How so? Most of us are probably reading Slashdot right now on desktop computers descended from the Intel-based architecture introduced with the IBM Personal Computer some 20 years ago...
As for the guy who claims his software costs $9,500 but lost out because it was pirated-- make your software not work without authentication with the mothership.
Problems with this: 1. It's only appropriate for software packages that already require a network connection. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to run for instance a $10,000 professional CAD package on a standalone workstation with no Internet connectivity.
2. This only works until someone writes something that spoofs the 'mothership' server and always returns a valid key.
3. Privacy issues. Would you be upset if a company was grabbing information about your hardware and sending it off to a mysterious remote server periodically? What if the remote server is owned by Microsoft?
The point is, no technical solution to digital copyright violation will ever be failsafe, and many of the possible solutions just make things worse for the legitimate users.
The only solution that makes sense is to revise commercial software licensing and sales pricing structures so that there's no incentive not to pay for the software that you use.
I would imagine that any law enforcement agency has a better idea of risks assessment than J. Random Slashdotter.
Obviously there was a reason they assigned 40 armed agents to bust one man, and I guarantee you that it's not because 38 guys were sitting around with nothing better to do and decided to go out there on a lark.
Maybe you would have cooperated and gone in quietly if 2 unarmed agents showed up. Maybe this guy would have pulled an unregistered shotgun from his closet and blown them both away. You don't know, and they didn't either.
I see, so if one state doesn't want something but the other 49 gang up on them, then they're gonna get it. What a wonderful system we have.
The word for it is "democracy". The wishes of the 2 million Nevada residents are overriden by the wishes of the 279 million residents in other states.
How would you improve on the system?
So in this case someone shits in New Jersey and it ends up in Nevada's back yard.
New Jersey has 5 times Nevada's population, and in a much smaller and more valuable area of land as well. The potential damage and loss of life that would occur due to a nuclear accident in NJ is far greater than that in NV. This is why Nevada was chosen in the first palce.
The nuclear waste already exists. Any argument founded on "Nuclear waste is potentially unsafe" is moot to the discussion of where nuclear waste should be stored.
It has to be stored SOMEWHERE. Do we keep it in close proximity to MANY people, ALL the time, or in close proximity to MANY people for a short amount of time and FEW people for a long time?
Crypto : how the code rebels beat the government--saving privacy in the digital age
Insanely great : the life and times of Macintosh, the computer that changed everything
Hackers : heroes of the computer revolution
Obviously, with titles like these, he must be an ignorant Microsoft toady.
Sounds more to me like a wanna-be Wired contributing editor who thinks computers are a RILLY RILLY KEWL social movement, but couldn't care less about the underlying technologies.
Re:Pure Laziness
on
Version Fatigue
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This is pure intellectual laziness. What is wrong with being in a "learning mode?" We do it our entire lives! Why should someone want to actually stop learning?
There's a difference between learning and re-learning.
If I already know how to perform a certain task in Foo 5.0, I should be able to apply that knowledge when Foo 6.0 comes out instead of digging through help files trying to figure out why the old method doesn't work anymore and what the new method is.
Adding new features is great. Changing the way existing features behave should be avoided unless there's an overriding NEED to do so
If you own the copyright they can not archive it without your permsiission, legally, that is all there is to it.
So if I want to establish an old-fashioned library full of books that are made of paper, I can't do so until I get permission from the author/publishers of every single book in the building?
The issue is not as cut-and-dried as you represent it to be.
...it is impossible to find every bug the first time, or even the hundredth time out.
True, but certain types of bugs are more preventable than others. There's no reason a buffer overflow should exist in any professionally written code these days.
Remember, they are up against people who are actively searching for exploits. This is not your average user we're talking about finding a hole in the system.
If dedicated hackers are capable of discovering these bugs, then a dedicated QA team should be capable too.
How many would point out the fact that since the sun emits the entire spectrum of visible light (and then some), saying that the sun "is" one particular color is meaningless?
If you have something to say regarding an article that another/. editor put up, you should post a comment in response to it like the rest of us do.
Using your privilege to update the item itself with your opinion makes you look like an ass and undermines the democracy of the Slashdot moderations system.
Who have? Gates and Ballmer? The executive VPs? Hundreds of developers? All Microsoft employees, inclusing the potwashers in the cafeteria?
They have created software which is so faulty that it's caused losses to other people counted in the Billions of Dollars. ( The cost of time needed to clean up after all the viruses and worms. )
1. Microsoft never created and released a product called MS Virus, nor MS Worm. 2. The losses that are reported due to virus attacks are 80% bullshit.
They have charged hundreds and thousands of dollars for bits of plastic worth cents. That's a con job netting 40 Billion Dollars.
IIRC the value of the raw chemicals that make up the human body is under $20. Should people be allowed to kill whatever people they want, so long as they pay twenty bucks?
Value of raw materials is not a meaningful indicator of total value.
They are now demanding money from people on a regular basis to provide continued access to their programs. In my country that's called a protection racket.
My landlady demands hundreds of dollars from me every month to provide continued access to my apartment. In my country that's called a lease.
With.NET, the operating system is not as important as it once was.. in the future, a proper.NET program will run on any system that has a.NET compatible VM and the correct class libraries!
Funny, people were saying the same thing about Java five years ago.
The only.NET Virtual Machines that will ever be 100% compatible with Office and other leading MS applications will be the one that Microsoft writes itself.
Do you honestly think Microsoft is going to maintain OS X or Linux/x86 versions of their VM with the same enthusiasm as their Windows VM's?
What further frustrates me, are the posts where people are declaring that these big media co's need to update their antiquated business model; To what, I ask? How should they update it? and where else are they going to get their revenue?
You know what? That's not my problem. That's not the government's problem.
It's the media companies and the media companies alone that are responsible for discovering a business method that is profitable without driving their customers away.
"Is there a net decrease in aircraft safety during movements?"
Sure, the likelihood of accident increases when the air traffic controller is sitting on the toilet instead of in front of the radar screens, but that's true of EVERY traffic control system.
Optimally we would get something that comes in rolls and can be cut to size. Then you just stick a piece of fiber on it anywhere, and have it communicate with you optically. Every pixel should have its own driver circuit, and they should speak to one another with various shortcut buses woven throughout the material. It should also be capable of speaking to other pieces of the material if you make it overlap.
Oh, and it should also cost 5 cents per square mile and be capable of traveling through time and it should taste like candy when you lick it.
Um, sounds like your district alrady has a party that has a shot of winning -- the Republican party, which has steamrolled Mr. Goodlatte to victory over and over again.
I agree that voters should not suffer the constrictions of the two-party vote race, but it sounds to me that your district has already chosen a preferred representative in Congress. I'm sorry that he's not who you would have chosen.
Slashdot Mirror
IBM missed out pretty badly on the PC revolution
How so? Most of us are probably reading Slashdot right now on desktop computers descended from the Intel-based architecture introduced with the IBM Personal Computer some 20 years ago...
Andersen Consulting changed its name at least a year before the Arthur Andersen accounting scandal broke.
(Maybe they knew something we didn't?)
Fireworks? What's their rejection notice, then?
They probably just redirect the applicant to the site of his or her safety school.
-Poot '99
What, was it supposed to lift 12.7 feet off the ground before falling back to earth in a huge fireball?
Why would I, the end user, care which editing widget Kate was built on? Would I even want to know what a widget is?
As for the guy who claims his software costs $9,500 but lost out because it was pirated--
make your software not work without authentication with the mothership.
Problems with this:
1. It's only appropriate for software packages that already require a network connection. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to run for instance a $10,000 professional CAD package on a standalone workstation with no Internet connectivity.
2. This only works until someone writes something that spoofs the 'mothership' server and always returns a valid key.
3. Privacy issues. Would you be upset if a company was grabbing information about your hardware and sending it off to a mysterious remote server periodically? What if the remote server is owned by Microsoft?
The point is, no technical solution to digital copyright violation will ever be failsafe, and many of the possible solutions just make things worse for the legitimate users.
The only solution that makes sense is to revise commercial software licensing and sales pricing structures so that there's no incentive not to pay for the software that you use.
I would imagine that any law enforcement agency has a better idea of risks assessment than J. Random Slashdotter.
Obviously there was a reason they assigned 40 armed agents to bust one man, and I guarantee you that it's not because 38 guys were sitting around with nothing better to do and decided to go out there on a lark.
Maybe you would have cooperated and gone in quietly if 2 unarmed agents showed up. Maybe this guy would have pulled an unregistered shotgun from his closet and blown them both away. You don't know, and they didn't either.
I see, so if one state doesn't want something but the other 49 gang up on them, then they're
gonna get it. What a wonderful system we have.
The word for it is "democracy". The wishes of the 2 million Nevada residents are overriden by the wishes of the 279 million residents in other states.
How would you improve on the system?
So in this case someone shits in New Jersey and it ends up in Nevada's back yard.
New Jersey has 5 times Nevada's population, and in a much smaller and more valuable area of land as well. The potential damage and loss of life that would occur due to a nuclear accident in NJ is far greater than that in NV. This is why Nevada was chosen in the first palce.
The nuclear waste already exists. Any argument founded on "Nuclear waste is potentially unsafe" is moot to the discussion of where nuclear waste should be stored.
It has to be stored SOMEWHERE. Do we keep it in close proximity to MANY people, ALL the time, or in close proximity to MANY people for a short amount of time and FEW people for a long time?
-
- Crypto : how the code rebels beat the government--saving privacy in the digital age
- Insanely great : the life and times of Macintosh, the computer that changed everything
- Hackers : heroes of the computer revolution
Obviously, with titles like these, he must be an ignorant Microsoft toady.Sounds more to me like a wanna-be Wired contributing editor who thinks computers are a RILLY RILLY KEWL social movement, but couldn't care less about the underlying technologies.
That's IMO of course.
Fortunately, everyone falls into the first group.
That post you just wrote? It's copyrighted.
This is pure intellectual laziness. What is wrong with being in a "learning mode?" We do it our entire lives! Why should someone want to actually stop learning?
There's a difference between learning and re-learning.
If I already know how to perform a certain task in Foo 5.0, I should be able to apply that knowledge when Foo 6.0 comes out instead of digging through
help files trying to figure out why the old method doesn't work anymore and what the new method is.
Adding new features is great. Changing the way existing features behave should be avoided unless there's an overriding NEED to do so
If you own the copyright they can not archive it without your permsiission, legally, that is all
there is to it.
So if I want to establish an old-fashioned library full of books that are made of paper, I can't do so until I get permission from the author/publishers of every single book in the building?
The issue is not as cut-and-dried as you represent it to be.
...it is impossible to find every bug the first time, or even the hundredth time out.
True, but certain types of bugs are more preventable than others. There's no reason a buffer overflow should exist in any professionally written code these days.
Remember, they are up against people who are actively searching for exploits. This is not your average user we're talking about finding a hole in the system.
If dedicated hackers are capable of discovering these bugs, then a dedicated QA team should be capable too.
...they don't remember the days when it was just Nintendo (The Atari was old and not not a serious compeditor) and there was no competition.
The Sega Master System says hello. IIRC the overseas version of that console still had decent sales into the mid-'90s.
-Poot
How many would point out the fact that since the sun emits the entire spectrum of visible light (and then some), saying that the sun "is" one particular color is meaningless?
Michael:
/. editor put up, you should post a comment in response to it like the rest of us do.
If you have something to say regarding an article that another
Using your privilege to update the item itself with your opinion makes you look like an ass and undermines the democracy of the Slashdot moderations system.
They have done crime with computers.
Who have? Gates and Ballmer? The executive VPs? Hundreds of developers? All Microsoft employees, inclusing the potwashers in the cafeteria?
They have created software which is so faulty that it's caused losses to other people counted in the Billions of Dollars. ( The cost of time needed to clean up after all the viruses and worms. )
1. Microsoft never created and released a product called MS Virus, nor MS Worm.
2. The losses that are reported due to virus attacks are 80% bullshit.
They have charged hundreds and thousands of dollars for bits of plastic worth cents. That's a con job netting 40 Billion Dollars.
IIRC the value of the raw chemicals that make up the human body is under $20. Should people be allowed to kill whatever people they want, so long as they pay twenty bucks?
Value of raw materials is not a meaningful indicator of total value.
They are now demanding money from people on a regular basis to provide continued access to their programs. In my country that's called a protection racket.
My landlady demands hundreds of dollars from me every month to provide continued access to my apartment. In my country that's called a lease.
With .NET, the operating system is not as important as it once was.. in the future, a proper .NET program will run on any system that has a .NET compatible VM and the correct class libraries!
.NET Virtual Machines that will ever be 100% compatible with Office and other leading MS applications will be the one that Microsoft writes itself.
Funny, people were saying the same thing about Java five years ago.
The only
Do you honestly think Microsoft is going to maintain OS X or Linux/x86 versions of their VM with the same enthusiasm as their Windows VM's?
I think this is a really good tactic for the music industry to use in their struggle against P2P piracy. Yes, piracy.
No. Not piracy.
There are no laws on the books against "music piracy". Copyright infringment of recorded materials, well, that's another thing.
A meter (I'm American--that's how we spell it)
Funny -- I'm an American too, and I spell it Y-A-R-D...
What further frustrates me, are the posts where people are declaring that these big media co's need to update their antiquated business model; To what, I ask? How should they update it? and where else are they going to get their revenue?
You know what? That's not my problem. That's not the government's problem.
It's the media companies and the media companies alone that are responsible for discovering a business method that is profitable without driving their customers away.
"Is there a net decrease in aircraft safety during movements?"
Sure, the likelihood of accident increases when the air traffic controller is sitting on the toilet instead of in front of the radar screens, but that's true of EVERY traffic control system.
Optimally we would get something that comes in rolls and can be cut to size. Then you just stick a piece of fiber on it anywhere, and have it communicate with you optically. Every pixel should have its own driver circuit, and they should speak to one another with various shortcut buses woven throughout the material. It should also be capable of speaking to other pieces of the material if you make it overlap.
Oh, and it should also cost 5 cents per square mile and be capable of traveling through time and it should taste like candy when you lick it.
Um, sounds like your district alrady has a party that has a shot of winning -- the Republican party, which has steamrolled Mr. Goodlatte to victory over and over again.
I agree that voters should not suffer the constrictions of the two-party vote race, but it sounds to me that your district has already chosen a preferred representative in Congress. I'm sorry that he's not who you would have chosen.