I mean, how often does someone buy a new car and then complain about all the problems that it undoubtedly has? Hardly ever.
Don't forget houses. A local realtor where I live boasts in its ads a 95% satisfaction rate. Frankly, I'm surprised as many as 5% are willing to admit they made a major blunder on a 30-year investment.
Just what this "effectively" means is yet to be decided in courts. It could mean just about anything. It could even be taken to mean "unhackable", which then make the whole law pointless.
Um, no. The DMCA defines the term explicitly. See my comment from an earlier article on the subject.
"Nothing has changed since 1998 that would lead members of Congress to upset the careful balance that was struck," says Bob Holleyman, head of the Business Software Alliance.
What is this guy smoking? "Careful balance"? The whole problem with this law is that there's no balance at all! It's completely one-sided, giving copyright holders dictatorial power over consumers.
...we could use pi (with a random and gigantic start point or seed)... for cheap and nasty encryption.
Except that your encryption would only be as strong as the randomness of your seed. Since you'd have to store the seed for decryption purposes, it amount to security through obscurity (you're relying entirely on no one figuring out the meaning of the seed).
I seem to remember reading somewhere that 140 ish digits is enought to calculate the circumfrence of the observable universe to within the diameter of a hydrogen atom...
Interesting. I seem to remember reading somewhere that 40 digits is enough to calculate the circumference of the observable universe to within the diameter of a proton. Methinks an urban myth is circulating.
It also means that you can TALK all you want about schemes that are being used, just don't release code.
Except that it has been pointed out again and again that code is speech. What's the difference between: i++; and "increment the variable"? What about pseudo-code? What about a verbal description of the algorithm? I maintain that the difference is merely a question of degree. Last I checked, the FBI and DOJ had a poor track record of drawing the line consistently, or in a place that favors anti-authoritarian individuals. Maybe that's a gamble you feel safe taking, but I don't.
You agreed to buy their[ OS] when others were offered freely.
Careful where you point that finger. Microsoft doesn't get any of my business; they haven't earned it.
But I think I understand where you're going with this: It's a free market. If I don't want Windows, I don't have to take it. (If this isn't your point, please correct me.) This argument is premised, though, on a truly free market, which doesn't exist (in part because Microsoft has distorted it). Your subject reads, "Let's be objective here." Indeed, let's:
In the United States, monopolies are required to temper their market power. They have an obligation to ensure that they only compete on the merits of their product, and not exploit the fact that no viable alternatives exist.
The District Court found, and the Appellate Court affirmed, that Microsoft has an OS monopoly.
The District Court found, and the Appellate Court affirmed, that Microsoft engaged in behavior that was designed to maintain its monopoly, but did not qualify as competition on the merits.
I'm not sure why you quoted my baseball bat analogy, because nothing in your post relates to it, unless it's your position that I can't be guilty of murder because my victim could've potentially run away. Once again: I cannot use the fact that it's my bat as a defense to murder. Similarly, Microsoft cannot use the fact that it's their OS as a defense for monopoly abuse.
I was planning on writing to my Congressman this past weekend. Since he's a Republican, I thought I'd point out how Adobe's customers for this product are mostly corporations, and show how much their profits are being hurt by paying $3000/doc for lame encryption (tailor your message to the audience, and all that). I figured I'd end with a write-up explaining just how lame Adobe's encryption was, complete with simple examples even a non-geek could understand. Then I realized that by doing so, I could find the FBI knocking on my door.
I don't have my copy of "1984" handy, but I seem to recall a statement along the lines of:
People might be able to say, "Big Brother is ungood", but they won't have the ability to back it up.
This is the real problem with the DMCA; no one can meaningfully protest it without running afoul of it.
...I still believe that Microsoft should have the freedom to do whatever they want with their OS.
The appellate court disagrees with you. As they neatly pointed out, this argument is akin to the notion that I should have the freedom to do whatever I want with my baseball bat.
Let me go ahead and address the most likely counter:
Provided you don't break any other laws, you are allowed to do whatever you want with your bat.
Similarly, Microsoft did break anti-trust laws, and is therefore not allowed to do anything it wants with its OS. "It's mine and I'll do what I want with it" is only a justification if the actions taken are already legal.
Out of 4 rulings, the appeals court threw one out, sent two back to be entirely reconsidered, and upheld one.
Close, but no cigar. Out of the four original charges against Microsoft, Judge Jackson only found Microsoft guilty of three, and only those three were appealed (MS wasn't going to complain about it, and DOJ didn't bother to cross-appeal). Of the remaining three, the appeals court: reversed one (not the same thing as "throwing one out"); sent one back to be partially reconsidered (the existing trial record is kept intact, and there are limits on what further evidence may be introduced); and upheld one.
Yes, I know you're making a joke (a pretty good one, btw); and yes, I realize I'm engaging in extreme nitpicking here, but... The Department of Transportation (or whoever it is that decides these things) has stated that if your steering wheel has an airbag in it (likely for the cars these toys will be in), you should use 3 & 9 instead of 10 & 2.
Re:I doubt he wants alternative PDF WRITERS
on
PDF Alternatives?
·
· Score: 1
I think it is about time for a backward compatible html update to allow for accurate formatting.
Please, no. There are reasons the Web is not WYSISYG (accessibility leaps to mind). If you're so much of a control freak that you need to guarantee that every user sees exactly the same thing, then ditch HTML altogether and just use images.
What benefit does it serve society to force people to do convoluted deals in order to avoid taxes?
As I pointed out elsewhere in this thread, Congress uses loopholes to get you to invest in a certain way. Maybe they think you setting up a trust for your kids (or whatever) is better for the economy as a whole than you just giving it straight to the kids. There's a chance your kids will blow it all on luxury items. If so, Congress prefers the money spends at least some time with a financial institution that can invest it before your kids throw it all away.
I'm moderately well off myself (though by no means wealthy)...
No statement more accurately captures Americans' beliefs about themselves than this. Americans overwhelmingly perceive themselves as middle-class. I know millionaires who think of themselves as "moderately well off... though by no means wealthy". I don't really have a point; it's just some bizzare psychological block I've noticed in my fellow Americans.
Sorta like the gimmick.99 cents added to the end of any price on sale items.
First, I think you meant the gimmick 99 cents, or.99 dollars. I'm not trying to give you a hard time; it's just a pet peeve of mine. Next, it's really more like a gimmick 1 cent that's subtracted. Psychological studies have shown that when dealing with numbers, most people don't want to bother with more than a couple of digits of precision, and prefer to truncate, rather than round. Thus, a lot of people see "5.99" and think "5". If you're mathematically inclined, this sounds crazy, but I've seen it in action. Most of the people I know generally don't fall for this, except with gasoline prices. They see "1.379" and think (and say) "1.37".
P.S. To anyone who knows - I've always wondered - is the MS trial a criminal trial or a civil trial? Why do posters on slashdot keep denying that it is either?
(IANAL) Antitrust laws are the source of much confusion on/. First, the MS trial is definitely ciminal, as 15 USC 1 & 2 say that violators are guilty of a felony (one could infer this, though, from the fact that it was the U.S. Govt that brought the suit). I think the conflicting posts come from the odd nature of the remedies. In this article, I unintentionally contributed to this confusion. Courts have become rather laid-back about dealing with monopolies, and the current thinking is that monopoly abuses shouldn't be punished, but rather corrected. This is why the government refers to a "rememdy", rather than a punishment. The goal of any rememdy is to restore the marketplace to a point where the guilty party faces as much competition as if they hadn't acted illegally. It is believed that part of MS's strategy is to stall for so long, that some token competition arises. If it can manage that, then the marketplace has corrected itself, and the courts will conclude that no remedy of any kind is needed.
The nice thing is, if you run WINE, no money goes to MS...
...except, of course, when you implicitly support the developers' decision to spend money on VC++ licenses, MSDN subscriptions, MS-Press books, Windows licenses, MS Tech Support,...
Not directly; perhaps not even deliberately. He does, however, attack ideas that are commonly associated with OSS/FS. His "Mistake number 1" derides releasing too soon, and #6 warns against releasing too often. His fourth point blames Microsoft not for going to subscriptions, but for waiting too long to get around to it.
He attacks the lack of a definitive release schedule.
Another OSS/FS staple. Is the Linux kernel a failure because 2.4 was behind schedule?
Mozilla development is a failure, no matter how good the software is when finally released.
First, using Mozilla as a punching bag is cheap and easy (I'll concede this is partly due to overhype, Joel's second point). Second, Mozilla has been released, and is re-released nightly! You cannot make a meaningful qualitative judgement of the code based solely on the version number. I use Mozilla 0.8 for day-to-day browsing, and have found it to be perfectly adequate for my needs.
Other people have slammed Mozilla for... adding so many unnecessary bells and whistles.
If you think anything beyond an HTML renderer is bloat, you're free to use Lynx. Believe it or not, there are users out there that actually want an all-in-one system. Take my S.O.: I can't seem to convey that documents aren't long-term stored in the application that displays them, and that icons aren't the actual programs. For people like this, the fewer interfaces, the better. A do-everything-from-one-place program is made for them, not us.
...They'd have released an IE-5.5 equiv browser by now and IE might not have won the browser war...
Nonsense. The browser war was won because MS tied IE to Windows; product quality never entered into the equation.
The point Joel is trying to make is that you need to build in increments.
That wasn't what I took from it at all. To me, he seems to say, "Unless your product has been in development for a decade:
Don't expect commercial success.
Don't advertise during the Super Bowl.
Don't rely on buzz-words.
Stick to a fixed (and infrequent) release schedule.
And finally: get people used to the idea that the software isn't theirs." A lot of this is just a lengthy way of saying, "don't be a dot-com", which was good advice a year or two ago, but today looks like "I told you so."
Sounds like he's fairly anti-OSS/FS to me. He advises against "release-early, release-often" and "it'll ship when it's ready"; he takes a poke at Mozilla because they're not stamping "1.0" on a buggy release; and seems to believe that software rental is the only way to go.
Okay, this is definitely moving into an area where a lawyer's interpretation is needed, but, just for kicks, I'll take a stab at it anyway (clearly, IANAL).
First, I read "copyright owner" as referring to the owner of the "work", not the "technological measure" (though it, too, might be copyrighted). If this is correct, Adobe has no case. The only people who could sue are those who created encrypted docs w/Adobe's help (there are instances where someone can sue on another's behalf, but this one seems like a stretch). But, for the sake of argument, let's assume I'm wrong (wouldn't be the first time).
In dealing with the "authority" issue you bring up, I'd like to take the opportunity to shift the premise out from under us both and point out there was also an XOR in there. This makes the "technological measure" not simply ROT-13, but rather "Adobe Encrypt-o-rama". Not only does this shift authority to Adobe (maybe), but it also brings us to the phrase, "in the ordinary course of its operation". Reverse-engineering may be fun, and ought to be legal, but I doubt it qualifies as ordinary operation for Adobe Encrypt-o-rama.
Finally, wasn't ROT-13 + XOR the process used in:CueCats?
Slashdot Mirror
[Selling out is] the only reason for going in to politics that i can see...
You'll never get my vote. I want my politicians to be motiviated by a lust for power, not money.
I mean, how often does someone buy a new car and then complain about all the problems that it undoubtedly has? Hardly ever.
Don't forget houses. A local realtor where I live boasts in its ads a 95% satisfaction rate. Frankly, I'm surprised as many as 5% are willing to admit they made a major blunder on a 30-year investment.
Just what this "effectively" means is yet to be decided in courts. It could mean just about anything. It could even be taken to mean "unhackable", which then make the whole law pointless.
Um, no. The DMCA defines the term explicitly. See my comment from an earlier article on the subject.
Several /. posters have claimed the DMCA was passed by voice-vote. If this is true, there is no record. Pretty convenient, no?
From the Wired article:
"Nothing has changed since 1998 that would lead members of Congress to upset the careful balance that was struck," says Bob Holleyman, head of the Business Software Alliance.
What is this guy smoking? "Careful balance"? The whole problem with this law is that there's no balance at all! It's completely one-sided, giving copyright holders dictatorial power over consumers.
Except that your encryption would only be as strong as the randomness of your seed. Since you'd have to store the seed for decryption purposes, it amount to security through obscurity (you're relying entirely on no one figuring out the meaning of the seed).
I seem to remember reading somewhere that 140 ish digits is enought to calculate the circumfrence of the observable universe to within the diameter of a hydrogen atom...
Interesting. I seem to remember reading somewhere that 40 digits is enough to calculate the circumference of the observable universe to within the diameter of a proton. Methinks an urban myth is circulating.
It also means that you can TALK all you want about schemes that are being used, just don't release code.
Except that it has been pointed out again and again that code is speech. What's the difference between: i++; and "increment the variable"? What about pseudo-code? What about a verbal description of the algorithm? I maintain that the difference is merely a question of degree. Last I checked, the FBI and DOJ had a poor track record of drawing the line consistently, or in a place that favors anti-authoritarian individuals. Maybe that's a gamble you feel safe taking, but I don't.
You agreed to buy their[ OS] when others were offered freely.
Careful where you point that finger. Microsoft doesn't get any of my business; they haven't earned it.
But I think I understand where you're going with this: It's a free market. If I don't want Windows, I don't have to take it. (If this isn't your point, please correct me.) This argument is premised, though, on a truly free market, which doesn't exist (in part because Microsoft has distorted it). Your subject reads, "Let's be objective here." Indeed, let's:
I'm not sure why you quoted my baseball bat analogy, because nothing in your post relates to it, unless it's your position that I can't be guilty of murder because my victim could've potentially run away. Once again: I cannot use the fact that it's my bat as a defense to murder. Similarly, Microsoft cannot use the fact that it's their OS as a defense for monopoly abuse.
include the [] ROT-13 key
Ooh! I've got one. How about:
I was planning on writing to my Congressman this past weekend. Since he's a Republican, I thought I'd point out how Adobe's customers for this product are mostly corporations, and show how much their profits are being hurt by paying $3000/doc for lame encryption (tailor your message to the audience, and all that). I figured I'd end with a write-up explaining just how lame Adobe's encryption was, complete with simple examples even a non-geek could understand. Then I realized that by doing so, I could find the FBI knocking on my door.
I don't have my copy of "1984" handy, but I seem to recall a statement along the lines of:
This is the real problem with the DMCA; no one can meaningfully protest it without running afoul of it.
The appellate court disagrees with you. As they neatly pointed out, this argument is akin to the notion that I should have the freedom to do whatever I want with my baseball bat.
Let me go ahead and address the most likely counter:
Provided you don't break any other laws, you are allowed to do whatever you want with your bat.
Similarly, Microsoft did break anti-trust laws, and is therefore not allowed to do anything it wants with its OS. "It's mine and I'll do what I want with it" is only a justification if the actions taken are already legal.
Out of 4 rulings, the appeals court threw one out, sent two back to be entirely reconsidered, and upheld one.
Close, but no cigar. Out of the four original charges against Microsoft, Judge Jackson only found Microsoft guilty of three, and only those three were appealed (MS wasn't going to complain about it, and DOJ didn't bother to cross-appeal). Of the remaining three, the appeals court: reversed one (not the same thing as "throwing one out"); sent one back to be partially reconsidered (the existing trial record is kept intact, and there are limits on what further evidence may be introduced); and upheld one.
So that's why I'm so fat and lazy!
Hands at 10 & 2!
Yes, I know you're making a joke (a pretty good one, btw); and yes, I realize I'm engaging in extreme nitpicking here, but...
The Department of Transportation (or whoever it is that decides these things) has stated that if your steering wheel has an airbag in it (likely for the cars these toys will be in), you should use 3 & 9 instead of 10 & 2.
I think it is about time for a backward compatible html update to allow for accurate formatting.
Please, no. There are reasons the Web is not WYSISYG (accessibility leaps to mind). If you're so much of a control freak that you need to guarantee that every user sees exactly the same thing, then ditch HTML altogether and just use images.
What benefit does it serve society to force people to do convoluted deals in order to avoid taxes?
As I pointed out elsewhere in this thread, Congress uses loopholes to get you to invest in a certain way. Maybe they think you setting up a trust for your kids (or whatever) is better for the economy as a whole than you just giving it straight to the kids. There's a chance your kids will blow it all on luxury items. If so, Congress prefers the money spends at least some time with a financial institution that can invest it before your kids throw it all away.
I'm moderately well off myself (though by no means wealthy)...
No statement more accurately captures Americans' beliefs about themselves than this. Americans overwhelmingly perceive themselves as middle-class. I know millionaires who think of themselves as "moderately well off... though by no means wealthy". I don't really have a point; it's just some bizzare psychological block I've noticed in my fellow Americans.
Sorta like the gimmick .99 cents added to the end of any price on sale items.
First, I think you meant the gimmick 99 cents, or .99 dollars. I'm not trying to give you a hard time; it's just a pet peeve of mine. Next, it's really more like a gimmick 1 cent that's subtracted. Psychological studies have shown that when dealing with numbers, most people don't want to bother with more than a couple of digits of precision, and prefer to truncate, rather than round. Thus, a lot of people see "5.99" and think "5". If you're mathematically inclined, this sounds crazy, but I've seen it in action. Most of the people I know generally don't fall for this, except with gasoline prices. They see "1.379" and think (and say) "1.37".
Oops! I somehow managed to misspell "remedy" twice. My bad.
P.S. To anyone who knows - I've always wondered - is the MS trial a criminal trial or a civil trial? Why do posters on slashdot keep denying that it is either?
(IANAL) Antitrust laws are the source of much confusion on /. First, the MS trial is definitely ciminal, as 15 USC 1 & 2 say that violators are guilty of a felony (one could infer this, though, from the fact that it was the U.S. Govt that brought the suit). I think the conflicting posts come from the odd nature of the remedies. In this article, I unintentionally contributed to this confusion. Courts have become rather laid-back about dealing with monopolies, and the current thinking is that monopoly abuses shouldn't be punished, but rather corrected. This is why the government refers to a "rememdy", rather than a punishment. The goal of any rememdy is to restore the marketplace to a point where the guilty party faces as much competition as if they hadn't acted illegally. It is believed that part of MS's strategy is to stall for so long, that some token competition arises. If it can manage that, then the marketplace has corrected itself, and the courts will conclude that no remedy of any kind is needed.
The nice thing is, if you run WINE, no money goes to MS...
...except, of course, when you implicitly support the developers' decision to spend money on VC++ licenses, MSDN subscriptions, MS-Press books, Windows licenses, MS Tech Support,...
He doesn't attack OSS/FS.
Not directly; perhaps not even deliberately. He does, however, attack ideas that are commonly associated with OSS/FS. His "Mistake number 1" derides releasing too soon, and #6 warns against releasing too often. His fourth point blames Microsoft not for going to subscriptions, but for waiting too long to get around to it.
He attacks the lack of a definitive release schedule.
Another OSS/FS staple. Is the Linux kernel a failure because 2.4 was behind schedule?
Mozilla development is a failure, no matter how good the software is when finally released.
First, using Mozilla as a punching bag is cheap and easy (I'll concede this is partly due to overhype, Joel's second point). Second, Mozilla has been released, and is re-released nightly! You cannot make a meaningful qualitative judgement of the code based solely on the version number. I use Mozilla 0.8 for day-to-day browsing, and have found it to be perfectly adequate for my needs.
Other people have slammed Mozilla for... adding so many unnecessary bells and whistles.
If you think anything beyond an HTML renderer is bloat, you're free to use Lynx. Believe it or not, there are users out there that actually want an all-in-one system. Take my S.O.: I can't seem to convey that documents aren't long-term stored in the application that displays them, and that icons aren't the actual programs. For people like this, the fewer interfaces, the better. A do-everything-from-one-place program is made for them, not us.
Nonsense. The browser war was won because MS tied IE to Windows; product quality never entered into the equation.
The point Joel is trying to make is that you need to build in increments.
That wasn't what I took from it at all. To me, he seems to say, "Unless your product has been in development for a decade:
And finally: get people used to the idea that the software isn't theirs." A lot of this is just a lengthy way of saying, "don't be a dot-com", which was good advice a year or two ago, but today looks like "I told you so."
Sounds like he's fairly anti-OSS/FS to me. He advises against "release-early, release-often" and "it'll ship when it's ready"; he takes a poke at Mozilla because they're not stamping "1.0" on a buggy release; and seems to believe that software rental is the only way to go.
Okay, this is definitely moving into an area where a lawyer's interpretation is needed, but, just for kicks, I'll take a stab at it anyway (clearly, IANAL).
First, I read "copyright owner" as referring to the owner of the "work", not the "technological measure" (though it, too, might be copyrighted). If this is correct, Adobe has no case. The only people who could sue are those who created encrypted docs w/Adobe's help (there are instances where someone can sue on another's behalf, but this one seems like a stretch). But, for the sake of argument, let's assume I'm wrong (wouldn't be the first time).
In dealing with the "authority" issue you bring up, I'd like to take the opportunity to shift the premise out from under us both and point out there was also an XOR in there. This makes the "technological measure" not simply ROT-13, but rather "Adobe Encrypt-o-rama". Not only does this shift authority to Adobe (maybe), but it also brings us to the phrase, "in the ordinary course of its operation". Reverse-engineering may be fun, and ought to be legal, but I doubt it qualifies as ordinary operation for Adobe Encrypt-o-rama.
Finally, wasn't ROT-13 + XOR the process used in :CueCats?