Could this be the Microsoft version of the Iran-Contra program? The money that M$ paid for a license just happens to be SCO's main product at the moment -- the ability to go after Linux. M$ would love to sue Linux out of existance, or (even better), let SCO act as a proxy/martyr. The suit is a joke; the odds of collecting are nil. The only surefire payoff is from M$, and even then only to the extent that the litigation helps fuel the FUD machine.
Hmmm... hijacking a web page to interfere with the virus' self-update. Is this an illegal "circumvention" of a "protection feature" in this copyrighted program (regardless of how it's installed)?
Don't get me wrong; I applaud the efforts of the virus busters; I just figured it was yet another example of unintended DMCA side-effects.
Congress has given up on all spam legislation, having deemed it unnecessary in the wake of Pres. George W. Bush's decision to launch "Operation Unsubscribe"
Who would think of trusting Microsoft with a device as important as the toilet? What would stop every script kiddie in the area from using your bathroom? How far from your computer does the toilet have to be in order to prevent Microsoft toilet viruses from reading your Outlook address book? How reliable would such a toilet be?
So you upgrade to the Palladium toilet, but now you can only go to the bathroom when Microsoft says it's OK.
Microsoft Flush 2003 offers very little improvment over Flush 2000, but you have to buy it because of "Potty Assurance (tm)." The new requirement of having each bathroom visitor sign the EULA looks annoying at first until you realize that the hardcopy EULAs are useful as toilet paper.
All things being equal, the older people really DO want more money, the question is "More than what?".
ANY person with a current job is not likely to switch for less. You have to assume that a person doing a good job is going to get a few raises along the way, so the older person SHOULD be making more than a newbie. If that is not the case, you have to wonder why. A recently unemployed person is going to try and hold out for whatever they made before. The long-term unemployed person has a salary of $0; therefore any offer is an improvement.
Think of an IT shop as if it were a sports team. Nobody has the budget to put a star at every position. Most teams would like to keep the stars they have, develop new stars from their own ranks, and fill the occasional specialty need from the outside.
There ARE situations where your team really needs a star in a certain position, and it makes sense to pay a premium for a free agent. Younger people are like draft picks. You might get a future star, you might not. Young people with language skills and top-notch degrees are the first-round draft picks. Random H1Bs are the 20th round. There are some possibilities in between. Can you sign a 20th round draft pick (for peanuts) and get a star? Sure, it happens. Just don't plan on building the entire team this way; the statistics will catch up with you eventually.
Older workers are the free agents. Some of them are established stars and worth a premium salary. Some have years of experience, but not as much success as the stars. They are not worth a premium salary, and sometimes not worth as much as they are currently making. Every team has a few players whose compensation exceeds their value. In some cases, their skills have dimished; everyone KNOWS these people will be making less with their next team, assuming they can stay in the game at all.
So if my team needs a second-string linebacker, I might look first to the draft picks, or perhaps a free agent if the price is right. If I need a starting quarterback, I probably have to pay a premium to sign a free agent star.
The problem is that we have too many IT teams who are perfectly willing to put mediocre talent on the field. Some of them have lost the ability to identify talent; they just make sure to have a body at each position. They will tolerate lousy performance as long as the payroll is kept under control. There are sports teams like this also; you find them at the bottom of the standings. When a few decent teams manage to demonstrate the value of winning, nature will take its course and things will change.
Consider this: Digital Equipment Corp. was once the #2 IT company in the world, with a huge software portfolio supported by an army of "world class" IT professionals. In the late 80's their products and support were awesome. Then it got ugly. By the time Compaq bought the remaining scraps, the "world class" software portfolio was sold off in bits and pieces. Where are those products now? Where is the support? If I had invested heavily in any DEC's software development tools, it would be a total write-off today. GNU is still there, isn't it?
When you buy a commercial software product, there is a real risk of failure, for all the reasons described above. When a manager makes a committment to a commercial software package, he or she can expect to be held accountable for what happens to that investment. If you start with open source products, the approval chain is generally short-circuited because the expenditure of $0 is with almost everyone's approval range. If the product fails to perform, you walk away from your investment of $0 and migrate to a commercial package. Of course, the people who sell commercial products are well aware of open source, and each has a reasonable migration path. Try calling Microsoft and tell them that you want some help in switching from Samba to Windows 2003 and watch them open the floodgates of support. On the other hand, if the OSS product performs well, you demonstrate the success to every level of management that will listen, calculate the ROI and deploy even more open source products in the future.
Now let's consider the risk the other way around. You buy Windows 2000, Microsoft IIS, and SQL Server because M$ has wonderful 24x7 commercial support. But Code Red, Code Blue, Nimda, Klez, and SQL Slammer come along and now your server is now owned by a 12-year-old who is renting it out as a spam gateway. The criticism for a technical debacle is bad enough, but then you get the CEO asking why it was necessary to spend big money AND face this nightmare when open source alternatives are proving to be somewhat more secure at a much lower cost. I doubt that my CEO would say such a thing, but open source is now getting coverage in Forbes and WSJ, so you never know. If you had installed Linux/Apache/MySQL and the same thing happened, at least you don't have to explain how the purchase price is now a total writeoff.
There are many people who use risk as their logic in support of closed source. Having seen more than a few defuct products and vendors, I say that risk really is the central issue, but that open source risk is more managable.
Almost since the beginning of software history, there has been the mythical "everything" product -- something so smart, so powerful, that it could make programmers obsolete. People would just type in their questions, and BAMMO! instant answers! I believe this "office of the future" was supposed to be paperless too.
Modern tools have given great power to the non-technical end user, but as a total percentage of all the things a modern computer can do, the non-technical end-user is still only doing a tiny fraction of what a geek can do. The space that exists above what a power user can do and below what a geek can do is where the entire IT industry lives. That space is a little overpopulated at the moment, but survivable for those who can outlive the challenges of outsourcing, H1B, etc.
Edit hosts file that redirects back to 127.0.0.1, where you have a server running in the background that always comes back with a "Server is down...Try again later" message.
Show me a hoax about bank fees, and I'll show you a bank dumb enough to try it:
From the "Top 100 Hoaxes" article, #88: Bank Teller Fees
"In 1999 the Savings Bank of Rockville placed an ad in the Connecticut Journal-Inquirer announcing that it would soon begin charging a $5 fee to customers who visited a live teller. The ad, which appeared on March 31, claimed that the fee was necessary in order to provide, "professional, caring and superior customer service." Although the ad was a joke, many customers failed to recognize it as such. One woman reportedly closed her account because of it. The bank then ran a second ad revealing that the initial ad was a joke. The bank manager commented that the first ad ironically "commits us to not charging such fees."
TRUE STORY: In 1989, another Connecticut bank "Society for Savings" charged a $6 fee in any month in which a customer visited a live teller. I know someone who had a checking account with this bank. She paid her landlord by check. The landlord visited a live teller at the bank and cashed the check in person, causing the account owner to get whacked $6/month. In a classic case of "reality stranger than fiction", the bank decided to count that activity as a "live teller" visit even though the person writing the checks has no control over how they are cashed. Stupid landlord (tenant moved out), idiotic bank (lost many customers, eventually merged & purged). Aside from the person who got whacked with lame fees, everyone else got that they deserved.
Selling the product at a price that discourages piracy and thus pulling the rug out from under the terrorists? Why are we wasting all this money on stealth bombers when we could bury Osama with cheap DVDs?
I know of very few disgruntled M$ employees. If anything, M$ raises the bar for other employers, at least in the areas where M$ has a physical presence. In this day and age of HB1 sweatshops and the Dilbert Academy of Mangement, we could use a few more employers like this.
But... Their growth rate has always required a steady flow of interns and recruits who become regular employees. We'll see what happens then the growth curve flattens out and they don't need more people. And then we'll see what happens when M$ actually begins to shrink. When you want to attract more people, you give them nice benefits and competitive salaries. When you want to downsize without handing out pink slips, the process runs in reverse. Nowhere is this easier to see than in the dot-com boom and subsequent meltdown.
M$ has already indicated that it's prices will be reduced to compete with open source; that lost revenue has to come from somewhere. The interns will "get it" first, then consultants, then regular employees.
I am writing to you in the hope that you will support H.R. 1066 "The Balance Act" introduced by Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). The idea is to reinforce the concept of consumer rights in the area of copyright law. Ironically, the copyright industry would benefit most of all, as they evidently need Congress to require them to pay attention to the demands of their customers. I know it's hard to imagine an industry that needs Congress to help it think, but that is what you are dealing with here. Please help them.
Reform of DMCA is badly needed. The law has done absolutely nothing to deter piracy, while the oppressive side effects are quite real. When Wal*Mart threatens to invoke DMCA against people who compare prices via http://www.fatwallet.com, you know something is wrong! The arrest and bungled prosecution of Dimitry Sklyarov was an international fiasco. My personal interest in all of this is merely frustration with the technologically inept approach that Congress has taken so far.
Most computer users ignore the legal aspects of what they do online. Those who know about DMCA, the NET act, etc. are taking technical countermeasures. The end result for all of this is an "arms race" of technology to defeat a digitally repressive regime.
Consider how China is desperately trying to censor the Internet. Their efforts are laughable, until you consider that the copyright industry has bullied Congress into some of the same logic. This industry sure has a lot of clout -- absolutely incredible, considering it's just a bunch of technically-obsolescent middlemen who live in a "reality distortion field".
The intelligence community will tell you that gathering data from the Internet involves processing astronomical amounts of plain-text, unencrypted data. Failure to establish a balanced approach to copyright and digital media will create a huge underground Internet, where data is encrypted, users are anonymous, and US law is irrelevant. Keeping ordinary activity open and above-board would make the bad guys stick out like a sore thumb. Conversely, the status quo will lead us into a world where "criminals" trading Britney Spears' latest song will unwittingly camoflage Al Qaeda operatives exchanging data. Reform of copyright law in general and DMCA in particular would go a long way towards making the terrorists do their own research & development.
There is a great presentation called "Free Culture" available at http://www.eff.org/IP/freeculture/free.html Even if you don't agree with the content, you have to admire the presentation skills of Lawrence Lessig. It's basically the computer geek version of the "I have a dream" speech -- worth a look even if just to steal ideas for your own presentations.
From a political angle, certain Democrats have been the chief errand boys of the copyright industry; it's time to put them in their place. Even though the bill is introduced by a Democrat, it is the Republicans who have the most to gain by putting a leash on the copyright industry. The bill is H.R. 1066 -- I would appreciate your support.
From the article..."There is a one-in-260,000 chance of winning $25,000 in the game"
That means each chance is "worth" about 9.6 cents. That's some pretty long odds for not-so-great money, and I'll bet it ends up costing alot more than 10 cents a try.
It seems to me that universities are not in a position to determine all by themselves exactly what consitutes "illegal" sharing. The universities may very well have self-authorized enforcement rights over their own AUP, as they truly do own the campus network. Such an AUP might reasonably restrict P2P (mostly due to resource consumption), but that's a far cry from notifying law enforcement and/or the gods of copyright.
I used to work in higher ed. If I was dealing with this issue today, I would include resource-wasting language in the AUP, naming P2P as an example. But tossing the resource squanderers would be as far as it goes until there are court orders, warrants, and/or subpeonas that specify precisely what to do and to whom. Appeasement of the copyright industry means the students all get pro bono lawyers from ACLU, and the universities get buried in lawsuits as well as a boatload of bad press. Higher education is the same as any other industry: take care of your customer or someone else will. RIAA is not a customer, so they are to be handled as a nuisance -- bare minimum legal cooperation.
Universities (or other network owners for that matter) are in no position to determine the copyright validity of every file fragment in transit across their network. No one really is, which is why the music industry must adapt or die.
"Who in their right minds would pick MS products in the first place..."
1. Businesses whose customers and suppliers have already picked Microsoft -- it's a "Catch-22" scenario where nobody really wants Microsoft, but everyone is stuck with them. It starts with the PCs you buy that almost always include Windoze pre-installed, and it goes downhill from there.
2. Nearsighted (not necessarily IT) managers who buy software on the spur of the moment, often by visiting the local office supply store (see #1 above). It's not at all by accident that Microsoft products are fairly cheap for the basic quantity-1 installation. These same people usually sign up with AOL for the same reason.
3. Novice IT "professionals" who never developed cross-platform skills; these people cheerfully tolerate Microsoft deficiencies because they have never seen anything better.
4. IQ-challenged corporate managers hire the people mentioned in #3, thinking that Microsoft is a good choice because you can hire low-paid workers for your tech. support staff and even lower-paid workers as your end users. Unfortunately, the helpdesk is constantly busy and some problems can never be solved -- somehow this never gets factored into the cost/benefit analysis.
Until Microsoft finds a way to adequately compensate Timeline, there is simply no way out of this. Timeline is not about to initiate vast numbers of individual lawsuits -- they don't have to. All they have to do is cherry-pick a few customers here and there and use BSA-style intimidation tactics. The publicity from the lawsuits or payoffs in lieu thereof will trigger a crippling Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt about SQL Server, AND ALL THE OTHER MICROSOFT PRODUCTS THAT MIGHT HAVE LATENT PATENT ISSUES! No reasonable person can have confidence in ANY Microsoft product until this issue is settled and some reassurances are given about how future patent issues are to be handled.
I can't help but think this entire situation would have been quietly settled if the offender was anyone other than Microsoft.
If and when Palladium reaches the market, our best defense an educated customer. If people know in advance about the downside of Palladium, it will be rejected.
To an extent, the education tactic is working. "Hailstorm" is buried in the Internet cemetary, somewhere near the CueCats, and Microsoft has decided to abandon the "Palladium" name (although the project lives on). I think they should rename it "Microsoft Smallpox", to help remind all of us that if we allow our neighbors to become infected with this disease, we will ultimately become infected as well.
Grab the picture, make it look like an FBI "wanted" poster, and send it out as spam. Need a fake return address?? How about spam headquarters, a.k.a. abuse@uu.net?
I also wondered if it really happened, but think about this: If it didn't happen, where did all that information come from? I figure he managed to e-mail or exploit IE into installing Back Orifice. That would do it.
"But all that means here on Slashdot is that the people who, without meaning it a bit, have been saying 'if you don't want us 'sharing' your IP, come up with a way to vend it to us' will now have to tone it down a bit."
That's part of the solution, but not the whole thing. The file format needs to be MP3, the restrictions need to be GONE, it needs to be a flat rate, and it must be viewed as a small fee for a small convenience (because that's all it is). At long last, the real market value of individual songs must be addressed. Consider this: If the recording industry had simply cut a deal with Napster and charged $5/month for an "all you can eat" plan, they would get about $150 million per month, as opposed to the $0 they get now. No matter how you slice it, the recording industry has ALREADY squandered over a BILLION dollars in money that they COULD HAVE HAD, for P2P activity that they KNEW would happen ANYWAY! That's alot of money to piss away! Hillary is on the way out (fairly or unfairly) because SOMEONE has to be held responsible for one of the foolish decisions in the history of business.
RIAA doesn't seem to realize that the name of the game is to get the most money. Sometimes this requires sharing the revenue stream with others. If my choice is to accept 50% of a $2 billion market, or retain my 100% share of $0, simple math dictates the answer. I feel entitled to 100% of everything, I have to find away to put my emotions aside long enough to take what is there to be taken instead of agonizing over what the other guy is getting.
At this point, no matter what RIAA does, it will be damn near impossible to earn back even a fraction of what they could have had if they kept Hillary on a short leash. Notice, they are still on the wrong track. Getting paid for every single transfer is nowhere near as important as getting something from everyone who shares.
Slashdot Mirror
Could this be the Microsoft version of the Iran-Contra program? The money that M$ paid for a license just happens to be SCO's main product at the moment -- the ability to go after Linux. M$ would love to sue Linux out of existance, or (even better), let SCO act as a proxy/martyr. The suit is a joke; the odds of collecting are nil. The only surefire payoff is from M$, and even then only to the extent that the litigation helps fuel the FUD machine.
Hmmm... hijacking a web page to interfere with the virus' self-update. Is this an illegal "circumvention" of a "protection feature" in this copyrighted program (regardless of how it's installed)?
Don't get me wrong; I applaud the efforts of the virus busters; I just figured it was yet another example of unintended DMCA side-effects.
Read the text and watch it spin!
Congress has given up on all spam legislation, having deemed it unnecessary in the wake of Pres. George W. Bush's decision to launch "Operation Unsubscribe"
Who would think of trusting Microsoft with a device as important as the toilet? What would stop every script kiddie in the area from using your bathroom? How far from your computer does the toilet have to be in order to prevent Microsoft toilet viruses from reading your Outlook address book? How reliable would such a toilet be?
So you upgrade to the Palladium toilet, but now you can only go to the bathroom when Microsoft says it's OK.
Microsoft Flush 2003 offers very little improvment over Flush 2000, but you have to buy it because of "Potty Assurance (tm)." The new requirement of having each bathroom visitor sign the EULA looks annoying at first until you realize that the hardcopy EULAs are useful as toilet paper.
All things being equal, the older people really DO want more money, the question is "More than what?".
ANY person with a current job is not likely to switch for less. You have to assume that a person doing a good job is going to get a few raises along the way, so the older person SHOULD be making more than a newbie. If that is not the case, you have to wonder why. A recently unemployed person is going to try and hold out for whatever they made before. The long-term unemployed person has a salary of $0; therefore any offer is an improvement.
Think of an IT shop as if it were a sports team. Nobody has the budget to put a star at every position. Most teams would like to keep the stars they have, develop new stars from their own ranks, and fill the occasional specialty need from the outside.
There ARE situations where your team really needs a star in a certain position, and it makes sense to pay a premium for a free agent. Younger people are like draft picks. You might get a future star, you might not. Young people with language skills and top-notch degrees are the first-round draft picks. Random H1Bs are the 20th round. There are some possibilities in between. Can you sign a 20th round draft pick (for peanuts) and get a star? Sure, it happens. Just don't plan on building the entire team this way; the statistics will catch up with you eventually.
Older workers are the free agents. Some of them are established stars and worth a premium salary. Some have years of experience, but not as much success as the stars. They are not worth a premium salary, and sometimes not worth as much as they are currently making. Every team has a few players whose compensation exceeds their value. In some cases, their skills have dimished; everyone KNOWS these people will be making less with their next team, assuming they can stay in the game at all.
So if my team needs a second-string linebacker, I might look first to the draft picks, or perhaps a free agent if the price is right. If I need a starting quarterback, I probably have to pay a premium to sign a free agent star.
The problem is that we have too many IT teams who are perfectly willing to put mediocre talent on the field. Some of them have lost the ability to identify talent; they just make sure to have a body at each position. They will tolerate lousy performance as long as the payroll is kept under control. There are sports teams like this also; you find them at the bottom of the standings. When a few decent teams manage to demonstrate the value of winning, nature will take its course and things will change.
Consider this: Digital Equipment Corp. was once the #2 IT company in the world, with a huge software portfolio supported by an army of "world class" IT professionals. In the late 80's their products and support were awesome. Then it got ugly. By the time Compaq bought the remaining scraps, the "world class" software portfolio was sold off in bits and pieces. Where are those products now? Where is the support? If I had invested heavily in any DEC's software development tools, it would be a total write-off today. GNU is still there, isn't it?
When you buy a commercial software product, there is a real risk of failure, for all the reasons described above. When a manager makes a committment to a commercial software package, he or she can expect to be held accountable for what happens to that investment. If you start with open source products, the approval chain is generally short-circuited because the expenditure of $0 is with almost everyone's approval range. If the product fails to perform, you walk away from your investment of $0 and migrate to a commercial package. Of course, the people who sell commercial products are well aware of open source, and each has a reasonable migration path. Try calling Microsoft and tell them that you want some help in switching from Samba to Windows 2003 and watch them open the floodgates of support. On the other hand, if the OSS product performs well, you demonstrate the success to every level of management that will listen, calculate the ROI and deploy even more open source products in the future.
Now let's consider the risk the other way around. You buy Windows 2000, Microsoft IIS, and SQL Server because M$ has wonderful 24x7 commercial support. But Code Red, Code Blue, Nimda, Klez, and SQL Slammer come along and now your server is now owned by a 12-year-old who is renting it out as a spam gateway. The criticism for a technical debacle is bad enough, but then you get the CEO asking why it was necessary to spend big money AND face this nightmare when open source alternatives are proving to be somewhat more secure at a much lower cost. I doubt that my CEO would say such a thing, but open source is now getting coverage in Forbes and WSJ, so you never know. If you had installed Linux/Apache/MySQL and the same thing happened, at least you don't have to explain how the purchase price is now a total writeoff.
There are many people who use risk as their logic in support of closed source. Having seen more than a few defuct products and vendors, I say that risk really is the central issue, but that open source risk is more managable.
Exhibit A: Apple Lisa. Apple's attempt to control hardware, OS, and application software gives them 100% of a $0 market.
The prosecution rests.
Almost since the beginning of software history, there has been the mythical "everything" product -- something so smart, so powerful, that it could make programmers obsolete. People would just type in their questions, and BAMMO! instant answers! I believe this "office of the future" was supposed to be paperless too.
Modern tools have given great power to the non-technical end user, but as a total percentage of all the things a modern computer can do, the non-technical end-user is still only doing a tiny fraction of what a geek can do. The space that exists above what a power user can do and below what a geek can do is where the entire IT industry lives. That space is a little overpopulated at the moment, but survivable for those who can outlive the challenges of outsourcing, H1B, etc.
Microsoft mice now to include odometer so users may not exceed the specified mileage limits as defined in the EULA.
I was getting tired of those.
Edit hosts file that redirects back to 127.0.0.1, where you have a server running in the background that always comes back with a "Server is down...Try again later" message.
Show me a hoax about bank fees, and I'll show you a bank dumb enough to try it:
From the "Top 100 Hoaxes" article, #88: Bank Teller Fees
"In 1999 the Savings Bank of Rockville placed an ad in the Connecticut Journal-Inquirer announcing that it would soon begin charging a $5 fee to customers who visited a live teller. The ad, which appeared on March 31, claimed that the fee was necessary in order to provide, "professional, caring and superior customer service." Although the ad was a joke, many customers failed to recognize it as such. One woman reportedly closed her account because of it. The bank then ran a second ad revealing that the initial ad was a joke. The bank manager commented that the first ad ironically "commits us to not charging such fees."
TRUE STORY: In 1989, another Connecticut bank "Society for Savings" charged a $6 fee in any month in which a customer visited a live teller. I know someone who had a checking account with this bank. She paid her landlord by check. The landlord visited a live teller at the bank and cashed the check in person, causing the account owner to get whacked $6/month. In a classic case of "reality stranger than fiction", the bank decided to count that activity as a "live teller" visit even though the person writing the checks has no control over how they are cashed. Stupid landlord (tenant moved out), idiotic bank (lost many customers, eventually merged & purged). Aside from the person who got whacked with lame fees, everyone else got that they deserved.
Selling the product at a price that discourages piracy and thus pulling the rug out from under the terrorists? Why are we wasting all this money on stealth bombers when we could bury Osama with cheap DVDs?
I know of very few disgruntled M$ employees. If anything, M$ raises the bar for other employers, at least in the areas where M$ has a physical presence. In this day and age of HB1 sweatshops and the Dilbert Academy of Mangement, we could use a few more employers like this.
But... Their growth rate has always required a steady flow of interns and recruits who become regular employees. We'll see what happens then the growth curve flattens out and they don't need more people. And then we'll see what happens when M$ actually begins to shrink. When you want to attract more people, you give them nice benefits and competitive salaries. When you want to downsize without handing out pink slips, the process runs in reverse. Nowhere is this easier to see than in the dot-com boom and subsequent meltdown.
M$ has already indicated that it's prices will be reduced to compete with open source; that lost revenue has to come from somewhere. The interns will "get it" first, then consultants, then regular employees.
I am writing to you in the hope that you will support H.R. 1066 "The Balance Act" introduced by Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). The idea is to reinforce the concept of consumer rights in the area of copyright law. Ironically, the copyright industry would benefit most of all, as they evidently need Congress to require them to pay attention to the demands of their customers. I know it's hard to imagine an industry that needs Congress to help it think, but that is what you are dealing with here. Please help them.
Reform of DMCA is badly needed. The law has done absolutely nothing to deter piracy, while the oppressive side effects are quite real. When Wal*Mart threatens to invoke DMCA against people who compare prices via http://www.fatwallet.com, you know something is wrong! The arrest and bungled prosecution of Dimitry Sklyarov was an international fiasco. My personal interest in all of this is merely frustration with the technologically inept approach that Congress has taken so far.
Most computer users ignore the legal aspects of what they do online. Those who know about DMCA, the NET act, etc. are taking technical countermeasures. The end result for all of this is an "arms race" of technology to defeat a digitally repressive regime.
Consider how China is desperately trying to censor the Internet. Their efforts are laughable, until you consider that the copyright industry has bullied Congress into some of the same logic. This industry sure has a lot of clout -- absolutely incredible, considering it's just a bunch of technically-obsolescent middlemen who live in a "reality distortion field".
The intelligence community will tell you that gathering data from the Internet involves processing astronomical amounts of plain-text, unencrypted data. Failure to establish a balanced approach to copyright and digital media will create a huge underground Internet, where data is encrypted, users are anonymous, and US law is irrelevant. Keeping ordinary activity open and above-board would make the bad guys stick out like a sore thumb. Conversely, the status quo will lead us into a world where "criminals" trading Britney Spears' latest song will unwittingly camoflage Al Qaeda operatives exchanging data. Reform of copyright law in general and DMCA in particular would go a long way towards making the terrorists do their own research & development.
There is a great presentation called "Free Culture" available at http://www.eff.org/IP/freeculture/free.html Even if you don't agree with the content, you have to admire the presentation skills of Lawrence Lessig. It's basically the computer geek version of the "I have a dream" speech -- worth a look even if just to steal ideas for your own presentations.
From a political angle, certain Democrats have been the chief errand boys of the copyright industry; it's time to put them in their place. Even though the bill is introduced by a Democrat, it is the Republicans who have the most to gain by putting a leash on the copyright industry. The bill is H.R. 1066 -- I would appreciate your support.
Sincerely,
David Cavanaugh
From the article..."There is a one-in-260,000 chance of winning $25,000 in the game"
That means each chance is "worth" about 9.6 cents. That's some pretty long odds for not-so-great money, and I'll bet it ends up costing alot more than 10 cents a try.
It seems to me that universities are not in a position to determine all by themselves exactly what consitutes "illegal" sharing. The universities may very well have self-authorized enforcement rights over their own AUP, as they truly do own the campus network. Such an AUP might reasonably restrict P2P (mostly due to resource consumption), but that's a far cry from notifying law enforcement and/or the gods of copyright.
I used to work in higher ed. If I was dealing with this issue today, I would include resource-wasting language in the AUP, naming P2P as an example. But tossing the resource squanderers would be as far as it goes until there are court orders, warrants, and/or subpeonas that specify precisely what to do and to whom. Appeasement of the copyright industry means the students all get pro bono lawyers from ACLU, and the universities get buried in lawsuits as well as a boatload of bad press. Higher education is the same as any other industry: take care of your customer or someone else will. RIAA is not a customer, so they are to be handled as a nuisance -- bare minimum legal cooperation.
Universities (or other network owners for that matter) are in no position to determine the copyright validity of every file fragment in transit across their network. No one really is, which is why the music industry must adapt or die.
"Who in their right minds would pick MS products in the first place..."
1. Businesses whose customers and suppliers have already picked Microsoft -- it's a "Catch-22" scenario where nobody really wants Microsoft, but everyone is stuck with them. It starts with the PCs you buy that almost always include Windoze pre-installed, and it goes downhill from there.
2. Nearsighted (not necessarily IT) managers who buy software on the spur of the moment, often by visiting the local office supply store (see #1 above). It's not at all by accident that Microsoft products are fairly cheap for the basic quantity-1 installation. These same people usually sign up with AOL for the same reason.
3. Novice IT "professionals" who never developed cross-platform skills; these people cheerfully tolerate Microsoft deficiencies because they have never seen anything better.
4. IQ-challenged corporate managers hire the people mentioned in #3, thinking that Microsoft is a good choice because you can hire low-paid workers for your tech. support staff and even lower-paid workers as your end users. Unfortunately, the helpdesk is constantly busy and some problems can never be solved -- somehow this never gets factored into the cost/benefit analysis.
Until Microsoft finds a way to adequately compensate Timeline, there is simply no way out of this. Timeline is not about to initiate vast numbers of individual lawsuits -- they don't have to. All they have to do is cherry-pick a few customers here and there and use BSA-style intimidation tactics. The publicity from the lawsuits or payoffs in lieu thereof will trigger a crippling Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt about SQL Server, AND ALL THE OTHER MICROSOFT PRODUCTS THAT MIGHT HAVE LATENT PATENT ISSUES! No reasonable person can have confidence in ANY Microsoft product until this issue is settled and some reassurances are given about how future patent issues are to be handled.
I can't help but think this entire situation would have been quietly settled if the offender was anyone other than Microsoft.
If and when Palladium reaches the market, our best defense an educated customer. If people know in advance about the downside of Palladium, it will be rejected.
To an extent, the education tactic is working. "Hailstorm" is buried in the Internet cemetary, somewhere near the CueCats, and Microsoft has decided to abandon the "Palladium" name (although the project lives on). I think they should rename it "Microsoft Smallpox", to help remind all of us that if we allow our neighbors to become infected with this disease, we will ultimately become infected as well.
Grab the picture, make it look like an FBI "wanted" poster, and send it out as spam. Need a fake return address?? How about spam headquarters, a.k.a. abuse@uu.net?
I also wondered if it really happened, but think about this: If it didn't happen, where did all that information come from? I figure he managed to e-mail or exploit IE into installing Back Orifice. That would do it.
A spammer forges the wrong domain into a batch of spam, and the victim strikes back.
"But all that means here on Slashdot is that the people who, without meaning it a bit, have been saying 'if you don't want us 'sharing' your IP, come up with a way to vend it to us' will now have to tone it down a bit."
That's part of the solution, but not the whole thing. The file format needs to be MP3, the restrictions need to be GONE, it needs to be a flat rate, and it must be viewed as a small fee for a small convenience (because that's all it is). At long last, the real market value of individual songs must be addressed. Consider this: If the recording industry had simply cut a deal with Napster and charged $5/month for an "all you can eat" plan, they would get about $150 million per month, as opposed to the $0 they get now. No matter how you slice it, the recording industry has ALREADY squandered over a BILLION dollars in money that they COULD HAVE HAD, for P2P activity that they KNEW would happen ANYWAY! That's alot of money to piss away! Hillary is on the way out (fairly or unfairly) because SOMEONE has to be held responsible for one of the foolish decisions in the history of business.
RIAA doesn't seem to realize that the name of the game is to get the most money. Sometimes this requires sharing the revenue stream with others. If my choice is to accept 50% of a $2 billion market, or retain my 100% share of $0, simple math dictates the answer. I feel entitled to 100% of everything, I have to find away to put my emotions aside long enough to take what is there to be taken instead of agonizing over what the other guy is getting.
At this point, no matter what RIAA does, it will be damn near impossible to earn back even a fraction of what they could have had if they kept Hillary on a short leash. Notice, they are still on the wrong track. Getting paid for every single transfer is nowhere near as important as getting something from everyone who shares.