Though it doesn't seem like disabling region protection on a DVD player to get around region encoding should actually be illegal; since regions have nothing to do with copy protection (piracy; if you are able to duplicate DVDs, it should be trivial to remove region encodings from them) and everything to do with control of when and where a particular dvd becomes playable.
So...IANAL...how is removing region checking from a DVD player illegal?
Why don't I? Why don't other people? I don't have the cash to hire a lawyer; I'm in debt. Money wins here. I think it is likely other people are in the same position.
People are very attached to what they have; they are scared to let go of it, even if it is to seek something better.
I must admit that I don't think Perens' idea was very creative. I would be more willing to do something more effectual; to break the law without doing *any* harm. To find many easy ways to break the law without doing *any* harm -- when this is possible for a law, then the law (IMO)is bad.
Showing people how to steal movies is rather silly; what about showing people how to chip their XBox so they can write their own games? Or use a load of cheap $200 computers to serve up their MP3s or home pages or simple databases?
Now *that* would be violating the law harmlessly:)
My suggestion as well; in particular because extreme programming encourages one practice that improves productivity. Check out the website here - and pay attention to the concept of "pair programming" where programmers work in a team. Putting a good programmer with a bad programmer for a moderate period of time will often raise the bad programmer's productivity (though obviously, it kills the good programmers productivity and maybe his attitude). So keep rotating the programmers around until things have become suitably efficient.
The whole concept of XP is a bit awkward and works best in either a teacher/student model, or using expert programmers who know eachother well. Nowhere close to panacea.
Not to mention the acronym sounds evil and M$-ish:)
Unfortunately, as we see time and time again, Americans are willing to trade their freedom for a bit of money. If Perens was serious about risking jailtime, why isn't he willing to resign from his position at HP before giving the presentation?
A true patriot might die for his country; I'm sure there are more than enough companies and hackers willing to donate a bit of cash if needs be until he finds another job.
There is also issues of consumer protection, where you purchase a product, but then talk about how bad it is, that could violate a term in a license agreement.
If I complain to my coworkers that.NET programs are 90% slower than their C++ unmanaged equivalents, am I violating the no-published-benchmarks clause?:)
Since the mod chips circumvent copy protection, I can see how they are made illegal under the DMCA in the US. Is there a Canadian version to this I am not aware of?
So you'd use a proprietary product, just not if it uses another proprietary product? (that is distributed under a very similar, and even less restrictive, license!)
If I SSH into a machine in Canada, run Emacs, and write cryptographic code, am I exporting anything/breaking any laws, if it would be export-regulated code, in the US (or maybe in another country?)
How do you decide when a piece of software or an effect is "good enough" for production? Do you make many "draft" versions of an effect, and constantly refine it, working out bugs and adding features (much like how Open Source software evolves)? Is there anything the Open Source community could learn about software quality from software that millions of people "see"?:)
I wonder what is meant by this. By no braking hardware, are they implying that the motors will be used to brake the car (maybe like some subways)? What about the need to "stop on a dime"? The idea of not having real brakes, I would imagine, is about as scary to the public (if not moreso) than carrying potentially explosive fuel tanks.
Also, I think they underestimate the public's willingness to invest a little more to be able to refuel at home. It'd be worth it to me to not have to leave early to get gas:) If it's real in 10 years, I want one!
Interesting to note that one of the reasons so many hacks come from China is that the computer security there is non-existant, and that so many machines there are 'owned'. Certainly they consider hacking/cracking information illegal in some contexts. It's not the Chinese doing the hacking; it's the ignorance of the Chinese allowing people to turn them into unwitting weapons.
I believe that the government likes this idea: Make sure they hear only what you want them to believe, and they will believe whatever you want. A billion people would make an awesome army (especially an economic one).
I am not aware of any current standards that exist that would be useful in distributing information. ASCII and tab delimited files are useless; Adobe has too much control over PDF related things (The ebook DMCA stuff worries me), and I don't think the average user wants or is capable of downloading large systems like TeX or OpenOffice, which while are technically superior to proprietary products in many ways, also both require large run time environments.
And at any rate, PDF and PostScript just aren't editable enough.
When I worked for a government contractor that published forms, we were given Microsoft Office and Acrobat Distiller to create them. Is it valid to use proprietary products to publish in open formats? What about open formats like HTML and certain companies who make browsers which support and use heavily non-standar extensions?
I'm not familiar with any open-standard file format for which free viewing and editing tools exist for multiple platforms that do not require huge downloads or complicated installations. TeX would actually be my first choice; but TeX is huge and complicated to install (though a standard installation with (I believe) MiKTeX for Win32 as well as TeTeX under any *IX is really really easy). SGML is also fairly useful, though not nearly as powerful.
Hmm, maybe we need to push TeX adoption among the Windows community (there already exists easy to use editors for *IX such as LyX!), and TeX files can be converted easily to.ps,.pdf,.txt,.html, and almost anything else you can think of!
So maybe software implementing standards is the key:)
In the context of networking, TCP can be considered deterministic because the output of the connection on the receiving end will be identical in all ways to the input of the connection on the transmitting end. This is not the case in UDP, where it is possible for packets to arrive in a different order than they were transmitted, or not at all. This is the heart of determinism: a deterministic algorithm has one and only one possible path for each possible input.
A deterministic system maps input to output in 1:1, non-deterministic maps input to output in 1:some_number
Note that TCP isn't really deterministic: What if all the routes between the source and destination go down? The packet won't be received. It's just that it's more likely to be deterministic. And anyway, TCP packets get dropped just like UDP packets; it's just that TCP packets get resent.
btw, this has nothing to do with the "magic" that non-deterministic systems exhibit (these systems can work by looking for a specific output for a specific input out of all the outputs that can be generated from that input).
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It's amazing what can be done with a hex editor and a packet sniffer.
You are right; I forgot about that. Sorry :)
Though it doesn't seem like disabling region protection on a DVD player to get around region encoding should actually be illegal; since regions have nothing to do with copy protection (piracy; if you are able to duplicate DVDs, it should be trivial to remove region encodings from them) and everything to do with control of when and where a particular dvd becomes playable.
So...IANAL...how is removing region checking from a DVD player illegal?
Why don't I? Why don't other people? I don't have the cash to hire a lawyer; I'm in debt. Money wins here. I think it is likely other people are in the same position.
:)
People are very attached to what they have; they are scared to let go of it, even if it is to seek something better.
I must admit that I don't think Perens' idea was very creative. I would be more willing to do something more effectual; to break the law without doing *any* harm. To find many easy ways to break the law without doing *any* harm -- when this is possible for a law, then the law (IMO)is bad.
Showing people how to steal movies is rather silly; what about showing people how to chip their XBox so they can write their own games? Or use a load of cheap $200 computers to serve up their MP3s or home pages or simple databases?
Now *that* would be violating the law harmlessly
My suggestion as well; in particular because extreme programming encourages one practice that improves productivity. Check out the website here - and pay attention to the concept of "pair programming" where programmers work in a team. Putting a good programmer with a bad programmer for a moderate period of time will often raise the bad programmer's productivity (though obviously, it kills the good programmers productivity and maybe his attitude). So keep rotating the programmers around until things have become suitably efficient.
:)
The whole concept of XP is a bit awkward and works best in either a teacher/student model, or using expert programmers who know eachother well. Nowhere close to panacea.
Not to mention the acronym sounds evil and M$-ish
Unfortunately, as we see time and time again, Americans are willing to trade their freedom for a bit of money. If Perens was serious about risking jailtime, why isn't he willing to resign from his position at HP before giving the presentation?
A true patriot might die for his country; I'm sure there are more than enough companies and hackers willing to donate a bit of cash if needs be until he finds another job.
There is also issues of consumer protection, where you purchase a product, but then talk about how bad it is, that could violate a term in a license agreement.
.NET programs are 90% slower than their C++ unmanaged equivalents, am I violating the no-published-benchmarks clause? :)
If I complain to my coworkers that
Since the mod chips circumvent copy protection, I can see how they are made illegal under the DMCA in the US. Is there a Canadian version to this I am not aware of?
And in other news, Microsoft refuses to sell Windows to Dell as long as they are selling computers with Linux pre-loaded.
HP, uncreative as always, goodbye!
So you'd use a proprietary product, just not if it uses another proprietary product? (that is distributed under a very similar, and even less restrictive, license!)
How is Borland any less evil than Troll Tech?
If I SSH into a machine in Canada, run Emacs, and write cryptographic code, am I exporting anything/breaking any laws, if it would be export-regulated code, in the US (or maybe in another country?)
How do you decide when a piece of software or an effect is "good enough" for production? Do you make many "draft" versions of an effect, and constantly refine it, working out bugs and adding features (much like how Open Source software evolves)? Is there anything the Open Source community could learn about software quality from software that millions of people "see"? :)
I wonder what is meant by this. By no braking hardware, are they implying that the motors will be used to brake the car (maybe like some subways)? What about the need to "stop on a dime"? The idea of not having real brakes, I would imagine, is about as scary to the public (if not moreso) than carrying potentially explosive fuel tanks.
:) If it's real in 10 years, I want one!
Also, I think they underestimate the public's willingness to invest a little more to be able to refuel at home. It'd be worth it to me to not have to leave early to get gas
Interesting to note that one of the reasons so many hacks come from China is that the computer security there is non-existant, and that so many machines there are 'owned'. Certainly they consider hacking/cracking information illegal in some contexts. It's not the Chinese doing the hacking; it's the ignorance of the Chinese allowing people to turn them into unwitting weapons.
I believe that the government likes this idea: Make sure they hear only what you want them to believe, and they will believe whatever you want. A billion people would make an awesome army (especially an economic one).
I am not aware of any current standards that exist that would be useful in distributing information. ASCII and tab delimited files are useless; Adobe has too much control over PDF related things (The ebook DMCA stuff worries me), and I don't think the average user wants or is capable of downloading large systems like TeX or OpenOffice, which while are technically superior to proprietary products in many ways, also both require large run time environments.
.ps, .pdf, .txt, .html, and almost anything else you can think of!
:)
And at any rate, PDF and PostScript just aren't editable enough.
When I worked for a government contractor that published forms, we were given Microsoft Office and Acrobat Distiller to create them. Is it valid to use proprietary products to publish in open formats? What about open formats like HTML and certain companies who make browsers which support and use heavily non-standar extensions?
I'm not familiar with any open-standard file format for which free viewing and editing tools exist for multiple platforms that do not require huge downloads or complicated installations. TeX would actually be my first choice; but TeX is huge and complicated to install (though a standard installation with (I believe) MiKTeX for Win32 as well as TeTeX under any *IX is really really easy). SGML is also fairly useful, though not nearly as powerful.
Hmm, maybe we need to push TeX adoption among the Windows community (there already exists easy to use editors for *IX such as LyX!), and TeX files can be converted easily to
So maybe software implementing standards is the key
In the context of networking, TCP can be considered deterministic because the output of the connection on the receiving end will be identical in all ways to the input of the connection on the transmitting end. This is not the case in UDP, where it is possible for packets to arrive in a different order than they were transmitted, or not at all. This is the heart of determinism: a deterministic algorithm has one and only one possible path for each possible input.
A deterministic system maps input to output in 1:1, non-deterministic maps input to output in 1:some_number
Note that TCP isn't really deterministic: What if all the routes between the source and destination go down? The packet won't be received. It's just that it's more likely to be deterministic. And anyway, TCP packets get dropped just like UDP packets; it's just that TCP packets get resent.
btw, this has nothing to do with the "magic" that non-deterministic systems exhibit (these systems can work by looking for a specific output for a specific input out of all the outputs that can be generated from that input).