My statement was a generalization regarding FBI practices. I realize this is not what happened in the Skylarov case and I believe there have been statements from the FBI that they will no longer enguage in the practice of luring hackers to the US with offers such as jobs, because of the tenuous legal standing of such offers with respect to entrapment.
It's disappointing that he has not been given a bail hearing (as far as I know)but Dmitry is in a position to change American law - which is probably of little interest to him other than it's what got him whrown in jail - but also to change the way laws are executed across borders. The FBI strategy of luring targets into the United States to prosecute them is distainful and will probably be put to great scrutiny as a result of this arrest.
As for being a civil rights hero, who would want to be that. Given the alternatives, come on, I'm sure he'd rather live his life without this whole experience; but experience, but if it wasn't Skylarov it would be someone else.
What makes him a hero? well, I think Emerson put it best: "A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer."
Dmitry was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he is providing a service to all of us by standing for our rights - the rights of people in a foreign country (to him), and for that we must be thankful and do whatever we can to help minimize his incarceration.
We rely too heavily on organizations like EPIC and the EFF to do our work for us and we should be ashamed of that. We need to take responsibility for the laws under which we live and properlyinstruct lawmakers with regard to issues like information provacy, copyright, and Intelectual property in a digital age, such that errors that result in such injustices as this aren't allowed to take place in the future.
No. Public Key authentication is exactly that. The authentication is done using a public and private key set.
The text - or mouse movement - you (probably) entered when the key was generated was intended as a source of unique input, hopefully containing enough entropic characteristics to create a secure non-pattern based key set.
The then probably had the option to encrypt the key using a passphrase which you'd then have to use when authenticating using that key set.
The main difference here is that the passphrase is not a required part of a key set, and it is not the main cryptographic mechanism of the authentication process.
I would agree that some OSS projects lack proper design, but the majority are designed quite well - a necessity when you're dealing with colaboration on such a large scale (as opposed to a team of 6 programmers). Such large projects as the Apache web server would never have atained the popularity that they have had they not been designed in a way that would allow management of such large scale colaboration. In fact there are OSS projects that are monuments to exceptional software design.
Granted there are some young projects with bad design but you generally don't have to be worried about having ot use those products because the projects generally don't reach maturity, for reasons of managability.
OSS doesn't just have good software design it requires good software design, much in the same way as OSS promotes an enviroment of cut-throat competitivemess among programmers, instituted through an effective system of massively scales pier review. Toy are only as good as your last piece of code, and the OSS project will only survive if the underlying design is exceptional.
This as distinct from treditional corporate software design where pier review is frequently limited to 6 guys in a small room critiqueing your code, and software design is driven by customer deadlines; where software designers, after failing to succeed in one project will be transfered to another and another. Try that in the OSS comunity. If you fail on one public project, it's highly unlikely that you'll be invited to participate in another project. Such is the world of OSS and this is why it will always be a part of the software universe.
Dan Gillmore and others observed that Mundie came off like a true statesman, compated to Tiemann. There is a lot to be said for statesmanship indebates of this sort. There is the PR advantage, the potential to catch your oponatnt off guard, and the potential to build alliances. Mundie and Microsoft as a whole has generall looked reasonable and fair (to outsiders) in the ongoing OSS discussions of the last 6 months. This is potentially vary damaging to the OSS position. If we can't get it together, as was done somewhat back in the beginning when Microsoft launched their attach on OSS through Mundie's first speech 6 months ago, then we might as well pack it in because public opinion is the end all and be all of public debates.
While I completely disagree with Mundie's position, I aplaud him for his professional handling of the debates at this conference. I never thought I'd suggest using Microsoft employees as examples but i this case we should learn from Mundie's example.
Ok, so it's entertaining that this guy spent the time to do such detailed - although not vary scientific - tests to gather his information, but is there anything here we don't already know?
Don't lurk in AOL chat rooms Don't play online lotteries
Fascinating. I would have never figured this out on my own...
Perhaps it's targeted to a less knowlegable audience (given that it's on C|Net) but still, this is the sort of article that serves no real purpose other than to get the author a few bucks and some publicity.
It is amusing though to think that someone actually spent 5 months evaluating this...
It may have been an accident but it's a much more interesting and assuring - it's good to see we aren't any worse people now than we were then - if it were murder. The belief that it was murder creates the potential for a sociological analysis (rabid theorization) but this will give one grad student a topic for his thesis, which I suppose is an inportant goal in and of itself
This practice is vary common, especially in the field of history. I'm going to stop short of aleging revisionist history, and simply say that it is common to evaluate the same event from entirely different perspectives and reach entirely different conclusions - sometimes simply for the purpose of being able to publish additional research papers - after all, there is a limited amount of history to interpret.
I'm not all that suprised at the agressiveless of blackhats. There are some extremely frightening statistics though:
we estimate the life expectancy of a default installation of Red Hat 6.2 server to be less then 72 hours. The last time we attempted to confirm this, the system was compromised in less than eight hours. The fastest time ever for a system to be compromised was 15 minutes. This means the system was scanned, probed, and exploited within 15 minutes of connecting to the Internet.
I've been doing home network consulting in an unofficial capacity, for my co-workers at a major telecom equipment company - where you'd epect the engineering staff to be extremely technically knowlegable - and I've been frightened to find the number of home users - even technical people - who don't realize the need for proper security. It indicates a great failure of user education in the internet comunity. I hope this paper serves as a wakeup call to users, but it must be covered in mainstream media outlets for that to happen
It's sad that consumers have turned a blind eye to the behavior of Microsoft in this regard but consumers are not to blame for the behavior of Microsoft.
The complaint is well articulated and although not as complete (detailed) as I'd expect - I'm not a lawyer so I don't know what's appropriate - it covers a wide range of issues which have been discussed on/. over the past 6 months. It's good that we have organizations like the EFF and EPIC to help consumers address this criminal corporate behavior but perhaps we have come to rely on these organizations to protect us - to a degree that isn't entirely healthy in so far as we (consumers) have not taken sufficient action ourselves. In that sense, perhaps the blame should fall - at least in part - on the consumers.
If only all OSS projects were this well run. Too bad. I was going to comment in more detail on one element of the synopsis (quoting it here) but it looks like Perl.com is/.'ed already. What a shame. I usually expect better or O'Reilly.
What if I want to program it to handle the complex moves of Mortak Kombat? I have a feeling I'd be there for hours waving my hand in the air and kicking in various combinations to get the thing to register the proper joystick button sequence to replicate the move on screen. This is certainly a vary rough first cut at the next evolutionary step in game control and I expect we will see better products become availble over time but as much as the idea is a cool one I expect the novelty of this product will wear off fact (until one can be created which is easier to program)
the article being discussed here is about Quality of Service - nothing more. The reporter who wrote it was looking to sensationalize it by discussing the potential abuses that could result from installation of QOS capable routers, but when it comes down to it QOS is a good thing where the advantages outweigh the disadvantages 10 to 1.
It will allow large scale carier grade IP telephony, a host of high bandwidth services and untild flexibility, although it does have the potential to obscure the idea that I (joe customer) have paid for bandwidth and should be able to do with it what I please. This is disappointing and potentially dangerous but it's just a matter of reading through the terms of service before signing with an ISP. Realistically though, this is no different than is the case now - if you didn't read the contract carefully, you might get screwed. What do you think Asynchronous DSL is? YOu get a lot of bandwidth down and a little bandwidth up, because the ISP doesn't want you hosting a website off your residential DSL. They want you to pay for the business package for that. There's nothing new here, just reporter sensationalism. That's all there is to it.
Remember, keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer there is something in Dan Gillmore's observations that worries me. He says that Mundie came off looking like a statesman compated to others in the discussion. There is real value in such statesmanship which I wish the OSS comunity would take to heart; that is, take the microsoft approach. Argue intensely, then give a little on an issue which has become irrelevant (like Microsoft did recently on OEM Licensing) given the shifting sands of the technological world we live in, so as to look like you're working tward compromise.
Mundie has done this vary well over the past 6 months but especially in this debate. I aplaud him for his approach to it. It shouw great consideration and wisdom - although I completely disagree with his viewpoint. It's this type of approach which must be taken by the OSS comunity if we want to come away from these debates with any shred of credibility.
Mainstream media outlets just don't get it. The Post article says:
Microsoft said on July 11 that it would give computer makers more flexibility in placing icons on the desktop -- the valuable real estate consumers see first when they turn on their machines.
This was discussed earlier on/. but, most important here is the point that microsoft really isn't giving up anything. Microsoft has moved from advertising services on the desktop (limited reale-state) to advertising services within applications and the OS as a whole (un-limited real-estate). This is not only a much more insideous form of advertising, has the potential to provide redidual revenue on a per user bases greater than the initial sale of the OS to that user. AOL is equally targeting these methods of promoting teir services in my reading of the proposal. This point seems to be glossed over in the article.
It's nice to see Intel get with the program and dump Rambus. This outfit has been screwing with the system too long. They have created quasi-standards then demanded licensing for them; built an empire on suing manufacturers, and have been investigated for all sorts of fraud. It's time for Intel to move on to support real standards in an open competitive enviroment. It's nice to see them taking steps in that direction
I agree that thepublication of this book under the FDL is a nice gensture and that having such detailed documentation freely available will make it possible for developers to release more device drivers at lower cost to them, but my convern is fith the concept of the FDL
The GPL works because it creates a potential service market by allowing complex software to be made freely available, and creating the need for consultation and support of the product. The FDL, on the other hand, has no such potential. Providing documentation under the FDL with software under the GPL makes sense, however providing documentation under the FDL alone does not create a post-provision market for services. It doesn't allow for any sort of value-add, except to make the material freely available online in some thuroughly indexed and referenced form (which the publisher is doing anyway). It does get the author and the publisher some name recognition, but O'Reilly was already recognised as the leader in such documentation, and service to the OSS comunity by a publisher.
The only value-add I can see is the provision of the document in printed form, for which customers are asked to pay. This works so long as printed books are the dominant form of knowlege distribution. This is rapidly changing. At some point in the vary near future, such printed and bound documents will become secondary to the online publication of the same works - for me it' just a matter of getting a better monitor so I don't go bug eyed after reading 10 pages online.
So, at some point the FDL will not serve a purpose or act as a market driving force as the GPL does - where the GPL creates through the potential for massive large scale peer review, an enviroment of cut-throat competition among developers, driving the creation of the highest quality software available. There is no similar force that the FDL creates. Does it really serve a valuable purpose, other than to allow the software to get his name ot there in a positive light?
Agreed. The BBC article is much more reasonable. It doesn't however provide any details with respect to the theorising of the existance of ice crystals binding together dust on the surface of mars - a much more reasonable hypothesys.
This is the sort of thing that you knew would have to happen. It's hard to day weather this iteration will be successful but eventually such a move will be nessecery in the scientific community.
I never though the day would come when I'd agree with ICANN. How could you possibly police a Kid safe zone on the net?
All it does it create a false sense of security and the moment an enterprising company wants to do something that walks that thin line of decency the question becomes, who's job would it be to manage it?
You could always give some company like the Childrens Television Workshop control over that TLD and let them manage the content restrictions. Don't get me wrong. I don't think this would be a good idea, just the only way a safe.kids TLD might be possible.
--CTH
--
From an anibe newbie - this is great news
on
Akira Re-Released
·
· Score: 2
Akira! was my first exposure to Anime, back in highschool. It was neat then, and now with all the improvenents mentions, the re-release will be ausome. Looking ofrward to seeing it.
maybe it's a good thing (long term) that he's not being released. at least then some people might see just what a ridiculous thing this act is... and some courts might have a chance to blow the DMCA out of the water.
I would tend to agree, although it's too bad a guy has to rot in jail durring this process of testing a new law. There must be more mainstream mediat outlets which can draw attention to this case as a proving ground for a new law. Surely Amaricans are interested in such things, regardless on which site of the issue they're on...
Here is a list of Los Angeles Area Television Stations. I'm sure there are similar lists for other regions, perhaps maintained on the FCC website. Call and write to the news departments of these stations to let them know you want to see stories on this issue. Regardless of which side they're on, it will interest them and provide for more coverage, and since Adobe has backed down, there really isn't any remaining complainant (except the US, in the legal sense) so which side could they possibly take...
I'm also disturbed at how many media outlets characterize Skylarov as a 'hacker' which e isn't. He's a programmer employed by a company, who was assigned the task of developing algorythems for use with a commercial product. The issue seems to be that the tech community still hasn't managed to finde the best bridges to the non-tech community. That's probably through media outlets, although it may be through political lobyists, but we havn't really succeeded in pushing information through either channel vary well.
Vary few technology companies ever debt finance (ie: through bonds) R&D because the revenue stream from such endevours is uncertain. It is far safer to equity finance such activitied (therough issuing stock) because debt financing is premised on the ability of the company to pay back the money borrowed, in that form, rather than the ability of the company (or OSS project or whatever) to produce equal value in some other form (such as high quality software) where the investor chooses that investment over others based on his perception of the value of the endevour and hid/her opinion of the ability of the company to return value to that investor in whatever investment horizon the investor has chosen for him/herself.
This is why companies like Nortel Networks, hith high debt loads are having a tougher time weathering these tough economic times than companies like Cisco Systems that has a low debt load.
This is basic economics. It's been proven over and over.
This deal is as much about saving face for AT&T as it is about market power. AT&T was humiliated when in the face of it's aborted spin-off of it's cable business, it suffered first from market pressures then recieved an unsolicited low-ball bid for that unit. This would be a good deal for AOL-Time-Warner not only because it expands their reach, but they can snap up the asets at bargain prices, since AT&T is desperate to find another suitor other than Comcast to get them out of this situation.
This is simple. Borland wants to be paid, and perhaps they want to stick it to Microsoft a little by supporting OSS in a backhandedsoret of way.
There were plenty of other options. Borland could have provided an Open Edition which has been crippled in some way, or is time-limited - neither of which solutions would incline developers to use the product for any extended perior or to the point where it's use is required by the product development cycle -,or has some arcaine licensing restrictions (as distinct from forcing users to distribute under the GPL) which would accomplish the same thing. I'm sure their lawyers loved this idea. Make a simple licensing statement that a particular pre-existing license must be used when developing using the Open Edition product, that would provide incentive to developers to buy the commercial product. Now, what license would provide such incentive. Ah - The GPL. Perfect
It's actually a vary shrewd move for which I applaud them. Vary sharp guys. --
Slashdot Mirror
My statement was a generalization regarding FBI practices. I realize this is not what happened in the Skylarov case and I believe there have been statements from the FBI that they will no longer enguage in the practice of luring hackers to the US with offers such as jobs, because of the tenuous legal standing of such offers with respect to entrapment.
--CTH
It's disappointing that he has not been given a bail hearing (as far as I know)but Dmitry is in a position to change American law - which is probably of little interest to him other than it's what got him whrown in jail - but also to change the way laws are executed across borders. The FBI strategy of luring targets into the United States to prosecute them is distainful and will probably be put to great scrutiny as a result of this arrest.
As for being a civil rights hero, who would want to be that. Given the alternatives, come on, I'm sure he'd rather live his life without this whole experience; but experience, but if it wasn't Skylarov it would be someone else.
What makes him a hero? well, I think Emerson put it best: "A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer."
Dmitry was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he is providing a service to all of us by standing for our rights - the rights of people in a foreign country (to him), and for that we must be thankful and do whatever we can to help minimize his incarceration.
We rely too heavily on organizations like EPIC and the EFF to do our work for us and we should be ashamed of that. We need to take responsibility for the laws under which we live and properlyinstruct lawmakers with regard to issues like information provacy, copyright, and Intelectual property in a digital age, such that errors that result in such injustices as this aren't allowed to take place in the future.
--CTH
No. Public Key authentication is exactly that. The authentication is done using a public and private key set.
The text - or mouse movement - you (probably) entered when the key was generated was intended as a source of unique input, hopefully containing enough entropic characteristics to create a secure non-pattern based key set.
The then probably had the option to encrypt the key using a passphrase which you'd then have to use when authenticating using that key set.
The main difference here is that the passphrase is not a required part of a key set, and it is not the main cryptographic mechanism of the authentication process.
--CTH
I would agree that some OSS projects lack proper design, but the majority are designed quite well - a necessity when you're dealing with colaboration on such a large scale (as opposed to a team of 6 programmers). Such large projects as the Apache web server would never have atained the popularity that they have had they not been designed in a way that would allow management of such large scale colaboration. In fact there are OSS projects that are monuments to exceptional software design.
Granted there are some young projects with bad design but you generally don't have to be worried about having ot use those products because the projects generally don't reach maturity, for reasons of managability.
OSS doesn't just have good software design it requires good software design, much in the same way as OSS promotes an enviroment of cut-throat competitivemess among programmers, instituted through an effective system of massively scales pier review. Toy are only as good as your last piece of code, and the OSS project will only survive if the underlying design is exceptional.
This as distinct from treditional corporate software design where pier review is frequently limited to 6 guys in a small room critiqueing your code, and software design is driven by customer deadlines; where software designers, after failing to succeed in one project will be transfered to another and another. Try that in the OSS comunity. If you fail on one public project, it's highly unlikely that you'll be invited to participate in another project. Such is the world of OSS and this is why it will always be a part of the software universe.
--CTH
Dan Gillmore and others observed that Mundie came off like a true statesman, compated to Tiemann. There is a lot to be said for statesmanship indebates of this sort. There is the PR advantage, the potential to catch your oponatnt off guard, and the potential to build alliances. Mundie and Microsoft as a whole has generall looked reasonable and fair (to outsiders) in the ongoing OSS discussions of the last 6 months. This is potentially vary damaging to the OSS position. If we can't get it together, as was done somewhat back in the beginning when Microsoft launched their attach on OSS through Mundie's first speech 6 months ago, then we might as well pack it in because public opinion is the end all and be all of public debates.
While I completely disagree with Mundie's position, I aplaud him for his professional handling of the debates at this conference. I never thought I'd suggest using Microsoft employees as examples but i this case we should learn from Mundie's example.
--CTH
Ok, so it's entertaining that this guy spent the time to do such detailed - although not vary scientific - tests to gather his information, but is there anything here we don't already know?
Don't lurk in AOL chat rooms
Don't play online lotteries
Fascinating. I would have never figured this out on my own...
Perhaps it's targeted to a less knowlegable audience (given that it's on C|Net) but still, this is the sort of article that serves no real purpose other than to get the author a few bucks and some publicity.
It is amusing though to think that someone actually spent 5 months evaluating this...
--CTH
It may have been an accident but it's a much more interesting and assuring - it's good to see we aren't any worse people now than we were then - if it were murder. The belief that it was murder creates the potential for a sociological analysis (rabid theorization) but this will give one grad student a topic for his thesis, which I suppose is an inportant goal in and of itself
This practice is vary common, especially in the field of history. I'm going to stop short of aleging revisionist history, and simply say that it is common to evaluate the same event from entirely different perspectives and reach entirely different conclusions - sometimes simply for the purpose of being able to publish additional research papers - after all, there is a limited amount of history to interpret.
--CTH
--CTH
Mod up NMSpaz's response to my earlier comment. He makes a vary good point.
It's sad that consumers have turned a blind eye to the behavior of Microsoft in this regard but consumers are not to blame for the behavior of Microsoft.
/. over the past 6 months. It's good that we have organizations like the EFF and EPIC to help consumers address this criminal corporate behavior but perhaps we have come to rely on these organizations to protect us - to a degree that isn't entirely healthy in so far as we (consumers) have not taken sufficient action ourselves. In that sense, perhaps the blame should fall - at least in part - on the consumers.
The complaint is well articulated and although not as complete (detailed) as I'd expect - I'm not a lawyer so I don't know what's appropriate - it covers a wide range of issues which have been discussed on
--CTH
If only all OSS projects were this well run. Too bad. I was going to comment in more detail on one element of the synopsis (quoting it here) but it looks like Perl.com is /.'ed already. What a shame. I usually expect better or O'Reilly.
--CTH
What if I want to program it to handle the complex moves of Mortak Kombat? I have a feeling I'd be there for hours waving my hand in the air and kicking in various combinations to get the thing to register the proper joystick button sequence to replicate the move on screen. This is certainly a vary rough first cut at the next evolutionary step in game control and I expect we will see better products become availble over time but as much as the idea is a cool one I expect the novelty of this product will wear off fact (until one can be created which is easier to program)
--CTH
the article being discussed here is about Quality of Service - nothing more. The reporter who wrote it was looking to sensationalize it by discussing the potential abuses that could result from installation of QOS capable routers, but when it comes down to it QOS is a good thing where the advantages outweigh the disadvantages 10 to 1.
It will allow large scale carier grade IP telephony, a host of high bandwidth services and untild flexibility, although it does have the potential to obscure the idea that I (joe customer) have paid for bandwidth and should be able to do with it what I please. This is disappointing and potentially dangerous but it's just a matter of reading through the terms of service before signing with an ISP. Realistically though, this is no different than is the case now - if you didn't read the contract carefully, you might get screwed. What do you think Asynchronous DSL is? YOu get a lot of bandwidth down and a little bandwidth up, because the ISP doesn't want you hosting a website off your residential DSL. They want you to pay for the business package for that. There's nothing new here, just reporter sensationalism. That's all there is to it.
--CTH
Remember, keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer there is something in Dan Gillmore's observations that worries me. He says that Mundie came off looking like a statesman compated to others in the discussion. There is real value in such statesmanship which I wish the OSS comunity would take to heart; that is, take the microsoft approach. Argue intensely, then give a little on an issue which has become irrelevant (like Microsoft did recently on OEM Licensing) given the shifting sands of the technological world we live in, so as to look like you're working tward compromise.
Mundie has done this vary well over the past 6 months but especially in this debate. I aplaud him for his approach to it. It shouw great consideration and wisdom - although I completely disagree with his viewpoint. It's this type of approach which must be taken by the OSS comunity if we want to come away from these debates with any shred of credibility.
--CTH
--CTH
It's nice to see Intel get with the program and dump Rambus. This outfit has been screwing with the system too long. They have created quasi-standards then demanded licensing for them; built an empire on suing manufacturers, and have been investigated for all sorts of fraud. It's time for Intel to move on to support real standards in an open competitive enviroment. It's nice to see them taking steps in that direction
--CTH
I agree that thepublication of this book under the FDL is a nice gensture and that having such detailed documentation freely available will make it possible for developers to release more device drivers at lower cost to them, but my convern is fith the concept of the FDL
The GPL works because it creates a potential service market by allowing complex software to be made freely available, and creating the need for consultation and support of the product. The FDL, on the other hand, has no such potential. Providing documentation under the FDL with software under the GPL makes sense, however providing documentation under the FDL alone does not create a post-provision market for services. It doesn't allow for any sort of value-add, except to make the material freely available online in some thuroughly indexed and referenced form (which the publisher is doing anyway). It does get the author and the publisher some name recognition, but O'Reilly was already recognised as the leader in such documentation, and service to the OSS comunity by a publisher.
The only value-add I can see is the provision of the document in printed form, for which customers are asked to pay. This works so long as printed books are the dominant form of knowlege distribution. This is rapidly changing. At some point in the vary near future, such printed and bound documents will become secondary to the online publication of the same works - for me it' just a matter of getting a better monitor so I don't go bug eyed after reading 10 pages online.
So, at some point the FDL will not serve a purpose or act as a market driving force as the GPL does - where the GPL creates through the potential for massive large scale peer review, an enviroment of cut-throat competition among developers, driving the creation of the highest quality software available. There is no similar force that the FDL creates. Does it really serve a valuable purpose, other than to allow the software to get his name ot there in a positive light?
--CTH
Agreed. The BBC article is much more reasonable. It doesn't however provide any details with respect to the theorising of the existance of ice crystals binding together dust on the surface of mars - a much more reasonable hypothesys.
This is the sort of thing that you knew would have to happen. It's hard to day weather this iteration will be successful but eventually such a move will be nessecery in the scientific community.
If you missed the discussion, the journal Nature has an ongoing discussion on online scientific publication.
--CTH
I never though the day would come when I'd agree with ICANN. How could you possibly police a Kid safe zone on the net?
.kids TLD might be possible.
All it does it create a false sense of security and the moment an enterprising company wants to do something that walks that thin line of decency the question becomes, who's job would it be to manage it?
You could always give some company like the Childrens Television Workshop control over that TLD and let them manage the content restrictions. Don't get me wrong. I don't think this would be a good idea, just the only way a safe
--CTH
--
Akira! was my first exposure to Anime, back in highschool. It was neat then, and now with all the improvenents mentions, the re-release will be ausome. Looking ofrward to seeing it.
--
Here is a list of Los Angeles Area Television Stations. I'm sure there are similar lists for other regions, perhaps maintained on the FCC website. Call and write to the news departments of these stations to let them know you want to see stories on this issue. Regardless of which side they're on, it will interest them and provide for more coverage, and since Adobe has backed down, there really isn't any remaining complainant (except the US, in the legal sense) so which side could they possibly take...
I'm also disturbed at how many media outlets characterize Skylarov as a 'hacker' which e isn't. He's a programmer employed by a company, who was assigned the task of developing algorythems for use with a commercial product. The issue seems to be that the tech community still hasn't managed to finde the best bridges to the non-tech community. That's probably through media outlets, although it may be through political lobyists, but we havn't really succeeded in pushing information through either channel vary well.
--CTH
--
Vary few technology companies ever debt finance (ie: through bonds) R&D because the revenue stream from such endevours is uncertain. It is far safer to equity finance such activitied (therough issuing stock) because debt financing is premised on the ability of the company to pay back the money borrowed, in that form, rather than the ability of the company (or OSS project or whatever) to produce equal value in some other form (such as high quality software) where the investor chooses that investment over others based on his perception of the value of the endevour and hid/her opinion of the ability of the company to return value to that investor in whatever investment horizon the investor has chosen for him/herself.
This is why companies like Nortel Networks, hith high debt loads are having a tougher time weathering these tough economic times than companies like Cisco Systems that has a low debt load.
This is basic economics. It's been proven over and over.
--CTH
--
This deal is as much about saving face for AT&T as it is about market power. AT&T was humiliated when in the face of it's aborted spin-off of it's cable business, it suffered first from market pressures then recieved an unsolicited low-ball bid for that unit. This would be a good deal for AOL-Time-Warner not only because it expands their reach, but they can snap up the asets at bargain prices, since AT&T is desperate to find another suitor other than Comcast to get them out of this situation.
--CTH
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This is simple. Borland wants to be paid, and perhaps they want to stick it to Microsoft a little by supporting OSS in a backhandedsoret of way.
There were plenty of other options. Borland could have provided an Open Edition which has been crippled in some way, or is time-limited - neither of which solutions would incline developers to use the product for any extended perior or to the point where it's use is required by the product development cycle -,or has some arcaine licensing restrictions (as distinct from forcing users to distribute under the GPL) which would accomplish the same thing. I'm sure their lawyers loved this idea. Make a simple licensing statement that a particular pre-existing license must be used when developing using the Open Edition product, that would provide incentive to developers to buy the commercial product. Now, what license would provide such incentive. Ah - The GPL. Perfect
It's actually a vary shrewd move for which I applaud them. Vary sharp guys.
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