I am certain that there are a great number of ways that you can set up the system within which these people work correctly so that the guidlines are met with minimal training on the part of the majority of people.
For instance I think you can implement PGP in many places behind the scenes and manage keys and transactions without necessarily telling anyone. This seems to be a problem where technology is a solution so why can't we give him some technology advice.
Unfortunately I don't know what is required for the guidelines or I might be able to give some suggestions.
I am talking with very little knowledge here, but wouldn't you need to have the private key that OpenSSH used to generate their MD5? Or am I completely wrong and MD5 doesn't use public/private keys?
The newest set of xbox modchips were a complete bios replacement. The bios included in this replacement was often created by illegally using the xbox sdk from a debug bios. There was one "cleanroom" bios being implemented (still is) by the xbox linux group. This is released to be placed on homebrew mods or on blank commercial mods that come with flashers.
I think the devices that remain on the shelf but are possibly contriversial are ones that don't use any copyrighted or otherwise protected software/hardware. This was an infrigement case so if the devices don't directly infringe they might be ok.
The dvd spins the correct way and mini-dvd writables are available on the market today. The reason there aren't big hacks of the gamecube must have something to do with no hacker interest in the platform, probably because it was marketed to kids.
I think the reason that "modchips" finally got nailed is they often use parts of the original bios of the machine which is copyrighted. Thats trouble no matter what you call the machine.
The way I read the article is that MS will give a security garuntee for a price. Meaning that if you buy the garunteed version they will back that garuntee with cash so if you are compromised you get monitary compensation. In addition to charging a monitary fee they would likely put restrictions on the use and the software/hardware configuration of the garunteed system. This would allow MS to test the software on the hardware/software configuration in order to try and eliminate all security holes. There would also probably be a requirment for manditory system patch application to patch holes discovered after release.
The normal version would still have security features but they wouldn't be able to garuntee the security of the system on your hardware with your configuration. If you installed a non-approved application or used a non-approved configuration or forget a patch its your own problem.
This pay-for-security model isn't much different than consulting as far as I see other than it might cost less because the components are mass produced and mass marketed.
Illegal copying of a software product would be more like theft of service. If you read the EULA for most software (yeah I know the/. crowd doesn't believe in them but humor me) you will find that what you purchased was unlimited use of the software on a single machine by a single person, yup thats right, you bought the right to use the services of the software and not a product at all. People hate the idea of software as a service but thats all it is, there is no product changing hands except the media that the software is printed on for you to use it.
Anyways back to my original point, because software is a service, a rental in a way (though of unlimited duration), using it without paying the fee is theft, even by your definition.
Bottom line, if you don't want to pay the fees or live by the licence don't buy or use the software. If there is any belief in the open source community then there are plenty of alternatives to commercial software available for you to use under licence terms that are more agreeable.
The latest generation of mod chips were COMPLETE replacement bios's. They connected to the LPC bus of the xbox and forced the boot sequence to load the bios from the mod instead of loading it from the original bios. The code on the mod chips could also be flashed into the original bios if you knew what you were doing which allowed you to replace the bios without having to keep the hardward modifications in place.
I think the bigger point is that in the music market there is not the same network effect. Having more people listen to Metallica doesn't make the next album easier to produce, easier to listen to, or easier to sell.
All the project did was prove how long it took to search the keyspace, it did NOTHING to prove the strength of the algorithm. It could be that a clever person could cut the search space by examining patterns in the encoded message (the way normal codebreakers work btw). Its highly possible that with a thourough examination of the encoded text the key could have been discovered in days (doubtful).
What is an amazing result of this contest is showing just how much computing power is available in the world today.
I think thats why the software industry is quite a bit different from most "material" industries economically. The fixed cost of development so massively outweighs the cost of materials that the normal tendancy of price to approach marginal costs just doesn't seem to happen.
Probably the best corallary to the software market that I can come up with right now is the prescription drug market. The cost of developing a drug and bringing it to market is so much more than the cost of the chemicals in the drug that the normal economic tendancy doesn't work. Thats why drug companies get to patent drugs, incentive to develop them in the first place. Selling idea's is always strange to speak of economically, the only way I have been able to fit it into normal economic models is to rent the service of the idea, and not sell the idea itself.
I have a feeling that the book discusses things like code maintenance, OOP and 4th gen languages, and proper management as ways to reduce the development cost and doesn't speak of the consumer at all.
I have to say that to a majority of computer users having the CODE available for free doesn't matter a whit. I mean even in the active open source comminity I bet that most of the time the code is not opened up and looked into, just compiled and run. I don't think that having the code available for free is nearly the selling point of OSS that the community thinks it is.
Granted its ultra important to a few people and so I'm glad the community exists, but most people just wants a product that mostly works, is easy to install and run, and is easy to find at a local software store.
As long as MS keep developers creating that kind of software then windows can stay dominant by competing in the market the way the market works.
Anyways I wish linux the best of luck but until they make consumer quality software (they are getting close in general and in specific cases even beat the commercial windows software) they will have a large hill to climb into the arena of consumer sales.
I echo the parent post's sentiment completely and take it one step further. Not only boycott the big 5 (or is it 7?) but promote the small record companies that are about making good music and paying the artists that do so.
When you pirate a CD you prove that the music is worth listening to and that validates the RIAA's quest to recieve revenue for it. That just causes them to lobby for more stupid laws that mess up the whole free market system. If instead those record companies lost revenue and saw piracy dwindling at the same time they would be less able to con the congress into stupid laws, thier power would be gone.
The final blow in my vision is promoting the small record companies, fill the industry back up with good companies again, and do even more the force the crap down the drain.
I read somewhere that decent 35mm film has about 10megapixels of information (for as accurate as that sort of conversion goes). I think they based this on how far you could blow the picture up before you saw the grains or something like that.
Anyways if canon has gotten an 11.1megapixel camera with color that is accurate and full we have our first digital camera thats as good as film. To me thats an amazing leap for digital photography and says more than anything to date that digital photography is real and will take over.
The difference is that NTSC (US color television standard) was designed to show up well on the old black and white tv. All of the picture is there you just don't see the fancy color.
I think the complaint with the web is that things don't gracefully degrade in downlevel browsers, they just die.
The original intent of the web and html was to distribute content with tags that describe the "purpose" of that content and leave the rendering up to the browser. This meant that I could write a page and my message would get across to anyone even though it might look different to every person.
Then enter the marketing folk and the desire that a webpage look the same to everyone. That sucked.
CSS allows better control of the look but still works on the premise that the html (or xhtml) describes the purpose of the content and CSS is around to give hints on how the page should look. It still gives the end browser ultimate control of the rendering and the page could look different to different people.
If people would design thier webpages realizing that whats important is the purpose of the information and not the look of the information we wouldn't have so many of these problems. The web was designed for information, not for art.
If its anything like the current DRM that microsoft has in windows XP there is a certificat transfer utility, so you would be able to move the content forward as an upgrade. It would be rendered inactive on the current system though because the certificate would be deleted.
I don't like DRM in a lot of ways, but I think I can see the reason, copying digital media is a lot easier and faster and higher quality than say a VHS recording. It just is more valuable and less costly to a consumer to copy these things than it is to make a video of the same.
In the end though I think if you broadcast something through my TV I have a right to keep a copy of it around, and use it in whatever machine I want. I also think that I should be prosecuted if I give a copy to anyone else.
The point you are missing is that now MS is in 100% compliance to the contract (by not including java) and that hurts Sun so they are suing to get java included.
I have no argument that MS was wrong in its breach of contract (not in extending java, but in extending java in a way that broke its obligations to sun) because that is cut and dried. The thing I have a problem with is now that MS is doing exactly what sun asked (which was to include a compliant version or not include a version at all) they are crying that MS isn't being fair. There is nothing in the laws of this world that says Ford SUV's are required to come with firestone tires and in the same way there is nothing in our laws that say windows must ship with java.
Unfortunately Sun might be able to get the court to decide its anticompetative for MS to include a competing product (C# and.NET which only sort of kind of competes) which I think is an abuse of our legal system.
People are 100% free to download the SUN jvm for windows and use it, the fact that they don't is as much a relfection of the lack of need for the product as anything else.
Its also worthwhile to point out java's great success in the enterprise server application market. Java wants to do everything and sun needs to realize that its not the best fit for every job and be happy with the success they get.
The reason for this is based on how the two tivo's get thier signal.
The direcTivo just extracts the mpeg stream directly from the sattelite signal, it has no mpeg encoder in the box. Thus its cheap enough to put in 2 recorders because they just dump the stream to disk.
The standalone tivo on the otherhand has a chip for doing mpeg encoding in realtime. It can only process 1 stream at a time. I guess its a price/value call for the tivo company not to include 2 of these in the box.
The one thing I like most about the tivo vs a PC based solution is that the tivo is a sexy little box that does its 1 job very very well. I don't want to have 2 pc's to do that same job. The only big advantage to me for the PC based solution is the fact that it would be far easier to archive the video that I capture.
Upon a 2nd careful reading its very clear that he was arrested on 2 counts of copyright infingement (I assume this is for the pirate games) and 4 counts of selling unauthorized computer equipment. I guess thats the end of hardware hacking in Canada which makes me sad.
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Some explain to me what this is. Is it different than a circle? Doesn't a sphere in its basic definition mean 3 dimensions?
For instance I think you can implement PGP in many places behind the scenes and manage keys and transactions without necessarily telling anyone. This seems to be a problem where technology is a solution so why can't we give him some technology advice.
Unfortunately I don't know what is required for the guidelines or I might be able to give some suggestions.
I am talking with very little knowledge here, but wouldn't you need to have the private key that OpenSSH used to generate their MD5? Or am I completely wrong and MD5 doesn't use public/private keys?
The newest set of xbox modchips were a complete bios replacement. The bios included in this replacement was often created by illegally using the xbox sdk from a debug bios. There was one "cleanroom" bios being implemented (still is) by the xbox linux group. This is released to be placed on homebrew mods or on blank commercial mods that come with flashers.
Lik-Sang's only xbox mod (last I checked, I might be wrong) was a blank flashrom with associated hardware to flash it and connect it to the xbox bus.
I think the devices that remain on the shelf but are possibly contriversial are ones that don't use any copyrighted or otherwise protected software/hardware. This was an infrigement case so if the devices don't directly infringe they might be ok.
The dvd spins the correct way and mini-dvd writables are available on the market today. The reason there aren't big hacks of the gamecube must have something to do with no hacker interest in the platform, probably because it was marketed to kids.
I think the reason that "modchips" finally got nailed is they often use parts of the original bios of the machine which is copyrighted. Thats trouble no matter what you call the machine.
The normal version would still have security features but they wouldn't be able to garuntee the security of the system on your hardware with your configuration. If you installed a non-approved application or used a non-approved configuration or forget a patch its your own problem.
This pay-for-security model isn't much different than consulting as far as I see other than it might cost less because the components are mass produced and mass marketed.
Anyways back to my original point, because software is a service, a rental in a way (though of unlimited duration), using it without paying the fee is theft, even by your definition.
Bottom line, if you don't want to pay the fees or live by the licence don't buy or use the software. If there is any belief in the open source community then there are plenty of alternatives to commercial software available for you to use under licence terms that are more agreeable.
The latest generation of mod chips were COMPLETE replacement bios's. They connected to the LPC bus of the xbox and forced the boot sequence to load the bios from the mod instead of loading it from the original bios. The code on the mod chips could also be flashed into the original bios if you knew what you were doing which allowed you to replace the bios without having to keep the hardward modifications in place.
I think the bigger point is that in the music market there is not the same network effect. Having more people listen to Metallica doesn't make the next album easier to produce, easier to listen to, or easier to sell.
What is an amazing result of this contest is showing just how much computing power is available in the world today.
Probably the best corallary to the software market that I can come up with right now is the prescription drug market. The cost of developing a drug and bringing it to market is so much more than the cost of the chemicals in the drug that the normal economic tendancy doesn't work. Thats why drug companies get to patent drugs, incentive to develop them in the first place. Selling idea's is always strange to speak of economically, the only way I have been able to fit it into normal economic models is to rent the service of the idea, and not sell the idea itself.
I have a feeling that the book discusses things like code maintenance, OOP and 4th gen languages, and proper management as ways to reduce the development cost and doesn't speak of the consumer at all.
Granted its ultra important to a few people and so I'm glad the community exists, but most people just wants a product that mostly works, is easy to install and run, and is easy to find at a local software store.
As long as MS keep developers creating that kind of software then windows can stay dominant by competing in the market the way the market works.
Anyways I wish linux the best of luck but until they make consumer quality software (they are getting close in general and in specific cases even beat the commercial windows software) they will have a large hill to climb into the arena of consumer sales.
It would definitely be a major develpoment if GM started building SUV's for Ford :)
When you pirate a CD you prove that the music is worth listening to and that validates the RIAA's quest to recieve revenue for it. That just causes them to lobby for more stupid laws that mess up the whole free market system. If instead those record companies lost revenue and saw piracy dwindling at the same time they would be less able to con the congress into stupid laws, thier power would be gone.
The final blow in my vision is promoting the small record companies, fill the industry back up with good companies again, and do even more the force the crap down the drain.
Any smart company should keep around ideas even if a particular product flopped in case the pieces that make up the technology are good.
Anyways if canon has gotten an 11.1megapixel camera with color that is accurate and full we have our first digital camera thats as good as film. To me thats an amazing leap for digital photography and says more than anything to date that digital photography is real and will take over.
I think the complaint with the web is that things don't gracefully degrade in downlevel browsers, they just die.
The original intent of the web and html was to distribute content with tags that describe the "purpose" of that content and leave the rendering up to the browser. This meant that I could write a page and my message would get across to anyone even though it might look different to every person.
Then enter the marketing folk and the desire that a webpage look the same to everyone. That sucked.
CSS allows better control of the look but still works on the premise that the html (or xhtml) describes the purpose of the content and CSS is around to give hints on how the page should look. It still gives the end browser ultimate control of the rendering and the page could look different to different people.
If people would design thier webpages realizing that whats important is the purpose of the information and not the look of the information we wouldn't have so many of these problems. The web was designed for information, not for art.
I don't like DRM in a lot of ways, but I think I can see the reason, copying digital media is a lot easier and faster and higher quality than say a VHS recording. It just is more valuable and less costly to a consumer to copy these things than it is to make a video of the same.
In the end though I think if you broadcast something through my TV I have a right to keep a copy of it around, and use it in whatever machine I want. I also think that I should be prosecuted if I give a copy to anyone else.
I have no argument that MS was wrong in its breach of contract (not in extending java, but in extending java in a way that broke its obligations to sun) because that is cut and dried. The thing I have a problem with is now that MS is doing exactly what sun asked (which was to include a compliant version or not include a version at all) they are crying that MS isn't being fair. There is nothing in the laws of this world that says Ford SUV's are required to come with firestone tires and in the same way there is nothing in our laws that say windows must ship with java.
Unfortunately Sun might be able to get the court to decide its anticompetative for MS to include a competing product (C# and .NET which only sort of kind of competes) which I think is an abuse of our legal system.
People are 100% free to download the SUN jvm for windows and use it, the fact that they don't is as much a relfection of the lack of need for the product as anything else.
Its also worthwhile to point out java's great success in the enterprise server application market. Java wants to do everything and sun needs to realize that its not the best fit for every job and be happy with the success they get.
The direcTivo just extracts the mpeg stream directly from the sattelite signal, it has no mpeg encoder in the box. Thus its cheap enough to put in 2 recorders because they just dump the stream to disk.
The standalone tivo on the otherhand has a chip for doing mpeg encoding in realtime. It can only process 1 stream at a time. I guess its a price/value call for the tivo company not to include 2 of these in the box.
The one thing I like most about the tivo vs a PC based solution is that the tivo is a sexy little box that does its 1 job very very well. I don't want to have 2 pc's to do that same job. The only big advantage to me for the PC based solution is the fact that it would be far easier to archive the video that I capture.
Upon a 2nd careful reading its very clear that he was arrested on 2 counts of copyright infingement (I assume this is for the pirate games) and 4 counts of selling unauthorized computer equipment. I guess thats the end of hardware hacking in Canada which makes me sad.
Actually it was unclear in the article as well. I can't blame /. for this when I am not sure exactly why he was arrested.