* Business people aren't mainstream people. Linux will come to desktop when home computer buyers will adopt it.
This is just nonsense. Business (and other corporate usage such as education and government) makes up the bulk of computer purchase and use. Windows wound up in people's homes becuase it was used at work, not the other way around. Even though most versions of Windows are more suited to home usage than business usage.
I agree with other posters that PC manufacturers brought this situation upon themselves by agreeing to exclusive deals back when Microsoft didn't really have the muscle to force its own terms.
Wouldn't they have been obliged to accept them anyway. Due to laws about maximising corporate profit...
Re: Corporate use of spyware
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Spy v. Spy
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· Score: 2
See, in a corp, spyware does NOT have to be invisible. Rather employees not do illegal stuff than catch them later.
If the only surveilence systems are visible ones then malicious people may attempt to work around them. If some of the systems are covert they may not be able to.
Re:More virus-like that the company might admit
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Spy v. Spy
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· Score: 2
As I understand, it's illegal to monitor other people (inc your employees) unless you give them a warning that you are doing so, or might be doing so. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.
But you don't have to then give details of exactly how, when and where they might be being monitored. Indeed if you have some overt monitoring this could easily be judged sufficent warning.
Re:Mmmm.. FUN! And a legal nightmare..
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Spy v. Spy
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· Score: 2
Everywhere I've worked the policy has been that employees are not allowed to load anything, or what they can load is limited to stuff available at some corporate web site. Two days ago we got an email warning us not to load software that comes with our hardware if it was not loaded by the techs (why they don't just keep the disks if they don't want us loading the software is beyond me, but there you go).
Are different people handling the hardware and the software installations? As an aside most suppliers wouldn't understand the concept of send hardware to address A, software to address B and licence certificates to address C even if you asked them to...
Having been on the other side of the problem (trying to maintain a few thousand PCs) I can see the need to control what's loaded. If something breaks the cause could be just about anything, and the last thing you need is to find rogue software the user loaded, even if it's legal and won't get them in trouble with the PC police [bsa.org]. Maybe it wasn't the rogue software, maybe it was. Maybe unloading it to check will just make the problem worse. It's a headache the techs don't need.
You can also get things such as Windows software installs which "virally" change DLLs or registry keys. Which even uninstalling may not fix this kind of thing.
Re:Mmmm.. FUN! And a legal nightmare..
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Spy v. Spy
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· Score: 2
So? I is *not* a basic right in most jurisdictions of the USA. Most employers (if you have one) inform you in your new hire packet and in published company policy that your computer may be monitored at any time and that only authorized software and hardware may be run.
Actually this is the norm throughout the civilised world and tends to apply to any machine issued to someone in the course of their work.
Re:Mmmm.. FUN! And a legal nightmare..
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Spy v. Spy
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· Score: 2
Consider this situation: You are at work, and you'd like to know if someone's snooping on you (a valid concern). You install your anti-snooper, and the snooping software disables it. Since the computers are owned by the company, you really have no legal recourse (take your software elsewhere?).
Also consider that unless you are some kind of system admin you had no business attempting to install this "anti-snooper" program in the first place. Maybe what disabled it wasn't a "snooper" but something more "anti viris and vandalism"...
Our overwhelming military advantages are largely comprised of superior technology - intelligence gained from those nice satellites, GPS units carried by the grunts, cruise missles, even the technology used in the simulations we use to train our forces and command staff.This dosn't change the fact that the US had more weapons and soldiers. As well as having production and supply outside the war zone.
I think, however, that the CIA (and other intelligence agencies in other countries for that matter) know (and have known for a long time) that the information they get from satellites only goes so far. It's difficult to convince a politician who's trying to get reelected, or a senator that wants the money for some pork project back home, that we might have to get our hands a little bit dirty and spend some money to prevent some really nasty things from happening.
Immediatly afterwards there was quite a bit of fuss about the need for more high tech toys. Also are you so sure that giving the CIA more "dirty money" is such a good idea? Considering these are the people who trained Osama Bin Laden in the first place. Basic problem with the CIA is that in addition to gathering imtelligence they also appear to have been operating as a covert military force.
Something people seem to have decided after 11/9;-) is that it's important to keep communication - aka the internet - going if a country has a national disaster.
The Internet didn't appear especially vulnerable. Apart from a few specific websites being overloaded. A far more vunerable communication system that day was broadcast radio and television. When did Manhatten get all it's TV stations back?
We have learned a lot. If the internet was designed today, we wouldn't make the same mistakes. An example is that the protocols (or routers) should not allow DoS attacks using packets with fake headers. They do because DoS was not considered when the protocols were first implemented, and now we can't change them.
Which dosn't do much against a more primative attack. Something like a few truck bombs against telephone switching centres or power lines. Terrorist attacks are far more likely to be low tech than high tech.
The only way you'll stop it happening again -- IMHO -- is to stop funding Israel and get the fsck out of the economies and political systems of supposedly "independent" states that don't want you there (the people, that is, not the rulers), and to stop backing dictatorships like Saudi Arabia just because they're "on your side".
"On your side" for the moment, remember Osama Bin Laden was considered "friendly" by the US when he was targeting the Soviet Union. Backing dictators is just another part of interfering with other country's "economic" and "political" systems. More than once the US has attacked a democratic government to install a dictator. The most common thread is so US corporations can maximise their profit. Personally I would say that a viable solution would also involve the US withdrawing from the occuipied nation state of Hawaii, bombing Iraq for attempting much the same kind of thing with Kuwait looks rather hypocritcial.
It's now much safer politically to spend billions on a satellite program that most people never hear or think about rather than "risk the life of one American soldier." The fact that we've had some very successful military actions in the last 20 years, largely due to an overwhelming technical advantage, only makes new tech that much more attractive to the pols.
It's difficult to call either Iraq, Kosova or Afganistan "tech advantages". They were out and out military advantages. A large, well equipted and well supplied military going after one much smaller and not as well supplied and equipted.
We tend to believe that our actions have had long lasting effect on this troubled region, but my take on it is quite different. US tends to wage its war and then pack its bags and go home leaving a war ravaged country and its warlords to fight the rest of the war between themselves and their common enemies
At least with respect to a conventional war. When it came to covertly supporting mostly these exact same warlords against the Soviet Union there was plenty of "staying power", ditto with the mess the US made of Nicaragua. Difference is when the US fights a covert war CNN arn't there keeping count of the number of dead Americans... It's not as if the war is fully over, but apparently the US would prefer supposed allies such as the UK and Canada to do the hard work. A bit like with Kosova...
I don't think tech failed us, we failed to use the tech properly. Only now, reactively are we implementing the types of airport scanning needed to stop weapons from coming aboard airplanes.
How old a technology is radar (useful for tracking aircraft which go of course); ditto jet fighters (useful for chasing down off course aircraft, frightening kamikaze minded hijackers and if needs be shooting said aircrafts down as the lesser of two evils when the alternative is crashing into buildings with thousands of people inside); ditto telephones (useful for telling people what is going on, including giving instructions to evacuate buildings) and fire alarms (useful for getting people out of buildings quickly.)
The real interesting thing is that the entire idea of a teenager (13-17 as not being an adult) is post-Industrial Revolution. What essentially happened was that all the sudden, there were a lot of 13-17 who didn't have farms to work on (since their parents now worked in factories) and were being put into schools in order to give them something to do until they were old enough to work in a factory like everyone else.
Effectivly the age of legal majority has gone up, whilst, due to better nutrition and medical care, the age of physically maturity has gone down. One of the areas in which this has generated a whole heap of problems is in respect of ages of consent.
Care to point out the EULA-like clauses in the GPL? I must have missed them. It seems to me that the GPL is quite the opposite of what one normally thinks of as an EULA.
Maybe this needs to be in an FAQ somewhere. The GPL is not an EULA. It is has more in common with a publishing contract where the author does not sign over copyright to the publisher or even a contract between a band and a venue than it does with any "click this as you install" type "agreement".
A sufficiently oily IP lawyer could argue that the making of the copy in (for example) the filesystem cache is not an essential step; the software will run just fine without the cached copy.
They might argue that all caching is infringment, since it's not strictly necessary. What about disk mirroring, it's prefectly possible to have a HDD which mirrors platters, completly transparent to the OS... It's a basic problem with the wording being over specific, especially when refering to fast changing technology. Far better wording would be something like "a transitory copy, created by the normal operation of any system, is never infringing, unless captured in some way."
The fictitious need for a "license" at all stems from an impossibly boneheaded court decision made in the 1970's which stated that the act of loading the software into memory for the purposes of execution constituted an infringing copy (the copy just made from disk to RAM), and was not covered under Fair Use. Ergo, a license was required.
This is the kind of argument which superficially makes sense (especially if you dress it up in enough technobabble). Problem is that playing any media which can be played more than one must involve making a copy. Looking at anything creates an image (i.e. a copy) on the retina, etc. Problem is that those making laws are often too boneheaded to understand that it makes little sense to consider "copies" (especially transient copies) created purely as a side effect of use to ever be "copyright infringement".
Thats actually a bad analogy, and rather interesting. In the UK it is illegal to make a tape copy of your CD to play in the car - no fair use over here.
Even though various law lords admit this is both daft and impossible to enforce no-one actually wants to change the law.
You would be allowed to use the software, except for the fact that it makes a copy to install / a transient copy in memory. Your aren't licensed to do that, unless you agree to their license. This is why its legal to play import videos, but not DVDs. You don't have a license to make any copy, since it wasn't sold in this country, and that includes the transient one a DVD player makes. The fact that you are allowed to watch the same thing on VHS, because the technology doesn't involve transient copies.
The obvious problem here is that VHS does involve creating transient copies. If it didn't you'd have a place once media:) How do you read without creating a "transient copy"? Problem is that people have somehow got hold of the idea that digital media involves creating transient copies, analogue media dosn't. Which just happens to be a misunderstanding very favourable to a certain few publishing companies. Who can make a lot of money reselling what people have already bought.
The claim that installation or copying into RAM to run software represents some sort of restricted copying is as silly as claiming that making a tape copy of a CD to listen to in the car is restricted. So why is computer software somehow different?
These claims are only silly until they actually make it into statute or case law. Problem is that some judges and legislators don't actually that the "copy in RAM should be copyright infringment" type argument actually is daft. So they are quite happy to create what is an unenforcable law.
I didn't purchase a license - I purchased software. They consider it a copyrighted work - doesn't that mean that when I buy it I get to use it according to copyright law?
Problem is that proprietary software companies want things both ways. They want to one hand treat things as a product which can be sold off the shelf and on the other hand enforce a contract which only makes much sense if you had specifically contracted them to write the software.
In most states, a contract entered into by a minor is voidable by the minor, rather than void . That means that the minor can (before reaching the age of majority, I believe) decide to declare the contract void, and then it is as if the contract had never been entered into.
I think it's more like the contract ceases at that point in time than being treated as though it never existed. e.g. consider the case where a minor is contracted to do X amount of work for Y amount of money. If they do only X/Z amount of work they are still owed Y/Z amount of money.
Once copyright is something that expires after seven years or so, *whoosh* all that GPL'd code... mmmmm, tasty......
Not all GPL code, simply that which hasn't been altered for 7 years. Any active project would still have the current release fully protected by copyright. Microsoft would probably be very worried about new versions of Windows 95 which run well on all the latest hardware though...
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* Business people aren't mainstream people. Linux will come to desktop when home computer buyers will adopt it.
This is just nonsense. Business (and other corporate usage such as education and government) makes up the bulk of computer purchase and use.
Windows wound up in people's homes becuase it was used at work, not the other way around. Even though most versions of Windows are more suited to home usage than business usage.
I agree with other posters that PC manufacturers brought this situation upon themselves by agreeing to exclusive deals back when Microsoft didn't really have the muscle to force its own terms.
Wouldn't they have been obliged to accept them anyway. Due to laws about maximising corporate profit...
See, in a corp, spyware does NOT have to be invisible. Rather employees not do illegal stuff than catch them later.
If the only surveilence systems are visible ones then malicious people may attempt to work around them. If some of the systems are covert they may not be able to.
As I understand, it's illegal to monitor other people (inc your employees) unless you give them a warning that you are doing so, or might be doing so. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.
But you don't have to then give details of exactly how, when and where they might be being monitored. Indeed if you have some overt monitoring this could easily be judged sufficent warning.
Everywhere I've worked the policy has been that employees are not allowed to load anything, or what they can load is limited to stuff available at some corporate web site. Two days ago we got an email warning us not to load software that comes with our hardware if it was not loaded by the techs (why they don't just keep the disks if they don't want us loading the software is beyond me, but there you go).
Are different people handling the hardware and the software installations? As an aside most suppliers wouldn't understand the concept of send hardware to address A, software to address B and licence certificates to address C even if you asked them to...
Having been on the other side of the problem (trying to maintain a few thousand PCs) I can see the need to control what's loaded. If something breaks the cause could be just about anything, and the last thing you need is to find rogue software the user loaded, even if it's legal and won't get them in trouble with the PC police [bsa.org]. Maybe it wasn't the rogue software, maybe it was. Maybe unloading it to check will just make the problem worse. It's a headache the techs don't need.
You can also get things such as Windows software installs which "virally" change DLLs or registry keys. Which even uninstalling may not fix this kind of thing.
So? I is *not* a basic right in most jurisdictions of the USA. Most employers (if you have one) inform you in your new hire packet and in published company policy that your computer may be monitored at any time and that only authorized software and hardware may be run.
Actually this is the norm throughout the civilised world and tends to apply to any machine issued to someone in the course of their work.
Consider this situation: You are at work, and you'd like to know if someone's snooping on you (a valid concern). You install your anti-snooper, and the snooping software disables it. Since the computers are owned by the company, you really have no legal recourse (take your software elsewhere?).
Also consider that unless you are some kind of system admin you had no business attempting to install this "anti-snooper" program in the first place. Maybe what disabled it wasn't a "snooper" but something more "anti viris and vandalism"...
Our overwhelming military advantages are largely comprised of superior technology - intelligence gained from those nice satellites, GPS units carried by the grunts, cruise missles, even the technology used in the simulations we use to train our forces and command staff.This dosn't change the fact that the US had more weapons and soldiers. As well as having production and supply outside the war zone.
I think, however, that the CIA (and other intelligence agencies in other countries for that matter) know (and have known for a long time) that the information they get from satellites only goes so far. It's difficult to convince a politician who's trying to get reelected, or a senator that wants the money for some pork project back home, that we might have to get our hands a little bit dirty and spend some money to prevent some really nasty things from happening.
Immediatly afterwards there was quite a bit of fuss about the need for more high tech toys. Also are you so sure that giving the CIA more "dirty money" is such a good idea? Considering these are the people who trained Osama Bin Laden in the first place. Basic problem with the CIA is that in addition to gathering imtelligence they also appear to have been operating as a covert military force.
Because in the post 9/11 world, we're all potential terrorists and thieves, and the gov't has to protect it's corporate cash cows.
:)
Shouldn't "cash" equal "sacred"
Something people seem to have decided after 11/9 ;-) is that it's important to keep communication - aka the internet - going if a country has a national disaster.
The Internet didn't appear especially vulnerable. Apart from a few specific websites being overloaded. A far more vunerable communication system that day was broadcast radio and television. When did Manhatten get all it's TV stations back?
We have learned a lot. If the internet was designed today, we wouldn't make the same mistakes. An example is that the protocols (or routers) should not allow DoS attacks using packets with fake headers. They do because DoS was not considered when the protocols were first implemented, and now we can't change them.
Which dosn't do much against a more primative attack. Something like a few truck bombs against telephone switching centres or power lines.
Terrorist attacks are far more likely to be low tech than high tech.
The only way you'll stop it happening again -- IMHO -- is to stop funding Israel and get the fsck out of the economies and political systems of supposedly "independent" states that don't want you there (the people, that is, not the rulers), and to stop backing dictatorships like Saudi Arabia just because they're "on your side".
"On your side" for the moment, remember Osama Bin Laden was considered "friendly" by the US when he was targeting the Soviet Union.
Backing dictators is just another part of interfering with other country's "economic" and "political" systems. More than once the US has attacked a democratic government to install a dictator.
The most common thread is so US corporations can maximise their profit.
Personally I would say that a viable solution would also involve the US withdrawing from the occuipied nation state of Hawaii, bombing Iraq for attempting much the same kind of thing with Kuwait looks rather hypocritcial.
It's now much safer politically to spend billions on a satellite program that most people never hear or think about rather than "risk the life of one American soldier." The fact that we've had some very successful military actions in the last 20 years, largely due to an overwhelming technical advantage, only makes new tech that much more attractive to the pols.
It's difficult to call either Iraq, Kosova or Afganistan "tech advantages". They were out and out military advantages. A large, well equipted and well supplied military going after one much smaller and not as well supplied and equipted.
Terribly sorry to be contrary, but foreign nationals should literally never be working with any type of sensitive government information or operation.
That would explain rumours about Isralii owned companies being involved in operating telephone interceptions in the US exactly how?
We tend to believe that our actions have had long lasting effect on this troubled region, but my take on it is quite different. US tends to wage its war and then pack its bags and go home leaving a war ravaged country and its warlords to fight the rest of the war between themselves and their common enemies
At least with respect to a conventional war. When it came to covertly supporting mostly these exact same warlords against the Soviet Union there was plenty of "staying power", ditto with the mess the US made of Nicaragua.
Difference is when the US fights a covert war CNN arn't there keeping count of the number of dead Americans...
It's not as if the war is fully over, but apparently the US would prefer supposed allies such as the UK and Canada to do the hard work. A bit like with Kosova...
I don't think tech failed us, we failed to use the tech properly. Only now, reactively are we implementing the types of airport scanning needed to stop weapons from coming aboard airplanes.
How old a technology is radar (useful for tracking aircraft which go of course); ditto jet fighters (useful for chasing down off course aircraft, frightening kamikaze minded hijackers and if needs be shooting said aircrafts down as the lesser of two evils when the alternative is crashing into buildings with thousands of people inside); ditto telephones (useful for telling people what is going on, including giving instructions to evacuate buildings) and fire alarms (useful for getting people out of buildings quickly.)
The real interesting thing is that the entire idea of a teenager (13-17 as not being an adult) is post-Industrial Revolution. What essentially happened was that all the sudden, there were a lot of 13-17 who didn't have farms to work on (since their parents now worked in factories) and were being put into schools in order to give them something to do until they were old enough to work in a factory like everyone else.
Effectivly the age of legal majority has gone up, whilst, due to better nutrition and medical care, the age of physically maturity has gone down. One of the areas in which this has generated a whole heap of problems is in respect of ages of consent.
So why not pay the kid in Hershey bars instead of cash?
The type of consideration is utterly irrelevent to contract law anyway.
Care to point out the EULA-like clauses in the GPL? I must have missed them. It seems to me that the GPL is quite the opposite of what one normally thinks of as an EULA.
Maybe this needs to be in an FAQ somewhere. The GPL is not an EULA. It is has more in common with a publishing contract where the author does not sign over copyright to the publisher or even a contract between a band and a venue than it does with any "click this as you install" type "agreement".
A sufficiently oily IP lawyer could argue that the making of the copy in (for example) the filesystem cache is not an essential step; the software will run just fine without the cached copy.
They might argue that all caching is infringment, since it's not strictly necessary. What about disk mirroring, it's prefectly possible to have a HDD which mirrors platters, completly transparent to the OS...
It's a basic problem with the wording being over specific, especially when refering to fast changing technology. Far better wording would be something like "a transitory copy, created by the normal operation of any system, is never infringing, unless captured in some way."
The fictitious need for a "license" at all stems from an impossibly boneheaded court decision made in the 1970's which stated that the act of loading the software into memory for the purposes of execution constituted an infringing copy (the copy just made from disk to RAM), and was not covered under Fair Use. Ergo, a license was required.
This is the kind of argument which superficially makes sense (especially if you dress it up in enough technobabble). Problem is that playing any media which can be played more than one must involve making a copy. Looking at anything creates an image (i.e. a copy) on the retina, etc.
Problem is that those making laws are often too boneheaded to understand that it makes little sense to consider "copies" (especially transient copies) created purely as a side effect of use to ever be "copyright infringement".
Thats actually a bad analogy, and rather interesting. In the UK it is illegal to make a tape copy of your CD to play in the car - no fair use over here.
:)
Even though various law lords admit this is both daft and impossible to enforce no-one actually wants to change the law.
You would be allowed to use the software, except for the fact that it makes a copy to install / a transient copy in memory. Your aren't licensed to do that, unless you agree to their license. This is why its legal to play import videos, but not DVDs. You don't have a license to make any copy, since it wasn't sold in this country, and that includes the transient one a DVD player makes. The fact that you are allowed to watch the same thing on VHS, because the technology doesn't involve transient copies.
The obvious problem here is that VHS does involve creating transient copies. If it didn't you'd have a place once media
How do you read without creating a "transient copy"? Problem is that people have somehow got hold of the idea that digital media involves creating transient copies, analogue media dosn't. Which just happens to be a misunderstanding very favourable to a certain few publishing companies. Who can make a lot of money reselling what people have already bought.
The claim that installation or copying into RAM to run software represents some sort of restricted copying is as silly as claiming that making a tape copy of a CD to listen to in the car is restricted. So why is computer software somehow different?
These claims are only silly until they actually make it into statute or case law. Problem is that some judges and legislators don't actually that the "copy in RAM should be copyright infringment" type argument actually is daft. So they are quite happy to create what is an unenforcable law.
I didn't purchase a license - I purchased software. They consider it a copyrighted work - doesn't that mean that when I buy it I get to use it according to copyright law?
Problem is that proprietary software companies want things both ways. They want to one hand treat things as a product which can be sold off the shelf and on the other hand enforce a contract which only makes much sense if you had specifically contracted them to write the software.
In most states, a contract entered into by a minor is voidable by the minor, rather than void . That means that the minor can (before reaching the age of majority, I believe) decide to declare the contract void, and then it is as if the contract had never been entered into.
I think it's more like the contract ceases at that point in time than being treated as though it never existed. e.g. consider the case where a minor is contracted to do X amount of work for Y amount of money. If they do only X/Z amount of work they are still owed Y/Z amount of money.
Once copyright is something that expires after seven years or so, *whoosh* all that GPL'd code... mmmmm, tasty......
Not all GPL code, simply that which hasn't been altered for 7 years. Any active project would still have the current release fully protected by copyright. Microsoft would probably be very worried about new versions of Windows 95 which run well on all the latest hardware though...