Re:Legislation to open XP source for "software OEM
on
The End is Nigh for XP
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· Score: 1
Software are not cars. What you are arguing is that when a car model goes out of sale as the new one is available, the manufacturer either continue selling it against their will, or release their IP so others can build that model, also against their will. It is not the consumers right to purchase an end-of-lifed product.
XP will no longer be sold by OEMs, but will still be supported on existing installations, or new ones where the user had a valid license, etc.
In the automotive world, no one get up in arms that you can't be a last generation BMW anymore as the new generation is the current line, so why should it be any different for software? It's not like support is ending, just OEM installations.
All crypotgraphic methods are to buy time. Some buy more, some buy less. The balance is to find the method that buys you enough time, that by the time it is circumvented, the information it is protecting is no longer useful.
Using a hidden key buys you a little time. Using AES with a strong key buys you a lot of time.
They can't? What's this Vista that's been running on this box with no crashes since...(let me check the build number)...August 18th. Yeah, I haven't upgraded to RTM yet, but that's because I don't have time and everything has been working just fine.
You are correct, the internet is cheap and is a good resource for learning. I will disagree with you that your college tuition only gets you lectures with 300 other students.
Given that you go to a respected school, you get a lot more. Those other students become your colleagues in your field. The professors that teach those classes are respected members of their fields. The social networking possible at a university is one of the biggest oppertunities you will have of your life. The other big take away from a university is the knowledge on *how* to function in your field, not so much what to do in it. Yes, those skills can be picked up from theoretical and practical knowledge, but the density at which you are exposed to theory and practice at the university is phenomenal.
Say you want to be a bio chemist. You can read all the material you want on the web and learn a lot. When you apply for a grant, or to work for a company, you'll not look as good a candidate as a student who spent countless hours in an actual lab, handling the samples and doing the research.
Say you want to be a novelist. You can read all the novels you want, write all the novels you want, and you will develope your style and skill. You'll do it much faster if you are studying in person under a Nobel winning novelist who gives you personal feedback on your writing and talking with other students about their work and feedback.
Say you want to be a computer programmer. Well, that's one where the internet is a pretty good source on. Working on open source applications will ready you for many future tasks. None the less, having a Knuth or Rivest teaching your class can give you better oppertunity. You might show them a new algorithm you've been working on but haven't quite figured out what to use it for, or how to make it efficient. They can take your work, share it with other thinkers in the field, and figure out that you've had that breakthrough idea that's been holding up something they've been thinking about. Next think you know, you've co-published a paper with them and had your name bandied about the web as a repsected source on that topic.
Not saying college is necessary, but don't fool yourself that the tuition is a waste, there are some vast oppertunities to be had there, regardless your field, so long as you are there with the right mindset and open to them.
This is the best idea I've read on Slashdot in months. It's the perfect place to apply concepts from the semantic web to a project that can realy impact information exchange. Now, if only I had more time...
You call it a donation, but that's not what it is. It's a subsidy. No entity has the requirement to be altruistic. If one entity chooses to subsidize something and place restrictions, that's their perogative.
Are you arguing that those with money be forced to provide, without restrictions, their financing to those without? It sounds a bit like the communist credo.
While, I agree that it's vile and disgusting to provide subsidized machines in exchange for forced ad viewing, I certinaly hope it doesn't become illegal to place resitrictions on things you fund. What I hope for, is that another entity one-ups and provides capable machines at a decent cost to those that could benefit from them, and not place restrictions. In fact, there are entities that do just that. Were I a school, I'd go with one of them first. Incidentilly they also run Linux. Choices are good. When one entity provides something that's not to your liking, go with another (or form another), do not force them to do what you want through laws that restrict their freedom, because that's just as bad as them restricting your freedom.
Running advertisements opens up a whole can of worms as to the policies as to which ads get shown for which pages. When you are providing society a data source that aims to be impartial, brining in funds from biased sources always is a cause for concern. While it *is* a solution, they are doing the wise thing and trying more apt solutions first.
While I think this is vile and disgusting, it should not be illegal.
They front money, they let you use the machine, in exchange they want you to look at the ads that they are selling to recoup their up front costs, they enforce the deal and pull the computer if you don't do as asked.
Yeah, that really sucks, it's a stupid deal, and a dumb way of enforcing it. We can come up with better than that. But, your freedom is not being messed with. You *choose* to use the subsidized computer where you have to watch ads. You have other choices: you could front the money yourself and have free reign on how to use the machine for example.
If you lease a car, they restrict what you can do with it, because it's not your car. They own it, they put restrictions on it, you get a cheaper deal (well, not if you plan on owning the car, but CTO for the time period it's usually cheaper). You could spend more, buy the car, and do what you want with it.
I finance an item, say item X. I let you use it with restriction Y. You like this deal, because item X is ridiculously expensive. You break the deal, I find out. I tell you, deals off. Why should that be illegal?!
"The performance on vista(sic) for games is abysmal to say the least"
That's a false statement. I play Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Never Winter Nights 2, Paradise, and Civilization 4 on my Vista machine. Every single one of those games runs the same or better as when the machine was running XP.
Perhaps you'd like to qualify your statement more. "The performance of X game with Y hardware on Vista is abysmal", might be a true statement. Making a blanket statement like that, where there are counter examples is just plain irresponsible.
Heh, interesting, I'm currently running Vista on a 3Ghz processor, 2GB RAM, and Geforce 6 series something, and it runs faster than XP. My TabletPC has a 2Ghz processor, 1GB RAM, and a Geforce Go something, and it runs Vista as fast as XP. Not sure what problem you are having, but it might not be related to the OS.
Funny how you resort to GMT (as opposed to UTC) to try to be worldly and all, yet list MMDDYY for your date, which is really kind of a localized representation.
First off, you might want to look "non sequitur" up in a dictionary.
Second off, not having gotten around to doing something does not make one a hypocrite. If this event is a sign of their zeitgeist, then it will be a while before they identify all of the tasks necessary to fulfill their dream. It could very well be that they extend their reasoning beyond iTunes and realize that it actually doesn't make sense in the grand scheme of things and that they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater and back peddle on their decision and try to find a better, more reasonable solution to their woes about DRM. In any case, not doing everything that needs to be done in one day does not make them hypocrites.
Really 20%?! My Athalon 64 3200+ is using about 3% CPU for the search indexer background process (not usually indexing depending on how I set my power profiles depending on my current needs, I run it when actively using the machine and plugged into a wall outlet) and not much else. Turning off the search indexer has my task manager toggle between 0% and 2% (when taskmgr updates). Are there occasional spikes when the indexer *is* running and fetches a chunck of data, sure, but that's not idleing at 20%, that's a process processing.
Actually, Beta 5 started today. No more NDA and it's pretty easy to get in. Not quite "open" in the traditional sense, but no very closed either.
My system is hardly high-end and I get 30fps everywhere I've been in game on highest settings. Granted I haven't tried higher than 1280x1024 resolutions since that's my LCD's native, but I would hardly call that running like a pig.
"I mean, have you ever tried to *use* Visual Studio? Because, I *have*, just a little, and it only comes across as pleasant to use if you compare it to something out of the fifties, like perhaps punchcards. It makes development tools from the seventies (like Emacs for instance) seem by comparison like the best thing since indoor plumbing."
You know that sounds just like "throwing out such a broad statement without qualification or supporting rationale," which you say in the same post "is not what I would call a hallmark of sound reasoning."
First a little about my use of VS and Emacs. I currently split my time between both VS and Emacs, about 80%/20%. Despite this, I still have used Emacs about five times as much as VS. I never use the VS debugger, as windbg has greater extensibility, easier remote capability, and kernel debugging. I use the VS compiler from a command line build environment. I only really use the VS editor and code browser. It's far from the best tool I've used, but it does what it intends to do quite well.
I'm not very clear why it is that you don't like Visual Studio. You only used it a little yet you can say nothing that you dislike about it beyond a few cute similies. I guess I'm just a bit saddened that someone tauting objective thinking is blinded enough by the technologies he chose for his projects that he or she can't even make a coherent comparison with another technology without resulting to unsupported namecalling. I only wish that the engineers of this world don't follow in your footsteps and think a bit for themselves.
What's wrong with apt-get is that my mother would need to be shown more than once to get it to the point where she can use it on her own without calling me. So, while there is nothing inherently wrong with it in general, it's a poor tool for the purpose discussed here.
Are you absolutely convinced that you did not determine the location of the washroom because you have been in countless restaurants, diners, and other public eateries in the past and built up a pretty comprehensive pattern of typical washroom locations in such establishments? I mean, finding a washroom at a diner isn't excatly so challenging as to require having specific knowledge about that particular instance of a diner.
I don't think you got MY point. I never said that the employee was entitled. I was saying that it's actually in the company's best interest to keep your salary competitive lest they loose you. And what's in the company's best interest is in the employee's best interest. And in this particular case what's in the employee's best interest is in the company's best interest.
For example, employee A is unhappy getting $40k when everyone is getting $45k a year. The employee can mention this to his or her manager, citing that the going rate for N years of experience is $45k in that area in that field, etc. The employee is not entitled to that, and I never said he or she was. They are entitled to be unhappy though, as that's their choice. Now, the manager has two responses: I'll conceed to you or I won't. If they don't and the employee leaves, it'll cost the company more than $5k to find, train, and aclimate a replacement. So even though the employee is not entitled to that $5k, it makes business sense to give raises when the market for that position changes. It's just cheaper in the long run. Even getting someone with N-1 years of experience at $38k might be more expensive in the long run if it takes them 3-6 months to ramp up ($19k spent doing that there) and a year later thay have experience which would have a going rate of $45k a year (once again faced with either upping the rate to $45k or losing another one and repeating the process).
It's not about entitlement, it's about business sense.
I'm sorry, but although your argument is valid for the case when current employee A has a rate of $800k and N years of experience and prospective employee B has a rate of $40k and N-1 years of experience, it falls short in the reality. In reality the comparisons are more like $74k with 5 years experience or $72k with 4 years experience. It really is cheaper for a company to pay you $2k more per year then lose you and replace you.
"This logic would make it seem that a Ford Temp is a better car than a Lotus Elise since the Lotus doesn't have AC or a Stereo."
Well, I think you hit the nail on the head here. For some people the Ford Temp (sic) *is* a better car than the Lotus Elise because it has a feature that's critical to the particular problem they are trying to solve. Perhaps that feature is the AC because they live in an ungodly climate, or the radio because they sit in traffic for an hour a day and would be bored silly otherwise, or the price tag because spending their home's downpayment on a commuter vehicle is just plain irresponsible, or they have two children and need a car with more seats, or a miriad of other reasons.
It's really very hard to make blanket statements that tool X is a better tool than tool Y. It realy depends on its application.
Is OOo better than Office because it does not have export to PDF? For some uses, yes, but I'll bet that OOo doesn't have half the data anaysis tools in Excel that make my work quick and painless. (I haven't used it in years as when I did try it it was "missing" many of the features I found critical, but maybe the current version caught up; someone will jump in and correct me I'm sure).
Um, my phone, which is now pretty old, has this functionality. I can turn the radio off but keep the phone one so that I can use the PDA in flight, etc.
I think your analogy is flawed. Patton authorizing a US spy agency to tap the communications of the German military on foreign soil is quit a different animal than George W Bush authorizing a US spy agency with no jurisdiction within our borders tapping the communication of US citizens without getting a warrent. If they suspect someone and have anything more than a vague hunch, any judge will gladly issue a warrent for them to further investigate within hours or minutes. I understand you don't have a problem with the government rattling a sabre and then using that excuse to curtail any and all of our freedoms with no real process in place (which a warrent provides if the government does do something fishy it shouldn't), but then really you have no business saying that those who respect those freedoms for which America is (or was) known as a bastion are absolutely silly.
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Software are not cars. What you are arguing is that when a car model goes out of sale as the new one is available, the manufacturer either continue selling it against their will, or release their IP so others can build that model, also against their will. It is not the consumers right to purchase an end-of-lifed product.
XP will no longer be sold by OEMs, but will still be supported on existing installations, or new ones where the user had a valid license, etc.
In the automotive world, no one get up in arms that you can't be a last generation BMW anymore as the new generation is the current line, so why should it be any different for software? It's not like support is ending, just OEM installations.
All crypotgraphic methods are to buy time. Some buy more, some buy less. The balance is to find the method that buys you enough time, that by the time it is circumvented, the information it is protecting is no longer useful.
Using a hidden key buys you a little time. Using AES with a strong key buys you a lot of time.
Are you an AI? I think you may need service.
They can't? What's this Vista that's been running on this box with no crashes since...(let me check the build number)...August 18th. Yeah, I haven't upgraded to RTM yet, but that's because I don't have time and everything has been working just fine.
Drivers, now that's a different story.
You are correct, the internet is cheap and is a good resource for learning. I will disagree with you that your college tuition only gets you lectures with 300 other students.
Given that you go to a respected school, you get a lot more. Those other students become your colleagues in your field. The professors that teach those classes are respected members of their fields. The social networking possible at a university is one of the biggest oppertunities you will have of your life. The other big take away from a university is the knowledge on *how* to function in your field, not so much what to do in it. Yes, those skills can be picked up from theoretical and practical knowledge, but the density at which you are exposed to theory and practice at the university is phenomenal.
Say you want to be a bio chemist. You can read all the material you want on the web and learn a lot. When you apply for a grant, or to work for a company, you'll not look as good a candidate as a student who spent countless hours in an actual lab, handling the samples and doing the research.
Say you want to be a novelist. You can read all the novels you want, write all the novels you want, and you will develope your style and skill. You'll do it much faster if you are studying in person under a Nobel winning novelist who gives you personal feedback on your writing and talking with other students about their work and feedback.
Say you want to be a computer programmer. Well, that's one where the internet is a pretty good source on. Working on open source applications will ready you for many future tasks. None the less, having a Knuth or Rivest teaching your class can give you better oppertunity. You might show them a new algorithm you've been working on but haven't quite figured out what to use it for, or how to make it efficient. They can take your work, share it with other thinkers in the field, and figure out that you've had that breakthrough idea that's been holding up something they've been thinking about. Next think you know, you've co-published a paper with them and had your name bandied about the web as a repsected source on that topic.
Not saying college is necessary, but don't fool yourself that the tuition is a waste, there are some vast oppertunities to be had there, regardless your field, so long as you are there with the right mindset and open to them.
This is the best idea I've read on Slashdot in months. It's the perfect place to apply concepts from the semantic web to a project that can realy impact information exchange. Now, if only I had more time...
You call it a donation, but that's not what it is. It's a subsidy. No entity has the requirement to be altruistic. If one entity chooses to subsidize something and place restrictions, that's their perogative.
Are you arguing that those with money be forced to provide, without restrictions, their financing to those without? It sounds a bit like the communist credo.
While, I agree that it's vile and disgusting to provide subsidized machines in exchange for forced ad viewing, I certinaly hope it doesn't become illegal to place resitrictions on things you fund. What I hope for, is that another entity one-ups and provides capable machines at a decent cost to those that could benefit from them, and not place restrictions. In fact, there are entities that do just that. Were I a school, I'd go with one of them first. Incidentilly they also run Linux. Choices are good. When one entity provides something that's not to your liking, go with another (or form another), do not force them to do what you want through laws that restrict their freedom, because that's just as bad as them restricting your freedom.
Running advertisements opens up a whole can of worms as to the policies as to which ads get shown for which pages. When you are providing society a data source that aims to be impartial, brining in funds from biased sources always is a cause for concern. While it *is* a solution, they are doing the wise thing and trying more apt solutions first.
While I think this is vile and disgusting, it should not be illegal.
They front money, they let you use the machine, in exchange they want you to look at the ads that they are selling to recoup their up front costs, they enforce the deal and pull the computer if you don't do as asked.
Yeah, that really sucks, it's a stupid deal, and a dumb way of enforcing it. We can come up with better than that. But, your freedom is not being messed with. You *choose* to use the subsidized computer where you have to watch ads. You have other choices: you could front the money yourself and have free reign on how to use the machine for example.
If you lease a car, they restrict what you can do with it, because it's not your car. They own it, they put restrictions on it, you get a cheaper deal (well, not if you plan on owning the car, but CTO for the time period it's usually cheaper). You could spend more, buy the car, and do what you want with it.
I finance an item, say item X. I let you use it with restriction Y. You like this deal, because item X is ridiculously expensive. You break the deal, I find out. I tell you, deals off. Why should that be illegal?!
"The performance on vista(sic) for games is abysmal to say the least"
That's a false statement. I play Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Never Winter Nights 2, Paradise, and Civilization 4 on my Vista machine. Every single one of those games runs the same or better as when the machine was running XP.
Perhaps you'd like to qualify your statement more. "The performance of X game with Y hardware on Vista is abysmal", might be a true statement. Making a blanket statement like that, where there are counter examples is just plain irresponsible.
Heh, interesting, I'm currently running Vista on a 3Ghz processor, 2GB RAM, and Geforce 6 series something, and it runs faster than XP. My TabletPC has a 2Ghz processor, 1GB RAM, and a Geforce Go something, and it runs Vista as fast as XP. Not sure what problem you are having, but it might not be related to the OS.
Could you point me to descriptions of these Windows Defender security holes, please? That could be some interesting reading.
Funny how you resort to GMT (as opposed to UTC) to try to be worldly and all, yet list MMDDYY for your date, which is really kind of a localized representation.
First off, you might want to look "non sequitur" up in a dictionary.
Second off, not having gotten around to doing something does not make one a hypocrite. If this event is a sign of their zeitgeist, then it will be a while before they identify all of the tasks necessary to fulfill their dream. It could very well be that they extend their reasoning beyond iTunes and realize that it actually doesn't make sense in the grand scheme of things and that they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater and back peddle on their decision and try to find a better, more reasonable solution to their woes about DRM. In any case, not doing everything that needs to be done in one day does not make them hypocrites.
Really 20%?! My Athalon 64 3200+ is using about 3% CPU for the search indexer background process (not usually indexing depending on how I set my power profiles depending on my current needs, I run it when actively using the machine and plugged into a wall outlet) and not much else. Turning off the search indexer has my task manager toggle between 0% and 2% (when taskmgr updates). Are there occasional spikes when the indexer *is* running and fetches a chunck of data, sure, but that's not idleing at 20%, that's a process processing.
Actually, Beta 5 started today. No more NDA and it's pretty easy to get in. Not quite "open" in the traditional sense, but no very closed either.
My system is hardly high-end and I get 30fps everywhere I've been in game on highest settings. Granted I haven't tried higher than 1280x1024 resolutions since that's my LCD's native, but I would hardly call that running like a pig.
"I mean, have you ever tried to *use* Visual Studio? Because, I *have*, just a little, and it only comes across as pleasant to use if you compare it to something out of the fifties, like perhaps punchcards. It makes development tools from the seventies (like Emacs for instance) seem by comparison like the best thing since indoor plumbing."
You know that sounds just like "throwing out such a broad statement without qualification or supporting rationale," which you say in the same post "is not what I would call a hallmark of sound reasoning."
First a little about my use of VS and Emacs. I currently split my time between both VS and Emacs, about 80%/20%. Despite this, I still have used Emacs about five times as much as VS. I never use the VS debugger, as windbg has greater extensibility, easier remote capability, and kernel debugging. I use the VS compiler from a command line build environment. I only really use the VS editor and code browser. It's far from the best tool I've used, but it does what it intends to do quite well.
I'm not very clear why it is that you don't like Visual Studio. You only used it a little yet you can say nothing that you dislike about it beyond a few cute similies. I guess I'm just a bit saddened that someone tauting objective thinking is blinded enough by the technologies he chose for his projects that he or she can't even make a coherent comparison with another technology without resulting to unsupported namecalling. I only wish that the engineers of this world don't follow in your footsteps and think a bit for themselves.
What's wrong with apt-get is that my mother would need to be shown more than once to get it to the point where she can use it on her own without calling me. So, while there is nothing inherently wrong with it in general, it's a poor tool for the purpose discussed here.
Are you absolutely convinced that you did not determine the location of the washroom because you have been in countless restaurants, diners, and other public eateries in the past and built up a pretty comprehensive pattern of typical washroom locations in such establishments? I mean, finding a washroom at a diner isn't excatly so challenging as to require having specific knowledge about that particular instance of a diner.
I don't think you got MY point. I never said that the employee was entitled. I was saying that it's actually in the company's best interest to keep your salary competitive lest they loose you. And what's in the company's best interest is in the employee's best interest. And in this particular case what's in the employee's best interest is in the company's best interest.
For example, employee A is unhappy getting $40k when everyone is getting $45k a year. The employee can mention this to his or her manager, citing that the going rate for N years of experience is $45k in that area in that field, etc. The employee is not entitled to that, and I never said he or she was. They are entitled to be unhappy though, as that's their choice. Now, the manager has two responses: I'll conceed to you or I won't. If they don't and the employee leaves, it'll cost the company more than $5k to find, train, and aclimate a replacement. So even though the employee is not entitled to that $5k, it makes business sense to give raises when the market for that position changes. It's just cheaper in the long run. Even getting someone with N-1 years of experience at $38k might be more expensive in the long run if it takes them 3-6 months to ramp up ($19k spent doing that there) and a year later thay have experience which would have a going rate of $45k a year (once again faced with either upping the rate to $45k or losing another one and repeating the process).
It's not about entitlement, it's about business sense.
I'm sorry, but although your argument is valid for the case when current employee A has a rate of $800k and N years of experience and prospective employee B has a rate of $40k and N-1 years of experience, it falls short in the reality. In reality the comparisons are more like $74k with 5 years experience or $72k with 4 years experience. It really is cheaper for a company to pay you $2k more per year then lose you and replace you.
"This logic would make it seem that a Ford Temp is a better car than a Lotus Elise since the Lotus doesn't have AC or a Stereo."
Well, I think you hit the nail on the head here. For some people the Ford Temp (sic) *is* a better car than the Lotus Elise because it has a feature that's critical to the particular problem they are trying to solve. Perhaps that feature is the AC because they live in an ungodly climate, or the radio because they sit in traffic for an hour a day and would be bored silly otherwise, or the price tag because spending their home's downpayment on a commuter vehicle is just plain irresponsible, or they have two children and need a car with more seats, or a miriad of other reasons.
It's really very hard to make blanket statements that tool X is a better tool than tool Y. It realy depends on its application.
Is OOo better than Office because it does not have export to PDF? For some uses, yes, but I'll bet that OOo doesn't have half the data anaysis tools in Excel that make my work quick and painless. (I haven't used it in years as when I did try it it was "missing" many of the features I found critical, but maybe the current version caught up; someone will jump in and correct me I'm sure).
Um, my phone, which is now pretty old, has this functionality. I can turn the radio off but keep the phone one so that I can use the PDA in flight, etc.
I think your analogy is flawed. Patton authorizing a US spy agency to tap the communications of the German military on foreign soil is quit a different animal than George W Bush authorizing a US spy agency with no jurisdiction within our borders tapping the communication of US citizens without getting a warrent. If they suspect someone and have anything more than a vague hunch, any judge will gladly issue a warrent for them to further investigate within hours or minutes. I understand you don't have a problem with the government rattling a sabre and then using that excuse to curtail any and all of our freedoms with no real process in place (which a warrent provides if the government does do something fishy it shouldn't), but then really you have no business saying that those who respect those freedoms for which America is (or was) known as a bastion are absolutely silly.
Because you do not run as Administrator (or root or other equivalent) on your box?