Not at all. In this case it's SCO who claims their code is being infringed upon. It's their responsibility to prove this. Same as you having to show receipts for something if you claim I stole it. If you make a claim, prepare to back it up.
Now that an easy tool is available, look for whistle-blowers. All they have to say is that file X, lines Y-Z, of Windows XP, build N, are taken from linux and here are the MD5s. At this point it's relatively easy for someone to get a court order allowing them to view the code, under NDA of course. Without a tool like this people would have to actually read source and be familiar with potential sources in order to catch dupes. Not something someone with casual access could do.
Hell, this could even store all the MD5 sums of open source projects on a website, allowing people to compare their code to large open source projects without even having to download the source.
It would be interesting if "they" rewrote this to compare with or without comments, and with or without original variable names. I'd imagine in a few cases you'd want the code but you'd do a mini re-write to bring the variable names into line with your existing code. I wonder if comparing the parse tree, as suggested elsewhere in this over-thread, would provide good results?
No, companies don't pull statistics out of their ass. They pull circumstances out of their ass to justify the statistics you want.
Microsoft didn't say, "Make J2EE look bad compared to us", they said "Make us look good in one of these (a, b, c) areas." The company then looked around for a competing product that overlapped one of those and didn't perform as well as the MS product in at least one aspect. That's how these paid-for studies work.
Ahh yes, the twelve year-old daughter of a wealthy software magnate is going to be too busy to play on a computer...
Also, you can get music on P2P programs that you literally can't buy except perhaps for ebay (which does take a lot of time). I bet that many wealthy people use P2P programs to get their favorite rare music. It's just a couple of clicks awya, if they've got time to play music, they've got time to download it.
It does seem reasonable that groups formed around who, or where, you are would be less meaningful than groups you sought out and joined because of shared views.
Yeah, I know. It's not easy, but I'd think they could have found someone. Start with the guy in the video and lean on him to reveal who told him to make it, etc. It's what they do with mobsters, so try it on white-collar criminals. Otherwise it's basically a license to commit fraud. "Well, sure, I did do the criminal act, but I didn't know it, and the email telling me to do it was conveniently lost."
Or, just fine the corporation. Perhaps a corporation is too spread out for easily assigning blame to someone, so hurt the corporate entity directly. Just fit the fine to the stock value, or liquid assets, of the company.
It was a off-the-cuff figure, but it seems somewhat reasonable. The US is on the low end of this, but many countries charge a fair bit more. I've seen a stufy saying that in the US and Canada you pay aproximately double what your income tax is, once you count all the taxes and tariffs and hidden costs.
I don't know what US income tax rates are, but in Canada 30% is fairly low-middle tax bracket. That'd mean we'd pay 60%, at a minimum, to the government.
Anyways, the point is that if that, be it 40%, or 70%, was assessed in one large lump payment, we'd have an honest accounting of our finances and perhaps we'd do something about the tax burden. This is the argument for on-the-top sales taxes, they let you know every time you're buying something, how much you're giving to the government, instead of hiding it.
Getting rid of a type of taxes doesn't have to mean getting rid of that tax money. You'd up one tax, assuming you need the money, when abolishing another. Then the tax burden would, mainly, be one large number. You'd have sticker shock, but you'd also have an honest answer about what government costs you.
It would be worth getting rid of many types of taxes and having only income tax and cost-of-service taxes, such as a tax on gasoline to pay for roads, etc.
Once people saw how much tax they were paying in a no-nonscense way, they'd be better enabled to do something about it. Why do we have to pay upwards of 70% of our income, in one way or another, to the government? Do we really need to pay for everything we're paying for?
All the government needs to do with Microsoft is enforce already existing laws. Just as if MS was a collection of people.
Microsoft has repeatedly broken the law and officers of the company have perjured themselves in court over it. (Remember the video of 98 working badly without IE?)
Start tossing MS execs into jail and fine the company, the same as would be done to anyone else who broke those laws.
If you've got less than fifty computers, Microsoft ignores you. You might as well buy your software at Circuit City for all they care. Companies like this that fall in the cracks - too small for Ballmer to fly out and see, are going to want a discount.
Companies like mine are, I think, fairly common. ~40 people, maybe ten or so who would want specialized software. But, those ten would all want one thing, and rarely the same thing. A tech writer or two would want Word, the accountants would want Excel and maybe a specific accounting package, the Windows developers want Windows and Visual Studio, etc.
The managers may want Windows and Office, but if they have to justify the cost it's less likely to happen. Especially where each desktop is full price.
Not at all. The Taiwanese don't want to be part of China. They've done everything they could to distance themselves. If it was possible to hook the island up to ships and tow it away, they would.
How much stronger of a hint is required?
I've heard China's type of argument before. From stalkers, right aroung the time the victim gets a restraining order and the stalker is still saying, "But she's my wife!" You've got to know when it's over.
In many businesses I see, Linux is taking server market from Microsoft, or denying Microsoft entrance into that market. Most small businesses don't have huge unix servers. They got onto the net after the invention of the web, on Linux or BSD on x86 hardware. Microsoft is the competition in this area. Netcraft says there are what, ~30 million apache servers out there. Do you think there were that many big-iron UNIX servers for Apache/Linux to replace?
As for the desktop, consider that an 2Ghz machine with 256MB of ram and 40GB HD is around $500, do you really think that $700 for an OS and office suite is reasonable? Sure, graphic artists and tech writers, expensive workers, will be able to demand their specific platform, but the rank-and-file workers who may need a spreadsheet or word-processor once a month aren't going to convince the boss that they need Office XP Pro.
Like the servers though, Linux won't take desktops away from Windows as much as it'll enable people who couldn't justify Windows to have a desktop computer.
Only a freaking moron would think Taiwan is part of mainland China. However, that does seem to adequately describe billions of Chinese evidently, as many of them just can't understand why Taiwan wouldn't want to be part of the utopia they've built. Go figure.
Attacking an obviously shoddy and insecure proprietary product produced by someone who has stated they wish to see a particular party in power is seems to be directly relevant and an important part of making sure we don't get fixed elections.
However, the fact that the company is run by republicans isn't relevant. Both parties are corrupt. They're both bought, there are conflicts of interest with both, etc. Bush and Haliburton, the Clinton's and their scandal, etc. I wouldn't trust either of them and until people realize that they're simply two sides of a plutocracy we're going to be screwed.
To use these machines from an obviously biased company is tantamount to election fraud. Saying otherwise, pretending that everyone looks past their personal preferences to provide a fair playing field, is just ridiculous and goes against all of recorded history. The *only* way we'll get a fair result is if people who hate each other watch every step of this together, both watching for the other to screw up, and both afraid to cheat for fear of being watched.
It's not a question of if this particular company is crooked. That's a given. The question is how to keep everyone honest.
The problem with the CPU ID is that a CPU is usually more expensive than a network card. You can't just swap out a CPU like you can with a NIC and you probably won't be able to change the ID like you can with a MAC address. The problem with the serial number is that a physical serial number etched onto the chip is all that's required to stop theft (or catch the thief) so consumers knew this wasn't being implemented for them as Intel was pushing.
There's no benefit to the consumer with these technologies. If software can tell which machine it's on it'll refuse to be used on another machine. That's not handy, I can't rebuild my computer and keep my software. If websites can query a DRM-enabled browser and read my CPU-ID I can't anonymously browse the web. I'm fine with being identified some of the time, but I don't like the idea of not being able to be anonymous.
Being linked to my CPU isn't trusted enough ID to let me bank without a password or anything, yet it's trusted enough to link me to every link I click on, every time a piece of software is used, every document I view, etc. Again, how do I benefit from any of this?
The Intel CPU-ID failed because everyone realized that they was a feature for DoubleClick, and for the MPAA/RIAA, etc, not for them.
Wouldn't do any good. You'd just hack the executable to ignore it.
What they could do is use public key encryption to sign the hash of the BIOS, then the BIOS chip checks that this is a valid signature before it flashes the new code.
But, BIOS chips aren't massively secure (well, in fact, they aren't at all, being just an EEPROM) so this wouldn't be too hard to reverse engineer. Until they go to using a smart-card (or other security system designed in a similar way) to authenticate, it would be pretty easy to get around.
And truthfully, there really isn't a problem with loads of features, as long as people aren't rushing out to upgrade just for features they'll never use. The problem is that people switch to the new MS Office as soon as it's out for some weird reason, but then don't use anything that Office 97 couldn't do. Weird.
Not at all. That song is no more copyable, in whatever form, than a CD-Single. As in, both could be around the net in minutes. But selling a CD is legal, so why wouldn't it be legal to sell this song?
Nobody has their rights trampled. Copyright law is still in effect and forbids the creation of extra copies. You can shift this copy from format to format, deleting the old one, as long as you've only got one copy at the end when you send it to the customer.
You figure this out by job description. Graphic artists get Photoshop, people who write documents get Word, Accountants get Excel, etc. If you're a graphic artist who wants Excel, you'll have to ask. Just like an accountant would ask if they need a graphics tablet.
We manage to get by with assigning all the other specialty supplies based on need. Nobody in the office needs a pallet-jack, few people need a drafting table, only some people get 21" monitors even though everyone wants one, etc.
Re:video phones = stupid for day to day use.
on
What's Always Next?
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Same sort of thing with self-driving cars. Better, from a liability point of view, to sell a car that has absolutely no collision avoidance, and market it as such, than sell a car that avoids 99.9% of accidents but accidently kills someone by performing a collision avoidance move, even if that other person was at fault (for example, jaywalking).
It's like when you mention speed limiters, the expected response is "But what if I'm parked at a light and I see a semi bearing down on me and I need to floor it, at 110% of maximum power, or I'll die!?". Even if that speed limiter would save your life by preventing some other accident a hundred times before this scenario ever occured. Anti-lock brakes faced the same initial resistance, as did seat-belts before them.
I remember all the stories of "the guy" who survived a wreck only because he was thrown harmlessly from it onto a truckload of pillows, while his friend who was belted in died horribly as the car burned around him, yada, yada... If a safety device could ever kill someone, despite saving almost everyone else, it will be looked on as a deathtrap by everyone who didn't grow up with it. The next generation though will have trouble imagining how people got by without it.
Hire a real developer and get them to learn it. Not to disparage everyone else, but someone who is a skilled programmer can learn a new scripting language pretty easily, where someone who understands VBScript may not be able to easily learn another langauge. As a bonus, they'll have a better idea of general programming practices and will probably write better code than a tinkerer who learned by extending existing macros.
It's cheaper in a short-sighted way to have one of the accounting staff who knows a bit of scripting write the macros, but it doesn't produce the same quality of code and takes them away from their other tasks that they're really hired for. A programmer would be an extra budget item but you could get the work done quickly and well, letting your accouting staff (for instance) do what they're really good at.
USA Copyright law specifically addresses this. Copies made for the purpose of using the copyrighted work are specifically allowed. If you have to copy the game (for example) onto your HD, then into RAM, to play it as intended (easy to show - did you use their installer?) it's not a copyright infringement.
This is indeed what software companies said, and this is what the courts did to end this stupid argument. Imagine - the gall to say "We sold it to him, but he's not in any way allowed to actually USE it."
US copyright law specifically exempts copying for the purpose of use, if that copying is a required part of using the copyrighted work.
In other words, if you have to install the game on the HD to run it, and running it means copying it into RAM, and onto the video card, then those actions, it you are trying to use the software, aren't copyright infringement and you don't need anyone's permission.
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Not at all. In this case it's SCO who claims their code is being infringed upon. It's their responsibility to prove this. Same as you having to show receipts for something if you claim I stole it. If you make a claim, prepare to back it up.
Now that an easy tool is available, look for whistle-blowers. All they have to say is that file X, lines Y-Z, of Windows XP, build N, are taken from linux and here are the MD5s. At this point it's relatively easy for someone to get a court order allowing them to view the code, under NDA of course. Without a tool like this people would have to actually read source and be familiar with potential sources in order to catch dupes. Not something someone with casual access could do.
Hell, this could even store all the MD5 sums of open source projects on a website, allowing people to compare their code to large open source projects without even having to download the source.
It would be interesting if "they" rewrote this to compare with or without comments, and with or without original variable names. I'd imagine in a few cases you'd want the code but you'd do a mini re-write to bring the variable names into line with your existing code. I wonder if comparing the parse tree, as suggested elsewhere in this over-thread, would provide good results?
No, companies don't pull statistics out of their ass. They pull circumstances out of their ass to justify the statistics you want.
Microsoft didn't say, "Make J2EE look bad compared to us", they said "Make us look good in one of these (a, b, c) areas." The company then looked around for a competing product that overlapped one of those and didn't perform as well as the MS product in at least one aspect. That's how these paid-for studies work.
Ahh yes, the twelve year-old daughter of a wealthy software magnate is going to be too busy to play on a computer...
Also, you can get music on P2P programs that you literally can't buy except perhaps for ebay (which does take a lot of time). I bet that many wealthy people use P2P programs to get their favorite rare music. It's just a couple of clicks awya, if they've got time to play music, they've got time to download it.
It does seem reasonable that groups formed around who, or where, you are would be less meaningful than groups you sought out and joined because of shared views.
Unpopular, but it does make sense.
Yeah, I know. It's not easy, but I'd think they could have found someone. Start with the guy in the video and lean on him to reveal who told him to make it, etc. It's what they do with mobsters, so try it on white-collar criminals. Otherwise it's basically a license to commit fraud. "Well, sure, I did do the criminal act, but I didn't know it, and the email telling me to do it was conveniently lost."
Or, just fine the corporation. Perhaps a corporation is too spread out for easily assigning blame to someone, so hurt the corporate entity directly. Just fit the fine to the stock value, or liquid assets, of the company.
It was a off-the-cuff figure, but it seems somewhat reasonable. The US is on the low end of this, but many countries charge a fair bit more. I've seen a stufy saying that in the US and Canada you pay aproximately double what your income tax is, once you count all the taxes and tariffs and hidden costs.
I don't know what US income tax rates are, but in Canada 30% is fairly low-middle tax bracket. That'd mean we'd pay 60%, at a minimum, to the government.
Anyways, the point is that if that, be it 40%, or 70%, was assessed in one large lump payment, we'd have an honest accounting of our finances and perhaps we'd do something about the tax burden. This is the argument for on-the-top sales taxes, they let you know every time you're buying something, how much you're giving to the government, instead of hiding it.
Getting rid of a type of taxes doesn't have to mean getting rid of that tax money. You'd up one tax, assuming you need the money, when abolishing another. Then the tax burden would, mainly, be one large number. You'd have sticker shock, but you'd also have an honest answer about what government costs you.
It would be worth getting rid of many types of taxes and having only income tax and cost-of-service taxes, such as a tax on gasoline to pay for roads, etc.
Once people saw how much tax they were paying in a no-nonscense way, they'd be better enabled to do something about it. Why do we have to pay upwards of 70% of our income, in one way or another, to the government? Do we really need to pay for everything we're paying for?
All the government needs to do with Microsoft is enforce already existing laws. Just as if MS was a collection of people.
Microsoft has repeatedly broken the law and officers of the company have perjured themselves in court over it. (Remember the video of 98 working badly without IE?)
Start tossing MS execs into jail and fine the company, the same as would be done to anyone else who broke those laws.
If you've got less than fifty computers, Microsoft ignores you. You might as well buy your software at Circuit City for all they care. Companies like this that fall in the cracks - too small for Ballmer to fly out and see, are going to want a discount.
Companies like mine are, I think, fairly common. ~40 people, maybe ten or so who would want specialized software. But, those ten would all want one thing, and rarely the same thing. A tech writer or two would want Word, the accountants would want Excel and maybe a specific accounting package, the Windows developers want Windows and Visual Studio, etc.
The managers may want Windows and Office, but if they have to justify the cost it's less likely to happen. Especially where each desktop is full price.
Not at all. The Taiwanese don't want to be part of China. They've done everything they could to distance themselves. If it was possible to hook the island up to ships and tow it away, they would.
How much stronger of a hint is required?
I've heard China's type of argument before. From stalkers, right aroung the time the victim gets a restraining order and the stalker is still saying, "But she's my wife!" You've got to know when it's over.
In many businesses I see, Linux is taking server market from Microsoft, or denying Microsoft entrance into that market. Most small businesses don't have huge unix servers. They got onto the net after the invention of the web, on Linux or BSD on x86 hardware. Microsoft is the competition in this area. Netcraft says there are what, ~30 million apache servers out there. Do you think there were that many big-iron UNIX servers for Apache/Linux to replace?
As for the desktop, consider that an 2Ghz machine with 256MB of ram and 40GB HD is around $500, do you really think that $700 for an OS and office suite is reasonable? Sure, graphic artists and tech writers, expensive workers, will be able to demand their specific platform, but the rank-and-file workers who may need a spreadsheet or word-processor once a month aren't going to convince the boss that they need Office XP Pro.
Like the servers though, Linux won't take desktops away from Windows as much as it'll enable people who couldn't justify Windows to have a desktop computer.
Only a freaking moron would think Taiwan is part of mainland China. However, that does seem to adequately describe billions of Chinese evidently, as many of them just can't understand why Taiwan wouldn't want to be part of the utopia they've built. Go figure.
The point was that Friday wasn't happy with the sex either.
Attacking an obviously shoddy and insecure proprietary product produced by someone who has stated they wish to see a particular party in power is seems to be directly relevant and an important part of making sure we don't get fixed elections.
However, the fact that the company is run by republicans isn't relevant. Both parties are corrupt. They're both bought, there are conflicts of interest with both, etc. Bush and Haliburton, the Clinton's and their scandal, etc. I wouldn't trust either of them and until people realize that they're simply two sides of a plutocracy we're going to be screwed.
To use these machines from an obviously biased company is tantamount to election fraud. Saying otherwise, pretending that everyone looks past their personal preferences to provide a fair playing field, is just ridiculous and goes against all of recorded history. The *only* way we'll get a fair result is if people who hate each other watch every step of this together, both watching for the other to screw up, and both afraid to cheat for fear of being watched.
It's not a question of if this particular company is crooked. That's a given. The question is how to keep everyone honest.
The problem with the CPU ID is that a CPU is usually more expensive than a network card. You can't just swap out a CPU like you can with a NIC and you probably won't be able to change the ID like you can with a MAC address. The problem with the serial number is that a physical serial number etched onto the chip is all that's required to stop theft (or catch the thief) so consumers knew this wasn't being implemented for them as Intel was pushing.
There's no benefit to the consumer with these technologies. If software can tell which machine it's on it'll refuse to be used on another machine. That's not handy, I can't rebuild my computer and keep my software. If websites can query a DRM-enabled browser and read my CPU-ID I can't anonymously browse the web. I'm fine with being identified some of the time, but I don't like the idea of not being able to be anonymous.
Being linked to my CPU isn't trusted enough ID to let me bank without a password or anything, yet it's trusted enough to link me to every link I click on, every time a piece of software is used, every document I view, etc. Again, how do I benefit from any of this?
The Intel CPU-ID failed because everyone realized that they was a feature for DoubleClick, and for the MPAA/RIAA, etc, not for them.
Wouldn't do any good. You'd just hack the executable to ignore it.
What they could do is use public key encryption to sign the hash of the BIOS, then the BIOS chip checks that this is a valid signature before it flashes the new code.
But, BIOS chips aren't massively secure (well, in fact, they aren't at all, being just an EEPROM) so this wouldn't be too hard to reverse engineer. Until they go to using a smart-card (or other security system designed in a similar way) to authenticate, it would be pretty easy to get around.
Well of course, to an emacs user, nothing. :)
And truthfully, there really isn't a problem with loads of features, as long as people aren't rushing out to upgrade just for features they'll never use. The problem is that people switch to the new MS Office as soon as it's out for some weird reason, but then don't use anything that Office 97 couldn't do. Weird.
Not at all. That song is no more copyable, in whatever form, than a CD-Single. As in, both could be around the net in minutes. But selling a CD is legal, so why wouldn't it be legal to sell this song?
Nobody has their rights trampled. Copyright law is still in effect and forbids the creation of extra copies. You can shift this copy from format to format, deleting the old one, as long as you've only got one copy at the end when you send it to the customer.
You figure this out by job description. Graphic artists get Photoshop, people who write documents get Word, Accountants get Excel, etc. If you're a graphic artist who wants Excel, you'll have to ask. Just like an accountant would ask if they need a graphics tablet.
We manage to get by with assigning all the other specialty supplies based on need. Nobody in the office needs a pallet-jack, few people need a drafting table, only some people get 21" monitors even though everyone wants one, etc.
Same sort of thing with self-driving cars. Better, from a liability point of view, to sell a car that has absolutely no collision avoidance, and market it as such, than sell a car that avoids 99.9% of accidents but accidently kills someone by performing a collision avoidance move, even if that other person was at fault (for example, jaywalking).
It's like when you mention speed limiters, the expected response is "But what if I'm parked at a light and I see a semi bearing down on me and I need to floor it, at 110% of maximum power, or I'll die!?". Even if that speed limiter would save your life by preventing some other accident a hundred times before this scenario ever occured. Anti-lock brakes faced the same initial resistance, as did seat-belts before them.
I remember all the stories of "the guy" who survived a wreck only because he was thrown harmlessly from it onto a truckload of pillows, while his friend who was belted in died horribly as the car burned around him, yada, yada... If a safety device could ever kill someone, despite saving almost everyone else, it will be looked on as a deathtrap by everyone who didn't grow up with it. The next generation though will have trouble imagining how people got by without it.
Hire a real developer and get them to learn it. Not to disparage everyone else, but someone who is a skilled programmer can learn a new scripting language pretty easily, where someone who understands VBScript may not be able to easily learn another langauge. As a bonus, they'll have a better idea of general programming practices and will probably write better code than a tinkerer who learned by extending existing macros.
It's cheaper in a short-sighted way to have one of the accounting staff who knows a bit of scripting write the macros, but it doesn't produce the same quality of code and takes them away from their other tasks that they're really hired for. A programmer would be an extra budget item but you could get the work done quickly and well, letting your accouting staff (for instance) do what they're really good at.
Except that nothing uses them properly.
You can use a shortcut to open anything, but try to append to it, or save-as a document onto a shortcut.
The problem is that the underlying OS has absolutely no concept of links, but the window manager does.
USA Copyright law specifically addresses this. Copies made for the purpose of using the copyrighted work are specifically allowed. If you have to copy the game (for example) onto your HD, then into RAM, to play it as intended (easy to show - did you use their installer?) it's not a copyright infringement.
This is indeed what software companies said, and this is what the courts did to end this stupid argument. Imagine - the gall to say "We sold it to him, but he's not in any way allowed to actually USE it."
US copyright law specifically exempts copying for the purpose of use, if that copying is a required part of using the copyrighted work.
In other words, if you have to install the game on the HD to run it, and running it means copying it into RAM, and onto the video card, then those actions, it you are trying to use the software, aren't copyright infringement and you don't need anyone's permission.