(...) You always are placing things somewhere in relation to another thing.
Unfortunately, when following this strategy, I'm running out of space quickly even in the real world where there is plenty of it. I consistently end up putting things on top of some stack, later browsing through several stacks in order to retrieve them.
Many people are used to flipping through CD's because to them, that's where the data is stored, so that's the first place they look.
Actually, they flip through CDs because that fscking shelf lacks a search engine.
DRM simply cannot work without enforcement in the hardware.
Bzzzt. Wrong! DRM serves as an anchor for legal enforcement. You are right in that it certainly won't work without hardware support. However, that's not the point. The whole point is to make you, or anyone who does manufacture devices without DRM support in their hardware, look like a villain -- a "hacker", a thief, a criminal.
An example: German news site Heisereports that the music industry here started to go after people who sell software able to copy music CDs. So this is what does happen:
Music industry claims there is copy protection (aka DRM) on some of their CDs,
Music industry claims this copy protection is "circumvented" if certain tools are used,
Music industry sues those who sell those tools,
Music industry assumes new_world == old_world - evil_tools, and claims that there is a working copy protection scheme (aka DRM).
Repeat ad infinitum.
It does not matter what works and what doesn't from a technical point of view. What matters is that the legal system accepts claim No. 1, and is sufficiently forgetful to not notice the loop when they return to claim No. 1 for the next iteration.
... so at least we can know what exactly it is and whether this is a hoax or not.
Doesn't matter. What will happen is this: After admitting some of their code leaked, they will wait for a couple of months. Then, a company paid by them will release an "independent" study on the effects of this source code leakage on the number of security problems discovered in Windows. Nifty charts in this study will suggest that availability of source code increases the number of security problems exploited by hackers. Mainstream media will report this as breaking news.
A propaganda war has just begun when SCO and Microsoft managed to "get attacked" by "those open source zealots". They weren't, of course, but few people know after misleading media coverage of the respective events.
Not all mass-mailings are spam. Will your solution break high-volume mailing lists?
Microsoft.NET Antispam(TM) will support mailing lists. Everyone will be able open and run a Microsoft.NET Antispam(TM)-compliant mailing list with a few mouse clicks in the new Microsoft.NET Mailing List Console(TM) which will be part of the next version of Microsoft Windows(TM). A migration guide will be published on our Web site to help those currently running their mailing lists elsewhere.
Not all computer generated mails are spam. Will your solution break order status updates from web businesses? What happens if the business does not use the same domain for emailing? support@customers.example.com instead of store.example.com?
All Web businesses hosted by the Microsoft.NET Web Business(TM) service will be recognized by Microsoft.NET Antispam(TM). A migration guide will be published on our Web site to help those currently running their businesses elsewhere.
Speaking of which, will your solution break messages sent from computers without an external email server? What happens if the cronjob on gateway.example.com wants to send bob@example.com an email?
The Microsoft.NET Antispam(TM) suite will be available for all operating system platforms supported by Microsoft(TM). For cronjobs, there will be Microsoft.NET Cron(TM) which comes with a migration guide to help those currently using other platforms to implement their cronjobs.
Spamming is worldwide. Will your solution include a spammer in, say, South Africa?
Microsoft.NET Antispam(TM) will be worldwide, too.
A spammer can use more then one machine in order to send email. Does your solution still work if the spammer is controlling 10 machines? 100 machines? 1000 machines?
Microsoft.NET Antispam(TM) will be based on the Microsoft Next Generation Secure Computing Base(TM), ensuring that only Microsoft(TM) controls machines.
Inversely, will your solution bog down my cellphone's anemic processor when I check my mail? Or will it cause my ISP to purchase faster hardware and pass the price on to me?
The Microsoft.NET Antispam(TM) suite will be available for all operating system platforms supported by Microsoft(TM), including Windows.NET Cellphone(TM). The hardware requirements for Windows.NET Cellphone(TM) are described on our Web site. To ISPs, Microsoft(TM) will offer Consulting and Solution services for their Microsoft.NET Antispam(TM) implementation.
Finally, if I forge the address someone_i_hate@example.com on all my spam, will your solution bury their server in spam or not?
The Microsoft.NET Antispam(TM) mail user agent (Microsoft Outlook.NET Antispam Edition(TM)) will contain advanced Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology. Users of Microsoft.NET Antispam(TM) will only be able to use addresses registered with their Microsoft.NET Passport(TM) account. The Microsoft.NET Antispam(TM) mail delivery protocol is proprietary and based on patented and patent-pending technology so only the Microsoft.NET Antispam(TM) mail user agent or mail user agents licensed by Microsoft(TM) can be used to send Microsoft.NET Antispam(TM)-compliant messages.
That's what some people in the music industry think it is. What they imagine is a world where they don't need extensive distribution channels but still get the money.
Now that's an excellent proof for the claim that patents foster innovation, isn't it? Patents on FAT 'technology' plus a company enfocing them provide should be quite effective as an incentive to create something better.
While I fully support ESR and the rest of the open source movement's defense of Linux against SCO, I have a feeling that this tool's results will not immediately be accepted by established media simply because of ESR's bias.
Note that the tool itself is biased regardless of its author. Much like testing, which can show the presence of errors but not prove their absence, this tool can show the presence of copied lines but not prove the absence of copyright violations. So the bias actually seems to work for SCO because they could use it to substantiate their claims but the Linux community cannot use it to disprove SCO's (unstubstantiated) claims. Well, seems. The hidden message is: We really want to get rid of code illegally copied into Linux if there is any, and we don't need SCO's fscking support to find it.
The defense arguments will be interesting when they undoubtably say the clients didn't have the technical knowledge to understand that "download and listen" really means "download and provide."
Reminds me of this/. story titled Kazaa Usability Study. Looks like there are a couple of usability problems, and the average user may not understand what is going on.
... or alternatively its CEO can spend 10 days in clink for violating an injunction.
According to SCO's current business model, the CEO should choose this option because it is going to generate a lot more press coverage than silent payment of the 10,000 fine.
Longhorn will be to previous versions of windows what Windows 95 was back in the day - a radical change.
Within the last ten years we have seen three such radical changes in the Microsoft OS world: DOS -> DOS+Win, 3.x -> 9x, 9x/ME -> 2000/XP. The publishing and training industries are quite happy about it, but is anybody else? What is it they are changing so radically so often, and why?
In the Unix/Linux world, on the other hand, we have seen just evolution: a steady stream of improvements, leaving intact what was not broken in the first place while improving what needs improvement. In the Unix world, today I'm still using knowledge I acquired ten years ago under AIX, HP-UX, or SunOS, like vi and shell commands, central APIs, etc.
Aircraft, for example, run on extremely reliable software.
An aircraft is a pretty simple environment to run software in, compared to computers. No, really. Computers are expected to run arbitrary combinations of software, to perform equally well as a platform for gaming, a database server, and a network firewall. Computers come in zillions of hardware configurations and are used for zillions of different applications, and a piece of software that happens to be run on one of them is expected to run smoothly and to open up no security holes no matter what. Operating systems are modified every other week, and even BIOSems are routinely modified for nonsensical reasons like buying a replacement battery for a laptop computer.
Compare aircraft. Software running there is severely constrained by the environment. There ain't no HyperWing (TM) USB Toy needing a special driver. There ain't no Aerobatics software self-taught home pilots install from CD. No control panel for administration and maintenance designed with this target group in mind, too, and no interface between passengers and important systems other than non-interactive cabin windows. There ain't no Web browser downloading code from the Internet. No need to interact with obscure peers running broken implementations of outdated or experimental protocol versions. Also, most aircraft in operation today are based on well-understood designs whose flaws and weaknesses were learned and fixed the hard way. With aircraft, you can buy only slightly modified implementations of 30 years-old designs. Try buying a 40 GB harddisk today.
Well, that's what I hope aircraft are like. Another thing is for sure. Civil aviation has established a system of investigation covering not only accidents but also incidents that might have lead to accidents under less lucky circumstances, while the IT industry prefers to protect their mistakes as "valuable intellectual property".
Suppose you labor extremely hard to create something, it took so much of your time, might have cost you a marriage, every single penny in your account, and someone comes and swipes it from under your feet what would you do? Without patenting there wouldn't be much you could do now could you.
With patenting, I would have to find a less greedy employer, too.
Patents in general are entirely anti-capitalistic devices. Their primary purpose is to inhibit competition, by making it illegal to compete.
Which might have made sense back in the industrial ages, when turning an idea into a product required considerable investments in terms of materials and tools to build prototypes, and manufacturing facilities for mass production. Software is different. To make it takes just a computer and a brain. After a piece of software is written down and debugged, it's done - no manufacturing required, hence no factories and machines. Modifying the design of any industrial good is likely to require reconfiguration of an entire production facility. Modifying the design of software takes just a branch on CVS and a little time.
(...) but a couple well-placed "digital terrorist" or such phrases could easily get ignorant people thinking the wrong way
Actually, Internet security is a point against software patents. What users of networked systems need more than ever are services helping them to secure their infrastructure against all kinds of threads, making boxed software packages less important both technically and economically. Just like an airline needs continuous maintenance of their fleet, a company running computers needs continuous maintenance of their systems.
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Unfortunately, when following this strategy, I'm running out of space quickly even in the real world where there is plenty of it. I consistently end up putting things on top of some stack, later browsing through several stacks in order to retrieve them.
Actually, they flip through CDs because that fscking shelf lacks a search engine.
Bzzzt. Wrong! DRM serves as an anchor for legal enforcement. You are right in that it certainly won't work without hardware support. However, that's not the point. The whole point is to make you, or anyone who does manufacture devices without DRM support in their hardware, look like a villain -- a "hacker", a thief, a criminal.
An example: German news site Heise reports that the music industry here started to go after people who sell software able to copy music CDs. So this is what does happen:
It does not matter what works and what doesn't from a technical point of view. What matters is that the legal system accepts claim No. 1, and is sufficiently forgetful to not notice the loop when they return to claim No. 1 for the next iteration.
Doesn't matter. What will happen is this: After admitting some of their code leaked, they will wait for a couple of months. Then, a company paid by them will release an "independent" study on the effects of this source code leakage on the number of security problems discovered in Windows. Nifty charts in this study will suggest that availability of source code increases the number of security problems exploited by hackers. Mainstream media will report this as breaking news.
A propaganda war has just begun when SCO and Microsoft managed to "get attacked" by "those open source zealots". They weren't, of course, but few people know after misleading media coverage of the respective events.
You get what you pay for.
Microsoft .NET Antispam(TM) will support mailing lists. Everyone will be able open and run a Microsoft .NET Antispam(TM)-compliant mailing list with a few mouse clicks in the new Microsoft .NET Mailing List Console(TM) which will be part of the next version of Microsoft Windows(TM). A migration guide will be published on our Web site to help those currently running their mailing lists elsewhere.
All Web businesses hosted by the Microsoft .NET Web Business(TM) service will be recognized by Microsoft .NET Antispam(TM). A migration guide will be published on our Web site to help those currently running their businesses elsewhere.
The Microsoft .NET Antispam(TM) suite will be available for all operating system platforms supported by Microsoft(TM). For cronjobs, there will be Microsoft .NET Cron(TM) which comes with a migration guide to help those currently using other platforms to implement their cronjobs.
Microsoft .NET Antispam(TM) will be worldwide, too.
Microsoft .NET Antispam(TM) will be based on the Microsoft Next Generation Secure Computing Base(TM), ensuring that only Microsoft(TM) controls machines.
The Microsoft .NET Antispam(TM) suite will be available for all operating system platforms supported by Microsoft(TM), including Windows .NET Cellphone(TM). The hardware requirements for Windows .NET Cellphone(TM) are described on our Web site. To ISPs, Microsoft(TM) will offer Consulting and Solution services for their Microsoft .NET Antispam(TM) implementation.
The Microsoft .NET Antispam(TM) mail user agent (Microsoft Outlook .NET Antispam Edition(TM)) will contain advanced Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology. Users of Microsoft .NET Antispam(TM) will only be able to use addresses registered with their Microsoft .NET Passport(TM) account. The Microsoft .NET Antispam(TM) mail delivery protocol is proprietary and based on patented and patent-pending technology so only the Microsoft .NET Antispam(TM) mail user agent or mail user agents licensed by Microsoft(TM) can be used to send Microsoft .NET Antispam(TM)-compliant messages.
... Y2K and the end of the world as we knew it? 'nuff said.
That's what some people in the music industry think it is. What they imagine is a world where they don't need extensive distribution channels but still get the money.
Now that's an excellent proof for the claim that patents foster innovation, isn't it? Patents on FAT 'technology' plus a company enfocing them provide should be quite effective as an incentive to create something better.
Not funny. A couple of months ago I bought a hibiscus plant. With it came this label stating in serveral languages: "Propagation prohibited."
Note that the tool itself is biased regardless of its author. Much like testing, which can show the presence of errors but not prove their absence, this tool can show the presence of copied lines but not prove the absence of copyright violations. So the bias actually seems to work for SCO because they could use it to substantiate their claims but the Linux community cannot use it to disprove SCO's (unstubstantiated) claims. Well, seems. The hidden message is: We really want to get rid of code illegally copied into Linux if there is any, and we don't need SCO's fscking support to find it.
Reminds me of this /. story titled Kazaa Usability Study. Looks like there are a couple of usability problems, and the average user may not understand what is going on.
Mercy? Pity? Charity?
Making money out of open source software is so simple:
Within the last ten years we have seen three such radical changes in the Microsoft OS world: DOS -> DOS+Win, 3.x -> 9x, 9x/ME -> 2000/XP. The publishing and training industries are quite happy about it, but is anybody else? What is it they are changing so radically so often, and why?
In the Unix/Linux world, on the other hand, we have seen just evolution: a steady stream of improvements, leaving intact what was not broken in the first place while improving what needs improvement. In the Unix world, today I'm still using knowledge I acquired ten years ago under AIX, HP-UX, or SunOS, like vi and shell commands, central APIs, etc.
What does that tell us about radical change?
An aircraft is a pretty simple environment to run software in, compared to computers. No, really. Computers are expected to run arbitrary combinations of software, to perform equally well as a platform for gaming, a database server, and a network firewall. Computers come in zillions of hardware configurations and are used for zillions of different applications, and a piece of software that happens to be run on one of them is expected to run smoothly and to open up no security holes no matter what. Operating systems are modified every other week, and even BIOSems are routinely modified for nonsensical reasons like buying a replacement battery for a laptop computer.
Compare aircraft. Software running there is severely constrained by the environment. There ain't no HyperWing (TM) USB Toy needing a special driver. There ain't no Aerobatics software self-taught home pilots install from CD. No control panel for administration and maintenance designed with this target group in mind, too, and no interface between passengers and important systems other than non-interactive cabin windows. There ain't no Web browser downloading code from the Internet. No need to interact with obscure peers running broken implementations of outdated or experimental protocol versions. Also, most aircraft in operation today are based on well-understood designs whose flaws and weaknesses were learned and fixed the hard way. With aircraft, you can buy only slightly modified implementations of 30 years-old designs. Try buying a 40 GB harddisk today.
Well, that's what I hope aircraft are like. Another thing is for sure. Civil aviation has established a system of investigation covering not only accidents but also incidents that might have lead to accidents under less lucky circumstances, while the IT industry prefers to protect their mistakes as "valuable intellectual property".
Well, assuming security can be quantified counting open ports, it obviously means that Linux is NaN times more secure than XP.
This article suggests that free speech might not be the prime issue from a MEP's point of view.
Yes.
Which might have made sense back in the industrial ages, when turning an idea into a product required considerable investments in terms of materials and tools to build prototypes, and manufacturing facilities for mass production. Software is different. To make it takes just a computer and a brain. After a piece of software is written down and debugged, it's done - no manufacturing required, hence no factories and machines. Modifying the design of any industrial good is likely to require reconfiguration of an entire production facility. Modifying the design of software takes just a branch on CVS and a little time.
Actually, Internet security is a point against software patents. What users of networked systems need more than ever are services helping them to secure their infrastructure against all kinds of threads, making boxed software packages less important both technically and economically. Just like an airline needs continuous maintenance of their fleet, a company running computers needs continuous maintenance of their systems.
Isn't this a common feature of all lawyers?
Exactly. AFAIK the city is named after the wriggly litte rivulet Darmbach which is not quite visible any more in the city.
Darmstadt, by the way, is about the geekiest place in old Europe. Seemingly ordinary people may actually understand the print on your T-shirt there. Besides GSI, Darmstadt has a Technical University and a University of Applied Sciences. The European Space Operations Center is located there and the Fraunhofer institutes for Secure Telecooperation, Integrated Publication and Information Systems, Computer Graphics, and Structural Durability. Deutsche Telekom is running a research center there and the headquarters of T-Online are about to move to Darmstadt from the nearby town of Weiterstadt. There is a Linux User Group too. Darmstadt officially carries the title Wissenschaftsstadt (city of science). It is located about 30km south of Frankfurt/Main. The bus ride from Frankfurt airport takes 25 minutes.
Hey, evil cyber terrorists are attacking us!