I would like to see some actual report that says "we know this foam is not as good but we don't want to use CFC's".
Even if the new foam is 100% responsible, I belive the decision to use it was based on evidence that it worked as well or better than before and that thus switching to no CFC was believed to be an entirely positive mood.
Blaming environmentalists is really cheap. If they had painted an american flag on it and that caused the disaster, would you blame patriots? Or would you more intelligently blame the engineers who did not figure out that the big american flag was possibly dangerous and turn down that idea?
Okay, for the slow people in the audience out there. This has nothing to do with folders or with some problem with Microsoft's file system. This simply is a joke about the default settings of Explorer to "hide extensions" and the fact that their product is called DOTnet. Get it? DOT means that the "net" is an extension and is in fact hidden by their system as sold.
My god you are so stupid.
Yes it is true that it checks for directories before hiding the extension, but so what? I don't think he was talking about a directory, simply about a file called ".net".
And a quick check shows that "hide extensions" hides any text at all after the last period, not just "known" extensions. This is on W2K.
You are an idiot for being unable to see an obvious joke.
You can also turn off the "hide extensions" control and see a.net file even when using Explorer.
Though it does point out that Microsoft could improve their design. How about only hiding "recognized" extensions? Or not hiding the extension if there is nothing before the dot? It would also help if they did not screw up with files that had any number of dots other than 1 in their name, for instance "foo" and "foo." conflict though many programs think they won't conflict.
Yes this is a definate problem. However if they do this then they better be consistent, you are not allowed to work on closed-source or any commercial product where there are any limitations on redistribution either.
Though bad for the GPL, if they actually do this in a consistent way then at least they are not hyprocrites. I am afraid they are going to get brainwashed into believing that GPL=bad but working on a patch for Windows is ok.
Yes that is correct. You can use the software without "accepting" the GPL. Therefore all liability is just like public domain software.
Notice that *all* his arguments apply to public domain software and commercial software. EULA's are invalid in Germany. For that reason I call this article FUD, they mention "GPL" all the time as though these problems are specific to it.
This is like saying "Volkswagens are very bad cars. They operate at "highway" speeds which are so fast that in a collision it is very likely the occupants will be badly injured or killed."
If the GPL is "invalid" then NOBODY can copy the code, because it is simply an "exception" to copyright law that gives certain rules under which you can violate the copyright. If it vanished you would not be allowed to copy the code at all.
MS could not steal GNU/Linux code and put it in their kernels any more than they do now.
No Linux distros could exist at all. Anybody wanting to sell Linux would have to negotiate rights to the copyright with every single developer of the kernel.
The new h/w design/spec could not use a copy of Linux without also negotiating the rights to the copyright.
No it could be used for trademarks. Say KDE is really popular, they could (and probably have) trademarked the KDE icon in the corner. Even though you could copy all the code under the GPL and make your own version, you are not allowed to use that icon. You must replace it with your own. Ideally the code will work if the icon is missing so that nobody can make any argument that the icon is a necessary part of the code and thus must have been released under the GPL.
Such icons would immediately identify the code as "genuine" and that could be turned into a method to make people buy the real thing rather than a copy.
Or a road-map display program could be open source, but the map data it reads copyrighted. You could make modifications to this program but it is useless unless you either provide your own map data, or you give or sell it to people who already have bought the map program.
This means it can't be GPL'd
on
Open Source Science
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This does mean that such work cannot be released under the GPL either (since the GPL requires copyright), it must be public domain.
I don't think this is a bad thing, actually. But I'm sure the lobbyists are going to twist this into "the government can't *buy* GPL code".
Pretty correct, however it is interesting that Palladium will probably prevent your company from doing some stuff that it is doing right now.
Almost certainly it will be impossible to stop "upgrades" from happening automatically. Microsoft may make it impossible to stop a user from installing the upgrade to Word, for instance (thus forcing the rest of the company to upgrade). It may automatically download and turn on/off advertising.
In some ways the things your company is doing are the types of freedom that Microsoft is trying to prevent. The computers belong to your company and they now have some freedom to restrict them to being used the way they want.
If your company had a garage sale and you bought one of their computers, right now you can take it home, take out some screws, plug in a CD, and install your own copy of Windows (or Linux). Under Palladium the equivalent is impossible, it is as though that machine belongs to your company forever.
The idea that this has *anything* to do with what most people call "computer security" is rubbish.
To counter your point, modern versions of Widows do use the CPU protections to stop programs from doing anything they want. They cannot randomly jump into the kernel or change it.
However this reinforces your point:
1. The CPU protections are hardware protections that stop "bad" programs (outside the kernel) from messing with "good" ones (inside the kernel).
2. This hardware protection is absolutley bulletproof, far more reliable than the more complex Palladium. As far as I know there are no viruses that rely on a bug in the microcode to turn off the CPU's hardware protection state.
3. It is obvious that despite this demonstratably perfect hardware protection, Windows system (and Linux ones) are not immune to viruses.
The reason it fails is that such hardware protection does not stop bugs. Every single virus and attack relies on telling some software that somebody "trusted" to do something that it was not expected to do. The fact that the software is "trusted by Palladium" and by 1024-bit one-way encryption does ZERO to make it less likely that it will do something unexpected.
In fact Palladium may make it worse, by encouraging far more stuff to be "trusted" (just like one security problem is that there is too much in the kernel). Claiming Palladium is a "micro" kernel is rubbish, as the current CPU hardware protection is probably a few hundred transistors in a tiny dot buried inside the processor chip and is more micro than anything Microsoft is dreaming up, and it is already proven that it does squat for protecting your machine.
The other bad effect of Palladium is it may make it impossible to fix the problems, especially if it prevents unsigned filters from being installed between the network and executables.
Palladium is 100% designed for DRM and that is 100% of it's purpose. Well on current machines a virus writer can probalby get Outlook to do all kinds of nasty things, but most involve email, they cannot get it to decrypt and play a DVD. Right now you can play a DVD by running another program. Palladium will not allow that program to run, so the only possible way to play a DVD would be the equivalent of fooling Outlook into doing it, and Microsoft and the RIAA knows that is impossible.
Some Palladium defenders keep pointing out that the chip will provide hardware encryption calculations. The problem is that it has to so that trusted stuff can be decrypted without anybody being able to access the secret decryption key. So it is trivial to add a little extra access to that hardware that is already there. Considering this is the same industry that thinks it is a good idea to have the actual waveforms produced by modems and speakers be generated in realtime by the processor rather than add a $5 chip to the machine to do it, any suggestion that they are adding this expensive chip for any benevolent reason should be dismissed immediately.
Microsoft does not compete. If things had happened slightly different than it did in 1980 then somebody else would be in Billy Gates' monopoly position, and Billy would be posting on Slashdot complaining about that monopoly's unfair practices. He could write Windows exactly like it is now and it would have ZERO impact on the market. Quality has absolutely zero to do with who is on top.
You know this to be true. Everybody does. Any argument that Microsoft competed on the quality of their products is absolute bunk. Any quality is due to them hiring good people, but guess what, the alternative monopoly would have hired those same people!
Clue: Linux is running commercial applications! So "the vast majority of the actual graphics software we use is still commercial/proprietary" does not mean you are not using Linux!
The "dedicated compositing system" is by far the most likely thing to be running on Linux. Every commercial compositing system that is worth using has a Linux version.
For every single person who says "Linux will never work because there is no good open-source house-blueprint software (or whatever)" is missing the entire point. Nobody expects good open-source house-blueprint software (it's not interesting enough to work on). If things were reversed and Linux was the most popular system, there would be a closed-source house-blueprint software for it, and every game and everything you see for Windows. And if Microsoft tried to compete would people then say "Windows will never work because the employees at Microsoft have not been able to write house-blueprint software"? Hopefully not, but it seems like they would.
Just want to be the first to point out that if "software piracy" is the problem, lowering the Xbox price has nothing to do with it! Seems like Microsoft wanted to get that in there so everybody keeps hearing about "piracy". Sure software piracy is a problem, but it cannot possibly explain lowered Xbox sales. In fact if everybody stole Xbox software (and say were prevented from stealing Playstation software) then the Xbox itself would be more popular!
This is not completely a joke. One possible reason SCO refuses to release the code, assumming they really have a case, is that it is in an embarrassing position, such as an obsolete back-compatabilty part of Linux, or in an algorithim that has been removed in the newest Linux already, or marked with comments like "This is stupid and should be rewritten asap".
As many have pointed out, releasing the code location would not hurt their case (and I think it would help it, as Linux hackers would probably remove the code without too much question, and they could then point to this removal as "proof" that even the Linux hackers admit it was stolen). Because of this I figured that their refusal to release the code indicates that they really have no case and are being paid by Microsoft to spread FUD about Linux.
However the "embarrassing location" possibility may also exist. Even though releasing the code location would not technically hurt their case, the resulting laughter would probably be so extreme that it would appear in the general press and public opinion and completely compromise their lawsuit and force them to settle.
To the average person, Windows is free. It came with the computer, and it is therefore free, as far as the consumer is concerned all that money went for the piece of hardware.
If Microsoft is ever foolish enough to make Windows pop up a "type in your credit card number so we can charge you $20" window, then people will switch to Linux in droves. However Microsoft can get away with charging $200 or more (yes I know that right now it is only about $50 but I believe that is a possible limit) per machine manufactured and people will gladly believe it is "free".
I read the article again, and I agree he did imply that Linus created the whole thing. My first reading was more along the lines of "Linus created the thing SCO is suing" but that is not what the article actually says. It certainly would have been more fair to say that Linus built on existing open source and was assisted by many others in creating Linux.
You are confused about the power of the GPL. SCO is claiming far more than the GPL.
If I take a piece of GPL code and extend it with my own code to make a new program, it is true that I cannot release the result without also releasing my code. However (and this is a big one that everybody that calls the GPL "viral" ignores) I can remove the GPL code and sell the rest, the part I wrote, as closed source!. Now it is true that I will have to replicate the functions I need from the GPL code, but everybody knows that is not impossible or even difficult. This could even be a reasonable business plan as temporarily using the GPL code may allow development and testing to be done sooner.
SCO is basically claiming you cannot do that with their code. They are trying to say the Unix code is truly "viral" and it really "infects" everything it touches. The GPL does not "infect" at all and is completely harmless once you seperate it from the code it came in contact with.
Listen, "Linux" is the popular term. And RMS and everybody else who argues against it should look very carefully at what happened. IMHO about 50% of Linux's success is not due to GPL or good engineering or the BSD lawsuits, it is due to a nice name and a cute picture of a penguin. BSD has a not-as-cute devil and had a terrible nerdy spell-it-out name and it lost for that reason.
I've started to wonder if RMS's insistence on "GNU/Linux" is to try to get rid of some of the popularity of Linux amoung the non-elite-haxors, so that only members of the exclusive club will use it.
In any case, to be technically correct, SCO seems to be attacking the kernel anyway, not the GNU tools. Don't they distribute some GNU tools with their own system?
"copyleft" (ie the GPL) depends on copyright. If there was no such thing as copyright, the GPL could not exist. Therefore RMS is entirely in favor of copyright.
egcs is based on gcc so just using it won't work. Maybe the new compiler could be based on the Intel one? That would be a coup.
However I am not sure the compiler really needs to be replaced to make a non-GNU system. Gcc also runs on Windows and is used for lots of development there but that does not make it GNU/Windows.
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Even if the new foam is 100% responsible, I belive the decision to use it was based on evidence that it worked as well or better than before and that thus switching to no CFC was believed to be an entirely positive mood.
Blaming environmentalists is really cheap. If they had painted an american flag on it and that caused the disaster, would you blame patriots? Or would you more intelligently blame the engineers who did not figure out that the big american flag was possibly dangerous and turn down that idea?
Okay, for the slow people in the audience out there. This has nothing to do with folders or with some problem with Microsoft's file system. This simply is a joke about the default settings of Explorer to "hide extensions" and the fact that their product is called DOTnet. Get it? DOT means that the "net" is an extension and is in fact hidden by their system as sold.
My god you are so stupid.
Yes it is true that it checks for directories before hiding the extension, but so what? I don't think he was talking about a directory, simply about a file called ".net".
And a quick check shows that "hide extensions" hides any text at all after the last period, not just "known" extensions. This is on W2K.
You can also turn off the "hide extensions" control and see a .net file even when using Explorer.
Though it does point out that Microsoft could improve their design. How about only hiding "recognized" extensions? Or not hiding the extension if there is nothing before the dot? It would also help if they did not screw up with files that had any number of dots other than 1 in their name, for instance "foo" and "foo." conflict though many programs think they won't conflict.
You are wrong. Linux explicitly allows closed-source programs to be run on it, and closed source "modules" to be added to it.
Aren't getting invited to parties anymore, huh?
Though bad for the GPL, if they actually do this in a consistent way then at least they are not hyprocrites. I am afraid they are going to get brainwashed into believing that GPL=bad but working on a patch for Windows is ok.
Notice that *all* his arguments apply to public domain software and commercial software. EULA's are invalid in Germany. For that reason I call this article FUD, they mention "GPL" all the time as though these problems are specific to it.
This is like saying "Volkswagens are very bad cars. They operate at "highway" speeds which are so fast that in a collision it is very likely the occupants will be badly injured or killed."
MS could not steal GNU/Linux code and put it in their kernels any more than they do now.
No Linux distros could exist at all. Anybody wanting to sell Linux would have to negotiate rights to the copyright with every single developer of the kernel.
The new h/w design/spec could not use a copy of Linux without also negotiating the rights to the copyright.
Such icons would immediately identify the code as "genuine" and that could be turned into a method to make people buy the real thing rather than a copy.
Or a road-map display program could be open source, but the map data it reads copyrighted. You could make modifications to this program but it is useless unless you either provide your own map data, or you give or sell it to people who already have bought the map program.
I don't think this is a bad thing, actually. But I'm sure the lobbyists are going to twist this into "the government can't *buy* GPL code".
Ice, Rayz, and Nuke all run on Linux.
Almost certainly it will be impossible to stop "upgrades" from happening automatically. Microsoft may make it impossible to stop a user from installing the upgrade to Word, for instance (thus forcing the rest of the company to upgrade). It may automatically download and turn on/off advertising.
In some ways the things your company is doing are the types of freedom that Microsoft is trying to prevent. The computers belong to your company and they now have some freedom to restrict them to being used the way they want.
If your company had a garage sale and you bought one of their computers, right now you can take it home, take out some screws, plug in a CD, and install your own copy of Windows (or Linux). Under Palladium the equivalent is impossible, it is as though that machine belongs to your company forever.
To counter your point, modern versions of Widows do use the CPU protections to stop programs from doing anything they want. They cannot randomly jump into the kernel or change it.
However this reinforces your point:
1. The CPU protections are hardware protections that stop "bad" programs (outside the kernel) from messing with "good" ones (inside the kernel).
2. This hardware protection is absolutley bulletproof, far more reliable than the more complex Palladium. As far as I know there are no viruses that rely on a bug in the microcode to turn off the CPU's hardware protection state.
3. It is obvious that despite this demonstratably perfect hardware protection, Windows system (and Linux ones) are not immune to viruses.
The reason it fails is that such hardware protection does not stop bugs. Every single virus and attack relies on telling some software that somebody "trusted" to do something that it was not expected to do. The fact that the software is "trusted by Palladium" and by 1024-bit one-way encryption does ZERO to make it less likely that it will do something unexpected.
In fact Palladium may make it worse, by encouraging far more stuff to be "trusted" (just like one security problem is that there is too much in the kernel). Claiming Palladium is a "micro" kernel is rubbish, as the current CPU hardware protection is probably a few hundred transistors in a tiny dot buried inside the processor chip and is more micro than anything Microsoft is dreaming up, and it is already proven that it does squat for protecting your machine.
The other bad effect of Palladium is it may make it impossible to fix the problems, especially if it prevents unsigned filters from being installed between the network and executables.
Palladium is 100% designed for DRM and that is 100% of it's purpose. Well on current machines a virus writer can probalby get Outlook to do all kinds of nasty things, but most involve email, they cannot get it to decrypt and play a DVD. Right now you can play a DVD by running another program. Palladium will not allow that program to run, so the only possible way to play a DVD would be the equivalent of fooling Outlook into doing it, and Microsoft and the RIAA knows that is impossible.
Some Palladium defenders keep pointing out that the chip will provide hardware encryption calculations. The problem is that it has to so that trusted stuff can be decrypted without anybody being able to access the secret decryption key. So it is trivial to add a little extra access to that hardware that is already there. Considering this is the same industry that thinks it is a good idea to have the actual waveforms produced by modems and speakers be generated in realtime by the processor rather than add a $5 chip to the machine to do it, any suggestion that they are adding this expensive chip for any benevolent reason should be dismissed immediately.
You know this to be true. Everybody does. Any argument that Microsoft competed on the quality of their products is absolute bunk. Any quality is due to them hiring good people, but guess what, the alternative monopoly would have hired those same people!
The "dedicated compositing system" is by far the most likely thing to be running on Linux. Every commercial compositing system that is worth using has a Linux version.
For every single person who says "Linux will never work because there is no good open-source house-blueprint software (or whatever)" is missing the entire point. Nobody expects good open-source house-blueprint software (it's not interesting enough to work on). If things were reversed and Linux was the most popular system, there would be a closed-source house-blueprint software for it, and every game and everything you see for Windows. And if Microsoft tried to compete would people then say "Windows will never work because the employees at Microsoft have not been able to write house-blueprint software"? Hopefully not, but it seems like they would.
Just want to be the first to point out that if "software piracy" is the problem, lowering the Xbox price has nothing to do with it! Seems like Microsoft wanted to get that in there so everybody keeps hearing about "piracy". Sure software piracy is a problem, but it cannot possibly explain lowered Xbox sales. In fact if everybody stole Xbox software (and say were prevented from stealing Playstation software) then the Xbox itself would be more popular!
They could hire the people but that would not give them the rights to the "stolen code". Any such code would belong to SCO still.
This is not completely a joke. One possible reason SCO refuses to release the code, assumming they really have a case, is that it is in an embarrassing position, such as an obsolete back-compatabilty part of Linux, or in an algorithim that has been removed in the newest Linux already, or marked with comments like "This is stupid and should be rewritten asap".
As many have pointed out, releasing the code location would not hurt their case (and I think it would help it, as Linux hackers would probably remove the code without too much question, and they could then point to this removal as "proof" that even the Linux hackers admit it was stolen). Because of this I figured that their refusal to release the code indicates that they really have no case and are being paid by Microsoft to spread FUD about Linux.
However the "embarrassing location" possibility may also exist. Even though releasing the code location would not technically hurt their case, the resulting laughter would probably be so extreme that it would appear in the general press and public opinion and completely compromise their lawsuit and force them to settle.
If Microsoft is ever foolish enough to make Windows pop up a "type in your credit card number so we can charge you $20" window, then people will switch to Linux in droves. However Microsoft can get away with charging $200 or more (yes I know that right now it is only about $50 but I believe that is a possible limit) per machine manufactured and people will gladly believe it is "free".
I read the article again, and I agree he did imply that Linus created the whole thing. My first reading was more along the lines of "Linus created the thing SCO is suing" but that is not what the article actually says. It certainly would have been more fair to say that Linus built on existing open source and was assisted by many others in creating Linux.
If I take a piece of GPL code and extend it with my own code to make a new program, it is true that I cannot release the result without also releasing my code. However (and this is a big one that everybody that calls the GPL "viral" ignores) I can remove the GPL code and sell the rest, the part I wrote, as closed source!. Now it is true that I will have to replicate the functions I need from the GPL code, but everybody knows that is not impossible or even difficult. This could even be a reasonable business plan as temporarily using the GPL code may allow development and testing to be done sooner.
SCO is basically claiming you cannot do that with their code. They are trying to say the Unix code is truly "viral" and it really "infects" everything it touches. The GPL does not "infect" at all and is completely harmless once you seperate it from the code it came in contact with.
I've started to wonder if RMS's insistence on "GNU/Linux" is to try to get rid of some of the popularity of Linux amoung the non-elite-haxors, so that only members of the exclusive club will use it.
In any case, to be technically correct, SCO seems to be attacking the kernel anyway, not the GNU tools. Don't they distribute some GNU tools with their own system?
In fact it can be easily argued that open-source discourages copyright infringement because it can so easily be detected.
"copyleft" (ie the GPL) depends on copyright. If there was no such thing as copyright, the GPL could not exist. Therefore RMS is entirely in favor of copyright.
However I am not sure the compiler really needs to be replaced to make a non-GNU system. Gcc also runs on Windows and is used for lots of development there but that does not make it GNU/Windows.