Of course, this rights-management is all useless (as any informed antivirus software user can tell you) as long as users have the right to execute whatever code they want on their PCs. No software is safe from attack from an emulator. They'd have to make VMWare and Virtual PC illegal, and make flashing your computer's BIOS to a different BIOS illegal to actually have this work and stop any but the most casual practitioners.
Of course the way the legal system is acting as of late, that may not be too unrealistic a scenario:-(
I believe that this is the one bundled in the PowerMacs.
Since it burns DVD-R at 2x, DVD-RW at 1x, CDR at 8x, and CD-RW at 4x, and is available for what looks like a relatively cheap price right now, it looks like what I'd put on my christmas list.:-)
Especially since Nero now supports burning VideoCD (mpeg1) and MPEG2 DVDs.
Germany's situation in 1930s is not the best
One to use when describing this situation.
Downplaying our current reality?
What kind of tactics are in use that
IBM hadn't been trying to use in the 80's?
Netscape was trying to become a de-facto
Standard too, and take over the desktop and E-commerce.
London's surveillance cameras are relevant how?
Adobe's treatment of Sklyarov is intolerable and unjust as well.
While we disagree, calling me Quisling is a bit out of hand.
ISA and other IBM patented technologies (like VGA) were by no means "Free as in Beer". The clone companies pay/paid licence fees for them
Are you sure there? I asked a few old engineer friends on that one, and from what I heard, S100 bus, which is what people were using at the time, was 100% free to use, and because IBM wanted people to adopt the PC bus, they just let people use it. I'm also not aware of specific patents there, (though what you say is quite plausible -- it is IBM). I thought all you needed was the PC-AT technical reference manual and you were good to go.
I mentioned in my previous reply that I wasn't comprehensive enough in what I said there. I agree with you that they should have to publish formats / etc to keep out the unfair barrier to entry on other platforms.
However I must disagree that MS Media Player, IE, and Passport are illegal efforts. I am wholly in favor of monetarily penalizing the living daylights out of the bastards to account for unfair business practices. But a lot of Microsoft's software is where it is because it really is better than the competition.
What CODEC did the pirates, who could choose any one they want to swap pirate video, choose to use? Quicktime Sorenson? RealMedia? No, Media Player.
Taken to the ludicrous extreme, you could construe Microsoft's "illegal product tying" of WordPad / Calc / Paint / CHKDSK as unfair competition against Wordperfect / Mathematica / Photoshop / Norton Disk Doctor.
Hate Microsoft for the right reasons. The decent software they write isn't one of them. (wooo, will I ever be modded down for this one.)
I believe we shall have to agree to disagree. Sinking to the level of people who are unethical to "outdo" them is not the answer.
As far as Microsoft wanting security problems on the Internet, I think you are attributing to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.
This isn't some William Gibson novel, or Bubblegum Crisis. Microsoft is not some dark megacorp that needs legions of stalwart brave men and women to give their lives to bring about its downfall. It's just a software company that's perpetually running scared, and acting vicious like cornered dogs, because they know they can go from boom to bust in less than 2 years, as they've done to Novell and other victims. And with enough labor on the part of those who are "giving it away for free", we can achieve our dream:
I wasn't comprehensive enough in my statement there, I agree that all three (APIs, file formats, networking protocols) should be published.
Re:Fiber is still expensive -- followup
on
Wiring A New House?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Actually, whether or not the cable jacket is plenum-rated (usually with Teflon) is completely unrelated to whether or not they wrap an extra layer of foil around the wire (shielded vs unshielded). If you're running unbalanced signals down the wire, such as RS232 serial data (Like Cisco or Sun Netra consoles), shielding is good. But Ethernet and Telephone send electrically opposite signals down each wire, so the electromagnetic fields and the twisting of the wire helps fight interference.
Perhaps frequent DDoS attacks on Passport-compliant web sites are in order.... we need to do something, so that Microsoft does not use Passport to take the internet away from us.
Wonderful idea there. (cough). How about we offer up something as good or better? Private corporations dominating a space through de facto standards happen because nobody else has stepped up with a Free (as in speech) solution that's better. Some cases to take into consideration:
Bus architectures
16-bit ISA took off because anyone could build to the IBM PC published spec (essentially free-as-in-beer).
Then Microchannel flubbed it (must license from IBM).
(Unfortunate footnote -- for 32-bit slots, VESA came along, and was destroyed by Intel's PCI when they slaughtered their competition in the PC chipset market.)
Email specs
X.500 and X.400 were [are] big bulky specs that you need to buy a copy of from ISO
DNS and SMTP / RFC822 are specified for free in RFC's and everyone is welcome to use them. X.400/500 email transfer across organizations is rather archaic now.
Document Formatting
EDI was a closed (if well written IMHO) spec, which I believe requires a license from IBM to use.
XML is a freely available spec, and is largely eradicating EDI's hold in the market.
So instead of proposing that people DDoS Passport sites, maybe we need to make ubiquitous a better solution that's published and freely implementable. Microsoft did lose out on the browser encryption fight (shttp vs https) and SSLeay / OpenSSL provided free reference implementations that let people use encryption without having to play with the big monopolies (um, except for Verisign). We can come up with a system that delivers Passport /.NET's functionality too.
A darned good idea (imho) would be to force Microsoft to publish their APIs, and restrict them from anti-competitive practices. IBM was doing this 20 years ago in the mainframe world and the European Union slapped them down hard for it.
Seen when attempting to follow the link in the story:
SecureIIS application firewall security alert HTTP Request caused a security alert, please contact our web master if you are getting this alert in error.
What is SecureIIS SecureIIS offers websites running Microsoft Internet Information Server a broad range of protection from common vulnerabilities, both known and unknown. Because SecureIIS does not protect against specific vulnerabilities, but classes of vulnerabilities, it allows for a much more far reaching layer of security. For more information on SecureIIS, please visit http://www.eeye.com/SecureIIS/ eEye Digital Security - Vulnerability Is Over...
Wow... good to know that eEye is protecting innocent IIS users from the horrors of the Slashdot Effect!!;-)
Look up Oracle's history. They produced the first ever commercial relational database -- under contract to the CIA for a project called Oracle that got cancelled. Then they decided to market it, and took the name Oracle.
In fact, Larry Ellison was fired from Oracle in his early years there.:)
This news (both Theo interview and others) has been up for a few days on OpenBSD Journal.
Slashdot readers who have made an account and are logged in can customize their display to add the headlines from OpenBSD journal and other sites to their main slashdot page, and catch news like this as it happens. It's a neat feature.;)
I daresay these nasty lawsuits contributed to Diamond's demise. None of the consumer electronics companies want to spend the cash battling the recording industry in court, so every one of them toe the line. I'm sure the recording industry has pounded the crap out of several small companies who've tried it -- and when Ogg Vorbis is finalized I'm sure the recording industry will try to pound the crap out of anyone making hardware Vorbis players as "Piracy Devices"
The closest thing I've seen is the Apple Ipod which lets you either store music for listening to, or store files for moving to another PC, but not to listen to the files marked for moving to another PC as far as I know...
CD Media World has extensive reviews and information on CD media sources, burner reviews, etc.
CD-Recordable.com, if you're in the US, is (so they claim) the only US Manufacturer of CD media. Their site makes it look like they put real effort into their product, I've ordered a few batches for work and personal use (~100) and not had coaster problems. (Disclaimer: I haven't really had coaster problems with other brands either)
CD-RW's may play better in some finicky CD players than plain CD-R's. I have not verified this myself, nor seen more than rumors on the subject. Anyone have any experience?
A standard between disc player manufacturers (Even an informal one) to handle custom changes to the DVD data would be nice -- two immediate things I can see coming from it:
Ability for fan-created edits of films, such as "The Phantom Edit" of Star Wars Ep I w/o Jar-Jar
Ability for fans to release their own subtitles / notes for foreign films that will never be released in their country
1984 Interview with Bill Joy
on
VIM 6.0 is Out
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Slashdot Mirror
Mr. Satchell,
I poked around the net a bit trying to do a bit of research about you (Google's cache of your page at fluent-access.com, which seems to be down right now, and the Amazon entry on your book on Linux IP stacks)
What do you think of Ralph Nader's positions on Microsoft, and his qualifications to be on this committee as well?
And what do you think of Richard Stallman's proposal for dealing with them?
(Clarification - only Lampson was named on the patent, the others I was just mentioning are just MS employees)
One of the named inventors on the patent, Butler Lampson, is a famed CS person who is noted in the Jargon File. Microsoft Research has all kinds of famous computer folk working there, including the inventor of Qsort, the author of VMS, the author of Turbo Pascal (now C#), and others.
Of course, this rights-management is all useless (as any informed antivirus software user can tell you) as long as users have the right to execute whatever code they want on their PCs. No software is safe from attack from an emulator. They'd have to make VMWare and Virtual PC illegal, and make flashing your computer's BIOS to a different BIOS illegal to actually have this work and stop any but the most casual practitioners.
Of course the way the legal system is acting as of late, that may not be too unrealistic a scenario :-(
Looks like the cheapest Kingston/StorCase offering (which supports ATA/100, bonus!) costs around $80 mail-order.
Are there any other reputable manufacturers that sell a cheaper solution for IDE?
I believe that this is the one bundled in the PowerMacs.
Since it burns DVD-R at 2x, DVD-RW at 1x, CDR at 8x, and CD-RW at 4x, and is available for what looks like a relatively cheap price right now, it looks like what I'd put on my christmas list. :-)
Especially since Nero now supports burning VideoCD (mpeg1) and MPEG2 DVDs.
"Microsoft should be treated, both in the US and Europe, the way IBM was treated in Europe."
Germany's situation in 1930s is not the best
One to use when describing this situation.
Downplaying our current reality?
What kind of tactics are in use that
IBM hadn't been trying to use in the 80's?
Netscape was trying to become a de-facto
Standard too, and take over the desktop and E-commerce.
London's surveillance cameras are relevant how?
Adobe's treatment of Sklyarov is intolerable and unjust as well.
While we disagree, calling me Quisling is a bit out of hand.
No, I think they should be punished in both Europe *and* the US.
Are you sure there? I asked a few old engineer friends on that one, and from what I heard, S100 bus, which is what people were using at the time, was 100% free to use, and because IBM wanted people to adopt the PC bus, they just let people use it. I'm also not aware of specific patents there, (though what you say is quite plausible -- it is IBM). I thought all you needed was the PC-AT technical reference manual and you were good to go.
Correct, I was again not specific enough :-)
I meant Windows Media 8 (?) Video CODEC not the wrapper format.
Brick and mortar stores have cheaper prices than online, eh?
I mentioned in my previous reply that I wasn't comprehensive enough in what I said there. I agree with you that they should have to publish formats / etc to keep out the unfair barrier to entry on other platforms.
However I must disagree that MS Media Player, IE, and Passport are illegal efforts. I am wholly in favor of monetarily penalizing the living daylights out of the bastards to account for unfair business practices. But a lot of Microsoft's software is where it is because it really is better than the competition.
What CODEC did the pirates, who could choose any one they want to swap pirate video, choose to use? Quicktime Sorenson? RealMedia? No, Media Player.
Taken to the ludicrous extreme, you could construe Microsoft's "illegal product tying" of WordPad / Calc / Paint / CHKDSK as unfair competition against Wordperfect / Mathematica / Photoshop / Norton Disk Doctor.
Hate Microsoft for the right reasons. The decent software they write isn't one of them. (wooo, will I ever be modded down for this one.)
I believe we shall have to agree to disagree. Sinking to the level of people who are unethical to "outdo" them is not the answer.
As far as Microsoft wanting security problems on the Internet, I think you are attributing to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.
This isn't some William Gibson novel, or Bubblegum Crisis. Microsoft is not some dark megacorp that needs legions of stalwart brave men and women to give their lives to bring about its downfall. It's just a software company that's perpetually running scared, and acting vicious like cornered dogs, because they know they can go from boom to bust in less than 2 years, as they've done to Novell and other victims. And with enough labor on the part of those who are "giving it away for free", we can achieve our dream:
I wasn't comprehensive enough in my statement there, I agree that all three (APIs, file formats, networking protocols) should be published.
Actually, whether or not the cable jacket is plenum-rated (usually with Teflon) is completely unrelated to whether or not they wrap an extra layer of foil around the wire (shielded vs unshielded). If you're running unbalanced signals down the wire, such as RS232 serial data (Like Cisco or Sun Netra consoles), shielding is good. But Ethernet and Telephone send electrically opposite signals down each wire, so the electromagnetic fields and the twisting of the wire helps fight interference.
Wonderful idea there. (cough). How about we offer up something as good or better ? Private corporations dominating a space through de facto standards happen because nobody else has stepped up with a Free (as in speech) solution that's better. Some cases to take into consideration:
- 16-bit ISA took off because anyone could build to the IBM PC published spec (essentially free-as-in-beer).
- Then Microchannel flubbed it (must license from IBM).
(Unfortunate footnote -- for 32-bit slots, VESA came along, and was destroyed by Intel's PCI when they slaughtered their competition in the PC chipset market.)So instead of proposing that people DDoS Passport sites, maybe we need to make ubiquitous a better solution that's published and freely implementable. Microsoft did lose out on the browser encryption fight (shttp vs https) and SSLeay / OpenSSL provided free reference implementations that let people use encryption without having to play with the big monopolies (um, except for Verisign). We can come up with a system that delivers Passport / .NET's functionality too.
A darned good idea (imho) would be to force Microsoft to publish their APIs, and restrict them from anti-competitive practices. IBM was doing this 20 years ago in the mainframe world and the European Union slapped them down hard for it.
It's mentioned in this article on gnu.org, but one of the links to the settlement details (the most important part) is broken, the new location for ibm1984ec.html is here.
Wow... good to know that eEye is protecting innocent IIS users from the horrors of the Slashdot Effect!! ;-)
Look up Oracle's history. They produced the first ever commercial relational database -- under contract to the CIA for a project called Oracle that got cancelled. Then they decided to market it, and took the name Oracle.
In fact, Larry Ellison was fired from Oracle in his early years there. :)
This news (both Theo interview and others) has been up for a few days on OpenBSD Journal.
Slashdot readers who have made an account and are logged in can customize their display to add the headlines from OpenBSD journal and other sites to their main slashdot page, and catch news like this as it happens. It's a neat feature. ;)
Remember that the first portable MP3 player, the Diamond Rio PMP300, (first announced in September 1998) was entangled in nasty lawsuits, as covered in this slashdot article from 1998.
I daresay these nasty lawsuits contributed to Diamond's demise. None of the consumer electronics companies want to spend the cash battling the recording industry in court, so every one of them toe the line. I'm sure the recording industry has pounded the crap out of several small companies who've tried it -- and when Ogg Vorbis is finalized I'm sure the recording industry will try to pound the crap out of anyone making hardware Vorbis players as "Piracy Devices"
The closest thing I've seen is the Apple Ipod which lets you either store music for listening to, or store files for moving to another PC, but not to listen to the files marked for moving to another PC as far as I know ...
Happy holidays anyhow
Interesting tidbits