Before you go off on one at MS, don't forget that *every* major tech company is patenting software, including IBM and Apple. (and Apple has patents on stuff like dragable progress bars in media players...)
I agree with you in principle, however there is one thing that I think is wrong with your statement that "copyright is a broken way to see to it that content creators get paid".
Following on from your example - you pay some band some amount to record a song for you. They're happy, they've been paid. Now, you want to sell copies of that recording on (after all, you've just paid a lot of money for it and would like to be able to make some in return). In the absence of copyright, what's to stop me from buying a copy from you (say for $5), then reproducing it myself and selling it at a lower price (say $4) or even giving it away?
Or, do you envisage essentially a return to the days when artists were sponsored by wealthy patrons, who then release the music to the public without worrying about even covering their own costs?
Well, I don't know if Shareaza is invasive (although I don't think so), but I do know that when I used it for a while a few months ago, it absolutely killed network performance for all other apps while it was running. I eventually uninstalled it for that very reason. I don't suppose it's anything sinister; most likely it's just a complete hog.
While I agree with you in general, I take issue with one thing you said:
What about the company that buys 10,000 computers per year and because some 12 year old is "stealing" music they have to pay an additional tax and further have to have their computers crippled with DRM?
If that company isn't buying the computers so that its employees can listen to music they've bought in ways that DRM prevents, how are those machines crippled? The DRM isn't going to prevent me from writing specifications, developing code, emailing clients, etc, so in what way would my PC be crippled? The graphics card isn't very good for playing games like Doom 3 (something else I wouldn't do at work) - does that mean the machine is crippled?
You personally may buy enough extra songs to make up the difference, but would everyone? I understand the theory - drop the per unit price to shift more units. There comes a point, however, when dropping the price further won't increase sales; how do you know that $0.05 isn't the wrong side of that point? What if that point is closer to $0.1, or even $0.5?
i would buy BIGGER MP3 players, BIGGER hard drivers and FASTER internet connections
All of which is very nice, but none of those things are sold by the record labels; they provide zero incentive to the people who, ultimately, control the price of the songs.
At what point does one say, enough is enough, how many different processors need to be in a computer.
When I run out of things for those processors to do. I have a CPU, because liek duh, I need one!
I have a processor on my soundcard, because it assists in sound processing, something I do a lot (in games, of course)
I have a GPU because it assists in graphics processing, something I do a lot (in games, of course)
I can imagine having a physics processor, because physical simulation is something I do a lot (in games, of course, although I do do a little of my own coding in this area from time to time too)
Why would I want all of these things in a single processor, if multiple independent units can do it better? Why would I want to swap out a single, hideously expensive unit to upgrade one aspect, when I could just swap out that one component?
The way I see it, we've gone from having a single CPU to having a CPU and graphics hardware and sound hardware; why not physics hardware, AI hardware, encryption hardware, etc? The point is that a CPU, by its very nature, cannot ever be as fast at a given specialised task (eg rendering graphics) as specialised hardware. The best you could do would be to stick seperate cores into a single package; but why bother? That raises all sorts of problems (especially heat - the GeForce 6 line runs very hot, for example), for what gain?
It's not that they're boneheaded - quite the opposite. Bittorrent and similar apps are (they believe) a real thorn in their side at the moment. They believe that if they can show that these apps have no significant non-infringing use, then they can have them outlawed. That would make their jobs much easier - rather than having to be able to prove that a user was violating their copyrights, they'd just have to prove that they were using the apps at all.
Let me put it this way - why should they care that people like us use these things for perfectly legal file trading, if enough people use them in ways that do infringe? We're not their concern - preventing you or I from getting the latest Linux ISO isn't going to impact their profits at all. Hell, *personally* they may care, but *professionally*, it's not even a consideration, as long as they (believe that they) stand to lose more money by doing nothing, than by seeking to outlaw p2p apps.
They're not boneheaded, they just have a different set of priorities, and you're never going to be able to effectively work against them by dismissing them and their actions in this way.
Is there an ATM anywhere in the country which will dole out amounts in units of less than £5 at a time.
It's been a number of years since I last saw a machine that would give out less than a tenner at a time, let alone less than a fiver...
I agree with you though - the new chiped cards cannot possibly be responsible for time delay between pressing a key and it registering on-screen. The machine will be checking the PIN at the point that you press Enter/Accept, not with each key press (unless the programmer is completely stupid...)
Once roll out was under way, all 1000 ATMs in the network has to be re-booted *TWICE* per week because of a memory leak in the NCR software.
Well, that's not Window's fault, is it? Crappy software brings computer down; film at 11?
I don't think I've ever used a Unix or Linux system that had any sort of process accounting or quotaing setup. On such a machine, you can bring the system to a grinding halt with a couple of lines of C.
I saw a Nationwide Building Society ATM that was crashed displaying it's own IP address for all to see
Embarrassing, yse, but so what? I can guarantee you that you'd not get anywhere near that IP address from the Internet. (Was it even a publicly-routable one?)
Properly configured and running properly-written software on decent hardware, XP has uptimes to rival that of any Linux box. Besides which, cash points don't have to have 100% uptime. What would be wrong with rebooting them every morning at 3am? Even if someone tries to use it while it's down, so what? Most cahspoints are installed in twos and threes; just stagger the reboots across the group, making sure that only one is down at a time. If any fail to come back up, the others can easily call for help, while still serving people.
No, you wouldn't have 100% uptime, perhaps it shouldn't even be necessary, but really, does it matter?
This hacker used standard techniques to grab the userids and passwords of people accessing their internet banking sites from untrusted terminals - this relates to ATMs how?
That bit's a joke, right? The editors RTFA before posting?
slaps incredibly misleading title on top
The title is submitted along with the summary by the user. It may be that the editor has changed it, of course, but there's a good chance that it is as the submitter intended it to be.
Most pop-up windows aren't *urgent* (like need attention RIGHT NOW), but are more informational.
The ones that do require attention right now aren't going to get it if you look up from the keyboard just in time to see that you hitting space inbetween words has dismissed it...
No application should be able to steal focus from another; nothing is that important on a desktop machine.
No dialogue box should be dismissable in a single, commonly-used key press; it's too easy to do it by accident ("Shit, what did I just agree to?!")
More likely it's details of a reward program for Iraqi citizens - eg for turning in suspected insurgents and criminals, joining the security forces, etc.
If a company has a monopoly there is no incentive to innovate.
On the contrary; it gives all other companies and (would-be) competitors an excellent incentive to innovate, as direct competition is expensive (due to licencing) or impossible (for the same reason).
In the UK, there is a knee-jerk reaction to like more taxes
Then why is every pre-election budget based around *cutting* tax as much as possible (at least for the general public, companies are another matter), to increase the chances of the incumbent government being re-elected? Why is every tax rise accompanied by moaning, both in the media and amongst the general population?
a couple of years ago the UK govt imposed this absolutely HUGE tax hike for the benefit of 'health'
I've been a UK resident for the whole of my life, and have been working (and therefore paying a variety of taxes) for 6 years, and I have no idea what you're talking about. Could you give a reference for this "HUGE tax hike" of "a couple of years ago"? I would certainly have noticed such a change to my pay packet.
everyone I know who was English was actively happy, they felt reassured that it was a return to socialism and all for the public good
Witness the near-constant moaning in the press and by the Opposition about "stealth taxes" - we have had pensioners protesting in the streets about the increases to the Council Tax in recent years. (Note, however, that it's essentially become the Opposition's *job* to moan about current government policy...) 15-20 years ago, there were literally riots when the Poll Tax was introduced (and quickly scrapped).
In general, as a nation, we accept that taxation is necessary for the greater good of all, but your suggestion that the English enjoy being presented with tax rises is utter nonsense.
Personally, I wouldn't trust any security system that doesn't involve a warm body to successfully recognise the difference between an expected visitor and a potential attacker/thief.
i feel this patent is just as wrong as the other software patents.... if they lose then well its another bouht victory for microsoft
How can you say those two things in the same post? Either the patent is wrong and MS deserve to win, or it's good and they deserve to lose. That's it, no other choices; this isn't about MS "buying a victory", it's about whether or not the patent is valid. It happens that in this instance, the patent holder has taken on someone that a) "we all hate" and b) has enough money to fight it out.
Hell, this is the sort of thing the anti-software patent crowd should be screaming for - someone with a bogus patent taking on someone with the resources to fight back and losing big time.
Get over the fact that it's MS - wrong is wrong no matter who it happens to.
I am aware that they have said they wouldnt use the patent on any open source project
I've said all sorts of things in my life; I meant most of them at the time, too. And yet, I still don't get enough exercise, drink to excess sometimes, eat too much junk, post here, etc. Don't believe everything you're told.
You can do all that on any phone that supports caller ID (all of them!) and groups. I've had several phones that allowed you to assign contacts to groups, and assign different behaviours to different groups - eg always ring, go straight to voicemail, etc.
How is this any different, other than the addition of an inconvenient and error-prone manual step for the caller?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for new and novel tech and uses of existing tech, but this is a solution looking for a problem.
A number of 'phones have essentially just this - you can lock the keypad, making it unusable until you've entered a PIN. Combine that with requiring a PIN on 'phone startup, and you have a 'phone that's unusable by anyone who doesn't know the PIN (as long as you remember to lock it...)
Slashdot Mirror
M$-like patenting behaviour stay out of Europe
Before you go off on one at MS, don't forget that *every* major tech company is patenting software, including IBM and Apple. (and Apple has patents on stuff like dragable progress bars in media players...)
I agree with you in principle, however there is one thing that I think is wrong with your statement that "copyright is a broken way to see to it that content creators get paid".
Following on from your example - you pay some band some amount to record a song for you. They're happy, they've been paid. Now, you want to sell copies of that recording on (after all, you've just paid a lot of money for it and would like to be able to make some in return). In the absence of copyright, what's to stop me from buying a copy from you (say for $5), then reproducing it myself and selling it at a lower price (say $4) or even giving it away?
Or, do you envisage essentially a return to the days when artists were sponsored by wealthy patrons, who then release the music to the public without worrying about even covering their own costs?
Well, I don't know if Shareaza is invasive (although I don't think so), but I do know that when I used it for a while a few months ago, it absolutely killed network performance for all other apps while it was running. I eventually uninstalled it for that very reason. I don't suppose it's anything sinister; most likely it's just a complete hog.
Are you sure that's because of copyright, and not because of the licence under which you purchase the right to use the data?
While I agree with you in general, I take issue with one thing you said:
What about the company that buys 10,000 computers per year and because some 12 year old is "stealing" music they have to pay an additional tax and further have to have their computers crippled with DRM?
If that company isn't buying the computers so that its employees can listen to music they've bought in ways that DRM prevents, how are those machines crippled? The DRM isn't going to prevent me from writing specifications, developing code, emailing clients, etc, so in what way would my PC be crippled? The graphics card isn't very good for playing games like Doom 3 (something else I wouldn't do at work) - does that mean the machine is crippled?
You personally may buy enough extra songs to make up the difference, but would everyone? I understand the theory - drop the per unit price to shift more units. There comes a point, however, when dropping the price further won't increase sales; how do you know that $0.05 isn't the wrong side of that point? What if that point is closer to $0.1, or even $0.5?
i would buy BIGGER MP3 players, BIGGER hard drivers and FASTER internet connections
All of which is very nice, but none of those things are sold by the record labels; they provide zero incentive to the people who, ultimately, control the price of the songs.
For instance, IBM's "product" is the tailor-made services and consultancy it provides.
Not to mention their hardware.
At what point does one say, enough is enough, how many different processors need to be in a computer.
When I run out of things for those processors to do. I have a CPU, because liek duh, I need one!
I have a processor on my soundcard, because it assists in sound processing, something I do a lot (in games, of course)
I have a GPU because it assists in graphics processing, something I do a lot (in games, of course)
I can imagine having a physics processor, because physical simulation is something I do a lot (in games, of course, although I do do a little of my own coding in this area from time to time too)
Why would I want all of these things in a single processor, if multiple independent units can do it better? Why would I want to swap out a single, hideously expensive unit to upgrade one aspect, when I could just swap out that one component?
The way I see it, we've gone from having a single CPU to having a CPU and graphics hardware and sound hardware; why not physics hardware, AI hardware, encryption hardware, etc? The point is that a CPU, by its very nature, cannot ever be as fast at a given specialised task (eg rendering graphics) as specialised hardware. The best you could do would be to stick seperate cores into a single package; but why bother? That raises all sorts of problems (especially heat - the GeForce 6 line runs very hot, for example), for what gain?
It's not that they're boneheaded - quite the opposite. Bittorrent and similar apps are (they believe) a real thorn in their side at the moment. They believe that if they can show that these apps have no significant non-infringing use, then they can have them outlawed. That would make their jobs much easier - rather than having to be able to prove that a user was violating their copyrights, they'd just have to prove that they were using the apps at all.
Let me put it this way - why should they care that people like us use these things for perfectly legal file trading, if enough people use them in ways that do infringe? We're not their concern - preventing you or I from getting the latest Linux ISO isn't going to impact their profits at all. Hell, *personally* they may care, but *professionally*, it's not even a consideration, as long as they (believe that they) stand to lose more money by doing nothing, than by seeking to outlaw p2p apps.
They're not boneheaded, they just have a different set of priorities, and you're never going to be able to effectively work against them by dismissing them and their actions in this way.
Peer reviews never work out properly. This is why FOSS is turning out more secure and clean code.
Isn't that a contradiction in terms? Or by "peer", do you mean something other than "a comparable programmer"?
Is there an ATM anywhere in the country which will dole out amounts in units of less than £5 at a time.
It's been a number of years since I last saw a machine that would give out less than a tenner at a time, let alone less than a fiver...
I agree with you though - the new chiped cards cannot possibly be responsible for time delay between pressing a key and it registering on-screen. The machine will be checking the PIN at the point that you press Enter/Accept, not with each key press (unless the programmer is completely stupid...)
Once roll out was under way, all 1000 ATMs in the network has to be re-booted *TWICE* per week because of a memory leak in the NCR software.
Well, that's not Window's fault, is it? Crappy software brings computer down; film at 11?
I don't think I've ever used a Unix or Linux system that had any sort of process accounting or quotaing setup. On such a machine, you can bring the system to a grinding halt with a couple of lines of C.
I saw a Nationwide Building Society ATM that was crashed displaying it's own IP address for all to see
Embarrassing, yse, but so what? I can guarantee you that you'd not get anywhere near that IP address from the Internet. (Was it even a publicly-routable one?)
Properly configured and running properly-written software on decent hardware, XP has uptimes to rival that of any Linux box. Besides which, cash points don't have to have 100% uptime. What would be wrong with rebooting them every morning at 3am? Even if someone tries to use it while it's down, so what? Most cahspoints are installed in twos and threes; just stagger the reboots across the group, making sure that only one is down at a time. If any fail to come back up, the others can easily call for help, while still serving people.
No, you wouldn't have 100% uptime, perhaps it shouldn't even be necessary, but really, does it matter?
This hacker used standard techniques to grab the userids and passwords of people accessing their internet banking sites from untrusted terminals - this relates to ATMs how?
Slashdot editor skims... lame sysadmin's blog
That bit's a joke, right? The editors RTFA before posting?
slaps incredibly misleading title on top
The title is submitted along with the summary by the user. It may be that the editor has changed it, of course, but there's a good chance that it is as the submitter intended it to be.
Dude, I don't know what things are like on your planet, but around here, turtles were not designed for any such thing.
Well, dude, I don't know what things are like on your planet, but around here, turtles weren't designed at all, they evolved.
Most pop-up windows aren't *urgent* (like need attention RIGHT NOW), but are more informational.
The ones that do require attention right now aren't going to get it if you look up from the keyboard just in time to see that you hitting space inbetween words has dismissed it...
No application should be able to steal focus from another; nothing is that important on a desktop machine.
No dialogue box should be dismissable in a single, commonly-used key press; it's too easy to do it by accident ("Shit, what did I just agree to?!")
More likely it's details of a reward program for Iraqi citizens - eg for turning in suspected insurgents and criminals, joining the security forces, etc.
If a company has a monopoly there is no incentive to innovate.
On the contrary; it gives all other companies and (would-be) competitors an excellent incentive to innovate, as direct competition is expensive (due to licencing) or impossible (for the same reason).
Should I sue Sony because my old Betamax VCR is now all-but useless due to the non-availability of Betamax tapes?
Utter bullshit.
In the UK, there is a knee-jerk reaction to like more taxes
Then why is every pre-election budget based around *cutting* tax as much as possible (at least for the general public, companies are another matter), to increase the chances of the incumbent government being re-elected? Why is every tax rise accompanied by moaning, both in the media and amongst the general population?
a couple of years ago the UK govt imposed this absolutely HUGE tax hike for the benefit of 'health'
I've been a UK resident for the whole of my life, and have been working (and therefore paying a variety of taxes) for 6 years, and I have no idea what you're talking about. Could you give a reference for this "HUGE tax hike" of "a couple of years ago"? I would certainly have noticed such a change to my pay packet.
everyone I know who was English was actively happy, they felt reassured that it was a return to socialism and all for the public good
Witness the near-constant moaning in the press and by the Opposition about "stealth taxes" - we have had pensioners protesting in the streets about the increases to the Council Tax in recent years. (Note, however, that it's essentially become the Opposition's *job* to moan about current government policy...) 15-20 years ago, there were literally riots when the Poll Tax was introduced (and quickly scrapped).
In general, as a nation, we accept that taxation is necessary for the greater good of all, but your suggestion that the English enjoy being presented with tax rises is utter nonsense.
Personally, I wouldn't trust any security system that doesn't involve a warm body to successfully recognise the difference between an expected visitor and a potential attacker/thief.
Image recognition just isn't that good yet, imho.
Well, Word is opt-in, except that everyone uses it, and so I have to use it too.
One day, the same may be true of google's services...
i feel this patent is just as wrong as the other software patents.... if they lose then well its another bouht victory for microsoft
How can you say those two things in the same post? Either the patent is wrong and MS deserve to win, or it's good and they deserve to lose. That's it, no other choices; this isn't about MS "buying a victory", it's about whether or not the patent is valid. It happens that in this instance, the patent holder has taken on someone that a) "we all hate" and b) has enough money to fight it out.
Hell, this is the sort of thing the anti-software patent crowd should be screaming for - someone with a bogus patent taking on someone with the resources to fight back and losing big time.
Get over the fact that it's MS - wrong is wrong no matter who it happens to.
I am aware that they have said they wouldnt use the patent on any open source project
I've said all sorts of things in my life; I meant most of them at the time, too. And yet, I still don't get enough exercise, drink to excess sometimes, eat too much junk, post here, etc. Don't believe everything you're told.
You can do all that on any phone that supports caller ID (all of them!) and groups. I've had several phones that allowed you to assign contacts to groups, and assign different behaviours to different groups - eg always ring, go straight to voicemail, etc.
How is this any different, other than the addition of an inconvenient and error-prone manual step for the caller?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for new and novel tech and uses of existing tech, but this is a solution looking for a problem.
Key code: You dial a code and then dial your #
A number of 'phones have essentially just this - you can lock the keypad, making it unusable until you've entered a PIN. Combine that with requiring a PIN on 'phone startup, and you have a 'phone that's unusable by anyone who doesn't know the PIN (as long as you remember to lock it...)