t is you, my friend, who is confused. "Modern society" doesnt have anything to do with your rights as a human, and where they emanate from. Your rights are not given to you by any government, they are born pre-existing when you are born.
!?! I'm not sure if there is much point in us continuing this conversation. We appear to be living on different planets.
The government has nothing to do with this at all. They should not be able to prevent you from engaging in this sort of activity, by requiring you to have a government issued ID card. The right that I am talking about is the right to be free from interference in you private affairs.
The Spanish government does not prevent you from opening a bank account. Spanish banks ask to see your ID card because it is the most secure way for them to identify you. UK banks ask for silly things like drivers licences and gas bills because there is no means in the UK to properly identify yourself.
Its amazing that sensible people want to throw away thier rights unecessarily perhaps if you had personally fought in a war against people who were trying to enslave you you would think and act differently.
Please, tell me again which rights I have thrown away by carrying a card which I can use to securely identify myself to others?
Like i said here and in another thread, this problem can be fixed by a DSS only card. Its not an excuse to issue a mandatory card for everyone.
Well, like I keep saying, the issue is one of having a means to securely identify yourself to others, and for you to be able to confidently identify others.
Let me give you another example. Just about ten days ago I flew to the UK and went to one of the big multinational car hire places at the airport to hire a car. Now, I don't have a credit card (I don't like them), but I do have a UK bank account with a debit card, as well as a UK passport, and a UK drivers licence. Because I did not have a credit card (for which the bank would guarantee to the car hire company that they would cover any charges) they said they needed to run a credit check on me. But of course not having a credit card (nor ever having had one) I had no credit record. So they refused to give me the car. I asked why and they said, well, you could just steal it and the proof that you have given isn't enough to let us hire you a car. I then had an idea - I asked them if they would accept my Spanish debit card along with my Spanish ID. And they would, they said because the ID card was more secure. So, as a British citizen I couldn't hire a car in my own country!
So let me repeat myself one last time. A national ID card is nothing more than a secure way to identify yourself, and for others to identify you. There are lots of situations in which it is important to be able to confidently identify yourself, such as opening a bank account, hiring a car, claiming social security benefits or seeking free medical aid. UK citizens do not have a secure means of identifying themselves and so bad things like fraud happen, or transactions become more difficult than they should be. Spanish citizens do have such a card, and it makes many of these transactions (wether it be with the government or a private party) much more efficient and more secure.
Its amazing that sensible people want to throw away thier rights unecessarily perhaps if you had personally fought in a war against people who were trying to enslave you you would think and act differently.
So, not having a secure means to identify yourself is sensible? Having to show the bank a recent gas bill when trying to open a bank account - that's sensible? Losing money to social security fraudsters is sensible? Not being able to hire a car in your own country because of lack of secure identification - that's sensible? Being able to get a social security number (with which you can apply for benefits) using just a old birth certificate - some of which have ink you can wash off and rewrite with made up details - that's sensible is it?
Your rights as a human being do not emanate from the state; this includes your right to live where you want in your own country, and to go out of your house and walk in the street.
You seem really confused about how modern society works. Your rights do emanate from the state, or at least, the lawmaking part of it.
Your right to open a bank account should not be conditional on having government issued papers.
Again, you seem confused. You have no "right" to open a bank account. Banks ask for papers because they need to be sure you are who you say you are.
We understand that Europeans do not get this,
I would hope that most Europeans understand how their systems work a little better than you seem to.
We in Britain, do not want to use these systems. Europeans should simply understand this, and move along.
Speak for yourself. I am a British citizen. I would like to see ID cards mainly because I hate the idea of my taxes going to Social Security fraudsters.
People who are compelled to use ID cards seem to dislike / be befuddled by the fact that there is a perfectly orderly society where ID cards to not exist...
But it's not perfectly orderly. Do you realise how much of the money you contribute to the state via taxes goes to fraudsters? I am concerned about it because I pay taxes in the UK! I expect most other Europeans don't really give a damn.
I'm not going to respond to each of your individual points. What I don't understand is the level of paranoia in the UK with regards to an identity card.
An identity card is a means for you to prove you are how you say you are. In the UK, you don't have one. You don't have any standard means to prove you are who you say you are.
Now, in Spain, if I go to open a bank account, the bank only needs to see one document - my proof of who I am. If I purchase something with a credit card, then again, the shopkeeper has proof that is much more secure than a signiature. And if I ask the government for benefits, then they I can prove to them who I am.
Many people in the UK say they are better off for not having a means to prove they are who they say they are. Forgive me for not understanding it. As far as I can see, the only people who benefit from not having ID are people who rip off the social security, fraudsters and tax evaders.
Like I said, I've got a Spanish ID card, and I am also a UK citizen and have extensive experience of both how the UK and Spanish systems work. Please tell me some practical reasons why I need to be paranoid about having a Spanish ID card. Genuine ones, not abstract notions. And please let me know the practical benefits that UK citizens enjoy from not having a secure means to identify themselves.
For an insight into why these cards are true evil, read this piece in The Guardian [independent.co.uk] about how the Spanish have been habituated into ID cards like battery chickens who refuse to leave thier cages when the doors are opened.
As someone who has lived between the UK and Spain for many years, and is both a UK passport holder and Spanish ID card holder, perhaps I can give more insight into this.
Personally, I think the situation in the UK is much more open to abuse than the Spanish situation. The reason the Spanish do not worry about their ID cards is because there is nothing "evil" about them - in fact, having a clear way to prove your identity is very useful.
Imagine what a Spaniard thinks when they try to open a bank account in the UK. They ask you for your driving licence! If you don't have one, they ask for a recent gas or electricity bill. Seriously! How nuts is that!
When I lived in London I a met a local who was unemployed and was drawing unemployment benefit and housing benefit in the names of four different people - people he had just invented! He told me how he did it (it is suprisingly easy). Also, about ten years ago I applied for a new copy of my UK drivers licence (the old one was getting tatty) and was told that I had aleady been sent a replacement - apparently someone had applied for a replacement copy in my name - I deduced that when I had shared a house with some other people someone there had applied for the drivers licence in my name. These types of things rarely happen in Spain because they have a better way for individuals to prove their identity.
So, you may think that the Spanish way of doing things is bad, but believe me, there is a very good reason when Spaniards express disbelief at UK citizens when they say they have no identity card.
You're suggestion to 'just remove the worm' would give the author notice that the feds were on to him.
I never said "just remove the worm". I was talking about general policy towards security. The government seems to do a lot of trying to catch "hackers", but I don't see them doing so many practical things to prevent these problems in the first place.
So what? They still need to be stopped.
Or alternatively, the root causes could be addressed. When a mischevious 14 year old school kid can cause hundreds of millions of dollars of expense just by messing around, then the kid isn't really the problem, is it?
Furthermore, aren't there some great tax-avoidance (not tax evasion - that's illegal) measures you could take with such a company? It sounds like an idea case for an off-shore company, as you're not employing anyone in your country of residence and the company doesn't need any physical premisies.
Never mind the KDE/Gnome discussion, I found it fascinating to read how TheKompany.com is made up of people who have not all met face-to-face. The founder has only met one of his employees ever.
His employees were all basically referred and the traditional face-to-face interviews were obviously never done.
It's a new way of doing business. I like it.
Exactly what I thought when I read the article. I have often toyed with the idea of employing someone over the net, but I've never had the balls to actually do it. It seems to me it must be a very efficient way to run a business.
I'd be interested on what kind of contracts he uses. Does he employ these people full-time, or by project? Another issue - getting stuff delivered on time. I guess if you make products like theKompany.com, it doesn't matter if you slip. But working for clients, you have to deliver when you promised to, or you'll quickly go out of business. Is it practical to run a business this way if you need to deliver to clients with tight deadlines?
Whats worse, the BOD has been seeded with European managers. Now, dont get me wrong, I have nothing against europeans, but you cannot take a company that has been doing NE Corridor style work processes for 20+ years and suddenly kick it over to the "european" business model. Things apparently get done a lot more slowly over there.
I can't help but feel that the USA is in danger of losing its global dominance because of the general attitude of Americans that "We're just better". Your insight above has prompted me to say this, but some of the other responses to this article also make me think it.
It is true that the USAs economic success is in part down to the intelligence, innovation and hard work of its natives. But it is also down to its unique historical position of being a very young country with a single unified people. (In other words, a huge homogenous market - a startup company in the USA has a massive easily accessible market on its doorstep. That's not so true in the rest of the world.)
Don't sit on your laurels, Americans. The rest of the world isn't as stupid, or as lazy, as many of you seem to think.
If Mandrake dies a horrible and ugly death, it will not just be one more dead distro, it will be proof to all the closed source liscensing junkie corps. that "free" (as in beer) software cannot survive.
But doesn't it prove just the opposite? The company dies, but the software lives on. I expect that the vast majority of people who use Mandrake will have no problem moving their setup across to another distro. But imagine what would happen if a traditional, closed source company died. Then you'd be screwed.
For end users it is obviously important to make things easy. Although it is true that many web sites for Open Source projects have forums or email lists for feedback, I don't think that's easy enough. Many end users don't really know or care what software they are using.
What I suggest is a new dropdown item from the menu bar. Just as it is standard practice to add Help->About to an application, so it should perhaps become standard practice in the OSS world to add a Help->Feedback item. This send feedback info. from all OSS applications to a single database, which could then be browsed by OSS geeks to find out where problems are occurring.
I've always wondered why MS never did something like this. I think it would innovation - and a willingness to listen to endusers - on behalf of the OSS community if they did something like this.
I've been thinking about this for a while. One of the things that is so powerful about Open Source is that it pools the abilities of so many people. Unfortunately, the mechanisms currently in place in the Open Source world are great for pooling the skills, observations and ideas of programmers and geeks, but they're not good at all at pooling them from end users.
What i'd like to see is a kind of buzilla application completely focused on feedback from end-users. Somewhere where end users could make observations about OSS applications, and perhaps other users could vote or comment on them.
I brought a digital camera the other day. Before buying it, I could go to several web sites (for instance, amazon and cnet) and see lots of comments from other people who had used it. It was really useful to me, but of course could also be of use to the manufacturers themselves to get raw comments from end users. Open source software needs something like this so that developers can see first had what people like and dislike about their software.
If I see an antique on eBay selling for $5 that I know to be incredibly valuable, I should buy it -- I'm under no imaginable obligation to contact the seller and let him know he's an idiot.
Actually, the law may be more complex than you expect. There was a case in the UK - I believe the law in the UK is similar to the US - I can't remember the exact details, but the case was of an old lady who had led a very sheltered life and then suddenly got rich, and decided to do up her house. The builders realised that she didn't have a clue and so got her to sign contracts with greatly inflated prices. She signed them and everything was legit as far as the contracts were concerned, but friendly neighbours realised she'd been exploited and helped her take legal action against the builders. She won, despite having signed the contracts of her own free will.
I understand that the Tablet PC operating system is essentially a modified version of XP.
I use XP. Just two mintues ago the automatic update application advised me to install two critical updates, one of the being to the Java Virtual Machine. In order to install them I had to click through a EULA that included the following paragraph:
You may not disclose the results of any benchmark test of the.NET framework component of the OS Components to any third party without Microsoft's prior written approval.
So in other words, in order to install a critical security patch for an operating system that I have paid good money for, I have to agree that I won't publish figures that be show one of Microsoft's other products in a bad light.
I find this stunning. Anyone who thinks that Microsoft has changed because of all the recent legal action needs to think again.
Someone else could make a competing MS Linux and include Apache, MySQL, PHP etc...
Not really. Microsoft could include loads of different proprietry applications, all tied tightly together. They wouldn't have to GPL it and you wouldn't be able to copy it.
Is this likely? The question we need to ask ourselves is, could Microsoft profit from doing without hurting current cash cows?
We all know that MS Office and the "Microsoft tax" (the price we pay for buying Windows desktops and servers) are by far Microsofts main sources of revenue. Could Microsoft support Linux and maintain these cash cows? I believe they could.
Firstly, there is no reason why Microsoft couldn't sell their own version of Linux for the server, and charge the same as they charge for their current Windows server software. I am quite sure that it would sell well, and could reduce the numbers of people migrating to Red Hat, for example. Secondly, I see no reason why they couldn't come out with a version of MS Office for Linux and charge a similar price for it. This might also prevent people migrating to OpenOffice.org or Star Office.
If they did this, they could also try to use their considerable muscle to sway people away from technologies they don't want people to use. So for instance, the MS Linux would probably not include MySQL and PHP, and perhaps not even Apache.
I don't see any reason why they couldn't do this. Of course, they still have the long term problem of the erosion in value of what they offer as free competing solutions improve, but there's not much they can do about that other than try to fight off the inevitable.
I don't think you'll be covered if you use encryption to protect SOMEBODY ELSE'S copyrights. You have to have the copyright yourself.
But the point is that stuff could be encrypted so that you couldn't tell what it was unless you circumvented the copy protection, which is what the DMCA is all about. So if on the P2P network some people were trading materials to which they owned the copyright, and other people were not, how do you go about proving anything without breaking the law? The people sharing legitimate files could rightly sue them under the DMCA.
As I understand it the DCMA is supported by the film and music industry because it allows them to create technologies which they can wrap their content in, which are illegal to try to break.
What happens if we create a file compression/security method that incorporates an original encryption technology, with some mechanism by which you only give out the key to people you trust? We could then put whatever material we wanted on P2P networks, and the film and music industry representatives wouldn't even be able to find out what we were sharing without breaking the law they support. Wouldn't that be a good way of demonstrating the stupidity of this law?
This article seems to have written in a deliberately misleading manner from a few out of context quotes. They put words in a Sun executives mouth (as far as I can see nobody has "conceded defeat") and then makes out that there is a rift because others haven't "conceded defeat".
One of the thing the Sun guy says is "I don't think it will be very long before we have a pervasive non-Microsoft client". That doesn't sound like conceding defeat to me.
This is why AI and the UN are irrelevant. You cannot compare an enlightened, liberal (in the true sense of the word) and open system like the US to any totalitarian regime in the rest of the world.
The United states is amongst only six countries that impose the death penalty on juveniles. The others: Iran, Nigeria, Pakisan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
The United States is the only country besides Somalia that has not signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, because it contains a provision prohibiting the execution of children.
So, you can compare the US to many totalitarian regiemes in the world.
And if you think that you cannot compare them because the USA justice system is so infallible, you may like to refer to the study of error rates in death penalty cases "A Broken System: Error rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995" by James S Leibman, Jeffery Fagan and Valerie West (2000). Search Google for a copy.
The USA is currently holding 600 people indefinately captive in inhuman conditions without any due process and without any legal rights or representation. Your claim that the USA is so "enlightened, liberal and open" that AI and the UN are irrelevant is laughable.
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t is you, my friend, who is confused. "Modern society" doesnt have anything to do with your rights as a human, and where they emanate from. Your rights are not given to you by any government, they are born pre-existing when you are born.
!?! I'm not sure if there is much point in us continuing this conversation. We appear to be living on different planets.
The government has nothing to do with this at all. They should not be able to prevent you from engaging in this sort of activity, by requiring you to have a government issued ID card. The right that I am talking about is the right to be free from interference in you private affairs.
The Spanish government does not prevent you from opening a bank account. Spanish banks ask to see your ID card because it is the most secure way for them to identify you. UK banks ask for silly things like drivers licences and gas bills because there is no means in the UK to properly identify yourself.
Its amazing that sensible people want to throw away thier rights unecessarily perhaps if you had personally fought in a war against people who were trying to enslave you you would think and act differently.
Please, tell me again which rights I have thrown away by carrying a card which I can use to securely identify myself to others?
Like i said here and in another thread, this problem can be fixed by a DSS only card. Its not an excuse to issue a mandatory card for everyone.
Well, like I keep saying, the issue is one of having a means to securely identify yourself to others, and for you to be able to confidently identify others.
Let me give you another example. Just about ten days ago I flew to the UK and went to one of the big multinational car hire places at the airport to hire a car. Now, I don't have a credit card (I don't like them), but I do have a UK bank account with a debit card, as well as a UK passport, and a UK drivers licence. Because I did not have a credit card (for which the bank would guarantee to the car hire company that they would cover any charges) they said they needed to run a credit check on me. But of course not having a credit card (nor ever having had one) I had no credit record. So they refused to give me the car. I asked why and they said, well, you could just steal it and the proof that you have given isn't enough to let us hire you a car. I then had an idea - I asked them if they would accept my Spanish debit card along with my Spanish ID. And they would, they said because the ID card was more secure. So, as a British citizen I couldn't hire a car in my own country!
So let me repeat myself one last time. A national ID card is nothing more than a secure way to identify yourself, and for others to identify you. There are lots of situations in which it is important to be able to confidently identify yourself, such as opening a bank account, hiring a car, claiming social security benefits or seeking free medical aid. UK citizens do not have a secure means of identifying themselves and so bad things like fraud happen, or transactions become more difficult than they should be. Spanish citizens do have such a card, and it makes many of these transactions (wether it be with the government or a private party) much more efficient and more secure.
Its amazing that sensible people want to throw away thier rights unecessarily perhaps if you had personally fought in a war against people who were trying to enslave you you would think and act differently.
So, not having a secure means to identify yourself is sensible? Having to show the bank a recent gas bill when trying to open a bank account - that's sensible? Losing money to social security fraudsters is sensible? Not being able to hire a car in your own country because of lack of secure identification - that's sensible? Being able to get a social security number (with which you can apply for benefits) using just a old birth certificate - some of which have ink you can wash off and rewrite with made up details - that's sensible is it?
Your rights as a human being do not emanate from the state; this includes your right to live where you want in your own country, and to go out of your house and walk in the street.
You seem really confused about how modern society works. Your rights do emanate from the state, or at least, the lawmaking part of it.
Your right to open a bank account should not be conditional on having government issued papers.
Again, you seem confused. You have no "right" to open a bank account. Banks ask for papers because they need to be sure you are who you say you are.
We understand that Europeans do not get this,
I would hope that most Europeans understand how their systems work a little better than you seem to.
We in Britain, do not want to use these systems. Europeans should simply understand this, and move along.
Speak for yourself. I am a British citizen. I would like to see ID cards mainly because I hate the idea of my taxes going to Social Security fraudsters.
People who are compelled to use ID cards seem to dislike / be befuddled by the fact that there is a perfectly orderly society where ID cards to not exist...
But it's not perfectly orderly. Do you realise how much of the money you contribute to the state via taxes goes to fraudsters? I am concerned about it because I pay taxes in the UK! I expect most other Europeans don't really give a damn.
The people of the UK are Europeans--it's a simple geographic and political fact.
Careful! People will start saying that Columbians, Peruvians and Argentinians are Americans if you start along that road!
I'm not going to respond to each of your individual points. What I don't understand is the level of paranoia in the UK with regards to an identity card.
An identity card is a means for you to prove you are how you say you are. In the UK, you don't have one. You don't have any standard means to prove you are who you say you are.
Now, in Spain, if I go to open a bank account, the bank only needs to see one document - my proof of who I am. If I purchase something with a credit card, then again, the shopkeeper has proof that is much more secure than a signiature. And if I ask the government for benefits, then they I can prove to them who I am.
Many people in the UK say they are better off for not having a means to prove they are who they say they are. Forgive me for not understanding it. As far as I can see, the only people who benefit from not having ID are people who rip off the social security, fraudsters and tax evaders.
Like I said, I've got a Spanish ID card, and I am also a UK citizen and have extensive experience of both how the UK and Spanish systems work. Please tell me some practical reasons why I need to be paranoid about having a Spanish ID card. Genuine ones, not abstract notions. And please let me know the practical benefits that UK citizens enjoy from not having a secure means to identify themselves.
For an insight into why these cards are true evil, read this piece in The Guardian [independent.co.uk] about how the Spanish have been habituated into ID cards like battery chickens who refuse to leave thier cages when the doors are opened.
As someone who has lived between the UK and Spain for many years, and is both a UK passport holder and Spanish ID card holder, perhaps I can give more insight into this.
Personally, I think the situation in the UK is much more open to abuse than the Spanish situation. The reason the Spanish do not worry about their ID cards is because there is nothing "evil" about them - in fact, having a clear way to prove your identity is very useful.
Imagine what a Spaniard thinks when they try to open a bank account in the UK. They ask you for your driving licence! If you don't have one, they ask for a recent gas or electricity bill. Seriously! How nuts is that!
When I lived in London I a met a local who was unemployed and was drawing unemployment benefit and housing benefit in the names of four different people - people he had just invented! He told me how he did it (it is suprisingly easy). Also, about ten years ago I applied for a new copy of my UK drivers licence (the old one was getting tatty) and was told that I had aleady been sent a replacement - apparently someone had applied for a replacement copy in my name - I deduced that when I had shared a house with some other people someone there had applied for the drivers licence in my name. These types of things rarely happen in Spain because they have a better way for individuals to prove their identity.
So, you may think that the Spanish way of doing things is bad, but believe me, there is a very good reason when Spaniards express disbelief at UK citizens when they say they have no identity card.
You're suggestion to 'just remove the worm' would give the author notice that the feds were on to him.
I never said "just remove the worm". I was talking about general policy towards security. The government seems to do a lot of trying to catch "hackers", but I don't see them doing so many practical things to prevent these problems in the first place.
So what? They still need to be stopped.
Or alternatively, the root causes could be addressed. When a mischevious 14 year old school kid can cause hundreds of millions of dollars of expense just by messing around, then the kid isn't really the problem, is it?
So the best government executives in the USA act like secret agents in cheap pulp detective novels?
Perhaps they should try:
a) alterting businesses and organisations that have vulnerable systems.
c) naming and shaming software manufacturers with poor security processes.
But I guess fighting faceless villans with wicked plots to destroy the world is a lot more fun.
It's not quite as exciting when you realise that most of the villans are actually just naughty children.
It's a new way of doing business. I like it.
Furthermore, aren't there some great tax-avoidance (not tax evasion - that's illegal) measures you could take with such a company? It sounds like an idea case for an off-shore company, as you're not employing anyone in your country of residence and the company doesn't need any physical premisies.
Never mind the KDE/Gnome discussion, I found it fascinating to read how TheKompany.com is made up of people who have not all met face-to-face. The founder has only met one of his employees ever.
His employees were all basically referred and the traditional face-to-face interviews were obviously never done.
It's a new way of doing business. I like it.
Exactly what I thought when I read the article. I have often toyed with the idea of employing someone over the net, but I've never had the balls to actually do it. It seems to me it must be a very efficient way to run a business.
I'd be interested on what kind of contracts he uses. Does he employ these people full-time, or by project? Another issue - getting stuff delivered on time. I guess if you make products like theKompany.com, it doesn't matter if you slip. But working for clients, you have to deliver when you promised to, or you'll quickly go out of business. Is it practical to run a business this way if you need to deliver to clients with tight deadlines?
Whats worse, the BOD has been seeded with European managers. Now, dont get me wrong, I have nothing against europeans, but you cannot take a company that has been doing NE Corridor style work processes for 20+ years and suddenly kick it over to the "european" business model. Things apparently get done a lot more slowly over there.
I can't help but feel that the USA is in danger of losing its global dominance because of the general attitude of Americans that "We're just better". Your insight above has prompted me to say this, but some of the other responses to this article also make me think it.
It is true that the USAs economic success is in part down to the intelligence, innovation and hard work of its natives. But it is also down to its unique historical position of being a very young country with a single unified people. (In other words, a huge homogenous market - a startup company in the USA has a massive easily accessible market on its doorstep. That's not so true in the rest of the world.)
Don't sit on your laurels, Americans. The rest of the world isn't as stupid, or as lazy, as many of you seem to think.
If Mandrake dies a horrible and ugly death, it will not just be one more dead distro, it will be proof to all the closed source liscensing junkie corps. that "free" (as in beer) software cannot survive.
But doesn't it prove just the opposite? The company dies, but the software lives on. I expect that the vast majority of people who use Mandrake will have no problem moving their setup across to another distro. But imagine what would happen if a traditional, closed source company died. Then you'd be screwed.
Well, according to , it took him nearly two years and 1.5m lines of code!
Wow.
Replying to my own post...
For end users it is obviously important to make things easy. Although it is true that many web sites for Open Source projects have forums or email lists for feedback, I don't think that's easy enough. Many end users don't really know or care what software they are using.
What I suggest is a new dropdown item from the menu bar. Just as it is standard practice to add Help->About to an application, so it should perhaps become standard practice in the OSS world to add a Help->Feedback item. This send feedback info. from all OSS applications to a single database, which could then be browsed by OSS geeks to find out where problems are occurring.
I've always wondered why MS never did something like this. I think it would innovation - and a willingness to listen to endusers - on behalf of the OSS community if they did something like this.
I've been thinking about this for a while. One of the things that is so powerful about Open Source is that it pools the abilities of so many people. Unfortunately, the mechanisms currently in place in the Open Source world are great for pooling the skills, observations and ideas of programmers and geeks, but they're not good at all at pooling them from end users.
What i'd like to see is a kind of buzilla application completely focused on feedback from end-users. Somewhere where end users could make observations about OSS applications, and perhaps other users could vote or comment on them.
I brought a digital camera the other day. Before buying it, I could go to several web sites (for instance, amazon and cnet) and see lots of comments from other people who had used it. It was really useful to me, but of course could also be of use to the manufacturers themselves to get raw comments from end users. Open source software needs something like this so that developers can see first had what people like and dislike about their software.
If I see an antique on eBay selling for $5 that I know to be incredibly valuable, I should buy it -- I'm under no imaginable obligation to contact the seller and let him know he's an idiot.
Actually, the law may be more complex than you expect. There was a case in the UK - I believe the law in the UK is similar to the US - I can't remember the exact details, but the case was of an old lady who had led a very sheltered life and then suddenly got rich, and decided to do up her house. The builders realised that she didn't have a clue and so got her to sign contracts with greatly inflated prices. She signed them and everything was legit as far as the contracts were concerned, but friendly neighbours realised she'd been exploited and helped her take legal action against the builders. She won, despite having signed the contracts of her own free will.
I understand that the Tablet PC operating system is essentially a modified version of XP.
.NET framework component of the OS Components to any third party without Microsoft's prior written approval.
I use XP. Just two mintues ago the automatic update application advised me to install two critical updates, one of the being to the Java Virtual Machine. In order to install them I had to click through a EULA that included the following paragraph:
You may not disclose the results of any benchmark test of the
So in other words, in order to install a critical security patch for an operating system that I have paid good money for, I have to agree that I won't publish figures that be show one of Microsoft's other products in a bad light.
I find this stunning. Anyone who thinks that Microsoft has changed because of all the recent legal action needs to think again.
Someone else could make a competing MS Linux and include Apache, MySQL, PHP etc...
Not really. Microsoft could include loads of different proprietry applications, all tied tightly together. They wouldn't have to GPL it and you wouldn't be able to copy it.
Is this likely? The question we need to ask ourselves is, could Microsoft profit from doing without hurting current cash cows?
We all know that MS Office and the "Microsoft tax" (the price we pay for buying Windows desktops and servers) are by far Microsofts main sources of revenue. Could Microsoft support Linux and maintain these cash cows? I believe they could.
Firstly, there is no reason why Microsoft couldn't sell their own version of Linux for the server, and charge the same as they charge for their current Windows server software. I am quite sure that it would sell well, and could reduce the numbers of people migrating to Red Hat, for example. Secondly, I see no reason why they couldn't come out with a version of MS Office for Linux and charge a similar price for it. This might also prevent people migrating to OpenOffice.org or Star Office.
If they did this, they could also try to use their considerable muscle to sway people away from technologies they don't want people to use. So for instance, the MS Linux would probably not include MySQL and PHP, and perhaps not even Apache.
I don't see any reason why they couldn't do this. Of course, they still have the long term problem of the erosion in value of what they offer as free competing solutions improve, but there's not much they can do about that other than try to fight off the inevitable.
As most people here will be aware, Europe generally has much stricter gun control than the USA.
USAians often give the following reasons for needing "freedom to bare arms":
1) It reduces crime, so with guns you are safer.
2) In extremis, having citizens with guns allows them to overthrow the government.
A question for the Europeans (proper Europeans, not Americans living in Europe or Europeans living in America):
Do you believe Europe should have less strict gun control?
This article reminded me of the classic "History Today" sketch from the British comedy show "The Mary Whitehouse Experience".
RN: See those cable companies?
DB: I am aware of them...
RN: They're like, your best friends, they are.
I guess I've had too much coffee today.
Script here:
http://www.micaelita.com/historytoday/mwe1
I don't think you'll be covered if you use encryption to protect SOMEBODY ELSE'S copyrights. You have to have the copyright yourself.
But the point is that stuff could be encrypted so that you couldn't tell what it was unless you circumvented the copy protection, which is what the DMCA is all about. So if on the P2P network some people were trading materials to which they owned the copyright, and other people were not, how do you go about proving anything without breaking the law? The people sharing legitimate files could rightly sue them under the DMCA.
As I understand it the DCMA is supported by the film and music industry because it allows them to create technologies which they can wrap their content in, which are illegal to try to break.
What happens if we create a file compression/security method that incorporates an original encryption technology, with some mechanism by which you only give out the key to people you trust? We could then put whatever material we wanted on P2P networks, and the film and music industry representatives wouldn't even be able to find out what we were sharing without breaking the law they support. Wouldn't that be a good way of demonstrating the stupidity of this law?
This article seems to have written in a deliberately misleading manner from a few out of context quotes. They put words in a Sun executives mouth (as far as I can see nobody has "conceded defeat") and then makes out that there is a rift because others haven't "conceded defeat".
One of the thing the Sun guy says is "I don't think it will be very long before we have a pervasive non-Microsoft client". That doesn't sound like conceding defeat to me.
The cover of this guy's Web Site Accessibility book is bizzarely reminiscent of that goatsx guy. Ugh.
http://joeclark.org/book/images/bawcover25.jpg
This is why AI and the UN are irrelevant. You cannot compare an enlightened, liberal (in the true sense of the word) and open system like the US to any totalitarian regime in the rest of the world.
The United states is amongst only six countries that impose the death penalty on juveniles. The others: Iran, Nigeria, Pakisan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
The United States is the only country besides Somalia that has not signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, because it contains a provision prohibiting the execution of children.
So, you can compare the US to many totalitarian regiemes in the world.
And if you think that you cannot compare them because the USA justice system is so infallible, you may like to refer to the study of error rates in death penalty cases "A Broken System: Error rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995" by James S Leibman, Jeffery Fagan and Valerie West (2000). Search Google for a copy.
The USA is currently holding 600 people indefinately captive in inhuman conditions without any due process and without any legal rights or representation. Your claim that the USA is so "enlightened, liberal and open" that AI and the UN are irrelevant is laughable.