If you actually go down the list of security vulnerabilities for the Linux distributions, half of it is stuff like this:
http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-2004 10-07.xml
Every single one of those counts as a vulnerability against a Linux distro. If Microsoft had a vulnerability like that, they probably wouldn't fix it, much less publish it as a vulnerability.
I disagree. We see exploits for every major security issue in every major OS. If Windows Visa gets better than your average Linux distro on security vulnerabilities, we'll see less exploits overall.
The whole reason the Student test was developed was to work with small samples. You know... beer taste testing where you can't have the same tester drink a hundred beers at once.
If the BBC put their content online DRM free, they would basically be telling people that it's OK to download, transcode, share etc. all of their content which would surely have a more significant impact on their revenue than P2P does at the moment.
That's just a really lame excuse to screw viewers. Legally, redistributing content downloaded from the BBC without permission is exactly the same as redistributing stuff off some torrent site. Redistribution is already illegal - there's absolutely no reason to sacrifice interoperability in order to screw with the functionality of people's computers.
Beyond the way I mentioned, which does involve one participant using the approved player, as long as it's possible to look at the DRM system inside of a VM (which will even be possible if it depends on a TPM, because TPM systems are hackable), there will be inexpensive ways to hack the format that don't involve using a non-Linux machine at all.
All TPM systems are hackable, that's true. The question is if that requires a $10 million dollar electronics lab with a laser cutter accurate to nanometers and an electron microscope or not. A system that hard to hack is possible, at least theoretically, and the video camera attack becomes the best available attack long before then.
I agree that it's difficult, however the reality is that the market has defined the standard, and there is a way of making it happen.
That's obviously the way you have to look at it for the idea to make sense, but that's not necessarily the correct way to look at it. Another way to look at it is like this: Binary Windows applications, as a "standard", aren't really that big a deal. Linux is useful right now without them, and patching the few holes in functionality with native Linux apps is more useful than trying to emulate a non-standard interface who's creator intentionally modifies it to thwart emulators.
Some applications, like media players with DRM, will *never* be possible to emulate (by design). Applications written by Microsoft will be specifically patched to break emulation; this has already happened with MS Office and Wine. What does that leave to emulate? Adobe apps that will be ported in a couple more years of market share gains? Games? Various apps that are being replaced by web-apps anyway like tax prep software?
Another way of looking at it is this: The "standard" is cross-platform open source software. Commercial software can only really compete with it in some niche markets, and those niche players can port their software wherever they want as the market changes. As people notice that they can replace individual apps with $0 replacements, they will eventually make the same decision for the OS itself. Windows desktop market share is just inertia (and video gamers, where the market is different), and it will lose to friction eventually.
That's generally true, if the goals of the minority are directly opposed to the goals of the majority. If the minority can have what the want without the majority losing out, they'll get what they want too. As a quick example, consider handicap parking spaces.
Wait, what? You're comparing feature sets based on how the subroutines are named?
If something is supported in a standardized and widely implemented extension, it's supported. That'd be like saying that Apache doesn't support PHP because it requires an "extension" to make it work.
You do realize that all of the BBC content is already available for free download on ThePirateBay.org, right?
All that adding DRM to their download service does is inconvenience TV license payers who use Linux. That's it. Nothing else. If they restrict downloads to UK IP addresses only, there's no reason to worry about those videos getting re-uploaded to file sharing sites because *the videos are already there*.
All of this content is already available DRM free for $0 on ThePirateBay.org, and that fact isn't going to change anytime soon. A simpler direct download (either to UK residents for free or to the world for a fee) is a service worth offering. If they make that download DRM-encumbered, they've basically just made their service worse than TPB - they shouldn't bother because it's a waste of time and will give them bad press.
As the person you're replying to said, what you're suggesting has been tried - the Wine project has been working on it for years and expended an impressive amount of resources on it. As a result, it's possible to run quite a few Windows apps on Linux. But - they've discovered that the basic idea of re-implementing Windows won't work in general because it's a moving target.
We'll be much better off pointing developers in the direction of stuff like WxWidgets and getting them to write cross-platform apps. It's not hard, and there aren't that many platforms to test.
DRM is impossible to implement correctly because it is theoretically impossible to do. The only reason any DRM system isn't cracked is because no one has cared enough yet to crack it.
DRM is theoretically impossible. That's true. Unfortunately, DRM that can only be inexpensively hacked with an allowed player and recapture equipment is probably entirely possible. What that means is this: It's possible to create a DRM system that will prevent people from playing videos on Linux. It'll still be possible to crack the DRM and extract the video, but you'll have to use an approved player in the process.
I don't know enough about the TPM design and Vista to know if they have implemented that sort of DRM. Any video format that can run on Windows XP is probably susceptible to a key interception attack. But don't underestimate the potential for DRM in the future - it's an excellent technology to create platform lock-in, which is why Microsoft and Apple think it's so great.
Anyway, even 7.5% is a paltry amount for the government to listen to. The only time a government listens to such a small percentage of the population is when that particular percentage controls a disproportionately large portion of wealth and/or donations to political campaigns. I still agree that it sucks.
Wait, what?
Are you seriously suggesting that a government could get away with failing to provide a public service to 7.5% of the population? In most countries you get seats in parliament for less than that. Here in the USA, we provide much more complicated public services than the BBC to support much smaller minorities than that.
but do you really have to "grudgingly agree" not to rob anyone at gunpoint? Or to not make fotos of young children to sell them on the web?
Those are good examples, because exactly which activities we're going to restrict to prevent those problems is a matter of continuing debate. Obviously robbing people is bad, but banning guns is much less obvious. Obviously abusing children is bad, but banning the sale of all pornography on the internet will get you some opposition. You'll be more likely to get different results depending how the debate is framed. ("Why should the government be able to interfere with your right to play with model rockets?" vs "Why should the government allow you to play with dangerous model rockets?")
Well, how do you define what is and what isn't a political topic? Lots of people consider things that are "objectively incorrect beliefs about simple and easily verifiable facts" to be political.
You're right. That's a hard question. Personally, I don't think that "political speech" should be the relevant qualifier - all speech should be allowed, and the question should be about which specific cases of malicious speech (i.e. fraud, orders to commit an immediate and specific crime, etc) leave the speaker with some liability. Under that model, yelling FIRE in a crowded theater is perfectly legal - but a judge can later decide that the yeller is liable for any damage caused in any panic that results.
Wherever you try to draw the line on allowed speech, there will be some edge cases to argue about - getting the line in the right place is an utter mess, and given the way politics and laws work I don't think there's any way to get it right. Freedom of speech is important enough that it's better not to give legislators the chance to screw it up at all.
I'm not sure how the theater being on fire could have anything to do with politics. Race is a very politically charged topic, objectively incorrect beliefs about simple and easily verifiable facts like whether or not a theater is on fire really aren't related to politics at all.
Cache size is occasionally useful if you happen to know what the working set is of the app you're running. Clock speed means basically nothing unless you're comparing two chips with identical architectures - actually, for these chips, comparing the model numbers (higher is better) probably gives you almost exactly as much useful information.
The problem is that it's illegal for them to release it. Both Sony and Nintendo require that all gamees released on their platforms be approved by them (it's part of the contract a developer must sign to get a dev kit). In some countries it's even more illegal because selling an unrated game is prohibited.
All I really have to say is "Ha, Ha! That's what you get for developing for a proprietary platform".
it is OK to call for genocide because there is no law that forbids it?
No. It should be legal to call for genocide because that would be speech that doesn't immediately incite a specific crime.
The fact of the matter is that there are people who hold political beliefs that include violent action against groups of people they don't like. Preventing them from publicly discussing and promoting those beliefs is bad for two reasons: First, a free society based on political discourse can't function if the majority can silence a minority with laws. It doesn't matter what the minority is promoting or how much you think they're blatantly wrong, because interesting political speech is almost always controversial. Second, if you drive things like hate speech underground people will still talk about it - the public just won't get to hear about it and argue against it.
The only reason to try to ban political speech is if you disagree with it but don't have a good explanation why it's wrong. Are you saying that you're having trouble explaining why we shouldn't kill all black people?
Did you even actually read what I said? Did you understand it?
I never once said that anyone has a legally recognized right to modify proprietary software. In fact, copyright law most likely prohibits modifying copyrighted stuff - it absolutely prohibits distributing modified versions of copyrighted software.
All I'm arguing is that copyright law (as well as software licensing) is completely and wholly different and separate from physical property law. I also began the argument that current copyright law is in conflict with the philosophical basis for physical property, but I don't think I'm going to get very far with that because you're having trouble grasping the easy part of my statements.
There's an argument that they should be using a patent free codec, but you're right - if they're going to be using a patented codec anyway, there is no argument for using anything other than some flavor of MPEG-4 - and H.264 is the preferred flavor due to hardware support.
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If you actually go down the list of security vulnerabilities for the Linux distributions, half of it is stuff like this:4 10-07.xml
http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200
Every single one of those counts as a vulnerability against a Linux distro. If Microsoft had a vulnerability like that, they probably wouldn't fix it, much less publish it as a vulnerability.
I'd disagree. Those two metrics are about the same.
How about this metric: Percentage of systems pwned? Or this one: Percentage of systems pwned when not behind a firewall?
I disagree. We see exploits for every major security issue in every major OS. If Windows Visa gets better than your average Linux distro on security vulnerabilities, we'll see less exploits overall.
The whole reason the Student test was developed was to work with small samples. You know... beer taste testing where you can't have the same tester drink a hundred beers at once.
That's just a really lame excuse to screw viewers. Legally, redistributing content downloaded from the BBC without permission is exactly the same as redistributing stuff off some torrent site. Redistribution is already illegal - there's absolutely no reason to sacrifice interoperability in order to screw with the functionality of people's computers.
All TPM systems are hackable, that's true. The question is if that requires a $10 million dollar electronics lab with a laser cutter accurate to nanometers and an electron microscope or not. A system that hard to hack is possible, at least theoretically, and the video camera attack becomes the best available attack long before then.
That's obviously the way you have to look at it for the idea to make sense, but that's not necessarily the correct way to look at it. Another way to look at it is like this: Binary Windows applications, as a "standard", aren't really that big a deal. Linux is useful right now without them, and patching the few holes in functionality with native Linux apps is more useful than trying to emulate a non-standard interface who's creator intentionally modifies it to thwart emulators.
Some applications, like media players with DRM, will *never* be possible to emulate (by design). Applications written by Microsoft will be specifically patched to break emulation; this has already happened with MS Office and Wine. What does that leave to emulate? Adobe apps that will be ported in a couple more years of market share gains? Games? Various apps that are being replaced by web-apps anyway like tax prep software?
Another way of looking at it is this: The "standard" is cross-platform open source software. Commercial software can only really compete with it in some niche markets, and those niche players can port their software wherever they want as the market changes. As people notice that they can replace individual apps with $0 replacements, they will eventually make the same decision for the OS itself. Windows desktop market share is just inertia (and video gamers, where the market is different), and it will lose to friction eventually.
That's generally true, if the goals of the minority are directly opposed to the goals of the majority. If the minority can have what the want without the majority losing out, they'll get what they want too. As a quick example, consider handicap parking spaces.
Wait, what? You're comparing feature sets based on how the subroutines are named?
If something is supported in a standardized and widely implemented extension, it's supported. That'd be like saying that Apache doesn't support PHP because it requires an "extension" to make it work.
You do realize that all of the BBC content is already available for free download on ThePirateBay.org, right?
All that adding DRM to their download service does is inconvenience TV license payers who use Linux. That's it. Nothing else. If they restrict downloads to UK IP addresses only, there's no reason to worry about those videos getting re-uploaded to file sharing sites because *the videos are already there*.
All of this content is already available DRM free for $0 on ThePirateBay.org, and that fact isn't going to change anytime soon. A simpler direct download (either to UK residents for free or to the world for a fee) is a service worth offering. If they make that download DRM-encumbered, they've basically just made their service worse than TPB - they shouldn't bother because it's a waste of time and will give them bad press.
As the person you're replying to said, what you're suggesting has been tried - the Wine project has been working on it for years and expended an impressive amount of resources on it. As a result, it's possible to run quite a few Windows apps on Linux. But - they've discovered that the basic idea of re-implementing Windows won't work in general because it's a moving target.
We'll be much better off pointing developers in the direction of stuff like WxWidgets and getting them to write cross-platform apps. It's not hard, and there aren't that many platforms to test.
DRM is theoretically impossible. That's true. Unfortunately, DRM that can only be inexpensively hacked with an allowed player and recapture equipment is probably entirely possible. What that means is this: It's possible to create a DRM system that will prevent people from playing videos on Linux. It'll still be possible to crack the DRM and extract the video, but you'll have to use an approved player in the process.
I don't know enough about the TPM design and Vista to know if they have implemented that sort of DRM. Any video format that can run on Windows XP is probably susceptible to a key interception attack. But don't underestimate the potential for DRM in the future - it's an excellent technology to create platform lock-in, which is why Microsoft and Apple think it's so great.
Wait, what?
Are you seriously suggesting that a government could get away with failing to provide a public service to 7.5% of the population? In most countries you get seats in parliament for less than that. Here in the USA, we provide much more complicated public services than the BBC to support much smaller minorities than that.
Those are good examples, because exactly which activities we're going to restrict to prevent those problems is a matter of continuing debate. Obviously robbing people is bad, but banning guns is much less obvious. Obviously abusing children is bad, but banning the sale of all pornography on the internet will get you some opposition. You'll be more likely to get different results depending how the debate is framed. ("Why should the government be able to interfere with your right to play with model rockets?" vs "Why should the government allow you to play with dangerous model rockets?")
He mentions Spectra in TFA.
You're right. That's a hard question. Personally, I don't think that "political speech" should be the relevant qualifier - all speech should be allowed, and the question should be about which specific cases of malicious speech (i.e. fraud, orders to commit an immediate and specific crime, etc) leave the speaker with some liability. Under that model, yelling FIRE in a crowded theater is perfectly legal - but a judge can later decide that the yeller is liable for any damage caused in any panic that results.
Wherever you try to draw the line on allowed speech, there will be some edge cases to argue about - getting the line in the right place is an utter mess, and given the way politics and laws work I don't think there's any way to get it right. Freedom of speech is important enough that it's better not to give legislators the chance to screw it up at all.
I'm not sure how the theater being on fire could have anything to do with politics. Race is a very politically charged topic, objectively incorrect beliefs about simple and easily verifiable facts like whether or not a theater is on fire really aren't related to politics at all.
Cache size is occasionally useful if you happen to know what the working set is of the app you're running. Clock speed means basically nothing unless you're comparing two chips with identical architectures - actually, for these chips, comparing the model numbers (higher is better) probably gives you almost exactly as much useful information.
The problem is that it's illegal for them to release it. Both Sony and Nintendo require that all gamees released on their platforms be approved by them (it's part of the contract a developer must sign to get a dev kit). In some countries it's even more illegal because selling an unrated game is prohibited.
All I really have to say is "Ha, Ha! That's what you get for developing for a proprietary platform".
No. It should be legal to call for genocide because that would be speech that doesn't immediately incite a specific crime.
The fact of the matter is that there are people who hold political beliefs that include violent action against groups of people they don't like. Preventing them from publicly discussing and promoting those beliefs is bad for two reasons: First, a free society based on political discourse can't function if the majority can silence a minority with laws. It doesn't matter what the minority is promoting or how much you think they're blatantly wrong, because interesting political speech is almost always controversial. Second, if you drive things like hate speech underground people will still talk about it - the public just won't get to hear about it and argue against it.
The only reason to try to ban political speech is if you disagree with it but don't have a good explanation why it's wrong. Are you saying that you're having trouble explaining why we shouldn't kill all black people?
Why? I'd expect that a straightforward copyright infringement complaint would be fine here.
Did you even actually read what I said? Did you understand it?
I never once said that anyone has a legally recognized right to modify proprietary software. In fact, copyright law most likely prohibits modifying copyrighted stuff - it absolutely prohibits distributing modified versions of copyrighted software.
All I'm arguing is that copyright law (as well as software licensing) is completely and wholly different and separate from physical property law. I also began the argument that current copyright law is in conflict with the philosophical basis for physical property, but I don't think I'm going to get very far with that because you're having trouble grasping the easy part of my statements.
There's an argument that they should be using a patent free codec, but you're right - if they're going to be using a patented codec anyway, there is no argument for using anything other than some flavor of MPEG-4 - and H.264 is the preferred flavor due to hardware support.
What? Like 19 terabytes? When we're talking about streaming video to 100 million people? Nope - that's not a lot of bandwidth.