You have a couple of problems with touch screens and standard applications.
1. The resolution of a touch screen is reduced because fingers (or stylus) are much fatter than mouse pointers.
2. It takes some adjustment to use since with some technologies you can't leave your finger lightly touching the screen, as with a keyboard or mouse.
3. Shoulder strain and muscle cramps. That's the reason why touch-sensitive monitors didn't take off at the same time as the original IBM PC.
Actually it is the USA that will become a '2nd class citizen'.
Anyone who doesn't want TCPA or Palladium but wants to read or listen to or watch 'Palladium-protected' or 'TCPA-protected' media will either have to figure out a way to hack the tamper-proof hardware (and thereby becoming a criminal in the US, EU, Australia and any country that doesn't want to be a target for economic sanctions by the WTO) or manage without.
Unless some sanity enters the minds of the *AA and their ilk, connecting to the net without TCPA/Pa enabled will in a few years time be the same as surfing the web with a text-only browser.
If Intel and MS become 'Palladium only' then the rest of the world will buy something else, or make it themselves.
I'm hoping that the Linux-only market is large enough by then. Then again, how many netbanks support Mozilla or Opera and are the netbanks that are IE only seeing any noticable effect on their bottom line for not supporting Linux users?
But here is the problem -- WMP codecs already work under emulation, they will have to break their infrastructure again.
True. It is also true that many Linux distribution vendors are afraid of including MS copyrighted DLLs and codecs because they are afraid of a patent or copyright infringement lawsuit.
Case in point - How many of the Mandrakes and RedHats out there include DeCSS or DVD players that include DeCSS-derived codebases?
You and I will download and install the latest mplayer or vlc, but we're only a tiny percentage of the market.
Why not just break patents and have an organization that will do nothing but stall them in the courts until they will become irrelevant?
The final answer is to try to push for non-patented codecs like Ogg Vorbis. However, MS, Real and other companies are using considerable economic muscle to make "content creators" use their formats only.
The saving grace of Open Source/Free Software so far, is that it isn't a single company or entity that MS can attack with their regular set of weapons.
So? Why would I care about their opinions? For me any society where Microsoft-like stunts can be pulled, is uncivilized.
You should care if you want to win people over to your side. I'm not saying that MS is good and nice - MS is in many situations behaving like a predator in a group of herbivores.
The extention of "any society where Microsoft-like stunts can be pulled, is uncivilized" is that MS is not really the problem - MS is merely (ab)using the current realities of the software market. The correct answer is to identify the mechanisms that makes it possible for the likes of MS to seize power and try to change those mechanisms. Identify and attack the cause, not the symptom.
The issue isn't that "M$ is bad". The issue is that a collection of the network effect, patent and copyright law applied to software, EULAs (and perhaps other effects) makes it possible for MS to behave in a manner that is hurting society.
Saying "M$ is bad" makes it easy for other people to ignore you. Saying "The network effect makes it possible for a major player in the market to control media delivery formats. Is that the way it should be?" might force other people to start thinking.
All MS has to do is release a new codec for WMP, and mplayer is again out in the cold. For Windows, it is a simple autodownload the first time the new codec is encountered, no need to break compatibility. The situation is a bit more difficult for embedded devices without an easy software upgrade capability. Anyway, rest assured that MS *will* do this the moment they consider mplayer to be a genuine competitor.
Besides, MS has still not played the patent card to stop interoperable implementations. Now that the DoJ is no longer breathing down their necks, MS will use that weapon whenever it applies.
(yes, "M$" is an appropriate spelling no matter what proponents of "civilized discussion" consider to be politically correct)
(As for the M$ spelling - it tends to make the people you are arguing with write you off as a juvenile gas-bag instead of listening to any valid arguments that you make.)
That will only work if you are willing to become a 2nd class citizen on the Internet. No man is an island, especially with the network effect on the Internet.
How much 'content' out there requires Windows Media Player today? In five years, I'd expect the situation to be is even worse - with WMP-Palladium required.
I think the reason Microsoft is being malleable is that really wants digital media ASAP.
Ok, I can see that one.
Doesn't exactly give me a happy fluffy feeling knowing that MS is helping the *AA erect the DRM iron curtain only because that might make the major content providers make their goods available on the 'net two years earlier than they would without ubiquous DRM. MS should also be smart enough to see that DRM will damage the market demand for digital media in the long run. I'm wondering whether this is a sign of MS getting desperate.
I just don't think Microsoft sees any other technology to drive the next generation of upgrades.
What about user created content? SMTP was the initial killer app of the Internet, SMS on cell phones, blogs are taking off.. All of this user created content.
There is an obvious trend in handheld devices of including cameras and microphones - what if MS tried to make it really easy for people to create their own content instead of building infrastructure for force-fed content?
The bottom line though is that the government will not be able to control the VoIP "problem" entirely without just pulling the plug on all Internet activity.
Too true.
I'm actually more worried about collateral damage here - if the news report is correct then any traffic passing _through_ Panama would be subject to the filters - stopping any application that just happens to use one of the ports mentioned.
Answer: The FBI are involved because the only two agencies with jursdiction in america over Network Crimes which may pass in and out of normal police lines are the Secret Service and the FBI. Who do you prefer to have knocking on your door?
I agree with all your other points. If you uncap your cable modem, you are getting access to a service that you haven't paid for.
However, why is this a matter for the FBI and criminal law?
My first impression would be that this is a question of breech of contract between the customer and the cable ISP, and that the ISP - not the FBI - should be suing.
uncapping your modem is like breaking the speed limit!
The speed limit is a government/state imposed limit. Thus, breaking the limit is a criminal offence and the state can put you in jail.
Uncapping a modem would be closer to breech of contract between you and the service provider, and should IMHO be grounds for a civil lawsuit raised by the service provider.
I have no problem with people being dragged to court by ISPs if they uncap their modems and thereby violate the service agreement. I have a problem with FBI throwing people in jail for the same.
I'm not really sure who to blame for the sorry state of security in the MS world - the customers for asking for more features, or MS for providing it.
At this point there hope is that digitial content is going to be enough of a feature to outweigh the bad things they will need to do to get the MPAA and RIAA to stop worrying so much.
MS is not exactly the role model for a weak and malleable corporation. I'm kind of surprised that they are allowing the *AA to push them around like this.
Besides, you'd expect that MS and the consumer electronics mfgrs know enough about history to recognize the pattern - the content industry yell and scream for each new technology, but eventually they come around. Why are they so willing to bend over when it should be obvious that Adam Smith's invisible hand will eventually force the *AA to adapt?
(Anyone remember the movie industry and color TV? If people could see color movies on the TV for free, it would surely be the death of movie theaters. According to the MPAA, no movie company would ever license their movies for color TV. It only took one or two defectors before their line in the sand crumbled.)
You are correct however that the.net strategy and Palladium are pulling in opposite directions.
And I dislike both, for opposite reasons. Palladium for creating 'security' that so obviously can be abused for DRM purposes (and making machine virtualisation impossible), and.net for the possibility of becoming the next portmap on bugtraq.
If OTP requires a completely secure delivery method for the key (which is the same length as the message), why not use the completely secure delivery method for the message itself and forget the encryption?
Exactly.:)
It's kinda pointless at that point.
For many normal uses of encryption, you're right.
However, OTP can be used in situations where you can deliver the OTP securely at certain times only, but need to be able to send encrypted messages at random times. Say, a US nuclear sub can refill its stack of pads when it is at home base.
The only encryption mathematically proven to be uncrackable is the One-Time-Pad.
Why is the above moderated as flamebait? Hint to moderators - if you don't understand the subject matter, stay away.
OTP is the only mathematically proven uncrackable encryption algorithm.
OTP is rarely used because the key management is cumbersome - the key can only be used once, and the key must be the same length as the message.
Apart from OTP, none of the other algorithms have a positive proof (i.e., a mathematical proof that states once and for all that it is unbreakable). There are no mathematical proofs that can show that a particular algorithm where the key length is shorter than the message is safe in all situations. They are only considered 'safe' because noone has so far been able to give a negative proof.
All we know is that a lot of very skilled people have stared long and hard at some ciphers and said that they can't at this time think of any attack that would significantly reduce the effort required to crack them. That's the best you can get unless you go OTP, and is the most important reason for why the claim 'newer is better' does not hold true in crypto.
I'm not saying the bike analogy is good, so let's discard that
It is hard to make valid analogies for software and software/hardware bundles like the TiVo. It is both a physical tool, a copy of a copyrighted work and a service.
1) You bought the tool - you have physical ownership of the hardware, and can do whatever you like with it.
2) You either bought or licensed a copy of the copyrighted software running on the hardware.
3) You are buying a service, with software updates, etc.
If you ignore (3) and the courts consider (2) as a sale, then (1) and (2) combined makes a book analogy valid - you own the physical book, and you can do pretty much anything you like with the copyrighted contents of the book (sell the book, pick it to pieces, make comments, etc) as long as you don't give other people copies of it or distribute modified versions.
And I should be able to take my TiVo and reprogram it into an alarm clock if I want. Sure, it voids the warranty - but it shouldn't be illegal.
No argument there. The right to reverse engineer and the right to pick to pieces anything you buy is important. As long as there is no illegal redistribution of a copyrighted work, and the software changes you make is not done in order to break other laws (say, like service theft) then I have no problem whatsoever with 'hacking' the TiVo.
Felten has got the right idea - the freedom to tinker is very important and we have to be very careful not to restrict that freedom.
Nope. People think "fair use" and "this is happening inside my private home" so they think that it is legal according to copyright law.
Here's a newsflash for you: US copyright law is like a piece of software that has been patched and modified for several hundred years. It is internally inconsistent. It does not say what most people out there think that it says. It does not apply cleanly to the changes caused by digital technology.
Read Jessica Litman's "Digital Copyright" for some background history.
Im my opinion a 'drop in' replacement would have the ability to migrate all user content from existing infrastructure into the new infrastructure.
Why did someone moderate the above as a troll? Admittedly, his message is harsh but for a large customer that is currently using Exchange he is correct.
The SuSE solution is not a drop-in replacement. A drop-in replacement would be able to migrate users and data stores (email, calendars, address books, etc) from the Exchange servers to the replacements and would not require any configuration changes on the clients.
I'm sure the SuSE solution provides somewhat equivalent functionality, but it will be a large job to migrate a company that is using Exchange today to SuSE. In the long run you might even save money, but the migration cost (both in time, management, client reconfiguration and user training) will be noticable.
God try, and keep up the good work, SuSE. But please don't market this as a drop-in replacement.
Of course! Consider how many texts are in the public domain then consider the percentage that have gotten into Project Guttenberg
Point.
However, it seems reasonable to me that if the US government decide that it is a good idea to PD government-funded software then they would define some rules that assure that members of the public can get access to the code (perhaps a government-wide website).
To me, PD guarantees reusability but doesn't guarantee availability. GPL guarantees both.
GPL guarantees source code availability if someone publishes a binary, and it guarantees reusability if you are willing to comply with the terms of the GPL. For government funded software, I think that both commercial interests and the free software community should have the ability to benefit, and that is why I think that PD (or perhaps a BSD'ish license) is the best choice in this particular case. There should of course be a requirement that all interested parties are able to get get access to the PD source code.
There is nothing in the GPL that makes it impossible for a piece of GPL'ed code to rot on a backup tape. The problem is admittedly more obvious with copyrighted works that have entered the PD, since few of them have been republished in the last ~50 years of the extensively long copyright term and it is thus hard to find existing copies to digitise.
As you might guess, I salute the efforts of Project Gutenberg and think that the efforts of the Abandonware community is morally right even though it is copyright infringement according to the law.
I also like the GPL and agree with many of the goals of the FSF, but I don't think the GPL is the right choice in every situation.
But what if only proprietary software vendors have access to A.tgz?
In that case, is A.tgz really in the PD?
In the event this happens, I find it hard to believe that the proprietary software vendors are under any obligation to admit that parts of the code they incorporated are in the public domain, much less offering the PD code they used.
I agree, this could become a problem if there is no clear standard as to how the government should release (to coin a new expression) public source software. One of the requirements must be that the public can get access to PSS.
What the anti-GPL'ers don't see is that their efforts can backfire bigtime by starting the discussion about how the public should benefit from publicly-funded software.:-D
Public domain is NOT the same as Free software. It's nowhere NEAR Free software. With public domain, anyone can take my code and change the license and sell it to me with a restrictive license.
Psst.. T'is not your code, it is code paid for with public funds.
Government release A.tgz as public domain.
Even if proprietary software vendors develop and release restricted license versions of A, you are still free to take A.tgz and develop a GPL-licensed branch.
So, I suppose by publishing the commands necessary to change your MAC address (specifically to circumvent the access control of the server), you are violating the DAA.
The DAA, DMCA and EUCD only cover "technical protection measures" that protect a copyrighted work. The anticircumvention rules are bad, but they are not so bad that you can just slap an access control on something and expect to be protected by the law.
Case in point - An australian judge has ruled that PS2 modchips are not circumvention devices within the meaning of the DAA.
If you're a big company, you reserve the exclusive right to run servers for a game that you publish
Good point. But the right to reverse engineer is luckily rather entrenched both in the US and EU, so if you really really want to you can write your own. Not that I expect it to ever happen for a sufficiently complex game, but whatever.
Except in the USA, one of the world's largest markets for PC video games.
And in EU, and in Australia, maybe in Canada, and in all the small 2nd/3rd world countries that have signed the WIPO Copyright Treaty.
As a matter of law, the situation sucks. As a matter of fact, anything client-side is crackable unless you move the root of trust to tamper-proof hardware.
He's completely correct in saying that a network of ethernet switches routes packets. The on pedantry is the absolute adherence to the labels that the manufacturers put on the products.
If you work with networks it is kind of important to keep the different layers separate. In layman terms I agree with the above, but if you don't use the correct technical terms on/. you shouldn't be surprised or angry if someone corrects you.
As for the labels that manufacturers put on their products, don't get me started on "layer 3/4 switching". furrfu!:)
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You have a couple of problems with touch screens and standard applications.
1. The resolution of a touch screen is reduced because fingers (or stylus) are much fatter than mouse pointers.
2. It takes some adjustment to use since with some technologies you can't leave your finger lightly touching the screen, as with a keyboard or mouse.
3. Shoulder strain and muscle cramps. That's the reason why touch-sensitive monitors didn't take off at the same time as the original IBM PC.
Actually it is the USA that will become a '2nd class citizen'.
Anyone who doesn't want TCPA or Palladium but wants to read or listen to or watch 'Palladium-protected' or 'TCPA-protected' media will either have to figure out a way to hack the tamper-proof hardware (and thereby becoming a criminal in the US, EU, Australia and any country that doesn't want to be a target for economic sanctions by the WTO) or manage without.
Unless some sanity enters the minds of the *AA and their ilk, connecting to the net without TCPA/Pa enabled will in a few years time be the same as surfing the web with a text-only browser.
If Intel and MS become 'Palladium only' then the rest of the world will buy something else, or make it themselves.
I'm hoping that the Linux-only market is large enough by then. Then again, how many netbanks support Mozilla or Opera and are the netbanks that are IE only seeing any noticable effect on their bottom line for not supporting Linux users?
But here is the problem -- WMP codecs already work under emulation, they will have to break their infrastructure again.
True. It is also true that many Linux distribution vendors are afraid of including MS copyrighted DLLs and codecs because they are afraid of a patent or copyright infringement lawsuit.
Case in point - How many of the Mandrakes and RedHats out there include DeCSS or DVD players that include DeCSS-derived codebases?
You and I will download and install the latest mplayer or vlc, but we're only a tiny percentage of the market.
Why not just break patents and have an organization that will do nothing but stall them in the courts until they will become irrelevant?
The final answer is to try to push for non-patented codecs like Ogg Vorbis. However, MS, Real and other companies are using considerable economic muscle to make "content creators" use their formats only.
The saving grace of Open Source/Free Software so far, is that it isn't a single company or entity that MS can attack with their regular set of weapons.
So? Why would I care about their opinions? For me any society where Microsoft-like stunts can be pulled, is uncivilized.
You should care if you want to win people over to your side. I'm not saying that MS is good and nice - MS is in many situations behaving like a predator in a group of herbivores.
The extention of "any society where Microsoft-like stunts can be pulled, is uncivilized" is that MS is not really the problem - MS is merely (ab)using the current realities of the software market. The correct answer is to identify the mechanisms that makes it possible for the likes of MS to seize power and try to change those mechanisms. Identify and attack the cause, not the symptom.
The issue isn't that "M$ is bad". The issue is that a collection of the network effect, patent and copyright law applied to software, EULAs (and perhaps other effects) makes it possible for MS to behave in a manner that is hurting society.
Saying "M$ is bad" makes it easy for other people to ignore you. Saying "The network effect makes it possible for a major player in the market to control media delivery formats. Is that the way it should be?" might force other people to start thinking.
"WMP" content is already supported by mplayer
All MS has to do is release a new codec for WMP, and mplayer is again out in the cold. For Windows, it is a simple autodownload the first time the new codec is encountered, no need to break compatibility. The situation is a bit more difficult for embedded devices without an easy software upgrade capability. Anyway, rest assured that MS *will* do this the moment they consider mplayer to be a genuine competitor.
Besides, MS has still not played the patent card to stop interoperable implementations. Now that the DoJ is no longer breathing down their necks, MS will use that weapon whenever it applies.
(yes, "M$" is an appropriate spelling no matter what proponents of "civilized discussion" consider to be politically correct)
(As for the M$ spelling - it tends to make the people you are arguing with write you off as a juvenile gas-bag instead of listening to any valid arguments that you make.)
Don't buy it?
That will only work if you are willing to become a 2nd class citizen on the Internet. No man is an island, especially with the network effect on the Internet.
How much 'content' out there requires Windows Media Player today? In five years, I'd expect the situation to be is even worse - with WMP-Palladium required.
I think the reason Microsoft is being malleable is that really wants digital media ASAP.
Ok, I can see that one.
Doesn't exactly give me a happy fluffy feeling knowing that MS is helping the *AA erect the DRM iron curtain only because that might make the major content providers make their goods available on the 'net two years earlier than they would without ubiquous DRM. MS should also be smart enough to see that DRM will damage the market demand for digital media in the long run. I'm wondering whether this is a sign of MS getting desperate.
I just don't think Microsoft sees any other technology to drive the next generation of upgrades.
What about user created content? SMTP was the initial killer app of the Internet, SMS on cell phones, blogs are taking off.. All of this user created content.
There is an obvious trend in handheld devices of including cameras and microphones - what if MS tried to make it really easy for people to create their own content instead of building infrastructure for force-fed content?
The bottom line though is that the government will not be able to control the VoIP "problem" entirely without just pulling the plug on all Internet activity.
Too true.
I'm actually more worried about collateral damage here - if the news report is correct then any traffic passing _through_ Panama would be subject to the filters - stopping any application that just happens to use one of the ports mentioned.
2) Why is the FBI involved, thats Overkill?
Answer: The FBI are involved because the only two agencies with jursdiction in america over Network Crimes which may pass in and out of normal police lines are the Secret Service and the FBI. Who do you prefer to have knocking on your door?
I agree with all your other points. If you uncap your cable modem, you are getting access to a service that you haven't paid for.
However, why is this a matter for the FBI and criminal law?
My first impression would be that this is a question of breech of contract between the customer and the cable ISP, and that the ISP - not the FBI - should be suing.
uncapping your modem is like breaking the speed limit!
The speed limit is a government/state imposed limit. Thus, breaking the limit is a criminal offence and the state can put you in jail.
Uncapping a modem would be closer to breech of contract between you and the service provider, and should IMHO be grounds for a civil lawsuit raised by the service provider.
I have no problem with people being dragged to court by ISPs if they uncap their modems and thereby violate the service agreement. I have a problem with FBI throwing people in jail for the same.
Microsoft is a feature vendor.
:)
.net strategy and Palladium are pulling in opposite directions.
.net for the possibility of becoming the next portmap on bugtraq.
No shit.
I'm not really sure who to blame for the sorry state of security in the MS world - the customers for asking for more features, or MS for providing it.
At this point there hope is that digitial content is going to be enough of a feature to outweigh the bad things they will need to do to get the MPAA and RIAA to stop worrying so much.
MS is not exactly the role model for a weak and malleable corporation. I'm kind of surprised that they are allowing the *AA to push them around like this.
Besides, you'd expect that MS and the consumer electronics mfgrs know enough about history to recognize the pattern - the content industry yell and scream for each new technology, but eventually they come around. Why are they so willing to bend over when it should be obvious that Adam Smith's invisible hand will eventually force the *AA to adapt?
(Anyone remember the movie industry and color TV? If people could see color movies on the TV for free, it would surely be the death of movie theaters. According to the MPAA, no movie company would ever license their movies for color TV. It only took one or two defectors before their line in the sand crumbled.)
You are correct however that the
And I dislike both, for opposite reasons. Palladium for creating 'security' that so obviously can be abused for DRM purposes (and making machine virtualisation impossible), and
If OTP requires a completely secure delivery method for the key (which is the same length as the message), why not use the completely secure delivery method for the message itself and forget the encryption?
:)
Exactly.
It's kinda pointless at that point.
For many normal uses of encryption, you're right.
However, OTP can be used in situations where you can deliver the OTP securely at certain times only, but need to be able to send encrypted messages at random times. Say, a US nuclear sub can refill its stack of pads when it is at home base.
The only encryption mathematically proven to be uncrackable is the One-Time-Pad.
Why is the above moderated as flamebait? Hint to moderators - if you don't understand the subject matter, stay away.
OTP is the only mathematically proven uncrackable encryption algorithm.
OTP is rarely used because the key management is cumbersome - the key can only be used once, and the key must be the same length as the message.
Apart from OTP, none of the other algorithms have a positive proof (i.e., a mathematical proof that states once and for all that it is unbreakable). There are no mathematical proofs that can show that a particular algorithm where the key length is shorter than the message is safe in all situations. They are only considered 'safe' because noone has so far been able to give a negative proof.
All we know is that a lot of very skilled people have stared long and hard at some ciphers and said that they can't at this time think of any attack that would significantly reduce the effort required to crack them. That's the best you can get unless you go OTP, and is the most important reason for why the claim 'newer is better' does not hold true in crypto.
One of the fundamentals of capacity systems (which is where the ideas behind palladium came from) "if programs can communicate they can collude".
.NET, DCOM, DDE and OLE all about communication?
Excuse me for being slow, but isn't
Doesn't MS claim that Palladium won't break existing applications? *scratch head*
hell I can strap a rocket on the back if it pleases me.
;-D
Only if you want to become a Darwin Award myth.
I'm not saying the bike analogy is good, so let's discard that
It is hard to make valid analogies for software and software/hardware bundles like the TiVo. It is both a physical tool, a copy of a copyrighted work and a service.
1) You bought the tool - you have physical ownership of the hardware, and can do whatever you like with it.
2) You either bought or licensed a copy of the copyrighted software running on the hardware.
3) You are buying a service, with software updates, etc.
If you ignore (3) and the courts consider (2) as a sale, then (1) and (2) combined makes a book analogy valid - you own the physical book, and you can do pretty much anything you like with the copyrighted contents of the book (sell the book, pick it to pieces, make comments, etc) as long as you don't give other people copies of it or distribute modified versions.
And I should be able to take my TiVo and reprogram it into an alarm clock if I want. Sure, it voids the warranty - but it shouldn't be illegal.
No argument there. The right to reverse engineer and the right to pick to pieces anything you buy is important. As long as there is no illegal redistribution of a copyrighted work, and the software changes you make is not done in order to break other laws (say, like service theft) then I have no problem whatsoever with 'hacking' the TiVo.
Felten has got the right idea - the freedom to tinker is very important and we have to be very careful not to restrict that freedom.
Heh, that's technically legal here in the US too
Nope. People think "fair use" and "this is happening inside my private home" so they think that it is legal according to copyright law.
Here's a newsflash for you: US copyright law is like a piece of software that has been patched and modified for several hundred years. It is internally inconsistent. It does not say what most people out there think that it says. It does not apply cleanly to the changes caused by digital technology.
Read Jessica Litman's "Digital Copyright" for some background history.
Im my opinion a 'drop in' replacement would have the ability to migrate all user content from existing infrastructure into the new infrastructure.
Why did someone moderate the above as a troll? Admittedly, his message is harsh but for a large customer that is currently using Exchange he is correct.
The SuSE solution is not a drop-in replacement. A drop-in replacement would be able to migrate users and data stores (email, calendars, address books, etc) from the Exchange servers to the replacements and would not require any configuration changes on the clients.
I'm sure the SuSE solution provides somewhat equivalent functionality, but it will be a large job to migrate a company that is using Exchange today to SuSE. In the long run you might even save money, but the migration cost (both in time, management, client reconfiguration and user training) will be noticable.
God try, and keep up the good work, SuSE. But please don't market this as a drop-in replacement.
If you'd like to discuss more, let's continue in this entry in my journal.
Of course! Consider how many texts are in the public domain then consider the percentage that have gotten into Project Guttenberg
Point.
However, it seems reasonable to me that if the US government decide that it is a good idea to PD government-funded software then they would define some rules that assure that members of the public can get access to the code (perhaps a government-wide website).
To me, PD guarantees reusability but doesn't guarantee availability. GPL guarantees both.
GPL guarantees source code availability if someone publishes a binary, and it guarantees reusability if you are willing to comply with the terms of the GPL. For government funded software, I think that both commercial interests and the free software community should have the ability to benefit, and that is why I think that PD (or perhaps a BSD'ish license) is the best choice in this particular case. There should of course be a requirement that all interested parties are able to get get access to the PD source code.
There is nothing in the GPL that makes it impossible for a piece of GPL'ed code to rot on a backup tape. The problem is admittedly more obvious with copyrighted works that have entered the PD, since few of them have been republished in the last ~50 years of the extensively long copyright term and it is thus hard to find existing copies to digitise.
As you might guess, I salute the efforts of Project Gutenberg and think that the efforts of the Abandonware community is morally right even though it is copyright infringement according to the law.
I also like the GPL and agree with many of the goals of the FSF, but I don't think the GPL is the right choice in every situation.
But what if only proprietary software vendors have access to A.tgz?
:-D
In that case, is A.tgz really in the PD?
In the event this happens, I find it hard to believe that the proprietary software vendors are under any obligation to admit that parts of the code they incorporated are in the public domain, much less offering the PD code they used.
I agree, this could become a problem if there is no clear standard as to how the government should release (to coin a new expression) public source software. One of the requirements must be that the public can get access to PSS.
What the anti-GPL'ers don't see is that their efforts can backfire bigtime by starting the discussion about how the public should benefit from publicly-funded software.
Public domain is NOT the same as Free software. It's nowhere NEAR Free software. With public domain, anyone can take my code and change the license and sell it to me with a restrictive license.
Psst.. T'is not your code, it is code paid for with public funds.
Government release A.tgz as public domain.
Even if proprietary software vendors develop and release restricted license versions of A, you are still free to take A.tgz and develop a GPL-licensed branch.
So, I suppose by publishing the commands necessary to change your MAC address (specifically to circumvent the access control of the server), you are violating the DAA.
The DAA, DMCA and EUCD only cover "technical protection measures" that protect a copyrighted work. The anticircumvention rules are bad, but they are not so bad that you can just slap an access control on something and expect to be protected by the law.
Case in point - An australian judge has ruled that PS2 modchips are not circumvention devices within the meaning of the DAA.
If you're a big company, you reserve the exclusive right to run servers for a game that you publish
Good point. But the right to reverse engineer is luckily rather entrenched both in the US and EU, so if you really really want to you can write your own. Not that I expect it to ever happen for a sufficiently complex game, but whatever.
Except in the USA, one of the world's largest markets for PC video games.
And in EU, and in Australia, maybe in Canada, and in all the small 2nd/3rd world countries that have signed the WIPO Copyright Treaty.
As a matter of law, the situation sucks. As a matter of fact, anything client-side is crackable unless you move the root of trust to tamper-proof hardware.
Tell that to your local electric power company.
Not really a valid comparision, since the power company and other utilities tend to be regulated.
Do they want the badwill that would inevitably build up as accidental permanent bans force users to put up anti-that-server web sites?
You're talking about two different things - what a game server admin can do legally, and what conduct the user community is going to accept.
It is legal for the admin to decide who gets to play, but you have to be careful not to alienate the userbase.
(oh, and any scheme which is built on trusted clients will be crackable)
He's completely correct in saying that a network of ethernet switches routes packets. The on pedantry is the absolute adherence to the labels that the manufacturers put on the products.
/. you shouldn't be surprised or angry if someone corrects you.
:)
If you work with networks it is kind of important to keep the different layers separate. In layman terms I agree with the above, but if you don't use the correct technical terms on
As for the labels that manufacturers put on their products, don't get me started on "layer 3/4 switching". furrfu!