It is a fundamental fact of information theory that you cannot securely transmit information from one party to another if the other party doesn't want it secure.
You can make it a total pain in the ass, which means in terms of time, effort, and hardware (all translatable into $), if the commodity isn't worth as much as it costs to crack it, then it won't be pirated on a large scale.
But the more they delay, the more MP3s get pirated.
Not only that, but when you combine such power with unscrupulous practices (I'm not saying that Microsoft is unscrupulous - this is a what-if scenario;-) - you have tremendous potential for abuse.
For instance, say some independent software vendor has come up with some hot new product idea, but because they're a cash-starved startup, they "rent" Visual Studio from Microsoft, via.NET/ASP service. Now, Microsoft has MANY avenues of leverage here. They can probably gain access to this potential competitor's source-code. They could make all kinds of moves like cancelling the service at their whim - paralyzing the startup's developers, and they don't even have to be in breach of contract to do that; the services rates could be changed, the payment could be "lost in the mail", or they could simply be found "in violation" of Microsoft's usage policy, or Microsoft could simply run into "technical problems" on the application server. The independent developer is at Microsoft's mercy. They could even be as subtle as, run a screen saver on the application server, slowing it down to the point where the startup's deadlines are impacted because of the increased time it takes to launch Visual Studio, or just access files.
This is all above and beyond the present tactics MS uses with MFC, altering APIs at their whims, misleading documentation (intentional, or just economizing on tech writers, you be the judge), and providing "secret APIs" to their own developers (none of which will not change with the DOJ-mandated split, by the way).
Since this company also "rents" Office from.NET, they're also open to espionage of documents and spreadsheets.
Eventually, this company runs into trouble, no revenue, lagging product releases, lays off half it's staff, starts looking for financial rescue, or a partner, and along comes Microsoft with a stock buyout. Microsoft very cheaply buys this "great idea", and completes it, integrates it into it's product line, and comes out smelling nice a purdy.
Eventually, nobody starts up computer software companies anymore, and all the major competitors have been beaten down or dissolved, and the only place to get software/service from is Microsoft. Never mind that no consumers want or ever wanted.NET. There's no more choice because MS is the only vendor, and they vend only service, no software anymore.
**conspiracy theory** and the best payoff of all is that computers no longer need to be sold with CDROM drives, because everything is.NET-ified, so the RIAA no longer has to worry about piracy of digital media thru CDs. Microsoft probably gets a nod and a wink from the record companies, who are beholden to MS anyway, because MS 0wns their SDMI music servers like everything else.
Microsoft also intended for NT to be multi-platform as well.
We no longer have with us:
NT-MIPS, NT-PPC, NT-Alpha
Whaddya think is going to happen when there is a.NET for other platforms? Lip service enough to rope in the non-x86 people, less features, more bugs, slow painful death, make x86 the most attractive platform, help migrate people to x86, then kill off the others one by one.
Just like they did with NT.
Not because they're in any secret conspiracy with Intel, mind you. It's because it's a profit-optimization to support only one platform. This is why companies standardize on one platform.
There are lots of good reasons why this is a bad idea, but haven't bean-counters been running things for quite some time now?
3 years ago, this is how I said Microsoft would destroy Linux.
Windows is not important, it's not the OS that gives Microsoft it's power anymore. Microsoft GOT there originally from it's OS market domination, but now it's the PLATFORM. All they have to do is move the PLATFORM over to other OSes. What I didn't forsee is them integrating it all with the internet/ASP-plan thing.
Of course, Apple/NeXT could have done this with OpenStep (Yellowbox for Windows) and WebObjects two years ago. But they don't seem interested in world domination so much anymore. They could still do it, but it looks like Motorola is doing all they can to stall Apple on it's native platform. (PPC).
I could sit here and criticize the lousy brits and their facist corporat-owned government, but we all know that the same thing is coming to a red-white-and-blue country near you soon. Just like the DMCA and UTICA.
um - the near future, you're talking Geological time-scales right?
Face it, the 1ghz VAPORWARE announcement was a pathetic attempt to soften the blow they all knew was coming the day before they had to announce their profit warning. Didja see the stocks today? Oh! the humanity!
Face it, if Motorola would just get out of the AIM partnership, PPC could be a great chip again. Right now, IBM has faster chips than Motorola is capable of producing, and CAN'T SELL THEM due to a clause in the contract that forbids, well, actual competition.
Hard drives already have a "power saving mode", which is the reason why if you leave your computer unattended for more than a few minutes, it porks out making you wait while the disk spins up. You can hear it. And of course the machine sits there like a moron while you're waiting for it to do something. This is why most people disable power managment in the computer's bios, to stop this annoyance.
I understand that laptop hard drives are supposedly designed with more efficient motors, which was requested by Intel about two years ago when they wrote some standard paper about how component makers can make their components more energy efficient. While at the same time spitting out CPUs that consume upwards of 35 watts. It must be good to be the king.
While I'm initially disappointed; most geeks know that a very large chunk of laptop power goes into the screen, and another into the hard drive. Silly as it may sound, considering the performance hit you take by using this chip over the real-deal (Pentium), and considering the power savings is watered down because of the screen and HD, maybe MP would be the way to go. . .
Of course, I've heard wonderful things about PPC-based laptops, and how very much more efficient they are with batteries. If only Moronola would get off their butts and ramp clock speed. ("twice as fast" argument doesn't wash when clock speed is half as fast).
I saw Soylent Green for the first time the other night, and it strikes me that the movie was a story about reverse-engineering.
If Thorne hadn't illegally entered the food-processing plant, and observed the manufacturing process (and killed two workers in the process), he would not have discovered that Soylent Green is people.
I believe that is all that needs to be said on this subject.
I understand that this is total flamebait and offtopic (moderators do your worst). But you brought politics into this discussion (what was this one about anyway?)
But might it be possible that if Gore is elected, that we continue to have serious problems in the mideast - like the escalation in violence and OPEC posturing (as well as Hussein's posturing) we've seen over the past 3 months?
Might it be possible that they (the Palestinians, Saudis, and Iraqis) don't want Leiberman in the White House? Or might it be possible that Bush wouldn't be broken-hearted to see oil at $50-$100/bbl, seeing as how he has seriously heavy-duty ties to domestic oil interests?
Again, I blame the morons who didn't vote for McCain. You're to blame. And we're all going to be paying the price for the next 50 years.
well, look at all the spineless morons who caved into RAMBUS's bogus DRAM patent claim. If these major chip manufacturers do it, mom and pop's web-shop surely will.
Lawyers can be so intimidating. But not when they're in the crosshairs. . .
I don't forget what it was like when I was making $18k a year, and had a wife and two kids, and had to live with my parents for 9 months to save up enough money for a down payment on a condo.
When I think of what I was paying in taxes then, and how I lived, it sickens me, and I'm ALL FOR a progressive tax. And I'm not too sure I'm comfortable about capital gains tax - I feel that it should be taxed at the regular rate, but it does try to incent stock owners into owning a stock for at least 12 months, instead of selling right away. Although I don't at all like Alternative Minimum Tax. That's a total screw-job, and needs to disappear.
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There is no uncrackable protection.
It is a fundamental fact of information theory that you cannot securely transmit information from one party to another if the other party doesn't want it secure.
You can make it a total pain in the ass, which means in terms of time, effort, and hardware (all translatable into $), if the commodity isn't worth as much as it costs to crack it, then it won't be pirated on a large scale.
But the more they delay, the more MP3s get pirated.
Not only that, but when you combine such power with unscrupulous practices (I'm not saying that Microsoft is unscrupulous - this is a what-if scenario ;-) - you have tremendous potential for abuse.
.NET/ASP service. Now, Microsoft has MANY avenues of leverage here. They can probably gain access to this potential competitor's source-code. They could make all kinds of moves like cancelling the service at their whim - paralyzing the startup's developers, and they don't even have to be in breach of contract to do that; the services rates could be changed, the payment could be "lost in the mail", or they could simply be found "in violation" of Microsoft's usage policy, or Microsoft could simply run into "technical problems" on the application server. The independent developer is at Microsoft's mercy. They could even be as subtle as, run a screen saver on the application server, slowing it down to the point where the startup's deadlines are impacted because of the increased time it takes to launch Visual Studio, or just access files.
.NET, they're also open to espionage of documents and spreadsheets.
.NET. There's no more choice because MS is the only vendor, and they vend only service, no software anymore.
.NET-ified, so the RIAA no longer has to worry about piracy of digital media thru CDs. Microsoft probably gets a nod and a wink from the record companies, who are beholden to MS anyway, because MS 0wns their SDMI music servers like everything else.
For instance, say some independent software vendor has come up with some hot new product idea, but because they're a cash-starved startup, they "rent" Visual Studio from Microsoft, via
This is all above and beyond the present tactics MS uses with MFC, altering APIs at their whims, misleading documentation (intentional, or just economizing on tech writers, you be the judge), and providing "secret APIs" to their own developers (none of which will not change with the DOJ-mandated split, by the way).
Since this company also "rents" Office from
Eventually, this company runs into trouble, no revenue, lagging product releases, lays off half it's staff, starts looking for financial rescue, or a partner, and along comes Microsoft with a stock buyout. Microsoft very cheaply buys this "great idea", and completes it, integrates it into it's product line, and comes out smelling nice a purdy.
Eventually, nobody starts up computer software companies anymore, and all the major competitors have been beaten down or dissolved, and the only place to get software/service from is Microsoft. Never mind that no consumers want or ever wanted
**conspiracy theory** and the best payoff of all is that computers no longer need to be sold with CDROM drives, because everything is
Microsoft also intended for NT to be multi-platform as well.
.NET for other platforms? Lip service enough to rope in the non-x86 people, less features, more bugs, slow painful death, make x86 the most attractive platform, help migrate people to x86, then kill off the others one by one.
We no longer have with us:
NT-MIPS, NT-PPC, NT-Alpha
Whaddya think is going to happen when there is a
Just like they did with NT.
Not because they're in any secret conspiracy with Intel, mind you. It's because it's a profit-optimization to support only one platform. This is why companies standardize on one platform.
There are lots of good reasons why this is a bad idea, but haven't bean-counters been running things for quite some time now?
Controlling the servers alone doesn't work.
Look at the ones who failed that route;
Novell
Banyan
Sun
Linux (sort of)
-
Look at the ones who've failed because they only controlled the desktop;
Amiga
Apple (sort of)
Windows has the magic formula, desktop, low-end server, and commodity hardware.
how is .NET a technological break?
It's basically just OLE/COM/DCOM/DNA repackaged to look like Java.
3 years ago, this is how I said Microsoft would destroy Linux.
Windows is not important, it's not the OS that gives Microsoft it's power anymore. Microsoft GOT there originally from it's OS market domination, but now it's the PLATFORM. All they have to do is move the PLATFORM over to other OSes. What I didn't forsee is them integrating it all with the internet/ASP-plan thing.
Of course, Apple/NeXT could have done this with OpenStep (Yellowbox for Windows) and WebObjects two years ago. But they don't seem interested in world domination so much anymore. They could still do it, but it looks like Motorola is doing all they can to stall Apple on it's native platform. (PPC).
I could sit here and criticize the lousy brits and their facist corporat-owned government, but we all know that the same thing is coming to a red-white-and-blue country near you soon. Just like the DMCA and UTICA.
um - the near future, you're talking Geological time-scales right?
Face it, the 1ghz VAPORWARE announcement was a pathetic attempt to soften the blow they all knew was coming the day before they had to announce their profit warning. Didja see the stocks today? Oh! the humanity!
Face it, if Motorola would just get out of the AIM partnership, PPC could be a great chip again. Right now, IBM has faster chips than Motorola is capable of producing, and CAN'T SELL THEM due to a clause in the contract that forbids, well, actual competition.
Hard drives already have a "power saving mode", which is the reason why if you leave your computer unattended for more than a few minutes, it porks out making you wait while the disk spins up. You can hear it. And of course the machine sits there like a moron while you're waiting for it to do something. This is why most people disable power managment in the computer's bios, to stop this annoyance.
I understand that laptop hard drives are supposedly designed with more efficient motors, which was requested by Intel about two years ago when they wrote some standard paper about how component makers can make their components more energy efficient. While at the same time spitting out CPUs that consume upwards of 35 watts. It must be good to be the king.
While I'm initially disappointed; most geeks know that a very large chunk of laptop power goes into the screen, and another into the hard drive. Silly as it may sound, considering the performance hit you take by using this chip over the real-deal (Pentium), and considering the power savings is watered down because of the screen and HD, maybe MP would be the way to go. . .
Of course, I've heard wonderful things about PPC-based laptops, and how very much more efficient they are with batteries. If only Moronola would get off their butts and ramp clock speed. ("twice as fast" argument doesn't wash when clock speed is half as fast).
not only is the article old (been on slashdot before, twice, I think), but the posts appear to be the same ones.
well, since it's now obvious, who's going to patent it?
you mean "the Jewish conspiracy", right?
let 'em do something useful for a change, instead of chasing balls of yarn around.
I guess that's the difference between Americans and Japanese that the inventor cited in the article.
Americans see that as crazy.
Japanese see it as neeto-keen.
First, we had licensed laywers, which gives us this litiginous rat's next of laws we have today.
Now you want to license the reverse engineers too?
If GM were reverse-engineering Ford cars, they wouldn't be producing the utter crap they are now.
I saw Soylent Green for the first time the other night, and it strikes me that the movie was a story about reverse-engineering.
If Thorne hadn't illegally entered the food-processing plant, and observed the manufacturing process (and killed two workers in the process), he would not have discovered that Soylent Green is people.
I believe that is all that needs to be said on this subject.
I understand that this is total flamebait and offtopic (moderators do your worst). But you brought politics into this discussion (what was this one about anyway?)
But might it be possible that if Gore is elected, that we continue to have serious problems in the mideast - like the escalation in violence and OPEC posturing (as well as Hussein's posturing) we've seen over the past 3 months?
Might it be possible that they (the Palestinians, Saudis, and Iraqis) don't want Leiberman in the White House? Or might it be possible that Bush wouldn't be broken-hearted to see oil at $50-$100/bbl, seeing as how he has seriously heavy-duty ties to domestic oil interests?
Again, I blame the morons who didn't vote for McCain. You're to blame. And we're all going to be paying the price for the next 50 years.
That's still opto-magnetic. or even opto-mechanical.
did somebody finally fire Bill Walker? Or did his Borg Implant crash when they upgraded it to Windows 2000?
You're just another one of those Linux-zealot Microsoft bashers spewing the party-line on Slashdot in order to gain karma.
from what I hear, speaking English is illegal in France.
.
Then again, lot's of things in France are naughty. .
well, look at all the spineless morons who caved into RAMBUS's bogus DRAM patent claim. If these major chip manufacturers do it, mom and pop's web-shop surely will.
Lawyers can be so intimidating. But not when they're in the crosshairs. . .
I don't forget what it was like when I was making $18k a year, and had a wife and two kids, and had to live with my parents for 9 months to save up enough money for a down payment on a condo.
When I think of what I was paying in taxes then, and how I lived, it sickens me, and I'm ALL FOR a progressive tax. And I'm not too sure I'm comfortable about capital gains tax - I feel that it should be taxed at the regular rate, but it does try to incent stock owners into owning a stock for at least 12 months, instead of selling right away. Although I don't at all like Alternative Minimum Tax. That's a total screw-job, and needs to disappear.