Windows 8 certainly won't require it, that much has already been made clear - and MS wouldn't want to make it impossible for existing users to upgrades. The only thing that requires it is the Designed for Windows 8 sticker, which all windows-selling OEMs need because it entitles them to OEM price for preinstalled windows and looks great in advertising. It's possible that a future version of Windows could require it, but that's quite a few years ahead.
They could... or, more realistically, they might just not *bother* to include an option to disable the windows-eight-only lock. After all, somewhere around 1% of their customers are going to want to run non-Microsoft OSs, hardly a thriving market. Scarcely worth the cost of having someone program, test and document another option in the setup program.
Or maybe when Windows Ten comes out, Microsoft will demand that the windows-only-lock will be fixed on... as a security feature, of course, to prevent future supermalware from disabling it.
Most users have no idea what a wifi adaptor is. They just buy the PC from one OEM or another, and are happy to find it works out the box. They'd be very happy that they don't have to worry about drivers, if they knew what drivers were.
Intel: We've invented a new technology that can be used to prevent low-level malware from being loaded during the pre-kernel boot process, when conventional antimalware techniques are ineffective. It could also be used by a manufacturer to prevent the user from installing any unapproved OS, as from a technological standpoint this functionality is identical to blocking malware, but that isn't what we designed it for.
Microsoft: Oh, that sounds fun. Ok, all OEMs: If you want to ship with the 'windows 8' logo which everyone is going to want soon, you need to include support for this and it must be enabled by default. You will have to include Windows 8 on the trust list, but anything else you need to block as it may be malware. You can give the user the ability to turn this feature off and install non-Windows OSs if you want, but we don't really care.
Linux supporters: But that means that unless an OEM has explicitly taken the trouble to install a feature that few users will even know of, it'll be impossible for us to use any OS except Windows - most seriously on laptops, where we can't build our own.
Microsoft: Not our problem! Take it up with the OEMs. We're only mandating that they install linux-blocking capability, we're not asking them to actually use it.
Throughout this, the OEMs have remained silent on the issue.
A matter of lazyness. Imagine you come up with a new super-awesome idea worth millions. You have two options.
1. Sell it to the highest bidder. You'll get a million or so. You're not going to be one of the mega-wealthy on that, but you can retire early and live a life of comfortable luxury.
2. Found a business. Now you can be one of the mega-wealthy, but only if you have business savvy, and legal knowledge, and a bit of luck. You'll also spend the next few decades in meetings, running your new company. You do get to life in decadent luxury when you're not busy working, and you get enough money to do some serious dabbling in politics or philoanthropy.
So it comes down to a simple question of which is more important: Modest wealth but a life without work, or risking it to become much wealthier?
In the case of this prize though, DARPA just isn't offering enough. Tech worth that much? Put the patent on eBay. I'm sure someone will pay a lot more.
I would guess that chemical pulping machines require some paperwork in themselves. Caustic chemicals like that must need all manner of health and safety assessments and someone qualified to handle them, even if that means just emptying a bottle into the hole every week. Alternatively you could have them done in an of-site facility, but then you have to deal with secure transport too. Shredders are very convenient - just supply electricity and they work. Incinerators only a little less so.
I know the event you are thinking of, and it was actually China. Just about the whole world complained about it because of the additional space junk produced, but... China is a superpower, not a lot you can do to stop them.
Yes, IBM suffered heavily. So heavily that today it's one of the most successful technology companies around, still manufactures computers and is *the* company to go to for high-performance computing.
Politician: "I'm going to propose a bill requiring search engines return impartial results, and arn't allowed to return results for piracy or pornography."
I can think of two explanations for this. Firstly, it might be that the authors know that DNS blocking is trivially easy to bypass via hosts file. Secondly, and in my cynical oppinion far more likely, the authors don't actually know what DNS does.
It's not just about money though. The various entertainment industry representative groups are some of the most skilled legal and lobbying groups around today. They are just really good at it, far more skilled than even the giant of the tech industry. They may not have as much money, but they can make it count.
Preagrement. You can tag data onto the end of a jpeg easily.
1. Take really-high-resolution photo.
2. Compress the hell out of it, so it's only 100k. It'll look horrible, but that's ok. It only has to be good enough to pass a quick inspection.
3. Add symmetrically encrypted music file. I hope Vorbis, because MP3 sucks.
4. Post.
Now all you need is for your friends to know what it is. Easiest way is to just tell your trusted followers the key, give the the extraction program and tell them to feed any large images you post into it.
It could be argued that modern copyright has come so far from what it was back then, it's ceased to even be the same form of law. The original term in the US was fourteen years - now it's the life of the author, and seventy more years after that. Whole new forms of media are copyrighted that didn't exist back then. Technology has changed the notion of what copying even means.
The internet will be as the people who run it want it to be. There are many organisations who run it though, all of them with different agendas. They will fight over what the internet should be, just as they have since DARPA let the first university in, and just as they are today.
Would be amusing if they used a vhost shared by some very popular site... can't block that by IP. BT might be able to do something with DNS block (Easily cirumvented), or may have to resort to adapting their Cleanfeed anti-child-porn filter, which does have that capability via transparent HTTP proxying.
It'll become both. The internet will split - the controled, Disneyfied internet for the majority of people, all heavily policed, tracked and filtered. The internet of corporate governance. Then there will be the internet of the geeks, hidden in lower-level protocols and encryted connections, accessible only to those will the will and skill to find it.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows 8 certainly won't require it, that much has already been made clear - and MS wouldn't want to make it impossible for existing users to upgrades. The only thing that requires it is the Designed for Windows 8 sticker, which all windows-selling OEMs need because it entitles them to OEM price for preinstalled windows and looks great in advertising. It's possible that a future version of Windows could require it, but that's quite a few years ahead.
An actual qualified scientist posting on Slashdot?
I'm surprised.
They could... or, more realistically, they might just not *bother* to include an option to disable the windows-eight-only lock. After all, somewhere around 1% of their customers are going to want to run non-Microsoft OSs, hardly a thriving market. Scarcely worth the cost of having someone program, test and document another option in the setup program.
Or maybe when Windows Ten comes out, Microsoft will demand that the windows-only-lock will be fixed on... as a security feature, of course, to prevent future supermalware from disabling it.
Most users have no idea what a wifi adaptor is. They just buy the PC from one OEM or another, and are happy to find it works out the box. They'd be very happy that they don't have to worry about drivers, if they knew what drivers were.
I imagine it'll go like the last one. Microsoft will be fined tens of millions of dollars... after making billions.
Intel: We've invented a new technology that can be used to prevent low-level malware from being loaded during the pre-kernel boot process, when conventional antimalware techniques are ineffective. It could also be used by a manufacturer to prevent the user from installing any unapproved OS, as from a technological standpoint this functionality is identical to blocking malware, but that isn't what we designed it for.
Microsoft: Oh, that sounds fun. Ok, all OEMs: If you want to ship with the 'windows 8' logo which everyone is going to want soon, you need to include support for this and it must be enabled by default. You will have to include Windows 8 on the trust list, but anything else you need to block as it may be malware. You can give the user the ability to turn this feature off and install non-Windows OSs if you want, but we don't really care.
Linux supporters: But that means that unless an OEM has explicitly taken the trouble to install a feature that few users will even know of, it'll be impossible for us to use any OS except Windows - most seriously on laptops, where we can't build our own.
Microsoft: Not our problem! Take it up with the OEMs. We're only mandating that they install linux-blocking capability, we're not asking them to actually use it.
Throughout this, the OEMs have remained silent on the issue.
Correction: *Two* sheet fed image scanners. One on top, one underneath. Unless you have some way to flip every piece to the correct orientation.
A matter of lazyness. Imagine you come up with a new super-awesome idea worth millions. You have two options.
1. Sell it to the highest bidder. You'll get a million or so. You're not going to be one of the mega-wealthy on that, but you can retire early and live a life of comfortable luxury.
2. Found a business. Now you can be one of the mega-wealthy, but only if you have business savvy, and legal knowledge, and a bit of luck. You'll also spend the next few decades in meetings, running your new company. You do get to life in decadent luxury when you're not busy working, and you get enough money to do some serious dabbling in politics or philoanthropy.
So it comes down to a simple question of which is more important: Modest wealth but a life without work, or risking it to become much wealthier?
In the case of this prize though, DARPA just isn't offering enough. Tech worth that much? Put the patent on eBay. I'm sure someone will pay a lot more.
I would guess that chemical pulping machines require some paperwork in themselves. Caustic chemicals like that must need all manner of health and safety assessments and someone qualified to handle them, even if that means just emptying a bottle into the hole every week. Alternatively you could have them done in an of-site facility, but then you have to deal with secure transport too. Shredders are very convenient - just supply electricity and they work. Incinerators only a little less so.
Those two countries were seriously mismatched. Being proud of defeating Iraq and Afganistan is like being proud of beating up someone in a wheelchair.
I know the event you are thinking of, and it was actually China. Just about the whole world complained about it because of the additional space junk produced, but... China is a superpower, not a lot you can do to stop them.
Yes, IBM suffered heavily. So heavily that today it's one of the most successful technology companies around, still manufactures computers and is *the* company to go to for high-performance computing.
The IBM PC. Success directly attributable to the unauthorised, much cheaper and entirely compatible clones.
Fight it with technology. If the law censors sites, invent ways to decensor them, or refocus piracy in a way less reliant on the web.
Politician: "I'm going to propose a bill requiring search engines return impartial results, and arn't allowed to return results for piracy or pornography."
They even get to pick who is invited to those debates.
I can think of two explanations for this. Firstly, it might be that the authors know that DNS blocking is trivially easy to bypass via hosts file. Secondly, and in my cynical oppinion far more likely, the authors don't actually know what DNS does.
It's not just about money though. The various entertainment industry representative groups are some of the most skilled legal and lobbying groups around today. They are just really good at it, far more skilled than even the giant of the tech industry. They may not have as much money, but they can make it count.
Preagrement. You can tag data onto the end of a jpeg easily.
1. Take really-high-resolution photo.
2. Compress the hell out of it, so it's only 100k. It'll look horrible, but that's ok. It only has to be good enough to pass a quick inspection.
3. Add symmetrically encrypted music file. I hope Vorbis, because MP3 sucks.
4. Post.
Now all you need is for your friends to know what it is. Easiest way is to just tell your trusted followers the key, give the the extraction program and tell them to feed any large images you post into it.
It could be argued that modern copyright has come so far from what it was back then, it's ceased to even be the same form of law. The original term in the US was fourteen years - now it's the life of the author, and seventy more years after that. Whole new forms of media are copyrighted that didn't exist back then. Technology has changed the notion of what copying even means.
The internet will be as the people who run it want it to be. There are many organisations who run it though, all of them with different agendas. They will fight over what the internet should be, just as they have since DARPA let the first university in, and just as they are today.
A particually large JPEG file could easily be used to hide a novel or a few minutes of music inside.
They are too sensible to sue Google. They'll save their lawyers for the startup companies that might be a threat in future years.
Would be amusing if they used a vhost shared by some very popular site... can't block that by IP. BT might be able to do something with DNS block (Easily cirumvented), or may have to resort to adapting their Cleanfeed anti-child-porn filter, which does have that capability via transparent HTTP proxying.
It'll become both. The internet will split - the controled, Disneyfied internet for the majority of people, all heavily policed, tracked and filtered. The internet of corporate governance. Then there will be the internet of the geeks, hidden in lower-level protocols and encryted connections, accessible only to those will the will and skill to find it.