Sometimes you just have to assume there is an evil conspiracy of broadband companies ruling the media companies. Why whould the media companies otherwise do just about everything to promote the use of private copies, distributed over Internet, instead of physical media?
There was a posting a few days ago on Slashdot about PlayStaion 2 gaining Net access via AOL (http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-5928280.html ). That's more than enough reason for Sony to use a Netscape branded version of Mozilla. Mozilla is going beta with 0.9.1 in a few days, that's a lot of time for making the branded versions befor Christmas.
It's just a "postman biting dog" vs. "dog bitning postman" thing. Russians are famous for acting on their own in space, Americans are not. It's illustrated by this quote from Newsweek July 7, 1997:
Blagov's [Russian on Mir] invocation of common sense pointed up an interesting difference in the cultures of the two countries' space programs. The Russians have developed an improvisational spirit that Americans like to imagine is theirs alone -- but is acutally just the opposite of NASA's by-the-briefing-book approch to spaceflight. "If anything goes wrong with the shuttle, we bring it right back down," said one member of the NASA team in Moscow. "But the Russians are great at fixing and patching. Just look at their cars!" The first American to fly on Mir, Norman Thagard, recalls that the backup oxygen canisters were used often during his mission, but that the crew often found them difficult to activate. Shortly after he arrived, Thagard told Newsweek, the Russian commander handed him a canister, said "Hold this" -- then set a nail into it and gave it a whack with a hammer to get the reaction going.
It's not that simple. Intellecutal property rights are not entirely unconditional in USA. Your constitution says that Congress shall have the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writhings and Discoveries" (8, 8). In other words: Microsoft does, at least in principle, not own Windows because it's nice for Bill Gates, but because it's assumed to further "the Progess of Science and useful Arts".
OpenBSD style code audit is obviously very important, but it's not enough. That's why NSA and others are exploring how to enhance or redesign the security model of current operating systems (see for example http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/index.html).
The problem with the proposed enhancements is that they will alter the OS in fundamental ways. The basic drawbacks are that the OS will become more restrictive and slower. Some people are willing to pay the price others are not. Security modules are quite nice in that situation.
Eric Raymond wrote about AOL's use of shifting standards for IM in August 1999: http://www.byte.com/column/BYT19990803S0007 . His headline "Microsoft Is Right!"
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Companies should not be allowed to make contracts that violates the most basic principles of free trade in the first place.
Sometimes you just have to assume there is an evil conspiracy of broadband companies ruling the media companies. Why whould the media companies otherwise do just about everything to promote the use of private copies, distributed over Internet, instead of physical media?
There was a posting a few days ago on Slashdot about PlayStaion 2 gaining Net access via AOL (http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-5928280.html ). That's more than enough reason for Sony to use a Netscape branded version of Mozilla. Mozilla is going beta with 0.9.1 in a few days, that's a lot of time for making the branded versions befor Christmas.
It gives the ones making the safer OS a strong selling point, and that's what really matters in the long run.
It's easy to forget that the western tip of China is about halfway between Athens and Beijing.
It's not that simple. Intellecutal property rights are not entirely unconditional in USA. Your constitution says that Congress shall have the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writhings and Discoveries" (8, 8). In other words: Microsoft does, at least in principle, not own Windows because it's nice for Bill Gates, but because it's assumed to further "the Progess of Science and useful Arts".
OpenBSD style code audit is obviously very important, but it's not enough. That's why NSA and others are exploring how to enhance or redesign the security model of current operating systems (see for example http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/index.html). The problem with the proposed enhancements is that they will alter the OS in fundamental ways. The basic drawbacks are that the OS will become more restrictive and slower. Some people are willing to pay the price others are not. Security modules are quite nice in that situation.
Eric Raymond wrote about AOL's use of shifting standards for IM in August 1999: http://www.byte.com/column/BYT19990803S0007 . His headline "Microsoft Is Right!"