The answer then is to boycott companies that have poor security (i.e. companies that disallow non-alphanumeric characters)
My financial institution here in Australia (its a Credit Union, not a bank) has an on-screen keyboard you click on to input your password. Each time you click a letter, it moves slightly. (making it harder to intercept the password just based on mouse clicks)
They also have a second password (again input with the on-screen keyboard) that you use when you are transferring money to someone you have not transferred money to before (i.e. someone not on your "approved payees" list).
I have seen other larger institutions that offer security options (including on-screen keyboards and unique SMS codes that they send to your phone and that you have to enter into the online banking) so its not just mine. At least one does offer key-fobs for transaction security.
What I want to ask this guy (SA Attorney General) is this: Why do you think that the safeguards put in place to prevent R rated computer games from being sold to minors would be any different to those currently in place for R rated movies and why do you think such safeguards would not be adequate to prevent minors from gaining access to this content?
My understanding of the law (as an Aussie and an adult gamer who believes that there should be an R classification for games) is that if Valve sells the game in Australia over Steam, they can be fined/punished.
If this law is passed and the specs are forced open, a third party will produce a tool that does what the GM Tech 2 tool does only cheaper. These proprietary tools are (for the most part) just software talking to the software in the car anyway.
Cars have "check engine" lights (and other similar warnings). People have been conditioned to take the car to the mechanic when the warning lights light up or else their car may not work properly.
Computers should have something similar, something that doesn't even try to explain whats wrong, that just says "something is wrong, you need to get your computer looked at by an expert" in language that even the dumbest user can understand.
People dont buy a new car just because its running slow or because the "check engine" light came on, they take it to the mechanic. The same should apply to computers, when the "something is wrong" message comes up, they should be taking it to their local PC guy (or calling the knowledgeable family member)
Its a phone thats open and hackable out of the box. It has decent hardware specs. (unlike the OpenMoko phone) It doesn't contain all kinds of locks and isn't made by a company who has consistently shown a willingness to violate the GPL (Motorola) Android is great and all but you can only officially program it via Java (with a limited API set) or via the recently-released native SDK (with an even more limited API set)
If Nokia releases this thing with 900/2100 UMTS support and if Vodafone Australia carries it without crippling it, I am SO there for my next phone. (even though I used to hate Nokia with a passion)
I am normally a Moto supporter through and through but the hackability of Maemo is too good to ignore.
Telstra here in Australia built out a UMTS network running on 850MHz/2100MHz and (with the right phone) you can get service in some pretty remote places (I got family on a sheep station out near Broken Hill and they got NextG service even way out there with an external antenna and/or standing in exactly the right place)
The obvious question is, why isn't AT&T throwing everything it can into a build out with the specific goal of getting better coverage than Verizon in as many areas as possible. I am sure that if AT&T could beat Verizon's coverage (and run a marketing campaign touting that fact) they would get quite a few people switching over (especially people who want to be able to buy their own phone and use it without being tied down with contracts and carrier-disabled-features)
There needs to be a new law that operates similar to the DMCA safe harbor and take-down notice system works for copyrights. If Louis Vitton thinks that someone is selling a fake Louis Vitton bag on, say, eBay, they would send eBay a take down notice alleging (under penalty of perjury) trademark/trade dress infringement. eBay then takes down the auction when notified (and in doing so is given safe harbor from any infringement connected with the auction). And just like the DMCA take-down notice system, if the take-down is baseless (i.e. no violation has taken place), the item can be re-listed (or the information can be re-posted or whatever). And just like the DMCA, when you file a counter claim, you are alleging (under penalty of perjury) that no violation has taken place.
sites get protection from being sued for allowing items/content/etc that violate someones IP to be listed/sold/posted/etc Companies who's IP is being violated have a simple way to get infringing content/auctions/etc taken down (but only if its actually infringing) And those who are selling legitimate items that DON'T violate someone else's IP (such as a genuine Louis Vitton bag) are free to go on selling without the risk of having their legit auction pulled.
More people are using streaming audio and video to get their content. Hulu. YouTube. Spotify. Last.FM.
Me for example, if I want a song, instead of going to p2p, I just go to YouTube or Google and search for it. If its even remotely popular, I am sure someone has uploaded a suitable video with a suitable version of the song as the audio. Then I can use a YouTube downloader to download the video then FFMPEG to convert it to an audio file.
Great way to find stuff and less likelihood of being sued too (the RIAA seems to be more concerned about uploaders which you dont do when you access YouTube. Plus, all the stuff I download is too obscure for the RIAA to care about:P )
Blame Wall Street and the idiots who decided that anything beyond the next set of financial numbers was a complete waste of money and not worth investing in.
Given all the DRM Microsoft is adding to Windows at the behest of the MPAA and RIAA, I am surprised that an app can even GET access to the raw audio anymore.
Why is it that current Android devices (at least those that are out here in Australia) all have crappy screen resolutions compared to phones like the Nokia N-series (N97 etc), the iPhone and the top end Windows Mobile phones?
If someone released a phone with hardware specs that matched or beat the iPhone 3GS in every way and stuck Android on it (and then marketed the hell out of it), Android might start making a dent in the market.
Nokia seem to be in compliance with other versions of their linux tablet OS so there is no reason to suspect that this will be any different. If by some chance it has phone functionality, it will almost certainly be like the OpenMoko phone where the phone functionality is in a blackbox on a seperate baseband CPU.
In the case of the TV schedules, these are for free-to-air TV and they are distributed quite widely in the TV guides in various newspapers.
What the networks DON'T want is machine readable schedules that can be used by PVRs (MythTV etc) that contain commercial skip features (30-second skip etc) or piracy features (i.e. being able to copy the video content off the device to store on a PC or whatever else)
Its more likely that the Pope will declare that God doesn't exist than that US Colleges will stop caring about sports and start caring about education again.
Yes, GPL compliance is not optional. But in a number of cases (this case, the case of the Wii game that violated the GPL on SCUMMVM, the case of the drivers for the memory card slot/card on at least one model of Motorola linux phone and possibly others), the penalties for violating the GPL (including any "you have to stop selling the product" penalties) are smaller than the penalties for violating other license agreements.
For example, in the case of the memory card slot drivers (MicroSD IIRC), the penalty for violating the SD card association NDAs that (at the time) applied to the SD card specs could very well have been a complete ban on selling any products with an SD card slot (not just the linux phones every phone Moto makes). And the penalty for violating the Wii SDK NDA would have been at the very least a ban from producing any games for any Nintendo console if not more. And in the case of this sattelite decoder box, the penalty for releasing all the stuff needed to comply with the GPL could be a loss of the rights to produce decoder boxes that use the NDS Videoguard encryption (or worse, providers choosing to abandon NDS in favor of its competitors due to the increased risk of hacks)
Reasons why they may not be able to comply with the GPL: 1.3rd party hardware info they cant share (sattelite receiver chips, hardware video decoders, smart cards/smart card slots etc) 2.Sharing the GPL bits may help hackers figure out how to talk to the smart cards (either in the box or in a custom hardware rig) and from there hack the DRM and get free service. 3.Protecting the channels (for example, kernel source may show how video gets passed to the hardware video decoder or the TV encoder, both of which are places hackers could insert code to grab the video in order to make illegal copies and share them online, even just being able to run code on the box lets you do a lot in terms of hacking the box either to copy the content for sharing or hacking the service itself to try and get channels without paying for them). Or even simply being able to use the provided info (from the GPL source) to build a 3rd party box capable of receiving the channels and properly decoding them.
I guarantee you that the Liberals (under Howard, Turnbul or anyone else who has a snowballs chance of being Liberal leader) would have supported this kind of "ISP as copyright cop" legislation had they won government instead of Rudd.
The big push for this stuff is comming from the commercial TV networks (7, 9 and 10), the Pay TV operators (i.e. Foxtel and all the various owners of the various channels) and the movie studios. All of these parties have been arguing that without some kind of "ISP as copyright cop" enforcement to stop piracy (why the same copyright legislation and court system that has served this nation for over 100 years is not suitable for this I fail to see), it will become more and more un-viable to continue to produce content in this country.
And how do you propose to link this mesh network to other networks? Its not like you can just plug into the Southern Cross Cable or Australia-Japan Cable to get connectivity to the outside world. Nor can you just plug into fiber links between all the different isolated towns and cities that would be part of this network (and even if it was possible to string up enough wireless boxes to go from Sydney to Melbourne, the latency would be so big as to render it unusable).
1.Microsoft and their army of lawyers grind i2i into dust by proving prior art for the i2i patent (or proving why it doesn't apply to Word and OOXML) or 2.i2is patent is declared valid and Microsoft is forced to stop selling and supporting Word versions with XML document formats. Given that Microsoft cant do that (because of all the thousands of docx files out there), the only option for Microsoft in this case is for them to lobby congress for patent change in a way that makes i2is patent invalid. (which would be a good thing)
Slashdot Mirror
The answer then is to boycott companies that have poor security (i.e. companies that disallow non-alphanumeric characters)
My financial institution here in Australia (its a Credit Union, not a bank) has an on-screen keyboard you click on to input your password. Each time you click a letter, it moves slightly. (making it harder to intercept the password just based on mouse clicks)
They also have a second password (again input with the on-screen keyboard) that you use when you are transferring money to someone you have not transferred money to before (i.e. someone not on your "approved payees" list).
I have seen other larger institutions that offer security options (including on-screen keyboards and unique SMS codes that they send to your phone and that you have to enter into the online banking) so its not just mine. At least one does offer key-fobs for transaction security.
What I want to ask this guy (SA Attorney General) is this:
Why do you think that the safeguards put in place to prevent R rated computer games from being sold to minors would be any different to those currently in place for R rated movies and why do you think such safeguards would not be adequate to prevent minors from gaining access to this content?
My understanding of the law (as an Aussie and an adult gamer who believes that there should be an R classification for games) is that if Valve sells the game in Australia over Steam, they can be fined/punished.
If this law is passed and the specs are forced open, a third party will produce a tool that does what the GM Tech 2 tool does only cheaper.
These proprietary tools are (for the most part) just software talking to the software in the car anyway.
Cars have "check engine" lights (and other similar warnings). People have been conditioned to take the car to the mechanic when the warning lights light up or else their car may not work properly.
Computers should have something similar, something that doesn't even try to explain whats wrong, that just says "something is wrong, you need to get your computer looked at by an expert" in language that even the dumbest user can understand.
People dont buy a new car just because its running slow or because the "check engine" light came on, they take it to the mechanic. The same should apply to computers, when the "something is wrong" message comes up, they should be taking it to their local PC guy (or calling the knowledgeable family member)
Thats a good idea and I wish more ISPs would do the same.
What we need is efforts by software vendors like Microsoft to make computers easier to use and harder to mess up.
Nokia N900 with MAEMO. Gives you root out of the box. No restrictions on what you can do. If it doesn't have features you want just install them.
That or something else with Maemo on it.
Its a phone thats open and hackable out of the box.
It has decent hardware specs. (unlike the OpenMoko phone)
It doesn't contain all kinds of locks and isn't made by a company who has consistently shown a willingness to violate the GPL (Motorola)
Android is great and all but you can only officially program it via Java (with a limited API set) or via the recently-released native SDK (with an even more limited API set)
If Nokia releases this thing with 900/2100 UMTS support and if Vodafone Australia carries it without crippling it, I am SO there for my next phone. (even though I used to hate Nokia with a passion)
I am normally a Moto supporter through and through but the hackability of Maemo is too good to ignore.
Telstra here in Australia built out a UMTS network running on 850MHz/2100MHz and (with the right phone) you can get service in some pretty remote places (I got family on a sheep station out near Broken Hill and they got NextG service even way out there with an external antenna and/or standing in exactly the right place)
The obvious question is, why isn't AT&T throwing everything it can into a build out with the specific goal of getting better coverage than Verizon in as many areas as possible. I am sure that if AT&T could beat Verizon's coverage (and run a marketing campaign touting that fact) they would get quite a few people switching over (especially people who want to be able to buy their own phone and use it without being tied down with contracts and carrier-disabled-features)
There needs to be a new law that operates similar to the DMCA safe harbor and take-down notice system works for copyrights. If Louis Vitton thinks that someone is selling a fake Louis Vitton bag on, say, eBay, they would send eBay a take down notice alleging (under penalty of perjury) trademark/trade dress infringement. eBay then takes down the auction when notified (and in doing so is given safe harbor from any infringement connected with the auction). And just like the DMCA take-down notice system, if the take-down is baseless (i.e. no violation has taken place), the item can be re-listed (or the information can be re-posted or whatever). And just like the DMCA, when you file a counter claim, you are alleging (under penalty of perjury) that no violation has taken place.
sites get protection from being sued for allowing items/content/etc that violate someones IP to be listed/sold/posted/etc
Companies who's IP is being violated have a simple way to get infringing content/auctions/etc taken down (but only if its actually infringing)
And those who are selling legitimate items that DON'T violate someone else's IP (such as a genuine Louis Vitton bag) are free to go on selling without the risk of having their legit auction pulled.
More people are using streaming audio and video to get their content. Hulu. YouTube. Spotify. Last.FM.
Me for example, if I want a song, instead of going to p2p, I just go to YouTube or Google and search for it. If its even remotely popular, I am sure someone has uploaded a suitable video with a suitable version of the song as the audio. Then I can use a YouTube downloader to download the video then FFMPEG to convert it to an audio file.
Great way to find stuff and less likelihood of being sued too (the RIAA seems to be more concerned about uploaders which you dont do when you access YouTube. Plus, all the stuff I download is too obscure for the RIAA to care about :P )
Blame Wall Street and the idiots who decided that anything beyond the next set of financial numbers was a complete waste of money and not worth investing in.
Given all the DRM Microsoft is adding to Windows at the behest of the MPAA and RIAA, I am surprised that an app can even GET access to the raw audio anymore.
Why is it that current Android devices (at least those that are out here in Australia) all have crappy screen resolutions compared to phones like the Nokia N-series (N97 etc), the iPhone and the top end Windows Mobile phones?
If someone released a phone with hardware specs that matched or beat the iPhone 3GS in every way and stuck Android on it (and then marketed the hell out of it), Android might start making a dent in the market.
Nokia seem to be in compliance with other versions of their linux tablet OS so there is no reason to suspect that this will be any different.
If by some chance it has phone functionality, it will almost certainly be like the OpenMoko phone where the phone functionality is in a blackbox on a seperate baseband CPU.
In the case of the TV schedules, these are for free-to-air TV and they are distributed quite widely in the TV guides in various newspapers.
What the networks DON'T want is machine readable schedules that can be used by PVRs (MythTV etc) that contain commercial skip features (30-second skip etc) or piracy features (i.e. being able to copy the video content off the device to store on a PC or whatever else)
Its more likely that the Pope will declare that God doesn't exist than that US Colleges will stop caring about sports and start caring about education again.
Yes, GPL compliance is not optional. But in a number of cases (this case, the case of the Wii game that violated the GPL on SCUMMVM, the case of the drivers for the memory card slot/card on at least one model of Motorola linux phone and possibly others), the penalties for violating the GPL (including any "you have to stop selling the product" penalties) are smaller than the penalties for violating other license agreements.
For example, in the case of the memory card slot drivers (MicroSD IIRC), the penalty for violating the SD card association NDAs that (at the time) applied to the SD card specs could very well have been a complete ban on selling any products with an SD card slot (not just the linux phones every phone Moto makes). And the penalty for violating the Wii SDK NDA would have been at the very least a ban from producing any games for any Nintendo console if not more. And in the case of this sattelite decoder box, the penalty for releasing all the stuff needed to comply with the GPL could be a loss of the rights to produce decoder boxes that use the NDS Videoguard encryption (or worse, providers choosing to abandon NDS in favor of its competitors due to the increased risk of hacks)
Reasons why they may not be able to comply with the GPL:
1.3rd party hardware info they cant share (sattelite receiver chips, hardware video decoders, smart cards/smart card slots etc)
2.Sharing the GPL bits may help hackers figure out how to talk to the smart cards (either in the box or in a custom hardware rig) and from there hack the DRM and get free service.
3.Protecting the channels (for example, kernel source may show how video gets passed to the hardware video decoder or the TV encoder, both of which are places hackers could insert code to grab the video in order to make illegal copies and share them online, even just being able to run code on the box lets you do a lot in terms of hacking the box either to copy the content for sharing or hacking the service itself to try and get channels without paying for them). Or even simply being able to use the provided info (from the GPL source) to build a 3rd party box capable of receiving the channels and properly decoding them.
Thats great but I dont think there are sewers or pipes running to America :)
I guarantee you that the Liberals (under Howard, Turnbul or anyone else who has a snowballs chance of being Liberal leader) would have supported this kind of "ISP as copyright cop" legislation had they won government instead of Rudd.
The big push for this stuff is comming from the commercial TV networks (7, 9 and 10), the Pay TV operators (i.e. Foxtel and all the various owners of the various channels) and the movie studios. All of these parties have been arguing that without some kind of "ISP as copyright cop" enforcement to stop piracy (why the same copyright legislation and court system that has served this nation for over 100 years is not suitable for this I fail to see), it will become more and more un-viable to continue to produce content in this country.
And how do you propose to link this mesh network to other networks? Its not like you can just plug into the Southern Cross Cable or Australia-Japan Cable to get connectivity to the outside world. Nor can you just plug into fiber links between all the different isolated towns and cities that would be part of this network (and even if it was possible to string up enough wireless boxes to go from Sydney to Melbourne, the latency would be so big as to render it unusable).
1.Microsoft and their army of lawyers grind i2i into dust by proving prior art for the i2i patent (or proving why it doesn't apply to Word and OOXML)
or 2.i2is patent is declared valid and Microsoft is forced to stop selling and supporting Word versions with XML document formats. Given that Microsoft cant do that (because of all the thousands of docx files out there), the only option for Microsoft in this case is for them to lobby congress for patent change in a way that makes i2is patent invalid. (which would be a good thing)