This is the current situation of US business at the moment. Which is that companies want more than anything to use the current patent system to try to hold the industry hostage while they do a "make money for nothing" business model... Meaning if the system worked the way they want it to work, we would still be paying money to the family of the caveman that developed the rolling wheel.... Talk about stupid...
I agree... Also, why try to "crack" his online accounts, as a simple court order can give you easy access to these. And I dont think that getting a judge to do this for you would be very difficult unless the guy specifically expressed he didn't want this to happen...
Exactly... I doubt he encrypted the partition, so if you just bring up the OS in single user mode you can pretty much get whatever you want. You can even reset the password if you choose.
Even if he did encrypt his partitions, chances are he put the master key on a USB key somewhere. I suspect in his irrationally condition he was not thinking about proper security protection...
Finally, I probably would try to brute force his root password just to find out what it was. It might help give you insight into his mindset at the time...
I disagree... A simple court order would open up any account they want. Why people go to these companies and ask "permission" is beyond me... That is why our legal system is there, and it is quite good at getting what it wants...
So why do I keep getting the feeling like they will provide some "incentives" to migrate to Vista with this new SP3 release... I mean why release a service pack 2 months before you end support on a product?? Kind of something to think about before installing this potential trojan...:)
In my opinion, the real thing at play here has nothing to do with the children, but rather has all to with the dominate OS. Meaning, MS and Intel were concerned in the early days that if OLPC took off that the upcoming user base of the developed nations would run the risk move away from the WinTel platform. It was because of this fear that they moved into this sector with a "money loss" approach with the intent of killing OLPC.
Finally, it is my prediction that now that OLPC is pretty much dying on the vine, so to speak, that MS, Intel, and the rest of the threatened players will slowly back away from it and let it all disappear... I also predict that the players, such as ASUS, who are producing the low end versions will eventually back away from doing this as well because they will determine at some point that product margins will be too low to be very appealing...
I think for this type of model, whether their server code is GPL'd or not really does not matter. Meaning, it is their content and community that means the most to them the most.
Personally I think the future of these types of games is not really the paid connections, which could limit the size of your user base, but rather incorporating some form of product promotional support to them. I saw a Toyota commercial one time on them showing a Toyota Truck in World of Warcraft and really thought that was just a brilliant idea. Done well it could be the perfect blend of product advertising that they have been looking for... Unfortunately this probably will occur, but be short lived because business would simply overdue the concept and annoy the heck out of their users...
Great statement... Writing was never my strong point..:)
First, I dont think that copyrights in general are all bad, but rather the perversion of them. Copyright law was put in place to try to create a balance where authors couple get compensation for their work, and then in time it would be turned over to the public domain. In fact, the original copyright laws protected for only 28 years... Obviously something has changed since those days, and none of those changes were good, in my opinion.
Also, I think a better phrase probably is that "OSS tips the balance of power to users" rather than just benefits users. Meaning, if they do not like a particular vendor, then can go to another one, or even create their own. Also, I do not see anything inherently wrong with closed source models as they create jobs, attract investments, and build revenues considerably faster than any OSS business model could. My main concern is simply the abuse of these models. Companies fight change because it creates uncertainly for them, but change is the foundation of innovation itself.
Personally, I really question is OSS would exist at all if the software industry worked in the same manner as the pharmacutical industry works. Meaning, if after 17 years of making profits from a software product, a company was forced to turn over the code base to the public domain, I think that future business and users would be better off. I would also agree that this will never happen either for a large number of reasons, which is why I am glad OSS community is around..:)
I think that this is mostly because to truly pull off an OSS project, there typically is a profit motive involved. That is why you see allot of business related OSS projects, and not as much consumer related OSS projects.
Most OSS projects I have seen typically were assembled for one reason or another. Some are created to give them the functionality they want, but to free them from an existing vendor and are funded by existing business entities. Others are built with one individuals desire to just build something they want to have. In most cases, however, the individuals that are working on these projects typically look for a "carrot" as a means to dedicate their time to them. Meaning, for many of these projects, their founders eventually hope that they will be able to construct some sort of support business around their model. This would be a little more difficult to pull off in the client installed app gaming world, but a couple groups are definitely trying it on the MMORPG side of things. See the point here?? These guys are not dumb cookies...:)
I think you kind of missed the overall theme of what I was trying to say...
I agree that there are a number of Linux and BSD innovations out there, and simply being OSS does not mean that you are "old" so to speak... My main point is that OSS is critical to the functioning capitalism marketplace because it forces balance. You can think of the technology industry as the same thing as building a wall of bricks. Each product (brick) that is built sits on top of another layer of bricks.
If the XEN, KVM, and even Ubuntu groups had to start off or license proprietary OS's and even Databases to lay their products on, then they simply would not exist because it would be too expensive to be useful. Meaning, if you look at the code base of each of these products versus the overall code base of all the Linux modules they lay on, then these innovative projects seem more like a "weekend" projects than anything else. In time, I suspect you will see the next layer of "bricks", which means that the products of today go into the background while another even more innovative layer of bricks sit on top of them... Starting to see my point here??:)
OSS typically goes after mature late life cycle applications, such as OS's, Office suites, etc.. If Microsoft was truly on the cutting edge of innovation, I dont think they would care either way....
Meaning, people can say what they like, but in my opinion OSS is capitalism's way of preventing companies from profiting on a product the developed indefinitely... And this is a good thing, in my opinion..:)
I guess a better way to put it would be "oh... Way Cool!!!!"...:)
Meaning, yes I agree that in most cases it is not needed, but I have internal processing servers that have up times of over 3 years, so if I had something like this probably all my servers would have up times of this long..
I think allot of this depends on the margins.. Meaning, on the low end, the vendor is forced to try to go for volume at the expense of individual product margins. Dell can tell you first hand the long-term effects of this...
The key is how much competition exists in this space. If Asus can make money after their support and managing costs are figured it, then they might keep it around. A problem that many businesses are having in the advanced industrial nations, however, is that the cost of business overhead really is becoming a problem.
I think I understand your argument, but it sounds more political than technology in nature... Also, I know my history well and it certainly does not backup that secrecy makes societies fail. Early Germany certainly did not fail because of secrecy, but rather because they had a madman at their helm. Soviet Russia just had an unsustainable government structure... The US economy is currently failing not because of our secrecy, but rather because we want to try grow our economy on the ever continued consumption of debt...:)
In short, it sounds like you work for a big company and are quite frustrated by their internal procedures that most likely were put in place by managers and sales people who know nothing about security or the implication it has on people who run the business... Quite understandable, but I would not consider this as every business.
That actually is a pretty good argument... I would agree that no technology in the world will stand up to someone simply giving the information away...:)
The issue is not how we handle security, but rather a fundamental flaw with the technology itself..
Meaning, the design of files themselves make it too easy to copy them. Also, trying to slap on some sort of encryption layer is laughable at best because once the encryption is removed all security goes along with it.
In my opinion, as an industry we need to re-examine how documents are managed. I suspect a considerably better approach is more of a "looking glass" to managing data where instead of actually having the physical files move around the network, you instead have sort of a vnc type approach where you only view the document where it resides. Yes, there are allot of complexities to this approach, but fundamentally I think this is where the industry needs to go...
Exactly.. Modern day business does not see newer and efficient designs are better... They see it as a threat to their business..
OSS from my experience only works in mature marketplaces. Meaning, you do not see OSS products going after fast moving software products such as Solidworks, etc... You only see it in mature slow moving companies... Meaning, OSS is just capitalism at work.:)
AT&T cannot even provide decent cell or phone service, and they now are deciding to build browsers??? It will be a cold day in hell before I would install that trojan... I suspect its real purpose is to collect enough financial information to automatically swap your phone service to them...
As much as these "old" companies claim they understand where the industry is headed, they really have no clue....
The only thing that Sun will achieve in this change is a fork... Maybe that was the plan all along... The founders of MySQL AB get their big checks, and then create a new company with a forked version of MYSQL.. Brilliant!!!:)
The key advantage of OLED is that it does not require a backlight. Meaning, since they are technically stamped emitting diodes, their backlight is "built-in" so to speak. The main issue with OLED's is that their life has never been real good, at about 10K hours in most applications which is real low... They also suffer from problems just like their cousin LED's where their luminance decreases pretty dramatically over time depending on usage and heat buildup. Think of this like bleaching of colors in the areas of the screen that get used the most. Refresh rates really have never been an issue with OLED's from my understanding. In short, a number of additional technology issues will still need to be worked out for OLED's to get widespread application usage...
Patent law specifies that you have 1 year after the "release" of a product to patent its technologies. It is also quite easy to get around this, however, as I would assume MS showed with their FAT filesystem patent. I am still baffled how they actually got a patent on such old technology. I would agree that Apple patenting such trivial items goes contrary to the original intention of the patent system, but it is my belief that the problem is with the patent laws and not with how Apple is using them.
In short, we need a congress that will actually try to update the patent laws to make them relevant in todays world. Actually specifying digital copyright laws would be a nice bonus as well. Unfortunately, though, considering the death grip that the corporate world has on our US government right now, I strongly suspect nothing will change anytime soon. In fact, I think we will need a major economic disruption for any real change to occur, and I do not see this happening anytime soon...
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This is the current situation of US business at the moment. Which is that companies want more than anything to use the current patent system to try to hold the industry hostage while they do a "make money for nothing" business model... Meaning if the system worked the way they want it to work, we would still be paying money to the family of the caveman that developed the rolling wheel.... Talk about stupid...
Valid point... :)
I agree... Also, why try to "crack" his online accounts, as a simple court order can give you easy access to these. And I dont think that getting a judge to do this for you would be very difficult unless the guy specifically expressed he didn't want this to happen...
Exactly... I doubt he encrypted the partition, so if you just bring up the OS in single user mode you can pretty much get whatever you want. You can even reset the password if you choose.
Even if he did encrypt his partitions, chances are he put the master key on a USB key somewhere. I suspect in his irrationally condition he was not thinking about proper security protection...
Finally, I probably would try to brute force his root password just to find out what it was. It might help give you insight into his mindset at the time...
I disagree... A simple court order would open up any account they want. Why people go to these companies and ask "permission" is beyond me... That is why our legal system is there, and it is quite good at getting what it wants...
So why do I keep getting the feeling like they will provide some "incentives" to migrate to Vista with this new SP3 release... I mean why release a service pack 2 months before you end support on a product?? Kind of something to think about before installing this potential trojan... :)
I agree... I also think we probably need to fork and rename the filesystem. Now that he is convicted, I think doing that probably would be best...
The whole thing is just sad....
In my opinion, the real thing at play here has nothing to do with the children, but rather has all to with the dominate OS. Meaning, MS and Intel were concerned in the early days that if OLPC took off that the upcoming user base of the developed nations would run the risk move away from the WinTel platform. It was because of this fear that they moved into this sector with a "money loss" approach with the intent of killing OLPC.
Finally, it is my prediction that now that OLPC is pretty much dying on the vine, so to speak, that MS, Intel, and the rest of the threatened players will slowly back away from it and let it all disappear... I also predict that the players, such as ASUS, who are producing the low end versions will eventually back away from doing this as well because they will determine at some point that product margins will be too low to be very appealing...
I think for this type of model, whether their server code is GPL'd or not really does not matter. Meaning, it is their content and community that means the most to them the most.
Personally I think the future of these types of games is not really the paid connections, which could limit the size of your user base, but rather incorporating some form of product promotional support to them. I saw a Toyota commercial one time on them showing a Toyota Truck in World of Warcraft and really thought that was just a brilliant idea. Done well it could be the perfect blend of product advertising that they have been looking for... Unfortunately this probably will occur, but be short lived because business would simply overdue the concept and annoy the heck out of their users...
Great statement... Writing was never my strong point.. :)
:)
First, I dont think that copyrights in general are all bad, but rather the perversion of them. Copyright law was put in place to try to create a balance where authors couple get compensation for their work, and then in time it would be turned over to the public domain. In fact, the original copyright laws protected for only 28 years... Obviously something has changed since those days, and none of those changes were good, in my opinion.
Also, I think a better phrase probably is that "OSS tips the balance of power to users" rather than just benefits users. Meaning, if they do not like a particular vendor, then can go to another one, or even create their own. Also, I do not see anything inherently wrong with closed source models as they create jobs, attract investments, and build revenues considerably faster than any OSS business model could. My main concern is simply the abuse of these models. Companies fight change because it creates uncertainly for them, but change is the foundation of innovation itself.
Personally, I really question is OSS would exist at all if the software industry worked in the same manner as the pharmacutical industry works. Meaning, if after 17 years of making profits from a software product, a company was forced to turn over the code base to the public domain, I think that future business and users would be better off. I would also agree that this will never happen either for a large number of reasons, which is why I am glad OSS community is around..
I think that this is mostly because to truly pull off an OSS project, there typically is a profit motive involved. That is why you see allot of business related OSS projects, and not as much consumer related OSS projects.
:)
Most OSS projects I have seen typically were assembled for one reason or another. Some are created to give them the functionality they want, but to free them from an existing vendor and are funded by existing business entities. Others are built with one individuals desire to just build something they want to have. In most cases, however, the individuals that are working on these projects typically look for a "carrot" as a means to dedicate their time to them. Meaning, for many of these projects, their founders eventually hope that they will be able to construct some sort of support business around their model. This would be a little more difficult to pull off in the client installed app gaming world, but a couple groups are definitely trying it on the MMORPG side of things. See the point here?? These guys are not dumb cookies...
I think you kind of missed the overall theme of what I was trying to say...
:)
I agree that there are a number of Linux and BSD innovations out there, and simply being OSS does not mean that you are "old" so to speak... My main point is that OSS is critical to the functioning capitalism marketplace because it forces balance. You can think of the technology industry as the same thing as building a wall of bricks. Each product (brick) that is built sits on top of another layer of bricks.
If the XEN, KVM, and even Ubuntu groups had to start off or license proprietary OS's and even Databases to lay their products on, then they simply would not exist because it would be too expensive to be useful. Meaning, if you look at the code base of each of these products versus the overall code base of all the Linux modules they lay on, then these innovative projects seem more like a "weekend" projects than anything else. In time, I suspect you will see the next layer of "bricks", which means that the products of today go into the background while another even more innovative layer of bricks sit on top of them... Starting to see my point here??
OSS typically goes after mature late life cycle applications, such as OS's, Office suites, etc.. If Microsoft was truly on the cutting edge of innovation, I dont think they would care either way....
:)
Meaning, people can say what they like, but in my opinion OSS is capitalism's way of preventing companies from profiting on a product the developed indefinitely... And this is a good thing, in my opinion..
I guess a better way to put it would be "oh... Way Cool!!!!"... :)
Meaning, yes I agree that in most cases it is not needed, but I have internal processing servers that have up times of over 3 years, so if I had something like this probably all my servers would have up times of this long..
I think allot of this depends on the margins.. Meaning, on the low end, the vendor is forced to try to go for volume at the expense of individual product margins. Dell can tell you first hand the long-term effects of this...
:)
The key is how much competition exists in this space. If Asus can make money after their support and managing costs are figured it, then they might keep it around. A problem that many businesses are having in the advanced industrial nations, however, is that the cost of business overhead really is becoming a problem.
I guess time will only tell...
That now that OLPC is no longer a threat that all of the other vendors of small low cost laptops will simply stop offering them... Just a thought... :)
Wouldnt you know that on Drudge Report this morning the top new article heading is "MYSTERY LIGHTS OVER ARIZONA, FLORIDA; RESIDENTS SPOOKED"...
:)
So yes, it must be a slow news day...
I think I understand your argument, but it sounds more political than technology in nature... Also, I know my history well and it certainly does not backup that secrecy makes societies fail. Early Germany certainly did not fail because of secrecy, but rather because they had a madman at their helm. Soviet Russia just had an unsustainable government structure... The US economy is currently failing not because of our secrecy, but rather because we want to try grow our economy on the ever continued consumption of debt... :)
In short, it sounds like you work for a big company and are quite frustrated by their internal procedures that most likely were put in place by managers and sales people who know nothing about security or the implication it has on people who run the business... Quite understandable, but I would not consider this as every business.
That actually is a pretty good argument... I would agree that no technology in the world will stand up to someone simply giving the information away... :)
The issue is not how we handle security, but rather a fundamental flaw with the technology itself..
Meaning, the design of files themselves make it too easy to copy them. Also, trying to slap on some sort of encryption layer is laughable at best because once the encryption is removed all security goes along with it.
In my opinion, as an industry we need to re-examine how documents are managed. I suspect a considerably better approach is more of a "looking glass" to managing data where instead of actually having the physical files move around the network, you instead have sort of a vnc type approach where you only view the document where it resides. Yes, there are allot of complexities to this approach, but fundamentally I think this is where the industry needs to go...
Exactly.. Modern day business does not see newer and efficient designs are better... They see it as a threat to their business..
:)
OSS from my experience only works in mature marketplaces. Meaning, you do not see OSS products going after fast moving software products such as Solidworks, etc... You only see it in mature slow moving companies... Meaning, OSS is just capitalism at work.
AT&T cannot even provide decent cell or phone service, and they now are deciding to build browsers??? It will be a cold day in hell before I would install that trojan... I suspect its real purpose is to collect enough financial information to automatically swap your phone service to them...
As much as these "old" companies claim they understand where the industry is headed, they really have no clue....
:)
The only thing that Sun will achieve in this change is a fork... Maybe that was the plan all along... The founders of MySQL AB get their big checks, and then create a new company with a forked version of MYSQL.. Brilliant!!!
The key advantage of OLED is that it does not require a backlight. Meaning, since they are technically stamped emitting diodes, their backlight is "built-in" so to speak. The main issue with OLED's is that their life has never been real good, at about 10K hours in most applications which is real low... They also suffer from problems just like their cousin LED's where their luminance decreases pretty dramatically over time depending on usage and heat buildup. Think of this like bleaching of colors in the areas of the screen that get used the most. Refresh rates really have never been an issue with OLED's from my understanding. In short, a number of additional technology issues will still need to be worked out for OLED's to get widespread application usage...
Patent law specifies that you have 1 year after the "release" of a product to patent its technologies. It is also quite easy to get around this, however, as I would assume MS showed with their FAT filesystem patent. I am still baffled how they actually got a patent on such old technology. I would agree that Apple patenting such trivial items goes contrary to the original intention of the patent system, but it is my belief that the problem is with the patent laws and not with how Apple is using them.
In short, we need a congress that will actually try to update the patent laws to make them relevant in todays world. Actually specifying digital copyright laws would be a nice bonus as well. Unfortunately, though, considering the death grip that the corporate world has on our US government right now, I strongly suspect nothing will change anytime soon. In fact, I think we will need a major economic disruption for any real change to occur, and I do not see this happening anytime soon...