Ah, but they're only asking. You don't have to sign anything you don't want to, being of sound mind and free will. I make it a practice to read everything I put my name and/or signature to. If I don't like or don't understand it, I don't sign it. Simple as that.
Bothersome - people here imply that Microsoft is "tricking" people, that Microsoft is "forcing" them into an unagreeable license. But they're the ones who downloaded Microsoft's intellectual property and begat themselves of its wonders, and 9/10 of them knew there was a license attached to what they were reading.
Seems to me the fools here are the ones who read the license, understood what it meant, didn't like it, and went ahead and clicked OK anyways. Stop all this talk of being forced to do things - you're not all helpless sheep victim to any passing breeze. You're human beings with rational minds and the ability to make decisions based on your judgement.
And if you are a sheep, well, that's just the way you are, but if you *know* you're a sheep you shouldn't be going around clicking OK to things you don't understand.
Define competition. Would a court take a social standpoint (how many people use the software) or an economic standpoint (how much money does the company make from the software)?
Open Source software almost by definition does not directly generate profits from its products. Sure, you can make money from supporting the products, but that's not the same thing. One might argue that closed-source software does not compete with Open Source software because it does not draw capital from the Open Source software provider. Open Source, on the other hand, at least has the potential to draw capital from its closed-source counterpart. So - does they compete? Are they competitors? Can there be such a thing as one-way competition?
Thoughts from an observer of the Open Source community
But, to be fair, computer science has come a --long-- way over the last 20 years, since the dawn of the PC. Sure, Microsoft made some weird assumptions (640K is a shining example) but they were also trying their damndest to stay on top of things. Something had to slip through the cracks, and they're now going to pay the price with a bloated operating system and a legacy API that dates back to before some of today's developers were even born.
This is one reason that Apple is on the right track with OS X. They've carefully inspected the still-warm corpse of the Macintosh OS 9, ripped out the juicy parts and left the rest to rot. Microsoft is going to be kicking themselves in the arse when Apple releases a honest-to-Jobs *new* operating system while they're still churning out DOS-compatibility-mode code.
Besides, one must at least admire with sick horror what they've managed to build on top of DOS. It's a miracle that the bear dances at all, never mind that he can't do the macarena!
Here's an extension to your thought: what if you set up a program for a blind person that would read the text of the specification (no chance to "click OK" and accept the license)? Or (hmm...) give them a copy of the thing, *accidentally* omitting the license page, and have them use one of those library auto-OCR machines to read it back? What if I read the spec, and (in written form) ask a subordinate of mine to engineer a patch to Keberos that would make it behave in the following manner? Designing software to act a certain way can't be illegal (can it?) provided the code is all original...?
I agree with many of the posters here: even among this limited population we can conceive of numerous potential get-arounds for this situation, so it's unlikely that any court would look at this and think, "You know, despite offering this 'trade secret' document to millions of online users, I don't really think Microsoft really meant for them to use the information contained within it."
Besides, what would be Microsoft's motivation for distributing the spec, "FYI" ?!? It's not like we're going to program our *neurons* to do MS-Keberos authentication - and what other possible use could we have for this information? Any reasonable person would not blink twice if you used this to create a compatibility layer.
The question of the anonyminity of the programmer is also a valid one. If a compatible version of Keberos were to suddenly appear on the web or in my mailbox on an unmarked, no-return-address floppy, how in the world would Microsoft figure out who to bring a lawsuit against? They would be unlikely to prove that somebody didn't reverse engineer it, especially, as one poster noted, if the implementation was engineered to spec and not to behavior.
Ah, the issues of the digital age... it's only uphill from here.
By the way - these forms of URLs don't seem to work under Netscape on a Macintosh. Thanks for the explanation, though - I've always wondered why people were posting such "obviously" wrong URLs!
Given that Mac piracy is approximately 15 times that experienced by games developers on Windows, is it suprising that it's uneconomical to produce games for the Mac?
No, it's not, really. Have you ever tried to move an application between two Windows machines? It's almost impossible to track down every little file it depends on - and even if you DO find all those pesky DLLs, you still have to make sure you don't overwrite a more recent version on the destination machine. The reason piracy is reduced on Windows machines is, quite frankly, a result of obsfucation.
On the Mac, the only time an application might patch the operating system or place a file in a system directory would be to support some strange hardware or to perform a very low-level task, like utilizing the vertical retrace interrupt. Otherwise, applications are (mostly) self-contained in their own directories and can be moved around at will without breaking them.
The Mac, designed to be easy-to-use and maintain, is hoist in its own petard, to an extent; it must be easy to use, but it should not allow rampant piracy; but disallowing rampant piracy means making the machine less approachable. It's a fine balance, but users definately win on the Macintosh.
Seems to me it's actually more efficient. After all, if they weren't making these two cards in such a similar fashion, both cards would end up costing more because they'd have to design two cards, two manufacturing processes, and two sets of firm/software. We actually get lower prices from these two cards being so similar.
The other reason they make these two cards is to get greater market saturation with their products. Some people will buy the $20 controller for their PC but would never afford RAID; some admins will buy the $65 RAIDer but would shop elsewhere if all they could find was a $20 cheapie controller.
Apple is doing this with their hardware line. Top to bottom, server to PowerBook, they share the same motherboard design, the Unified Motherboard Architecture. It's exciting because they enjoy much faster design-production cycles and we get lower prices and better product availability (ask anybody who's waited weeks-months for their G4 to arrive).
So I think this approach really does make sense, even if it is just a marketing ploy on behalf of the board manufacturer. I'm sure this is flamebait, but I do think it's rational.
I read an interesting blurblet about how the human body may have sacrificed a tail in favor of supporting a larger brain - the theory is that evolution decided a larger brain was more deserving of protein, bloodflow, etc. than the tail, and therefore brainer genetics won out over "tailier" genetics.
That's the theory, anyway. Not sure I believe it, because obese people do not lose their minds, despite having to support substantially more mass than a "normal" person. But interesting to think about...
Interestingly enough, the Macintosh already prevents you from taking screen shots of DVD video.
The Macintosh DVD system places the responsibility for displaying the DVD video stream onto the video card - it uses some sort of an alpha channel system to overlay the DVD video over a window filled with a particular "color" of pixel. This all happens on the "other side" of the frame buffer, so all the OS sees is a window filled with dark green.
This has some advantages - there is no drag on the CPU to display the DVD video stream on the screen - but it is very effective against capturing the video.
Software that would want to run a DVD, for instance, would decrpyt the DVD (MPEG) and then re-encrypt it (through the driver or specialized hardware?) into the encrypted monitor driving signals (HDCP).
Unless these conversions are done in some specialized chip it would be just a matter of disassembling the player software. IMHO, it is highly unlikely that there will be such specialized hardware.
Mmm - not to beg the point, but aren't "specialized chips" just the thing Intel is known for?
It seems to me that Intel is just doing what any business would do: try to steer an industry in the direction that will make them money. By pushing this technology, they are trying to create a market where none exists today. One must admire their ingenuity, at least, even if one does not admire the product itself.
Personally, I think that they are going to split the computer market into two distinct categories that use different hardware:
1) Consumer - Joe Six Pack wants to e-mail, browse the web and look at the pretty DVD pictures. He buys a sealed system with a DVD-ROM and a CD burner; the thing has encryption top to bottom that prevents him from pirating the pretty pictures. These machines can be mass-produced (in iMac fashion) and will be dirt-cheap.
2) Tech-Head - This is where most of slashdotters will fit in. We want to be able to take the computer part, repair and upgrade it ourselves, and develop software and hardware for it. To do so, we must have unfettered access to every niche and cranny of the system.
Unfortunately, you and I are going to be in the minority. A hardware "underground" may form, supporting an entirely different platform than the Consumer platform outlined above. A select few (smaller) companies will continue to manufacture conventional computer parts (seperate video cards, sound cards, motherboards, etc.) for this smaller market.
Much of the software that companies are producing today will eventually include hooks to the Consumer platform's encryption scheme, so it won't run on the Tech-Head platform - and again, a software underground will be spawned, continuing development on what we already possess in the public domain.
-=-
On another note, has anybody thought of this particular feature of encrypted video - the manufacturer of a digital monitor could lock the monitor into a specific display adapter through encryption.
Another idea - products like VirtualPC for the Macintosh currently emulate the video hardware in software. Will products like VirtualPC no longer be able to operate properly if the operating system itself requires encrypted video?
Lots of questions - no answers in the short term, I think. This is going to be an interesting trend to watch. Nebulo
The "skull" represents the latest in safety helmets the inhabitants of Mars have designed to protect their fragile brains from the effects of Earth's music. They're planning an attack right now.
It should be an interesting war. I think this time, instead of exposing them to music, we should try network television. This should handily blind them, as well as turn them into slobbering consumers. Once they're all out shopping, all we have to do is saturate-bomb all the Wal-Marts and ShopKos. Problem solved.
A while ago Slashdot had a feature on that Linux "box" the size of a matchbook that was a fully functional webserver - could these two things converge? Did that itsybitsy have a parallel port? Or could the decoder be altered to accept Ethernet (which I believe that boxlet had). Could just implement a direct-connect to the motherboard...
IMHO, Quicktime is already a defacto standard. Otherwise, why would so many people be clambering to be able to play it on their platform-o-choice? I can't think of a non-Microsoft-non-Real site that offers video exclusively in non-Quicktime delivery.
Possibly some of my blank stare is due to the fact that I never got into the math-based role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons and the like. Still, I have a good head for math, and this is complex.
I think the moderator idea is peachy. Giving us commonfolk a chance to more actively participate and have an opportunity to mold what is rapidly being called the Slashdot community - that's great, don't get me wrong.
But.. sheesh. There's got to be a simpler way. Could the principles of open source be used to evolve it? IE:
Keep the moderators. But instead of having the computer keep score on people, let each moderator have a go at it. Start out with a basic formula and cook up some way for each moderator to make variations on it for each discussion. Keep moderators in their discussions for extended periods of time so they can verify/disverify their theory.
Begin a discussion just for moderators. Let them talk it over with eachother, exchanging ideas and techniques. Furthermore, (and this may conflict with Rob's personal philosophy - I don't know) Rob should be posting to this (and other) discussion concerning moderation. Aren't discussions supposed to be an exchange of ideas? The whole idea is to "breed" the perfect moderation algorithm. Open source is just what we call 'evolution' acting in the digital realm - and look where evolution has taken us, albeit over millions of year! I think Rob has done an admirable job here - if he weren't so darn mortal, needing both sleep AND food, he'd be the ideal Moderator of All. So that's not likely. This system needs to be largely self-governing; requiring human intervention occassionally but perfectly able to cope if we all sleep in tomorrow morning. Rather like HAL... without the uncomfortable side effects.
I'm a pretty regular reader of/., but I don't think I've ever seen anybody explicitly calling for folken to Slashdot a server.
I think anybody thinking of a lawsuit over the Slashdot Effect would have a pretty difficult time proving that the Slashdot Effect was a coordinated effort on the part of any particular entity/organization. You can't sue an angry mob - just individuals who do unlawful things. Last time I checked, visiting a corporation's web page on the Internet was not unlawful - hell, it's why they put it there in the first place!
Rather like (excuse the reference - they showed Star Trek 6 twice on Thursday) Capt. Kirk as captain being responsible for the actions of the members of his crew. If we were employees of a company or if we were servicemembers in a military unit, our employer/commanding officer might be held responsible. And I don't take orders from Rob! (After all, he sucks.:) )
I agree with later posts. E-mails and visiting websites is not only a form of free speech; as such it's a valid form of protest. This doesn't mean that one person flooding a mailserver with thousands of spurious e-mails is OK - but thousands of individual users, each with a distinct opinion and reason, should be free to make reasonable efforts to communicate their displeasure to companies.
We should not let the frailness of technology (ie, inability of mailservers to handle bazillions of emails) to hamper our rights to free speech. We're the masters here.
Slashdot Mirror
"...equal to asking you to sign..."
Ah, but they're only asking. You don't have to sign anything you don't want to, being of sound mind and free will. I make it a practice to read everything I put my name and/or signature to. If I don't like or don't understand it, I don't sign it. Simple as that.
Bothersome - people here imply that Microsoft is "tricking" people, that Microsoft is "forcing" them into an unagreeable license. But they're the ones who downloaded Microsoft's intellectual property and begat themselves of its wonders, and 9/10 of them knew there was a license attached to what they were reading.
Seems to me the fools here are the ones who read the license, understood what it meant, didn't like it, and went ahead and clicked OK anyways. Stop all this talk of being forced to do things - you're not all helpless sheep victim to any passing breeze. You're human beings with rational minds and the ability to make decisions based on your judgement.
And if you are a sheep, well, that's just the way you are, but if you *know* you're a sheep you shouldn't be going around clicking OK to things you don't understand.
OK! I know flamebait when I see it. It's late.
Nebulo
Define competition. Would a court take a social standpoint (how many people use the software) or an economic standpoint (how much money does the company make from the software)?
Open Source software almost by definition does not directly generate profits from its products. Sure, you can make money from supporting the products, but that's not the same thing. One might argue that closed-source software does not compete with Open Source software because it does not draw capital from the Open Source software provider. Open Source, on the other hand, at least has the potential to draw capital from its closed-source counterpart. So - does they compete? Are they competitors? Can there be such a thing as one-way competition?
Thoughts from an observer of the Open Source community
Nebulo
But, to be fair, computer science has come a --long-- way over the last 20 years, since the dawn of the PC. Sure, Microsoft made some weird assumptions (640K is a shining example) but they were also trying their damndest to stay on top of things. Something had to slip through the cracks, and they're now going to pay the price with a bloated operating system and a legacy API that dates back to before some of today's developers were even born.
This is one reason that Apple is on the right track with OS X. They've carefully inspected the still-warm corpse of the Macintosh OS 9, ripped out the juicy parts and left the rest to rot. Microsoft is going to be kicking themselves in the arse when Apple releases a honest-to-Jobs *new* operating system while they're still churning out DOS-compatibility-mode code.
Besides, one must at least admire with sick horror what they've managed to build on top of DOS. It's a miracle that the bear dances at all, never mind that he can't do the macarena!
:)
Nebulo
Here's an extension to your thought: what if you set up a program for a blind person that would read the text of the specification (no chance to "click OK" and accept the license)? Or (hmm...) give them a copy of the thing, *accidentally* omitting the license page, and have them use one of those library auto-OCR machines to read it back? What if I read the spec, and (in written form) ask a subordinate of mine to engineer a patch to Keberos that would make it behave in the following manner? Designing software to act a certain way can't be illegal (can it?) provided the code is all original...?
I agree with many of the posters here: even among this limited population we can conceive of numerous potential get-arounds for this situation, so it's unlikely that any court would look at this and think, "You know, despite offering this 'trade secret' document to millions of online users, I don't really think Microsoft really meant for them to use the information contained within it."
Besides, what would be Microsoft's motivation for distributing the spec, "FYI" ?!? It's not like we're going to program our *neurons* to do MS-Keberos authentication - and what other possible use could we have for this information? Any reasonable person would not blink twice if you used this to create a compatibility layer.
The question of the anonyminity of the programmer is also a valid one. If a compatible version of Keberos were to suddenly appear on the web or in my mailbox on an unmarked, no-return-address floppy, how in the world would Microsoft figure out who to bring a lawsuit against? They would be unlikely to prove that somebody didn't reverse engineer it, especially, as one poster noted, if the implementation was engineered to spec and not to behavior.
Ah, the issues of the digital age... it's only uphill from here.
Nebulo
By the way - these forms of URLs don't seem to work under Netscape on a Macintosh. Thanks for the explanation, though - I've always wondered why people were posting such "obviously" wrong URLs!
Nebulo
No, it's not, really. Have you ever tried to move an application between two Windows machines? It's almost impossible to track down every little file it depends on - and even if you DO find all those pesky DLLs, you still have to make sure you don't overwrite a more recent version on the destination machine. The reason piracy is reduced on Windows machines is, quite frankly, a result of obsfucation.
On the Mac, the only time an application might patch the operating system or place a file in a system directory would be to support some strange hardware or to perform a very low-level task, like utilizing the vertical retrace interrupt. Otherwise, applications are (mostly) self-contained in their own directories and can be moved around at will without breaking them.
The Mac, designed to be easy-to-use and maintain, is hoist in its own petard, to an extent; it must be easy to use, but it should not allow rampant piracy; but disallowing rampant piracy means making the machine less approachable. It's a fine balance, but users definately win on the Macintosh.
Nebulo
Actually, I don't think this sucks.
Seems to me it's actually more efficient. After all, if they weren't making these two cards in such a similar fashion, both cards would end up costing more because they'd have to design two cards, two manufacturing processes, and two sets of firm/software. We actually get lower prices from these two cards being so similar.
The other reason they make these two cards is to get greater market saturation with their products. Some people will buy the $20 controller for their PC but would never afford RAID; some admins will buy the $65 RAIDer but would shop elsewhere if all they could find was a $20 cheapie controller.
Apple is doing this with their hardware line. Top to bottom, server to PowerBook, they share the same motherboard design, the Unified Motherboard Architecture. It's exciting because they enjoy much faster design-production cycles and we get lower prices and better product availability (ask anybody who's waited weeks-months for their G4 to arrive).
So I think this approach really does make sense, even if it is just a marketing ploy on behalf of the board manufacturer. I'm sure this is flamebait, but I do think it's rational.
nebulo
Not unless you want to sacrifice a few IQ points!
(this is waaaay of-topic)
I read an interesting blurblet about how the human body may have sacrificed a tail in favor of supporting a larger brain - the theory is that evolution decided a larger brain was more deserving of protein, bloodflow, etc. than the tail, and therefore brainer genetics won out over "tailier" genetics.
That's the theory, anyway. Not sure I believe it, because obese people do not lose their minds, despite having to support substantially more mass than a "normal" person. But interesting to think about...
nebulo
Nah - he Open-Sourced it. (wokka-wokka)
Interestingly enough, the Macintosh already prevents you from taking screen shots of DVD video.
The Macintosh DVD system places the responsibility for displaying the DVD video stream onto the video card - it uses some sort of an alpha channel system to overlay the DVD video over a window filled with a particular "color" of pixel. This all happens on the "other side" of the frame buffer, so all the OS sees is a window filled with dark green.
This has some advantages - there is no drag on the CPU to display the DVD video stream on the screen - but it is very effective against capturing the video.
Nebulo
Unless these conversions are done in some specialized chip it would be just a matter of disassembling the player software. IMHO, it is highly unlikely that there will be such specialized hardware.
Mmm - not to beg the point, but aren't "specialized chips" just the thing Intel is known for?
It seems to me that Intel is just doing what any business would do: try to steer an industry in the direction that will make them money. By pushing this technology, they are trying to create a market where none exists today. One must admire their ingenuity, at least, even if one does not admire the product itself.
Personally, I think that they are going to split the computer market into two distinct categories that use different hardware:
1) Consumer - Joe Six Pack wants to e-mail, browse the web and look at the pretty DVD pictures. He buys a sealed system with a DVD-ROM and a CD burner; the thing has encryption top to bottom that prevents him from pirating the pretty pictures. These machines can be mass-produced (in iMac fashion) and will be dirt-cheap.
2) Tech-Head - This is where most of slashdotters will fit in. We want to be able to take the computer part, repair and upgrade it ourselves, and develop software and hardware for it. To do so, we must have unfettered access to every niche and cranny of the system.
Unfortunately, you and I are going to be in the minority. A hardware "underground" may form, supporting an entirely different platform than the Consumer platform outlined above. A select few (smaller) companies will continue to manufacture conventional computer parts (seperate video cards, sound cards, motherboards, etc.) for this smaller market.
Much of the software that companies are producing today will eventually include hooks to the Consumer platform's encryption scheme, so it won't run on the Tech-Head platform - and again, a software underground will be spawned, continuing development on what we already possess in the public domain.
-=-
On another note, has anybody thought of this particular feature of encrypted video - the manufacturer of a digital monitor could lock the monitor into a specific display adapter through encryption.
Another idea - products like VirtualPC for the Macintosh currently emulate the video hardware in software. Will products like VirtualPC no longer be able to operate properly if the operating system itself requires encrypted video?
Lots of questions - no answers in the short term, I think. This is going to be an interesting trend to watch. Nebulo
One title: "Atlas Shrugged." Who moves the world today?
You're on the right track - you will find it easier if you try to envision the universe on the surface of a 747.
They're on the completely wrong track.
The "skull" represents the latest in safety helmets the inhabitants of Mars have designed to protect their fragile brains from the effects of Earth's music. They're planning an attack right now.
It should be an interesting war. I think this time, instead of exposing them to music, we should try network television. This should handily blind them, as well as turn them into slobbering consumers. Once they're all out shopping, all we have to do is saturate-bomb all the Wal-Marts and ShopKos. Problem solved.
nebulo
"We are your friends... " (BOOM)
Hmm - there's some irony here. I wonder if patents.ibm.com is a single server, or a load-balancing cluster?
A while ago Slashdot had a feature on that Linux "box" the size of a matchbook that was a fully functional webserver - could these two things converge? Did that itsybitsy have a parallel port? Or could the decoder be altered to accept Ethernet (which I believe that boxlet had). Could just implement a direct-connect to the motherboard...
IMHO, Quicktime is already a defacto standard. Otherwise, why would so many people be clambering to be able to play it on their platform-o-choice? I can't think of a non-Microsoft-non-Real site that offers video exclusively in non-Quicktime delivery.
Possibly some of my blank stare is due to the fact that I never got into the math-based role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons and the like. Still, I have a good head for math, and this is complex.
I think the moderator idea is peachy. Giving us commonfolk a chance to more actively participate and have an opportunity to mold what is rapidly being called the Slashdot community - that's great, don't get me wrong.
But.. sheesh. There's got to be a simpler way. Could the principles of open source be used to evolve it? IE:
Keep the moderators. But instead of having the computer keep score on people, let each moderator have a go at it. Start out with a basic formula and cook up some way for each moderator to make variations on it for each discussion. Keep moderators in their discussions for extended periods of time so they can verify/disverify their theory.
Begin a discussion just for moderators. Let them talk it over with eachother, exchanging ideas and techniques. Furthermore, (and this may conflict with Rob's personal philosophy - I don't know) Rob should be posting to this (and other) discussion concerning moderation. Aren't discussions supposed to be an exchange of ideas? The whole idea is to "breed" the perfect moderation algorithm. Open source is just what we call 'evolution' acting in the digital realm - and look where evolution has taken us, albeit over millions of year! I think Rob has done an admirable job here - if he weren't so darn mortal, needing both sleep AND food, he'd be the ideal Moderator of All. So that's not likely. This system needs to be largely self-governing; requiring human intervention occassionally but perfectly able to cope if we all sleep in tomorrow morning. Rather like HAL... without the uncomfortable side effects.
I think anybody thinking of a lawsuit over the Slashdot Effect would have a pretty difficult time proving that the Slashdot Effect was a coordinated effort on the part of any particular entity/organization. You can't sue an angry mob - just individuals who do unlawful things. Last time I checked, visiting a corporation's web page on the Internet was not unlawful - hell, it's why they put it there in the first place!
Rather like (excuse the reference - they showed Star Trek 6 twice on Thursday) Capt. Kirk as captain being responsible for the actions of the members of his crew. If we were employees of a company or if we were servicemembers in a military unit, our employer/commanding officer might be held responsible. And I don't take orders from Rob! (After all, he sucks. :) )
I agree with later posts. E-mails and visiting websites is not only a form of free speech; as such it's a valid form of protest. This doesn't mean that one person flooding a mailserver with thousands of spurious e-mails is OK - but thousands of individual users, each with a distinct opinion and reason, should be free to make reasonable efforts to communicate their displeasure to companies.
We should not let the frailness of technology (ie, inability of mailservers to handle bazillions of emails) to hamper our rights to free speech. We're the masters here.