Actually, I remember the 8 bit/64K pre-Microsoft era well:
Apple ][ was the dominant platform Commodore Pets (we had them at school) Radio Shack TRS-80 Atari 400's & 800s
The 6502 was the most popular CPU at the time, although some machines were Z80 based.
Almost everything ran on some version of ROM based interpreted Basic. None had any sort of compiler. Games & other apps were hand coded in assembly
Dedicated monitors were for the rich - for the most part, your TV was the monitor.
1200/2400 baud casette tape loaders were the most popular storage device. Eventually 8 inch or 5 1/4 inch floppies appeared for the Uber wealthy that could store about 100K of data
Most 16 bit minicomputers were the size of desks
My dream machine was a PDP-11/03 with the 8 inch floppy drives (worth about as much as a car, but it was a true 16 bit machine and had an optional compiler)
They just recently snagged Dr. Neil Turok from Cambridge to serve as the the executive Director - it looks like we will soon have all of England's great physicists
I believe there was a patent applied for sometime around 2000 for cell phones to voluntarily go to vibrate or silent mode if it was within range of a special code transmitter, which could be installed in theatres, churches, etc. I know because I thought up the same thing were I was working at the time, but was just a few months too late. I don't have the patent number, but I know it was in the US and I saw a photocopied newspaper article on it when I got the "close but no cigar" letter from upper management.
They can reverse engineer it, find out how it generates the encryption keys and reverse the algorithm - and crank out a utility that does it automatically. (Assuming it doesn't just write randomized data into the _CRYPT file and sucker you into sending them $ in hope of recovering what you lost, but at least then they would know the file is unrecoverable)
I cancelled my Bell cellular account I have held since 2002 yesterday - my contract was coming up and instead of renewing I went with somebody else, despite them trying to bribe me with hundreds of dollars in hardware upgrades.
More importantly, I let their customer service rep know exactly why I was cancelling and told them to make sure their boss knows that Bell's corporate policy on throttling and network neutrality was the reason.
I couldn't make it to Parliament hill, but I could to something small to hurt them in the pocket book. If enough people cancel not just their internet, but satellite, wireless and landline phone with Bell and let them know why, it will put real pressure where it counts.
> Untrue. It is unlikely the majority of Windows Vista users will ever even > activate any of its DRM features, let alone be negatively impacted by them. The fact that Vista checks undocumented features of your video and sound card 60x a second to see if you are running the real McCoy or an emulated version if it affects everybody. Whether or not you are using the DRMed modules it still introduces bloat in the code.
Actually, EVERY vista user has to pay for the patent and licensing fees for the DRM encryption, regardless whether or not they use it. And there have been a lot of cases where somebody's shiny new monitor or video card was declared untrusted and downscaled for some unfathomable reason.
> You leave out the part where you have the choice whether or not to go and > stand under the bucker by avoiding DRM-encumbered content.
Where do I find the big red warning label that tells me this content is DRM encumbered? Remember the Sony "rootkit" CDs, or other DRM encumbered CD technologies that didn't fly? They were going out of the way to not divulge which CDs were crippled in this fashion. I choose not to run an OS which has these "features". The media companies can keep their futzing hands off my hardware, thank you very much.
The USMA academy is some of the best of the best. Meaning, these guys have to be appointed by two state senators to even apply... Meaning they have to be politically well connected.
Actually, in the Michael Moore film they scroll down the WHO ranking list, showing off how high France and the U.K. were, which is why he used them as examples. When he reaches the US the film quickly cuts away - I think he didn't want you to notice his shining example of Cuba was under the US and that Canada (which he also used as an example) wasn't too much higher up. If you find the scene, you have to be quick with the DVD freeze to spot it.
You also briefly notice in the scene at the Cuban fire station, somebody from the ministry of the interior following them around, just like the bad old days of the U.S.S.R.
Actually you only need one, ( or maybe a few more if you want the 64bit and Kubuntu/Edubuntu/Xubuntu versions ) a single PC with a CD burner, and a stack of blank CDs. You can legally burn as many as you want.
There was a funny incident in Canada, I think it was related to the Helms/Burton act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms-Burton_Act where the Canadian Wal-Mart stores were found to be selling Cuban made clothing, and the US government ordered them to stop. So they (briefly) stopped. Canadian newspapers found out and it was turned into a big sovereignty flap on this side of the border. The Canadian government then forbade any company operating on Canadian soil from obeying the embargo, and Wal-Mart's Cuban made clothing returned.
Funny how little things get turned into a government p*ssing contest - wars have started over stupid crap like this.
1. Put copy of kid's book report HarryPotter.txt on P2P server 2. Wait for DMCA notice 3. Immediately call cops to raid the offices of Media Sentry because they have clearly downloaded YOUR copyright work.
I used to work for an unnamed major ASIC vendor, and they would license chunks of HDL code from 3rd party vendors. They also had secret back doors for stuff like bypassing the DRM. Of course you can always reverse engineer the windows drivers with effort, so the code to exploit the backdoors would never ship anyway.
IMHO buying IP offers short term gains, but you ultimately paint yourself into a corner. You saved some NRE costs, but have become severely restricted in what you can do with your own product. I would guess that is why Nvidia doesn't fully open source, but eventually the chickens will come home to roost and they will have to find a way to do it, even if it means ripping out and redesigning all that expensive IP they bought earlier, just to get out of the license.
Also, they cut corners on development costs by buying some of the code and legally can't open source it - e.g. some proprietary codecs, or signal processing technology.
If somebody who is going to buy 10 million parts a year from you "strongly recommends" something, you can bet your backside the vendor will comply unless it is partically impossible for them to do so.
Sure, but doing a good thing for selfish reasons is still doing a good thing. Now if more companies realize this and jump on the bandwagon, it can be a win for the company and a win for the world at large. The lower the cost and the greater the benefit, the better your chance you have to swing it with the CEO.
Almost every company involved with open source does it for selfish reasons, but the FOSS community still benefits.
Even if companies made a policy of open sourcing their abandonware and old products like ID games does with their old game engines it would help a lot. Hell, even open sourcing the hardware specs on their obsolete products would be a boon - old hardware could enjoy an extended life with open source drivers, as poor people likely couldn't afford their shiny new "Vista ready" peripherals anyway. At least it keeps it out of landfills.
Unfortunately, they can and do put in "traffic calming" infrastructure downgrades which is analogous to what Bell is doing. But that is a gripe for another day...
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I remember the 8 bit/64K pre-Microsoft era well:
Apple ][ was the dominant platform
Commodore Pets (we had them at school)
Radio Shack TRS-80
Atari 400's & 800s
The 6502 was the most popular CPU at the time, although some machines were Z80 based.
Almost everything ran on some version of ROM based interpreted Basic. None had any sort of compiler. Games & other apps were hand coded in assembly
Dedicated monitors were for the rich - for the most part, your TV was the monitor.
1200/2400 baud casette tape loaders were the most popular storage device. Eventually 8 inch or 5 1/4 inch floppies appeared for the Uber wealthy that could store about 100K of data
Most 16 bit minicomputers were the size of desks
My dream machine was a PDP-11/03 with the 8 inch floppy drives (worth about as much as a car, but it was a true 16 bit machine and had an optional compiler)
Yet another reason not to buy Lexmark - If you remember, they tried to use the DMCA to squelch the after market toner industry.
(I have had good luck with HP)
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/
They just recently snagged Dr. Neil Turok from Cambridge to serve as the the executive Director - it looks like we will soon have all of England's great physicists
The RIM founder just kicked in another $50 Mil to his pet project:
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/News/In_The_Media/Mike_Lazaridis_Donates_Additional_$50_Million_to_Perimeter_Institute/
I would love to see Dr. Hawking at their monthly public outreach lectures.
I think they are the ones that need to be "educated".
I believe there was a patent applied for sometime around 2000 for cell phones to voluntarily go to vibrate or silent mode if it was within range of a special code transmitter, which could be installed in theatres, churches, etc. I know because I thought up the same thing were I was working at the time, but was just a few months too late. I don't have the patent number, but I know it was in the US and I saw a photocopied newspaper article on it when I got the "close but no cigar" letter from upper management.
They can reverse engineer it, find out how it generates the encryption keys and reverse the algorithm - and crank out a utility that does it automatically. (Assuming it doesn't just write randomized data into the _CRYPT file and sucker you into sending them $ in hope of recovering what you lost, but at least then they would know the file is unrecoverable)
I cancelled my Bell cellular account I have held since 2002 yesterday - my contract was coming up and instead of renewing I went with somebody else, despite them trying to bribe me with hundreds of dollars in hardware upgrades.
More importantly, I let their customer service rep know exactly why I was cancelling and told them to make sure their boss knows that Bell's corporate policy on throttling and network neutrality was the reason.
I couldn't make it to Parliament hill, but I could to something small to hurt them in the pocket book. If enough people cancel not just their internet, but satellite, wireless and landline phone with Bell and let them know why, it will put real pressure where it counts.
Sue the b@stards, and the puppet masters behind them for astrobucks.
> Untrue. It is unlikely the majority of Windows Vista users will ever even
> activate any of its DRM features, let alone be negatively impacted by them. The fact that Vista checks undocumented features of your video and sound card 60x a second to see if you are running the real McCoy or an emulated version if it affects everybody. Whether or not you are using the DRMed modules it still introduces bloat in the code.
Actually, EVERY vista user has to pay for the patent and licensing fees for the DRM encryption, regardless whether or not they use it. And there have been a lot of cases where somebody's shiny new monitor or video card was declared untrusted and downscaled for some unfathomable reason.
> You leave out the part where you have the choice whether or not to go and
> stand under the bucker by avoiding DRM-encumbered content.
Where do I find the big red warning label that tells me this content is DRM encumbered? Remember the Sony "rootkit" CDs, or other DRM encumbered CD technologies that didn't fly? They were going out of the way to not divulge which CDs were crippled in this fashion. I choose not to run an OS which has these "features". The media companies can keep their futzing hands off my hardware, thank you very much.
And if they do see that you have Truecrypt installed, tell them it is only for use with the USB key your boss/client/whatever has at .
Actually, in the Michael Moore film they scroll down the WHO ranking list, showing off how high France and the U.K. were, which is why he used them as examples. When he reaches the US the film quickly cuts away - I think he didn't want you to notice his shining example of Cuba was under the US and that Canada (which he also used as an example) wasn't too much higher up. If you find the scene, you have to be quick with the DVD freeze to spot it.
You also briefly notice in the scene at the Cuban fire station, somebody from the ministry of the interior following them around, just like the bad old days of the U.S.S.R.
Actually you only need one, ( or maybe a few more if you want the 64bit and Kubuntu/Edubuntu/Xubuntu versions ) a single PC with a CD burner, and a stack of blank CDs. You can legally burn as many as you want.
There was a funny incident in Canada, I think it was related to the Helms/Burton act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms-Burton_Act where the Canadian Wal-Mart stores were found to be selling Cuban made clothing, and the US government ordered them to stop. So they (briefly) stopped. Canadian newspapers found out and it was turned into a big sovereignty flap on this side of the border. The Canadian government then forbade any company operating on Canadian soil from obeying the embargo, and Wal-Mart's Cuban made clothing returned.
Funny how little things get turned into a government p*ssing contest - wars have started over stupid crap like this.
1. Put copy of kid's book report HarryPotter.txt on P2P server
2. Wait for DMCA notice
3. Immediately call cops to raid the offices of Media Sentry because they have clearly downloaded YOUR copyright work.
Will they be adding a submarine simulator?
In some cases, they are even in trouble there...
I used to work for an unnamed major ASIC vendor, and they would license chunks of HDL code from 3rd party vendors. They also had secret back doors for stuff like bypassing the DRM. Of course you can always reverse engineer the windows drivers with effort, so the code to exploit the backdoors would never ship anyway.
IMHO buying IP offers short term gains, but you ultimately paint yourself into a corner. You saved some NRE costs, but have become severely restricted in what you can do with your own product. I would guess that is why Nvidia doesn't fully open source, but eventually the chickens will come home to roost and they will have to find a way to do it, even if it means ripping out and redesigning all that expensive IP they bought earlier, just to get out of the license.
Also, they cut corners on development costs by buying some of the code and legally can't open source it - e.g. some proprietary codecs, or signal processing technology.
If somebody who is going to buy 10 million parts a year from you "strongly recommends" something, you can bet your backside the vendor will comply unless it is partically impossible for them to do so.
Isn't a petaflop Cray the minimum hardware required to run Duke Nukem Forever?
Sure, but doing a good thing for selfish reasons is still doing a good thing. Now if more companies realize this and jump on the bandwagon, it can be a win for the company and a win for the world at large. The lower the cost and the greater the benefit, the better your chance you have to swing it with the CEO.
Almost every company involved with open source does it for selfish reasons, but the FOSS community still benefits.
Even if companies made a policy of open sourcing their abandonware and old products like ID games does with their old game engines it would help a lot. Hell, even open sourcing the hardware specs on their obsolete products would be a boon - old hardware could enjoy an extended life with open source drivers, as poor people likely couldn't afford their shiny new "Vista ready" peripherals anyway. At least it keeps it out of landfills.
Unfortunately, they can and do put in "traffic calming" infrastructure downgrades which is analogous to what Bell is doing. But that is a gripe for another day...
I think goodwin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwin's_law is having a field day with this thread!
Sadly the US probably won't - It looks like Obama will be the next president, and his is planning to gut NASA's manned space program:
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/obamas_nasa_plan_gets_little_p.php
It looks like the Russians or Chinese are our last best hope to find a way off this rock.