then that's not much different to a zip file with an exe in it.
Fortunatly most *nix users aren't likely to fall for it, but if we had all the "stupid" users that Windows currently has then the situation could be very different.
You apparantly are "stuck" in the idea that everyone is motivated by the same thing. Not every single anti-social arsehole is going to be.
It only takes one mildly competant person to do it. Perhaps they hate the western world and would view it as striking against it. Perhaps they've been turned down for one too many jobs and flip out. Perhaps they are bored of worms that essentially do the same thing. Perhaps they simply don't give a fuck.
The reason itself is somewhat irrelevant, but it only takes one person to have one.
Didn't blaster target the wrong address for Windows Update?
DDOS a website that probably gets about 10 interested visitors a day anyway?
Personally I'm surprised at the lack of damage these things do. Our systems and people are apparently wide open to these things. Blaster and MyDoom should be viewed as warning shots. It's only going to be a matter of time before someone writes something that infects, spends 2-8 hours propagating itself and then nukes the system it's living on, causing real widespread damage rather than minor annoyances.
Certainly. You don't have to convince me that a lot of the record companies actions are self destructive, I'm a living example.
That said I think anyone reasonable would have to concede that P2P trading must cost them some sales even if the amount is unquantifiable. Of all the people who get stiffed in some way by the industries various hare-brained schemes the illegitimate file traders are the ones I have least sympathy for. I'd rather the industry screw them over than sell me crippled discs.
A friend of mine is a Linux kernel hacker for IBM and a while ago he was telling me IBM got quite a lot of people asking for Linux over AIX on some of their hardware but that IBM had to say "no" because they couldn't deliver it. (Sadly my memory is fuzzy on the details)
Hopefully this announcement and the fact they have more external vendors on board means they are ready to push some product out the door.
If there's any third party IP in there then relicencing becomes a complete nightmare. The codecs suffer from this fate.
You might recall a similar problem being faced with Mozilla. Stuff like the spell checker couldn't be opened and had to be left out of Mozilla and made available as a proprietary plugin by Netscape. With any luck over time the Open parts of the product will grow so as to render the closed parts into legacy. But that will take time. There is no magic wand that can change the past.
I'd rather that they either go completely open and be embraced as a standard, or else stay completely proprietary so they can die out as quickly as possible and be replaced by open formats.
And I'd rather travel to work in a flying car, get paid a million dollars for an hours work and drive home to my wives Sarah Michelle Geller and Jennifer Love Hewitt for a bit of nookie.
Unfortunatly I live in the real world.
Real cannot feasibly open up their closed codecs.
They cannot simply dump their closed codecs in favour of open ones as they clearly must continue to support existing customers.
There is no indication that if Real were to die there would be any great migration to open formats. Instead there would be a migration to the only other format that has an existing installation base. Microsoft Media Player.
Real providing access to open formats provides a migration path. It's incredibly hard to get people to switch from one thing to another without one of those.
From that perspective, it seems to be working. Perhaps 1,500 or so people got sued, but around 10M people left the p2p networks. Which number do you think is more important?
I agree. As I said (and you quoted) the goal is significantly reducing infringement.
I just don't think it's going to work. The media has a notoriously short attention span and the RIAA suing people won't keep making headlines. When it isn't making headlines then for most people it isn't happening. There's still legs in the idea yet. If they stop settling and start really sticking it to people that will get another round of publicity etc etc. But it's not going to last forever. It'll end up being like speeding. It might get you in trouble but 95% of people still do it regularly....
You seem to be saying that getting Realmedia to adopt open formats is a bad thing?
Sure, we'd all like all the codecs to be open but in the meantime proprietary+open is better than proprietary alone. Pre-existing proprietary codecs are never going to be opened. Whatever they or we want sorting out all the patents and licences to do so would be an unbelievable amount of effort. You can't just "undo" proprietary development like that.
What we can do however is help Realmedia see the value of Open formats here and now. We can't change their history but we can try and guide their future.
They are going after the right people but it still won't "work" in terms of solving the problem of stopping or significantly reducing infringement in the long term.
These law suits may reduce infringement while people are worried by them but that is only a short term effect while people are scared. For that to continue:
a) They must keep suing people.
b) The press must continue to care enough to publicise it.
Over time the press will get bored of yet another round of lawsuits and it will be out of sight, out of mind.
Not that I necessarily have any answers but there's a feeling that the RIAA don't really have an idea how to handle it but that they have to be seen to "do something".
If you don't have anything to hide (and aren't interested in trying to make a point) then in practical terms you are probably better off letting them come to that conclusion that so they get off your back.
I don't see how looking like you are hiding something would help you in any way whatsoever unless you particularly wanted your friends/family/neighbours/co-workers interviewed about you and god knows what other forms of attention that may be directed your way.
They are taking your stuff one way or the other. If you are confident there's nothing on your PCs then what is getting a lawyer going to do other than put you further out of pocket?
If they are taking all your PCs then perhaps the first call you should make should be to Dell;)
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently not if the people claiming that not having a flashy watch will significantly impact my chances of getting laid are correct.
"can be pushed to freedesktop.org or KDE directly for wider usage"
Seems like Robert Love is looking into getting X/GNOME up faster (skip to after first picture). Obviously he's focused on GNOME but with any luck the techniques he uses and general X bits can be pushed to or KDE directly for wider usage.
if this is anything to go by
until the LeDeZepplin bit. Now I think I'm going to have to change my name.
Paul Le D'Zeppelin.
That would rock (if you'll pardon the phrase).
and my previous post is bollocks.
Erk.
then that's not much different to a zip file with an exe in it.
Fortunatly most *nix users aren't likely to fall for it, but if we had all the "stupid" users that Windows currently has then the situation could be very different.
You apparantly are "stuck" in the idea that everyone is motivated by the same thing. Not every single anti-social arsehole is going to be.
It only takes one mildly competant person to do it. Perhaps they hate the western world and would view it as striking against it. Perhaps they've been turned down for one too many jobs and flip out. Perhaps they are bored of worms that essentially do the same thing. Perhaps they simply don't give a fuck.
The reason itself is somewhat irrelevant, but it only takes one person to have one.
Didn't blaster target the wrong address for Windows Update?
DDOS a website that probably gets about 10 interested visitors a day anyway?
Personally I'm surprised at the lack of damage these things do. Our systems and people are apparently wide open to these things. Blaster and MyDoom should be viewed as warning shots. It's only going to be a matter of time before someone writes something that infects, spends 2-8 hours propagating itself and then nukes the system it's living on, causing real widespread damage rather than minor annoyances.
The site isn't responding so I haven't seen anything explaining the derivation of the name but it seems like an odd choice
"You ought to see this one" - Senator Joseph Lieberman
(not to mention Evolution) So just the major GNOME apps then?
Certainly. You don't have to convince me that a lot of the record companies actions are self destructive, I'm a living example.
That said I think anyone reasonable would have to concede that P2P trading must cost them some sales even if the amount is unquantifiable. Of all the people who get stiffed in some way by the industries various hare-brained schemes the illegitimate file traders are the ones I have least sympathy for. I'd rather the industry screw them over than sell me crippled discs.
A friend of mine is a Linux kernel hacker for IBM and a while ago he was telling me IBM got quite a lot of people asking for Linux over AIX on some of their hardware but that IBM had to say "no" because they couldn't deliver it. (Sadly my memory is fuzzy on the details)
Hopefully this announcement and the fact they have more external vendors on board means they are ready to push some product out the door.
If there's any third party IP in there then relicencing becomes a complete nightmare. The codecs suffer from this fate.
You might recall a similar problem being faced with Mozilla. Stuff like the spell checker couldn't be opened and had to be left out of Mozilla and made available as a proprietary plugin by Netscape. With any luck over time the Open parts of the product will grow so as to render the closed parts into legacy. But that will take time. There is no magic wand that can change the past.
Unfortunatly I live in the real world.
- Real cannot feasibly open up their closed codecs.
- They cannot simply dump their closed codecs in favour of open ones as they clearly must continue to support existing customers.
- There is no indication that if Real were to die there would be any great migration to open formats. Instead there would be a migration to the only other format that has an existing installation base. Microsoft Media Player.
Real providing access to open formats provides a migration path. It's incredibly hard to get people to switch from one thing to another without one of those.I just don't think it's going to work. The media has a notoriously short attention span and the RIAA suing people won't keep making headlines. When it isn't making headlines then for most people it isn't happening. There's still legs in the idea yet. If they stop settling and start really sticking it to people that will get another round of publicity etc etc. But it's not going to last forever. It'll end up being like speeding. It might get you in trouble but 95% of people still do it regularly....
You seem to be saying that getting Realmedia to adopt open formats is a bad thing?
Sure, we'd all like all the codecs to be open but in the meantime proprietary+open is better than proprietary alone. Pre-existing proprietary codecs are never going to be opened. Whatever they or we want sorting out all the patents and licences to do so would be an unbelievable amount of effort. You can't just "undo" proprietary development like that.
What we can do however is help Realmedia see the value of Open formats here and now. We can't change their history but we can try and guide their future.
If this one is anything to go by it looks like they may have created something better than the old players from hell.
Simply a menu bar, a playback area and some control buttons. Lovely.
They are going after the right people but it still won't "work" in terms of solving the problem of stopping or significantly reducing infringement in the long term.
These law suits may reduce infringement while people are worried by them but that is only a short term effect while people are scared. For that to continue:
a) They must keep suing people.
b) The press must continue to care enough to publicise it.
Over time the press will get bored of yet another round of lawsuits and it will be out of sight, out of mind.
Not that I necessarily have any answers but there's a feeling that the RIAA don't really have an idea how to handle it but that they have to be seen to "do something".
I've quickly scanned through all these posts and not seen a single joke about GWB cancelling it to fund a mission to mars.
Parking is a very different problem than driving.
If you don't have anything to hide (and aren't interested in trying to make a point) then in practical terms you are probably better off letting them come to that conclusion that so they get off your back.
I don't see how looking like you are hiding something would help you in any way whatsoever unless you particularly wanted your friends/family/neighbours/co-workers interviewed about you and god knows what other forms of attention that may be directed your way.
They are taking your stuff one way or the other. If you are confident there's nothing on your PCs then what is getting a lawyer going to do other than put you further out of pocket?
;)
If they are taking all your PCs then perhaps the first call you should make should be to Dell
Gib