I remember the first time I watched Akira Back in College, it was the original version from Japan, not Sub'ed or Dubed. I was Totally Drunk, probably a little high from the weed that my friends had been smoking at a party, and I'll be damned the story was so good, and animation so good the movie still made perfect sense despite not understanding a word, and being coherently impaired.
Again Many times your stuck with what the company says you can use. If you work for a M$ centric company(actually worse a M$ strat, partner), you use M$, and nothing else is allowed. Its Impossible to convince anyone above you that something else might be better.
I blame both, its stupid of M$ to design a bad system, but sometimes your stuck with what the company you work for will let you use, and then you HAVE to work around the Vendor's(M$) stupidity.
Yeah im totally agree, I go through it alot on many of the projects a work on. We recently had a rollout of W2k and O2K. These systems want a users files in My documents. Unfortuantely there is a legacy directory from before M$ created this as the efault for the world that all the users are used to using. 3 Months of Reg hacking, MSI customizing, and testing, we finally got that under control.
I might take heat for saying so, but what the heck. Actually, I think its a great idea. here is why. Venture capitalists are a pain, since once thye have dropped 10,000,000 into your compnay they are going to expect results and with each passing day they will press harder to see results. The same goes with signing up with a big publisher for your software, esspecially games. In a bond market this would be less so, of course the investors are going to expect results, but then at least its based on your rep as a software creator. If you have a great idea, put it out there, get people invest, and get the cash you need to get through development. I would imagine over time the market would learn who is worth the bucks. The better you stuff the better the investment gets. Imagine if you would Sid Mier, or Chris Roberts in the game world doing this, I'd buy bonds on the development of the next Civ game or the next Wing Commander(ok the last Chris Roberts game was not so good, but he hitched his wagon to M$ there which i think actually proves my point)
It is Possible to run a secure NT Based Web/SQL server. The problem is that MS makes everything run as the system acocunt on the machine by default. Most people don't change the defaults. Things get further complicated if you do change the account that these services run as, due to the fact that nowhere do they tell you all the things that these services need access to, or to talk too. Then things get even worse as they make assumptions in upgrades, patches, and addons that you are running as system.(This is a major problem when it comes to frontpage at times) The fact still remains though that you can infact change the service account that these services run as, to a different account and then restrict the access these accounts have to other parts of the system. For instance, only the IIS, service account has access to the SQL server that backends it. Then you make the service account for IIS only a local account on the Web box, with no global domain access. Then you take the actual logon rights away from that account, then restrict it from access to anything outside of wwwroot of the IIS box. Then give ownership of all the files that make the web site to a different account and give the IIS account read only access. The same can be done with the SQL account, only a local account, no access to anything on the box. it can be done it just takes work, and Most M$ admins are to lazy to do it.
Well maybe anyway? We can only hope that they will extend this to all those which wish to co-operate. My guess is its more likely to be those that wish to pay for access, or for some kind of technology exchange. I can only hope that Open source clients will, and open source servers will be allowed to play, but Imagine, that AOL is going to be heavy on writing the rules of interopeability. I can also imagine that those rules will be heavily in their favor.
You think its bad now, Just wait, I have been looking at the asp.net stuff, and C#...wow the nastiness that stuff is going to introduce when XP hits along with this stuff. But don't worry, M$ took out Java becuase it could spread Virus's. I believe though that more fault lies in people and companies that are not running proper virus protection, and don't have proper policies. Half the nastiness that gets in most companies could be stopped if the companies would just have the servers scan for viruses and delete the attachments that are infected before they reached the users. Still further they would be stopped by enforced Virus protection on the desktop. The biggest purveyor of Viruses that is almost unstoppable is the people that have Outlook setup to grab their email from thier ISP. Our servers, and most virus protection never have a chance to look at that mail before they click on that infected document. SHUT OFF the DAMN SMTP port don't let anyone retreive mail from anywhere but the approved company servers. Don't een get me started on the Hotmail/Yahoo, webmail menace, they should get sued if they let a known virus reach your mailbox.
Wow, calm down it was just a suggestion, I was actually not thinking so much of games, as stuff like windows revisons, and application revisions. I totally agree about games I play tons of games that even up to 20 years old, I still have my original Zork disks. I just felt that 10 years was a bit long, of a time in the PC world, consider that basically the PC world just turned 20 this year, then consider the amount of perfectly good software/hardware that has been left in the wake of the ever proceeding crush of change. Hell everytime Bill Gate's burps half the old software doesn't run on M$ OS'es anymore. I was actually taking the ideas in your post and rnning with them, as it made total sense to me that once something is no longer available to purchase that the publisher that clock should be ticking quickly until the publisher no longer has rights to it, they are not making money on it because they are not selling it anymore after all.
I am not no any high horse, just attempting to be in a discussion about what could be proposed to make things a little more fair is all. I started posting Ideas for this idea about to months ago and it has been gathering steam each time I proposed it. You actually gave me alot of good ideas infact. The fact remains however that software wise there has to be some dividing line other than hardware platform existance, be otherwise the publisher will always have a strangle hold on those idea and concepts because they will claim that by releasing a new version they have now exteneded the copyright on it. Look at W2K boot sometime it says Copyright 1985-1999, which means that M$ is claiming that the copyright any anything in the windows system goes back that far, and that forward. Inotherwords when the copyright to Windows 1.0 runs out they can claim that no it didn't it was renewed with the release of Windows 200 in 1999(which is a mistake in its own right since it was released in 2/2000 the copyright screen really should read 1985-2000, but that academic). Its funny how in one post you can be so supportive and then in another when I propose a small change for discussion you seem to tkae it as a personal affront and become instantly negative. This is exactlky the same kind of opposition that any proposal to reverse the effects of the DMCA would face in the real world. The origianl authors will violently defend their ideas in the same way. I would love to discuss this more with you, despite your harsh words I value your opinions. By the way I probably will not be posting the DFCA post again, I think its pretty much where it oughta be from the posting this time. I don't mean to be redundant, its just each time it gets revised it needs to reviewed again to get better and better feedback and close as many loopholes as possible.
Actually for software it should be more like two....
8a. Each major version of software (ie. v1 v2, etc) shall have a copyright perod not to exceed 2 years past the time that version is no longer available for sale. In this time the software publisher will have most likely published a newer version, ceased to exist(how can a company which doesn't exist reasonablely hold a copyright anyway), or abandoned that line of software. "
I propose the (DFCA)Digital Freedom Continuence Act. "1. Congress Shall Pass no law restricting your ability to do anything digitally that you can do through handwritten, and or Analog means. 2. Congress shall not allow the granting of a patent for any device that would knowingly impinge upon your ability to do anything digitally that you could do via handwritten or Analog means. 3. It shall be unlawful to distribute technology which would knowingly violate the Free Speech and Fair use intentions of the Consitution of the United states of America. 4. It shall hence forth be understood that once "content" is purchased, it is the purchaser's right to do what ever they choose with that content, and shall have the right to do as they have always been able to do via handwritten, or analog means. 5. Congress Shall repeal the DMCA it does not serve the people of United States in any fair way shape or form. It abridges the freedoms that are set forth in the constitution. 6. Congress shall pass no law which prevents fair use of media, nor shall it support any initive which would do the same. 6a. it shall be illegal to develop technology or any other means which would prevent fair use of media."
Humm...and the results....
1. And get arrested for Tax evasion...that doesn't work
2. And move to a country where true lawlessness is allowed, hell even someplace like england doesn't really work out, they have way more domestic terrorism.
3. I do vote, but my representitives don't do shit for me, no matter how much I write, they don't even bother to reply.
4. You know I can support this idea except, when ever I start thinking about boycotting companies in such a way its almost impossible. If I Boycott M$ because I don't like they way they licence things then some one sends me a document written in Office I have little choice because I work in a M$ centric corp. The same for Adobe, these people are PDF crazy.
Actually NO I am not confusing them, and if you had paid attention you would understand what I had said. Once again, there is no reason at all to depend on anything the client does or does not have installed. It happens all the time around here, developers in other parts of the company get constant complaints that something is wrong with their site...everytime its looked into its a problem with the client not having some up to date component on it, or being down rev'ed on the Java engine, or something else of the like.(Many times because my Boss respects my skills he will ask me to look into these pages, and when i load them on a machine with none of this plug in java, and other various crap loaded I know right away what wrong with the page cuase I see this stuff fail. I present him with the answer about what wrong, and usually the code to achive similar or the same results server side) I never ever get these complaints about sites I develop(several with many javascript sections, although I tend to stick to PHP, and yes I do maintain some IIS machine so ASP as well, when I can, but often I am handed code from other areas that I must integrate from outside vendors and such), because strictly depend on only what my servers are able to do on the back end, never on what the cleint may or may not be capable of on it end. Infact the only thing I depend on is that the cleint is running at at least 1024x768 screen resolution, and even then I make sure that the page will not look to strange if not. Anyone with any browser capable of rendering HTML 4 compliant code can read my pages.
Ok, look its great to have the Open source stuff, but lets face it, the development is slow, and the only way to speed up development of quality apps for Linux(or other Open OSes) is to pay someone for the development effort, the development is managed has goals and deadlines, hopefully quality support, and so long as they charge a fair price, then I am all for it, and Kompany charges a very fair price for the software. I was very excited about Kylix from Borland once upon a time, but given the pricing, I will never ever develop with that environment, simply because I would never pay that price to get it. thekompany on the other hand is handing us the tool to program in the KDE/QT environment, for a mere 69.99...!
If I understand you I have to disagree.
Yes Linux, KDE, et all is Open source, Free Software type stuff, but if its ever to become a useful system with people dedicated, and getting paid to be dedicated, and for us to get enterprise quality apps, as well as Apps for us to use in the home in general someone has to start paying for them. I looked at the site, and the article, and the Price they want for the software...as much as I support, free software, Open source and such, for what they offer I am quite happy to pay the price. KDE Studio Gold for $69.99, as opposed to Visual Studio for 299.99+
If you write decent, real web code it shouldn't matter one Damn bit what the client has on his side. The server should do ALL the work period. Client side scripting is a crutch for Admins, and web coders who can't figure out how to do things right anyway. And for the most part, what is Java Client side scripting used for anyway, POPUP ads(who cares), causing a new page to open as soon as you close the one your one you were on(most often seen in Porn sites, good ridence to that happening). Write your sites dynamically in PHP, Perl, Python, (Shudder)ASP, let it all execute on the server, and move on with your life.
Its amazing, and tell to see what happens when M$ gets defeated in their stragegy.
M$:"You won't let me win!"
Java(Sun):"No I made up the game, and I want everyone to play as fair as possible"
M$:"But I'm bigger I should be allowed to make my own rules"
Java(Sun):"No, Billy you can't everyone has to play fair"
M$:"Well then I'm not playing anymore, and I'm not helping you play on my field, I'm taking my Ball and going home, Your game is dumb anyway, I'm gonna make up my own(C#), and its gonna be better, and everyone is gonna play my game instead cause I'm bigger and I have more fields.
Sound about right?
I propose the (DFCA)Digital Freedom Continuence Act. "1. Congress Shall Pass no law restricting your ability to do anything digitally that you can do through handwritten, and or Analog means. 2. Congress shall not allow the granting of a patent for any device that would knowingly impinge upon your ability to do anything digitally that you could do via handwritten or Analog means. 3. It shall be unlawful to distribute technology which would knowingly violate the Free Speech and Fair use intentions of the Consitution of the United states of America. 4. It shall hence forth be understood that once "content" is purchased, it is the purchaser's right to do what ever they choose with that content, and shall have the right to do as they have always been able to do via handwritten, or analog means. 5. Congress Shall repeal the DMCA it does not serve the people of United States in any fair way shape or form. It abridges the freedoms that are set forth in the constitution. 6. Congress shall pass no law which prevents fair use of media, nor shall it support any initive which would do the same. 6a. it shall be illegal to develop technology or any other means which would prevent fair use of media."
Good stuff I agree, there needs to be a law saying that media companies cannot violate fair use. Of course this also means that a certian russian programmer shouldn;t have gotten thrown in jail by Abobe as well as there system also violates fair use.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember the first time I watched Akira Back in College, it was the original version from Japan, not Sub'ed or Dubed. I was Totally Drunk, probably a little high from the weed that my friends had been smoking at a party, and I'll be damned the story was so good, and animation so good the movie still made perfect sense despite not understanding a word, and being coherently impaired.
Again Many times your stuck with what the company says you can use. If you work for a M$ centric company(actually worse a M$ strat, partner), you use M$, and nothing else is allowed. Its Impossible to convince anyone above you that something else might be better.
I blame both, its stupid of M$ to design a bad system, but sometimes your stuck with what the company you work for will let you use, and then you HAVE to work around the Vendor's(M$) stupidity.
Yeah im totally agree, I go through it alot on many of the projects a work on. We recently had a rollout of W2k and O2K. These systems want a users files in My documents. Unfortuantely there is a legacy directory from before M$ created this as the efault for the world that all the users are used to using. 3 Months of Reg hacking, MSI customizing, and testing, we finally got that under control.
Unfortuantely at some companies its a requirement.
I might take heat for saying so, but what the heck. Actually, I think its a great idea. here is why. Venture capitalists are a pain, since once thye have dropped 10,000,000 into your compnay they are going to expect results and with each passing day they will press harder to see results. The same goes with signing up with a big publisher for your software, esspecially games. In a bond market this would be less so, of course the investors are going to expect results, but then at least its based on your rep as a software creator. If you have a great idea, put it out there, get people invest, and get the cash you need to get through development. I would imagine over time the market would learn who is worth the bucks. The better you stuff the better the investment gets. Imagine if you would Sid Mier, or Chris Roberts in the game world doing this, I'd buy bonds on the development of the next Civ game or the next Wing Commander(ok the last Chris Roberts game was not so good, but he hitched his wagon to M$ there which i think actually proves my point)
It is Possible to run a secure NT Based Web/SQL server. The problem is that MS makes everything run as the system acocunt on the machine by default. Most people don't change the defaults. Things get further complicated if you do change the account that these services run as, due to the fact that nowhere do they tell you all the things that these services need access to, or to talk too. Then things get even worse as they make assumptions in upgrades, patches, and addons that you are running as system.(This is a major problem when it comes to frontpage at times) The fact still remains though that you can infact change the service account that these services run as, to a different account and then restrict the access these accounts have to other parts of the system. For instance, only the IIS, service account has access to the SQL server that backends it. Then you make the service account for IIS only a local account on the Web box, with no global domain access. Then you take the actual logon rights away from that account, then restrict it from access to anything outside of wwwroot of the IIS box. Then give ownership of all the files that make the web site to a different account and give the IIS account read only access. The same can be done with the SQL account, only a local account, no access to anything on the box. it can be done it just takes work, and Most M$ admins are to lazy to do it.
Well maybe anyway? We can only hope that they will extend this to all those which wish to co-operate. My guess is its more likely to be those that wish to pay for access, or for some kind of technology exchange. I can only hope that Open source clients will, and open source servers will be allowed to play, but Imagine, that AOL is going to be heavy on writing the rules of interopeability. I can also imagine that those rules will be heavily in their favor.
POP SMTP, they work together, I was thinking rather generically, of Mail servers in general.
You think its bad now, Just wait, I have been looking at the asp.net stuff, and C#...wow the nastiness that stuff is going to introduce when XP hits along with this stuff. But don't worry, M$ took out Java becuase it could spread Virus's. I believe though that more fault lies in people and companies that are not running proper virus protection, and don't have proper policies. Half the nastiness that gets in most companies could be stopped if the companies would just have the servers scan for viruses and delete the attachments that are infected before they reached the users. Still further they would be stopped by enforced Virus protection on the desktop. The biggest purveyor of Viruses that is almost unstoppable is the people that have Outlook setup to grab their email from thier ISP. Our servers, and most virus protection never have a chance to look at that mail before they click on that infected document. SHUT OFF the DAMN SMTP port don't let anyone retreive mail from anywhere but the approved company servers. Don't een get me started on the Hotmail/Yahoo, webmail menace, they should get sued if they let a known virus reach your mailbox.
Wow, calm down it was just a suggestion, I was actually not thinking so much of games, as stuff like windows revisons, and application revisions. I totally agree about games I play tons of games that even up to 20 years old, I still have my original Zork disks. I just felt that 10 years was a bit long, of a time in the PC world, consider that basically the PC world just turned 20 this year, then consider the amount of perfectly good software/hardware that has been left in the wake of the ever proceeding crush of change. Hell everytime Bill Gate's burps half the old software doesn't run on M$ OS'es anymore. I was actually taking the ideas in your post and rnning with them, as it made total sense to me that once something is no longer available to purchase that the publisher that clock should be ticking quickly until the publisher no longer has rights to it, they are not making money on it because they are not selling it anymore after all. I am not no any high horse, just attempting to be in a discussion about what could be proposed to make things a little more fair is all. I started posting Ideas for this idea about to months ago and it has been gathering steam each time I proposed it. You actually gave me alot of good ideas infact. The fact remains however that software wise there has to be some dividing line other than hardware platform existance, be otherwise the publisher will always have a strangle hold on those idea and concepts because they will claim that by releasing a new version they have now exteneded the copyright on it. Look at W2K boot sometime it says Copyright 1985-1999, which means that M$ is claiming that the copyright any anything in the windows system goes back that far, and that forward. Inotherwords when the copyright to Windows 1.0 runs out they can claim that no it didn't it was renewed with the release of Windows 200 in 1999(which is a mistake in its own right since it was released in 2/2000 the copyright screen really should read 1985-2000, but that academic). Its funny how in one post you can be so supportive and then in another when I propose a small change for discussion you seem to tkae it as a personal affront and become instantly negative. This is exactlky the same kind of opposition that any proposal to reverse the effects of the DMCA would face in the real world. The origianl authors will violently defend their ideas in the same way. I would love to discuss this more with you, despite your harsh words I value your opinions. By the way I probably will not be posting the DFCA post again, I think its pretty much where it oughta be from the posting this time. I don't mean to be redundant, its just each time it gets revised it needs to reviewed again to get better and better feedback and close as many loopholes as possible.
Actually for software it should be more like two.... 8a. Each major version of software (ie. v1 v2, etc) shall have a copyright perod not to exceed 2 years past the time that version is no longer available for sale. In this time the software publisher will have most likely published a newer version, ceased to exist(how can a company which doesn't exist reasonablely hold a copyright anyway), or abandoned that line of software. "
I can do a good enough copy of a TV show or DVD to my VCR....and thats what I mean.
I really like that, I will add it...I report this everytime a big DMCA story, and have added a few reader suggestions along the way.
I propose the (DFCA)Digital Freedom Continuence Act. "1. Congress Shall Pass no law restricting your ability to do anything digitally that you can do through handwritten, and or Analog means. 2. Congress shall not allow the granting of a patent for any device that would knowingly impinge upon your ability to do anything digitally that you could do via handwritten or Analog means. 3. It shall be unlawful to distribute technology which would knowingly violate the Free Speech and Fair use intentions of the Consitution of the United states of America. 4. It shall hence forth be understood that once "content" is purchased, it is the purchaser's right to do what ever they choose with that content, and shall have the right to do as they have always been able to do via handwritten, or analog means. 5. Congress Shall repeal the DMCA it does not serve the people of United States in any fair way shape or form. It abridges the freedoms that are set forth in the constitution. 6. Congress shall pass no law which prevents fair use of media, nor shall it support any initive which would do the same. 6a. it shall be illegal to develop technology or any other means which would prevent fair use of media."
Humm...and the results.... 1. And get arrested for Tax evasion...that doesn't work 2. And move to a country where true lawlessness is allowed, hell even someplace like england doesn't really work out, they have way more domestic terrorism. 3. I do vote, but my representitives don't do shit for me, no matter how much I write, they don't even bother to reply. 4. You know I can support this idea except, when ever I start thinking about boycotting companies in such a way its almost impossible. If I Boycott M$ because I don't like they way they licence things then some one sends me a document written in Office I have little choice because I work in a M$ centric corp. The same for Adobe, these people are PDF crazy.
Well I suppose given that its based on the smae stuff in a MAC, its not surprising that its insanely over priced.
Actually NO I am not confusing them, and if you had paid attention you would understand what I had said. Once again, there is no reason at all to depend on anything the client does or does not have installed. It happens all the time around here, developers in other parts of the company get constant complaints that something is wrong with their site...everytime its looked into its a problem with the client not having some up to date component on it, or being down rev'ed on the Java engine, or something else of the like.(Many times because my Boss respects my skills he will ask me to look into these pages, and when i load them on a machine with none of this plug in java, and other various crap loaded I know right away what wrong with the page cuase I see this stuff fail. I present him with the answer about what wrong, and usually the code to achive similar or the same results server side) I never ever get these complaints about sites I develop(several with many javascript sections, although I tend to stick to PHP, and yes I do maintain some IIS machine so ASP as well, when I can, but often I am handed code from other areas that I must integrate from outside vendors and such), because strictly depend on only what my servers are able to do on the back end, never on what the cleint may or may not be capable of on it end. Infact the only thing I depend on is that the cleint is running at at least 1024x768 screen resolution, and even then I make sure that the page will not look to strange if not. Anyone with any browser capable of rendering HTML 4 compliant code can read my pages.
Ok, look its great to have the Open source stuff, but lets face it, the development is slow, and the only way to speed up development of quality apps for Linux(or other Open OSes) is to pay someone for the development effort, the development is managed has goals and deadlines, hopefully quality support, and so long as they charge a fair price, then I am all for it, and Kompany charges a very fair price for the software. I was very excited about Kylix from Borland once upon a time, but given the pricing, I will never ever develop with that environment, simply because I would never pay that price to get it. thekompany on the other hand is handing us the tool to program in the KDE/QT environment, for a mere 69.99...!
If I understand you I have to disagree.
Yes Linux, KDE, et all is Open source, Free Software type stuff, but if its ever to become a useful system with people dedicated, and getting paid to be dedicated, and for us to get enterprise quality apps, as well as Apps for us to use in the home in general someone has to start paying for them. I looked at the site, and the article, and the Price they want for the software...as much as I support, free software, Open source and such, for what they offer I am quite happy to pay the price. KDE Studio Gold for $69.99, as opposed to Visual Studio for 299.99+
Yeah I miss the simple stuff like Pitfall, and galaga...I played those for hours!
If you write decent, real web code it shouldn't matter one Damn bit what the client has on his side. The server should do ALL the work period. Client side scripting is a crutch for Admins, and web coders who can't figure out how to do things right anyway. And for the most part, what is Java Client side scripting used for anyway, POPUP ads(who cares), causing a new page to open as soon as you close the one your one you were on(most often seen in Porn sites, good ridence to that happening). Write your sites dynamically in PHP, Perl, Python, (Shudder)ASP, let it all execute on the server, and move on with your life.
Its amazing, and tell to see what happens when M$ gets defeated in their stragegy.
M$:"You won't let me win!"
Java(Sun):"No I made up the game, and I want everyone to play as fair as possible"
M$:"But I'm bigger I should be allowed to make my own rules"
Java(Sun):"No, Billy you can't everyone has to play fair"
M$:"Well then I'm not playing anymore, and I'm not helping you play on my field, I'm taking my Ball and going home, Your game is dumb anyway, I'm gonna make up my own(C#), and its gonna be better, and everyone is gonna play my game instead cause I'm bigger and I have more fields.
Sound about right?
I propose the (DFCA)Digital Freedom Continuence Act. "1. Congress Shall Pass no law restricting your ability to do anything digitally that you can do through handwritten, and or Analog means. 2. Congress shall not allow the granting of a patent for any device that would knowingly impinge upon your ability to do anything digitally that you could do via handwritten or Analog means. 3. It shall be unlawful to distribute technology which would knowingly violate the Free Speech and Fair use intentions of the Consitution of the United states of America. 4. It shall hence forth be understood that once "content" is purchased, it is the purchaser's right to do what ever they choose with that content, and shall have the right to do as they have always been able to do via handwritten, or analog means. 5. Congress Shall repeal the DMCA it does not serve the people of United States in any fair way shape or form. It abridges the freedoms that are set forth in the constitution. 6. Congress shall pass no law which prevents fair use of media, nor shall it support any initive which would do the same. 6a. it shall be illegal to develop technology or any other means which would prevent fair use of media."
Good stuff I agree, there needs to be a law saying that media companies cannot violate fair use. Of course this also means that a certian russian programmer shouldn;t have gotten thrown in jail by Abobe as well as there system also violates fair use.