Precisely who were these third parties whose support was necessary (or even existed) on these projects? What evidence can you show of any standards compliance or collaberation? As far as I'm concerned, Windows, IE, and WMP were all solo projects based more on ignoring standards than setting them.
I will offer a brief review of notable Microsoft partnerships:
IBM -- Let's get M$ to help us with OS/2!
Sun -- Java; enough said
Apple -- A love/hate relationship if ever there was one
Digital -- How did they manage to mess up the 64-bit version of NT?
There must be lots of Microsoft-led initiatives that were a smashing success for all parties involved, where standards were adopted and open to all, where everyone lived happily ever after -- I just can't think of any at the moment.
Their lack of credibility has finally caught up with them.
IMHO, Microsoft is incapable of leading any kind of initiative that requires third party support. That would require finding third parties that trust Microsoft -- a dubious proposition indeed.
Hell, it's not easy to get rid of any of the senators. By definition, it's a place for well connected people to cruise for long distances between elections, with even less accountability than the average politician.
Funny story about hard-to-defeat Senators: Here in Connecticut, we had the seemingly invincible Lowell Weicker, who was ousted as a result of Joe Lieberman's well-organized mostly negative campaign. Weicker then became governor and repaid us for kicking him out of the Senate with a state income tax after basing his whole campaign on opposing such a thing. I saw him at an NHL game where he was apparently accepting a check on behalf of a charity during a pre-game ceremony. I say "apparently" because as soon as the crowd figured out who was on the ice, 15000 people went wild, bordering on a riot. It was the most exciting moment I've ever seen in sports. To this day, I can't believe the video didn't make the national news. The local liberal-slanted newspaper tried to downplay the incident, but they couldn't just ignore it. They printed a quote from one of the players, who said "I've never seen our fans so excited about anything!"
Now, back to our program: It all starts with associating his name with the stuff that he's shovelling. Assuming the voter pool is an uneducated as you say, Joe Sixpack may end up watching two minutes of TV news by mistake when NASCAR is rained out and he'll see how everyone is really pissed at Fritz. Granted the whole thing gets iffy when the news broadcast breaks for the Pork Rinds info-mercial, but you have to start somewhere.
Perhaps a better strategy is to give Hollings lots and lots of visibility pushing these lost causes, thus enabling the Republicans to use the issue in elections across the country -- portraying all Democrats as Disney Droids, with Fritz as their leader. It won't be hard to get Hollings to portay himself as a leader, and claim the support of the Democrats for all of his "popular voter-driven initiatives". Just keep him talking about this crap, and let nature take its course. Played properly, the Democratic National Committee will have to put a leash on him for damage control.
My basic thought is that the people who push this DMCA/SSSCA/CBDTBA crap need to encounter some negative political consequences; we have to find a way to make them play defense.
Are you sure that isn't House of Representatives or the other Senate seat? I thought the Senate was a 6-year term. If he was elected in 1998, that means he won't be up for re-election until 2004, even though other congressional seats will expire sooner.
Now that our complaining has killed SSSCA and scored a direct hit on CBDTPA, we should go after Hollings by encouraging the geeks of South Carolina to hold him accountable for these bills in every public forum they can find. If he is voted out of the Senate, then other potential Disney appointees will realize that acting as an errand boy for the entertainment industry is not without risk. Turning him into a national laughingstock is amusing, but the only people who can make him go away are the people who put him there: the voters of South Carolina.
According to opensecrets.org he was elected in 1998, which means the next election is 2004. Is it mere coincidence or is the midpoint of a Senate term the ideal time to deal with the sleaziest bills that PAC money can buy?
I find it really odd that this guy is a Democrat. I'm a Republican, and it's usually my guys who specialize in catering to anti-consumer interests like this. The Democrats ususally waste money on social programs and tax the hell out of the middle class to pay for it. He really should make up his mind: either be sleazy or counterproductive; it's not good to be both.
Given that M$ is already a monopoly, and their products are difficult to get rid of, it's a little late in the game to be talking about how to break up Windows without breaking up Microsoft.
If M$ strips Windows down to a "Lite" version and starts charging for the current batch of "bundle-ware" (WMP, IE, Outlook Express, file & print services), they will just find ways to force us to buy all that crap by making their other monopoly (M$ Office) products work so much better when "Microsoft Humpty-Dumpty 2002" is installed. It won't take M$ more than a month to break down Windows into "Feature Packs", in which the pricing and packaging are specifically geared towards making everyone buy the "whole enchilada". It's like buying a car and discovering that you can get a stripped down model, but if you want traction control you have to buy power windows, a big stereo, and leather seats. You don't need to be a monopoly to use bundling to sell things that people would not otherwise buy. That practice will continue whether Windows is modularized or not.
In the short run, consumers would be totally screwed by M$ exploiting the revenue possibilities of bundleware. Eventually it would be good for Linux, as the pricey nature of Windows triggers the search for OS independance.
Either M$ is a monopoly or it isn't. The government either takes meaningful corrective action or M$ continues with business as usual. Breaking up Windows is a poor substitute for any if the other possible legal remedies.
Every once in a while, I saw one of those <55 MPH people. Mostly retired folks with Florida plates, just visiting for the summer (or using an out-of-state residence for tax purposes). It was never so much a matter of road rage as it was the cluelessness with which they would make unsafe merges & lane changes. When cars are passing you left & right about twice per second, there is no such thing as a waiting for a gap in traffic to change lanes. At that point, there are no "gaps" at all -- the other drivers detect a slowpoke nearby and close-in formation like a bunch of B-17 bombers in a WWII movie. The irony here is that any "road rage" was mostly confined to the people who obeyed the speed limit; the process of leaving them in the dust was relatively trouble-free.
Lock up one guy? Sure. Ten? No problem. A hundred? It starts to get interesting. A thousand? Now they have a problem. Finding space is just the beginning. The benefits of selective prosecution fade when the evildoers switch to "bulk" mode. How many Sklyarov's do you really think they want? In the beginning, the prosecution of defendants serves as a deterrent, even if they're acquitted. After a while, the resentment and outrage will call the entire DRM concept into question.
"They" are not omnipotent; "we" are not powerless.
No matter how you look at it, attacking OSS is a much more difficult proposition than DTV. Microsoft faces a huge threat from OSS, but most of the non-M$ software industry needs OSS, as will the hardware industry when M$ outlives its usefulness. The communications industry will be less than thrilled when the unwanted crippled PCs mean fewer new ISP customers. SSSCA will become the lightning rod for any tech company that fails to meet its forecasts, just like Sept. 11 was the #1 corporate excuse for 2001, which was a lousy business year all along.
When the first SSSCA-type of law passes, Microsoft will be in compliance, while Linux will be in defiance. The hardware vendors are going to have some interesting choices to make when the technical community describes Microsoft XP/SSSCA as a crippled downgrade and people stop buying new computers so as to avoid having this crippleware pre-installed. If the government's "war on piracy" is as effective as the "war on drugs", we won't have much to worry about at all.
It's interesting that you would mention national firewalls, China in particular. It just so happens that my company has an office in Shenzhen. Despite the spam blockade, they send e-mail to the US, China, Taiwan, HK, and Singapore every day -- no problem. Should there be anything resembling a national firewall that works, I'm prepared to take a number of steps to circumvent it. They won't be offline for more than a day. The only way you would see a national firewall that worked is if IP addresses were based on GPS. I don't see that happening anytime soon, and even when they have it, I can think of lots of ways for it to fail.
Having the technology for pay-per-play and having a market are two different things. The music industry can do whatever they want, but I will refuse to buy. I can live without their product longer than they can live without my money.
I ignored DIVX before, I may very well get a chance to ignore it again.
As one who has attended far too many corporate meetings, I would not want to be the executive who has to justify the expense of developing a DIVX-like product to a board of directors. Considering the overwhelming market rejection of the initial concept, it will be damn near impossible to convince anyone to invest in the sequel to the Edsel. Even the dot-com venture capatialists are now smart enough to pass on that kind of thing. Then again, maybe Radio Shack will melt down all those surplus Cue Cats and turn them into DIVX players.
I don't think that's universally true. There are far more OSS members than DTV. Pressuring them is not so easy due to the international nature of OSS and the diversity of OSS projects. The DTV hackers are vulnerable because they are a small, readily identifiable group that is opposed by a single large company. OSS is decentralized like Gnutella while DTV hackers are more like Napster. Hunting DTV hackers is easy; just follow the supply of certain specialized hardware. Let's see them figure out how to confiscate all the copies of Linux or even try to limit the modifications. Remember that some large companies (as large as the media interests) have a great deal at stake in this battle, and their interests may very well be opposed to the SSSCA/DMCA world.
Besides, how do they intend to control the concept of programming, when so many thousands of people work as programmers and have the tools readily available at school, home, and the office? You might as well try to control the concept of breathing.
Any attempt to use new hardware or OS features to control programming will result in lots of dumpsters being filled with hardware and software that nobody will buy. Microsoft is having enough trouble getting people to tolerate product activation. Granted, many ignorant people will tolerate a crippleware operating system, but not the ones who know how to write code. I don't think they will limit their computing activities to surfing MSN via IE just because M$ says so.
"If it gets to the point where everybody who uses a computer is violating some obscure law, then all that does is give the authorities the ultimate powers of selective prosecution."
I live in Connecticut, where we had the 55 MPH speed limit until a few years ago. It was the ultimate in universal violation and selective enforcement. As an added bonus, we have some of the highest fines in the US. Years of data would show that fines have zero effect on the actual speed of cars; the average motorist in Connecticut breaks 55 about halfway down the entrance ramp. After years of selective enforcement, the legislature relented and upped the speed limit after newspapers revealed that the courts were swamped with "not guilty" pleas and were dismissing approx. 50% of the cases due to capacity. You can imagine how little revenue was generated after people realized the value of using their "due process" rights.
The problem with DMCA, SSSCA, etc. is that the penalties are so severe that jury trials are a necessity. All it would take is an army of ACLU-style lawyers to turn each case into the Napster trial. I think a "delay and deny" strategy would be immensely useful. This is how large corporations wear down plaintiffs who sue them; I see no reason why it wouldn't work here.
The mere existance of a DirecTV hacking community proves my point of the guerilla hackers as a formidable opponent. Over the course of many years, DirecTV has spent millions on software, not to mention the cost of swapping out all those p2 and p3 cards. Considering how few of the pirates are going to become paying customers, it makes me wonder why they spent the money. If they had opted out of the protection game, they could have kept all the money that was spent on software and hardware upgrades. Yes, there would be piracy, but the time-proven method of thwarting pirates is low prices and a no-hassle purchase experience. Piracy is caused by unreasonable prices and needless BS in the business relationship.
Even if they succeed in crushing the hacker community, they lose the war because they devoted resources to fighting a battle that should have been avoided. I know of one legitimate DirecTV customer whose service has been disrupted several times because the modem connection kept messing up his receiver. He solved the problem by disconnecting the phone line, but a year later they wiped out his service for a week because his (unhacked) H card was "defective" and had to be replaced. Defective, yeah right. Could they try any harder to encourage piracy? DirecTV is not obligated to use easily hacked technology, nor are they obligated to make life easy for the hackers. However, their attitude toward the current customer and the potential future customer is IMHO not compatible with long-term business survival. Then again, the telcos have been around for a long time, so maybe I'm wrong about that.
Aside from the fascinating technical challenge, I have never been motivated to decode satellite signals BECAUSE THE "ENTERTAINMENT" IS NOT WORTH WATCHING, TO SAY NOTHING OF THE POTENTIAL VALUE OF MY TIME SPENT HACKING, OR THE LOONEY-TUNES PRICING THAT EXISTS TODAY. I am DirecTV's worst nightmare: A potential customer who would cheerfully abandon cable, but doesn't view their product as a cost-effective alternative. Not only will I not buy their product, I won't even make an effort to "steal" it! It wouldn't take much for me to toss my TV entirely. Considering the crap that passes for programming, they should be paying me to watch, not the other way around.
The best way to really teach the media industry a lesson would be to have a "Boycott TV" week. It would be so easy to do. The mere threat of such a thing would have the advertisers screaming. And just when you thought there was no acceptable use for spam...
You have a point, apathy is what the evildoers are counting on. By default, the bad guys win.
Your example of the DVD player is an interesting one. The average consumer tolerates region coding because they don't encounter the problem on a daily basis. I carry an IBM Thinkpad with a DVD drive. I travel internationally on business. Ironically, region coding prevented me from buying DVDs while travelling because the region codes would wreak havoc with my DVD drive. My choices are (a) don't buy DVDs while travelling, or (b) defeat the region code. Sorry, no karma points for guessing which choice I made.
I view the online world as a free market economy. As the "rights management" crippleware becomes more and more obnoxious, the incentives to defeat it will increase. The copy protection interests have to balance cost, customer acceptance, and technical viability. There is a definite limit as to how far they can go before "protection" gets too expensive or customers walk. Remember Circuit City's DIVX? It's dead-as-a-doornail, and not because of any grassroots consumer revolt. It was an intrusive nuisance -- not even worth cracking, much less buying.
Make no mistake, this is a battle. There will be casualties. Some of the stuff we like about the Internet will be lost. Then again, the DIVX players will have to share landfill space with other DRM follies, like the SSSCA-compatible computers.
Everything is cyclical. The 2004 article may in fact happen. If life on the net somehow gets that bad, there will be an equal and opposite force that limits the damage.
Without a doubt, the legal aspects of this will be every bit as bad as the article suggests. However, there is a big difference between having laws and enforcing them. In the 2004 scenario, practically everyone who owns a computer will be violating somebody's license or patent. The legal system may very well drown in it's own filth.
Considering how Napster was launched by a few low-budget geeks, imagine what might happen with serious opposition. I have often heard about the open source movement being the "Viet Cong" of the software world. Using laws to control a guerilla force is not going to be effective. If gun control doesn't stop criminals from using guns, I don't see how SSSCA is going to fare any better with computers. Surely, some people will be intimidated, but the Internet will simply become more encrypted and private. Historically, the Russians have been among the world leaders in dealing with repressive regimes. They are especially well suited for the Microsoft-Disney-Hollings world. Dimitry Sklyarov may very well have the last laugh after all.
The 2004 article presumes that the bad guys have achieved a total victory. The same mentality would have predicted a British victory in the American revolution, and a US victory in the Vietnam war. Goliath doesn't always win.
On the surface, it looks like Microsoft, RIAA, and Disney are a dominant force because they have money. We can assume that money will buy custom-crafted legislation (DMCA, SSSCA, and whatever Hollings is told to produce). But the advantage ends there. If you think about the brainpower aspect of this battle, a finite number of software professionals will have to outsmart an almost limitless number of guerilla hackers -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Every time the hackers get lucky, the "axis of evil" loses millions of dollars. The reason why Micrsoft is being hacked and embarrassed on a daily basis is not because they are dumb, it's because they are outnumbered.
We can't afford to be complacent, but this battle is by no means over.
Spammers. Let's use the awesome power ASCI White to send opt-out messages on behalf of every IP address on the Internet to all of the spammers in nanae. Now that's the e-bomb in action.
This adware/spyware stuff is almost always unwanted, and should be treated as such by virus protection software. I find it absolutely amazing that we have all this obnoxious stealth-spyware out there, and it's cheerfully ignored by the anti-virus programs.
At the very least, there should be a "Handle ad-ware as virus" option for virus protection programs. Obviously, the anti-virus people are afraid of lawsuits from the adware vendors, so they need a cute way of letting the end users designate adware for destruction while maintaining plausible deniability -- "Dear Mr. Gator, our anti-virus software does not disable your product's installation unless the user has specifically chosen to block adware. In such cases, the end user has specifically forbidden your access to his computer, so we just saved you from criminal and civil enforcement!"
Maybe we should all just copyright our IP addresses and DMCA the hell out of sites that misuse our copyrighted information for unauthorized purposes. If it accomplished nothing else, an avalanche of frivilous litigation would be its own reward.
This whole thing has "lowball webhead" written all over it. M$ pays real money to some talented advertising and graphics people; this "Junior Achievement" project is out of character for them.
Strange how they have a budget that is supposedly $25+ million, yet none of it was spent on this little web fiasco. If I had that kind of money to spend, the site would be a "tour de force" of graphics, articles, and commentary. Then again, I wouldn't do it at all if I had to sell M$ products. This kind of advertising works best if you have a good story to tell. In the case of M$, it's just going to draw sniper fire. Using the web to tell IT people that M$ is scalable, stable, and secure is like trying to sell household nuclear power plants to environmentalists.
Just wait and see -- M$ and possibly Unisys marketing will soon be relegated to golf outings with technially clueless CEOs, as part of a "sell high" strategy. That's really the final frontier for products that depend more on salesmanship and less on quality, features, and value.
"You may only use the service if you agree to their Terms." Precisely. I have defined a service "dealing with direct marketing crap". It costs $5000 per message. You may only use the service if you agree to my terms. They have a service, they have terms. I have a service, I have terms. What's the problem?
"It [Unix] requires you to pay for expensive experts..." So this means Windows experts are cheap? According to Microsoft's own logic, MCSE is a commodity (cheap labor) market. Attention Computer Science students: Adjust your course selection and career plans accordingly.
Suppose all of us Yahoo users were to draft a hardcopy letter that goes something like this...
Dear Yahoo, By copy if this letter, I am opting out of all marketing lists; my contact information is not to be used by Yahoo for marketing purposes, nor is it to be sold, shared, leased, lent, or revealed to any third parties. This letter supersedes any website settings and is in response to all past, present, and future requests for marketing permission. Any future requests for permission will be ignored, since this letter will serve as your notification until revoked by me in writing.
Should you make use of my contact information anyway, I will invoice you $5000 per message as a "reading fee". Abuse of my contact information constitues your agreement to pay the "reading fee", in addition to collection costs, court fees, and reasonable attorney's fees. I understand that $5000 per message is quite expensive -- do not use the service unless you intend to pay the fee.
I would love to see a service that offered to auto-send this kind of letter to all the "opt-in-by-default" morons. Even better if it could help facilitate the collection process.
All Zope objects are in the ZODB database, which is in./var/Data.fs off of whatever directory you installed Zope in; the server log file is in./var/Z2.log. If you were looking through the filesystem in the hopes of finding your Squishdot objects and backing them up, it must have been a frustrating exercise. Then again, backing up one file (OK to do this "live") is about as easy as backup gets.
If there was one thing Zope could really use, it would be the ability to conveniently & reliably use non-ZODB databases and/or filesystems as alternatives to ZODB object storage. There are plug-ins that attempt some of this, but they are limited and not particularly useful in conjunction with products like Squishdot.
By the way, FTP and WEBDAV are also management options, so it's really not limited to browsers. In exchange for the limitation of "http/ftp/webdav" management, you get platform independance. Zope server runs on Windoze,Linux,Solaris,etc. and can be managed by anyone with a browser on any OS whatsoever. That's about as un-Microsoft as software gets these days.
Having said all that, a "fat client" management program would make a nifty IDE-style environment, but the Zope designers seem to like the concept of being able to run the entire operation from the local Internet cafe or airport kiosk.
Like all the other app servers out there, Zope has a fairly steep learning curve. Among those who use app server systems, there is a great deal of the "what I know how to use is best" attitude. There are some people who look at Zope and just don't get it. For others, Zope is like a religion. I'm somewhere between the two. It's a great product, bordering on awesome. The fact is, nobody has the perfect all-purpose app server. If such a thing existed, we would all install it and there would be no discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. I should have described IE as a failed partnership, not a solo project -- just more fuel for the fire.
I will offer a brief review of notable Microsoft partnerships:
There must be lots of Microsoft-led initiatives that were a smashing success for all parties involved, where standards were adopted and open to all, where everyone lived happily ever after -- I just can't think of any at the moment.
Their lack of credibility has finally caught up with them.
IMHO, Microsoft is incapable of leading any kind of initiative that requires third party support. That would require finding third parties that trust Microsoft -- a dubious proposition indeed.
Hell, it's not easy to get rid of any of the senators. By definition, it's a place for well connected people to cruise for long distances between elections, with even less accountability than the average politician.
Funny story about hard-to-defeat Senators: Here in Connecticut, we had the seemingly invincible Lowell Weicker, who was ousted as a result of Joe Lieberman's well-organized mostly negative campaign. Weicker then became governor and repaid us for kicking him out of the Senate with a state income tax after basing his whole campaign on opposing such a thing. I saw him at an NHL game where he was apparently accepting a check on behalf of a charity during a pre-game ceremony. I say "apparently" because as soon as the crowd figured out who was on the ice, 15000 people went wild, bordering on a riot. It was the most exciting moment I've ever seen in sports. To this day, I can't believe the video didn't make the national news. The local liberal-slanted newspaper tried to downplay the incident, but they couldn't just ignore it. They printed a quote from one of the players, who said "I've never seen our fans so excited about anything!"
Now, back to our program: It all starts with associating his name with the stuff that he's shovelling. Assuming the voter pool is an uneducated as you say, Joe Sixpack may end up watching two minutes of TV news by mistake when NASCAR is rained out and he'll see how everyone is really pissed at Fritz. Granted the whole thing gets iffy when the news broadcast breaks for the Pork Rinds info-mercial, but you have to start somewhere.
Perhaps a better strategy is to give Hollings lots and lots of visibility pushing these lost causes, thus enabling the Republicans to use the issue in elections across the country -- portraying all Democrats as Disney Droids, with Fritz as their leader. It won't be hard to get Hollings to portay himself as a leader, and claim the support of the Democrats for all of his "popular voter-driven initiatives". Just keep him talking about this crap, and let nature take its course. Played properly, the Democratic National Committee will have to put a leash on him for damage control.
My basic thought is that the people who push this DMCA/SSSCA/CBDTBA crap need to encounter some negative political consequences; we have to find a way to make them play defense.
How many Slashdotters can I get to e-mail the link for my original posting at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=30881&cid=3319 647 to Senator Hollings at qmail@hollings-cms.senate.gov ?
Sorry, no karma points for posting the "hidden" value in his website's email contact page to Usenet.
Are you sure that isn't House of Representatives or the other Senate seat? I thought the Senate was a 6-year term. If he was elected in 1998, that means he won't be up for re-election until 2004, even though other congressional seats will expire sooner.
Now that our complaining has killed SSSCA and scored a direct hit on CBDTPA, we should go after Hollings by encouraging the geeks of South Carolina to hold him accountable for these bills in every public forum they can find. If he is voted out of the Senate, then other potential Disney appointees will realize that acting as an errand boy for the entertainment industry is not without risk. Turning him into a national laughingstock is amusing, but the only people who can make him go away are the people who put him there: the voters of South Carolina.
According to opensecrets.org he was elected in 1998, which means the next election is 2004. Is it mere coincidence or is the midpoint of a Senate term the ideal time to deal with the sleaziest bills that PAC money can buy?
I find it really odd that this guy is a Democrat. I'm a Republican, and it's usually my guys who specialize in catering to anti-consumer interests like this. The Democrats ususally waste money on social programs and tax the hell out of the middle class to pay for it. He really should make up his mind: either be sleazy or counterproductive; it's not good to be both.
Given that M$ is already a monopoly, and their products are difficult to get rid of, it's a little late in the game to be talking about how to break up Windows without breaking up Microsoft.
If M$ strips Windows down to a "Lite" version and starts charging for the current batch of "bundle-ware" (WMP, IE, Outlook Express, file & print services), they will just find ways to force us to buy all that crap by making their other monopoly (M$ Office) products work so much better when "Microsoft Humpty-Dumpty 2002" is installed. It won't take M$ more than a month to break down Windows into "Feature Packs", in which the pricing and packaging are specifically geared towards making everyone buy the "whole enchilada". It's like buying a car and discovering that you can get a stripped down model, but if you want traction control you have to buy power windows, a big stereo, and leather seats. You don't need to be a monopoly to use bundling to sell things that people would not otherwise buy. That practice will continue whether Windows is modularized or not.
In the short run, consumers would be totally screwed by M$ exploiting the revenue possibilities of bundleware. Eventually it would be good for Linux, as the pricey nature of Windows triggers the search for OS independance.
Either M$ is a monopoly or it isn't. The government either takes meaningful corrective action or M$ continues with business as usual. Breaking up Windows is a poor substitute for any if the other possible legal remedies.
Every once in a while, I saw one of those <55 MPH people. Mostly retired folks with Florida plates, just visiting for the summer (or using an out-of-state residence for tax purposes). It was never so much a matter of road rage as it was the cluelessness with which they would make unsafe merges & lane changes. When cars are passing you left & right about twice per second, there is no such thing as a waiting for a gap in traffic to change lanes. At that point, there are no "gaps" at all -- the other drivers detect a slowpoke nearby and close-in formation like a bunch of B-17 bombers in a WWII movie. The irony here is that any "road rage" was mostly confined to the people who obeyed the speed limit; the process of leaving them in the dust was relatively trouble-free.
Lock up one guy? Sure. Ten? No problem. A hundred? It starts to get interesting. A thousand? Now they have a problem. Finding space is just the beginning. The benefits of selective prosecution fade when the evildoers switch to "bulk" mode. How many Sklyarov's do you really think they want? In the beginning, the prosecution of defendants serves as a deterrent, even if they're acquitted. After a while, the resentment and outrage will call the entire DRM concept into question.
"They" are not omnipotent; "we" are not powerless.
No matter how you look at it, attacking OSS is a much more difficult proposition than DTV. Microsoft faces a huge threat from OSS, but most of the non-M$ software industry needs OSS, as will the hardware industry when M$ outlives its usefulness. The communications industry will be less than thrilled when the unwanted crippled PCs mean fewer new ISP customers. SSSCA will become the lightning rod for any tech company that fails to meet its forecasts, just like Sept. 11 was the #1 corporate excuse for 2001, which was a lousy business year all along.
When the first SSSCA-type of law passes, Microsoft will be in compliance, while Linux will be in defiance. The hardware vendors are going to have some interesting choices to make when the technical community describes Microsoft XP/SSSCA as a crippled downgrade and people stop buying new computers so as to avoid having this crippleware pre-installed. If the government's "war on piracy" is as effective as the "war on drugs", we won't have much to worry about at all.
It's interesting that you would mention national firewalls, China in particular. It just so happens that my company has an office in Shenzhen. Despite the spam blockade, they send e-mail to the US, China, Taiwan, HK, and Singapore every day -- no problem. Should there be anything resembling a national firewall that works, I'm prepared to take a number of steps to circumvent it. They won't be offline for more than a day. The only way you would see a national firewall that worked is if IP addresses were based on GPS. I don't see that happening anytime soon, and even when they have it, I can think of lots of ways for it to fail.
Having the technology for pay-per-play and having a market are two different things. The music industry can do whatever they want, but I will refuse to buy. I can live without their product longer than they can live without my money.
I ignored DIVX before, I may very well get a chance to ignore it again.
As one who has attended far too many corporate meetings, I would not want to be the executive who has to justify the expense of developing a DIVX-like product to a board of directors. Considering the overwhelming market rejection of the initial concept, it will be damn near impossible to convince anyone to invest in the sequel to the Edsel. Even the dot-com venture capatialists are now smart enough to pass on that kind of thing. Then again, maybe Radio Shack will melt down all those surplus Cue Cats and turn them into DIVX players.
I don't think that's universally true. There are far more OSS members than DTV. Pressuring them is not so easy due to the international nature of OSS and the diversity of OSS projects. The DTV hackers are vulnerable because they are a small, readily identifiable group that is opposed by a single large company. OSS is decentralized like Gnutella while DTV hackers are more like Napster. Hunting DTV hackers is easy; just follow the supply of certain specialized hardware. Let's see them figure out how to confiscate all the copies of Linux or even try to limit the modifications. Remember that some large companies (as large as the media interests) have a great deal at stake in this battle, and their interests may very well be opposed to the SSSCA/DMCA world.
Besides, how do they intend to control the concept of programming, when so many thousands of people work as programmers and have the tools readily available at school, home, and the office? You might as well try to control the concept of breathing.
Any attempt to use new hardware or OS features to control programming will result in lots of dumpsters being filled with hardware and software that nobody will buy. Microsoft is having enough trouble getting people to tolerate product activation. Granted, many ignorant people will tolerate a crippleware operating system, but not the ones who know how to write code. I don't think they will limit their computing activities to surfing MSN via IE just because M$ says so.
"If it gets to the point where everybody who uses a computer is violating some obscure law, then all that does is give the authorities the ultimate powers of selective prosecution."
I live in Connecticut, where we had the 55 MPH speed limit until a few years ago. It was the ultimate in universal violation and selective enforcement. As an added bonus, we have some of the highest fines in the US. Years of data would show that fines have zero effect on the actual speed of cars; the average motorist in Connecticut breaks 55 about halfway down the entrance ramp. After years of selective enforcement, the legislature relented and upped the speed limit after newspapers revealed that the courts were swamped with "not guilty" pleas and were dismissing approx. 50% of the cases due to capacity. You can imagine how little revenue was generated after people realized the value of using their "due process" rights.
The problem with DMCA, SSSCA, etc. is that the penalties are so severe that jury trials are a necessity. All it would take is an army of ACLU-style lawyers to turn each case into the Napster trial. I think a "delay and deny" strategy would be immensely useful. This is how large corporations wear down plaintiffs who sue them; I see no reason why it wouldn't work here.
The mere existance of a DirecTV hacking community proves my point of the guerilla hackers as a formidable opponent. Over the course of many years, DirecTV has spent millions on software, not to mention the cost of swapping out all those p2 and p3 cards. Considering how few of the pirates are going to become paying customers, it makes me wonder why they spent the money. If they had opted out of the protection game, they could have kept all the money that was spent on software and hardware upgrades. Yes, there would be piracy, but the time-proven method of thwarting pirates is low prices and a no-hassle purchase experience. Piracy is caused by unreasonable prices and needless BS in the business relationship.
Even if they succeed in crushing the hacker community, they lose the war because they devoted resources to fighting a battle that should have been avoided. I know of one legitimate DirecTV customer whose service has been disrupted several times because the modem connection kept messing up his receiver. He solved the problem by disconnecting the phone line, but a year later they wiped out his service for a week because his (unhacked) H card was "defective" and had to be replaced. Defective, yeah right. Could they try any harder to encourage piracy? DirecTV is not obligated to use easily hacked technology, nor are they obligated to make life easy for the hackers. However, their attitude toward the current customer and the potential future customer is IMHO not compatible with long-term business survival. Then again, the telcos have been around for a long time, so maybe I'm wrong about that.
Aside from the fascinating technical challenge, I have never been motivated to decode satellite signals BECAUSE THE "ENTERTAINMENT" IS NOT WORTH WATCHING, TO SAY NOTHING OF THE POTENTIAL VALUE OF MY TIME SPENT HACKING, OR THE LOONEY-TUNES PRICING THAT EXISTS TODAY. I am DirecTV's worst nightmare: A potential customer who would cheerfully abandon cable, but doesn't view their product as a cost-effective alternative. Not only will I not buy their product, I won't even make an effort to "steal" it! It wouldn't take much for me to toss my TV entirely. Considering the crap that passes for programming, they should be paying me to watch, not the other way around.
The best way to really teach the media industry a lesson would be to have a "Boycott TV" week. It would be so easy to do. The mere threat of such a thing would have the advertisers screaming. And just when you thought there was no acceptable use for spam...
You have a point, apathy is what the evildoers are counting on. By default, the bad guys win.
Your example of the DVD player is an interesting one. The average consumer tolerates region coding because they don't encounter the problem on a daily basis. I carry an IBM Thinkpad with a DVD drive. I travel internationally on business. Ironically, region coding prevented me from buying DVDs while travelling because the region codes would wreak havoc with my DVD drive. My choices are (a) don't buy DVDs while travelling, or (b) defeat the region code. Sorry, no karma points for guessing which choice I made.
I view the online world as a free market economy. As the "rights management" crippleware becomes more and more obnoxious, the incentives to defeat it will increase. The copy protection interests have to balance cost, customer acceptance, and technical viability. There is a definite limit as to how far they can go before "protection" gets too expensive or customers walk. Remember Circuit City's DIVX? It's dead-as-a-doornail, and not because of any grassroots consumer revolt. It was an intrusive nuisance -- not even worth cracking, much less buying.
Make no mistake, this is a battle. There will be casualties. Some of the stuff we like about the Internet will be lost. Then again, the DIVX players will have to share landfill space with other DRM follies, like the SSSCA-compatible computers.
Everything is cyclical. The 2004 article may in fact happen. If life on the net somehow gets that bad, there will be an equal and opposite force that limits the damage.
Without a doubt, the legal aspects of this will be every bit as bad as the article suggests. However, there is a big difference between having laws and enforcing them. In the 2004 scenario, practically everyone who owns a computer will be violating somebody's license or patent. The legal system may very well drown in it's own filth.
Considering how Napster was launched by a few low-budget geeks, imagine what might happen with serious opposition. I have often heard about the open source movement being the "Viet Cong" of the software world. Using laws to control a guerilla force is not going to be effective. If gun control doesn't stop criminals from using guns, I don't see how SSSCA is going to fare any better with computers. Surely, some people will be intimidated, but the Internet will simply become more encrypted and private. Historically, the Russians have been among the world leaders in dealing with repressive regimes. They are especially well suited for the Microsoft-Disney-Hollings world. Dimitry Sklyarov may very well have the last laugh after all.
The 2004 article presumes that the bad guys have achieved a total victory. The same mentality would have predicted a British victory in the American revolution, and a US victory in the Vietnam war. Goliath doesn't always win.
On the surface, it looks like Microsoft, RIAA, and Disney are a dominant force because they have money. We can assume that money will buy custom-crafted legislation (DMCA, SSSCA, and whatever Hollings is told to produce). But the advantage ends there. If you think about the brainpower aspect of this battle, a finite number of software professionals will have to outsmart an almost limitless number of guerilla hackers -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Every time the hackers get lucky, the "axis of evil" loses millions of dollars. The reason why Micrsoft is being hacked and embarrassed on a daily basis is not because they are dumb, it's because they are outnumbered.
We can't afford to be complacent, but this battle is by no means over.
Spammers. Let's use the awesome power ASCI White to send opt-out messages on behalf of every IP address on the Internet to all of the spammers in nanae. Now that's the e-bomb in action.
This adware/spyware stuff is almost always unwanted, and should be treated as such by virus protection software. I find it absolutely amazing that we have all this obnoxious stealth-spyware out there, and it's cheerfully ignored by the anti-virus programs.
At the very least, there should be a "Handle ad-ware as virus" option for virus protection programs. Obviously, the anti-virus people are afraid of lawsuits from the adware vendors, so they need a cute way of letting the end users designate adware for destruction while maintaining plausible deniability -- "Dear Mr. Gator, our anti-virus software does not disable your product's installation unless the user has specifically chosen to block adware. In such cases, the end user has specifically forbidden your access to his computer, so we just saved you from criminal and civil enforcement!"
Maybe we should all just copyright our IP addresses and DMCA the hell out of sites that misuse our copyrighted information for unauthorized purposes. If it accomplished nothing else, an avalanche of frivilous litigation would be its own reward.
It's called the OFF switch. Once we start using it, the Disney droids will go into full retreat.
This whole thing has "lowball webhead" written all over it. M$ pays real money to some talented advertising and graphics people; this "Junior Achievement" project is out of character for them.
Strange how they have a budget that is supposedly $25+ million, yet none of it was spent on this little web fiasco. If I had that kind of money to spend, the site would be a "tour de force" of graphics, articles, and commentary. Then again, I wouldn't do it at all if I had to sell M$ products. This kind of advertising works best if you have a good story to tell. In the case of M$, it's just going to draw sniper fire. Using the web to tell IT people that M$ is scalable, stable, and secure is like trying to sell household nuclear power plants to environmentalists.
Just wait and see -- M$ and possibly Unisys marketing will soon be relegated to golf outings with technially clueless CEOs, as part of a "sell high" strategy. That's really the final frontier for products that depend more on salesmanship and less on quality, features, and value.
"You may only use the service if you agree to their Terms." Precisely. I have defined a service "dealing with direct marketing crap". It costs $5000 per message. You may only use the service if you agree to my terms. They have a service, they have terms. I have a service, I have terms. What's the problem?
"It [Unix] requires you to pay for expensive experts..." So this means Windows experts are cheap? According to Microsoft's own logic, MCSE is a commodity (cheap labor) market. Attention Computer Science students: Adjust your course selection and career plans accordingly.
Suppose all of us Yahoo users were to draft a hardcopy letter that goes something like this...
Dear Yahoo,
By copy if this letter, I am opting out of all marketing lists; my contact information is not to be used by Yahoo for marketing purposes, nor is it to be sold, shared, leased, lent, or revealed to any third parties. This letter supersedes any website settings and is in response to all past, present, and future requests for marketing permission. Any future requests for permission will be ignored, since this letter will serve as your notification until revoked by me in writing.
Should you make use of my contact information anyway, I will invoice you $5000 per message as a "reading fee". Abuse of my contact information constitues your agreement to pay the "reading fee", in addition to collection costs, court fees, and reasonable attorney's fees. I understand that $5000 per message is quite expensive -- do not use the service unless you intend to pay the fee.
I would love to see a service that offered to auto-send this kind of letter to all the "opt-in-by-default" morons. Even better if it could help facilitate the collection process.
All Zope objects are in the ZODB database, which is in ./var/Data.fs off of whatever directory you installed Zope in; the server log file is in ./var/Z2.log. If you were looking through the filesystem in the hopes of finding your Squishdot objects and backing them up, it must have been a frustrating exercise. Then again, backing up one file (OK to do this "live") is about as easy as backup gets.
If there was one thing Zope could really use, it would be the ability to conveniently & reliably use non-ZODB databases and/or filesystems as alternatives to ZODB object storage. There are plug-ins that attempt some of this, but they are limited and not particularly useful in conjunction with products like Squishdot.
By the way, FTP and WEBDAV are also management options, so it's really not limited to browsers. In exchange for the limitation of "http/ftp/webdav" management, you get platform independance. Zope server runs on Windoze,Linux,Solaris,etc. and can be managed by anyone with a browser on any OS whatsoever. That's about as un-Microsoft as software gets these days.
Having said all that, a "fat client" management program would make a nifty IDE-style environment, but the Zope designers seem to like the concept of being able to run the entire operation from the local Internet cafe or airport kiosk.
Like all the other app servers out there, Zope has a fairly steep learning curve. Among those who use app server systems, there is a great deal of the "what I know how to use is best" attitude. There are some people who look at Zope and just don't get it. For others, Zope is like a religion. I'm somewhere between the two. It's a great product, bordering on awesome. The fact is, nobody has the perfect all-purpose app server. If such a thing existed, we would all install it and there would be no discussion.