This is why these ISPs should have one net-block for residential customers (where all the SPAM comes from) and a different net-block with static IPs for business customers who want to run their own mail server etc.
If the ISPs are (as others said) giving their business class customers static IPs from the same pool as their residential customers then that's poor network management IMO.
If we teach our kids not to trust random people online in the same as we teach our kids not to trust random people in the real world, online pedophiles wont be a problem.
Kids should be taught that the "Captain Turbo" in that chatroom they like to chat in is not to be trusted in the same way as someone strange who walks up to them in the street.
Oracle knows they are going to get negative flack from programmers and stuff.
But the people who make the decision to use Oracle technologies (Oracle database, Oracle J2EE and all the other technologies) are usually not programmers, its PHBs who like the fact that some guy in a suit is saying good things about this "Oracle" thing and are duped into buying it (and the fact that in many cases there is no comparable alternative that is as good as the Oracle product unless you are willing to sign your soul to Microsoft or IBM)
The sort of kids who are skipping school regularly enough that they need to be part of this kind of tracking program are the same sort of kids who are likely to stay out until all hours of the night cruising with their mates (or their gang) and potentially causing trouble.
By requiring an 8pm check-in it ensures the kids are actually at home and not out causing problems.
Basically what Microsoft is banning is code covered by licenses that contain terms that would subject Microsoft code to the license or that contain terms that are incompatible with the Microsoft Windows Phone DRM and lockdowns (i.e. any license where its a violation to distribute the software in a way that cant be copied or modified or whatever)
In simple terms it says that any code covered under a license that is incompatible with the marketplace rules is not allowed in the marketplace.
The same thing happened with a GPLv3 app in the Apple App Store, it was removed because the GPLv3 is not compatible with the App Store DRM.
The BBC is not being evil, its the evil MPAA saying "do this or we wont let you broadcast our content".
The BBC does the bare minimum they are required to by their deals with the big content producers.
Of course what is needed is for the big content producers stop thinking that DRM (especially DRM on free TV broadcasts) will ever stop their content from being pirated (or even do much to slow it down). But there is as much chance of that happening as there is of George Lucas deciding to give Star Wars away for free and uploading copies to YouTube.
No, what happens is that you go to facebook.com which resolves to a machine run by the ISP or government (due to DNS hijacking). This machine goes to the real facebook.com over https, retrieves the page and sends it to you as http. You log in on this page which sends your details to the fake ISP server who sends them on to Facebook.
yeah I think its the same on PC in that there is a single "action" button. But IMO it would be better if it was more like some PC RPGs where you just click on things that are activatable or actionable.
The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion suffers from "consolitis" in that the controls just arent right for a PC. For example why cant I click on a chest and have it open automatically to allow me to pick stuff up without needing to press a button to open it?
On a console having a separate "open chest" button made sense but not on PC with a mouse.
The obvious solution is for the government (assuming they are still in fact pro-competition and still support the idea of Wind Mobile operating in Canada) to pass a law removing the requirement that telcos be operated by Canadians.
1.Introduce a rule where anyone (someone being sued for the patent, someone using the patented technology and not being sued, someone not using the patent at all, whatever) can submit possible prior art for for the patent. Then the patent is re-examined in light of the new prior art. If the prior art is found to be genuine, the patent is ruled invalid and the person who submitted the patent has to pay the costs of the re-examination. If the prior art is found not to be genuine, the patent stands and the person who submitted the prior art has to pay the costs of the re-examination.
2.Change the methods used for calculating patent damages. They already said that damages would be higher if a patent is important to the product and lower if its less important (which is a good thing) but there should also be a rule whereby a patent that is being actually used or licenced by the patent holder attracts higher damages than one that is simply being held (i.e. patent trolls who hold the patent purely to sue people get less money than those who are actually using or licensing the patent).
3.Ban patents on any genetic sequence or chemical compound found in nature. (so a pharma company that finds a new medicine in a plant in the amazon jungle does not get to claim a patent over that medicine or any genes in the plant responsible for producing that chemical). Chemicals and gene sequences created in a lab would still be eligible for patent protection though. Should it be discovered (and verified) that the complete chemical or genetic sequence does exist in nature and that the occurrence could not have come from the lab-produced version, that evidence would count as prior art and could be used as such under point 1 above.
Also further to this, there would be a complete ban on patenting any genetic sequence found in any human being anywhere on the planet as well as any proteins produced by those genes or any tests for those genes or the proteins they produce.
4.Ban patents on mathematical formulas and algorithms including encryption algorithms and compression algorithms. This would also mean the banning of patents such as the patent granted to eHarmony for its algorithim to match up people based on the answers to the eHarmony questionnaire.
5.Ban business method patents and make it clear that all kinds of business method patents (including those involving a computer system) are not patentable.
The precedent was already set when Apple decided that apps that view web content from places like Project Gutenberg are required to be rated "adult" if any of the content is adult content
A thorium reactor does not require the expensive hard-to-make enriched uranium fuel rods that conventional pressurized water reactors and boiling water reactors do.
The manufacturers of nuclear reactor technology such as General Electric Nuclear and Westsinghouse Electric make big money from selling the expensive fuel rods and have no interest in reactor designs that dont need such fuel roads.
The GPU code in the Hypervisor is the the same for GameOS and OtherOS. (being that both GameOS and OtherOS sit on top of the same Hypervisor).
For USB, AFAIK all USB host controllers implement one of a few documented standards like UHCI, OHCI or EHCI. I have never seen a bluetooth chip that isn't documented either (most of them put the secret bits into an on-device firmware that is downloaded)
WiFi I will grant you, there are still WiFi vendors unwilling to open up their drivers. But with the PS3 having Ethernet (and any future PS3 wouldn't change that) if Sony wanted to use a WiFi chipset that couldn't be supported in OSS drivers, they could just not support WiFi in OtherOS and let the community deal with it.
Don't know what sort of audio chip Sony are using on the PS3 and whether its a dumb "sound card" like on most PC motherboards or a smarter chip that does audio processing work but I havent seen any audio chipsets that are undocumented either (even Creative Labs has open-source drivers for many of their cards these days, some written by third parties but still open)
Name one component in the PS3 where there are manufacturers not willing to release OSS drivers (i.e. where Sony would be restricted to picking parts that have open drivers).
Sony never provided access to the GPU other than through Hypervisor calls and a dumb frame-buffer so that doesn't count.
Presumably GeoHot and his lawyers argued that the information is already out there with many many mirror sites and that the injunction against distributing something that's so widely mirrored is therefore pointless.
What I want to know is what the Sony lawyer's argument as to why the injunction was required given the wide dissemination of the information and what the judge said in response to the "its already out there so the injunction is pointless" arguments.
I suspect Sony were concerned about further publications by GeoHot of currently unpublished information (such as a custom LV2/GameOS replacement that does minimal hardware init and then runs a Linux bootloader/kernel) and about GeoHot dissecting the next PS3 firmware update (the one that is going to try and shut the stable door even though the horse has already bolted) and posting its secrets online.
I have already blacklisted the computer games, music and electronic arms of Sony including products branded with the Walkman, PlayStation, CyberShot and Sony Erricson brands. (although I did buy a special "bushfire aid" CD a few years ago because it had cool songs on it and the money went to bushfire victims and didn't line the pockets of Sony executives). Blacklisting the movie arm of Sony is harder because they own so many different movies and franchises under so many different names that its impossible to know which films I need to avoid. (plus the movie arm isn't the one distributing rootkits on audio CDs or suing hackers for discovering that they need to hire someone who actually knows about encryption, not just someone who claims they do on their resume)
The real kick-starter for the hackers was the desire to run OtherOS on the slim PS3 (which didnt support it even though there is no technical reason it couldn't, just Sony wanting to stop people buying PS3s for Linux only and not buying games)
This is partially what led to the first GeoHot exploit (the memory glitch) which was used (in conjunction with Linux running under OtherOS) to produce the first firmware dumps of the machine.
Sony then got concerned that the memory glitch could have lead to piracy somehow (by exposing the workings of the game-loading bits of the PS3 in a way that OtherOS can talk to and load and mess with) so they removed OtherOS and that kicked things into high gear (starting with the "jailbreak" exploits, then firmware downgrade exploits to downgrade to a vulnerable version and finally the complete failure of the PS3 security thanks to Sony not knowing how to use ECDSA.
The problem with the N900 is not that there is a lack of open-source development but that too many critical pieces of the phone software were not open-sourced by Nokia.
MeeGo gets better, the only closed source components on that platform are: Broadcomm Bluetooth chip firmware (closed source due to FCC regulations regarding bluetooth hardware) userspace GPU drivers (closed source because PowerVR wont share its "valuable IP") TI wireless chip firmware and certain user-space code related to it (closed source due to FCC regulations regarding WiFi hardware) A few audio algorithms (likely closed source because they contain 3rd party code or they contain secret algorithms Nokia doesn't want to disclose) GPS libraries and daemon (closed source because of the proprietary algorithms that talk to the TI GPS chip) Library that talks to the special calibration data on the phone (closed source because messing with this data can seriously screw things up) Battery Management Entity module (closed source because if you send the wrong thing to the battery related hardware, its possible to damage the handset or battery) Cell modem firmware (closed source due to FCC regulations regarding GSM/UMTS hardware)
Other important things like the telephony stack and internet connectivity stuff are now open source in MeeGo (telephony stack in MeeGo is based on ofono with special code for the N900 and its cellular modem)
The downside is that MeeGo support on the N900 is a community effort only and is unlikely to be a viable replacement for Maemo Fremantle anytime soon and that all the MeeGo work means no further work (including opening of closed source packages to benefit the community) is likely to happen for Maemo Fremantle.
In some cases there may be a company-wide ban on the use of encryption and in particular encryption that leaves the company network (it may sound stupid but I HAVE seen it before). So Telnet is the only approved way to access servers and things (especially stuff outside the normal company network such as machines hosted in a colo or something)
Given the fact that its got 3G and WiFi and given that Sony is really pushing downloadable games on the PSP now (and given that making it download-only cuts out the game-store middleman) I cant see Sony putting an optical disk drive in this device.
Slashdot Mirror
Because you can use a calculator in class without it being confiscated.
Although once you start adding extra hardware that;s visible from the outside, its a different matter :)
... why you choose to bank with a bank that doesn't support your choice of OS & doesn't take security seriously?
Blame the carriers for all the crap on your Galaxy phone.
They are usually the ones that want all this crap.
This is why these ISPs should have one net-block for residential customers (where all the SPAM comes from) and a different net-block with static IPs for business customers who want to run their own mail server etc.
If the ISPs are (as others said) giving their business class customers static IPs from the same pool as their residential customers then that's poor network management IMO.
If we teach our kids not to trust random people online in the same as we teach our kids not to trust random people in the real world, online pedophiles wont be a problem.
Kids should be taught that the "Captain Turbo" in that chatroom they like to chat in is not to be trusted in the same way as someone strange who walks up to them in the street.
Oracle knows they are going to get negative flack from programmers and stuff.
But the people who make the decision to use Oracle technologies (Oracle database, Oracle J2EE and all the other technologies) are usually not programmers, its PHBs who like the fact that some guy in a suit is saying good things about this "Oracle" thing and are duped into buying it (and the fact that in many cases there is no comparable alternative that is as good as the Oracle product unless you are willing to sign your soul to Microsoft or IBM)
The sort of kids who are skipping school regularly enough that they need to be part of this kind of tracking program are the same sort of kids who are likely to stay out until all hours of the night cruising with their mates (or their gang) and potentially causing trouble.
By requiring an 8pm check-in it ensures the kids are actually at home and not out causing problems.
Basically what Microsoft is banning is code covered by licenses that contain terms that would subject Microsoft code to the license or that contain terms that are incompatible with the Microsoft Windows Phone DRM and lockdowns (i.e. any license where its a violation to distribute the software in a way that cant be copied or modified or whatever)
In simple terms it says that any code covered under a license that is incompatible with the marketplace rules is not allowed in the marketplace.
The same thing happened with a GPLv3 app in the Apple App Store, it was removed because the GPLv3 is not compatible with the App Store DRM.
The BBC is not being evil, its the evil MPAA saying "do this or we wont let you broadcast our content".
The BBC does the bare minimum they are required to by their deals with the big content producers.
Of course what is needed is for the big content producers stop thinking that DRM (especially DRM on free TV broadcasts) will ever stop their content from being pirated (or even do much to slow it down). But there is as much chance of that happening as there is of George Lucas deciding to give Star Wars away for free and uploading copies to YouTube.
No, what happens is that you go to facebook.com which resolves to a machine run by the ISP or government (due to DNS hijacking). This machine goes to the real facebook.com over https, retrieves the page and sends it to you as http. You log in on this page which sends your details to the fake ISP server who sends them on to Facebook.
yeah I think its the same on PC in that there is a single "action" button. But IMO it would be better if it was more like some PC RPGs where you just click on things that are activatable or actionable.
The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion suffers from "consolitis" in that the controls just arent right for a PC. For example why cant I click on a chest and have it open automatically to allow me to pick stuff up without needing to press a button to open it?
On a console having a separate "open chest" button made sense but not on PC with a mouse.
The obvious solution is for the government (assuming they are still in fact pro-competition and still support the idea of Wind Mobile operating in Canada) to pass a law removing the requirement that telcos be operated by Canadians.
1.Introduce a rule where anyone (someone being sued for the patent, someone using the patented technology and not being sued, someone not using the patent at all, whatever) can submit possible prior art for for the patent. Then the patent is re-examined in light of the new prior art. If the prior art is found to be genuine, the patent is ruled invalid and the person who submitted the patent has to pay the costs of the re-examination.
If the prior art is found not to be genuine, the patent stands and the person who submitted the prior art has to pay the costs of the re-examination.
2.Change the methods used for calculating patent damages. They already said that damages would be higher if a patent is important to the product and lower if its less important (which is a good thing) but there should also be a rule whereby a patent that is being actually used or licenced by the patent holder attracts higher damages than one that is simply being held (i.e. patent trolls who hold the patent purely to sue people get less money than those who are actually using or licensing the patent).
3.Ban patents on any genetic sequence or chemical compound found in nature. (so a pharma company that finds a new medicine in a plant in the amazon jungle does not get to claim a patent over that medicine or any genes in the plant responsible for producing that chemical). Chemicals and gene sequences created in a lab would still be eligible for patent protection though. Should it be discovered (and verified) that the complete chemical or genetic sequence does exist in nature and that the occurrence could not have come from the lab-produced version, that evidence would count as prior art and could be used as such under point 1 above.
Also further to this, there would be a complete ban on patenting any genetic sequence found in any human being anywhere on the planet as well as any proteins produced by those genes or any tests for those genes or the proteins they produce.
4.Ban patents on mathematical formulas and algorithms including encryption algorithms and compression algorithms. This would also mean the banning of patents such as the patent granted to eHarmony for its algorithim to match up people based on the answers to the eHarmony questionnaire.
5.Ban business method patents and make it clear that all kinds of business method patents (including those involving a computer system) are not patentable.
The precedent was already set when Apple decided that apps that view web content from places like Project Gutenberg are required to be rated "adult" if any of the content is adult content
A thorium reactor does not require the expensive hard-to-make enriched uranium fuel rods that conventional pressurized water reactors and boiling water reactors do.
The manufacturers of nuclear reactor technology such as General Electric Nuclear and Westsinghouse Electric make big money from selling the expensive fuel rods and have no interest in reactor designs that dont need such fuel roads.
The GPU code in the Hypervisor is the the same for GameOS and OtherOS. (being that both GameOS and OtherOS sit on top of the same Hypervisor).
For USB, AFAIK all USB host controllers implement one of a few documented standards like UHCI, OHCI or EHCI.
I have never seen a bluetooth chip that isn't documented either (most of them put the secret bits into an on-device firmware that is downloaded)
WiFi I will grant you, there are still WiFi vendors unwilling to open up their drivers. But with the PS3 having Ethernet (and any future PS3 wouldn't change that) if Sony wanted to use a WiFi chipset that couldn't be supported in OSS drivers, they could just not support WiFi in OtherOS and let the community deal with it.
Don't know what sort of audio chip Sony are using on the PS3 and whether its a dumb "sound card" like on most PC motherboards or a smarter chip that does audio processing work but I havent seen any audio chipsets that are undocumented either (even Creative Labs has open-source drivers for many of their cards these days, some written by third parties but still open)
Name one component in the PS3 where there are manufacturers not willing to release OSS drivers (i.e. where Sony would be restricted to picking parts that have open drivers).
Sony never provided access to the GPU other than through Hypervisor calls and a dumb frame-buffer so that doesn't count.
Presumably GeoHot and his lawyers argued that the information is already out there with many many mirror sites and that the injunction against distributing something that's so widely mirrored is therefore pointless.
What I want to know is what the Sony lawyer's argument as to why the injunction was required given the wide dissemination of the information and what the judge said in response to the "its already out there so the injunction is pointless" arguments.
I suspect Sony were concerned about further publications by GeoHot of currently unpublished information (such as a custom LV2/GameOS replacement that does minimal hardware init and then runs a Linux bootloader/kernel) and about GeoHot dissecting the next PS3 firmware update (the one that is going to try and shut the stable door even though the horse has already bolted) and posting its secrets online.
I have already blacklisted the computer games, music and electronic arms of Sony including products branded with the Walkman, PlayStation, CyberShot and Sony Erricson brands. (although I did buy a special "bushfire aid" CD a few years ago because it had cool songs on it and the money went to bushfire victims and didn't line the pockets of Sony executives). Blacklisting the movie arm of Sony is harder because they own so many different movies and franchises under so many different names that its impossible to know which films I need to avoid. (plus the movie arm isn't the one distributing rootkits on audio CDs or suing hackers for discovering that they need to hire someone who actually knows about encryption, not just someone who claims they do on their resume)
The real kick-starter for the hackers was the desire to run OtherOS on the slim PS3 (which didnt support it even though there is no technical reason it couldn't, just Sony wanting to stop people buying PS3s for Linux only and not buying games)
This is partially what led to the first GeoHot exploit (the memory glitch) which was used (in conjunction with Linux running under OtherOS) to produce the first firmware dumps of the machine.
Sony then got concerned that the memory glitch could have lead to piracy somehow (by exposing the workings of the game-loading bits of the PS3 in a way that OtherOS can talk to and load and mess with) so they removed OtherOS and that kicked things into high gear (starting with the "jailbreak" exploits, then firmware downgrade exploits to downgrade to a vulnerable version and finally the complete failure of the PS3 security thanks to Sony not knowing how to use ECDSA.
The problem with the N900 is not that there is a lack of open-source development but that too many critical pieces of the phone software were not open-sourced by Nokia.
MeeGo gets better, the only closed source components on that platform are:
Broadcomm Bluetooth chip firmware (closed source due to FCC regulations regarding bluetooth hardware)
userspace GPU drivers (closed source because PowerVR wont share its "valuable IP")
TI wireless chip firmware and certain user-space code related to it (closed source due to FCC regulations regarding WiFi hardware)
A few audio algorithms (likely closed source because they contain 3rd party code or they contain secret algorithms Nokia doesn't want to disclose)
GPS libraries and daemon (closed source because of the proprietary algorithms that talk to the TI GPS chip)
Library that talks to the special calibration data on the phone (closed source because messing with this data can seriously screw things up)
Battery Management Entity module (closed source because if you send the wrong thing to the battery related hardware, its possible to damage the handset or battery)
Cell modem firmware (closed source due to FCC regulations regarding GSM/UMTS hardware)
Other important things like the telephony stack and internet connectivity stuff are now open source in MeeGo (telephony stack in MeeGo is based on ofono with special code for the N900 and its cellular modem)
The downside is that MeeGo support on the N900 is a community effort only and is unlikely to be a viable replacement for Maemo Fremantle anytime soon and that all the MeeGo work means no further work (including opening of closed source packages to benefit the community) is likely to happen for Maemo Fremantle.
In some cases there may be a company-wide ban on the use of encryption and in particular encryption that leaves the company network (it may sound stupid but I HAVE seen it before). So Telnet is the only approved way to access servers and things (especially stuff outside the normal company network such as machines hosted in a colo or something)
Given the fact that its got 3G and WiFi and given that Sony is really pushing downloadable games on the PSP now (and given that making it download-only cuts out the game-store middleman) I cant see Sony putting an optical disk drive in this device.
I cant read the bill text .pdf link, does anyone have a mirror or a copy of the text?