Basicly, what happens is that google pays money to ispa. Then an end user pays money to ispb. Then, ispa and ispb have aggreements so that based on the traffic flow between ispa and ispb, money changes hands in one direction or the other (I dont fully understand it but I think thats right).
Now ispb wants to charge google extra for "preferential treatment"??? This is not just a cash grab, its also a way to favor some stuff over others. For example: voip.isp.com over Skype/Vonage/etc Microsoft over Google (because Microsoft is in bed with the media companies and cable companies and telcos) Napster/wbmoviedownload.com/etc over P2P downloading/BitTorrent/etc And so on
I suggest we boycot and/or write letters to any ISP that threatens to do this (and tell our friends to do the same). Also, we should write to our government (at least those of us in countries where this is actually being talked about) and support/push for bills to force net neutrality on ISPs.
Thankfully no Australian ISP could ever do this (if they did, they would be out of business quick smart thanks to the great competition we have here)
And it should also be easy to use. Making security easy to use CAN be done.
Email encryption for example, when you install the mail client, it could generate a public/private keypair automatically and submit the public key to public key servers automatically.
Then when you send an email, it can automatically look up the public key of the person you are emailing and encrypt the email (unless you tell it not to).
When explaining it all to the user, dont call it "Encryption", just tell them that if they use this feature, it will mean that only the person you are sending the email to can read it and it cant be read by .
Facilities could be there so that businesses could configure it (via group policy) so that email encryption is active but keypairs are created by corporate mailservers and the mailserver (or the mail admin or whoever) has the keys and can look at the mail to look for whatever it is that email admins want to monitor email for. Or it could be disabled completly (or completly except for email going out of the company).
If email encryption was easy to use, everyone would start using it and the world would be a better place.
Ditto with other security features such as IM security (I would love to see a new feature in MSN messenger/AOL messenger/etc such that IMs were encrypted and only readable by the intended recipiant)
What is Excel using for macros these days? Still using VBA? Is there any reason that OO.o couldnt implement a compatible implementation of VBA if some hacker wanted to take the time to implement it?
They should stop discriminating based on protocol, destination or content and simply change the pricing model.
Basicly, instead of offering "unlimited"* internet (with all these strings attached), change to a sane pricing model.
Basicly, you get x gb per month for your monthly fee. Then, if you go over that, you have to pay extra $x per gb.
Most people (i.e. anyone who doesnt download large movie files or pirate warez ISOz etc) wont care (as long as the initial gb amount is reasonable). The high bandwidth users will be paying for their usage.
That way, they dont discriminate against content or protocols, only against bandwidth use (so the guy downloading 10gb per month of linux ISOs over HTTP and FTP pays extra just like the guy downloading 10gb per month of TV and movies over BitTorrent and the guy downloading 10gb per month of xbox ISOz over emule.
The other option is to have the same initial gb amount but instead of charging extra, throttle the customer back to dialup speeds for the rest of the month (lots of ISPs in australia do that)
When you make a call to another VoIP user (e.g. vonage to vonage), the entire call would be encrypted end-to-end with keys known only to the clients at either end. The vonage server in that case would only exist to do call setup, teardown and control etc. If you are making a call to a PSTN user, its encrypted all the way from you to the PSTN connection link server again with keys known only to both ends.
I am sure there are ways to handle secure key exchange and such to make this actually work (and ways that dont require the user to know anything about how to create keys and other things) And there are encryption algorithims good enough to use for real-time encryption of compressed voice data.
With this idea, no-one between the 2 points can listen to the phonecall. (other than what can normally be done on the PSTN side of the PSTN linkup if it is a PSTN call)
Do what is done for OpenOffice.org/StarOffice. In that case, I believe, SUN has copyright assignments over the code and owns the copyright (I think) and can therefore release StarOffice as closed source.
Release it under GPL. This way, no-one can "pull a microsoft" and create incompatible forks because whatever changes they make can be brought back into the main tree.
Secondly, make a testsuite available to use for free (but only when developing against the GPL version of the VM) so people can make sure their VMs are compatible.
Thirdly, if you are a company that wants to use the JVM embedded in your product and want a closed source licence (either to ship the JVM as is or to modify it), you would be able to get one from sun (just like it is now)
Forthly, there would be rules governing the use of the JAVA trademark.
So basicly, forks would be prevented by controling the trademark, having a solid testsuite available so people can make sure their VM is still 100% compatible and that they didnt make any changes that accidently broke things and by encouraging people to submit changes back to the main tree.
Plus, just look at other open source projects. There are a few people hacking on the Mozilla codebase and releasing their own stuff but most people just follow what mozilla.org puts out (and/or tries to get their changes into official mozilla.org tree somewhere). Most GCC development (with the exception of Apple OSX stuff and a few platforms like MingW which (for whatever reason) seem to end up second class citicens) is done on mainline. Same with pretty much all GNU projects. Along with WINE and a number of others.
The only time I have seen forks is the X fork where people didnt like the way xfree86 was being run and created x.org. These days most people have moved to x.org.
The licence and releases should cover all 3 flavors of java, J2EE, J2SE and J2ME.
Just follow australia. We just have the 10% GST on everything except certain food and other essentials plus a special tax on a couple things like alcohol & cigarettes.
The RIAA has hated streaming audio since the days when "streaming audio" meant files comming over a 300bps modem that told your PC speaker how to beep a song. The whole point is that, unlike traditional radio stations (ClearChannel etc), streaming radio stations play what THEY want to play, not what the RIAA wants them to play.
I am am australian and I dont have problems with an ID card as such, especially if it would mean I would need to carry less stuff in my wallet. The problem is when governments start attaching more information to the cards or starts mandating you need ID cards in all sorts of places (e.g. "You need ID card to check books out of the library") or make it compulsory to cary it with you. (e.g. "if you dont have your card, the cops can arrest you")
The places generally talked about needing an ID card are perfectly OK with me. You already need to show ID to open a bank account so that isnt an issue. You also need ID if you are going to sell stuff to a second hand shop (at least here in Western Australia you do) which is aimed at making it harder to sell stolen property. As for domestic air travel, last time I flew, I had to show ID when I checked in. And the airlines can link you to your flight/seat/ticket/boarding pass etc already. Needing to show this new ID card to board a commercial airplane would not be any different IMO.
In my workplace (which shall remain nameless), to get into the building during normal hours you need a photo badge passcard. To get in after hours, you need a photo badge passcard and a pin number. I also have an individual key to my desk to keep any confidential paper or other physical materials secure plus several different access passwords for different parts of the system (email, login, corporate intranet, other locations), all of which have to be changed periodically.
Without passwords, there would be nothing to stop cleaners (who all have the same photo badge passcard access as I do), repair guys or even other engineers (I work in software development) accessing your machine and pretending to be you to steal confidential information or cause other problems.
Perhaps someone somewhere was worried about the new anti-discrimination laws or whatever they are, where if the list of people considered fomr a position is skewed too much towards one race/class/gender/religion/whatever, it could violate the laws.
A virtual drive (something that goes onto a home PC and shares data from that would be great) that can be accessed 100% over HTTPS. So you would be able to both download AND upload files over bog standard HTTPS.
The ideal program would let me share different bits of my drive under different passwords (e.g. one password for all of the drive, another for certain "shared files" etc) and would let me manipulate everything (creating folders, deleting files, downloading files, uploading files) over bog-standard almost-impossible-to-block-or-monitor HTTPS. HTTPS is used by so many things its impossible to block without making lots of people annoyed plus its pretty much impossible for man in the middle attacks (either eavesdropping or tampering) to happen as long as you check the certificates to see that they match up.
Basicly, from my perspective, if I can talk to it and use 100% of the functionality of it from any OS using 100% open code, its "Open Source" enough for me. If it relies on firmware or BIOS roms to do that, thats fine by me. (assuming one can download the firmware to the card correctly from any OS)
I dont want to know how it works. I just want to know how to talk to it properly so I can make it do what it is supposed to do (and push it to its full potential). My microsoft optical mouse might have code in a little embedded processor inside it (I dont know) but regardless of how it works, what matters is that it talks over USB and it talks using a known documented protocol (so any operating system is able to use it). My Intel Pentium IV 3.4GHz HT CPU does contain microcode that I dont have any source code for. But, it doesnt matter since the documentation of how to talk to it (the x86 instruction set) is open. (I dont know if the physical specs of how to talk to it and how to build a motherboard for it are open though) Its the same with graphics cards. We dont want or need the origonal design files for the custom ASICs used on the cards. Or the complete schematics for the cards. All we need is details of how to talk to the card and how to get it to draw stuff on the screen. (which these days means full hardware accellerated 3D being powered by OpenGL) If a manufacturer can provide a graphics card where the hardware interface is open and which supports all the things you need these days for games like Doom III, Unreal Tournament and Neverwinter Nights (like pixel and vertex shaders), I for one am prepared to put my money where my mouth is and support them.
Simple, offer fast speeds but limit downloads. Most "normal" users will not exceed the 10gb/month (or whatever is offered) but high bandwidth users will have to pay $X per gb over the limit. P2P bandwidth hogs will pay up (or move to other ISPs that havent adopted the new model). Because the high bandwidth users are paying extra, the average amount of bandwidth being used by everyone paying $x per month for the ISP service goes down. This means that the $x could go down (as the light users dont subsidise the heavy users as much anymore) which will keep the "normal" users from jumping ship to other ISPs still offering "unlimited".
Even today many ISPs (and other hosts along the way) run transparent caching proxy servers (there are various RFCs covering such servers and protocols governing them IIRC)
Firstly, there are major anti-trust issues here. But, even if there werent, there is NO WAY that the japanese government would let a foriegn company like Microsoft buy a company as big as sony.
Include FreeDOS or some other simple OS on the machine. Now its no longer an "OS-less" machine. Support costs are almost non existant (as if anyone is actually going to use FreeDOS and even if they do, it should be dead simple to support)
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My brother has a 360 and it looks just fine on a 51cm CRT TV.
Basicly, what happens is that google pays money to ispa.
Then an end user pays money to ispb.
Then, ispa and ispb have aggreements so that based on the traffic flow between ispa and ispb, money changes hands in one direction or the other (I dont fully understand it but I think thats right).
Now ispb wants to charge google extra for "preferential treatment"???
This is not just a cash grab, its also a way to favor some stuff over others.
For example:
voip.isp.com over Skype/Vonage/etc
Microsoft over Google (because Microsoft is in bed with the media companies and cable companies and telcos)
Napster/wbmoviedownload.com/etc over P2P downloading/BitTorrent/etc
And so on
I suggest we boycot and/or write letters to any ISP that threatens to do this (and tell our friends to do the same).
Also, we should write to our government (at least those of us in countries where this is actually being talked about) and support/push for bills to force net neutrality on ISPs.
Thankfully no Australian ISP could ever do this (if they did, they would be out of business quick smart thanks to the great competition we have here)
And it should also be easy to use.
Making security easy to use CAN be done.
Email encryption for example, when you install the mail client, it could generate a public/private keypair automatically and submit the public key to public key servers automatically.
Then when you send an email, it can automatically look up the public key of the person you are emailing and encrypt the email (unless you tell it not to).
When explaining it all to the user, dont call it "Encryption", just tell them that if they use this feature, it will mean that only the person you are sending the email to can read it and it cant be read by .
Facilities could be there so that businesses could configure it (via group policy) so that email encryption is active but keypairs are created by corporate mailservers and the mailserver (or the mail admin or whoever) has the keys and can look at the mail to look for whatever it is that email admins want to monitor email for. Or it could be disabled completly (or completly except for email going out of the company).
If email encryption was easy to use, everyone would start using it and the world would be a better place.
Ditto with other security features such as IM security (I would love to see a new feature in MSN messenger/AOL messenger/etc such that IMs were encrypted and only readable by the intended recipiant)
What is Excel using for macros these days? Still using VBA?
Is there any reason that OO.o couldnt implement a compatible implementation of VBA if some hacker wanted to take the time to implement it?
They should stop discriminating based on protocol, destination or content and simply change the pricing model.
Basicly, instead of offering "unlimited"* internet (with all these strings attached), change to a sane pricing model.
Basicly, you get x gb per month for your monthly fee.
Then, if you go over that, you have to pay extra $x per gb.
Most people (i.e. anyone who doesnt download large movie files or pirate warez ISOz etc) wont care (as long as the initial gb amount is reasonable). The high bandwidth users will be paying for their usage.
That way, they dont discriminate against content or protocols, only against bandwidth use (so the guy downloading 10gb per month of linux ISOs over HTTP and FTP pays extra just like the guy downloading 10gb per month of TV and movies over BitTorrent and the guy downloading 10gb per month of xbox ISOz over emule.
The other option is to have the same initial gb amount but instead of charging extra, throttle the customer back to dialup speeds for the rest of the month (lots of ISPs in australia do that)
When you make a call to another VoIP user (e.g. vonage to vonage), the entire call would be encrypted end-to-end with keys known only to the clients at either end.
The vonage server in that case would only exist to do call setup, teardown and control etc.
If you are making a call to a PSTN user, its encrypted all the way from you to the PSTN connection link server again with keys known only to both ends.
I am sure there are ways to handle secure key exchange and such to make this actually work (and ways that dont require the user to know anything about how to create keys and other things)
And there are encryption algorithims good enough to use for real-time encryption of compressed voice data.
With this idea, no-one between the 2 points can listen to the phonecall. (other than what can normally be done on the PSTN side of the PSTN linkup if it is a PSTN call)
Do what is done for OpenOffice.org/StarOffice.
In that case, I believe, SUN has copyright assignments over the code and owns the copyright (I think) and can therefore release StarOffice as closed source.
Release it under GPL. This way, no-one can "pull a microsoft" and create incompatible forks because whatever changes they make can be brought back into the main tree.
Secondly, make a testsuite available to use for free (but only when developing against the GPL version of the VM) so people can make sure their VMs are compatible.
Thirdly, if you are a company that wants to use the JVM embedded in your product and want a closed source licence (either to ship the JVM as is or to modify it), you would be able to get one from sun (just like it is now)
Forthly, there would be rules governing the use of the JAVA trademark.
So basicly, forks would be prevented by controling the trademark, having a solid testsuite available so people can make sure their VM is still 100% compatible and that they didnt make any changes that accidently broke things and by encouraging people to submit changes back to the main tree.
Plus, just look at other open source projects. There are a few people hacking on the Mozilla codebase and releasing their own stuff but most people just follow what mozilla.org puts out (and/or tries to get their changes into official mozilla.org tree somewhere). Most GCC development (with the exception of Apple OSX stuff and a few platforms like MingW which (for whatever reason) seem to end up second class citicens) is done on mainline. Same with pretty much all GNU projects.
Along with WINE and a number of others.
The only time I have seen forks is the X fork where people didnt like the way xfree86 was being run and created x.org. These days most people have moved to x.org.
The licence and releases should cover all 3 flavors of java, J2EE, J2SE and J2ME.
Just follow australia.
We just have the 10% GST on everything except certain food and other essentials plus a special tax on a couple things like alcohol & cigarettes.
The RIAA has hated streaming audio since the days when "streaming audio" meant files comming over a 300bps modem that told your PC speaker how to beep a song.
The whole point is that, unlike traditional radio stations (ClearChannel etc), streaming radio stations play what THEY want to play, not what the RIAA wants them to play.
I am am australian and I dont have problems with an ID card as such, especially if it would mean I would need to carry less stuff in my wallet.
The problem is when governments start attaching more information to the cards or starts mandating you need ID cards in all sorts of places (e.g. "You need ID card to check books out of the library") or make it compulsory to cary it with you. (e.g. "if you dont have your card, the cops can arrest you")
The places generally talked about needing an ID card are perfectly OK with me.
You already need to show ID to open a bank account so that isnt an issue.
You also need ID if you are going to sell stuff to a second hand shop (at least here in Western Australia you do) which is aimed at making it harder to sell stolen property.
As for domestic air travel, last time I flew, I had to show ID when I checked in. And the airlines can link you to your flight/seat/ticket/boarding pass etc already. Needing to show this new ID card to board a commercial airplane would not be any different IMO.
In my workplace (which shall remain nameless), to get into the building during normal hours you need a photo badge passcard.
To get in after hours, you need a photo badge passcard and a pin number.
I also have an individual key to my desk to keep any confidential paper or other physical materials secure plus several different access passwords for different parts of the system (email, login, corporate intranet, other locations), all of which have to be changed periodically.
Without passwords, there would be nothing to stop cleaners (who all have the same photo badge passcard access as I do), repair guys or even other engineers (I work in software development) accessing your machine and pretending to be you to steal confidential information or cause other problems.
What about systems that remember every password you ever use (or remember so many that its unfesable to go to one you used before)?
Perhaps someone somewhere was worried about the new anti-discrimination laws or whatever they are, where if the list of people considered fomr a position is skewed too much towards one race/class/gender/religion/whatever, it could violate the laws.
Isnt that what all those lovely underground trains are for? To avoid the congestion tax and all that parking lot traffic?
A virtual drive (something that goes onto a home PC and shares data from that would be great) that can be accessed 100% over HTTPS.
So you would be able to both download AND upload files over bog standard HTTPS.
The ideal program would let me share different bits of my drive under different passwords (e.g. one password for all of the drive, another for certain "shared files" etc) and would let me manipulate everything (creating folders, deleting files, downloading files, uploading files) over bog-standard almost-impossible-to-block-or-monitor HTTPS. HTTPS is used by so many things its impossible to block without making lots of people annoyed plus its pretty much impossible for man in the middle attacks (either eavesdropping or tampering) to happen as long as you check the certificates to see that they match up.
Basicly, from my perspective, if I can talk to it and use 100% of the functionality of it from any OS using 100% open code, its "Open Source" enough for me. If it relies on firmware or BIOS roms to do that, thats fine by me. (assuming one can download the firmware to the card correctly from any OS)
I dont want to know how it works.
I just want to know how to talk to it properly so I can make it do what it is supposed to do (and push it to its full potential).
My microsoft optical mouse might have code in a little embedded processor inside it (I dont know) but regardless of how it works, what matters is that it talks over USB and it talks using a known documented protocol (so any operating system is able to use it).
My Intel Pentium IV 3.4GHz HT CPU does contain microcode that I dont have any source code for. But, it doesnt matter since the documentation of how to talk to it (the x86 instruction set) is open. (I dont know if the physical specs of how to talk to it and how to build a motherboard for it are open though)
Its the same with graphics cards. We dont want or need the origonal design files for the custom ASICs used on the cards. Or the complete schematics for the cards. All we need is details of how to talk to the card and how to get it to draw stuff on the screen. (which these days means full hardware accellerated 3D being powered by OpenGL) If a manufacturer can provide a graphics card where the hardware interface is open and which supports all the things you need these days for games like Doom III, Unreal Tournament and Neverwinter Nights (like pixel and vertex shaders), I for one am prepared to put my money where my mouth is and support them.
Simple, offer fast speeds but limit downloads. Most "normal" users will not exceed the 10gb/month (or whatever is offered) but high bandwidth users will have to pay $X per gb over the limit.
P2P bandwidth hogs will pay up (or move to other ISPs that havent adopted the new model).
Because the high bandwidth users are paying extra, the average amount of bandwidth being used by everyone paying $x per month for the ISP service goes down. This means that the $x could go down (as the light users dont subsidise the heavy users as much anymore) which will keep the "normal" users from jumping ship to other ISPs still offering "unlimited".
Even today many ISPs (and other hosts along the way) run transparent caching proxy servers (there are various RFCs covering such servers and protocols governing them IIRC)
Forget Trillian, go with Miranda IM which is 100% free (as in GPL) and is more lightweight than Trillian too.
Firstly, there are major anti-trust issues here.
But, even if there werent, there is NO WAY that the japanese government would let a foriegn company like Microsoft buy a company as big as sony.
Basicly, its the FDA concerned about giving approval for any kind of medical implant that hasnt been fully tested yet.
CGI doesnt always mean "3D" in the Toy Story, Shrek or Ice Age sense.
Even 2D shows like The Simpsons probobly have a fair amount of computer drawn and generated animation.
Not to mention the whole "South-park is 100% CGI" thing)
IMO, one of the best uses of 3D in a "traditional" animated cartoon is in the Disney Tarzan movie.
Include FreeDOS or some other simple OS on the machine.
Now its no longer an "OS-less" machine.
Support costs are almost non existant (as if anyone is actually going to use FreeDOS and even if they do, it should be dead simple to support)