IF people run with user rights (not admin) they are prevented from hitting anyone else. They can even be prevented from running software the admin didn't install for that matter. Problem is, most people run as admin. IT is their box after all, they'll do as they please.
One quite common reason for this is software developers writing programs which require this in order to actually work. Even though there is no actual reason for needing any privs in the first place.
the problem is the user between geek and sixpack
he wants to do things himself say install a printer, software, install new graphic card drivers maybe even replace his graphic card
but he has no deeper knowledge of the system
for this user linux is to complex to do such tasks (in sufficient time)
it is the point where windows has the biggest advantage to linux
Except that in practice Windows is no less complex than anything else. All the attempts at "wizard" interfaces do is ensure that this kind of user has a deep hole to drop into when things go wrong. Indeed for a closed source system a CPU register and stack frame dump isn't even much use to even a "geek".
Even if a copy right on a work expires, an intelligible copy of said work must actually be publically available for that work to truly pass into the public domain
This is the idea behind copyright libraries. Which were originally intended to hold copies of everything published, at least until the copyright on them ran out. But with both more and more books being published and longer copyright terms these libraries simply don't have the storage space. Copyright terms where the "clock" dosn't even start until the author dies don't help either, since librarians have better things to do than matching authors to death registers.
Speaking as one who has literally put thousands of hours into writing a book, I have to ask where you get off telling me that there should be a hard cap on the limit of my copyright.
What makes your writing a book so special? Many people put lots of work into all sorts of things, sometimes they get no reward for it at all. Imagine if a civil engineer tried to claim that they should receive a guarenteed income for life because of some project they "put thousands of hours into".
Don't I have the right to profit for the rest of my life from my work?
Since other people don't have that right why should you have it?
What about my children? What about my grandchildren?
Can't they work for themselves? Are you able to be supported by something your parents or grandparents did...
This is completely at odds with current copyright law. Copyright law, under the Berne Convention, grants copyright immedietly upon creation of the work. There is no regisration requirement. Requiring registration on the backend is nonsensical and the Copyright Office will be unable to validate existence of a valid copyright when granting the extension.
The Berne Convention is simply a treaty and we are talking about the US here. A country which in the last few years has decided to ignore all sorts of treaties. Global warming, nuclear weapons, treatment of prisoners of war and kidnapped childre, etc are IMHO rather more important than "intellectual property".
ADSL providers would be one - My ADSL connection is PPP over ATM, and my IP address belongs to my ISP somewhere in London. I just moved halfway across town, and moved my IP address with me. Any comprehensive databases of IP to location are based on the location of the ISP, updated through whois entries for the IP blocks,
Not everyone using your ISP need be in the same city as the ISP. Also the whois database may indicate the location of an ISP's offices, rather than where their hardware is.
The good liars can fool you, yes, but the bad ones are far less likely too, even online,
Depending how a liar lies they could easily find it harder to lie online.
Your statement that "online it's massively simple to social engineer" is only true if someone relies on another to be 100% honest about themselves, something which is dangerous to do both online and off.
It's more dangerous offline. Whilst there are online fraudsters it isn't possible for serial killers or armies to operate entirely in the online world.
Not only that, but Microsoft has done just about every other unfriendly thing that a software vendor can do. They have stopped development of projects, created spurious incompatibilities, and sold bugs as "features." If the government paid IBM (or RedHat or whomever) half of what they currently spend on Microsoft software they could almost certainly get a real service contract for a huge pile of Free Software, and if they didn't like the service they got, they could take that money next year and hire someone else without having to switch software.
In this case it wouldn't be in IBM's/RedHat's/whoever's interests to play "it's a feature, not a bug" in the first place. They'd know that X was a bug, because Y amount of money was saying that it was.
I agree that there are costs to switching to Free Software, and I definitely agree that Free Software can't currently fill everyone's computer needs,
A lot of software is actually some kind of "bespoke" rather than "off the shelf" system. Especially when you get into embedded systems. Open Source is arguably a better choice that proprietary software here.
If the software was GPL, it wouldn't matter how the contract was structured, because our programmers could have fixed the code. Instead, 2 million bucks was spent.
Here in Chicago, a new cell service came into town trumpeting that they have award winning customer service. Whether there service is actually good or not, I cannot say, but it does suggest that, in a market with consistently bad customer service, it can be used as a competitive differentiator.
Of course if the general standard is low even the best might be bad.
I don't think its hit a single person within 250 miles of me and im smack in the center of the damn US. A little window where people could click on a map or enter a postal code would be better -the first three digits even for those who will scream out about privacy BS- then narrow the search with the IP/traceroute based crapola).
They could even be original and use latitude and longitude. But even then you'd need a quite extensive geographic database to work out which other users were meaningfully close to you.
To joining a gym to meet people who are interested in staying in shape, joining a book club to meet people who are interested in books, joining a tiddly winks club to meet people (OK sad individuals) interested in tiddly winks?
Different things suit different people. Whilst for some joining some kind of activity club can be a good way to make new friends for others in can be a bad way. No doubt for every anecdote about XYZ activity having resulted in lots of friends or dating partners there is also one about only meeting people who were completly fanatical about XYZ.
The patent office operates on the idea that Existing Invention + Existing Invention = New Invention. If you thought of it first, you get a patent.
As well as following a maxim of "If I don't understand it then it must be worth a patent" as opposed to "If I don't understand it then the application belongs in the circular file".
To anyone who grew up using computers, and for whom using computers was a daily part of their lives (and for whom a computer isn't some magic black box they refuse to understand) the idea is blatently obvious.
Which should render the thing unpatenable. A basic criterion for something being patentable is that it is not obvious to someone "skilled in the art".
How the heck do you patent doing something that's been done for generations just because it's on the internet. It'd be like patenting giving stock quotes over the phone. It really ticks me off to see all these companies with nothing real to offer humanity getting patents for using other peoples technology.
It isn't just the companies holding the patents who are the problem here. The whole system is fundermentally broken. The US Patent Office has a tendency to pass just about anything and leave it to the courts to sort out. Then presumably we have courts deciding that the USPO wouldn't have granted a patent if it didn't have merit.
Since it is about trade secrets, SCO will have to come up with some sort of proof that the code in question really was misappropriated from SCO
In which case the only people they can sue would be whoever leaked their "trade secrets" in the first place. Yet SCO are also trying to sell licences to third parties. If they were claiming copyright or patent infringement that might give them some basis for doing this.
Many people create IP and don't expect to extract money from it. Many others even invest time and money creating IP *expecting* an ROI and never get it.
The likes of the RIAA and MPAA are more into the marketing and distribution of IP than its creation anyway.
Just because something requires time to create doesn't automatically mean they are entitled to money. The market decides what any given product (or IP) is worth.
This worth is not fixed, it can change, sometimes something which is very valuable one day can be virtually worthless the next day.
If the market has decided that music in its digital form is free then the artists either adapt to that reality by taking advantage of free music distribution to promote themselves, their products, and hopefully score endorsements, or they can find something else to do for a living.
Also those who previously made money on promoting and distributing music recordings need to realise that at best they now have a much smaller role to play, at worst are completly obsolete.
Re:The situation's aren't comparable.
on
RIAA vs The Economy
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Where this position fall short is that information has value only when it is scarce. Patents and other IP violations are only copyright violations, but once scarity is removed (i.e. easily available for free), the value to the legitimite owner is destroyed. The owner consumed resources to develop the IP, and it is reasonable for that owner to expect to extract value from that investment.
Just because person or corporation has invested X amount of money into a certain business, product or business model does not mean that they are entitled to get anything out of it. This argument would mean that the state should pay the creditors of bankrupts and compensate them for however much they "invested" in their failed business. Nor is there any reason to assume that just because something might have been profitable in the past it will continue to be profitable in the future.
What people refer to as "Intellectual Property" is neither physical property, nor a service rendered.
In the past people though it was a sensible idea to pretend that ideas were like physical entities. When "content" was tightly bound to some kind of media (a piece of physical property). This metaphore was grounded in a rational argument.
All violent crimes are a crime of hate. It shouldn't matter if they're black, gay or a cop.
It most definitly should matter if the perpetrator is a cop. There is the concept of "high crimes", where someone in a position of authority can do more damage and more easily cover up evidence, should he or she be a criminal.
However I'm glad they can make a distinction that a cop's life is more valuable than someone elses *rolls eyes*.
IIRC there are even places where a police dog's life can be considered more valuable than the life of a regular person. Most noticable is if a police officer is knocked down and killed by a car. The press will straight away call this "murder", yet are unlikely to do so when this happens to anyone else...
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IF people run with user rights (not admin) they are prevented from hitting anyone else. They can even be prevented from running software the admin didn't install for that matter. Problem is, most people run as admin. IT is their box after all, they'll do as they please.
One quite common reason for this is software developers writing programs which require this in order to actually work. Even though there is no actual reason for needing any privs in the first place.
the problem is the user between geek and sixpack he wants to do things himself say install a printer, software, install new graphic card drivers maybe even replace his graphic card but he has no deeper knowledge of the system for this user linux is to complex to do such tasks (in sufficient time) it is the point where windows has the biggest advantage to linux
Except that in practice Windows is no less complex than anything else. All the attempts at "wizard" interfaces do is ensure that this kind of user has a deep hole to drop into when things go wrong.
Indeed for a closed source system a CPU register and stack frame dump isn't even much use to even a "geek".
Even if a copy right on a work expires, an intelligible copy of said work must actually be publically available for that work to truly pass into the public domain
This is the idea behind copyright libraries. Which were originally intended to hold copies of everything published, at least until the copyright on them ran out. But with both more and more books being published and longer copyright terms these libraries simply don't have the storage space. Copyright terms where the "clock" dosn't even start until the author dies don't help either, since librarians have better things to do than matching authors to death registers.
I should be able to profit (as well as my children) for as long as the book remains profitable.
Assuming it ever is profitable. Even if it is why should your descendents, who had nothing to do with creating it, have these rights.
Sorry, I don't like the idea that after say, 20 years, someone can snatch my work up,
Would you be happy paying a fee to the people who built your house? Or even their great^X grandchildren...
Speaking as one who has literally put thousands of hours into writing a book, I have to ask where you get off telling me that there should be a hard cap on the limit of my copyright.
What makes your writing a book so special? Many people put lots of work into all sorts of things, sometimes they get no reward for it at all. Imagine if a civil engineer tried to claim that they should receive a guarenteed income for life because of some project they "put thousands of hours into".
Don't I have the right to profit for the rest of my life from my work?
Since other people don't have that right why should you have it?
What about my children? What about my grandchildren?
Can't they work for themselves? Are you able to be supported by something your parents or grandparents did...
This is completely at odds with current copyright law. Copyright law, under the Berne Convention, grants copyright immedietly upon creation of the work. There is no regisration requirement. Requiring registration on the backend is nonsensical and the Copyright Office will be unable to validate existence of a valid copyright when granting the extension.
The Berne Convention is simply a treaty and we are talking about the US here. A country which in the last few years has decided to ignore all sorts of treaties. Global warming, nuclear weapons, treatment of prisoners of war and kidnapped childre, etc are IMHO rather more important than "intellectual property".
ADSL providers would be one - My ADSL connection is PPP over ATM, and my IP address belongs to my ISP somewhere in London. I just moved halfway across town, and moved my IP address with me. Any comprehensive databases of IP to location are based on the location of the ISP, updated through whois entries for the IP blocks,
Not everyone using your ISP need be in the same city as the ISP. Also the whois database may indicate the location of an ISP's offices, rather than where their hardware is.
The good liars can fool you, yes, but the bad ones are far less likely too, even online,
Depending how a liar lies they could easily find it harder to lie online.
Your statement that "online it's massively simple to social engineer" is only true if someone relies on another to be 100% honest about themselves, something which is dangerous to do both online and off.
It's more dangerous offline. Whilst there are online fraudsters it isn't possible for serial killers or armies to operate entirely in the online world.
It's harder for people to lie in person, facial expressions, actions, etc. give it away. online... Hell.
That doesn't mean that there arn't a fair number of people who are capable of doing this very well.
Not only that, but Microsoft has done just about every other unfriendly thing that a software vendor can do. They have stopped development of projects, created spurious incompatibilities, and sold bugs as "features." If the government paid IBM (or RedHat or whomever) half of what they currently spend on Microsoft software they could almost certainly get a real service contract for a huge pile of Free Software, and if they didn't like the service they got, they could take that money next year and hire someone else without having to switch software.
In this case it wouldn't be in IBM's/RedHat's/whoever's interests to play "it's a feature, not a bug" in the first place. They'd know that X was a bug, because Y amount of money was saying that it was.
I agree that there are costs to switching to Free Software, and I definitely agree that Free Software can't currently fill everyone's computer needs,
A lot of software is actually some kind of "bespoke" rather than "off the shelf" system. Especially when you get into embedded systems. Open Source is arguably a better choice that proprietary software here.
If the software was GPL, it wouldn't matter how the contract was structured, because our programmers could have fixed the code. Instead, 2 million bucks was spent.
:)
2 million buys quite a few programmers
Here in Chicago, a new cell service came into town trumpeting that they have award winning customer service. Whether there service is actually good or not, I cannot say, but it does suggest that, in a market with consistently bad customer service, it can be used as a competitive differentiator.
Of course if the general standard is low even the best might be bad.
I don't think its hit a single person within 250 miles of me and im smack in the center of the damn US. A little window where people could click on a map or enter a postal code would be better -the first three digits even for those who will scream out about privacy BS- then narrow the search with the IP/traceroute based crapola).
They could even be original and use latitude and longitude. But even then you'd need a quite extensive geographic database to work out which other users were meaningfully close to you.
Do you really believe that? Should every person who wants to run for any kind of public position be forced to lead a quiet and sanctimonious life?
It's more that people in public positions are fools if they think they can claim to be something they are not and not be found out.
To joining a gym to meet people who are interested in staying in shape, joining a book club to meet people who are interested in books, joining a tiddly winks club to meet people (OK sad individuals) interested in tiddly winks?
Different things suit different people. Whilst for some joining some kind of activity club can be a good way to make new friends for others in can be a bad way.
No doubt for every anecdote about XYZ activity having resulted in lots of friends or dating partners there is also one about only meeting people who were completly fanatical about XYZ.
In this situation, it is NOT application of the tool. You are putting things together (software packages) to improve an existing invention (auction).
Software is a tool, an auction is a process.
A better ink pen is a tool! A better metal coating is a tool!
Both of these examples are physical products.
The patent office operates on the idea that Existing Invention + Existing Invention = New Invention. If you thought of it first, you get a patent.
As well as following a maxim of "If I don't understand it then it must be worth a patent" as opposed to "If I don't understand it then the application belongs in the circular file".
To anyone who grew up using computers, and for whom using computers was a daily part of their lives (and for whom a computer isn't some magic black box they refuse to understand) the idea is blatently obvious.
Which should render the thing unpatenable. A basic criterion for something being patentable is that it is not obvious to someone "skilled in the art".
How the heck do you patent doing something that's been done for generations just because it's on the internet. It'd be like patenting giving stock quotes over the phone. It really ticks me off to see all these companies with nothing real to offer humanity getting patents for using other peoples technology.
It isn't just the companies holding the patents who are the problem here. The whole system is fundermentally broken.
The US Patent Office has a tendency to pass just about anything and leave it to the courts to sort out. Then presumably we have courts deciding that the USPO wouldn't have granted a patent if it didn't have merit.
Since it is about trade secrets, SCO will have to come up with some sort of proof that the code in question really was misappropriated from SCO
In which case the only people they can sue would be whoever leaked their "trade secrets" in the first place.
Yet SCO are also trying to sell licences to third parties. If they were claiming copyright or patent infringement that might give them some basis for doing this.
Many people create IP and don't expect to extract money from it. Many others even invest time and money creating IP *expecting* an ROI and never get it.
The likes of the RIAA and MPAA are more into the marketing and distribution of IP than its creation anyway.
Just because something requires time to create doesn't automatically mean they are entitled to money. The market decides what any given product (or IP) is worth.
This worth is not fixed, it can change, sometimes something which is very valuable one day can be virtually worthless the next day.
If the market has decided that music in its digital form is free then the artists either adapt to that reality by taking advantage of free music distribution to promote themselves, their products, and hopefully score endorsements, or they can find something else to do for a living.
Also those who previously made money on promoting and distributing music recordings need to realise that at best they now have a much smaller role to play, at worst are completly obsolete.
Where this position fall short is that information has value only when it is scarce. Patents and other IP violations are only copyright violations, but once scarity is removed (i.e. easily available for free), the value to the legitimite owner is destroyed. The owner consumed resources to develop the IP, and it is reasonable for that owner to expect to extract value from that investment.
Just because person or corporation has invested X amount of money into a certain business, product or business model does not mean that they are entitled to get anything out of it. This argument would mean that the state should pay the creditors of bankrupts and compensate them for however much they "invested" in their failed business.
Nor is there any reason to assume that just because something might have been profitable in the past it will continue to be profitable in the future.
What people refer to as "Intellectual Property" is neither physical property, nor a service rendered.
In the past people though it was a sensible idea to pretend that ideas were like physical entities. When "content" was tightly bound to some kind of media (a piece of physical property). This metaphore was grounded in a rational argument.
All violent crimes are a crime of hate. It shouldn't matter if they're black, gay or a cop.
It most definitly should matter if the perpetrator is a cop. There is the concept of "high crimes", where someone in a position of authority can do more damage and more easily cover up evidence, should he or she be a criminal.
However I'm glad they can make a distinction that a cop's life is more valuable than someone elses *rolls eyes*.
IIRC there are even places where a police dog's life can be considered more valuable than the life of a regular person.
Most noticable is if a police officer is knocked down and killed by a car. The press will straight away call this "murder", yet are unlikely to do so when this happens to anyone else...
It would be funnier if the police has Segway's too. Perhaps they would have modified ones that could go 15 MPH.
Would the police Segways have lights on or would the cops be wearing helmets with flashing lights and sirens on...