Great, if they make it so that I can no longer rip CD's, then they'll never get another dime from me. This isn't because of some active decision to be a political dissenter, but rather because I don't listen to CD's anymore. I buy them and use them as masters for ripping to MP3 which is what I actually listen to.
Actually, this isn't really true, because my desire to hear new music won't fade. So, what will likely end up happening is that I'll still rip CD's and take the legal risk (which will be fairly minimal given that there will be millions of criminals just like me). The only major impact is that the development of new products that are based on ripped music will cease to happen. So it will negatively impact the economy.
Although realisitcally this isn't so much a flaw in IE, rather it is a flaw in the tight integration of IE and windows. How many of the major Microsoft security problems it the last couple of years can be directly tied to the integrations between the operating system and the applications? Frankly I can't think of many that aren't directly attributable to that.
It all boils down to the usual sacrifice of security for convenience. A computer in a 6 foot thick block of concrete at the bottom of the ocean is very secure and nearly unusable. Microsoft has chosen to focus more on convenience and their security must pay the corresponding price.
If they are taking the profits from those 40 cities and investing them in infrastructure and expansion in those other 10, then it makes sense that they wouldn't be profitable overall in the short term.
This is real simple for me. The best upstream bandwidth I can get through the local phone carrier is 128Kbps. I can get more, but then I have to pay for business class service which is WAY beyond what i need both in price and services.
I've been using Covad's services for two years now and they provide what I want. I've got 384Kbps up which is sufficient for most of my uses. Also, they have no stupid regulations about what I can and cannot do with my connection. Now I grant that when I move next I'll have to get a different service package because their default upstream is going to 128Kbps now, but at least the options are their without being exhorbitant.
My thinking is that if I should be able to have a menu of services to choose from and I should be able to pay mostly a la carte for those services. Right now if I got a cable modem I could get "home service" or "business service" which leaves me no room to get what I really want.
What would be ideal is if they provided a deal where you pay say $40 a month and get certain minimum specs and perhaps some restriction on what you were allowed to do with that connection. But if I'm willing to pay another 40 or 50/month, I should be able to get a static ip address or two, some better upstream bandwidth, and freedom to do what I want.
The problem right now is that there's no fine gradients in the system. Either you are paying $40/month with irritating TOS, bandwidth caps, etc, or you are paying $150/month+ for "business grade" service which I really don't need.
Actually I've found that most people who are not aware of these issues are actually quite interested when you take the time to explain it and to present them with reasonable alternatives. They may not be willing to go to extrordinary lengths but I think you'd be surprised how many would be willing to make small but useful changes.
Maybe instead of an XBox they get a PS2 or GameCube. Maybe instead of getting XP, they install RedHat7.2 (with a little support from you to help them adjust). Maybe they avoid using passport for their authentication on-line. Maybe the switch from getting their news on MSN to some other site.
I think you underestimate people, but I grant you, I've always been an optimist about people. It's large monolithic organizations that make me nervous:)
I agree, I try to avoid using microsoft software as much as possible, but perhaps taking this a step further would be more useful. The fact of the matter is that the average person won't boycott microsoft for various reasons. What we need to do is help average computer users learn why they should boycott microsoft and given them what they need to do it.
What does this translate into? Helping people learn other operating systems. Contributing to software projects that improve the usability of those other operating systems. This does not mean going out a proseletyzing and shouting "Windows sucks!" That sort of approach just makes you look arrogant and turns people off. Until we can get the masses on board, a boycott is nearly useless.
So for right now Microsoft is at least creating the impression that you need it. Requiring passport would be silly until they've got the vast majority of people moved over to XP. I'm guessing they'll say that the move to requiring passport is to insure security, etc
Give it a year or two and I'm sure they'll make changes to DirectX, etc, that will make Win2K completely worthless for playing any of the new games, etc. They'll suck you in eventually...
"Look, we'll make it easy for you to integrate all your authentication into one easy system and we'll even give it to you for free!"
10 years from now:
"Our auditing system indicates that your payments for licenses are past due. According to the terms of service we may claim this past due payment in stock, thus giving us majority share of your company."
A severe exaggeration, but you can bet that Microsoft's need to keep it's growth going will push it to make this all seem so easy and palatable now and will be followed with a big fee in a few years.
Here's a question for people to ponder. What happens if I violate the terms of service of Passport or any attached property of Microsoft? Or more to the point, what happens if Microsoft mistakenly thinks I did but I didn't (like if I was hacked, etc). It seems that as Passport is further extended, this has a greater and greater impact on my ability to do things on-line. What if my bank uses passport? What if I communicate with my doctor through a passport secured site? If I get booted from passport for whatever reason, there could be some serious personal ramifications, and there's noreal recourse for me because I clicked the little "I Accept" button.
I grant you this is a little out there and paranoid, but I think that if passport does become a very fundamental part of on-line authorization systems, this could become a potential problem
One way to make the system better is that for a 6 month period after a patent is officially issued, permit people to submit evidence of prior art. After the 6 month period, the prior art submissions would be reviewed by a commitee at the patent office for validity, rendering a decision of the patent's validity shortly thereafter.
The problem is that there currently exists no review process other than filing a lawsuit. That's expensive, potentially very protracted, and slanted in favor of those who can afford the biggest legal teams.
So if the government mandates DRM in all electronics, and Microsoft holds the patent on putting DRM in operating systems, that's pretty much the end of the road. Anything that uses an operating system (read anything that plugs into a wall these days) will have to go pay Microsoft for the right to exist.
Granted that's assuming that DRM requirements get passed which hopefull won't happen, but it is an interesting position for Microsoft to be in.
They've apparently got enough bandwidth for one-way broadcast of approximately 100 digital audio channels. There's not nearly enough there for doing two-way internet service of any reasonable bandwidth.
Okay, so Tivo will license to Sonicblue in exchange for Sonicblue licensing to Tivo. So in the end, they'll reach a push because it's in both their best interests to establish this mutual licensing.
The problem though is that small players are going to be screwed because they will have to negotiate with and pay two seperate companies for the licensing rights to that technology. So we can expect that for the forseeable future we will only have Tivo, ReplayTV, and any other big players who can afford to pay the licenses (Microsoft, etc).
So why do we have patents again? I keep forgetting...
What trends do you see on the Internet today that give you a glimmer of hope about what the Internet is becoming? With recent DMCA rulings, the growing power of WIPO, etc, it seems like a lot of the freedoms people assumed were built into the Internet are getting eliminated quickly. So given that, what do you see that gives you hope?
That kind of fine could probably be paid out of petty cash at Microsoft. And the irony is that the fine would get paid by Microsoft charging more for software and licenses. So in the end it really becomes little more than a tax on software users rather than a useful remedy. Remember, fines, settlements, etc, are nothing more than costs of doing business, so if your costs go up, your prices have to go up correspondingly.
Just look at what happened with the Tobacco lawsuits. Are any tobacco companies going out of business? No. They are just charging more, which just makes it more expensive to smoke, but most addicts just cope and pay the additional cost. What happened to all the money from that? Well, here in Chicago, a bunch of money went to property tax refunds. Apparently those most effected by the tobacco company practices were... land owners... yeah that's it...
Either make a regulatory change to make it impossible for Microsoft ot operate the way it has, or break them up. Fines are a complete waste even if you charge them real money instead of making them pay in software licenses.
In the future I suspect I'll finish what I'm typing before I post:). Anyhow, as open source becomes a more valid part of corporate software infrastructure there will be a greater incentive for companies to contribute to open source development. Then you can expect that stodgy things like banks, insurance companies, etc, will have some people on staff who spend time developing additions to open source software that meet specific needs they have,
Basically the best model for being able to contibute effectively to open source projects (other than being paid directly by a RedHat or similar) is probably to be an Academian. Professors, and their grad students can contribute to open source projects as part of their required research work.
I clicked on the link for "things you should see". The first article is about how some church was robbed out of a bunch of money. They start off by telling how their PayPal account was ilelgally accessed and that paypal was screwing them out of money. Then they go on to make this accusation:
In fact by a search on the internet, it appears PayPal is the largest money laundress for organized crime and pro-terriorist organizations that raise money with Gambling sites that are off-shore and not regulated. Most major credit cards will not allow use on these sites, so PayPal fraudulently shows the credit card usage is a PayPal payment rather than a gambling debt to the major credit card companies. http://paypal-casinos.com/
If you go to the paypal-casinos website it clearly says it isn't affiliated with PayPal, and it seems rather obvious that they are misappropriating PayPal's trademark to their own ends. The registrant's e-mail address is at freecasinocash.net, another very disreputable looking site.
Our science teacher showed us how explosive Hydrogen was while we watched the instant replay footage of the Challenger blowing up. Something like, "and kids, that had billions times more hydrogen than what you just saw."
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Great, if they make it so that I can no longer rip CD's, then they'll never get another dime from me. This isn't because of some active decision to be a political dissenter, but rather because I don't listen to CD's anymore. I buy them and use them as masters for ripping to MP3 which is what I actually listen to.
Actually, this isn't really true, because my desire to hear new music won't fade. So, what will likely end up happening is that I'll still rip CD's and take the legal risk (which will be fairly minimal given that there will be millions of criminals just like me). The only major impact is that the development of new products that are based on ripped music will cease to happen. So it will negatively impact the economy.
How many gaping security holes has Mozilla had?
The BEST is all in how you measure it, non?
Although realisitcally this isn't so much a flaw in IE, rather it is a flaw in the tight integration of IE and windows. How many of the major Microsoft security problems it the last couple of years can be directly tied to the integrations between the operating system and the applications? Frankly I can't think of many that aren't directly attributable to that.
It all boils down to the usual sacrifice of security for convenience. A computer in a 6 foot thick block of concrete at the bottom of the ocean is very secure and nearly unusable. Microsoft has chosen to focus more on convenience and their security must pay the corresponding price.
He get's a PS/2 :)
Seriously, with the vast improvements in game console hardware in the last year or two, the relevancy of the PC as a game platform is diminishing.
If they are taking the profits from those 40 cities and investing them in infrastructure and expansion in those other 10, then it makes sense that they wouldn't be profitable overall in the short term.
This is real simple for me. The best upstream bandwidth I can get through the local phone carrier is 128Kbps. I can get more, but then I have to pay for business class service which is WAY beyond what i need both in price and services.
I've been using Covad's services for two years now and they provide what I want. I've got 384Kbps up which is sufficient for most of my uses. Also, they have no stupid regulations about what I can and cannot do with my connection. Now I grant that when I move next I'll have to get a different service package because their default upstream is going to 128Kbps now, but at least the options are their without being exhorbitant.
My thinking is that if I should be able to have a menu of services to choose from and I should be able to pay mostly a la carte for those services. Right now if I got a cable modem I could get "home service" or "business service" which leaves me no room to get what I really want.
What would be ideal is if they provided a deal where you pay say $40 a month and get certain minimum specs and perhaps some restriction on what you were allowed to do with that connection. But if I'm willing to pay another 40 or 50/month, I should be able to get a static ip address or two, some better upstream bandwidth, and freedom to do what I want.
The problem right now is that there's no fine gradients in the system. Either you are paying $40/month with irritating TOS, bandwidth caps, etc, or you are paying $150/month+ for "business grade" service which I really don't need.
Actually I've found that most people who are not aware of these issues are actually quite interested when you take the time to explain it and to present them with reasonable alternatives. They may not be willing to go to extrordinary lengths but I think you'd be surprised how many would be willing to make small but useful changes.
:)
Maybe instead of an XBox they get a PS2 or GameCube. Maybe instead of getting XP, they install RedHat7.2 (with a little support from you to help them adjust). Maybe they avoid using passport for their authentication on-line. Maybe the switch from getting their news on MSN to some other site.
I think you underestimate people, but I grant you, I've always been an optimist about people. It's large monolithic organizations that make me nervous
Okay, if the passport implant starts being sold at Best Buy, I'll convert :)
So you move to washington and then sue them for spamming you :)
I agree, I try to avoid using microsoft software as much as possible, but perhaps taking this a step further would be more useful. The fact of the matter is that the average person won't boycott microsoft for various reasons. What we need to do is help average computer users learn why they should boycott microsoft and given them what they need to do it.
What does this translate into? Helping people learn other operating systems. Contributing to software projects that improve the usability of those other operating systems. This does not mean going out a proseletyzing and shouting "Windows sucks!" That sort of approach just makes you look arrogant and turns people off. Until we can get the masses on board, a boycott is nearly useless.
So for right now Microsoft is at least creating the impression that you need it. Requiring passport would be silly until they've got the vast majority of people moved over to XP. I'm guessing they'll say that the move to requiring passport is to insure security, etc
Give it a year or two and I'm sure they'll make changes to DirectX, etc, that will make Win2K completely worthless for playing any of the new games, etc. They'll suck you in eventually...
And don't forget licensing.
Today:
"Look, we'll make it easy for you to integrate all your authentication into one easy system and we'll even give it to you for free!"
10 years from now:
"Our auditing system indicates that your payments for licenses are past due. According to the terms of service we may claim this past due payment in stock, thus giving us majority share of your company."
A severe exaggeration, but you can bet that Microsoft's need to keep it's growth going will push it to make this all seem so easy and palatable now and will be followed with a big fee in a few years.
Here's a question for people to ponder. What happens if I violate the terms of service of Passport or any attached property of Microsoft? Or more to the point, what happens if Microsoft mistakenly thinks I did but I didn't (like if I was hacked, etc). It seems that as Passport is further extended, this has a greater and greater impact on my ability to do things on-line. What if my bank uses passport? What if I communicate with my doctor through a passport secured site? If I get booted from passport for whatever reason, there could be some serious personal ramifications, and there's noreal recourse for me because I clicked the little "I Accept" button.
I grant you this is a little out there and paranoid, but I think that if passport does become a very fundamental part of on-line authorization systems, this could become a potential problem
One way to make the system better is that for a 6 month period after a patent is officially issued, permit people to submit evidence of prior art. After the 6 month period, the prior art submissions would be reviewed by a commitee at the patent office for validity, rendering a decision of the patent's validity shortly thereafter.
The problem is that there currently exists no review process other than filing a lawsuit. That's expensive, potentially very protracted, and slanted in favor of those who can afford the biggest legal teams.
So if the government mandates DRM in all electronics, and Microsoft holds the patent on putting DRM in operating systems, that's pretty much the end of the road. Anything that uses an operating system (read anything that plugs into a wall these days) will have to go pay Microsoft for the right to exist.
Granted that's assuming that DRM requirements get passed which hopefull won't happen, but it is an interesting position for Microsoft to be in.
They've apparently got enough bandwidth for one-way broadcast of approximately 100 digital audio channels. There's not nearly enough there for doing two-way internet service of any reasonable bandwidth.
Are there currently any projects that are working on the software necessary to roll your own DVR?
Okay, so Tivo will license to Sonicblue in exchange for Sonicblue licensing to Tivo. So in the end, they'll reach a push because it's in both their best interests to establish this mutual licensing.
The problem though is that small players are going to be screwed because they will have to negotiate with and pay two seperate companies for the licensing rights to that technology. So we can expect that for the forseeable future we will only have Tivo, ReplayTV, and any other big players who can afford to pay the licenses (Microsoft, etc).
So why do we have patents again? I keep forgetting...
What trends do you see on the Internet today that give you a glimmer of hope about what the Internet is becoming? With recent DMCA rulings, the growing power of WIPO, etc, it seems like a lot of the freedoms people assumed were built into the Internet are getting eliminated quickly. So given that, what do you see that gives you hope?
That kind of fine could probably be paid out of petty cash at Microsoft. And the irony is that the fine would get paid by Microsoft charging more for software and licenses. So in the end it really becomes little more than a tax on software users rather than a useful remedy. Remember, fines, settlements, etc, are nothing more than costs of doing business, so if your costs go up, your prices have to go up correspondingly.
Just look at what happened with the Tobacco lawsuits. Are any tobacco companies going out of business? No. They are just charging more, which just makes it more expensive to smoke, but most addicts just cope and pay the additional cost. What happened to all the money from that? Well, here in Chicago, a bunch of money went to property tax refunds. Apparently those most effected by the tobacco company practices were... land owners... yeah that's it...
Either make a regulatory change to make it impossible for Microsoft ot operate the way it has, or break them up. Fines are a complete waste even if you charge them real money instead of making them pay in software licenses.
In the future I suspect I'll finish what I'm typing before I post :). Anyhow, as open source becomes a more valid part of corporate software infrastructure there will be a greater incentive for companies to contribute to open source development. Then you can expect that stodgy things like banks, insurance companies, etc, will have some people on staff who spend time developing additions to open source software that meet specific needs they have,
Basically the best model for being able to contibute effectively to open source projects (other than being paid directly by a RedHat or similar) is probably to be an Academian. Professors, and their grad students can contribute to open source projects as part of their required research work.
In the future, I suspect
I clicked on the link for "things you should see". The first article is about how some church was robbed out of a bunch of money. They start off by telling how their PayPal account was ilelgally accessed and that paypal was screwing them out of money. Then they go on to make this accusation:
In fact by a search on the internet, it appears PayPal is the largest money laundress for organized crime and pro-terriorist organizations that raise money with Gambling sites that are off-shore and not regulated. Most major credit cards will not allow use on these sites, so PayPal fraudulently shows the credit card usage is a PayPal payment rather than a gambling debt to the major credit card companies. http://paypal-casinos.com/
If you go to the paypal-casinos website it clearly says it isn't affiliated with PayPal, and it seems rather obvious that they are misappropriating PayPal's trademark to their own ends. The registrant's e-mail address is at freecasinocash.net, another very disreputable looking site.
Our science teacher showed us how explosive Hydrogen was while we watched the instant replay footage of the Challenger blowing up. Something like, "and kids, that had billions times more hydrogen than what you just saw."