I thought that the question was whether Apple could be nailed if it manipulating its iPod firmware to create an artificial barrier to entry for Real. In that case, yes, in principle, it could -- Apple has a monopoly, and it doesn't appear to be protected by any relevant patents, and Real claims immunity to DMCA under the reverse engineering for interoperability clause.
Re:It's not just the shady companies
on
The Spyware Inferno
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· Score: 1, Informative
I just wish the stupid Outlook 2003 icon could be killed as well.
However, Apple has a clear dominant position in the mobile music player market, and a pure monopoly in the iPod market. Microsoft doesn't have a dominant position in the computer industry as a whole, just in the PC-compatible Intel-compatible market. You only have to abuse a dominant position in a market that the court thinks is relevant to wind up in the dock.
That said, I sincerely doubt that Apple will get hauled in by the DOJ to face charges. If they could manage to remain successful, there might be some risk, but Jobs' and his syncophants have an unparalleld ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
According to Steven Hawking, they don't actually exist -- the singularity never forms in a quantum mechanical universe.
Bear in mind that a black hole with lunar mass would have a tiny event horizon. Given the amount of thermal noise in the solar center, it would be very hard for anything to "fall in" without being bumped out first. In time, the hole might consume the sun, but my back of the envelope calculations suggest that it's far more likely that the pseudo-singularity would decay in a burst of Hawking radiation long before it consumed anything.
[Making ethanol from corn] actually costs considerably more energy than you get from burning the ethanol, and oil is burned in the process of making it, so it doesn't help with US energy independence.
It may once have been true (although I wonder about even that), but it is not true any more.
You need to go back and read what I wrote. Did you notice how I said things? I talked about calling ShellExecute with a specific string...and that string did not list the executable, just the URL.
I wrote that intentionally, hoping that someone would come back with your response. You see, Windows does not necessarily launch IE when it is presented with a URL -- it launches your default browser whatever that is! In your case, Opera pops up, and, as you said, the conection won't be blocked, firewall or no firewall, administrator/root account or not.
(Wow. The troll mods are out big time today -- anyone who doesn't toe the slashbot line that the Windows Firewall sucks is getting hammered.)
The parent makes the right point here. If I want to bypass any outbound firewall, all I have to do is spin up the user's default web browser to make a port 80 connection to the outside world and pass information in the HTTP GET command. Spinning up such a process is really quite straightforward: just run http://foo with ShellExecute, passing whatever information you want in the URL.
The whole furore about outbound blocking is bizarre, in my opinion. Outbound blocking of random ports provides no protection, but only the illusion of protection.
I'm interested. Why do you think that there are Microsoft shills here? There are several of us here who work for the company, but I haven't seen anyone that I'd think was secretly supported by MS. So would you enlighten me with some examples, please?
Not if it's an OEM copy. The OEM license is quite clear, and is not transferrable to another machine. Only retail copies are transferrable in the way you describe.
Re:Apple is still ahead
on
Linux vs. Windows
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· Score: 3, Informative
As for your little tidbit about google, I suggest you check again - that's simply not correct.
Sorry to break it to you, but the GP is right, and you're wrong. Google Zeitgeist
If they'd had a single clue to rub together, much less two, they'd have gone about this in a different way. What they've done is make themselves worse off. First, they tried to blackmail Europe with one small politically-motivated project in one city. Then, when the EU called their bluff, they turn around and say, basically, "Didn't mean it! Don't worry, we were just trying to scare you." That's not going to stop software patents in Europe. It only makes the opponents of software patents look foolish and out of touch with reality. (Of course, that could be said of the Greens in general, but...)
The city could have done much better. For instance, Munich could have applied to the EC asking for a grandfather clause in the patent legislation, arguing that the current proposal essentially criminalizes acts which were legal at the time they were committed. Alternatively, after their first stunt, they could have recovered by saying: "No, we haven't stopped the process indefinitely, we're waiting for this committee to report to reopen bidding." Instead, they're reopening bidding with some vague contingency that they'll stop if the committee reports the wrong way.
So, somebody please send these guys a clue. I'm told that air freight is really cheap these days.
So the Munich Greens thought that having a small temper trantrum about the patent trheat in Linux would have an effect. Instead, they discovered that all they'd done was shoot themselves in the foot.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
So now what happens? The city government takes the same gun, and shoots itself in the other foot. "No, Linux is still threatened by software patents, but...uh...well...we're going to go aghead with the bidding because...we're going to ignore the threat we tried to blackmail all of Europe with." Yeah, that's the ticket, boys -- make it intentionaly infringement. Right.
Forgive me, I misunderstood your original post. I read you as invoking the standard "OS monoculture" meme when you talked about more and more . In this case, there's no relationship to any OS monoculture, merely to a fixed API on any phone which aupports J2ME. Since the game itself has to be written in something, I don't see how anything beyond having an API to send an SMS has anything to do with this issue?
Not only is bandwidth irrelevant here, this issue has nothing to do with OS/software. The malware is written in mobile java, and uses the standard, OS-independent, interface to the phone hardware itself to send the SMS messages.
According to The Register, the malware was built into Mosquitos to begin with as a copy protection mechanism. I don't know whether to believe it or not -- if it's true, it's a really clever way of recouping development costs, and puts a new twist on "software that calls home".
Of course, worm writers will still catch on quickly anyway, I'll bet.
The code you are writing is probably very tailored to the specific needs of your employer and so "the competition" really wouldn't be helped much by having access to it.
I hope you were being funny, but I fear that you were not.
Let's consider a fairly standard in-house development product: a data-driven expense reporting web application. We'll spec it to use a web-service that receives a csv, checks the columns, adds them, and routes to the submittor's manager for OK. It should also check against the back-end database, verifying that the submittor can actually draw against the account in question. Great. Nothing sigificant there, takes a couple of weeks to write...and of no value to the open source world.
But, you know, it isn't really teribly convenient to fill out. Instead, it'd really be better to d/l a small customized Excel spreadsheet to the user's machine. In that spreadsheet, the user would have dropdowns to list things with restricted choices, and the business logic to make those choices would be implemented in the formulas and lists on a hidden second sheet in the workbook.
That's still not an interesting application, but now it contains a lot of information for a competitor: how our bookkeeping is structured, what our directory looks like, what our business logic for expense handling is, and even what expense limits are for different job categories. Trust me, that's confidential information about my company which I don't want my competitors to get.
And that's from an uninteresting thing like a simple, well-designed employee expense report app. Think about those same principles applied to a supply chain management routine or production automation app. That's highly sensitive information, and it's built into the app. Don't tell me I can open source it; I can't.
So you're saying that molecular nitrogen is not only valueless, but of net negative value? That would jibe with my experience of free software on the desktop.
You should go back and read the link I posted. In three of the recorded cases, the operator concluded that no radiation had been delivered, because when the system froze up, it told him that none had been delivered. He restarted from scratch manually. The system got half way through and froze up again, etc.
And yes, I explicitly neglected the question of what would give me the right to redistribute the SP aside from the EULA
And, of course, that's the kicker. Under standard copyright doctrine, you absolutely do not have the right to redistribute the SP; the only case in which you might would be under an explicit grant of license from Microsoft -- that is, in a EULA. (Well, perhaps you have entered into a different contract with the company, but, in that case, you know who you are, and you should be asking your attorneys.)
In this case, no EULA, no meeting of minds, no license, no contract, just as you said. That implies no redistribution.
Actually, there were a string of deaths due to an OS crash in a radiation therapy machine -- patients, already weak from chemo, were given several times the radiation dosage that they were prescribed. Unsurprisingly, some of them died
So, yes, these machines -- and, specifically, radiation therapy machines that crash -- can kill.
IBM is recommending that its internal people not install SP2 yet -- not because of SP2, but because IBM's web apps might be broken. Windows used to tolerate that brokenness, but SP2 now demands proper compliance with the security rules of the platform. IBM is telling people to wait until they've tested the web apps and fixed any broken ones before shifting.
For my part, I don't understand why they didn't start fixing their apps months ago. The design of SP2 was fully fleshed out by the time RC1 rolled around. One of the reasons Microsoft sent out the RC's was so that businesses and partners could update their applications.
<irony>I'm a trifle puzzled by the delay: the fixes that SP2 requires are fixes that should have been in place previously; why would anyone delay putting in necessary security fixes in their code?</irony>
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Of course, the original "independent" consultant specialized in OSS setups.
Sounds to me like two villains each presented their best shot, and Newham decided which one to go with.
I thought that the question was whether Apple could be nailed if it manipulating its iPod firmware to create an artificial barrier to entry for Real. In that case, yes, in principle, it could -- Apple has a monopoly, and it doesn't appear to be protected by any relevant patents, and Real claims immunity to DMCA under the reverse engineering for interoperability clause.
However, Apple has a clear dominant position in the mobile music player market, and a pure monopoly in the iPod market. Microsoft doesn't have a dominant position in the computer industry as a whole, just in the PC-compatible Intel-compatible market. You only have to abuse a dominant position in a market that the court thinks is relevant to wind up in the dock.
That said, I sincerely doubt that Apple will get hauled in by the DOJ to face charges. If they could manage to remain successful, there might be some risk, but Jobs' and his syncophants have an unparalleld ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
According to Steven Hawking, they don't actually exist -- the singularity never forms in a quantum mechanical universe.
Bear in mind that a black hole with lunar mass would have a tiny event horizon. Given the amount of thermal noise in the solar center, it would be very hard for anything to "fall in" without being bumped out first. In time, the hole might consume the sun, but my back of the envelope calculations suggest that it's far more likely that the pseudo-singularity would decay in a burst of Hawking radiation long before it consumed anything.
See this 2002 Dept of Agriculture report for details.
go read this Infoworld review. They don't list any real figures that I could track -- do other reviews replicate their results?
You need to go back and read what I wrote. Did you notice how I said things? I talked about calling ShellExecute with a specific string...and that string did not list the executable, just the URL.
I wrote that intentionally, hoping that someone would come back with your response. You see, Windows does not necessarily launch IE when it is presented with a URL -- it launches your default browser whatever that is! In your case, Opera pops up, and, as you said, the conection won't be blocked, firewall or no firewall, administrator/root account or not.
(Wow. The troll mods are out big time today -- anyone who doesn't toe the slashbot line that the Windows Firewall sucks is getting hammered.)
The parent makes the right point here. If I want to bypass any outbound firewall, all I have to do is spin up the user's default web browser to make a port 80 connection to the outside world and pass information in the HTTP GET command. Spinning up such a process is really quite straightforward: just run http://foo with ShellExecute, passing whatever information you want in the URL.
The whole furore about outbound blocking is bizarre, in my opinion. Outbound blocking of random ports provides no protection, but only the illusion of protection.
I'm interested. Why do you think that there are Microsoft shills here? There are several of us here who work for the company, but I haven't seen anyone that I'd think was secretly supported by MS. So would you enlighten me with some examples, please?
Want to point to the "ET-Phone-Home" software that is in the box?
Not if it's an OEM copy. The OEM license is quite clear, and is not transferrable to another machine. Only retail copies are transferrable in the way you describe.
If they'd had a single clue to rub together, much less two, they'd have gone about this in a different way. What they've done is make themselves worse off. First, they tried to blackmail Europe with one small politically-motivated project in one city. Then, when the EU called their bluff, they turn around and say, basically, "Didn't mean it! Don't worry, we were just trying to scare you." That's not going to stop software patents in Europe. It only makes the opponents of software patents look foolish and out of touch with reality. (Of course, that could be said of the Greens in general, but...)
The city could have done much better. For instance, Munich could have applied to the EC asking for a grandfather clause in the patent legislation, arguing that the current proposal essentially criminalizes acts which were legal at the time they were committed. Alternatively, after their first stunt, they could have recovered by saying: "No, we haven't stopped the process indefinitely, we're waiting for this committee to report to reopen bidding." Instead, they're reopening bidding with some vague contingency that they'll stop if the committee reports the wrong way.
So, somebody please send these guys a clue. I'm told that air freight is really cheap these days.
So the Munich Greens thought that having a small temper trantrum about the patent trheat in Linux would have an effect. Instead, they discovered that all they'd done was shoot themselves in the foot.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
So now what happens? The city government takes the same gun, and shoots itself in the other foot. "No, Linux is still threatened by software patents, but...uh...well...we're going to go aghead with the bidding because...we're going to ignore the threat we tried to blackmail all of Europe with." Yeah, that's the ticket, boys -- make it intentionaly infringement. Right.
Somebody send these guys a clue, please?
No, an API isn't software -- it's a specification. Support for or use of an API requires software, usually, but, no, an API is not software.
Sorry that you were unclear on the concept.
Forgive me, I misunderstood your original post. I read you as invoking the standard "OS monoculture" meme when you talked about more and more . In this case, there's no relationship to any OS monoculture, merely to a fixed API on any phone which aupports J2ME. Since the game itself has to be written in something, I don't see how anything beyond having an API to send an SMS has anything to do with this issue?
Not only is bandwidth irrelevant here, this issue has nothing to do with OS/software. The malware is written in mobile java, and uses the standard, OS-independent, interface to the phone hardware itself to send the SMS messages.
According to The Register, the malware was built into Mosquitos to begin with as a copy protection mechanism. I don't know whether to believe it or not -- if it's true, it's a really clever way of recouping development costs, and puts a new twist on "software that calls home".
Of course, worm writers will still catch on quickly anyway, I'll bet.
Let's consider a fairly standard in-house development product: a data-driven expense reporting web application. We'll spec it to use a web-service that receives a csv, checks the columns, adds them, and routes to the submittor's manager for OK. It should also check against the back-end database, verifying that the submittor can actually draw against the account in question. Great. Nothing sigificant there, takes a couple of weeks to write...and of no value to the open source world.
But, you know, it isn't really teribly convenient to fill out. Instead, it'd really be better to d/l a small customized Excel spreadsheet to the user's machine. In that spreadsheet, the user would have dropdowns to list things with restricted choices, and the business logic to make those choices would be implemented in the formulas and lists on a hidden second sheet in the workbook.
That's still not an interesting application, but now it contains a lot of information for a competitor: how our bookkeeping is structured, what our directory looks like, what our business logic for expense handling is, and even what expense limits are for different job categories. Trust me, that's confidential information about my company which I don't want my competitors to get.
And that's from an uninteresting thing like a simple, well-designed employee expense report app. Think about those same principles applied to a supply chain management routine or production automation app. That's highly sensitive information, and it's built into the app. Don't tell me I can open source it; I can't.
So you're saying that molecular nitrogen is not only valueless, but of net negative value? That would jibe with my experience of free software on the desktop.
You should go back and read the link I posted. In three of the recorded cases, the operator concluded that no radiation had been delivered, because when the system froze up, it told him that none had been delivered. He restarted from scratch manually. The system got half way through and froze up again, etc.
In this case, no EULA, no meeting of minds, no license, no contract, just as you said. That implies no redistribution.
Actually, there were a string of deaths due to an OS crash in a radiation therapy machine -- patients, already weak from chemo, were given several times the radiation dosage that they were prescribed. Unsurprisingly, some of them died
So, yes, these machines -- and, specifically, radiation therapy machines that crash -- can kill.
That isn't quite accurate.
IBM is recommending that its internal people not install SP2 yet -- not because of SP2, but because IBM's web apps might be broken. Windows used to tolerate that brokenness, but SP2 now demands proper compliance with the security rules of the platform. IBM is telling people to wait until they've tested the web apps and fixed any broken ones before shifting.
For my part, I don't understand why they didn't start fixing their apps months ago. The design of SP2 was fully fleshed out by the time RC1 rolled around. One of the reasons Microsoft sent out the RC's was so that businesses and partners could update their applications.
<irony>I'm a trifle puzzled by the delay: the fixes that SP2 requires are fixes that should have been in place previously; why would anyone delay putting in necessary security fixes in their code?</irony>