Hey guys, this is open source: there was a security issue with 2.4 - it is fixed now.
Sure it may have been fixed, just like Microsoft has fixed tonnes of security faults with IIS, but that doesn't seem to stop the tens of thousands of vulnerable machines from waiting to be exploited. This is a big issue because something like a firewall tends to be on machines that you build and forget: My FreeBSD machine was configured, and I've almost forgotten how to configure it. It does the job and it does it well. So in other words even though the source tree somewhere may be fixed, that doesn't instantly fix all the machines out there.
On a similar note I'm still getting probed for the portmapper TCP 111 fault probably 4 times a day. Where there's smoke there's fire, and this indicates to me that there are a lot of machines out there with this vulnerability waiting to be ownzed.
So the moral of the story is this: It is largely irrelevant how quickly a patch comes out, because the sad reality is that a lot of people don't actively manage their machines (yes they should but we have to live in reality), so the mere existence of the fault is a serious problem.
As a sidenote I recommend that anyone not quite sure about XML/Schemas check out XMLSpy (Disclaimer: I don't work for that company, nor do I know anyone who does. I just think it's a very nice program for getting practical experience relating to XSD schemas, etc.).
By the Great Spirit, do we really need another XML grammar?
It's a schema (unfortunately apparently just a DTD). Backgrounder (which is probably unnecessary for you but for others that will misread your message and assume you are implying that there's all these crazy "standards" for XML) : XML is merely the basic rules by which the data is encapsulated, but without agreeing on a standard set of data organization standards (schemas) you really haven't acheived much (and this is something that most XML zealots and detractors fail to understand). If I said "Give me your resume in that new whiz bang `XML format'" I will have achieved nothing and would get a huge mess of sloppy data piles that would have to be analyzed, etc. One might be a binary Word document enclosed in the root tag, while another one might be heirarchial with tonnes of attributes, etc ("object oriented"). If on the other hand I said "Give me your resume conforming to the schema blah blah (giving a namespace like http://www.hr-xml.org/blahblah.xsd) you will know EXACTLY the format that your data should be encapsulated in, that the xsd:timeInstant field is ISO 8601, that the character set can be encapsulated just so, that the character field must follow specific rules, that it must have this set of fields in this order : I can then build a validation engine (that will have a local copy of that schema obviously : I can't see any situation where you'd be working with remote schemas. At most you will view it as a namespace. Schemas once published become like a COM interface : immutable, and when I say that my program conforms to MonkeyShema 1.0 at the namespace location of blah blah then I have that intrinsincally in the logic of the program and noway would I do a get of that schema everytime I wanted to parse something) that says "Does this conform to the rules?" and from there it can parse through it sucking out the values into the HR database. XML + XSD is the standard, and an absolutely brilliant one, that despite the frothy rantings of critics, is incredibly valuable. XML+XSD+XSLT is offering a solution that the industry has never had, certainly not this evolved.
As mentioned though the true power of XML is really in the schemas : The standard way of defining the data (see http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema). When people have such a clearly defined, standard method of describing communications between two products that is of immeasurable value. The idea behind each of these schema standards is to do exactly that : Start agreeing on some basic standard schemas. See Biztalk.org for examples.
Your opposition sounds primarily to be fear of change (which is one of the most imposing software development problems). XML+XPath+XSLT+XSD is quite a load to learn, so firstly I take issue with your claim that XML is "simple" : Can it be simple to start into? Absolutely. Just like C can be easy to start into.
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
  printf("Hello world!\n\r");
};
Does that diminish the power of C? Not in the slightest. XML represents a great leap forward in our ability to describe the data that we pass back and forth, and the standards are of enormous value.
BTW: Obviously eventually some fully spec'd XML compression will be standardized, such as XMill. XML is heavily compressible : Often, paradoxically, moreso than the same data stored in a proprietary format. However it is usually a moot point because XML usually comes into play where no existing communications were taking place.
Microsoft is not dropping support for USB 1, so all those USB peripherals will work fantastically.
USB 2.0 hasn't even been finalized yet.
There is no way Microsoft can put a product (Windows XP) into RC stages supporting hardware that hasn't even been finalized. This simply makes total sense for them to quell the disappointment later when every reviewer is falling over themselves to report the abhorrent lack of USB 2.0 support.
For those who say that this doesn't matter to this 31337 Slashdot crowd: Realize that numerous linked to sites from Slashdot have shown that great than 80% of the readers of Slashdot who follow the link are running Win32 OS', most often with IE.
You can be sure the MS will add USB 2.0 support later on. I'm sure this will give a little push to Firewire for a while, but once USB 2 has straightened out their ship I have no doubt that it will be supported in the MS OS'
Ever notice how "Bluetooth" became the darling of the open source community? Why is that? This is curiousity.
Excellent question and I'm very curious myself. It would seem to me that the success rate would drop dramatically as the sample set got larger, yet the article seems to indicate differently : i.e. that it actually gets MORE accurate as there are more "players". Odd.
This confused me as well however one part states "Once they have had a chance to look at the other hats, the players must simultaneously guess the color of their own hats or pass" so they are guessing simultaneously. I think they should reword "pass" to "give no answer" as pass implies successive answering.
It's been a while since I've played with finite math, and a lot of it's been forgotten, however this seems to defy the nature of random odds. i.e. Am I incorrect or is this based upon the supposition that by looking at the other draws you can base conclusions on your own (which of course defies the nature of random odds and is a common fallacy).
Windows users are profoundly stupid and could never grasp the complexity of using a computer to anything non trivial.
This is classic computer enthusiast elitism and it's absolutely, positively idiotic. I would offer up that anyone who is willing to proclaim "Windows users are profoundly stupid" are less intelligent than the ones they're criticizing, given their willingness to paint an entire genre of users with such a ridiculous statement.
As the parent post indicated there are a lot of people who use computers for very specific tasks and they only want to know exactly what is necessary to get by. That's efficiency not stupidity. Do you know how to replace the headgasket in your car? Do you know how to build a microprocessor out of silicon and some heat? No? Well you're just stupid now aren't you?
There are people who have domain specific skills because it is a hobby (i.e. Linux enthusiasts), or because they need those skills for career purposes. The vast majority of the population could easily grasp Linux and the nuances of configuration (this isn't rocket science it's just a matter of spending the time and having the motivation), but they DON'T WANT TO.
In any case the simple fact that you attempted to climb up into the tower of "alternative OS elitism" proves that you're rather on the juvenile scale. I am going to make a wild guess here that there are hundreds of thousands of Windows users out there who are far more intelligent (and certainly more mature) than you.
Time and time again this debate has raged, and most actual metrics that measure the real cost of implementing various solutions have agreed that Windows NT/2000 has a significantly lower total cost of ownership than Linux, Solaris, etc. While it's easy to look at the prices of the software alone think they're expensive (though from a consumers perspective), those prices are often absolutely dwarfed by the cost of implementation, training, etc.
Does this mean that I wouldn't recommend that firms consider BSD, Linux, etc? Not even remotely. The problem is when you get Linux fanatics who want to push Linux for anything and everything at an organization, and it turns into one high risk experiment. However, moderately implementing "alternative" OS' can be very beneficial for organizations. For instance there's no way I'd pay thousands for a copy of 2000 & ISA Server. Instead I'd take an old PC, stick FreeBSD with IP Filter on it, and would have a fully functional firewall transparently a part of the organization with extremely little maintenance required : The TCO for that is very low. However I wouldn't consider replacing MS servers with Samba at this point because the many minor nuisances (non-updating directories, security issues, etc.) aren't worth the trouble. It's "less expensive" to just buy an 2000 + CAL license pack for SMB serving. It's less expensive to use SQL Server than it is to play with the experiments that are open source SQL solutions (I realize there would be disagreement to this, but that has been my experience). It's FAR less expensive to equip end users with 2000 desktops than it is trying to shoehorn Linux+TheCoolGUIOfTheDay.
Re:enough with the april fools crap already
on
TCP/IP Over HTTP
·
· Score: 1
It's you. The only reason it seems unreasonable to you is because the US has done such a good job of it they appear invincible, so it's easy to mock them of over building their defenses (hence offenses). Yet as stable as the world seems there are always people eyeballing screwing it all up again, and if you wait until you're being overrun it's perhaps a little bit too late..
As for pharmaceutical companies, guess what, there's a huge industry in generic drugs.
Yeah there is: After a specific period of time (see http://www.labpuppy.com/patents.asp for an example of some expiring drug patents) have elapsed and the drug companies have recouped their costs of development. That's fair because it's a known limitation to protections, but it promotes and rewards innovation and creation, and pays for the R&D that is keeping a lot of people healthy and active today.
Microsoft did it to put Netscape out of business, not to help users
Don't fault Microsoft for making an actual modern component based system out of IE, and trying to pretend that it wasn't to benefit the user and developers is just sad.
MS' certificate didn't leak but rather somebody got Verisign to issue one for the corporate name of "Microsoft Corporation". Seems similar but there is a difference. MS has released a patch that basically disallows that one certificate from being trusted.
I don't know anything about farming, but it seems to me that this is one area where civil disobedience can make a huge impact. Think of a crop duster dusting a few square miles with these mutant canola seeds. I have no idea if this would actually work though, but if it did it'd cause enough of a problem in the legal system to make them think hard about whether growing seeds should be illegal.
Yeah, that'd be great. Who cares that these companies are spending billions of dollars and employing thousands of people to develop the technology in these seeds, and what you are basically saying is "screw them. Put em all out of business". While we're at it let's start mass producing patented drugs too because hey, we've got all we need and who cares if anyone ever develops another one. Down with big business!
Sorry but this whole story sounds rather...contrived, and hardly as one sided as it is made out to be. Big evil business versus poor innocent farmer.
The story as I see it goes like this: Supposedly one day the farmer goes out near the edge of his crop and tries to use Roundup on some weeds, realizing that there will be some collateral damage of nearby plants. He's aghast to discover that Roundup didn't kill the nearby plants! He proceeds to harvest the seeds from those plants, and next year he plants more of those seeds, basically taking advantage of the properties of those plants (which is the engineered fact that they resist Roundup, among other things, which he being a farmer is well aware is a trait of the Monsato seeds). Sorry but the "I'm an innocent farmer and dem der seeds blew on my farm so now they're mine!" sounds, to my cynical ears, completely bogus, and honestly something that I would see being believed and held up as credible on Slashdot where that sort of thinking pervades. If you "find" a CD-R of Windows 2000 sitting on your front step and someone removed any Copyright notices, do you therefore have the legal "just" right to give copies to anyone? If copyright & patent law worked like that they would be grossly ineffective as every tricky farmer would have seeds "blowing off trucks" into their crops, and every wank would claim to have received some software minus any copyright notices.
If indeed this was a matter of crop infection he should have immediately destroyed the crops and sued whoever was the culprit. He should NOT have taken advantage of it.
Some examples of protocols that have been adapted in this manner are HTML, SSL and Kerberos.
How has MS made SSL interoperable with anything else? Seems to me it's completely compliant. As per HTML Microsoft has proven to be one of the most compliant of any company, and they've done lots to extend the spec in a public way that can be implemented by competitors. Microsoft has submitted their scripting languages to public boards, and you can implement them if you want. What's that? You don't want to. So be it.
Kerberos is an interesting example because they did follow the spec, but afterwards the spec guardians realized "Whoops! My bad! We shouldn't have left that part of the spec in there. Let's revise history and pretend Microsoft is evil and non-conformist.". It is totally evil that Microsoft continues to keep their implementation of Kerberos proprietary (i.e. NDA regarding the protocol), however there is nothing insidius about their implementation.
The quality of applications that come bundled with the various incarnations of MSWindows is noticeably poorer where these are apps intended to provide connectivity to other OSs: MSTelnet, hyperterminal & command line ftp.
Isn't this omission of quality connectivity tools a blatant example of how Microsoft is using its monopoly on the desktop to mike life difficult for people who want to connect to a robust multi-user OS ?
Now this is funny: The complaint is that Microsoft isn't providing fully featured enough add-ins to the operating system for tasks such as telnet or FTP, and this is an example of MS "using its monopoly"?
There are countless (or rather at least lots;-}) FTP clients, Telnet clients, and even X-Windows clients for the Microsoft OS'. It is not MS' job to make operating with UNIX systems easier: The ability (sockets and a robust API) is there are third parties can exploit it all they want, but don't bitch because MS isn't bundling an X-Window client with Windows. I hope you aren't one of the people that banged fists about IE being included with the OS.
The purpose of the vast majority of copy protection isn't to eliminate copying, but rather it's to eliminate mainstream copying. Lots of new PCs now come with CD-Rs and lots of people, including people with incredibly limited technical skills, are busy using very simple tools included with the CD-R to make dupes of their CDs for their friends, etc. That's where the problem lies. Sure fair use, etc., however now that it's going mainstream (or rather has gone mainstream) there is potentially a serious problem because there is such a high number of personality depraved folks out there who want to buy friends by providing stuff for them, ex. a copy of the latest XYZ CD.
The crux of IP protection has always been this: 9/10ths of society feels that it's fair paying for CDs, movies, etc. 9/10ths like to act legally and responsibly because they see that that's how the world turns. However when 9/10ths all think they are being suckered because all they hear are idiots saying stuff like "Oh man you BOUGHT that? I could have duped you a copy", or "I just grabbed it on Napster", they get a feeling of being suckers. Having a feeling of being the sucker is a powerful thing because it is what leads to the collapse of a "generous" society. I could bring up a million parallels with the highway/roadway system and driving.
What's with all the armchair "parents" with their opinions on responsible parenting? (More likely 15 year olds fearful that they might have to live under their parents rules) Parents cannot hang over their children 24 hours a day, so we fall to the "tribe" mentality of watching our kids: The tribe puts signals stating the level of violence/nudity/profanity/etc. and we, being responsible configure our television to block it. I completely fail to see how this could be irresponsible, and presuming that this is in lieu of proper parenting is absurd: It's yet another parenting tool. It isn't the cure for Columbines nor will it ensure a better generation, but if you can give parents that control and they're the one's paying the bills and running the show, so be it.
Television (esp. with cable) has gotten much more risque than it was 15 years ago. The other day I was flipping through the channels and City TV (a Toronto station that single handedly changed Canadian standards) was showing full nudity of 300lb women. I'm sure there are a lot of GoatSexers out there who would love that, and I'm not even saying it's bad from a moral or teaching perspective (i.e. I personally have no problem with shows like SexTV and think inevitably your children will seek out this info as Sex is a rather basic human instinct), but parents should have the ability to monitor and control if the technology does exist. Don't brand them as irresponsible because they want this ability.
Microsoft has been doing this pen based/table evangelizing for many, many years. With Windows 3.1 they had all sorts of pen/table APIs written and they tried to push it. I remember PC magazine announcing the death of normal laptops and PCs...albeit a decade or so too early.
Re:This isn't rocket science
on
XBox Tidbits
·
· Score: 1
As a sidenote to this: Even if Nintendo's new box doesn't win out, I certainly hope they get in the business of writing software for other boxes. Nintendo knows how to make fun games, even with limited technology, which is something that is unfortunately a dying skill it seems.
Obviously? It's that clear cut? Our hands, feet, intestinal tract, and body chemistry are "obviously" that of a herbivore. That's why I stated that there's controversy.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey guys, this is open source: there was a security issue with 2.4 - it is fixed now.
Sure it may have been fixed, just like Microsoft has fixed tonnes of security faults with IIS, but that doesn't seem to stop the tens of thousands of vulnerable machines from waiting to be exploited. This is a big issue because something like a firewall tends to be on machines that you build and forget: My FreeBSD machine was configured, and I've almost forgotten how to configure it. It does the job and it does it well. So in other words even though the source tree somewhere may be fixed, that doesn't instantly fix all the machines out there.
On a similar note I'm still getting probed for the portmapper TCP 111 fault probably 4 times a day. Where there's smoke there's fire, and this indicates to me that there are a lot of machines out there with this vulnerability waiting to be ownzed.
So the moral of the story is this: It is largely irrelevant how quickly a patch comes out, because the sad reality is that a lot of people don't actively manage their machines (yes they should but we have to live in reality), so the mere existence of the fault is a serious problem.
As a sidenote I recommend that anyone not quite sure about XML/Schemas check out XMLSpy (Disclaimer: I don't work for that company, nor do I know anyone who does. I just think it's a very nice program for getting practical experience relating to XSD schemas, etc.).
By the Great Spirit, do we really need another XML grammar?
It's a schema (unfortunately apparently just a DTD). Backgrounder (which is probably unnecessary for you but for others that will misread your message and assume you are implying that there's all these crazy "standards" for XML) : XML is merely the basic rules by which the data is encapsulated, but without agreeing on a standard set of data organization standards (schemas) you really haven't acheived much (and this is something that most XML zealots and detractors fail to understand). If I said "Give me your resume in that new whiz bang `XML format'" I will have achieved nothing and would get a huge mess of sloppy data piles that would have to be analyzed, etc. One might be a binary Word document enclosed in the root tag, while another one might be heirarchial with tonnes of attributes, etc ("object oriented"). If on the other hand I said "Give me your resume conforming to the schema blah blah (giving a namespace like http://www.hr-xml.org/blahblah.xsd) you will know EXACTLY the format that your data should be encapsulated in, that the xsd:timeInstant field is ISO 8601, that the character set can be encapsulated just so, that the character field must follow specific rules, that it must have this set of fields in this order : I can then build a validation engine (that will have a local copy of that schema obviously : I can't see any situation where you'd be working with remote schemas. At most you will view it as a namespace. Schemas once published become like a COM interface : immutable, and when I say that my program conforms to MonkeyShema 1.0 at the namespace location of blah blah then I have that intrinsincally in the logic of the program and noway would I do a get of that schema everytime I wanted to parse something) that says "Does this conform to the rules?" and from there it can parse through it sucking out the values into the HR database. XML + XSD is the standard, and an absolutely brilliant one, that despite the frothy rantings of critics, is incredibly valuable. XML+XSD+XSLT is offering a solution that the industry has never had, certainly not this evolved.
As mentioned though the true power of XML is really in the schemas : The standard way of defining the data (see http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema). When people have such a clearly defined, standard method of describing communications between two products that is of immeasurable value. The idea behind each of these schema standards is to do exactly that : Start agreeing on some basic standard schemas. See Biztalk.org for examples.
Your opposition sounds primarily to be fear of change (which is one of the most imposing software development problems). XML+XPath+XSLT+XSD is quite a load to learn, so firstly I take issue with your claim that XML is "simple" : Can it be simple to start into? Absolutely. Just like C can be easy to start into.
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
  printf("Hello world!\n\r");
};
Does that diminish the power of C? Not in the slightest. XML represents a great leap forward in our ability to describe the data that we pass back and forth, and the standards are of enormous value.
BTW: Obviously eventually some fully spec'd XML compression will be standardized, such as XMill. XML is heavily compressible : Often, paradoxically, moreso than the same data stored in a proprietary format. However it is usually a moot point because XML usually comes into play where no existing communications were taking place.
Cheers!
Read this story regarding some follow up info related to this. The story is titled Windows XP will support USB 2.0, somehow.
Cheers!
Excellent question and I'm very curious myself. It would seem to me that the success rate would drop dramatically as the sample set got larger, yet the article seems to indicate differently : i.e. that it actually gets MORE accurate as there are more "players". Odd.
This confused me as well however one part states "Once they have had a chance to look at the other hats, the players must simultaneously guess the color of their own hats or pass" so they are guessing simultaneously. I think they should reword "pass" to "give no answer" as pass implies successive answering.
Ahhh...
It's been a while since I've played with finite math, and a lot of it's been forgotten, however this seems to defy the nature of random odds. i.e. Am I incorrect or is this based upon the supposition that by looking at the other draws you can base conclusions on your own (which of course defies the nature of random odds and is a common fallacy).
Windows users are profoundly stupid and could never grasp the complexity of using a computer to anything non trivial.
This is classic computer enthusiast elitism and it's absolutely, positively idiotic. I would offer up that anyone who is willing to proclaim "Windows users are profoundly stupid" are less intelligent than the ones they're criticizing, given their willingness to paint an entire genre of users with such a ridiculous statement.
As the parent post indicated there are a lot of people who use computers for very specific tasks and they only want to know exactly what is necessary to get by. That's efficiency not stupidity. Do you know how to replace the headgasket in your car? Do you know how to build a microprocessor out of silicon and some heat? No? Well you're just stupid now aren't you?
There are people who have domain specific skills because it is a hobby (i.e. Linux enthusiasts), or because they need those skills for career purposes. The vast majority of the population could easily grasp Linux and the nuances of configuration (this isn't rocket science it's just a matter of spending the time and having the motivation), but they DON'T WANT TO.
In any case the simple fact that you attempted to climb up into the tower of "alternative OS elitism" proves that you're rather on the juvenile scale. I am going to make a wild guess here that there are hundreds of thousands of Windows users out there who are far more intelligent (and certainly more mature) than you.
Time and time again this debate has raged, and most actual metrics that measure the real cost of implementing various solutions have agreed that Windows NT/2000 has a significantly lower total cost of ownership than Linux, Solaris, etc. While it's easy to look at the prices of the software alone think they're expensive (though from a consumers perspective), those prices are often absolutely dwarfed by the cost of implementation, training, etc.
Does this mean that I wouldn't recommend that firms consider BSD, Linux, etc? Not even remotely. The problem is when you get Linux fanatics who want to push Linux for anything and everything at an organization, and it turns into one high risk experiment. However, moderately implementing "alternative" OS' can be very beneficial for organizations. For instance there's no way I'd pay thousands for a copy of 2000 & ISA Server. Instead I'd take an old PC, stick FreeBSD with IP Filter on it, and would have a fully functional firewall transparently a part of the organization with extremely little maintenance required : The TCO for that is very low. However I wouldn't consider replacing MS servers with Samba at this point because the many minor nuisances (non-updating directories, security issues, etc.) aren't worth the trouble. It's "less expensive" to just buy an 2000 + CAL license pack for SMB serving. It's less expensive to use SQL Server than it is to play with the experiments that are open source SQL solutions (I realize there would be disagreement to this, but that has been my experience). It's FAR less expensive to equip end users with 2000 desktops than it is trying to shoehorn Linux+TheCoolGUIOfTheDay.
The world should use ISO 8601 and nothing else.
Is it me, or do Americans seem rather paranoid?
It's you. The only reason it seems unreasonable to you is because the US has done such a good job of it they appear invincible, so it's easy to mock them of over building their defenses (hence offenses). Yet as stable as the world seems there are always people eyeballing screwing it all up again, and if you wait until you're being overrun it's perhaps a little bit too late..
As for pharmaceutical companies, guess what, there's a huge industry in generic drugs.
Yeah there is: After a specific period of time (see http://www.labpuppy.com/patents.asp for an example of some expiring drug patents) have elapsed and the drug companies have recouped their costs of development. That's fair because it's a known limitation to protections, but it promotes and rewards innovation and creation, and pays for the R&D that is keeping a lot of people healthy and active today.
Microsoft did it to put Netscape out of business, not to help users
Don't fault Microsoft for making an actual modern component based system out of IE, and trying to pretend that it wasn't to benefit the user and developers is just sad.
MS' certificate didn't leak but rather somebody got Verisign to issue one for the corporate name of "Microsoft Corporation". Seems similar but there is a difference. MS has released a patch that basically disallows that one certificate from being trusted.
I don't know anything about farming, but it seems to me that this is one area where civil disobedience can make a huge impact. Think of a crop duster dusting a few square miles with these mutant canola seeds. I have no idea if this would actually work though, but if it did it'd cause enough of a problem in the legal system to make them think hard about whether growing seeds should be illegal.
Yeah, that'd be great. Who cares that these companies are spending billions of dollars and employing thousands of people to develop the technology in these seeds, and what you are basically saying is "screw them. Put em all out of business". While we're at it let's start mass producing patented drugs too because hey, we've got all we need and who cares if anyone ever develops another one. Down with big business!
Sorry but this whole story sounds rather...contrived, and hardly as one sided as it is made out to be. Big evil business versus poor innocent farmer.
The story as I see it goes like this: Supposedly one day the farmer goes out near the edge of his crop and tries to use Roundup on some weeds, realizing that there will be some collateral damage of nearby plants. He's aghast to discover that Roundup didn't kill the nearby plants! He proceeds to harvest the seeds from those plants, and next year he plants more of those seeds, basically taking advantage of the properties of those plants (which is the engineered fact that they resist Roundup, among other things, which he being a farmer is well aware is a trait of the Monsato seeds). Sorry but the "I'm an innocent farmer and dem der seeds blew on my farm so now they're mine!" sounds, to my cynical ears, completely bogus, and honestly something that I would see being believed and held up as credible on Slashdot where that sort of thinking pervades. If you "find" a CD-R of Windows 2000 sitting on your front step and someone removed any Copyright notices, do you therefore have the legal "just" right to give copies to anyone? If copyright & patent law worked like that they would be grossly ineffective as every tricky farmer would have seeds "blowing off trucks" into their crops, and every wank would claim to have received some software minus any copyright notices.
If indeed this was a matter of crop infection he should have immediately destroyed the crops and sued whoever was the culprit. He should NOT have taken advantage of it.
Some examples of protocols that have been adapted in this manner are HTML, SSL and Kerberos.
How has MS made SSL interoperable with anything else? Seems to me it's completely compliant. As per HTML Microsoft has proven to be one of the most compliant of any company, and they've done lots to extend the spec in a public way that can be implemented by competitors. Microsoft has submitted their scripting languages to public boards, and you can implement them if you want. What's that? You don't want to. So be it.
Kerberos is an interesting example because they did follow the spec, but afterwards the spec guardians realized "Whoops! My bad! We shouldn't have left that part of the spec in there. Let's revise history and pretend Microsoft is evil and non-conformist.". It is totally evil that Microsoft continues to keep their implementation of Kerberos proprietary (i.e. NDA regarding the protocol), however there is nothing insidius about their implementation.
The quality of applications that come bundled with the various incarnations of MSWindows is noticeably poorer where these are apps intended to provide connectivity to other OSs: MSTelnet, hyperterminal & command line ftp. Isn't this omission of quality connectivity tools a blatant example of how Microsoft is using its monopoly on the desktop to mike life difficult for people who want to connect to a robust multi-user OS ?
Now this is funny: The complaint is that Microsoft isn't providing fully featured enough add-ins to the operating system for tasks such as telnet or FTP, and this is an example of MS "using its monopoly"?
There are countless (or rather at least lots ;-}) FTP clients, Telnet clients, and even X-Windows clients for the Microsoft OS'. It is not MS' job to make operating with UNIX systems easier: The ability (sockets and a robust API) is there are third parties can exploit it all they want, but don't bitch because MS isn't bundling an X-Window client with Windows. I hope you aren't one of the people that banged fists about IE being included with the OS.
The purpose of the vast majority of copy protection isn't to eliminate copying, but rather it's to eliminate mainstream copying. Lots of new PCs now come with CD-Rs and lots of people, including people with incredibly limited technical skills, are busy using very simple tools included with the CD-R to make dupes of their CDs for their friends, etc. That's where the problem lies. Sure fair use, etc., however now that it's going mainstream (or rather has gone mainstream) there is potentially a serious problem because there is such a high number of personality depraved folks out there who want to buy friends by providing stuff for them, ex. a copy of the latest XYZ CD.
The crux of IP protection has always been this: 9/10ths of society feels that it's fair paying for CDs, movies, etc. 9/10ths like to act legally and responsibly because they see that that's how the world turns. However when 9/10ths all think they are being suckered because all they hear are idiots saying stuff like "Oh man you BOUGHT that? I could have duped you a copy", or "I just grabbed it on Napster", they get a feeling of being suckers. Having a feeling of being the sucker is a powerful thing because it is what leads to the collapse of a "generous" society. I could bring up a million parallels with the highway/roadway system and driving.
What's with all the armchair "parents" with their opinions on responsible parenting? (More likely 15 year olds fearful that they might have to live under their parents rules) Parents cannot hang over their children 24 hours a day, so we fall to the "tribe" mentality of watching our kids: The tribe puts signals stating the level of violence/nudity/profanity/etc. and we, being responsible configure our television to block it. I completely fail to see how this could be irresponsible, and presuming that this is in lieu of proper parenting is absurd: It's yet another parenting tool. It isn't the cure for Columbines nor will it ensure a better generation, but if you can give parents that control and they're the one's paying the bills and running the show, so be it.
Television (esp. with cable) has gotten much more risque than it was 15 years ago. The other day I was flipping through the channels and City TV (a Toronto station that single handedly changed Canadian standards) was showing full nudity of 300lb women. I'm sure there are a lot of GoatSexers out there who would love that, and I'm not even saying it's bad from a moral or teaching perspective (i.e. I personally have no problem with shows like SexTV and think inevitably your children will seek out this info as Sex is a rather basic human instinct), but parents should have the ability to monitor and control if the technology does exist. Don't brand them as irresponsible because they want this ability.
Yes Apple invented everything.
Microsoft has been doing this pen based/table evangelizing for many, many years. With Windows 3.1 they had all sorts of pen/table APIs written and they tried to push it. I remember PC magazine announcing the death of normal laptops and PCs...albeit a decade or so too early.
As a sidenote to this: Even if Nintendo's new box doesn't win out, I certainly hope they get in the business of writing software for other boxes. Nintendo knows how to make fun games, even with limited technology, which is something that is unfortunately a dying skill it seems.
Obviously? It's that clear cut? Our hands, feet, intestinal tract, and body chemistry are "obviously" that of a herbivore. That's why I stated that there's controversy.