This might be a good thing. If I pay a tax then it is specifically assumed that I have certain rights. I pay school tax so that my kids can go to public school (this may be a bad example). If I pay a tax based on copyright infringement, don't I then have the right to copy whatever I want whenever I want. IANAL but it seems like such a thing might make me immune to prosecution or civil damages (if part of the tax is turned over to the artist; labels, or associations.) Any lawyers want to comment.
The following is the true story behind microsoft signing their code:
I started this whole thing. I didn't really mean to, but it is my fault.
I used to work for a small company named Lockheed Martin. My job was to provide UNIX users with access to windows software. (office; exchange, whatever) I was migrating about 1000 users from Citrix Winframe 1.6(1.7) to Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition (WTS). I had been playing with this software since it came out in beta and had not had any (-relative) problems with it. Every thing tested well so I started to move production users to the new system. I had a few minor problems at first, but no big deal. One day out of the blue I started to get BSODs.(oops pun) I had not changed anything. So I could not figure out what the problem was. I called ms after about 3 months and a ton of live debugs, the determined that a problem existed with one of the print driver. I was told to download the latest version of said print driver. This solved my problem for about a week. Again and again the same thing kept happening. BSOD....Call ms....Live debug...Upgrade printer driver. Finally after talking to several ms people and having two really bright ms consultants on site, I discovered the real problem.
BACKGROUND
The whole multi-user thing is new to windows. (Yes I know UNIX has been doing this for a long time.) A company call CITRIX used Windows NT 3.51, plopped a multi user kernel on top and it worked. It was a great product. Well eventually they decided to upgrad this product to an NT 4.0 version. ms said your not licensed for that *smack smack smack* but I think were going to do it instead. ms licensed CITRIX tech and said "henceforth let this product be called WTS." What microsoft failed to realize was that the products (nt3.51 and 4.0) are fundamentally different. In 3.51 the print drivers are written in user mode. When you add multi-win (CITRIX multi user tech) to the 3.51 kernel, it separates the user space. When you print in this environment the print jobs are rendered by that users print driver process. This causes no problems with any 3.51 version of the print driver because it only sees print jobs printed in that single user space. NT 4.0 is different. It's print driver are written in kernel mode. Therefore the user spaces all share the same instance if the print driver. This is not a problem if there is only one user space (nt workstation) but, if multiple people try to print to the same driver at the same time and the print driver doesn't understand what is going on, the driver pukes. If a driver running in NT kernel mode pukes, the puke runs blue.
Were back
I told ms what I suspected and after several layers of management, they confirmed it. This process took 8 months. Their original solution was for me to test each print driver for compatibility. I explained with NT's trusted print driver model, this was sort of impossible. Their answer was service pack 4. SP4 gave you the ability to disable trusted driver. This was a step to fix our immediate problems. The real answer was to either rewrite the print process to be more forgiving of problem drivers of yank the print drivers out of the kernel. I was told and I quote "Windows 2000 will be out and February and the problem is fixed." I made several statement concerning Bill Gates mother and
explained to our account manager why a new release of a product doesn't fix a current products problems.
Anyway, since when this problem was discovered after win2k was pretty much written they decided the easiest thing to do was to test each print driver and sign it.
I think I have heard those ads. When I hear anything involving the BSA, my ears automatically close.
At the place that a use to work, a very large manufacturing plant with government contracts, we had a conversation directly with microsoft that went something like this:
Microsoft: This is insert TAM's name here. We want you to tell us if your are out of compliance with our software agreement.
Our rep: Well, to be honest with you we are really trying to stay compliant but, We have new machine coming in that come with licenses, department buying they're own licenses, a major OS upgrade we just complete, so, we really are not sure if we have accounted for every license we are using.
Microsoft: Well, sometimes its difficult to keep up. Thanks for your time. Have a nice day.
Actually what they would probably do is get a Lawyer to go to a judge and get a court
order (not a criminal search warrant) based on the fact that most licensing
agreement require you, if questioned, to prove that you own the software that you are
using and maybe an anonymous report of software piracy. At this point you would probably be ordered, by a judge and at you expense of course, to inventory your software and to show the proof of ownership to the lawyers of the BSA's satisfaction. At this point if you did not comply you could go to jail for violating the
judges order. If you did comply and you did not have proper licensing, you could be
sued, or the BSA could take the legally gather evidence to a federal prosecutor and get
them to charge you under criminal statutes.
IANAL but I play one on the NET
Re:bring on the race/gender card..
on
Should You Vote?
·
· Score: 1
I didn't realize I was stating any opinion here. So I will for the record state one. The Bill of rights is a perfect document. It adresses the issues for all times. These rights are for all citizens and can not legally be abridged. The law itself as upheld by the politically based supreme court has bastardized everything that this country stands for. I wish I had the answer to it all. The only way, it seems, that we will get those answers is to be put in the same situation our founding fathers were in. Our rights will have to become so abridged, that we can no longer stand the tyranny. We will at that time be forced to fight.
Re:Yes, I am a rocket scientist.
on
Should You Vote?
·
· Score: 1
Since we have the electoral college, the majority of your state decides. The electoral college is made up of people. Those people are NOT obligated to vote with the majority in a state.
Re:Why do you blindly follow the founders?
on
Should You Vote?
·
· Score: 1
The founders also though that black people are subhuman, and that women should not vote.
This is an historically inacurate statement. The vast majority of the delegates thought that all people including those of African decscent should be protected by and given full right under the Bill of Rights. Even most of the colonies that had slave based economies at the time agreed. There were two or three delegates who refused to sign if blacks were given rights. The delegates at the time decided that the vote must be unanamous so a horible politicle compromise was made.
The real issue is not whether the company is responsible for their employees behavior
The reality is that lawyers go after the companies because, me friends, that is where
the money is. And as everybody knows, Money is what makes the monkey dance. Dem is the real rules of the game. You might then ask, "gb, Why do the laws agree with this false assumption of guilt by employment?" Probably because the people who make the most money off of this kind of crap, THE LAWYERS, are the ones who make the laws.
I reeeeealy hate to defend Microsoft on this one.
But, This is not a vulnerablility. Just like it was not in RedHats case. How stupid do you have to be, as an admin, to leave a password as it is when it is installed? Not on my routers Not on my Servers Not on my bicycle combination lock. This blank SA password has been the way it is, atleast since SQL6.5 and probably since way before that. If you are to stupid to lockup your valuable, I have a hard time feeling sorry for your loss. Why doesn't someone take some personal GodDamn responsibily in this world. Bunch of crybaby losers make me wants puke.
Using this logic....Would the cd writer, the cd and the computer be 'piracy-assisting technology'
Or for that matter the desk that the computer sits on.
The chair the person sits in.. the floor the desk sits on.
The house the desk sits in. The land the house sits on.......The Univere. Come on people
Re:Random ramblings-REALITY CHECK
on
Selfish Society
·
· Score: 1
"our society worked just fine without the aid of computers and whatnot and will continue to do so if all computers up and vanished..."
You are quite correct in saying that our society worked "fine." What you left out was that it worked fine for the time. Without computers today unemployment would be the least of our problems.
Computers don't just play cool games like CIV.
Computer make our society(economic, political, environmental and industrial) function.
The argument could be made that we could go back to less techy times but you would probably have to go back to sharpening your straight razor with a leather strap, or having your kids die from cholera or small pox.
"Not likely to ever happen because technologists have managed to make people fairly dependent on computers and whatnot."
This is a lot like saying everyone is dependant on electricity or the internal combustion engine. While the dependency it true; no individual or group of individuals made it true. It came to be cause it was the next step in our socioeconomic development.
"Everyone still learns math and writing and reading in school so that we can subsist without the aid of that computer or high speed comm line to pass our info to another. "
I am not sure what you were taught in school, but other than basic math, things like algebra, trig and calculus where taught, not so you were able to do algebra, trig and calculus for the rest of your life, but to teach you to think logically and to be able solve problems.
"What will we do when all the lights go out? "
I for one will wait for the computer to kick on the back up generator. And while I'm waiting I'm going to be playing Civ on my Lithium ion powered laptop.
Its not so much the reality checks you have to worry about. Its those damn reality credit cards.
Slashdot Mirror
This might be a good thing. If I pay a tax then it is specifically assumed that I have certain rights. I pay school tax so that my kids can go to public school (this may be a bad example). If I pay a tax based on copyright infringement, don't I then have the right to copy whatever I want whenever I want. IANAL but it seems like such a thing might make me immune to prosecution or civil damages (if part of the tax is turned over to the artist; labels, or associations.) Any lawyers want to comment.
The following is the true story behind microsoft signing their code:
I started this whole thing. I didn't really mean to, but it is my fault.
I used to work for a small company named Lockheed Martin. My job was to provide UNIX users with access to windows software. (office; exchange, whatever) I was migrating about 1000 users from Citrix Winframe 1.6(1.7) to Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition (WTS). I had been playing with this software since it came out in beta and had not had any (-relative) problems with it. Every thing tested well so I started to move production users to the new system. I had a few minor problems at first, but no big deal. One day out of the blue I started to get BSODs.(oops pun) I had not changed anything. So I could not figure out what the problem was. I called ms after about 3 months and a ton of live debugs, the determined that a problem existed with one of the print driver. I was told to download the latest version of said print driver. This solved my problem for about a week. Again and again the same thing kept happening. BSOD....Call ms....Live debug...Upgrade printer driver. Finally after talking to several ms people and having two really bright ms consultants on site, I discovered the real problem.
BACKGROUND
The whole multi-user thing is new to windows. (Yes I know UNIX has been doing this for a long time.) A company call CITRIX used Windows NT 3.51, plopped a multi user kernel on top and it worked. It was a great product. Well eventually they decided to upgrad this product to an NT 4.0 version. ms said your not licensed for that *smack smack smack* but I think were going to do it instead. ms licensed CITRIX tech and said "henceforth let this product be called WTS." What microsoft failed to realize was that the products (nt3.51 and 4.0) are fundamentally different. In 3.51 the print drivers are written in user mode. When you add multi-win (CITRIX multi user tech) to the 3.51 kernel, it separates the user space. When you print in this environment the print jobs are rendered by that users print driver process. This causes no problems with any 3.51 version of the print driver because it only sees print jobs printed in that single user space. NT 4.0 is different. It's print driver are written in kernel mode. Therefore the user spaces all share the same instance if the print driver. This is not a problem if there is only one user space (nt workstation) but, if multiple people try to print to the same driver at the same time and the print driver doesn't understand what is going on, the driver pukes. If a driver running in NT kernel mode pukes, the puke runs blue.
Were back
I told ms what I suspected and after several layers of management, they confirmed it. This process took 8 months. Their original solution was for me to test each print driver for compatibility. I explained with NT's trusted print driver model, this was sort of impossible. Their answer was service pack 4. SP4 gave you the ability to disable trusted driver. This was a step to fix our immediate problems. The real answer was to either rewrite the print process to be more forgiving of problem drivers of yank the print drivers out of the kernel. I was told and I quote "Windows 2000 will be out and February and the problem is fixed." I made several statement concerning Bill Gates mother and
explained to our account manager why a new release of a product doesn't fix a current products problems.
Anyway, since when this problem was discovered after win2k was pretty much written they decided the easiest thing to do was to test each print driver and sign it.
I am sorry that was so long.. Any question???
me
I think I have heard those ads. When I hear anything involving the BSA, my ears automatically close.
At the place that a use to work, a very large manufacturing plant with government contracts, we had a conversation directly with microsoft that went something like this:
Microsoft: This is insert TAM's name here. We want you to tell us if your are out of compliance with our software agreement.
Our rep: Well, to be honest with you we are really trying to stay compliant but, We have new machine coming in that come with licenses, department buying they're own licenses, a major OS upgrade we just complete, so, we really are not sure if we have accounted for every license we are using.
Microsoft: Well, sometimes its difficult to keep up. Thanks for your time. Have a nice day.
We never heard anything about this issue again.
Actually what they would probably do is get a Lawyer to go to a judge and get a court
order (not a criminal search warrant) based on the fact that most licensing
agreement require you, if questioned, to prove that you own the software that you are
using and maybe an anonymous report of software piracy. At this point you would
probably be ordered, by a judge and at you expense of course, to inventory your software
and to show the proof of ownership to the lawyers of the BSA's
satisfaction. At this point if you did not comply you could go to jail for violating the
judges order. If you did comply and you did not have proper licensing, you could be
sued, or the BSA could take the legally gather evidence to a federal prosecutor and get
them to charge you under criminal statutes.
IANAL but I play one on the NET
I didn't realize I was stating any opinion here. So I will for the record state one. The Bill of rights is a perfect document. It adresses the issues for all times. These rights are for all citizens and can not legally be abridged. The law itself as upheld by the politically based supreme court has bastardized everything that this country stands for. I wish I had the answer to it all. The only way, it seems, that we will get those answers is to be put in the same situation our founding fathers were in. Our rights will have to become so abridged, that we can no longer stand the tyranny. We will at that time be forced to fight.
Since we have the electoral college, the majority of your state decides .
The electoral college is made up of people. Those people are NOT obligated to vote with the majority in a state.
The founders also though that black people are subhuman, and that women should not vote.
This is an historically inacurate statement. The vast majority of the delegates thought that all
people including those of African decscent should be protected by and given full right
under the Bill of Rights. Even most of the colonies that had slave based economies at the time agreed.
There were two or three delegates who refused to sign if blacks were given rights.
The delegates at the time decided that the vote must be unanamous so a horible politicle compromise was made.
Just a point of fac. The DOJ doesn't make laws. The most they can do is lobby for legislation.
A friendly reminder that nothing but stupidy supercedes the constitution.
right under DMCA. Isn't that just incredibly sad?
I think though a good point is made. If they concentrate on the website they could
probably pay the bills with AD revenues.
Remeber the phrase "No matter where you go. There you are."
We're here!
The reality is that lawyers go after the companies because, me friends, that is where
the money is. And as everybody knows, Money is what makes the monkey dance.
Dem is the real rules of the game. You might then ask, "gb, Why do the laws agree with this
false assumption of guilt by employment?" Probably because the people who make the most
money off of this kind of crap, THE LAWYERS, are the ones who make the laws.
not in RedHats case. How stupid do you have to be, as an admin, to leave a password as it
is when it is installed?
Not on my routers
Not on my Servers
Not on my bicycle combination lock.
This blank SA password has been the way it is, atleast since
SQL6.5 and probably since way before that. If you are to stupid to lockup your valuable, I have a hard time feeling sorry for your loss.
Why doesn't someone take some personal GodDamn responsibily in this world. Bunch of
crybaby losers make me wants puke.
What is that? is that hair gel?
Using this logic....Would the cd writer, the cd and the computer be 'piracy-assisting technology'
Or for that matter the desk that the computer sits on.
The chair the person sits in.. the floor the desk sits on.
The house the desk sits in. The land the house sits on.......The Univere. Come on people
You are quite correct in saying that our society worked "fine." What you left out was that it worked fine for the time. Without computers today unemployment would be the least of our problems.
Computers don't just play cool games like CIV.
Computer make our society(economic, political, environmental and industrial) function.
The argument could be made that we could go back to less techy times but you would probably have to go back to sharpening your straight razor with a leather strap, or having your kids die from cholera or small pox.
"Not likely to ever happen because technologists have managed to make people fairly dependent on computers and whatnot."
This is a lot like saying everyone is dependant on electricity or the internal combustion engine. While the dependency it true; no individual or group of individuals made it true. It came to be cause it was the next step in our socioeconomic development.
"Everyone still learns math and writing and reading in school so that we can subsist without the aid of that computer or high speed comm line to pass our info to another. "
I am not sure what you were taught in school, but other than basic math, things like algebra, trig and calculus where taught, not so you were able to do algebra, trig and calculus for the rest of your life, but to teach you to think logically and to be able solve problems.
"What will we do when all the lights go out? "
I for one will wait for the computer to kick on the back up generator. And while I'm waiting I'm going to be playing Civ on my Lithium ion powered laptop.
Its not so much the reality checks you have to worry about. Its those damn reality credit cards.
Just as a single amoral or immoral juror could. These need to be screened for too. ' Maybe the rack.. no signature required