Symantec is already on my list of "companies whos products and services I will never use" for their product activation. The fact that they make it so hard to completly uninstall their product is icing on the cake.
I have recived many letters over the years at different addresses from American Express even though I have never had an American Express card, have never given them any address information and have no wish to obtain ANY of their crappy products.
What I want to know is why so many people stick with a crappy company like Verizon what with all the crap they pull on their customers (crappy custom UI on their phones, locking out features so you have to pay them to transfer camera photos off or to transfer ringtones on, making it hard to cancel their service, charging big cancelation fees, extending contracts without even telling you and so on)
Simple solution: 1.Create a firmware that is loaded onto the chip by the driver (the details as to why driver loaded firmware is better than on-card firmware for a network card have been discussed elsewhere so I wont bother with those) The firmware could either run on some kind of microprocessor on the CPU or it could run on the host x86 chip (in which case an x86-64 port would also be a nice thing to have). 2.Put the country specific bits into the firmware (either with a firmware for each country or a switch to tell the firmware "this card should be run with the settings for ") 3.Open source the specifications or drivers for this firmware so you can write drivers and talk to it. 4.Allow redistribution of unmodified versions of the firmware blob by 3rd parties (such as linux distros) and 5.Profit (from all the open source users buying your card anyway)
Such a setup would not violate the FCC rules since you cant operate it in "FCC" mode outside of the FCC parameters (and someone loading the "EU" firmware in the US would be no different to someone loading an "EU" specific driver now)
The problem is, as we have seen in some cases already is that if Verizon, AT&T and the other companies rolling out various kinds of fibre data networks are required to roll it out to everyone (including all the non profitable areas) they wont roll it out at all.
Nintendo vs Tengen over who owned the rights to produce Tetris on the NES. Without this lawsuit in favor of nintendo, would we have had Tetris for the Game Boy? (and would Nintendo have become king of the handheld market?)
Nintendo vs Bung over cart copying devices. I believe this was one of the first lawsuits filed under the newly implemented Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
There is another Nintendo lawsuit involving the copy protection for the Nintendo Gameboy. Basicly the gameboy will not boot a cart unless it has the Nintendo logo data in the right place on the cart. There was a lawsuit over this (I dont know the particulars or who the other party was) where Nintendo argued that copying the nintendo logo was a copyright violation. I believe the court ruled that (like in the Sega vs Accolade case) it was OK to use the copyrighted nintendo logo for the specific purpose of making gameboy carts.
I am surprised that Nintendo didnt use stronger protection on the Gameboy Advance (such as encrypting the cart data somehow and having decryption done on the fly by the GBA). It may not have stopped chinese pirates from decapping the GBA CPU or decryption ASIC and reading out the secret key. But it would have meant that anything to do with GBA en/decrption falls squarely under the DMCA.
Basicly, the question is, what does Autocad do when it encounters a file without the "genuine" signature applied. If it rejects the file outright and refuses to load (or loads in a way that would be different to what it would do if the "genuine" signature was present) then it definatly should follow the case law of the Sega and Lexmark cases. However, if all it does is say "this file is not created by an autodesk product" but loads it anyway, there is a much weaker argument to apply the Sega and Lexmark decisions to this case.
Pretty much every GSM, UMTS and CDMA motorola (so not wierd stuff like that IDEN thing) currently available has a mini USB port which is used to charge the phone. You can use a wall-wart charger or a car cigarette lighter charger or whatver. It also uses USB for data transfer and if the USB port is powered, will charge whilst sending data. There is the negative that you cant charge and do data at the same time if the USB port cant provide enough juice but the answer is to charge and then transfer data, transfer data and then charge or build/buy a cable that the USB charger plugs into as does the phone and the computer such that the phone draws power over the power pins from the USB charger whilst communicating over the data pins with the computer. (I am surprised that such a cable doesnt already exist:)
Answer, dont approve users. Approve programs. There are ways to install software such as Firefox without needing administrator access (portable firefox for one IIRC) so approve certain software such as firefox and say "if you want to use firefox and can install it without needing admin access or help from IT, go ahead and use it but note that IT wont support it" or something.
Another example. I own a hire company that hires chainsaws. Someone hires one of my chainsaws and uses it to cut someones head off. Am I liable for the illegal act committed using my chainsaw? Since the person who used my chainsaw to cut off someones head did it without my knowledge or concent, the answer is probobly no (again IANAL). On the other hand, if the police find out that the persons head was cut off with one of my chainsaws, they can require me to hand over details of the person who hired the saw in question. If I dont, there are laws that apply to it (obstruction of justice I think it is).
The same should apply in the case of illegal activities online. If someone is using webspace I provide, I should not be liable for any illegal content hosted on that webspace (child porn, RIAA MP3s etc) unless I actually knew the content was there (e.g. RIAA told me to take content down and I did not). Again, if the police find out that one of my customers is using my webspace to host illegal content, they can require me to hand out customer details for that customer (i.e. if they have a court order/search warrent/whatever). And again, if I do not, there are penalties that would apply.
As for your comment, the room could get in trouble if: A.They knew about the illegal act and failed to take steps to stop it or catch the people who commited it (e.g. cops ask them to hand over details for the customer who rented the room and they do not do so) or B.it could be reasonably expected that the room was being used for illegal activities (e.g. if the hotel specifically advertized that drug dealers could use their rooms to deal drugs in, that would get them in trouble or if the majority of people using the hotel were using it for illegal acts that could also get them in trouble)
Now, in this particular case the content provider knew full well that the links were to illegally copied content and is therefore liable for it. But the ISP had no idea (presumably until advised by law enforcement or whatever) that the hosted page had links to illegally copied content and therefore should not be liable.
Put simply, making ISPs liable for illegal content on their networks that they are unaware of sets a dangerious precident. For example, could an ISP be liable for hosting child porn even though they had no idea that their customer was using their networks to spread it?
I have no problems with the idea that knowingly linking to illegal material should also be illegal. For example, if I start telling people "go talk to bob, he can sell you some illegal drugs", that would be illegal because I am telling someone how to commit an illegal act. Same deal here, linking to a webpage containing illegal material is equivilant to telling someone how to obtain that illegal material. Human edited directories such as Yahoo should also fall under this. Search engines like google that do not monitor or filter their content should not be liable for linking to illegal content unless they are specificially notified and asked to remove the links (or whatever).
The part about ISPs being liable is totally wrong. Say I own a hotel. I rent a room to someone (who pays me for it). That person then uses the room to conduct an illegal act. Does that mean that I am liable for the illegal use of the room? Only if I am specifically notified (e.g. by the police) and fail to take appropriate action (e.g. ejecting the person from the hotel). The same should apply to ISPs and content providers. They should only be liable for illegal content if they have been specifically notified and fail to take action (be that removing the illegal content, shutting down the account, providing account details to the appropriate authorities or whatever).
Making ISPs legally liable for content stored on/hosted by (and potentially even passing through) their networks and forcing them to activly police content would send a number of ISPs out of business and cause a great many more to stop offering any kind of hosting service. (although just like the "stonecutters" in that simpsons episode, there is a big group of vested interests who want to see the internet as we know it today disappear or morph into something much more controled and difficult to publish on)
Even if you are running Firefox or Opera or something else as your main web browser, upgrading to IE7 (if you are on a system where IE7 will run) still makes sense, if nothing else for all those applications that embed the IE widget which will get the benifits of all the bug fixes IE7 has. (although if said applications are known to fail with IE7 installed, thats a different matter)
Given 5 minutes I could easily have anonymous email addresses from at least 1/2 dozen locations along with IM addresses from all the majors with absolutly no way for anyone to link those accounts back to me personally.
Although more than likely the real reason for this law is so that if they are ever able to link a sex offender to an email or IM address not in the database they have something they can use to lock the sex offender up (after a fair trial obviously) without the need to prove that the sex offender did something untoward (i.e. whatever it is that sex offenders do that is illegal)
Although I personally am not interested in this, I know lots of other people are. I dont see the "you need to buy the subscription thing to play games on your 360" or the "you need to compile from source" or the "managed code only" as that serious. To me, the 2 biggest lacks is: C# only. No managed C++ or other languages. and the real big one: Programs written for the XBOX 360 cannot communicate with the outside world at all (i.e. no networking period). This is by far the biggest limitation of XNA Game Studio 360 IMO.
Just ask anyone in the television industry about SECAM. It started out as a french standard that was created because the french wanted to prevent imports of (cheaper) foriegn PAL TVs and protect the domestic industry.
Although later on the Soviets adopted it for a bunch of iron curtain countries so that only state controled SECAM TV could be recieved and not PAL TV comming in from over the border in the west.
From what I have read, the package being given by the US to the F-35 partners (Australia, UK etc) is going to have avionics and equipment that is not as good as that which the US military will be using on its own F-35s. The US probobly doesnt want the partners to turn around and restore this missing functionality (either by modifying the existing avionics hardware and software or by replacing it outright).
Also, the US is probobly worried that the partners (and those contractors the partners choose to work with) may not have as strict rules when it comes to protecting the secrets of the F-35 from "the bad guys".
Actually, its more like having a wall safe and the government forcing you to open that safe.
The solution (at least for interactive communication such as voice, video, IM, IM file transfer, remote computer access/control etc) is to implement a system where providing the key is impossible. The 2 ends of the link (such as VoIP software and a VoIP server or whatever) would communicate and generate a shared secret key via Diffie-Hellman key exchange or similar. Then this shared secret key would be used to encrypt the communications. Once the communictions are over (say, the VoIP call is hung up), both ends forget the shared secret and no-one can ever decrypt the information again. Since the users never see the shared secret and are never given any options to store it permanently, it is physically impossible to provide decryption keys to law enforcement.
If someone made such a program using open, standard, well tested (and patent free) encryption algorithims and principles and made the program itself open source (as well as documenting the protocol completly), it would make it even harder to stop.
1.Better validation to verify that yes, 123.123.123.123 aka mail.example.com IS allowed to send mail for bob@example.com (this means using things like SPF and with HARD fail specified in the SPF record, not Softfail which too many SPF agents simply ignore and let the mail through anyway)
2.Greater use of encryption and digital signatures to verify that people are who they say they are
3.Greater action by ISPs and others to stop machines that are infected by spambots (greater user education on the part of ISPs, more blocking of ports by default to prevent spambots etc). Its in the ISPs best interests (or so I would have thought) to stop spambots on their network (unlike real spammers who might pay extra for the privildge of being left alone, spambots do nothing except use more of the ISPs bandwidth)
I strongly support the GPLv3 and the anti-DRM and anti-trusted-computing provisions contained therein.
If I buy a device (be it a router, media player, games machine, computer, mobile phone, toaster, chainsaw or whatever else) and that device is running GPL software, I should have the right to replace that software with a modified version and continue using the device for its intented purpose (router, media player, games machine, computer, mobile phone, toaster, chainsaw etc)
If the manufacturer of the device does not want me replacing their software, they can use propriatory software.
Does this change the (stupid) clause in the law that says timeshifting is ok but says that the timeshifted content must be deleted/destroyed after you have watched it once?
If I upload a copyrighted image file to ImageShack or Photobucket without permission, does that make ImageShack or Photobucket liable for that copyrighted image? If I upload copyrighted content to a Geocities homepage without permission, does that make Geocities liable for that copyrighted content? IANAL but from my understanding of DMCA Safe Harbour provisions, those who provide hosting are not legally liable for content on their servers unless they fail to comply with a DMCA takedown or something.
So what makes Google Video and YouTube different? Why are they "on the hook" and being told that they need to activly remove copyrighted content?
A better option might be the new Turbo Delphi product. It comes in the free "explorer" flavor that as far as I can tell does everything that one would need for courses like this. Also, it can target both.NET and win32. Delphi combines the best features of Visual Basic (make GUIs quickly etc) with the best features of Pascal (including the strongly typed nature). Oh and it has none of the bad features of C/C++ (if it does have them, I havent seen them)
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Symantec is already on my list of "companies whos products and services I will never use" for their product activation. The fact that they make it so hard to completly uninstall their product is icing on the cake.
I have recived many letters over the years at different addresses from American Express even though I have never had an American Express card, have never given them any address information and have no wish to obtain ANY of their crappy products.
What I want to know is why so many people stick with a crappy company like Verizon what with all the crap they pull on their customers (crappy custom UI on their phones, locking out features so you have to pay them to transfer camera photos off or to transfer ringtones on, making it hard to cancel their service, charging big cancelation fees, extending contracts without even telling you and so on)
Simple solution:
1.Create a firmware that is loaded onto the chip by the driver (the details as to why driver loaded firmware is better than on-card firmware for a network card have been discussed elsewhere so I wont bother with those) The firmware could either run on some kind of microprocessor on the CPU or it could run on the host x86 chip (in which case an x86-64 port would also be a nice thing to have).
2.Put the country specific bits into the firmware (either with a firmware for each country or a switch to tell the firmware "this card should be run with the settings for ")
3.Open source the specifications or drivers for this firmware so you can write drivers and talk to it.
4.Allow redistribution of unmodified versions of the firmware blob by 3rd parties (such as linux distros)
and 5.Profit (from all the open source users buying your card anyway)
Such a setup would not violate the FCC rules since you cant operate it in "FCC" mode outside of the FCC parameters (and someone loading the "EU" firmware in the US would be no different to someone loading an "EU" specific driver now)
The problem is, as we have seen in some cases already is that if Verizon, AT&T and the other companies rolling out various kinds of fibre data networks are required to roll it out to everyone (including all the non profitable areas) they wont roll it out at all.
Nintendo vs Tengen over who owned the rights to produce Tetris on the NES. Without this lawsuit in favor of nintendo, would we have had Tetris for the Game Boy? (and would Nintendo have become king of the handheld market?)
Nintendo vs Bung over cart copying devices. I believe this was one of the first lawsuits filed under the newly implemented Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
There is another Nintendo lawsuit involving the copy protection for the Nintendo Gameboy. Basicly the gameboy will not boot a cart unless it has the Nintendo logo data in the right place on the cart. There was a lawsuit over this (I dont know the particulars or who the other party was) where Nintendo argued that copying the nintendo logo was a copyright violation. I believe the court ruled that (like in the Sega vs Accolade case) it was OK to use the copyrighted nintendo logo for the specific purpose of making gameboy carts.
I am surprised that Nintendo didnt use stronger protection on the Gameboy Advance (such as encrypting the cart data somehow and having decryption done on the fly by the GBA). It may not have stopped chinese pirates from decapping the GBA CPU or decryption ASIC and reading out the secret key. But it would have meant that anything to do with GBA en/decrption falls squarely under the DMCA.
Basicly, the question is, what does Autocad do when it encounters a file without the "genuine" signature applied. If it rejects the file outright and refuses to load (or loads in a way that would be different to what it would do if the "genuine" signature was present) then it definatly should follow the case law of the Sega and Lexmark cases. However, if all it does is say "this file is not created by an autodesk product" but loads it anyway, there is a much weaker argument to apply the Sega and Lexmark decisions to this case.
Pretty much every GSM, UMTS and CDMA motorola (so not wierd stuff like that IDEN thing) currently available has a mini USB port which is used to charge the phone. :)
You can use a wall-wart charger or a car cigarette lighter charger or whatver. It also uses USB for data transfer and if the USB port is powered, will charge whilst sending data. There is the negative that you cant charge and do data at the same time if the USB port cant provide enough juice but the answer is to charge and then transfer data, transfer data and then charge or build/buy a cable that the USB charger plugs into as does the phone and the computer such that the phone draws power over the power pins from the USB charger whilst communicating over the data pins with the computer. (I am surprised that such a cable doesnt already exist
Answer, dont approve users. Approve programs.
There are ways to install software such as Firefox without needing administrator access (portable firefox for one IIRC) so approve certain software such as firefox and say "if you want to use firefox and can install it without needing admin access or help from IT, go ahead and use it but note that IT wont support it" or something.
Another example. I own a hire company that hires chainsaws. Someone hires one of my chainsaws and uses it to cut someones head off. Am I liable for the illegal act committed using my chainsaw? Since the person who used my chainsaw to cut off someones head did it without my knowledge or concent, the answer is probobly no (again IANAL). On the other hand, if the police find out that the persons head was cut off with one of my chainsaws, they can require me to hand over details of the person who hired the saw in question. If I dont, there are laws that apply to it (obstruction of justice I think it is).
The same should apply in the case of illegal activities online. If someone is using webspace I provide, I should not be liable for any illegal content hosted on that webspace (child porn, RIAA MP3s etc) unless I actually knew the content was there (e.g. RIAA told me to take content down and I did not). Again, if the police find out that one of my customers is using my webspace to host illegal content, they can require me to hand out customer details for that customer (i.e. if they have a court order/search warrent/whatever). And again, if I do not, there are penalties that would apply.
As for your comment, the room could get in trouble if:
A.They knew about the illegal act and failed to take steps to stop it or catch the people who commited it (e.g. cops ask them to hand over details for the customer who rented the room and they do not do so)
or B.it could be reasonably expected that the room was being used for illegal activities (e.g. if the hotel specifically advertized that drug dealers could use their rooms to deal drugs in, that would get them in trouble or if the majority of people using the hotel were using it for illegal acts that could also get them in trouble)
Now, in this particular case the content provider knew full well that the links were to illegally copied content and is therefore liable for it. But the ISP had no idea (presumably until advised by law enforcement or whatever) that the hosted page had links to illegally copied content and therefore should not be liable.
Put simply, making ISPs liable for illegal content on their networks that they are unaware of sets a dangerious precident. For example, could an ISP be liable for hosting child porn even though they had no idea that their customer was using their networks to spread it?
IANAL btw.
I have no problems with the idea that knowingly linking to illegal material should also be illegal. For example, if I start telling people "go talk to bob, he can sell you some illegal drugs", that would be illegal because I am telling someone how to commit an illegal act. Same deal here, linking to a webpage containing illegal material is equivilant to telling someone how to obtain that illegal material. Human edited directories such as Yahoo should also fall under this. Search engines like google that do not monitor or filter their content should not be liable for linking to illegal content unless they are specificially notified and asked to remove the links (or whatever).
The part about ISPs being liable is totally wrong. Say I own a hotel. I rent a room to someone (who pays me for it). That person then uses the room to conduct an illegal act. Does that mean that I am liable for the illegal use of the room? Only if I am specifically notified (e.g. by the police) and fail to take appropriate action (e.g. ejecting the person from the hotel). The same should apply to ISPs and content providers. They should only be liable for illegal content if they have been specifically notified and fail to take action (be that removing the illegal content, shutting down the account, providing account details to the appropriate authorities or whatever).
Making ISPs legally liable for content stored on/hosted by (and potentially even passing through) their networks and forcing them to activly police content would send a number of ISPs out of business and cause a great many more to stop offering any kind of hosting service. (although just like the "stonecutters" in that simpsons episode, there is a big group of vested interests who want to see the internet as we know it today disappear or morph into something much more controled and difficult to publish on)
Even if you are running Firefox or Opera or something else as your main web browser, upgrading to IE7 (if you are on a system where IE7 will run) still makes sense, if nothing else for all those applications that embed the IE widget which will get the benifits of all the bug fixes IE7 has. (although if said applications are known to fail with IE7 installed, thats a different matter)
Given 5 minutes I could easily have anonymous email addresses from at least 1/2 dozen locations along with IM addresses from all the majors with absolutly no way for anyone to link those accounts back to me personally.
Although more than likely the real reason for this law is so that if they are ever able to link a sex offender to an email or IM address not in the database they have something they can use to lock the sex offender up (after a fair trial obviously) without the need to prove that the sex offender did something untoward (i.e. whatever it is that sex offenders do that is illegal)
Although I personally am not interested in this, I know lots of other people are.
I dont see the "you need to buy the subscription thing to play games on your 360" or the "you need to compile from source" or the "managed code only" as that serious.
To me, the 2 biggest lacks is:
C# only. No managed C++ or other languages.
and the real big one: Programs written for the XBOX 360 cannot communicate with the outside world at all (i.e. no networking period). This is by far the biggest limitation of XNA Game Studio 360 IMO.
Unless you can run the linux kernel on top of the .NET Common Language Runtime.
Oh and someone would need to port it to C# too.
Just ask anyone in the television industry about SECAM.
It started out as a french standard that was created because the french wanted to prevent imports of (cheaper) foriegn PAL TVs and protect the domestic industry.
Although later on the Soviets adopted it for a bunch of iron curtain countries so that only state controled SECAM TV could be recieved and not PAL TV comming in from over the border in the west.
From what I have read, the package being given by the US to the F-35 partners (Australia, UK etc) is going to have avionics and equipment that is not as good as that which the US military will be using on its own F-35s. The US probobly doesnt want the partners to turn around and restore this missing functionality (either by modifying the existing avionics hardware and software or by replacing it outright).
Also, the US is probobly worried that the partners (and those contractors the partners choose to work with) may not have as strict rules when it comes to protecting the secrets of the F-35 from "the bad guys".
Pirates will either not install the "manditory patch" or will wait for the hackers to obtain it and remove the disabling functionality.
Screw the wireless, give us hardware accelerated 3D.
Actually, its more like having a wall safe and the government forcing you to open that safe.
The solution (at least for interactive communication such as voice, video, IM, IM file transfer, remote computer access/control etc) is to implement a system where providing the key is impossible. The 2 ends of the link (such as VoIP software and a VoIP server or whatever) would communicate and generate a shared secret key via Diffie-Hellman key exchange or similar. Then this shared secret key would be used to encrypt the communications. Once the communictions are over (say, the VoIP call is hung up), both ends forget the shared secret and no-one can ever decrypt the information again. Since the users never see the shared secret and are never given any options to store it permanently, it is physically impossible to provide decryption keys to law enforcement.
If someone made such a program using open, standard, well tested (and patent free) encryption algorithims and principles and made the program itself open source (as well as documenting the protocol completly), it would make it even harder to stop.
1.Better validation to verify that yes, 123.123.123.123 aka mail.example.com IS allowed to send mail for bob@example.com (this means using things like SPF and with HARD fail specified in the SPF record, not Softfail which too many SPF agents simply ignore and let the mail through anyway)
2.Greater use of encryption and digital signatures to verify that people are who they say they are
3.Greater action by ISPs and others to stop machines that are infected by spambots (greater user education on the part of ISPs, more blocking of ports by default to prevent spambots etc). Its in the ISPs best interests (or so I would have thought) to stop spambots on their network (unlike real spammers who might pay extra for the privildge of being left alone, spambots do nothing except use more of the ISPs bandwidth)
I strongly support the GPLv3 and the anti-DRM and anti-trusted-computing provisions contained therein.
If I buy a device (be it a router, media player, games machine, computer, mobile phone, toaster, chainsaw or whatever else) and that device is running GPL software, I should have the right to replace that software with a modified version and continue using the device for its intented purpose (router, media player, games machine, computer, mobile phone, toaster, chainsaw etc)
If the manufacturer of the device does not want me replacing their software, they can use propriatory software.
Does this change the (stupid) clause in the law that says timeshifting is ok but says that the timeshifted content must be deleted/destroyed after you have watched it once?
If I upload a copyrighted image file to ImageShack or Photobucket without permission, does that make ImageShack or Photobucket liable for that copyrighted image? If I upload copyrighted content to a Geocities homepage without permission, does that make Geocities liable for that copyrighted content?
IANAL but from my understanding of DMCA Safe Harbour provisions, those who provide hosting are not legally liable for content on their servers unless they fail to comply with a DMCA takedown or something.
So what makes Google Video and YouTube different?
Why are they "on the hook" and being told that they need to activly remove copyrighted content?
A better option might be the new Turbo Delphi product. It comes in the free "explorer" flavor that as far as I can tell does everything that one would need for courses like this. Also, it can target both .NET and win32.
Delphi combines the best features of Visual Basic (make GUIs quickly etc) with the best features of Pascal (including the strongly typed nature). Oh and it has none of the bad features of C/C++ (if it does have them, I havent seen them)