ideally, a modern army sends armour against desk clerks.
I should have clarified myself better. A moderm army counters armor with armor. Of course we also have fighters, copters, and tow missles. The closest midevil thing to any of these is the crossbow to the tow missle.
You are right in many points, including decimating peasents, social and especially economic changes and so on. I don't dispute there were many negative side effects at all. My point is that the knight was undone by change and had to evolve, even if unwillingly. There was no single factor that removed him from the battlefield.
I agree with you completely. My only point on that was that is still available as an "emergency" weapon. And your correct in that it more closely resembles a pike than a sword. Point taken.
Actually missile weapons altogether had nothing to do with the disappearance of armored knights.
This statement is historically inaccurate. Their were 2 primary methods of removing the knight. One was the pike (which I mentioned), you got that much right. The other was the crossbow. The crossbow was capable of penetrating a knights armor in the 1400's, and the same crossbow, can easily penetrate a modern bulletproof vest.
This was such a concern to the Catholic church that they made posession of a crossbow illegal. The most powerful military organizations of the day were military knighthood orders. These knighthood orders were wholly capable of, and did, take down nations as desired. A weapon capable of removing the knight was a serious threat to the power of the Catholic church.
A knight is an armored soldier. But the armor was so heavy that it was impractical to wear on foot, so all knights were mounted.
A classic knight in armor wore less weight (70#) than todays modern soldier with pack. Not only was a Knight not encumbered by the armor. He could literally do cartwheels, and vault into the saddle from the ground. Modern recreationists find enjoyment in showing this to myth-mongers. The weight of the armor as it was, was distributed evenly throughout the body. This allowed him more manueverability than someone in chainmail alone (which hung all of it's weight from the shoulders).
Armor technology of the day was capable of repelling all but the most lucky of missiles
Very much true, except for the crossbow. Eventually the English developed the Longbow expressly for the purpose of penetrating armor. Like the crossbow, it is perfectly capable of penetrating a modern bullet proof vest.
It wasn't missile weapons that defeated mounted armored knights, it was military tactics.
This has no basis in reality. As weaponry came along that was capable of countering the knight (mainly the lowly pike), the knight was forced to evolve their tactics. The concept of the knight simply evolved into that of cavalry, and later armored vehicles (tanks). Knights were always fought with knights if pikemen were not available. Much as a modern army sends armor against armor. The formality of the knight only went away when the king of France grew jealous of their financial power.
European armor (and weapons) on the other-hand, evolved together, in a bigger-armor, bigger-sword kind of way, until the advent of gun-powder, at which time you could take down a knight no matter what he was wearing
Actually, the knights dissapearance had abosulutely nothing whatsoever to do with gunpowder. The end of the Knight on the battlefield was due to the invention of the Pike, the widespread use of the crossbow, and the English Longbow. Keep in mind that a crossbow bolt hits with about 17x times the thrust of a.45 caliber bullet. This is why the crossbow is frequently banned, even where firearms are legal. They chew through a bulletproof vest as if it wasn't there.
As for bullets on armor, you might be surprised. Tests have been done to see what would happen (discovery channel had a special on this kind of thing), the armor of a knight stops most modern small arms fire. Especially when worn over chainmail and padding. As for swords being replaced by firearms, that was no revolution. Swords were commonly issued to soldiers all the way up through the US civil war. It took centuries for the sword to be replaced by the gun. And even it today's modern army a bayonett fixed to the end of a rifle (emergency sword) is standard issue.
How come almost every time there is a post about supersomputers, they are being used for nuclear bomb explosion simulations?
Because that's who the customers for multi-teraflop computers are.
I just think it would be great to see an announcement mention that a supercomputer would be used for analyzing weather patterns, help with the human genome mapping effort, or something else
Supercomputers that aren't the biggest don't make the news. Kind of like whoever takes 11th at Indy doesn't make the news. Supercomputers are used for things like weather prediction, pharmacuetical research, and even Airline route planning.
How long until a distributed nuclear simulation project?
Hopefully never, some things were never meant to be the domain of the public, and I count nuclear weapons research among them.
Obviously they cannot mass produce with meteorite iron. They would have to use material from Earth for now. I'm talking about the tecniques used for the process.
Can they mass produce a blade like this? The benefits are far beyond the obvious (hey I own a couple of swords myself). There is carry over the more practical and widely used pocket knife. There is a also carry over to make cutting tools for industry. If you can make a better cutting tool, it has far more applications than most people ever realize. Mining machines, logging, industry, even on the nano level. Besides everything else, this is cool and I want one.
Yes, you could download at that speed with that many users. For one thing, they are not all going to be actively downloading or browsing at one time. As for the 24-25 users, of course they all would need to be actively doing something (downloading or whatnot) at the same time. That does not mean that my frame of reference is incorrect. You can easily have multiple computers run off a dial-up connection as well. The point is that the T-1 is roughly equivalent to 24-25 users all downloading at once on dial ups. That has not changed. And, yes unless measures are in place, each users computer will automatically try to use maximum bandwidth available.
It effectively works out that a T1 is roughly equivalent to 24 dial up phone lines. 64Kbps per channel, 24 channels. In other words, if you have more than 24-25 users on at once, you are getting worse performance than a dial up. Several hundred people on a single T-1 is going to kill it, no way around it. There are methods to minimize the impact, but you are still limited to 1.544 Mbps.
Your comparing apples to oranges. Wanting to know how something works for interoperability is one thing. The "freed information" you are referring to is of a completely different scale. Yes this happened decades ago. Guess what, some of those people are still alive. People tend to take things like a revolution very personally, especially when they ended up on the "wrong" side.
Exposing the story was one thing, and certainly merits CIA internal investigation. Putting individuals lives at stake to satisfy ego is another. There was no legitimate purpose in doing so. The hole in PDF could have been demonstrated in any other number of ways. The story itself was also already exposed. The only thing gained by the person who did this was a feeling of playing God with other peoples lives. It is not their place to have made that decision.
This has nothing to do with Capitalism. The Soviets have launched far more satelites than anyone else in history. The US is a very distant 2nd. This is an issue of responsibility. All nations that are responsible for space junk should help chip in on the cost for removal. Just think, we could attach a permanent space bound garbage truck to the international space station. It would fill up and then unload over the pacific at a predetermined time and location.
One industry has finally become immune to responsibility for the produts it creates. How soon until other industries try the same tactic? Can you imagine buying a shrink-wrapped car? It's legal precedents like this that allow companies like aol and ms to operate with impunity. When is the software industry going to "get it"?
When Zaphoid was put in the infinite perspective chamber he survived where no one else in history did. I have a debate with a fried who says that he survived because it was a private universe created just for him. I am of the thinking he survived because he/was/ the most important being in the universe.
Could you please answer this long debated question?
Heres the formula to tell if the technology is going to go bust
Proprietary standard + 5 times as expensive = going to go bust
Yes, rambus is better than what we have now, and it might even be better than DDR (debatable), this is irrelevant though. A Ferrari is technically superior to a Camaro in hundreds of ways, yet they are very rare to see. History is full of failed superior propietary standards. This one will be no different.
A link is nothing more than pointer to where something is. It is a series of directions written in a convenient protocol that our browsers can understand. This is no different than directions to anything else. Since a link is nothing more than a method of communication, it should be protected by the First Amendment. It is also noteworthy to consider the recent deeplinking lawsuit that was settled in favor of deep links.
I can give directions to a drug dealers house, and there is nothing illegal about it. If you go there and buy drugs you may face repurcussions, but I have done no wrong. This is a tactic that TV news crews have done for years, and I don't see them stopping anytime soon.
I want to know what safegaurds are in place to prevent the popular kids from using this as just one more technique to harass those that don't "fit in". Overreactions to Columbine have flooded schools across the country.
My questions: "What checks and balances are going to be put in place to keep abuses from occuring? Are they going to take any proactive actions to avoid profiling? What happens if someone is turned in? Does a qualified Pscyhiatrist answer the phone? What process is there to let someone know they are being turned in before they are on the shortlist?
Most/.'s have probably been "profiled", played lots of quake, enjoyed AD&D, and have never ever gone a shooting rampage. Profiling like this is only going to make life all the more misreble for those students who fit the stereotype.
207 pages worth of verdict. 2007 pages of appeal. 18 years from now the case will be heard by the supreme court. 18 years and 1 day later the Supreme Court issues their verdict. 18 years and 2 days later MS announces they are moving to Canada. They are far too devious to allow little things like the law or a court of law to get in their way. They will find a way out.
The DOJ is a toothless tiger that is incapable of risking political embarresment. If it weren't for the states driving the process the DOJ would have given up long ago. The only lesson MS has learned is one of negative publicity.
The only real solution to the issue is to break the monopoly. You certainly aren't going to hurt MS stockholders by doing so. I have read a number of reports on the potential of a breakup, and they all agree that Gates will be a richer man 5 years from now if that happens. Consumers would certainly benefit from a breakup. But only if a breakup created several companies with identical products. The express condition that they are not allowed to buy each other to be effective.
Another possible option is to allow anyone to make or modify their own version of windows. To open up the code to the public at large. Wither this is done open source or another model is a matter of semantics. This could also produce versions of windows that were secure, and did not crash as often.
A behavioral remedy at a company the size of MS would be impossible to enforce. How would you garauntee it was effective? Have lawyers that are also programmers? The only thing we can count on is an agreement that wont be worth the paper it is made on.
Slashdot Mirror
Until we are willing to get politically involved, they won't even know we exist. If people don't tell them this is a problem, they won't know. Our input is just as important as anyone elses. On capital hill the prevelant attitude is, "If it's important enough, someone will tell me". There are some organizations that do excellent work (EFF comes to mind), but they need our help. I realize this is anti-thesical to our culture. Technical people have amazing ability to organize and work togethor on very complex issues, and do so all the time. It would be nice to see some of those same skills used to fight legislation like this.
Their goal is to be able to remotely shut down license violators immeadiately. Without the proper decoder in your chipset or monitor and you can't play use that brand new game, program etc. And since you would buy a license to use your monitor/sound card etc, and not the hardware they can revoke this at will. In other words that brand new shiny monitor of yours could be a paperweight if someone makes that decision. Why are they working on satelite links? Simple, gets past firewalls everytime. And there isn't a damn thing a user can do about it. I imagine you'll see this unadvertised mandatory "feature" start to appear in chipsets rather soon, just to be "there and availabe". I don't know about VIA though, anyone out there have the scoop on them?
This is retail however, and I don't know how much carryover there would be. I know phone companies have gotten in trouble before for similiar things. There is a certain standard that things have to written to. You aren't allowed to try and claim everybody can consult a lawyer.
Name calling, hardly a way to prove your point. Opinions are fine, but state them as such. If you have a problem with the way an objective test is performed you should qualify your arguement with specifics.
As for both operating systems being designed for the same market, where did you get that? Even MS doesn't those kinds of claims. And last I checked you had different distributions of Linux, frequently customized to different markets (handheld vs server). I certainly hope your not going to make the claim that Linux is designed for mainstream use, even in office desktop environments. Last I checked, most *nix users took pride in the fact that their product was /not/ meant for mainstream use.
As for AIX and Solaris, why would those be brought up? They should have been tested that's why. Do you sincerely think that the only Sun web servers out there are the 6 figure high end very scalable variety? As for comparing Linux to Solaris, do you really think that MS is the only competition to Linux? You said it yourself, work is being done to make Linux more scalable. You can't say "next years version will squash everything". You have to compare to what exists now. Just because you did not see the results you wanted does not mean the test was invalid. Constructive criticism should be taken as just that. If something doesn't perform as expected, you learn and grow from it.
I concur
The situation is so bad that many business travelers that go to France must bring their own shredders. It seems the ones supplied in certain business hotels have cameras in them. They also bring with an interface for the powersupply. This is made to scramble carrier band signals. It seems that a "disproportionate" number of portable scanners break in France. There are also reported problems of listening devices in the headrests of certain airplanes.
I'm certainly no CIA agent or the like. But I can tell you about experiences certain industries deal with on a routine daily basis. Think pharmacueticals. Business people traveling there are briefed as if going into a hostile country, they are...
However, there had to be the will and organization (tactics) to use it.
Correct, and not in dispute, the point was that the tactics used required technology that took a very long time to develop.
Against middle eastern horsed bowmen, the flower of chivalry were commonly slaughtered by lighter, but better lead muslim soldiery who followed professional military leaders
Slaughtered? I don't think so. It was routine for knights to battle armies several times their size and win. I believe National Geographic (possibly Scientific American) quoted some historical references of odds up to 35 to 1. The inability to take on knights in even numbers had a direct influence on the development of the assasin.
professional military leaders rather than squabble amongst themselves
The various orders of the knighthood had professional military leaders. A person who was to become a knight would start training no later than 12 years of age. They received far more training than any modern army. As for squabbling among themselves, I don't dispute that. But that is certainly not a culture in history that has bypassed that.
Knights were a class of people who did not simply evolve into different categories of military units.
Yes, they were certainly a class of people, almost exclusively nobles. I don't question that their was discrimination. But to say that they did not evolve is incorrect. The skills they had (horsemanship was considered as important as swordsmanship) devloped as knights were what was to become the backbone of the cavalry. Even modern horseshows owe much to this history. As history progress it was quite common for the cavalry to consist of nobles. This had as much to do with access to training, and horses that came through wealth as anything else. Even up through the US civil war it was common to have large numbers of officers in the cavalry. FYI, modern US armored brigades quite often have the word "cavalry" in their name. Like the 11th cavalry brigade that gaurds Fort Knox.
A modern army does not ideally send armour against armour. Ideally, a modern army sends armour against desk clerks.
I should have clarified myself better. A moderm army counters armor with armor. Of course we also have fighters, copters, and tow missles. The closest midevil thing to any of these is the crossbow to the tow missle.
You are right in many points, including decimating peasents, social and especially economic changes and so on. I don't dispute there were many negative side effects at all. My point is that the knight was undone by change and had to evolve, even if unwillingly. There was no single factor that removed him from the battlefield.
I agree with you completely. My only point on that was that is still available as an "emergency" weapon. And your correct in that it more closely resembles a pike than a sword. Point taken.
Actually missile weapons altogether had nothing to do with the disappearance of armored knights.
This statement is historically inaccurate. Their were 2 primary methods of removing the knight. One was the pike (which I mentioned), you got that much right. The other was the crossbow. The crossbow was capable of penetrating a knights armor in the 1400's, and the same crossbow, can easily penetrate a modern bulletproof vest.This was such a concern to the Catholic church that they made posession of a crossbow illegal. The most powerful military organizations of the day were military knighthood orders. These knighthood orders were wholly capable of, and did, take down nations as desired. A weapon capable of removing the knight was a serious threat to the power of the Catholic church.
A knight is an armored soldier. But the armor was so heavy that it was impractical to wear on foot, so all knights were mounted.
A classic knight in armor wore less weight (70#) than todays modern soldier with pack. Not only was a Knight not encumbered by the armor. He could literally do cartwheels, and vault into the saddle from the ground. Modern recreationists find enjoyment in showing this to myth-mongers. The weight of the armor as it was, was distributed evenly throughout the body. This allowed him more manueverability than someone in chainmail alone (which hung all of it's weight from the shoulders).
Armor technology of the day was capable of repelling all but the most lucky of missiles
Very much true, except for the crossbow. Eventually the English developed the Longbow expressly for the purpose of penetrating armor. Like the crossbow, it is perfectly capable of penetrating a modern bullet proof vest.
It wasn't missile weapons that defeated mounted armored knights, it was military tactics.
This has no basis in reality. As weaponry came along that was capable of countering the knight (mainly the lowly pike), the knight was forced to evolve their tactics. The concept of the knight simply evolved into that of cavalry, and later armored vehicles (tanks). Knights were always fought with knights if pikemen were not available. Much as a modern army sends armor against armor. The formality of the knight only went away when the king of France grew jealous of their financial power.
European armor (and weapons) on the other-hand, evolved together, in a bigger-armor, bigger-sword kind of way, until the advent of gun-powder, at which time you could take down a knight no matter what he was wearing
Actually, the knights dissapearance had abosulutely nothing whatsoever to do with gunpowder. The end of the Knight on the battlefield was due to the invention of the Pike, the widespread use of the crossbow, and the English Longbow. Keep in mind that a crossbow bolt hits with about 17x times the thrust of a .45 caliber bullet. This is why the crossbow is frequently banned, even where firearms are legal. They chew through a bulletproof vest as if it wasn't there.
As for bullets on armor, you might be surprised. Tests have been done to see what would happen (discovery channel had a special on this kind of thing), the armor of a knight stops most modern small arms fire. Especially when worn over chainmail and padding. As for swords being replaced by firearms, that was no revolution. Swords were commonly issued to soldiers all the way up through the US civil war. It took centuries for the sword to be replaced by the gun. And even it today's modern army a bayonett fixed to the end of a rifle (emergency sword) is standard issue.
Because that's who the customers for multi-teraflop computers are.
I just think it would be great to see an announcement mention that a supercomputer would be used for analyzing weather patterns, help with the human genome mapping effort, or something else
Supercomputers that aren't the biggest don't make the news. Kind of like whoever takes 11th at Indy doesn't make the news. Supercomputers are used for things like weather prediction, pharmacuetical research, and even Airline route planning.
How long until a distributed nuclear simulation project?
Hopefully never, some things were never meant to be the domain of the public, and I count nuclear weapons research among them.
Obviously they cannot mass produce with meteorite iron. They would have to use material from Earth for now. I'm talking about the tecniques used for the process.
Can they mass produce a blade like this? The benefits are far beyond the obvious (hey I own a couple of swords myself). There is carry over the more practical and widely used pocket knife. There is a also carry over to make cutting tools for industry. If you can make a better cutting tool, it has far more applications than most people ever realize. Mining machines, logging, industry, even on the nano level. Besides everything else, this is cool and I want one.
Yes, you could download at that speed with that many users. For one thing, they are not all going to be actively downloading or browsing at one time. As for the 24-25 users, of course they all would need to be actively doing something (downloading or whatnot) at the same time. That does not mean that my frame of reference is incorrect. You can easily have multiple computers run off a dial-up connection as well. The point is that the T-1 is roughly equivalent to 24-25 users all downloading at once on dial ups. That has not changed. And, yes unless measures are in place, each users computer will automatically try to use maximum bandwidth available.
It effectively works out that a T1 is roughly equivalent to 24 dial up phone lines. 64Kbps per channel, 24 channels. In other words, if you have more than 24-25 users on at once, you are getting worse performance than a dial up. Several hundred people on a single T-1 is going to kill it, no way around it. There are methods to minimize the impact, but you are still limited to 1.544 Mbps.
should the publishers go to jail for that?
If people die, yes. It's called manslaugter. Something to do with reckless endangerment to other peoples lives.
Exposing the story was one thing, and certainly merits CIA internal investigation. Putting individuals lives at stake to satisfy ego is another. There was no legitimate purpose in doing so. The hole in PDF could have been demonstrated in any other number of ways. The story itself was also already exposed. The only thing gained by the person who did this was a feeling of playing God with other peoples lives. It is not their place to have made that decision.
This has nothing to do with Capitalism. The Soviets have launched far more satelites than anyone else in history. The US is a very distant 2nd. This is an issue of responsibility. All nations that are responsible for space junk should help chip in on the cost for removal. Just think, we could attach a permanent space bound garbage truck to the international space station. It would fill up and then unload over the pacific at a predetermined time and location.
I have seen quite a bit written on Napster, and must say yours is probably the best arguement I have seen yet. Well written.
One industry has finally become immune to responsibility for the produts it creates. How soon until other industries try the same tactic? Can you imagine buying a shrink-wrapped car? It's legal precedents like this that allow companies like aol and ms to operate with impunity. When is the software industry going to "get it"?
Could you please answer this long debated question?
Proprietary standard + 5 times as expensive = going to go bust
Yes, rambus is better than what we have now, and it might even be better than DDR (debatable), this is irrelevant though. A Ferrari is technically superior to a Camaro in hundreds of ways, yet they are very rare to see. History is full of failed superior propietary standards. This one will be no different.
I can give directions to a drug dealers house, and there is nothing illegal about it. If you go there and buy drugs you may face repurcussions, but I have done no wrong. This is a tactic that TV news crews have done for years, and I don't see them stopping anytime soon.
My questions: "What checks and balances are going to be put in place to keep abuses from occuring? Are they going to take any proactive actions to avoid profiling? What happens if someone is turned in? Does a qualified Pscyhiatrist answer the phone? What process is there to let someone know they are being turned in before they are on the shortlist?
Most /.'s have probably been "profiled", played lots of quake, enjoyed AD&D, and have never ever gone a shooting rampage. Profiling like this is only going to make life all the more misreble for those students who fit the stereotype.
207 pages worth of verdict. 2007 pages of appeal. 18 years from now the case will be heard by the supreme court. 18 years and 1 day later the Supreme Court issues their verdict. 18 years and 2 days later MS announces they are moving to Canada. They are far too devious to allow little things like the law or a court of law to get in their way. They will find a way out.
The only real solution to the issue is to break the monopoly. You certainly aren't going to hurt MS stockholders by doing so. I have read a number of reports on the potential of a breakup, and they all agree that Gates will be a richer man 5 years from now if that happens. Consumers would certainly benefit from a breakup. But only if a breakup created several companies with identical products. The express condition that they are not allowed to buy each other to be effective.
Another possible option is to allow anyone to make or modify their own version of windows. To open up the code to the public at large. Wither this is done open source or another model is a matter of semantics. This could also produce versions of windows that were secure, and did not crash as often.
A behavioral remedy at a company the size of MS would be impossible to enforce. How would you garauntee it was effective? Have lawyers that are also programmers? The only thing we can count on is an agreement that wont be worth the paper it is made on.