Microsoft's monopoly does not mean they're immune to the effects of the free market. Their abuse of their monopoly-derived power and influence is only accelerating their loss of market share to alternative OS's like Linux and Mac OS X.
What it will do is stop a legitimate user from transferring a purchased license, say, at the time his machine dies to a spare.
Absolutely not. Any TC system that doesn't allow for that eventuality would be laughed out of the marketplace, along with all the software vendors who release products under that system.
Be realistic. I feel like I'm back in the days when Microsoft Product Activation System (in Windows XP and Office >XP) was first announced. Everyone was talking about it like it was the end of the world, and what did it turn out to be? A perfectly reasonable copy protection system, that at most causes a few minutes of inconvenience for advanced users every year or two when they upgrade their computer, or move their copy of Windows to another machine.
So, the problem with this technology is that it will make it harder for people to pirate software?
Cry me a river.
And regarding this: "only software signed by those making the keys will run."
Talk about FUD. Can you point to any evidence that suggests trusted computing will be used for this purpose? In every TC implementation I've read about, the end-user has the ability to generate their own keys to use for whatever purposes they want (for example, to authorize some freeware app to run on their computer). If the system is designed securely, this won't compromise its effectiveness at all.
trusted chips will eventually be used by software manufacturers to make sure the computer's owner does not do anything with the software which the manufacturer does not want to per
My god, you can see the future too? I thought it was just me! How long have you had the gift?
[/sarcasm] Seriously, the chips the article is talking about are completely user-controllable. If they don't want to take advantage of the functionality, they don't have to. Did you even read the article? It talks about how the chips facilitate encryption and secure storage of passwords and other sensitive information, not controlling what the user does with their computer.
Making vague, unverifiable assertions about the possible applications of a technology that could potentially be derived from this one is nothing but FUD.
Yeah, or some junkie looking for quick cash broke into the offices, found a few laptops that had for some reason been left sitting around overnight, got spooked before he could take anything else, and left.
There must be a better way of showing a sane number of options while still allowing power users to access the more esoteric ones. Any thoughts?
Well, some of the more sophisticated user interfaces I've seen have a concept called "tabs". I know it might be hard to visualize, but imagine that you could split the configuration screen into two separate screens, and only show one of them at a time. The first screen could have the basic configuration, and the second could have the more advanced, "esoteric" ones.
Why, you could even label the screens "Simple" and "Advanced"! What a revolutionary concept!
Obviously you don't RTFA too often - I'd say about half of the stories on Slashdot use text directly lifted from the article in the summary.
I don't see what the problem with this is. Why should someone bother writing a summary for a story submission, when there's a perfectly good one available in the article itself?
I suppose it technically is plagiarism, but considering that the story submitter doesn't really stand to benefit from it I don't see how it matters. Have you ever heard yourself say "Damn, that was a kickass summary. That story submitter must be a freaking genius!"?
I can't see what you might possibly find offensive about Froogle and Gmail, or why their respective releases made you "afraid" for the future of Google.
It would be nice if the list were available in plaintext form, instead of this slow and miserable Flash presentation.
This is a prime example of Flash being misused. It's not needed at all, and only serves to slow things down. It also makes it impossible to use the data for anything useful.
Create laws so that the citizens are the owners, and that our time is valuable. Pay a basic minimum income to all citizens. Slow down immigration. Offer tax-funded national healtcare. Build public subsidized housing. And make all these govt programs transparent and effective.
While we're at it, why don't we save the whales, cure cancer, and establish world peace as well?
For those too lazy to read the article, it basically says Intel wants to drop the current-generation BIOS because it requires backward-compatibility. For instance, when designing the Itanium, they didn't want to have to make their fancy-schmancy 64-bit processor emulate a 16-bit 8mhz CPU simply for the sake of the BIOS.
Note that, despite the hyperbolized title of the Slashdot summary, Intel doesn't want the BIOS dead. They don't have any problem with the concept of a BIOS, they just want the current firmware standard to evolve to better meet the needs of today's technology.
If there's one thing I've learned in my (admittedly relatively short) life, it's that things are never as bad (or as good) as others would have me believe.
Am I upset about the direction our country is heading? Of course. Do I think we're in danger of "losing" our republic? Hell no.
And if I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd say that the two companies are both trying to make their restriction mechanisms as easily-breakable as possible. Think about it - if you had to choose between a TiVo and ReplayTV device, and a crack was only available (or at least only easily installed) for the TiVo, which one would you buy?
and the status of the then improperly confirmed judges would be unknown
Why's that? The Supreme Court would say "no, you stupid partisan dolts, it's perfectly constitutional", the judges that were approved improperly would be removed, and new ones would need to be nominated in the usual fashion.
Slashdot Mirror
A better system would look at the cars you're passing, and determine whether you were moving too fast relative to the flow of traffic.
Microsoft's monopoly does not mean they're immune to the effects of the free market. Their abuse of their monopoly-derived power and influence is only accelerating their loss of market share to alternative OS's like Linux and Mac OS X.
He submitted it a while ago for the Slashdot editors to hold onto and post when a slow news day (like today) comes around.
The editors probably should've removed the first few words from the article summary, but oh well...
Well then, if there are enough people like you the free market will resolve the situation by itself.
"The purpose of this technology is not to protect you, it's been made to prevent people from illegal copies." (emphasis added)
As I said in another post, cry me a river.
What it will do is stop a legitimate user from transferring a purchased license, say, at the time his machine dies to a spare.
Absolutely not. Any TC system that doesn't allow for that eventuality would be laughed out of the marketplace, along with all the software vendors who release products under that system.
Be realistic. I feel like I'm back in the days when Microsoft Product Activation System (in Windows XP and Office >XP) was first announced. Everyone was talking about it like it was the end of the world, and what did it turn out to be? A perfectly reasonable copy protection system, that at most causes a few minutes of inconvenience for advanced users every year or two when they upgrade their computer, or move their copy of Windows to another machine.
So, the problem with this technology is that it will make it harder for people to pirate software?
Cry me a river.
And regarding this:
"only software signed by those making the keys will run."
Talk about FUD. Can you point to any evidence that suggests trusted computing will be used for this purpose? In every TC implementation I've read about, the end-user has the ability to generate their own keys to use for whatever purposes they want (for example, to authorize some freeware app to run on their computer). If the system is designed securely, this won't compromise its effectiveness at all.
trusted chips will eventually be used by software manufacturers to make sure the computer's owner does not do anything with the software which the manufacturer does not want to per
My god, you can see the future too? I thought it was just me! How long have you had the gift?
[/sarcasm]
Seriously, the chips the article is talking about are completely user-controllable. If they don't want to take advantage of the functionality, they don't have to. Did you even read the article? It talks about how the chips facilitate encryption and secure storage of passwords and other sensitive information, not controlling what the user does with their computer.
Making vague, unverifiable assertions about the possible applications of a technology that could potentially be derived from this one is nothing but FUD.
Yeah, or some junkie looking for quick cash broke into the offices, found a few laptops that had for some reason been left sitting around overnight, got spooked before he could take anything else, and left.
Not everything is a conspiracy.
And, along similar lines, here is 2nd Post!'s approach to pulling the US military out of Iraq:
1) Pull the US military out of Iraq.
It isn't the job of the justice system to decide what the law should be. Its responsibility is to decide what the law is.
If the Internet and other forms of new technology weren't included in the ADA, then that's a problem Congress has to deal with, not the courts.
The job of the justice system is not to decide what the law should be, it's to decide what the law is.
If the ADA was written so as not to be extensible to the Internet or other forms of new technology, then that's Congress' job to fix, not the courts'.
Let's see how long it takes before some Slashdotter uses this opportunity to "accidentally" inform us that he drives a BMW.
LinuxWorks@hotmail.com :)
Still at two megs, though. Not that I use it for anything anymore...
Well then - they can have him.
There must be a better way of showing a sane number of options while still allowing power users to access the more esoteric ones. Any thoughts?
Well, some of the more sophisticated user interfaces I've seen have a concept called "tabs". I know it might be hard to visualize, but imagine that you could split the configuration screen into two separate screens, and only show one of them at a time. The first screen could have the basic configuration, and the second could have the more advanced, "esoteric" ones.
Why, you could even label the screens "Simple" and "Advanced"! What a revolutionary concept!
[/sarcasm]
Obviously you don't RTFA too often - I'd say about half of the stories on Slashdot use text directly lifted from the article in the summary.
I don't see what the problem with this is. Why should someone bother writing a summary for a story submission, when there's a perfectly good one available in the article itself?
I suppose it technically is plagiarism, but considering that the story submitter doesn't really stand to benefit from it I don't see how it matters. Have you ever heard yourself say "Damn, that was a kickass summary. That story submitter must be a freaking genius!"?
No? Didn't think so.
What exactly are the "problems" with Google?
I can't see what you might possibly find offensive about Froogle and Gmail, or why their respective releases made you "afraid" for the future of Google.
It would be nice if the list were available in plaintext form, instead of this slow and miserable Flash presentation.
This is a prime example of Flash being misused. It's not needed at all, and only serves to slow things down. It also makes it impossible to use the data for anything useful.
Create laws so that the citizens are the owners, and that our time is valuable. Pay a basic minimum income to all citizens. Slow down immigration. Offer tax-funded national healtcare. Build public subsidized housing. And make all these govt programs transparent and effective.
While we're at it, why don't we save the whales, cure cancer, and establish world peace as well?
For those too lazy to read the article, it basically says Intel wants to drop the current-generation BIOS because it requires backward-compatibility. For instance, when designing the Itanium, they didn't want to have to make their fancy-schmancy 64-bit processor emulate a 16-bit 8mhz CPU simply for the sake of the BIOS.
Note that, despite the hyperbolized title of the Slashdot summary, Intel doesn't want the BIOS dead. They don't have any problem with the concept of a BIOS, they just want the current firmware standard to evolve to better meet the needs of today's technology.
If there's one thing I've learned in my (admittedly relatively short) life, it's that things are never as bad (or as good) as others would have me believe.
Am I upset about the direction our country is heading? Of course. Do I think we're in danger of "losing" our republic? Hell no.
And if I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd say that the two companies are both trying to make their restriction mechanisms as easily-breakable as possible. Think about it - if you had to choose between a TiVo and ReplayTV device, and a crack was only available (or at least only easily installed) for the TiVo, which one would you buy?
And how long before someone breaks whatever method they use to perform the restriction?
My bet is less than a month after they're first made available to the public.
and the status of the then improperly confirmed judges would be unknown
Why's that? The Supreme Court would say "no, you stupid partisan dolts, it's perfectly constitutional", the judges that were approved improperly would be removed, and new ones would need to be nominated in the usual fashion.