There's just a bit of a problem with removing them. From the article: "The proposed EU Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive (see FIPR analysis) would specifically forbid Europeans from removing or deactivating Radio Frequency (RFID) tags embedded in clothing and other consumer devices!"
Note that the law does not "specifically forbid Europeans from removing or deactivating Radio Frequency (RFID) tags embedded in clothing and other consumer devices", that the just their interpretation of the law. I believe it is a bad interpretation, rather like saying something like "because the law says under 18s can't drink alcohol in public places, parents could be sent to jail for giving their children certain medicines in public places!" It's just a bad interpretation of a proposed law - it's the interpretation that's stupid, not the proposed law (although I don't agree with it).
What kind of government would legislate, let alone enforce, such a stupid law?
I think the problem here is that people are misinterpreting the law, and then pointing at it and saying "look it's so stoopid!" when in actual fact they've just got it wrong.
It is a bizarre interpretation of the law. Their logic is as follows:
1) The EU IP Enforcement Directive would make it illegal to circumvent copy protection devices. 2) Therefore, it would be illegal to remove an RFID tag from a box of cornflakes you just purchased.
Their interpretation is stupid, not the law. (although I don't necessarily agree with it).
I am amazed that the infection of the Halifax Bank ATM machines in the UK -- reported by someone here on Slashdot a few days ago -- did not reach the mainstream press in the UK.
I find it hard to believe that one of the best known banks in the UK has ATM machines that are exposed to the Internet in some way and can get infected by worms. Any UK journalists reading this - I'm sure your readers would be interested to know how insecure the Halifax computer network is.
Why on Earth would an engineer be redistributing corporate resources without authorization?
Depends on the size of the company. I wan't referring to big blue-chip corporations - for them it's fairly easy to be in compliance because they can get cover-all licences. There are lots of small and medium-sized businesses that don't have staff dedicated to "authorising the redistribution of corporate resources"!
the companies i know indeed have such policies. and it works. they were 100 employees, okay, so it's managable, but it *works* if you take care.
How do you know it works if you've not been audited by the BSA? If these companies were audited, are you sure the BSA wouldn't find any unlicenced software? Tom in engineering wouldn't have given his computer to Berol in accounts when he got a new one and forgotten to wipe all the software off the hard disc, would he?
i don't agree with M$/BSA methods. but legally, they have the right, and there's not a real excuse to not follow the terms and conditions of a license if you are running a professional business.
That's absolutely correct.
I have a business myself and I tell all my staff "don't use unlicenced software" and they do exactly as I say. And I say, "If you buy software, remember to put the licence and CD-ROM in the software cupboard", and that's what everyone does. And I say "if you buy a computer or recieve a second hand computer, make sure you have all the licences". And do you know, all my staff do that too. Dealing with staff is easy. You just tell them what to do, and they always do it, to the letter, and never forget, and everything is always neat and tidy and wonderfully efficient.
[/end of sarcasm]
I trust you don't actually run your own business with lots of staff?
But as it is, it's all going to be based on software written in English-ish programming languages, isn't that right?
Well, if you count c++ as being "English-ish" then you're right. However, most ordinary people would have as hard a time interpreting c++ as they would Chinese.
Of course, the Chinese could "translate" c++ into their own language, changing for instance "#include" to "#whatever", thus making their code completely incompatible with everyone elses. Or they could invent a new language, and thus be able to call it their own and "Chinese".
1,2,3,4,5 -- those are Arabic numerals. Yes them, the Arabs! Our current Holywood baddies! Feel free to create your own number system if it helps you feel more American.
And to make matters worse, they say English is the hardest second language to learn.
Who are "they"? It depends on what you mean by "learn". To learn English to be able to read it is relatively easy compared with some other languages. We only have 26 letters for a start. In fact I expect for a Chinese person to know enough to be able to code in c++ really isn't a big problem.
To be able to speak it is another matter - that is hard for most learners because of our highly irregular pronunciation and things like phrasal verbs.
Well in the US we have more than 240 million people to provide power for. Who is more likely to have problems, a country that has to provide power for 60 million or a country that has to provide power for over 240 million?
The power grid is France is part of a European wide power grid. I doubt that the USA one is much bigger, it may even be smaller.
In 2 years time, I've only seen 1 blue screen of death, and I've been using many different computers using with XP on them and I've installed in many times over that two years.
Well, I'm using XP and I see about two blue screens of death every day. It's getting depressing.
There was a trial about ten years ago. A retired policeman went on holiday and whilst he was away his money was taken from his Halifax account via an ATM. Halifax took him to court because they said that their security was infallible and the man must have given his ATM card to someone to extract money whilst he was on holiday to defraud the Halifax. The man lost.
I actually met the person who was an expert witness on the trial for the defence. He was a specialist in IT security for banks and a good man, but he said it was impossible to get the jury to understand the complexities involved in ATM security. He was as you can imagine very sad that the man he was defending had lost.
I can't find anything on Google about it. It must have been 1992 or '93 I guess.
Noone in the linux community can prove where or who it came from, it just sort of miraculously appeared and noone took credit for it.
I doubt very much that this is the case. Linus does not accept anonymous additions to the kernal! And everything is logged. So you're talking out your ass I'm afraid.
The only reason we can't identify where it came from is because SCO won't tell us what the code is!
I don't know why people are so cagey about pointing to Microsoft as being behind all this. For me, it's not a conspiracy theory, it is obvious.
Why? Because if you look at SCOs actions and what they say, they are doing things to attack Linux and the GLP that don't really have anything to do with their legal battles or trying to boost their share price. For instance, in their response to IBM, they say
If IBM were serious about addressing the real problems with Linux, it would offer full customer indemnification and move away from the GPL license.
Why this wording? This seems to be a general attack on Linux and the GPL. In what way does this wording favor SCO or its case?
I think it is clear that Microsoft has done a shady deal with SCO, and that SCO will just continue to do anything it can to damage the GPL and Linux even if it is detrimental to SCOs business or share price. In the last "halloween" document MS identified legal attacks as being the only effective way to fight Linux, and now this is happening. Coincidence? I think not.
SCO said:
As the stakes continue to rise in the Linux battles, it becomes increasingly clear that the core issue is bigger than SCO, Red Hat, or even IBM. The core issue is about the value of intellectual property in an Internet age.
Doesn't this ring as being a strange statement to anyone else? Is this really SCO talking, or is it really MS?
What the community should be doing is trying to find evidence of the deal between SCO and MS. I believe that is where the meat of this fiasco really lies, and if it could be found then MS could get in serious legal trouble too.
There must be employees within SCO that are unhappy about what is happening and have access to "interesting" information. The OSS community should set up a mechanism by which SCO employees can anonymously submit information, and we should be encoraging them to do so. A web site should be set up with contact details of SCO employees (Work contact details - email addresses, direct phone numbers) so we can contact them. If nothing else, if a concerted effort was made to do these things it would really f**k up SCO internally - imagine the paranoia if the SCO management know that there is a concerted effort to get SCO employees to snich.
I bl**dy hate SCO now, and I don't think people are being creative enough in thinking of ways that their life can be made difficult.
This sounds like straight abuse of confidential information. No computers required, no lax security required. A person with legitimate access to data went bad.
I don't think it is as simple as that. Just because it is an inside job doesn't means that the company does not have lax security.
I have worked on software systems for the management of transaction data for some major banks. Do you think they gave me access to their databases to do the work? No way Jose. They gave me access to duplicate systems with dummy data. Only a very few people had access to the 'real' data (even within the bank) and even then their access was strictly controlled - I mean they had to get permission to get physical access to terminals that could access the data, and they had to justify why, and all their actions were logged.
Anecdote - I once was working in a banks bomb-proof super-secure dataroom doing an install on one of their transaction processing systems. The install took a while and I was bored out of my mind. I was idly curious to see what was on the screen of one the many terminals in the room, so I touched the space key to active the monitor. About two minutes later the room was full of bank security guys asking what the hell I thought I was doing.
What the article doesn't say, but the Bloomberg radio commentary did mention, the EU seems to be financing its budget deficit by imposing fines, which makes the fairness of the whole process a little questionable.
Since this has been modded up as informative I guess I should respond.
You seem to be suggesting that the EU is using its competition laws to impose fines inorder to pay off its budget deficit. I really doubt that was said on Bloomberg. I suggest you read up a bit on the actions of the EU Competition Commissioner.
Getting popular applications like this running on Linux is the single most important thing to get Linux on the desktop.
Note that Adobe could probably release a native version of Photoshop to run on Linux fairly easily. They had a Unix version, and also of course it will run on OSX, so going native to Linux can't be that big an issue.
Everyone who wants to see Linux on the desktop should be pestering the companies of the software they use to release a Linux version. For me, the important one is Macromedia Flash, so I've been emailing Macromedia asking when they are going to port it. If you want to see Linux on the desktop, start pestering!
If we are going to have the concept of micro-payments, why can't we have micro-content providers?
I regularly post to Slashdot. I am essentially a micro-content provider to Slashdot. I have posted over 800 comments, many of them high Karma scorers. If I made, say, one cent per Karma point, then I would be about 30 dollars better off by now! Woohoo!
I can't be the only one frustrated that there isn't an effective way I can fight back at SCO at the moment.
Could there be grounds for a class action suit here? There are lots of developers that make their living in some way from linux. SCOs actions could well be a genuine threat to their livelihoods.
SCO is basically using the legal system as a weapon. Perhaps we used be using it back on them? I propose a campaign whereby:
1) Everyone that SCO thinks should pay for Linux should instead be encoraged to donate a sum to a legal fund.
2) Developers who work with Linux should find a lawer who would be willing to represent them in a class action against SCO.
I don't do anything illegal online (warez, stealing music, etc) so I've nothing to worry about.
Sir,
it has come to our attention that you have been illegally hacking into private computer systems. Please report to your local police station to pay your fine and receive your forehead tattoo. Failure to do so will result in your termination.
Slashdot Mirror
There's just a bit of a problem with removing them. From the article: "The proposed EU Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive (see FIPR analysis) would specifically forbid Europeans from removing or deactivating Radio Frequency (RFID) tags embedded in clothing and other consumer devices!"
Note that the law does not "specifically forbid Europeans from removing or deactivating Radio Frequency (RFID) tags embedded in clothing and other consumer devices", that the just their interpretation of the law. I believe it is a bad interpretation, rather like saying something like "because the law says under 18s can't drink alcohol in public places, parents could be sent to jail for giving their children certain medicines in public places!" It's just a bad interpretation of a proposed law - it's the interpretation that's stupid, not the proposed law (although I don't agree with it).
What kind of government would legislate, let alone enforce, such a stupid law?
I think the problem here is that people are misinterpreting the law, and then pointing at it and saying "look it's so stoopid!" when in actual fact they've just got it wrong.
It is a bizarre interpretation of the law. Their logic is as follows:
1) The EU IP Enforcement Directive would make it illegal to circumvent copy protection devices.
2) Therefore, it would be illegal to remove an RFID tag from a box of cornflakes you just purchased.
Their interpretation is stupid, not the law. (although I don't necessarily agree with it).
I am amazed that the infection of the Halifax Bank ATM machines in the UK -- reported by someone here on Slashdot a few days ago -- did not reach the mainstream press in the UK.
I find it hard to believe that one of the best known banks in the UK has ATM machines that are exposed to the Internet in some way and can get infected by worms. Any UK journalists reading this - I'm sure your readers would be interested to know how insecure the Halifax computer network is.
Why on Earth would an engineer be redistributing corporate resources without authorization?
Depends on the size of the company. I wan't referring to big blue-chip corporations - for them it's fairly easy to be in compliance because they can get cover-all licences. There are lots of small and medium-sized businesses that don't have staff dedicated to "authorising the redistribution of corporate resources"!
the companies i know indeed have such policies. and it works. they were 100 employees, okay, so it's managable, but it *works* if you take care.
How do you know it works if you've not been audited by the BSA? If these companies were audited, are you sure the BSA wouldn't find any unlicenced software? Tom in engineering wouldn't have given his computer to Berol in accounts when he got a new one and forgotten to wipe all the software off the hard disc, would he?
i don't agree with M$/BSA methods. but legally, they have the right, and there's not a real excuse to not follow the terms and conditions of a license if you are running a professional business.
That's absolutely correct.
I have a business myself and I tell all my staff "don't use unlicenced software" and they do exactly as I say. And I say, "If you buy software, remember to put the licence and CD-ROM in the software cupboard", and that's what everyone does. And I say "if you buy a computer or recieve a second hand computer, make sure you have all the licences". And do you know, all my staff do that too. Dealing with staff is easy. You just tell them what to do, and they always do it, to the letter, and never forget, and everything is always neat and tidy and wonderfully efficient.
[/end of sarcasm]
I trust you don't actually run your own business with lots of staff?
But as it is, it's all going to be based on software written in English-ish programming languages, isn't that right?
Well, if you count c++ as being "English-ish" then you're right. However, most ordinary people would have as hard a time interpreting c++ as they would Chinese.
Of course, the Chinese could "translate" c++ into their own language, changing for instance "#include" to "#whatever", thus making their code completely incompatible with everyone elses. Or they could invent a new language, and thus be able to call it their own and "Chinese".
1,2,3,4,5 -- those are Arabic numerals. Yes them, the Arabs! Our current Holywood baddies! Feel free to create your own number system if it helps you feel more American.
And to make matters worse, they say English is the hardest second language to learn.
Who are "they"? It depends on what you mean by "learn". To learn English to be able to read it is relatively easy compared with some other languages. We only have 26 letters for a start. In fact I expect for a Chinese person to know enough to be able to code in c++ really isn't a big problem.
To be able to speak it is another matter - that is hard for most learners because of our highly irregular pronunciation and things like phrasal verbs.
Well in the US we have more than 240 million people to provide power for. Who is more likely to have problems, a country that has to provide power for 60 million or a country that has to provide power for over 240 million?
The power grid is France is part of a European wide power grid. I doubt that the USA one is much bigger, it may even be smaller.
They're just copying Microsoft, which did this years ago:
It looks like you're writing a letter.
I wouldn't call a top of the range Sony Vaio "cheap".
In 2 years time, I've only seen 1 blue screen of death, and I've been using many different computers using with XP on them and I've installed in many times over that two years.
Well, I'm using XP and I see about two blue screens of death every day. It's getting depressing.
Some articles are here and here about it.
Thanks for those. I didn't know that justice had triumphed in the end. Good to know!
There was a trial about ten years ago. A retired policeman went on holiday and whilst he was away his money was taken from his Halifax account via an ATM. Halifax took him to court because they said that their security was infallible and the man must have given his ATM card to someone to extract money whilst he was on holiday to defraud the Halifax. The man lost.
I actually met the person who was an expert witness on the trial for the defence. He was a specialist in IT security for banks and a good man, but he said it was impossible to get the jury to understand the complexities involved in ATM security. He was as you can imagine very sad that the man he was defending had lost.
I can't find anything on Google about it. It must have been 1992 or '93 I guess.
Noone in the linux community can prove where or who it came from, it just sort of miraculously appeared and noone took credit for it.
I doubt very much that this is the case. Linus does not accept anonymous additions to the kernal! And everything is logged. So you're talking out your ass I'm afraid.
The only reason we can't identify where it came from is because SCO won't tell us what the code is!
I don't know why people are so cagey about pointing to Microsoft as being behind all this. For me, it's not a conspiracy theory, it is obvious.
Why? Because if you look at SCOs actions and what they say, they are doing things to attack Linux and the GLP that don't really have anything to do with their legal battles or trying to boost their share price. For instance, in their response to IBM, they say
If IBM were serious about addressing the real problems with Linux, it would offer full customer indemnification and move away from the GPL license.
Why this wording? This seems to be a general attack on Linux and the GPL. In what way does this wording favor SCO or its case?
I think it is clear that Microsoft has done a shady deal with SCO, and that SCO will just continue to do anything it can to damage the GPL and Linux even if it is detrimental to SCOs business or share price. In the last "halloween" document MS identified legal attacks as being the only effective way to fight Linux, and now this is happening. Coincidence? I think not.
SCO said:
As the stakes continue to rise in the Linux battles, it becomes increasingly clear that the core issue is bigger than SCO, Red Hat, or even IBM. The core issue is about the value of intellectual property in an Internet age.
Doesn't this ring as being a strange statement to anyone else? Is this really SCO talking, or is it really MS?
What the community should be doing is trying to find evidence of the deal between SCO and MS. I believe that is where the meat of this fiasco really lies, and if it could be found then MS could get in serious legal trouble too.
There must be employees within SCO that are unhappy about what is happening and have access to "interesting" information. The OSS community should set up a mechanism by which SCO employees can anonymously submit information, and we should be encoraging them to do so. A web site should be set up with contact details of SCO employees (Work contact details - email addresses, direct phone numbers) so we can contact them. If nothing else, if a concerted effort was made to do these things it would really f**k up SCO internally - imagine the paranoia if the SCO management know that there is a concerted effort to get SCO employees to snich.
I bl**dy hate SCO now, and I don't think people are being creative enough in thinking of ways that their life can be made difficult.
This sounds like straight abuse of confidential information. No computers required, no lax security required. A person with legitimate access to data went bad.
I don't think it is as simple as that. Just because it is an inside job doesn't means that the company does not have lax security.
I have worked on software systems for the management of transaction data for some major banks. Do you think they gave me access to their databases to do the work? No way Jose. They gave me access to duplicate systems with dummy data. Only a very few people had access to the 'real' data (even within the bank) and even then their access was strictly controlled - I mean they had to get permission to get physical access to terminals that could access the data, and they had to justify why, and all their actions were logged.
Anecdote - I once was working in a banks bomb-proof super-secure dataroom doing an install on one of their transaction processing systems. The install took a while and I was bored out of my mind. I was idly curious to see what was on the screen of one the many terminals in the room, so I touched the space key to active the monitor. About two minutes later the room was full of bank security guys asking what the hell I thought I was doing.
What the article doesn't say, but the Bloomberg radio commentary did mention, the EU seems to be financing its budget deficit by imposing fines, which makes the fairness of the whole process a little questionable.
Since this has been modded up as informative I guess I should respond.
You seem to be suggesting that the EU is using its competition laws to impose fines inorder to pay off its budget deficit. I really doubt that was said on Bloomberg. I suggest you read up a bit on the actions of the EU Competition Commissioner.
Well, I do know that they used to have a version that ran on Unix, so some of the code must be portable.
Getting popular applications like this running on Linux is the single most important thing to get Linux on the desktop.
Note that Adobe could probably release a native version of Photoshop to run on Linux fairly easily. They had a Unix version, and also of course it will run on OSX, so going native to Linux can't be that big an issue.
Everyone who wants to see Linux on the desktop should be pestering the companies of the software they use to release a Linux version. For me, the important one is Macromedia Flash, so I've been emailing Macromedia asking when they are going to port it. If you want to see Linux on the desktop, start pestering!
If we are going to have the concept of micro-payments, why can't we have micro-content providers?
I regularly post to Slashdot. I am essentially a micro-content provider to Slashdot. I have posted over 800 comments, many of them high Karma scorers. If I made, say, one cent per Karma point, then I would be about 30 dollars better off by now! Woohoo!
I can't be the only one frustrated that there isn't an effective way I can fight back at SCO at the moment.
Could there be grounds for a class action suit here? There are lots of developers that make their living in some way from linux. SCOs actions could well be a genuine threat to their livelihoods.
SCO is basically using the legal system as a weapon. Perhaps we used be using it back on them? I propose a campaign whereby:
1) Everyone that SCO thinks should pay for Linux should instead be encoraged to donate a sum to a legal fund.
2) Developers who work with Linux should find a lawer who would be willing to represent them in a class action against SCO.
Just an idea.
I don't do anything illegal online (warez, stealing music, etc) so I've nothing to worry about.
Sir,
it has come to our attention that you have been illegally hacking into private computer systems. Please report to your local police station to pay your fine and receive your forehead tattoo. Failure to do so will result in your termination.
Have a nice day!
USA Peopletackers(tm) Correction Unit Inc.
I'm not too bothered if someone is tracking where I go and where my car goes within a city.
You're obviously not married.
Guy: Hey, I was on holiday all last year, abroad. I didn't file a return because I didn't make any money.
IRS man: No you weren't. You were in San Francisco all year.
Guy: Oh. I didn't know you could find out that kind of thing.
IRS man: We have photos. Look, some of them are quite good.
Guy: Oh yes. Can I have a copy of that one of me selling stolen car radios at the beach?
IRS man: How about that one? Your hair looks really cool in that one.
Guy: Great!
IRS man: We'll add it to your bill...
Was the guy that wrote that article paid by the word? It sure reads like it. And it claims to tell the whole story, but it didn't. Pile of poo.