While you were probably speaking of the statistacal nobody, I'd like to point out that there are many people who solely use Linux on their desktops, myself included.
Thanks for pointing that out! I just added "nodrm" to my USE flags.
And I completely agree with you. When I use Free software, I feel that it's working for me and not working for someone else (whose interests may not be the same as mine). This, for me, is one of the biggest advantages to Free software.
Since IE downloads to the cache directory, I assume it's to save bandwidth if the user decides to download the file a second time. If the OP tried to download that large file again after hitting cancel, the download might go a lot quicker (unless the file was too big for the cache, and was deleted already).
Though back when I was using IE (oh so many years ago), I remember this behavior being somewhat flaky and poorly defined, so I guess YMMV. Personally, I'll stick with FireFox:)
I'd agree with you if you were selling a part of the laptop (say the battery charger or something). But you're trying to sell a service that came with the laptop. So that would be like buying a car and then trying the Ebay the service warranty. I don't actually use Ebay that much, but last I heard they automatically de-listed software auctions they found, on the idea that they were likely to be illegal. That may have changed though.
Now, I do agree that you should be able to purchase a laptop without Windows, I'm just not sure that it would necessarily be legal to sell Windows. IIRC, you technically can't even sell the Windows license if you sell the laptop. Same goes if you donate it to a non-profit -- they have to buy their own Windows license. But I may be wrong -- I like to stay in the Linux world where I don't have to worry about stupid things like that:)
Though for someone so inclined, going to (small claims) court to set a precedent might be nice so we would know rather than just some non lawyers debating on slashdot:)
What will probably happen is that Ebay will de-list your auction. If you persist, they'd probably delete your account. And since you're breaking the TOS of Ebay (I'm sure), you won't have any grounds to win a lawsuit against them.
Besides, what are you selling? A contract you haven't accepted, though you paid for it? If you haven't accepted the contract, why did you fulfill your obligation (payment)? The real problem is that the $100 or less that people pay for Windows on each and every new machine sold (at least in the US) isn't worth going to court over, so MS continues to make money hand over fist. It's wrong, but there's not enough popular support for Windows alternatives to force (legally or socially) MS to change their contractual requirements on OEMs.
So pay your protection money and add it to your collection of unused Windows licenses. Or spend thousands of dollars trying to prove your point.
Have you checked your RAM? Bad RAM could easily cause massive instability in both OSes. There's no reason why either Linux or Windows should crash so quickly. Try Memtest86 or its successor/fork Memtest86+. A quick test is to copy a large file and then md5sum both versions. If the MD5s are different, you may have bad RAM.
I while ago, I looked for the same thing, but couldn't find anything. So I wrote my own that uses 3DES to encrypt the passwords to a file on the mobile device. There's no desktop syncing, though. At one point I thought about posting the source, but I never got around to it. I probably could if there was interest in it (reply to this post, or find some other way to contact me).
How does a pile of bricks produce real value to the population when all you do is live inside it?
It's just a matter of supply and demand. The supply of property is pretty constant (there's very little of it being made). Demand for property does fluctuate, and it's that demand that ultimately determines the value. The more people want and are willing to pay for property, the higher its value. The more people there are, the more people will pay for it (since there is more demand). Property closer to urban areas or with other desirable qualities like on a waterfront or with a nice "pile of bricks" on it will have a higher demand and thus higher price. But the fact remains that as the population increases, demand and thus property value will also increase.
It actually exactly the same as your stock comparison. The number of stocks for a given company is fixed (barring splits, but in that instance, every stock owner owns the same percentage as before). Only the demand fluctuates. Stocks likely to produce dividends are more desirable, and thus higher priced. More people investing in the market (such as through 401k or other retirement plans) also cause more demand and higher values. Of course, people also buy "hot" stocks that they think more people will want later, without worrying about dividends. We call this the "dot com boom":)
Is the current house inflation insane and unsustainable? You bet. But so was the dot com boom. But unlike dot com stocks, homes do have intrisic value, so when the "bust" comes, it will just be a slowdown in housing prices, or at worst a mild correction (at least in most places, some will probably be worse off).
A little off topic, but you're right -- copyright periods are way too long. So long, in fact, that most people don't even realize that copyright is supposed to expire!
As far as patent lengths not growing, I imagine that's because there is usually strong opposition from competitors to the patent holder (such as generic drug companies) that keep Congress from running amok and extending patents to forever and a day. No such strong force exists for copyrights.
The advantage to using GPG signatures is that it doesn't require changing the existing SMTP/DNS/etc infastructure of the Internet, which as you said would be very difficult. The biggest impediment to using GPG to filter spam and other nasty emails is a lack of mindshare of the idea in the anti-spam community. If GPG signatures were pushed as the way to filter spam, it would get implemented in a variety of clients and people would quickly learn that passed signature was "good" and failed signature was "bad". Sure, some (or even most) would still view the failed signature emails, but they would hopefully treat the email with some suspicion.
But since the anti-spam community thinks that SPF, blocking port 25 from all but large (and therefore "trusted") corporations, Internet Mail 2000, dropping SMTP in favor of a magical protocol that prevents spam, choping off spammers balls, or whatever else, I agree that GPG signatures may never be widely used. That doesn't change the fact that there is an environment where the From header can not be (easily) spoofed. Even if people are unwilling or unable to use it.
we are still a long way from providing an environment where the From header can not be (easily) spoofed
Perhaps you need to look into GPG signatures then. As long as no one gets a hold of my GPG private key, no one can send an email claiming to be me. Sure, anyone could send an email with my address in the From header, but if they don't sign it correctly (and they can't), the receiver should have little to no trust in that header.
That's not to say GPG signing is full proof (public key distribution and user education are difficulties), but it amazes me that so much effort goes into anti-spam (and anti-mail-worm) efforts, and so little effort goes into using GPG signatures. People want to replace everything from SMTP to DNS to stop spam, but very few people advocate using GPG signatures.
Now, you can argue that we're still a long way from getting people from using methods to ensure email sources are valid, but techincally we can do it today with existing infastructure.
I hate to break it to you, but there's very little that Apple (or Mircosoft, or Linux, etc) can do to prevent many types of viruses, since they are installed by the user themselves. Think about a traditional virus that infects a binary and is run when the program is run. Or a trojan program that does bad things to your system. Good file permissions can prevent the spread of such viruses and limit their damage, but they aren't that hard to write. I've even seen prototypes for a shell script virus (in an educational setting, and non-destructive except for polluting your shell scripts). There's very little technically that anyone can do to prevent a shell script virus, at least not without making the system difficult to use (or radically redesigning the system, which will probably have other drawbacks).
Now, if you're talking about worms, yes most spread through security holes in the system, and those can be fixed. But there are many classes of malware where the security "hole" is the human doing work. And those are very hard, if not impossible to prevent.
They won't call the cops -- they'll just shutoff your network connection for violating the AUP (most AUPs are written so generally they can easily be applied to kick people off if they want). And then what are you going to do?
Re:Believe it or not, Apple's DRM doesn't bother m
on
iTunes DRM Hole Closed
·
· Score: 1
Russian mafia, Californian mafia... is there really that much of a difference?:)
Isn't that standard behavior for spreadsheet applications? It has been for as far as I remember. The standard convention for getting around that problem (formula vs literal) is to put a single quote (') before the equal sign. The single quote won't be show (if fact, it looks like OOo deletes it, requiring that you add it back if you ever have to edit the text).
Re:I'll tell you what's heroic
on
Donald Knuth On NPR
·
· Score: 5, Informative
If you have mplayer configured correctly, you can download it (no streaming required) under Linux:
Ignore any spaces in the rtsp link (slashcode inserts them to prevent page widening). The link itself comes from the smil file you get when you try to listen to the show on the NPR site.
I have a script that uses a similar method to grab the latest episode of Car Talk every week.
Yeah, tax laws suck, and are often way more complex than they need to be. Do you think this would get better or worse if the taxes were hidden from 90% of the people?
Calculating sales tax isn't that hard -- just add in 6 cents (or 5 or 7 or 8 or whatever) for every dollar. Or you could let the cashier do it and then get your money out.
But speaking as a USian, I hope sales taxes never become hidden like you suggest for the simple reason that all hidden taxes increase substantially. Any tax that is built into the price of the product grows massively. Whether it's a sales-like tax such as gasoline tax or cigarette tax or other forms of tax like income tax (believe me, income taxes would not be as high as they are if people had to pay every April instead of getting a refund for the amount that the government stole from them).
Also, adding on sales taxes is a great lesson about the evils of taxes (yes, taxes are a necessary evil) when they go to buy something marked 99 cents with their dollar and find they don't really have enough money. Harsh maybe, but not a lesson they're likely to forget.
My sister had a problem like this trying to access her university's webmail interface (why she prefers webmail in IE with half the screen filled with useless toolbars is beyond me, but she's dead set in her ways). I was able to figure out that the problem was because there were two popup blockers installed that some of the requested popups didn't get through. Turing off one of the two (IIRC, it didn't matter which one) made everything work. Of course, since just about every worthless IE toolbar nowadays includes a popup blocker, I'm not surprised that incompatibilities occur.
It's easy. You make being legal easier and more convenient (i.e., less costly) than illegally sharing it. If it's simple, easy, and convenient to download the Xvid (or whatever) version of the show for $1, why bother trying to waste time looking for a copy of it elsewhere? Sure, there will be some people who illegally copy it, but who cares?
(a) You can never stop all piracy everywhere. Trying for 100% only wastes time and money.
(b) The Microsoft effect works here -- the more the show is seen (even if it isn't legal), the more popular is may become (at least if its good), and the more likely people are to buy later episodes. Heck, they should give away the first couple of episodes just to get people hooked. I know I watch a number of shows now I probably wouldn't if I hadn't seen some other people had downloaded.
It's all about the numbers. If people see an advantage (monitarily, convenience, quality, etc) in downloading instead of paying, they'll do it. The media companies will never win on strict price, but they can easily win in conveience and quality factors. But if it's hard to get, low bitrate, or restricted, many people may not see it as better. Simple economics.
Of course, what do I know. I'm sure those media execs know so much more than I do on these matters. Otherwise, how would they get those high paying jobs?:)
Actually, it was a great analogy. Just a Evian doesn't take responsibility for drinking water as a whole, but just it's bottled water product, Red Hat doesn't take responsibility for the Linux kernel downloaded from kernel.org or other places, but does for its particular version of the kernel (and the other software it includes).
At least as much as Microsoft does for Windows, anyway.
I'm not the AC in question, but since you seem to have forgotten, let me refresh your memory. We (the U.S., and all the other countries in our coalition) invaded Iraq because at the time, our intelligence indicated that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction in violation of U.N. mandates. It turns out that may have been incorrect. But at the time, everyone believed it to be true. My memory may be a little selective here as well, but I don't remember anyone credibly standing up and stating that they didn't think Iraq had WMDs and have evidence beyond just a personal belief. I heard one report (don't know if it's true) that our intelligence may have been wrong because Saddam himself was being lied to by his subordinates about their WMD programs.
The added benefit of overthrowning an evil dictator who has killed millions of people was nice too. Remember that Saddam really wasn't a nice guy, and I think the America's approval rating shortly after his fall was over 95%. That's later fallen as reality has set in, but initially people in Iraq were very happy to see Saddam fall.
But quite frankly, it will be decades before we find out the real truth about what was going on. Iraq had lots of time to hide and WMDs they may have had. Or maybe they never really had any at all at it was just a collassal mistake.
In any case, this "war" has been pretty minor. The U.S. has lost less than 1400 soldiers since entering Iraq. Tragic, sure, but we have faught battles with more dead than that. And most of those deaths came from terrorist attacks after the fall of Saddam. President Bush said he wanted to take the war to the terrorists, and in that he's been successful. Every car bomb that blows up a police station in Basra is a car bomb that won't blow up a police station in Chicago, Atlanta, or Denver. Evil as it may be, we have given the terrorists more tempting targets that aren't on American soil. Is that the right thing to do? I don't know. But does it benefit Americans? Most definitely yes.
I'd never heard of this Source Guardian thing, so I did some Googling, and quickly found their web site. I found their FAQ particularly interesting. From the first question:
1. Why do I need to use SourceGuardian for PHP?
We have developed it because of the following needs:... * So that to prevent others from peeking into your code and find security holes
Besides the abhorent grammar (in the first question of a FAQ for software that costs $250 to license, you'd think someone might give it the once-over), it seems to be admitting that anyone who uses this product has poor quality code that they want to hide. Especially since the other reasons given for using SourceGuardian, such as shared hosting, don't apply in this case.
In response the the submitter's problem, the FAQ does prove remarkably helpful. Question 12 offers some pointers on how one might go about decrypting the code. Unfortunately, it sounds like the run it through an obfuscator first to make it even harder to use.
Really, even with the price discount the guy got, the use of this sounds like it should have been a huge red flag. The contractor was obviously not willing to trust the submitter, so why should the submitter trusted the contractor enough to be willing to use that program?
Slashdot Mirror
since really ... nobody uses Linux desktops anyway
While you were probably speaking of the statistacal nobody, I'd like to point out that there are many people who solely use Linux on their desktops, myself included.
-- Just another Nobody
Thanks for pointing that out! I just added "nodrm" to my USE flags.
And I completely agree with you. When I use Free software, I feel that it's working for me and not working for someone else (whose interests may not be the same as mine). This, for me, is one of the biggest advantages to Free software.
Since IE downloads to the cache directory, I assume it's to save bandwidth if the user decides to download the file a second time. If the OP tried to download that large file again after hitting cancel, the download might go a lot quicker (unless the file was too big for the cache, and was deleted already).
:)
Though back when I was using IE (oh so many years ago), I remember this behavior being somewhat flaky and poorly defined, so I guess YMMV. Personally, I'll stick with FireFox
I'd agree with you if you were selling a part of the laptop (say the battery charger or something). But you're trying to sell a service that came with the laptop. So that would be like buying a car and then trying the Ebay the service warranty. I don't actually use Ebay that much, but last I heard they automatically de-listed software auctions they found, on the idea that they were likely to be illegal. That may have changed though.
:)
:)
Now, I do agree that you should be able to purchase a laptop without Windows, I'm just not sure that it would necessarily be legal to sell Windows. IIRC, you technically can't even sell the Windows license if you sell the laptop. Same goes if you donate it to a non-profit -- they have to buy their own Windows license. But I may be wrong -- I like to stay in the Linux world where I don't have to worry about stupid things like that
Though for someone so inclined, going to (small claims) court to set a precedent might be nice so we would know rather than just some non lawyers debating on slashdot
What will probably happen is that Ebay will de-list your auction. If you persist, they'd probably delete your account. And since you're breaking the TOS of Ebay (I'm sure), you won't have any grounds to win a lawsuit against them.
Besides, what are you selling? A contract you haven't accepted, though you paid for it? If you haven't accepted the contract, why did you fulfill your obligation (payment)? The real problem is that the $100 or less that people pay for Windows on each and every new machine sold (at least in the US) isn't worth going to court over, so MS continues to make money hand over fist. It's wrong, but there's not enough popular support for Windows alternatives to force (legally or socially) MS to change their contractual requirements on OEMs.
So pay your protection money and add it to your collection of unused Windows licenses. Or spend thousands of dollars trying to prove your point.
Go get the WebDeveloper extension for Firefox. It has the ability to show you the headers for the page you're viewing. For example, for this reply page, I got:
R eply&threshold=0&commentsort=3&tid=154&mode=thread &pid=12519137
Response Headers - http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149315&op=
Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 14:08:27 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a mod_perl/1.29
SLASH_LOG_DATA: 149315
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.005000
X-Bender: Ahhh, functional.
Cache-Control: no-cache
Vary: User-Agent,Accept-Encoding
Connection: close
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Encoding: gzip
200 OK
hmm... slashcode seems to have auto-linkenized the URL in the header. I've never noticed it doing that before.
http://www.google.com/
Neat!
Have you checked your RAM? Bad RAM could easily cause massive instability in both OSes. There's no reason why either Linux or Windows should crash so quickly. Try Memtest86 or its successor/fork Memtest86+. A quick test is to copy a large file and then md5sum both versions. If the MD5s are different, you may have bad RAM.
I while ago, I looked for the same thing, but couldn't find anything. So I wrote my own that uses 3DES to encrypt the passwords to a file on the mobile device. There's no desktop syncing, though. At one point I thought about posting the source, but I never got around to it. I probably could if there was interest in it (reply to this post, or find some other way to contact me).
I don't know about the cheif of police, but the sheriff is often an elected position. At least it is in the county where I live.
How does a pile of bricks produce real value to the population when all you do is live inside it?
:)
It's just a matter of supply and demand. The supply of property is pretty constant (there's very little of it being made). Demand for property does fluctuate, and it's that demand that ultimately determines the value. The more people want and are willing to pay for property, the higher its value. The more people there are, the more people will pay for it (since there is more demand). Property closer to urban areas or with other desirable qualities like on a waterfront or with a nice "pile of bricks" on it will have a higher demand and thus higher price. But the fact remains that as the population increases, demand and thus property value will also increase.
It actually exactly the same as your stock comparison. The number of stocks for a given company is fixed (barring splits, but in that instance, every stock owner owns the same percentage as before). Only the demand fluctuates. Stocks likely to produce dividends are more desirable, and thus higher priced. More people investing in the market (such as through 401k or other retirement plans) also cause more demand and higher values. Of course, people also buy "hot" stocks that they think more people will want later, without worrying about dividends. We call this the "dot com boom"
Is the current house inflation insane and unsustainable? You bet. But so was the dot com boom. But unlike dot com stocks, homes do have intrisic value, so when the "bust" comes, it will just be a slowdown in housing prices, or at worst a mild correction (at least in most places, some will probably be worse off).
A little off topic, but you're right -- copyright periods are way too long. So long, in fact, that most people don't even realize that copyright is supposed to expire!
As far as patent lengths not growing, I imagine that's because there is usually strong opposition from competitors to the patent holder (such as generic drug companies) that keep Congress from running amok and extending patents to forever and a day. No such strong force exists for copyrights.
The advantage to using GPG signatures is that it doesn't require changing the existing SMTP/DNS/etc infastructure of the Internet, which as you said would be very difficult. The biggest impediment to using GPG to filter spam and other nasty emails is a lack of mindshare of the idea in the anti-spam community. If GPG signatures were pushed as the way to filter spam, it would get implemented in a variety of clients and people would quickly learn that passed signature was "good" and failed signature was "bad". Sure, some (or even most) would still view the failed signature emails, but they would hopefully treat the email with some suspicion.
But since the anti-spam community thinks that SPF, blocking port 25 from all but large (and therefore "trusted") corporations, Internet Mail 2000, dropping SMTP in favor of a magical protocol that prevents spam, choping off spammers balls, or whatever else, I agree that GPG signatures may never be widely used. That doesn't change the fact that there is an environment where the From header can not be (easily) spoofed. Even if people are unwilling or unable to use it.
we are still a long way from providing an environment where the From header can not be (easily) spoofed
Perhaps you need to look into GPG signatures then. As long as no one gets a hold of my GPG private key, no one can send an email claiming to be me. Sure, anyone could send an email with my address in the From header, but if they don't sign it correctly (and they can't), the receiver should have little to no trust in that header.
That's not to say GPG signing is full proof (public key distribution and user education are difficulties), but it amazes me that so much effort goes into anti-spam (and anti-mail-worm) efforts, and so little effort goes into using GPG signatures. People want to replace everything from SMTP to DNS to stop spam, but very few people advocate using GPG signatures.
Now, you can argue that we're still a long way from getting people from using methods to ensure email sources are valid, but techincally we can do it today with existing infastructure.
I hate to break it to you, but there's very little that Apple (or Mircosoft, or Linux, etc) can do to prevent many types of viruses, since they are installed by the user themselves. Think about a traditional virus that infects a binary and is run when the program is run. Or a trojan program that does bad things to your system. Good file permissions can prevent the spread of such viruses and limit their damage, but they aren't that hard to write. I've even seen prototypes for a shell script virus (in an educational setting, and non-destructive except for polluting your shell scripts). There's very little technically that anyone can do to prevent a shell script virus, at least not without making the system difficult to use (or radically redesigning the system, which will probably have other drawbacks).
Now, if you're talking about worms, yes most spread through security holes in the system, and those can be fixed. But there are many classes of malware where the security "hole" is the human doing work. And those are very hard, if not impossible to prevent.
They won't call the cops -- they'll just shutoff your network connection for violating the AUP (most AUPs are written so generally they can easily be applied to kick people off if they want). And then what are you going to do?
Russian mafia, Californian mafia... is there really that much of a difference? :)
Isn't that standard behavior for spreadsheet applications? It has been for as far as I remember. The standard convention for getting around that problem (formula vs literal) is to put a single quote (') before the equal sign. The single quote won't be show (if fact, it looks like OOo deletes it, requiring that you add it back if you ever have to edit the text).
I have a script that uses a similar method to grab the latest episode of Car Talk every week.
[long explanation of crazy tax laws]
Yeah, tax laws suck, and are often way more complex than they need to be. Do you think this would get better or worse if the taxes were hidden from 90% of the people?
Calculating sales tax isn't that hard -- just add in 6 cents (or 5 or 7 or 8 or whatever) for every dollar. Or you could let the cashier do it and then get your money out.
But speaking as a USian, I hope sales taxes never become hidden like you suggest for the simple reason that all hidden taxes increase substantially. Any tax that is built into the price of the product grows massively. Whether it's a sales-like tax such as gasoline tax or cigarette tax or other forms of tax like income tax (believe me, income taxes would not be as high as they are if people had to pay every April instead of getting a refund for the amount that the government stole from them).
Also, adding on sales taxes is a great lesson about the evils of taxes (yes, taxes are a necessary evil) when they go to buy something marked 99 cents with their dollar and find they don't really have enough money. Harsh maybe, but not a lesson they're likely to forget.
My sister had a problem like this trying to access her university's webmail interface (why she prefers webmail in IE with half the screen filled with useless toolbars is beyond me, but she's dead set in her ways). I was able to figure out that the problem was because there were two popup blockers installed that some of the requested popups didn't get through. Turing off one of the two (IIRC, it didn't matter which one) made everything work. Of course, since just about every worthless IE toolbar nowadays includes a popup blocker, I'm not surprised that incompatibilities occur.
It's easy. You make being legal easier and more convenient (i.e., less costly) than illegally sharing it. If it's simple, easy, and convenient to download the Xvid (or whatever) version of the show for $1, why bother trying to waste time looking for a copy of it elsewhere? Sure, there will be some people who illegally copy it, but who cares?
:)
(a) You can never stop all piracy everywhere. Trying for 100% only wastes time and money.
(b) The Microsoft effect works here -- the more the show is seen (even if it isn't legal), the more popular is may become (at least if its good), and the more likely people are to buy later episodes. Heck, they should give away the first couple of episodes just to get people hooked. I know I watch a number of shows now I probably wouldn't if I hadn't seen some other people had downloaded.
It's all about the numbers. If people see an advantage (monitarily, convenience, quality, etc) in downloading instead of paying, they'll do it. The media companies will never win on strict price, but they can easily win in conveience and quality factors. But if it's hard to get, low bitrate, or restricted, many people may not see it as better. Simple economics.
Of course, what do I know. I'm sure those media execs know so much more than I do on these matters. Otherwise, how would they get those high paying jobs?
Actually, it was a great analogy. Just a Evian doesn't take responsibility for drinking water as a whole, but just it's bottled water product, Red Hat doesn't take responsibility for the Linux kernel downloaded from kernel.org or other places, but does for its particular version of the kernel (and the other software it includes).
At least as much as Microsoft does for Windows, anyway.
I'm not the AC in question, but since you seem to have forgotten, let me refresh your memory. We (the U.S., and all the other countries in our coalition) invaded Iraq because at the time, our intelligence indicated that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction in violation of U.N. mandates. It turns out that may have been incorrect. But at the time, everyone believed it to be true. My memory may be a little selective here as well, but I don't remember anyone credibly standing up and stating that they didn't think Iraq had WMDs and have evidence beyond just a personal belief. I heard one report (don't know if it's true) that our intelligence may have been wrong because Saddam himself was being lied to by his subordinates about their WMD programs.
The added benefit of overthrowning an evil dictator who has killed millions of people was nice too. Remember that Saddam really wasn't a nice guy, and I think the America's approval rating shortly after his fall was over 95%. That's later fallen as reality has set in, but initially people in Iraq were very happy to see Saddam fall.
But quite frankly, it will be decades before we find out the real truth about what was going on. Iraq had lots of time to hide and WMDs they may have had. Or maybe they never really had any at all at it was just a collassal mistake.
In any case, this "war" has been pretty minor. The U.S. has lost less than 1400 soldiers since entering Iraq. Tragic, sure, but we have faught battles with more dead than that. And most of those deaths came from terrorist attacks after the fall of Saddam. President Bush said he wanted to take the war to the terrorists, and in that he's been successful. Every car bomb that blows up a police station in Basra is a car bomb that won't blow up a police station in Chicago, Atlanta, or Denver. Evil as it may be, we have given the terrorists more tempting targets that aren't on American soil. Is that the right thing to do? I don't know. But does it benefit Americans? Most definitely yes.
Besides the abhorent grammar (in the first question of a FAQ for software that costs $250 to license, you'd think someone might give it the once-over), it seems to be admitting that anyone who uses this product has poor quality code that they want to hide. Especially since the other reasons given for using SourceGuardian, such as shared hosting, don't apply in this case.
In response the the submitter's problem, the FAQ does prove remarkably helpful. Question 12 offers some pointers on how one might go about decrypting the code. Unfortunately, it sounds like the run it through an obfuscator first to make it even harder to use.
Really, even with the price discount the guy got, the use of this sounds like it should have been a huge red flag. The contractor was obviously not willing to trust the submitter, so why should the submitter trusted the contractor enough to be willing to use that program?