While handwriting analysis is more of an art than a science, it is rarely used in court when there is ny alternative. People comprehend the weakenesses, and it's easy to find counterexpert.
They'll parade the "billion keys a second 'til the end of time" number, as they do (incorrectly) with DNA evidence. It will appear to be the strongest evidence imaginable -- even stronger than an eyewitness ID (which has been shown to be surprisingly weak)
The crypto is a strong link in a weak chain, but it is the part that will be scrutinized in court and in the approval process. E-sigs are no better protected than the sum of the security flaws in the computer, account, human memory used to store passphrases and keys, etc. Expect the pasphrases to be protected as well as other important private data is - if so, a burglar or guest may find the Post-it under your mousepad and steal your identity
I would prefer a *physical* e-card for signing over software solutions. Users (and jurors) would understand the use and protection of a physical objects, and its theft would be easily detectable. It can also present options in easily understood buttons.
However, I expect legislators and citizens to strongly reject smart cards, leading to weaker security and privacy overall
There has been a lot of work in cryptography to establish systems that are identifiable (this e-sig belongs to this identity and to this document), authenticatable (this e-sig must have been generated by this person), non-repudiable (cannot be denied), and anonymous (it is not necessary to know who I am for me to buy a newspaper -- I should be able to create completely anonymous accounts, and pay out of them), and user-controllable (the amount of info from the list above that is released in the transaction should be user controllable) I don't think legislators will incorporate all these features.
I expect citizens or legislators to reject the card. However, and e-sig system that does not have these options will result in far less security and privacy for the citizens in the end.
The fact that all this (and other, far more technical concerns) are not immediately obvious suggest that Citizens will not use/protect their signatures properly. People alredy 'sign without reading' all too often. This will make things much worse.
How can these so-called "scientists" live with themselves after creating something that is this much of a blasphemy against God and nature?
Yes, the ability to read is SUCH a curse... Genesis 1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. {moveth: the Heb. is more like 'creepeth'}
There are roughly half a dozen similar passages in the OT and NT, and don't even get me started on the Koran and the various Talmuds -- they make the Christian Bible seem positively Luddite.
In my early 20's (ca 1982), I did a lot of private work on improved artifical limbs - until a worried friend (a lawyer) did a search of the case law to show me what a liability minefield it was. [1]
However, if cybernetic augmentaion really rocks your boat, you need to keep up on the DARPA and other government RFPs.
First up on the sci-fi drooler's hit parade is: "Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation"-- a current active DARPA RFP, but if you miss the deadline, don't worry, there's similar RFPs every funding cycle.
I only wish they hadn't said ``DARPA is soliciting devices and machines that accomplish one or more of the following:... 3) increase locomotive speed, 4) augment human strength, and 5) leap extraordinary heights and/or distances.''
In other words... faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound...
------------------------ [1] In her somewhat irreverent words: "People who lost limbs as adults (due to the nature of the interface I used) and can afford to pay for an experimental limb? Er - sounds like someone who just won multimillion dollar lawsuit, to me. Don't mess with them, they already have a legal team!"
"I have to admit, I would have filtered out Jon's ramblings a long time ago if I didn't get immense amusement out of them.
"But lately, I've been cultivating a theory: that JonKatz is not actually a human being, but in fact software that takes some random topic and turns it into a long, redundant, rambling essay on the dangers of globalization, media, capitalism, corporatism, ageism, intellectualism, polymorphism, foodism and the Geo Prizm. "
(Waltham, MA) As the sun sets on the seige of SlashDot fans wandering outside the Exodus Communications electrified fence, looking for a laptop LAN hook-up Rob Malda wonders where he went wrong.
"I guess it was the third Napster article in a row," he decides. "Not three days in a row, three articles in a row."
"It's a perfectly legitimate SlashDot topic," he insists. "It's Linux. And open source... in a closed-source, proprietary format, not available for Linux or any *nix sort of way. I mean, I thought it was cool. And I'm a geek, so that makes steal... -er- sharing music 'News for Nerds', right? I mean, it's not like non-nerds listen to music."
The lights dim as if some massive rationalizing mechanism was overloading. "Damn," Malda muttered, "Some guy put up a page on powering laptops from the electrified fence, and now I start to pray at sunset every night. I narc'ed the/. account info to the FBI, and Andover subpoenaed Geocitie's records, but after three layers of anonymizing we lost him. The next day the text file showed up on FreeNet! I tell you, this privacy stuff is getting out of hand." He calms himself before continuing, "Even the link to the fake potato power page didn't fool enough of them into unhooking from the fence to let us power up the missiles. Dang, geeks don't trust anyone anymore!"
He looks out the eight-inch armored glass porthole, at the hundreds of small campfires fueled by sheaves of source code. "It's pretty. Ever stop to think how many watts even a small abandoned app puts out when burned? That's what I call the power of open source!" For a moment he seems like a senile old man, "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of them!
Malda chuckles, despite his obvious strain, "Actually, I guess I'm a lucky man. Before they learned to tap the concrete-and-steel OC-24 conduits for bandwidth they used the fences as a low-frequency antenna -- kind of a mini HAARP. We all had Don King hairdos that week."
He snaps back to the subject at hand. "Looking back, the downhill slide started when we installed a K.A.T.Z AI that didn't come anywhere near passing the Turing test. I mean even the elementary school focus groups weren't fooled! But when it came up with the Hellsmouth thread, enough of the geeks fell into line to moderate down anyone who didn't. I guess we got cocky. We should never have let the AI do our article selection too."
"You see, there was a glitch in the code." He laughs again, bitterly this time, "Ironically, it was due to Napster. Pudge believed us when we said everyone used MP3 to discover obscure new groups, and share their own artistic work. He used the Napster traffic on the nearest backbone as a random number generator for K.A.T.Z." A small tear forms on the corner of his eye, "But of course, everyone really uses Napster to rip off the same old commercial songs, just like he does. Suddenly 90% of the threads were retreads of the Same Old Stuff. Maybe we should have suspected something when Napster started getting its own thread every day... but frankly, we don't read SlashDot, you know?"
"Roblimo mentioned it at the last board meeting, but it was in haiku, and anyway I couldn't hear him over Hemo's new Swedish masseuse. The last one did Rolfing or something --much quieter -- but this new one! Wowza! You can hear her though the armored vault."
"My biggest regret is putting the K.A.T.Z. in charge of supplies in the final week. We're rationing the emergency supplies we ordered before, but the last shipment... eighteen tons of instant breakfast packets. Grits, to be exact. Just add water. And not a pat of butter in the entire building."
When asked his view of the future he simply said "I'm petrified."
This essay, though impassioned, does not reveal a great insight into the world, rather it betrays a closed microcosmic view.
The impending 'corporatism' Katz speaks of was often discussed -- insightfully -- in the mainstream literature of the 50's and 60's (e.g. the cliche of the 'buttondown corporate mentality' and many novels set in the future) It was discussed in the 70's, but by then was so mainstream that it was often reduced to the empty-headed muttered of stoned hippies (most of what we think of as the "the Sixties" was rrealy the 70's) The 80's was a close parallel totoday, with "the invasion of the MBAs" and the first microcomputer explosion taking the place of the dotcoms.
In many ways, the corporatism of decades past was darker and more oppressive, if less intrusively pervasive, because a vast array of laws have grown up to protect us from the worst of those excesses, and a large proportion of the 'decent citizenry' in the postwar era actively idolized the legitimacy that power represented. Being big, to them, meant you were probably right. in the decades before Watergate changed our perception of power, survey after survey showed that people said government officials and top executives were 'too important' to have to be troubled by 'small laws' and should be allowed to skirt them in the interests of expediency and efficiency.
If you think today's intrusive (and often inaccurate) data bases are new, read the history of abuses behind laws like the Fair Credit Reporting Act, various worker right laws, etc. The civil rights movement was just part of a larger social milieu of oppression and conformity imposed by unquestioned (and unquestionable) powers.
Forget Santayana and 'those who forget history are doomed to repeat it'. Santayana had no such pithy quote for those who never knew it in the first place.
Re:So felons CAN profit from their crimes now?
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From the Sherman Anti-Trust Law of 1890:
Section 2. Monopolizing trade a felony; penalty
Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
(Emphasis mine)
MICROSOFT has been found guilty of a Sherman Anti-Trust violation. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, etc. have not. No one is going to jail...
...yet.;->
Re:Spread the message, brothers
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You don't seem to understand the impact of the UCITA. It is a law proposal that will exactly do that: put the magic in cellophane.
Short version of UCITA: The developer has FULL liability unless waivered by a shrink-wrapped license.
You're right, at the moment. But with the UCITA in action, your no warranty clause in the GPL would be overruled by law. Underestimating this is exactly the danger we're facing!
I've often heard that view espoused, however, I do not see any language in UCITA, or its predecessors CITA and UCC Article 2B that specify "shrink-wrap". That term does not appear in UCITA The terms I do see apply equally to all mass market licenses, whether they are read pre- or post-sale, shrink-wrapped or not, etc. (with one exception, below)
UCITA does 'firm up' some standards that were previously ambiguous or inconsistently interpreted. These include reaffirming a few principles of implied warranty, and weakening others. They also include reaffirming the inpplicability of outrageous terms in licenses. This has been interpreted variously as saying 'full waivers may be void' and 'full waivers are affirmed'. Whichever interpretations wins out, will apply equally to all mass market licenses. The only clause I have seen that differentiates SWL from GPL is the refund clause for SWL which allows a right of refund, with or without cause, if the license was not available until after purchase. Some have taken to mean that SWL products are *only* liable for refund (a claim that is difficult to support in the light of the whole law: either Section 809 and similar sections may properly be waived by a SWL and GPL; or they are both equally unconscionable and void. I cannot read the refund clause as a privileged state of limited liability)
I despise UCITA, but I feel that ignorant babbling serves our cause very poorly.
BTW, I think badsoftware.com is an interesting and site, but their slideshow is ambiguously worded on the SWL disclaimer. If you re-read it, you will find that it says the offensive disclaimers are allowed in 'shrink-wrap' (terms hidden until after purchase) licenses but NOT that such disclaimer can ONLY be exercised by an undisclosed license.
IANAL. I just invested time and effort before I made my comments. I trust you did, too, and that I will be reading a response soon
Re:Spread the message, brothers
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No shrink-wrapped license? Too bad, all liability is for the programmer. Unless we fight the UCITA (among other problems), we might be in serious legal trouble for every little bug. After all, we cannot waiver liability like shrink-wrapped software can.
Nonsense. There's no magic in cellophane. The liability waiver can exist in any license, even if (*gasp*) the user knows about it in advance!
From the GPL:
NO WARRANTY
11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls...
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This is the Death Knell, boys and girls.
I heard it when Apple went from the Velcro-back "we want you to poke around" Apple II+ to the "if you so much as open the case, you void the warranty" Mac (the one where you couldn't install a HDD until Apple introduced their own 'authrized HDD. Their market share plummeted, in favor of the 'commodity hardware' Wintel PC.
I heard it in the copy-protected games of the early 80's. When did you last see one of those?
I heard it from Lotus, once the 1000 lb gorilla of spreadsheets and business apps.
I heard it from IBM when they went MicroChannel with the PS/2 (a technical advance, in many ways, but with a "lock-in the consumer" mentality)
Some companies heard it themselves and spared themselves.
Even newbies were deserting AOL until they dropped their proprietary "we own this user" tricks one by one, and allowed free (as in speech) access to the internet, and third party apps. If AOL had tried to keep the squeeze on their users, and tie them to 'preferred vendors', they wouldn't have bought Time-Warner, they wouldn't even be able to buy time.
The 'CD Free' OS. It's all about revenue streams
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I see that this has been going on for many weeks. I suppose Microsoft has seen the writing on the (The 'no install CD for MS; article is dated a week after Judge Jackson's preliminary decree, which resulted in yesterday's Final Decree)
I shouldn't be surprised. As I said in a post in another article, there will be some serious market forces driving MS-OS and MS-AP apart, due to their differing nature, and the OS portion is going to get the short end of the stick.
Since most of the the biggest microcomputer OSs (aside from MS) have a hardware company behind them (Apple, Sun, SGI, etc), we forget that, for all its importance, an OS is simply not a high ticket item without packaged hardware, and it's bought infrequently. Buying each version since DOS 3 cost maybe $20-30 a year, and most of that would have gone to retailers, packaging, etc. instead of MS's profit column. Let's face it, it's peanuts.
MS milked their OS advantage to fatten their real cash cow: the apps. That's not to say that they didn't make money on the OS, but that wasn't what made them a powerhouse. Price MS-Office against Windows 98, and you'll see why MS-OS needs a new revenue stream.
So what will it be? They can milk licensing and partnering in exchange for a peek at their hidden APIs could be good for a quick infusion, but it's a one-shot. They'll need to offer favorable terms to developers for all future OS's or they won't get enough app support to compel immediate upgrades. Damn OS's live too long! Win95a still runs fine.
Sure, they'll still have new computer sales, but the installed base is their major advantage. Hardware, OS, and apps all bloated each other in a vicious cycle. But all that 'stranded hardware' has some real power left in it. And now there may be competitors who can make use of that power (like Linux) and erode MS's installed base from behind. The consumer desktop needs power for games -- and not much else. We have the equivalent of last decade's supercomputers on our desks now. DO we really need that to write letters, surf, and do our taxes?
MS-OS lost their Apps, most of their Enterprise stuff, MSN.NET, MSNBC, MS hardware (input devices, etc.) and now they are stuck with the central piece that made it all tick... and nothing to make tick. The 2001/2 could be a very lean year.
Further, it'll be harder to buy companies and technologies now that stock swaps won't be quite as appealing. All the guys the used to bully have grown up, and though there's a lot of tech funny money around, MS-OS won't have the liquidity it once had.
I foresaw this back at the beginnning of the DoJ business, but I guess I never really believed it until now. Wow. The OS *isn't* the power. Who ever got *giga-rich* off an OS alone, except Gates -- and he did it by fighting dirty.
After the split, MS shareholders [1] will find themselves owning both MS-OS (Micro-S.O.S) and MS-AP (MicroSaps) [2] stock. These two stocks will find themselves competing to keep their places in the portfolios of the same investors. Since there is no reason to expect both companies to perform equally in the next year, they will have to adopt a competitive stance. Otherwise, they will be cutting their own throats to benefit their siblings
In today's tech market market, the importance of stock value cannot be overlooked
[1] except Covered Shareholders = past/present employees and directors with 5% or more of MS (not many people in *that* group!) who cannot own shares in both companies [2] My guess is that they'll be Windows Corp. and Microsoft Applications Inc.
If it had been up to me, I'd have set the 'covered shareholder threshold' at 0.5-1% (or even lower) to assure that more of the top management had a personal stake in the competition. However, I suppose that there are SEC reasons for the 5% mark, and most top level executives probably want to see their babies perform.
MS-AP is actually the more profitable of the two, with a broad range of apps and services, and a large market penetration in the layman desktop (a sector that is not eager to retrain in new apps). Both companies fear 'user freeze', where FUD keeps the users on their existing systems (which 'work just fine'). No more lockstepped upgrades of interlocking OS/Apps!
MSAP will find that it has a major asset that is rapidly aging: its expertise in the hidden Windows APIs. They'll be eager for partners to make use of this resource while it is still valid and valued. MSOS, on the other hand, will benefit from releasing as much API info as possible, so MSAP doesn't outperform them on Wall Street and to allow better apps to keep users buying MSOS through Win 2000/Milennium and beyond.
MSOS needs a revenue stream -- which means more paid OS upgrades or license fees, while MSAP would prefer that WinNT/9x/2000/Millenium stayed on the market for a long time. They will have no edge in Win2002 (etc.) Another revenuestream for MSOS would be to buy applications companies and to rebuild its App division (permitted under Section 1(c)(ii) of the decree)
MSAP will be more open to widely porting their apps, and will seek unifying technologies (seeking crossplatform compatibility like any app developer) Their familiar UI is a potent market edge to overcome initial weaknesses in raw performance, but they'll be scrambling for development partners who 'know the terrain' of other OS's.
The bad news is that the 1000 lb gorilla is now two 500 lb gorillas. MS-AP isn't likely to offer very beneficial terms at first! Expect tight NDAs and restrictions, since it knows it has a sure winner (MS-Office, etc.) . The good news is that this will enable Linux/BeOS/etc. to take a place on a lot more machines, which benefits these communities as a whole.
What I find interesting is the stock split. Except for a tiny handful of owners [*], the shareholders of MS will probably end up with corresponding shared of MS-OS and MS-AP [**]. It won't be a 1:1 deal, because of the difference in value and percieved market potential between the two product lines, but it will mean that (at least initially) most shareholders will be rooting for both stocks.
After a little while, however, we'll see if that stands. MS-AP would be smart (for example) to quickly port to other OS's if it can, and to license/partner its knowledge of all the WinAPIs while that info is still current.
It's worth noting that the process of porting may be a) difficult for products that co-evolved with Windows; b) require the expertise best found by partnering with established developers for the new OS; c) make MS apps more configurable (especially as regards features that are security holes); and d) undo many of the adopt-and-modify changes of the past few years (e.g. Kerberos)
_________________________ [*] "Covered Shareholder" means a shareholder of Microsoft on the date of entry of this Final Judgment who is a present or former employee, officer or director of Microsoft and who owns directly or beneficially more than 5 percent of the voting stock of the firm. __________________________ [**] MS-OS and MS-AP are ugly names. Im look forward to seeing (and maybe composing) alternatives. The best I can do at the moment
Perhaps more troubling, there is nothing to prevent MS-OS from releasing new versions of the applications it 'divested' to MS-AP (i.e. creating or buying a new 'Office' and integrating it to the OS, as before) MS-OS will have a full permanent unlimited license on all current source, tools and other intellectual property related to integrating the divested Apps to the OS, but it won't have to share any *new* info/APIs/etc. with MS-AP.
The clause that explicitly prohibits MS-OS from releasing new versions of IE clearly grants MS-OS the right to release new versions of any other MS-App by default (see below). They may even be able to call it MS-Word (or whatever) depending on whether trademark is considered a business element of MS-AP (as I would argue) or an intellectual property (under the full unlimited license)
I would have expected the Judge to ban the 'Privileged App syndrome' more broadly (i.e. to lock MS-OS out of more than just the browser) The wording would be a little tricky, but that's a lawyer's stock-in-trade.
I'm not saying we'll see a wholesale regeneration of MS-Office, MS-BackOffice, etc. but I wouldn't be surprised if MS-OS tries to cherry pick, to its advantage. Buying new programs to replace the lost apps is easy for MS-OS. Buying privileged access back is explicitly banned for MS-AP.
In theory, all the 'talent/experience' behind MS apps will be reassigned to MS-AP, but we'll have to see how personnel are actually divided, won't we? The programming talent that produced the newly purchased programs will largely come along with the buyout.
1(c)(ii). Intellectual Property that is used both in a product developed, distributed, or sold by the Applications Business and in a product developed, distributed, or sold by the Operating Systems Business as of April 27, 2000, shall be assigned to the Applications Business, and the Operating Systems Business shall be granted a perpetual, royalty-free license to license and distribute such Intellectual Property in its products, and, except with respect to such Intellectual Property related to the Internet browser, to develop, license and distribute modified or derivative versions of such Intellectual Property, provided that the Operating Systems Business does not grant rights to such versions to the Applications Business. In the case of such Intellectual Property that is related to the Internet browser, the license shall not grant the Operating Systems Business any right to develop, license, or distribute modified or derivative versions of the Internet browser.
I absolutely agree that its important to make the distinction between virus, worm, trojan, etc., it would cut down on confusion, and encourage more background understanding of computers in general.
However, I think it's funny that you suggest "pathogens". In medical school, we had the same problem with distinctions that were generally important (bacteria, protozoa, viruses, worms, other parasites, etc.), but which could be cumbersome when speaking generically. 'Pathogen' wasn't always appropriate either (the same species can be a pathogen in one site, and normal flora in another).
Do you know what we call them, collectively, in the hospital? Bugs.
"Hmmm... Computer bugs?" No, that's already taken...
------------------- All right, who's the wise guy who/.'d the New England Journal of Medicine website tonight? It's up, but it's boggy as hell.
I have worked in a secure government environment, and this is simply not the case. Dedicated encrypted network links are preferred for data transmissions. Courier service is a failover solution, and rarely uses anything other than paper.
I was referring to genuinely sensitive material -- e,g, SAP, SCI, or my favorite, ORCON-designated. ORCON is exactly what the studios are tryng to do
A 'secure facility' is a generic term meaning that it's hard for data walk out the door. It doesn't mean that the material you handle is particularly sensitive. If you were responsible for transfer of highly sensitive material, you would not blandly suggest transmitting 50GB to an unsecured facility like a theater! Ask your site AIS officer if s/he'd certify transmission of 50GB of SCI ORCON.
Transfer of an entire 50GB database to a newly built or unsecured site (theater) is rarely, if ever, done by transmission. You can't use the common crypto algorithms (I had this same argument with a contractor who though triple DES was good enough -- even though DES variants have been specifically disallowed for classified material since 1975, when DES was released!
For the *most* sensitive data 'hardware (which includes human) plus software security' is preferred over software-only access control. Even the most secure software-only one-time pad crypto requires that the OTP encrypting data (equal in length to the data encrypted) be transported by independent channels (never transmitted over any segment used by the later encrypted file). This is often done by courier-transported HDD or media.
I nominate *you* for the job of generating 100 to 150Tb of OTP and delivering it in 50GB chunks by (independent) secure channels to 2000-3000 movie theaters, so that the ecryption can be SCI ORCON secure. But be quick about it! You have to do it for every film at the local 20-plex!
If the theaters have one iota of intelligence they are leasing dedicated lines for this and not just trying to use VPNs over the Internet. Dedicated lines can be encrypted at either end. Your comment about the traffic and how it relates to the Internet is fairly irrevelant.
If you had any idea how much it costs to lease and maintain a T-1 line and the local end equipment (which would take 12 hours to download 50GB under real-world coditions), you'd realize that few theaters would bother to do so. It would eliminate the cost-benefits of electronic distribution.
Maybe you're thinking of DSL -- well, check www.dslreports.com and you'll find out why business still lease T-1 (reliability/service) Theaters don't have sysadmins -- even part-time -- Margins are thin in the Cinema business -- they really make money on the refreshments. They don't want to pay for extras that don't boost revenues.
Dedicated line encryption does not perform the degree of access control that hardware access does. There are too many minimum wage teenage assistant managers. How much do you think the black market would pay a projectionist to copy the decrypted transmission onto a HDD?
-- and BTW, wiretapping DSL is only marginally more difficult that wiretapping a phone line. I built a trivial 2-transistor phone tap when I was 10.
In late 1968/69 AT&T was shaken up by the failure of Multics.
What type of crack are you smoking???
Check the,a href="http://www.multicians.org/multics.html">Mult ics site: Multics started in 1965 and 'The Book' (The Multics System: an Examination of its Structure) announced the 1968 state-of-Multics. MIT started providing Multics timesharing service to users in Fall, 1969. Multics got the first B2 rating (the highest security rating ever given an OS) in 8/85 and for years was the only B2 rated OS.
The major history of Multics doesn't begin until 69 and you say it had *failed* by then? Its first system wasn't even fully up! I suppose the 100++ huge commerical, government and military Multics facilities around the world, that came later are all irrelevant. In fact, all the major milestones and innovations in Multics are irrelevant.
Listen, bub, *you* may have been aborted before you were born, but Multics wasn't!;->
True, Multics was over budget and behind schedule in 68/69, and there was talk of cancelling it. But if it had failed back then, you and I would never have heard of it.
The solution (in the US, anyway) would be Open Access, an exploding trend in our increasingly deregulated infrastructure market. I am surprised that so many people still buy the 'laying mega-miles of new cable' argument.
BellAtlantic owns the POTS line into my house, but that doesn't mean they automatically get my long distance business. They get a limited monopoly (more limited all the time) on my local phone service, in exchange for laying and maintaining all that infrastructure, but they are required to provide access to any other long distance carrier. I pay a buck or two to the local telco for 'long distance access' whether my carrier is ATT, Sprint, etc.
The same thing happens in DSL, which is even more striking. Bell Atlantic owns the wire, but it only gets $8-18 for use of its 'last mile' infrastructure. This is striking because, when you think about it, DSL only applies to the Last Mile. Once you get to any sort of trunkline or ISP, a DSL packet is no different than any other packet.
Even more striking is electrical power. The electric company owns the wires, but I can quite literally buy my power from anyone who'll sell it to me. Here, it is even more bizarre, because its all an accounting matter... the actual 'electrons' (emf) I use won't come from the guy I 'buy' them from. There are many complicated 'inputs' and interlinks pooled onto the local power grid, and a giant system exists for financially balancing the payments. Often the 'electricity vendor' is just a commodity trader, buying bulk capacity or power, with no infrastructure at all.
This is *today*. These are the bills I pay every month. There is no reason why cable is any different. they may have a 'granted monopoly' in exchange for laying and maintaining the cable for transmitting television signals, but they don't get an automatic monopoly on internet access -- that's the long distance/local issue again: cable TV and TCP are different services.
That cable companies are making an argument that has been long defeated in all other similar markets.
Unfortunately, my local cable provider doesn't provide Internet access at all. I'm not sure a new law could force them to share an 'access' that doesn't even exist. I'm actually *hoping* they get bought out by a larger company. I live in a small, fairly upscale community, full of high-tech businesses (including one of the world's leading cablemodem technology companies), surrounded by communities that all have cable modem service, but it's an island of backwardness... and the DSL sucks.
To me the interesting question is why it's being *transmitted* at all -- except as a technology demonstration. I'm not sure that this will turn out to be the best transfer medium. (Certainly not in this case, where there will be Titan AE execs at the showing, and any one of them could have carried 50Gb of HDD in a jacket pocket)
Currently, it costs about $2K to make each theatre quality film print. The package weighs over 100 pounds, IIRC). Meanwhile a pair of 25GB HDDs costs under $500 in 1000+ quantities, and weighs a few pounds fully shock-insulated. (I'm sure studios will demand return of the HDDs, and reuse them)
Properly encrypted transmission over data lines permits a high degree of security, but shipping a special HDD unit with *hardware* protection may be more secure from certain attacks. This is the method preferred for transfer of government and high level financial secrets -- and a blockbuster film has comparable dollar value!
Envision an HDD with the file stored in a secure encryption, and hardware verification of (for example) the encrypted serial number of authorized theatre equipment. Equipment verification is crucial, because the decrypted datastream can be copied. Your HDD shouldn't play on anything but a self-verifying secured player.
Yes, all this can be done in software, but there are significant weaknesses to self-contained (on media) software-only access control when the media itself is under the total control of the attacker.
Incidentally, under software *or* hardware control the studio can assure license compliance: number of showings, seating capacity (Projector 1111 is in a 500-seat room, 1112 is in a 200 seat room, etc.), and other things theatre are interested in controlling.
Maybe internet traffic won't lag every release day, when 2000 copies of a 50GB film (100 Terabytes) go out over the Net. Maybe they'll build additional secure capacity specifically for teh 50+ major studio movie releases each year (bandwidth which can be used for other things between releases) On maybe not...
Courier- or carrier-delivery of Hardware-secured HDDs may not be glamorous, but it makes sense. If bandwidth-mediated transmission takes place at all, it should be limited to emergency replacement of damaged media, 'updates' 9as described by another poster) etc.
There are no "300x the speed of light" microwaves. This merely an effect that 'appears' to travel faster than light. Note that the article in that story specified that the effect only occurs with certain very specifically shaped waveforms. This takes the mystery out of how the far end of the apparatus can 'reconstruct the complete waveform' when only the leading edge has had time to enter the apparatus.
Such 'apparently faster than light' effects are not uncommon in relativistic phenomena. One example is the 'superluminal fireball' from the 80's:
Imagine a star 1000 light years from Earth gave off a 'fireball' or giant plasma burst pointed at our planet in the year 1000 AD. For the sake of argument let's say it's travelling at 99.9% the speed of light. In the year 2000, the light, we would see the light from the explosion, and could 'watch the fireball eject'. Meanwhile, the fireball itself will travel 999 light years, and be just 1 light year from Earth. Therefore the light that the fireball gives off in 2000 will reach the Earth in 2001 (followed, four days later, by the fireball itself striking the earth, possibly doing nasty things to humanity, Linux, Natalie Portman, and other things/.ers hold dear)
To an observer on Earth, the fireball will appear to have travelled 999x the speed of light. To an observer somewhere at right angles to the fireball's path, it will appear to travel at.999 the speed of light
What is the controversy here? According to the article, "those companies had agreed to pay an undisclosed amount per megabit per second in order to plug into the high-speed network." In other words, they are selling bandwidth. If anything, it is less troubling than the many 'preferred vendor' arrangements that have been on commercial networks (e.g. Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy) since the 80's.
By buying bandwidth directly to a network segment, these providers will get better throughput. If you look at the buyers (Akamai, iBeam and Microcast) in the article, you'd see that they defintely have an interest in eliminating netlag and other delays to cablemodem users (who can make best use of their services). I expect other 'wide pipe' providers to follow suit, and consider it both prudent, and a service to all customers. (The revenue stream is welcome, too: Excite@Home lost $1.5 billion on revenues of $337 mill last year. How long do you think they can afford to keep supplying service at current prices at his rate?)
There is a huge distinction between *providing* service* and *denying* it.
You might as well argue that high-bandwidth users are 'crowding everyone else off the Internet' (which has been argued). Howver, this doesn't have that nice conspiratorial anti-business ring, does it?
First, calculate the income from all the accounts you close, times the duration of each account. (in other words, for a $20/mo account, you lose $240 per year. If you cancel only one account a month, you'll lose $2880 over the next year. Each year, your losses increase (i.e. in 2003, you lose the income from the accounts you closed in 2000, 2001, 2002, and well as the accounts you close in 2003)
This probably scales with the size of the ISP: a small ISP may close 12 accounts a year. A larger ISP may close 50. The losses add up rapidly, even if you forget goodwill and reputation.
Meanwhile, by not implementing proper ant-DoS measures, the entire ISP is wide open. This can cost you a big chunk of your total business. Prudence demands proper anti-DoS measures to protect the ISP (and incidentally, the users)
*THAT* is the bottom line for ISPs today
An ISP whose head isn't in the sand will also realize that they are actively contributing to the growth of DoS, and their losses will mount exponentially.
The definitions of (Libel/Slander/Defamation), the accceptable defenses, and other relevant details vary surprisingly by jurisdiction in the US, and even more widely (but less surprisingly) abroad. Making blanket statements about "the law" is like making blanket statements about 'programming languages'. Here are just a few of the citations I found in 20 minutes on Google. (It's called research, Jon!) IANAL
1) This is not 'one of the few cases'! As far as straight (civil) libel goes, existing 'cyberlaw' goes back to the 80's, with mailing lists and BBSs and has definitely been upheld internationally. "international" is important, because you can be sued in jurisdiction where the 'damage' occurs or where the 'victim' resides. Here are some cases/sources:
Here's a Richmond Law Review (Va.) article suggesting unified approaches to cyber-defamation.
Rindos v. Hardwick was a famous case where an American was successfully sued in Australian courts for defamation on a e-mail list. [Summary] [Judgement]
A CyberLibel FAQ -- primarily non-US 'British tradition' (Australia, Canada) useful as a basis for further understanding.
Here's a course reading list (with links to cases and other resources embedded in the course outline) for a comparison of in the US and Australia with references to other law (Roman, English, Dutch, etc.) It hits some very relevant points in vey few words.
Similar US Criminal Libel cases against students have been reported widely in the media for years (names are not cited, because they are minors): [Colorado, 1997 (ACLU) and verdict, 1998]
2) Do a websearch for "criminal libel" and you'll find that its primary use worldwide, historically and currently is against journalists. One of the 'Inciting Abuses' that contributed to the American Revolution was a (then British) court verdict that a newspaper was guilty of defaming the reputation of the Governer-General of New York by (accurately) revealing his corruption.
Criminal Libel use.abuse is often cited in the annual US State Department Human Rights reports on each country. [Gabon, 1999]
In Ireland, journalistic websites get away with a great deal that print journalism can't.
Katz was on my 'exclude list' for a few months, not because I dislike his writing, but because his loose use of facts and analogies leads to a sloppy, infuriating discussion. A profesional writer should investigate his facts and limit his speculation to what those facts support; If he doesn't, the readers will certainly go hogwild. This is the first Katz article I've read in a while. I am not pleased.
Ordinarily, I'd hope that the European users, having a clear choice between privacy in Europe and blatant abuse in the US, would avoid American sites, and send a strong message that American companies might understand. I tend to favor free market solutions, and this might stand as a backup if we don't succeed in regulating US companies in their use of a commodity that does not truly beling to them: our personal info and patterns.
However, as a practical matter, it's not always easy to know when you're dealing with an American company:.com doesn't mean "American", and many foreign TLDs may actually point to servers in the US and other "non-private" jurisdictions.
I suppose that a privacy leak anywhere is a threat to privacy everywhere.
The fact that far too few people fully appreciate their privacy, or personal info protections, can only make things worse. It would hardly be the first time a right ot privilege was not appreciated until it wa attenuated or gone.
However, I must say that, privacy advocate that I am, I am still troubled by a paradox I've never been able to resolve: is privacy fundamental? Keep in mind that "urbanization" is a relatively ne phenomenon -- until the Great Depression (or a little later) most Americans lived in small towns or rural environments (I presume Europe was similar) and people rarely moved, compared to today. In a small town, a lot of what we now consider basic privacy was impossible. "Everyone knew your business": your salary, work history, the embarrassing things you did in third grade. Perhaps this is why our Founding Fathers did not address 'privacy' in the Constitution, though they seem to have a prescient awareness of other crtitical issues
Perhaps the key is that the companies buy, sell, and use *our* information anonymously. They do not tell us exactly what they do, nor do we have any right of consent. Once the information is 'out', it is considered "their" property, not ours.
Still, "privacy" is an important concept, if only because it is a major legal tool (in the American system) for defending and arguing for rights that were not mentioned in the Constitution, partly because wholesale violation was unthinkable before today's mindless technology evolved.
------------------ "Dum spiro, spero. Dum vivimus, vivamus." (While I breathe, let me hope. While I live, let me live)
Gyroscopes *precess* which means they move at right angles to the applied torque.
If you press on the front of a gyroscope, it tilts to one side (depending on the direction of rotation), etc. This might feel 'cool' to a kid (I think some children's toys have tried this), but in a realistic interface, it would feel incredibly unnatural.
The above applies to 'torques' - forces that tend to alter the axis of the gyroscope. Non-torque ('central' or 'direct') forces produce the same response as they would on any mass. However, this eliminates any advantage you might expect from a gyroscope -- it might as well be a chunk of rock, as far as non-torque forces are concerned.
If a gyroscope is fixed to the outside case of the blade, most reasonable swordfighting moves will produce mostly torque. If it is mounted on a gimbal, most moves will produce very little torque (depending on how good the gymbal is). You could have a variable resistance gymbal; or accelerate and decelerate the gyroscope rotation to modulate the the size of the precession force, but the direction would *still* be all wrong. It would be like wrestling a snake.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait... Jon Katz saw "Battlefield Earth" twice ?
And he's offering a 'small, but useful prize' for anyone who can scrape up something positive to say about it?
Oh God! It's all so clear(tm) now! He's a Scientologist!
Power up them Tesla coils, geeks. Maybe we can overload his e-meter!
How can these so-called "scientists" live with themselves after creating something that is this much of a blasphemy against God and nature?
Yes, the ability to read is SUCH a curse...
Genesis 1:28
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. {moveth: the Heb. is more like 'creepeth'}
There are roughly half a dozen similar passages in the OT and NT, and don't even get me started on the Koran and the various Talmuds -- they make the Christian Bible seem positively Luddite.
Two points:
... 3) increase locomotive speed, 4) augment human strength, and 5) leap extraordinary heights and/or distances.''
In my early 20's (ca 1982), I did a lot of private work on improved artifical limbs - until a worried friend (a lawyer) did a search of the case law to show me what a liability minefield it was. [1]
However, if cybernetic augmentaion really rocks your boat, you need to keep up on the DARPA and other government RFPs.
First up on the sci-fi drooler's hit parade is: "Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation"-- a current active DARPA RFP, but if you miss the deadline, don't worry, there's similar RFPs every funding cycle.
I only wish they hadn't said ``DARPA is soliciting devices and machines that accomplish one or more of the following:
In other words... faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound...
------------------------
[1] In her somewhat irreverent words: "People who lost limbs as adults (due to the nature of the interface I used) and can afford to pay for an experimental limb? Er - sounds like someone who just won multimillion dollar lawsuit, to me. Don't mess with them, they already have a legal team!"
The case law seemed to bear her out.
"I have to admit, I would have filtered out Jon's ramblings a long time ago if I didn't get immense amusement out of them.
/. account info to the FBI, and Andover subpoenaed Geocitie's records, but after three layers of anonymizing we lost him. The next day the text file showed up on FreeNet! I tell you, this privacy stuff is getting out of hand." He calms himself before continuing, "Even the link to the fake potato power page didn't fool enough of them into unhooking from the fence to let us power up the missiles. Dang, geeks don't trust anyone anymore!"
"But lately, I've been cultivating a theory: that JonKatz is not actually a human being, but in fact software that takes some random topic and turns it into a long, redundant, rambling essay on the dangers of globalization, media, capitalism, corporatism, ageism, intellectualism, polymorphism, foodism and the Geo Prizm. "
(Waltham, MA) As the sun sets on the seige of SlashDot fans wandering outside the Exodus Communications electrified fence, looking for a laptop LAN hook-up Rob Malda wonders where he went wrong.
"I guess it was the third Napster article in a row," he decides. "Not three days in a row, three articles in a row."
"It's a perfectly legitimate SlashDot topic," he insists. "It's Linux. And open source... in a closed-source, proprietary format, not available for Linux or any *nix sort of way. I mean, I thought it was cool. And I'm a geek, so that makes steal... -er- sharing music 'News for Nerds', right? I mean, it's not like non-nerds listen to music."
The lights dim as if some massive rationalizing mechanism was overloading. "Damn," Malda muttered, "Some guy put up a page on powering laptops from the electrified fence, and now I start to pray at sunset every night. I narc'ed the
He looks out the eight-inch armored glass porthole, at the hundreds of small campfires fueled by sheaves of source code. "It's pretty. Ever stop to think how many watts even a small abandoned app puts out when burned? That's what I call the power of open source!" For a moment he seems like a senile old man, "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of them!
Malda chuckles, despite his obvious strain, "Actually, I guess I'm a lucky man. Before they learned to tap the concrete-and-steel OC-24 conduits for bandwidth they used the fences as a low-frequency antenna -- kind of a mini HAARP. We all had Don King hairdos that week."
He snaps back to the subject at hand. "Looking back, the downhill slide started when we installed a K.A.T.Z AI that didn't come anywhere near passing the Turing test. I mean even the elementary school focus groups weren't fooled! But when it came up with the Hellsmouth thread, enough of the geeks fell into line to moderate down anyone who didn't. I guess we got cocky. We should never have let the AI do our article selection too."
"You see, there was a glitch in the code." He laughs again, bitterly this time, "Ironically, it was due to Napster. Pudge believed us when we said everyone used MP3 to discover obscure new groups, and share their own artistic work. He used the Napster traffic on the nearest backbone as a random number generator for K.A.T.Z." A small tear forms on the corner of his eye, "But of course, everyone really uses Napster to rip off the same old commercial songs, just like he does. Suddenly 90% of the threads were retreads of the Same Old Stuff. Maybe we should have suspected something when Napster started getting its own thread every day... but frankly, we don't read SlashDot, you know?"
"Roblimo mentioned it at the last board meeting, but it was in haiku, and anyway I couldn't hear him over Hemo's new Swedish masseuse. The last one did Rolfing or something --much quieter -- but this new one! Wowza! You can hear her though the armored vault."
"My biggest regret is putting the K.A.T.Z. in charge of supplies in the final week. We're rationing the emergency supplies we ordered before, but the last shipment... eighteen tons of instant breakfast packets. Grits, to be exact. Just add water. And not a pat of butter in the entire building."
When asked his view of the future he simply said "I'm petrified."
This essay, though impassioned, does not reveal a great insight into the world, rather it betrays a closed microcosmic view.
The impending 'corporatism' Katz speaks of was often discussed -- insightfully -- in the mainstream literature of the 50's and 60's (e.g. the cliche of the 'buttondown corporate mentality' and many novels set in the future) It was discussed in the 70's, but by then was so mainstream that it was often reduced to the empty-headed muttered of stoned hippies (most of what we think of as the "the Sixties" was rrealy the 70's) The 80's was a close parallel totoday, with "the invasion of the MBAs" and the first microcomputer explosion taking the place of the dotcoms.
In many ways, the corporatism of decades past was darker and more oppressive, if less intrusively pervasive, because a vast array of laws have grown up to protect us from the worst of those excesses, and a large proportion of the 'decent citizenry' in the postwar era actively idolized the legitimacy that power represented. Being big, to them, meant you were probably right. in the decades before Watergate changed our perception of power, survey after survey showed that people said government officials and top executives were 'too important' to have to be troubled by 'small laws' and should be allowed to skirt them in the interests of expediency and efficiency.
If you think today's intrusive (and often inaccurate) data bases are new, read the history of abuses behind laws like the Fair Credit Reporting Act, various worker right laws, etc. The civil rights movement was just part of a larger social milieu of oppression and conformity imposed by unquestioned (and unquestionable) powers.
Forget Santayana and 'those who forget history are doomed to repeat it'. Santayana had no such pithy quote for those who never knew it in the first place.
From the Sherman Anti-Trust Law of 1890:
;->
Section 2. Monopolizing trade a felony; penalty
Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
(Emphasis mine)
MICROSOFT has been found guilty of a Sherman Anti-Trust violation. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, etc. have not. No one is going to jail...
...yet.
You don't seem to understand the impact of the UCITA. It is a law proposal that will exactly do that: put the magic in cellophane.
Short version of UCITA: The developer has FULL liability unless waivered by a shrink-wrapped license.
You're right, at the moment. But with the UCITA in action, your no warranty clause in the GPL would be overruled by law. Underestimating this is exactly the danger we're facing!
I've often heard that view espoused, however, I do not see any language in UCITA, or its predecessors CITA and UCC Article 2B that specify "shrink-wrap". That term does not appear in UCITA The terms I do see apply equally to all mass market licenses, whether they are read pre- or post-sale, shrink-wrapped or not, etc. (with one exception, below)
UCITA does 'firm up' some standards that were previously ambiguous or inconsistently interpreted. These include reaffirming a few principles of implied warranty, and weakening others. They also include reaffirming the inpplicability of outrageous terms in licenses. This has been interpreted variously as saying 'full waivers may be void' and 'full waivers are affirmed'. Whichever interpretations wins out, will apply equally to all mass market licenses.
The only clause I have seen that differentiates SWL from GPL is the refund clause for SWL which allows a right of refund, with or without cause, if the license was not available until after purchase. Some have taken to mean that SWL products are *only* liable for refund (a claim that is difficult to support in the light of the whole law: either Section 809 and similar sections may properly be waived by a SWL and GPL; or they are both equally unconscionable and void. I cannot read the refund clause as a privileged state of limited liability)
However, I am eager to learn. Here's the UCITA text in a variety of formats, and 48 legal articles commenting on the law. Please quote the appropriate text supporting your claim. Otherwise I may suspect you accused me of not understanding UCITA, when I've done my homework and you haven't.
I despise UCITA, but I feel that ignorant babbling serves our cause very poorly.
BTW, I think badsoftware.com is an interesting and site, but their slideshow is ambiguously worded on the SWL disclaimer. If you re-read it, you will find that it says the offensive disclaimers are allowed in 'shrink-wrap' (terms hidden until after purchase) licenses but NOT that such disclaimer can ONLY be exercised by an undisclosed license.
IANAL. I just invested time and effort before I made my comments. I trust you did, too, and that I will be reading a response soon
No shrink-wrapped license? Too bad, all liability is for the programmer. Unless we fight the UCITA (among other problems), we might be in serious legal trouble for every little bug. After all, we cannot waiver liability like shrink-wrapped software can.
Nonsense. There's no magic in cellophane. The liability waiver can exist in any license, even if (*gasp*) the user knows about it in advance!
From the GPL:
NO WARRANTY
11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
This is the Death Knell, boys and girls.
I heard it when Apple went from the Velcro-back "we want you to poke around" Apple II+ to the "if you so much as open the case, you void the warranty" Mac (the one where you couldn't install a HDD until Apple introduced their own 'authrized HDD. Their market share plummeted, in favor of the 'commodity hardware' Wintel PC.
I heard it in the copy-protected games of the early 80's. When did you last see one of those?
I heard it from Lotus, once the 1000 lb gorilla of spreadsheets and business apps.
I heard it from IBM when they went MicroChannel with the PS/2 (a technical advance, in many ways, but with a "lock-in the consumer" mentality)
Some companies heard it themselves and spared themselves.
Even newbies were deserting AOL until they dropped their proprietary "we own this user" tricks one by one, and allowed free (as in speech) access to the internet, and third party apps. If AOL had tried to keep the squeeze on their users, and tie them to 'preferred vendors', they wouldn't have bought Time-Warner, they wouldn't even be able to buy time.
I have discussed the market forces that will drive MS-OS and MS-AP in another thread, as well as MS-OS's desperate need for new revenue streams. Check them out, if you haven't seen them. It all ties together.
Like a funeral shroud.
I see that this has been going on for many weeks. I suppose Microsoft has seen the writing on the (The 'no install CD for MS; article is dated a week after Judge Jackson's preliminary decree, which resulted in yesterday's Final Decree)
I shouldn't be surprised. As I said in a post in another article, there will be some serious market forces driving MS-OS and MS-AP apart, due to their differing nature, and the OS portion is going to get the short end of the stick.
Since most of the the biggest microcomputer OSs (aside from MS) have a hardware company behind them (Apple, Sun, SGI, etc), we forget that, for all its importance, an OS is simply not a high ticket item without packaged hardware, and it's bought infrequently. Buying each version since DOS 3 cost maybe $20-30 a year, and most of that would have gone to retailers, packaging, etc. instead of MS's profit column. Let's face it, it's peanuts.
MS milked their OS advantage to fatten their real cash cow: the apps. That's not to say that they didn't make money on the OS, but that wasn't what made them a powerhouse. Price MS-Office against Windows 98, and you'll see why MS-OS needs a new revenue stream.
So what will it be? They can milk licensing and partnering in exchange for a peek at their hidden APIs could be good for a quick infusion, but it's a one-shot. They'll need to offer favorable terms to developers for all future OS's or they won't get enough app support to compel immediate upgrades. Damn OS's live too long! Win95a still runs fine.
Sure, they'll still have new computer sales, but the installed base is their major advantage. Hardware, OS, and apps all bloated each other in a vicious cycle. But all that 'stranded hardware' has some real power left in it. And now there may be competitors who can make use of that power (like Linux) and erode MS's installed base from behind. The consumer desktop needs power for games -- and not much else. We have the equivalent of last decade's supercomputers on our desks now. DO we really need that to write letters, surf, and do our taxes?
MS-OS lost their Apps, most of their Enterprise stuff, MSN.NET, MSNBC, MS hardware (input devices, etc.) and now they are stuck with the central piece that made it all tick... and nothing to make tick. The 2001/2 could be a very lean year.
Further, it'll be harder to buy companies and technologies now that stock swaps won't be quite as appealing. All the guys the used to bully have grown up, and though there's a lot of tech funny money around, MS-OS won't have the liquidity it once had.
I foresaw this back at the beginnning of the DoJ business, but I guess I never really believed it until now. Wow. The OS *isn't* the power. Who ever got *giga-rich* off an OS alone, except Gates -- and he did it by fighting dirty.
After the split, MS shareholders [1] will find themselves owning both MS-OS (Micro-S.O.S) and MS-AP (MicroSaps) [2] stock. These two stocks will find themselves competing to keep their places in the portfolios of the same investors. Since there is no reason to expect both companies to perform equally in the next year, they will have to adopt a competitive stance. Otherwise, they will be cutting their own throats to benefit their siblings
In today's tech market market, the importance of stock value cannot be overlooked
[1] except Covered Shareholders = past/present employees and directors with 5% or more
of MS (not many people in *that* group!) who cannot own shares in both companies
[2] My guess is that they'll be Windows Corp. and Microsoft Applications Inc.
If it had been up to me, I'd have set the 'covered shareholder threshold' at 0.5-1% (or even lower) to assure that more of the top management had a personal stake in the competition. However, I suppose that there are SEC reasons for the 5% mark, and most top level executives probably want to see their babies perform.
MS-AP is actually the more profitable of the two, with a broad range of apps and services, and a large market penetration in the layman desktop (a sector that is not eager to retrain in new apps). Both companies fear 'user freeze', where FUD keeps the users on their existing systems (which 'work just fine'). No more lockstepped upgrades of interlocking OS/Apps!
MSAP will find that it has a major asset that is rapidly aging: its expertise in the hidden Windows APIs. They'll be eager for partners to make use of this resource while it is still valid and valued. MSOS, on the other hand, will benefit from releasing as much API info as possible, so MSAP doesn't outperform them on Wall Street and to allow better apps to keep users buying MSOS through Win 2000/Milennium and beyond.
MSOS needs a revenue stream -- which means more paid OS upgrades or license fees, while MSAP would prefer that WinNT/9x/2000/Millenium stayed on the market for a long time. They will have no edge in Win2002 (etc.) Another revenuestream for MSOS would be to buy applications companies and to rebuild its App division (permitted under Section 1(c)(ii) of the decree)
MSAP will be more open to widely porting their apps, and will seek unifying technologies (seeking crossplatform compatibility like any app developer) Their familiar UI is a potent market edge to overcome initial weaknesses in raw performance, but they'll be scrambling for development partners who 'know the terrain' of other OS's.
The bad news is that the 1000 lb gorilla is now two 500 lb gorillas. MS-AP isn't likely to offer very beneficial terms at first! Expect tight NDAs and restrictions, since it knows it has a sure winner (MS-Office, etc.) . The good news is that this will enable Linux/BeOS/etc. to take a place on a lot more machines, which benefits these communities as a whole.
What I find interesting is the stock split. Except for a tiny handful of owners [*], the shareholders of MS will probably end up with corresponding shared of MS-OS and MS-AP [**]. It won't be a 1:1 deal, because of the difference in value and percieved market potential between the two product lines, but it will mean that (at least initially) most shareholders will be rooting for both stocks.
After a little while, however, we'll see if that stands. MS-AP would be smart (for example) to quickly port to other OS's if it can, and to license/partner its knowledge of all the WinAPIs while that info is still current.
It's worth noting that the process of porting may be a) difficult for products that co-evolved with Windows; b) require the expertise best found by partnering with established developers for the new OS; c) make MS apps more configurable (especially as regards features that are security holes); and d) undo many of the adopt-and-modify changes of the past few years (e.g. Kerberos)
_________________________
[*] "Covered Shareholder" means a shareholder of Microsoft on the date of entry of this Final Judgment who is a present or former employee, officer or director of Microsoft and who owns directly or beneficially more than 5 percent of the voting stock of the firm.
__________________________
[**] MS-OS and MS-AP are ugly names. Im look forward to seeing (and maybe composing) alternatives. The best I can do at the moment
Perhaps more troubling, there is nothing to prevent MS-OS from releasing new versions of the applications it 'divested' to MS-AP (i.e. creating or buying a new 'Office' and integrating it to the OS, as before) MS-OS will have a full permanent unlimited license on all current source, tools and other intellectual property related to integrating the divested Apps to the OS, but it won't have to share any *new* info/APIs/etc. with MS-AP.
The clause that explicitly prohibits MS-OS from releasing new versions of IE clearly grants MS-OS the right to release new versions of any other MS-App by default (see below). They may even be able to call it MS-Word (or whatever) depending on whether trademark is considered a business element of MS-AP (as I would argue) or an intellectual property (under the full unlimited license)
I would have expected the Judge to ban the 'Privileged App syndrome' more broadly (i.e. to lock MS-OS out of more than just the browser) The wording would be a little tricky, but that's a lawyer's stock-in-trade.
I'm not saying we'll see a wholesale regeneration of MS-Office, MS-BackOffice, etc. but I wouldn't be surprised if MS-OS tries to cherry pick, to its advantage. Buying new programs to replace the lost apps is easy for MS-OS. Buying privileged access back is explicitly banned for MS-AP.
In theory, all the 'talent/experience' behind MS apps will be reassigned to MS-AP, but we'll have to see how personnel are actually divided, won't we? The programming talent that produced the newly purchased programs will largely come along with the buyout.
1(c)(ii). Intellectual Property that is used both in a product developed, distributed, or sold by the Applications Business and in a product developed, distributed, or sold by the Operating Systems Business as of April 27, 2000, shall be assigned to the Applications Business, and the Operating Systems Business shall be granted a perpetual, royalty-free license to license and distribute such Intellectual Property in its products, and, except with respect to such Intellectual Property related to the Internet browser, to develop, license and distribute modified or derivative versions of such Intellectual Property, provided that the Operating Systems Business does not grant rights to such versions to the Applications Business. In the case of such Intellectual Property that is related to the Internet browser, the license shall not grant the Operating Systems Business any right to develop, license, or distribute modified or derivative versions of the Internet browser.
I absolutely agree that its important to make the distinction between virus, worm, trojan, etc., it would cut down on confusion, and encourage more background understanding of computers in general.
/.'d the New England Journal of Medicine website tonight? It's up, but it's boggy as hell.
However, I think it's funny that you suggest "pathogens". In medical school, we had the same problem with distinctions that were generally important (bacteria, protozoa, viruses, worms, other parasites, etc.), but which could be cumbersome when speaking generically. 'Pathogen' wasn't always appropriate either (the same species can be a pathogen in one site, and normal flora in another).
Do you know what we call them, collectively, in the hospital? Bugs.
"Hmmm... Computer bugs?" No, that's already taken...
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All right, who's the wise guy who
I have worked in a secure government environment, and this is simply not the case. Dedicated encrypted network links are preferred for data transmissions. Courier service is a failover solution, and rarely uses anything other than paper.
I was referring to genuinely sensitive material -- e,g, SAP, SCI, or my favorite, ORCON-designated. ORCON is exactly what the studios are tryng to do
A 'secure facility' is a generic term meaning that it's hard for data walk out the door. It doesn't mean that the material you handle is particularly sensitive. If you were responsible for transfer of highly sensitive material, you would not blandly suggest transmitting 50GB to an unsecured facility like a theater! Ask your site AIS officer if s/he'd certify transmission of 50GB of SCI ORCON.
Transfer of an entire 50GB database to a newly built or unsecured site (theater) is rarely, if ever, done by transmission. You can't use the common crypto algorithms (I had this same argument with a contractor who though triple DES was good enough -- even though DES variants have been specifically disallowed for classified material since 1975, when DES was released!
For the *most* sensitive data 'hardware (which includes human) plus software security' is preferred over software-only access control. Even the most secure software-only one-time pad crypto requires that the OTP encrypting data (equal in length to the data encrypted) be transported by independent channels (never transmitted over any segment used by the later encrypted file). This is often done by courier-transported HDD or media.
I nominate *you* for the job of generating 100 to 150Tb of OTP and delivering it in 50GB chunks by (independent) secure channels to 2000-3000 movie theaters, so that the ecryption can be SCI ORCON secure. But be quick about it! You have to do it for every film at the local 20-plex!
If the theaters have one iota of intelligence they are leasing dedicated lines for this and not just trying to use VPNs over the Internet. Dedicated lines can be encrypted at either end. Your comment about the traffic and how it relates to the Internet is fairly irrevelant.
If you had any idea how much it costs to lease and maintain a T-1 line and the local end equipment (which would take 12 hours to download 50GB under real-world coditions), you'd realize that few theaters would bother to do so. It would eliminate the cost-benefits of electronic distribution.
Maybe you're thinking of DSL -- well, check www.dslreports.com and you'll find out why business still lease T-1 (reliability/service) Theaters don't have sysadmins -- even part-time -- Margins are thin in the Cinema business -- they really make money on the refreshments. They don't want to pay for extras that don't boost revenues.
Dedicated line encryption does not perform the degree of access control that hardware access does. There are too many minimum wage teenage assistant managers. How much do you think the black market would pay a projectionist to copy the decrypted transmission onto a HDD?
-- and BTW, wiretapping DSL is only marginally more difficult that wiretapping a phone line. I built a trivial 2-transistor phone tap when I was 10.
In late 1968/69 AT&T was shaken up by the failure of Multics.
,a href="http://www.multicians.org/multics.html">Mult ics site:
;->
What type of crack are you smoking???
Check the
Multics started in 1965 and 'The Book' (The Multics System: an Examination of its Structure) announced the 1968 state-of-Multics. MIT started providing Multics timesharing service to users in Fall, 1969. Multics got the first B2 rating (the highest security rating ever given an OS) in 8/85 and for years was the only B2 rated OS.
The major history of Multics doesn't begin until 69 and you say it had *failed* by then? Its first system wasn't even fully up! I suppose the 100++ huge commerical, government and military Multics facilities around the world, that came later are all irrelevant. In fact, all the major milestones and innovations in Multics are irrelevant.
Listen, bub, *you* may have been aborted before you were born, but Multics wasn't!
True, Multics was over budget and behind schedule in 68/69, and there was talk of cancelling it. But if it had failed back then, you and I would never have heard of it.
The solution (in the US, anyway) would be Open Access, an exploding trend in our increasingly deregulated infrastructure market. I am surprised that so many people still buy the 'laying mega-miles of new cable' argument.
BellAtlantic owns the POTS line into my house, but that doesn't mean they automatically get my long distance business. They get a limited monopoly (more limited all the time) on my local phone service, in exchange for laying and maintaining all that infrastructure, but they are required to provide access to any other long distance carrier. I pay a buck or two to the local telco for 'long distance access' whether my carrier is ATT, Sprint, etc.
The same thing happens in DSL, which is even more striking. Bell Atlantic owns the wire, but it only gets $8-18 for use of its 'last mile' infrastructure. This is striking because, when you think about it, DSL only applies to the Last Mile. Once you get to any sort of trunkline or ISP, a DSL packet is no different than any other packet.
Even more striking is electrical power. The electric company owns the wires, but I can quite literally buy my power from anyone who'll sell it to me. Here, it is even more bizarre, because its all an accounting matter... the actual 'electrons' (emf) I use won't come from the guy I 'buy' them from. There are many complicated 'inputs' and interlinks pooled onto the local power grid, and a giant system exists for financially balancing the payments. Often the 'electricity vendor' is just a commodity trader, buying bulk capacity or power, with no infrastructure at all.
This is *today*. These are the bills I pay every month. There is no reason why cable is any different. they may have a 'granted monopoly' in exchange for laying and maintaining the cable for transmitting television signals, but they don't get an automatic monopoly on internet access -- that's the long distance/local issue again: cable TV and TCP are different services.
That cable companies are making an argument that has been long defeated in all other similar markets.
Unfortunately, my local cable provider doesn't provide Internet access at all. I'm not sure a new law could force them to share an 'access' that doesn't even exist. I'm actually *hoping* they get bought out by a larger company. I live in a small, fairly upscale community, full of high-tech businesses (including one of the world's leading cablemodem technology companies), surrounded by communities that all have cable modem service, but it's an island of backwardness... and the DSL sucks.
To me the interesting question is why it's being *transmitted* at all -- except as a technology demonstration. I'm not sure that this will turn out to be the best transfer medium. (Certainly not in this case, where there will be Titan AE execs at the showing, and any one of them could have carried 50Gb of HDD in a jacket pocket)
Currently, it costs about $2K to make each theatre quality film print. The package weighs over 100 pounds, IIRC). Meanwhile a pair of 25GB HDDs costs under $500 in 1000+ quantities, and weighs a few pounds fully shock-insulated. (I'm sure studios will demand return of the HDDs, and reuse them)
Properly encrypted transmission over data lines permits a high degree of security, but shipping a special HDD unit with *hardware* protection may be more secure from certain attacks. This is the method preferred for transfer of government and high level financial secrets -- and a blockbuster film has comparable dollar value!
Envision an HDD with the file stored in a secure encryption, and hardware verification of (for example) the encrypted serial number of authorized theatre equipment. Equipment verification is crucial, because the decrypted datastream can be copied. Your HDD shouldn't play on anything but a self-verifying secured player.
Yes, all this can be done in software, but there are significant weaknesses to self-contained (on media) software-only access control when the media itself is under the total control of the attacker.
Incidentally, under software *or* hardware control the studio can assure license compliance: number of showings, seating capacity (Projector 1111 is in a 500-seat room, 1112 is in a 200 seat room, etc.), and other things theatre are interested in controlling.
Maybe internet traffic won't lag every release day, when 2000 copies of a 50GB film (100 Terabytes) go out over the Net. Maybe they'll build additional secure capacity specifically for teh 50+ major studio movie releases each year (bandwidth which can be used for other things between releases) On maybe not...
Courier- or carrier-delivery of Hardware-secured HDDs may not be glamorous, but it makes sense. If bandwidth-mediated transmission takes place at all, it should be limited to emergency replacement of damaged media, 'updates' 9as described by another poster) etc.
That would be kinder, smarter, more efficient.
There are no "300x the speed of light" microwaves. This merely an effect that 'appears' to travel faster than light. Note that the article in that story specified that the effect only occurs with certain very specifically shaped waveforms. This takes the mystery out of how the far end of the apparatus can 'reconstruct the complete waveform' when only the leading edge has had time to enter the apparatus.
/.ers hold dear)
.999 the speed of light
Such 'apparently faster than light' effects are not uncommon in relativistic phenomena. One example is the 'superluminal fireball' from the 80's:
Imagine a star 1000 light years from Earth gave off a 'fireball' or giant plasma burst pointed at our planet in the year 1000 AD. For the sake of argument let's say it's travelling at 99.9% the speed of light. In the year 2000, the light, we would see the light from the explosion, and could 'watch the fireball eject'. Meanwhile, the fireball itself will travel 999 light years, and be just 1 light year from Earth. Therefore the light that the fireball gives off in 2000 will reach the Earth in 2001 (followed, four days later, by the fireball itself striking the earth, possibly doing nasty things to humanity, Linux, Natalie Portman, and other things
To an observer on Earth, the fireball will appear to have travelled 999x the speed of light. To an observer somewhere at right angles to the fireball's path, it will appear to travel at
What is the controversy here? According to the article, "those companies had agreed to pay an undisclosed amount per megabit per second in order to plug into the high-speed network." In other words, they are selling bandwidth. If anything, it is less troubling than the many 'preferred vendor' arrangements that have been on commercial networks (e.g. Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy) since the 80's.
By buying bandwidth directly to a network segment, these providers will get better throughput. If you look at the buyers (Akamai, iBeam and Microcast) in the article, you'd see that they defintely have an interest in eliminating netlag and other delays to cablemodem users (who can make best use of their services). I expect other 'wide pipe' providers to follow suit, and consider it both prudent, and a service to all customers. (The revenue stream is welcome, too: Excite@Home lost $1.5 billion on revenues of $337 mill last year. How long do you think they can afford to keep supplying service at current prices at his rate?)
There is a huge distinction between *providing* service* and *denying* it.
You might as well argue that high-bandwidth users are 'crowding everyone else off the Internet' (which has been argued). Howver, this doesn't have that nice conspiratorial anti-business ring, does it?
That's an extremely short-sighted view.
First, calculate the income from all the accounts you close, times the duration of each account. (in other words, for a $20/mo account, you lose $240 per year. If you cancel only one account a month, you'll lose $2880 over the next year. Each year, your losses increase (i.e. in 2003, you lose the income from the accounts you closed in 2000, 2001, 2002, and well as the accounts you close in 2003)
This probably scales with the size of the ISP: a small ISP may close 12 accounts a year. A larger ISP may close 50. The losses add up rapidly, even if you forget goodwill and reputation.
Meanwhile, by not implementing proper ant-DoS measures, the entire ISP is wide open. This can cost you a big chunk of your total business. Prudence demands proper anti-DoS measures to protect the ISP (and incidentally, the users)
*THAT* is the bottom line for ISPs today
An ISP whose head isn't in the sand will also realize that they are actively contributing to the growth of DoS, and their losses will mount exponentially.
Quite a price for not doing proper sysadmin!
1) This is not 'one of the few cases'! As far as straight (civil) libel goes, existing 'cyberlaw' goes back to the 80's, with mailing lists and BBSs and has definitely been upheld internationally. "international" is important, because you can be sued in jurisdiction where the 'damage' occurs or where the 'victim' resides. Here are some cases/sources:
2) Do a websearch for "criminal libel" and you'll find that its primary use worldwide, historically and currently is against journalists . One of the 'Inciting Abuses' that contributed to the American Revolution was a (then British) court verdict that a newspaper was guilty of defaming the reputation of the Governer-General of New York by (accurately) revealing his corruption.
3) To address another of Katz's points, here are mini-case studies in dysfunctional human behaviour on the net
Katz was on my 'exclude list' for a few months, not because I dislike his writing, but because his loose use of facts and analogies leads to a sloppy, infuriating discussion. A profesional writer should investigate his facts and limit his speculation to what those facts support; If he doesn't, the readers will certainly go hogwild. This is the first Katz article I've read in a while. I am not pleased.
I oppose the Safe harbor proposal, and the FTC seens to agree that American companies deserve an overwhelmingly failing grade.
.com doesn't mean "American", and many foreign TLDs may actually point to servers in the US and other "non-private" jurisdictions.
Ordinarily, I'd hope that the European users, having a clear choice between privacy in Europe and blatant abuse in the US, would avoid American sites, and send a strong message that American companies might understand. I tend to favor free market solutions, and this might stand as a backup if we don't succeed in regulating US companies in their use of a commodity that does not truly beling to them: our personal info and patterns.
However, as a practical matter, it's not always easy to know when you're dealing with an American company:
I suppose that a privacy leak anywhere is a threat to privacy everywhere.
The fact that far too few people fully appreciate their privacy, or personal info protections, can only make things worse. It would hardly be the first time a right ot privilege was not appreciated until it wa attenuated or gone.
However, I must say that, privacy advocate that I am, I am still troubled by a paradox I've never been able to resolve: is privacy fundamental? Keep in mind that "urbanization" is a relatively ne phenomenon -- until the Great Depression (or a little later) most Americans lived in small towns or rural environments (I presume Europe was similar) and people rarely moved, compared to today. In a small town, a lot of what we now consider basic privacy was impossible. "Everyone knew your business": your salary, work history, the embarrassing things you did in third grade. Perhaps this is why our Founding Fathers did not address 'privacy' in the Constitution, though they seem to have a prescient awareness of other crtitical issues
Perhaps the key is that the companies buy, sell, and use *our* information anonymously. They do not tell us exactly what they do, nor do we have any right of consent. Once the information is 'out', it is considered "their" property, not ours.
Still, "privacy" is an important concept, if only because it is a major legal tool (in the American system) for defending and arguing for rights that were not mentioned in the Constitution, partly because wholesale violation was unthinkable before today's mindless technology evolved.
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"Dum spiro, spero. Dum vivimus, vivamus."
(While I breathe, let me hope. While I live, let me live)
Gyroscopes *precess* which means they move at right angles to the applied torque.
If you press on the front of a gyroscope, it tilts to one side (depending on the direction of rotation), etc. This might feel 'cool' to a kid (I think some children's toys have tried this), but in a realistic interface, it would feel incredibly unnatural.
The above applies to 'torques' - forces that tend to alter the axis of the gyroscope. Non-torque ('central' or 'direct') forces produce the same response as they would on any mass. However, this eliminates any advantage you might expect from a gyroscope -- it might as well be a chunk of rock, as far as non-torque forces are concerned.
If a gyroscope is fixed to the outside case of the blade, most reasonable swordfighting moves will produce mostly torque. If it is mounted on a gimbal, most moves will produce very little torque (depending on how good the gymbal is). You could have a variable resistance gymbal; or accelerate and decelerate the gyroscope rotation to modulate the the size of the precession force, but the direction would *still* be all wrong. It would be like wrestling a snake.