One drawback with this type of system is that there is tremendous incentive for a well funded third party (i.e. foreign powers) to try and factor Microsoft's private key for the purpose of intelligence gathering, espionage, and sabotage activities. Perhaps this is meaningless given the "hardness" of the problem, but if the NSA or other organization HAS found a way to speed up factoring then they would certainly want to keep quiet about it for as long as possible.
Perhaps some not too obvious honeypots should be left lying around next time so that we can get a better look at their attack methods when they come back and they will be back. Then we can catch them with their red hands stuck in the fortune cookie jar.
I wonder if the auctioned off the costume of the character Kivas Fajo from the TNG episode "The Most Toys"? It would have been an appropriate acquisition for these bidders under the cirumstances.
Indeed, the nearest major galaxy in the local group is actually the Andromeda Galaxy at ~2.5 million light years distance, give or take a few thousand since the distance can only be measured relatively indirectly via Cepheid variable stars. The Andromeda galaxy is also thought to be on a collision course with the Milky Way (although it is impossible to know for sure if they will actually collide because the tangential velocity of the Andromeda Galaxy with respect to the Milky Way is not known). So, assuming that some other disaster does not befall humanity in the meantime, which would certainly be miraculous given our recorded history and more recent events, we will know the answer in ~3 billion years or so (predicted time to impact or convergence rather since both galaxies are mostly empty space).
What assurances does that company or its customers have that the perps are prosecuted?
It depends upon the country, but in popular outsourcing destinations, such as India, the assurance is basically worthless. The Indian court system is a byword for red tape, bureaucracy, and inefficiency that lends new meaning to the phrase, "waiting in hell for a glass of ice water". Nothing gets done without every petty bureaucrat getting his palm greased and even then it is not unusual for cases to spend fifty (50) years winding their way through the system. In fact it is so bad that families actually inherit lawsuits because the disputes cannot be settled within the lifetimes of the original parties.
Are these the brilliant ideas that will change the world (and make you rich in the process)?"
They may change the world and the certainly will make somebody rich if they do succeed, but that person will probably NOT be the poor developer or inventor who came up with the idea in the first place. They don't call it "vulture capital" for nothing you know. If the idea or invention is a spectacular success then the inventor may receive some millions after the financiers have received their billions. Remember what happened to the inventor of the blue LED...there is a lesson to be learned there.
Zonk, can I have some of what you're smoking? Microsoft is protecting themselves from pirated software, not you or me.
Reminds me of how Macrovision used to bill their vertical blinking interval tampering as "Quality Protection" as if people wouldn't know the difference between the bear shit and the buckwheat.
What makes you think that Microsoft doesn't intend for people to not be able to swap motherboards? I would imagine that it is fully intentional. Prove me wrong.
It probably was not so much intentional, in that some Microsoft executives got together and explicitly decided that inability to swap the motherboard was a specific requirement, as it was a consequence or side effect of attempting to identify a specific computer based upon hardware. Is it possible that such a meeting occurred? Maybe. Is it probable? No. It is far more likely that in their attempt to build a detection algorithm for identifying individual computers uniquely, a prerequisite for enforcing their DRM accurately, it was decided that it was too difficult to NOT include the motherboard as one of the inputs when compared to the number of legitimate users who might end up being effected. How many home users swap their motherboards and of those how many would chose a NON-OEM after market board instead of taking their computer in for a warranty repair with the OEM board (which would probably not trigger the detection algorithm and costs less too). There may be some, but they are a statistically insignificant portion of the potential install base for Windows Vista. In the end it boils down to cost, not some secret meeting and a grand conspiracy, although that would admittedly be more entertaining.
Qt is licensed under two licenses: The GPL and Trolltech's commercial development license.
As I understand it they cannot do that IF they have mixed the code bases because of the viral clause of the GPL which would make the commercial version subject to the terms of the GPL. The only way they could do this is if the commercial project borrowe/used no non-trivial code from the commercial version or vice-versa otherwise the viral clause kicks in when they attempt to distribute.
Because they don't want to release their software as GPL, and the free version of cygwin requires it.
Then they cannot use the GPL for the free version either, otherwise you could could just download the free version and use it commercially anyway and that would be perfectly legal under the GPL. This is why SleepyCat uses their own OSI and FSF approved license for BerkeleyDB, so that they can legally distinguish between the free version and the pay version while still maintainting control over end use and some features of other OSS licenses such as GPL. I think that sometimes managers want to use GPL because they have heard about it being an "open source" license and trendy, but they don't understand that the GPL has some potential gotchas in the actual language, such as the inability to place limitations on use of the software once it is distributed and the requirement that the source code be distributed for free or minimal charge to cover the cost of shipping and CDs or paper and ink only, that might torpedo their business plans if they are not based upon support. So yeah, you can charge $1 million dollars for the software but who would pay that when they can get your code on CDs for $2 and compile it themselves and use it however they want without restriction, including redistributing their compiled version for free and undercutting your prices?
They specifically say that you can't use the open source version of their product to develop commercial software. Then, in the same breath, they claim that their library is under the GPL, which, if you ask the authors of the GPL they will tell you, has no such restriction.
In fact this is a violation of the GPL which they claim to be licensing under. There cannot be added clauses which remove rights granted by the GPL or it is NOT GPL. They can charge whatever they want for the "commercial" version under the GPL but they cannot prevent you from compiling your own version from their source code, which must be made available for free (download) or nominal reproduction/copying fees (burned CDs + shipping), or downloading their "non-commercial" (i.e free) version and then using it for "commercial" use.
If they modify or add features to a GPL project then they MUST license those features under the GPL too and they cannot add additional licensing restrictions on those improvements. The only way that they can charge more for the "commercial" version AND enforce their right to limit how you use the software is for them to build a completely proprietary project that runs on Linux, then they can license their complete, compiled (with or without source), and wholy owned product however they chose, but if they choose to license under the GPL then they cannot impose the use restrictions.
I just said, it is likely to be passed on, but not to just to gas users in CA, but throughout the country. As such, CA residents will actually pay about one tenth of this tax while the rest is pulled in from other states... unless those other states follow suit.
The cost will not be passed on to consumers in other states either. There is a certain wholesale price for gasoline and other refined products which is determined by the commodity exchanges via the futures contract. There are regional distributors of gasoline in the United States which have NO presence in California. These distributors will buy at the wholesale price and sell at the equilibrium retail price in their region. The national gas station chains run by the oil majors (Exxon, Chevron, et al) have to match these prices charged by the regional distributors or they will lose money. If it is illegal to pass on the cost in California AND the majors cannot raise prices in other states due to competition with regional distributors then California will experience a genuine SHORTAGE where little or no gasoline is provided (legally anyway) because the law removes the safety valve which would otherwise allow the cost of increased taxes to be paid by the consumers. This will lead to INCREADIBLY inefficient economic outcomes not just in the energy markets, but in everything which depends upon gasoline or diesel fuel which in practice is just about anything, including food, which needs to be shipped from point A to point B. There are probably many liberals in California that would love to 'stick it' to the oil majors with a law like this but they are cutting off their own nose to spite their face. The world demand for gasoline is so great that any excess capacity will quickly be bought up in other markets. In the end the only the people of California will suffer the consequences of this ill-conceived proposition.
Perhaps their goal is to remove a competitor form the marketplace, thereby driving more customers to XBOX by exercising ownership power to shut PlayStation down, and to wield the patent portfolio that once belonged to the PlayStation group against any potential upstarts that would seek to fill Sony's shoes in the console market following the shutdown. It is not so hard to imagine really, buying up the pesky competition and then shutting them down while absorbing their assets is a time honored tradition in American business.
Ordinary police work, within the strong framework of rights and liberties that is fundamental to Anglo-American law
Perhaps you can explain how ordinary police work will be effective against large groups of insurgents roaming the back roads of Afghanistan and the back alleys of Baghdad armed to teeth with automatic weapons, rocket propelled grenades, and suicide truck bombers. These people are not interested in laws or reason, the only laws they understand are the laws of combat where all that matters is who is left alive and standing and who is left dead or dying. These insurgents will fight to the death if caught or cornered with more firepower than just about any regular police force operating anywhere in the world. The terrorists represent a strategic international military threat and they must be addressed with an international military response. Police work is most effective in an organized, law abiding, and stable society, but what you have over there in the Middle East is bordering on pure anarchy where the only law is the law of the gun. The situation must first be stabilized militarily; before any serious work can begin on rebuilding the type of society where good police work has a chance at maintaining order.
BTW: If you think that the war is "make-believe" then why not sign up for a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan and see for yourself just how "make-believe" the war really is when the hot metal starts flying. Say what you want about the war, but don't deny that we are at war and that real people are being killed every day.
Visual Studio.NET is just fine for putting together 'professional' ASP.NET stuff, so why you'd want to release a product that overlaps is beyond me
I do production development with Visual Studio and ASP.NET 2.0 and I agree with this sentiment completely. The professional ASP.NET developers are 99% likely to be using Visual Studio anyway so why not further enhance the Visual Studio product by adding the additional web development functionality as an optional download? The people who just want to 'do a web page' are not going to pick up server side scripting and database driven web applications on a lark, so they can leave those people with the FrontPage product and fold the professional stuff into their professional tools. Expression seems more like a solution looking for a problem between two camps with very different needs or perhaps a first stab at competing with Dreamweaver and the like, because hey I can admit it...Visual Studio is not the best tool out there for CSS, Layout, and design with XHTML, JavaScript, etc. It does an adequate job, but some optional enhancements, at the risk of further enlarging the scope of what is already a massive piece of software, would probably be welcome.
All of this could probably be pretty easily foiled by having Bittorrent mask what it's doing by sending noise once in a while to throw these tools off.
This is actually a common feature in many cryptosystems which serves to prevent a successful cryptanalysis via "cribs" or short passages of known plaintext within the cipher text, especially at known location such as the start of the message (the Germans made this mistake with their Enigma traffic during WWII for example with standard message headers on their daily weather reports to the U-Boat flotillas). If the protocol were modified to introduce random segments of padding (i.e. junk) into the packets then cryptanalysis via cribbing would most probably be rendered impractical.
I seem to recall that it is theoretically possible to extract energy from a rotating mass that is generating a magnetic field at the cost of reducing the rate of rotation of that mass (i.e. converting the rotational energy of the mass into electric current and tapping that current via the magnetic field lines). this would be like spinning up a generator and then squeezing a bit more energy out after the motor has been shut off and the coil is spinning down. However, do we really want to mess with the rotation speed of the earth, possibly causing the end of life as we know it on this planet, just to get some "free" energy?
The reason drugs should be legal is because people should have dominion over their own bodies.
The problem is that your dominion over your own body is not completely detached from the responsibility of society to save your life when they roll you into the hospital even though you find yourself in that situation because of illicit drug use. Is it fair to make everyone else pay for the poor choices of the individual? The question is a difficult one since other potentially harmful substances, including as alcohol and tobacco for instance, ARE legal. I suppose it comes down to a collective decision by society as to which drugs whether by tradition or consensus, when compared against potential harmful effects, are worth the potential risks when used for recreational purposes.
I admit it wasn't the brightest idea to leave the stack there in the first place, but how dense do you have to be to see a tiny fire next to an enormous pot of water and not make the connection?
Meaning no offense, since you have obviously moved on to much better things as compared to your previous knuckle dragging associates, but the correct answer to your query would probably be, "Dense enough to work at Taco Bell."
It is actually not surprising that disaster situations tend to change people's priorities when it comes to physical possessions and property. Would you rather have your intact XBOX (w/working controllers) but no power OR MREs, Jeep Wrangler (or other four wheel drive vehicle), jerry cans w/fuel, waterproof matches, and your trusty sidearm (w/box of ammunition)? Actually, getting Americans to be more self-sufficient in a survival situation is probably a good thing as opposed to the throw away, outsourcing, let someone else do it society that we live in today. It is unfortunate that people suffered and in some cases lost their lives, but perhaps this will remind people that the government is not responsible for the survival of any one citizen, but rather society in general. You have to be prepared to take matters into your own hands because the police, government, coast guard, etc...will not always be there to help you.
I have heard it said that many hardware manufacturers have been pushing for a binary driver communication layer to be implemented in the kernel so that their driver source code could remain closed source. This of course conflicts with those that support the philosophy of open source because it would allow hardware manufacturers the "privilege" of running on Linux without having to contribute code for their drivers. It really comes down to a philosophical and legal disagreement between parties and not any particular technical reason, or at least that is the primary reason that I have heard.
They (MPAA, RIAA, et al) did it before with Macrovision and VCRs so it is not too far fetched to believe that they will try similar schemes again in the future. Remember when they were trying to lobby for a "cop chip" to somehow magically detect whether an arbitrary stream passing through a DAC was actually an infringement of a copyrighted work? Fortunately for all of the electrical and computer engineers out there even THEY (MPAA, RIAA, et al) realized how futile and stupid that approach was (probably after some engineers explained it to the execs in a way that even a second grader could understand). However, The strategy of the legally required control/scrambling chip is one that is near and dear to the hearts of the content companies and they will definitely try again in the future provided that they can get a solution that is not completely brain dead.
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One drawback with this type of system is that there is tremendous incentive for a well funded third party (i.e. foreign powers) to try and factor Microsoft's private key for the purpose of intelligence gathering, espionage, and sabotage activities. Perhaps this is meaningless given the "hardness" of the problem, but if the NSA or other organization HAS found a way to speed up factoring then they would certainly want to keep quiet about it for as long as possible.
Perhaps some not too obvious honeypots should be left lying around next time so that we can get a better look at their attack methods when they come back and they will be back. Then we can catch them with their red hands stuck in the fortune cookie jar.
I wonder if the auctioned off the costume of the character Kivas Fajo from the TNG episode "The Most Toys"? It would have been an appropriate acquisition for these bidders under the cirumstances.
Indeed, the nearest major galaxy in the local group is actually the Andromeda Galaxy at ~2.5 million light years distance, give or take a few thousand since the distance can only be measured relatively indirectly via Cepheid variable stars. The Andromeda galaxy is also thought to be on a collision course with the Milky Way (although it is impossible to know for sure if they will actually collide because the tangential velocity of the Andromeda Galaxy with respect to the Milky Way is not known). So, assuming that some other disaster does not befall humanity in the meantime, which would certainly be miraculous given our recorded history and more recent events, we will know the answer in ~3 billion years or so (predicted time to impact or convergence rather since both galaxies are mostly empty space).
What assurances does that company or its customers have that the perps are prosecuted?
It depends upon the country, but in popular outsourcing destinations, such as India, the assurance is basically worthless. The Indian court system is a byword for red tape, bureaucracy, and inefficiency that lends new meaning to the phrase, "waiting in hell for a glass of ice water". Nothing gets done without every petty bureaucrat getting his palm greased and even then it is not unusual for cases to spend fifty (50) years winding their way through the system. In fact it is so bad that families actually inherit lawsuits because the disputes cannot be settled within the lifetimes of the original parties.
Are these the brilliant ideas that will change the world (and make you rich in the process)?"
They may change the world and the certainly will make somebody rich if they do succeed, but that person will probably NOT be the poor developer or inventor who came up with the idea in the first place. They don't call it "vulture capital" for nothing you know. If the idea or invention is a spectacular success then the inventor may receive some millions after the financiers have received their billions. Remember what happened to the inventor of the blue LED...there is a lesson to be learned there.
Zonk, can I have some of what you're smoking? Microsoft is protecting themselves from pirated software, not you or me.
Reminds me of how Macrovision used to bill their vertical blinking interval tampering as "Quality Protection" as if people wouldn't know the difference between the bear shit and the buckwheat.
What makes you think that Microsoft doesn't intend for people to not be able to swap motherboards? I would imagine that it is fully intentional. Prove me wrong.
It probably was not so much intentional, in that some Microsoft executives got together and explicitly decided that inability to swap the motherboard was a specific requirement, as it was a consequence or side effect of attempting to identify a specific computer based upon hardware. Is it possible that such a meeting occurred? Maybe. Is it probable? No. It is far more likely that in their attempt to build a detection algorithm for identifying individual computers uniquely, a prerequisite for enforcing their DRM accurately, it was decided that it was too difficult to NOT include the motherboard as one of the inputs when compared to the number of legitimate users who might end up being effected. How many home users swap their motherboards and of those how many would chose a NON-OEM after market board instead of taking their computer in for a warranty repair with the OEM board (which would probably not trigger the detection algorithm and costs less too). There may be some, but they are a statistically insignificant portion of the potential install base for Windows Vista. In the end it boils down to cost, not some secret meeting and a grand conspiracy, although that would admittedly be more entertaining.
Qt is licensed under two licenses: The GPL and Trolltech's commercial development license.
As I understand it they cannot do that IF they have mixed the code bases because of the viral clause of the GPL which would make the commercial version subject to the terms of the GPL. The only way they could do this is if the commercial project borrowe/used no non-trivial code from the commercial version or vice-versa otherwise the viral clause kicks in when they attempt to distribute.
Because they don't want to release their software as GPL, and the free version of cygwin requires it.
Then they cannot use the GPL for the free version either, otherwise you could could just download the free version and use it commercially anyway and that would be perfectly legal under the GPL. This is why SleepyCat uses their own OSI and FSF approved license for BerkeleyDB, so that they can legally distinguish between the free version and the pay version while still maintainting control over end use and some features of other OSS licenses such as GPL. I think that sometimes managers want to use GPL because they have heard about it being an "open source" license and trendy, but they don't understand that the GPL has some potential gotchas in the actual language, such as the inability to place limitations on use of the software once it is distributed and the requirement that the source code be distributed for free or minimal charge to cover the cost of shipping and CDs or paper and ink only, that might torpedo their business plans if they are not based upon support. So yeah, you can charge $1 million dollars for the software but who would pay that when they can get your code on CDs for $2 and compile it themselves and use it however they want without restriction, including redistributing their compiled version for free and undercutting your prices?
They specifically say that you can't use the open source version of their product to develop commercial software. Then, in the same breath, they claim that their library is under the GPL, which, if you ask the authors of the GPL they will tell you, has no such restriction.
In fact this is a violation of the GPL which they claim to be licensing under. There cannot be added clauses which remove rights granted by the GPL or it is NOT GPL. They can charge whatever they want for the "commercial" version under the GPL but they cannot prevent you from compiling your own version from their source code, which must be made available for free (download) or nominal reproduction/copying fees (burned CDs + shipping), or downloading their "non-commercial" (i.e free) version and then using it for "commercial" use.
If they modify or add features to a GPL project then they MUST license those features under the GPL too and they cannot add additional licensing restrictions on those improvements. The only way that they can charge more for the "commercial" version AND enforce their right to limit how you use the software is for them to build a completely proprietary project that runs on Linux, then they can license their complete, compiled (with or without source), and wholy owned product however they chose, but if they choose to license under the GPL then they cannot impose the use restrictions.
I just said, it is likely to be passed on, but not to just to gas users in CA, but throughout the country. As such, CA residents will actually pay about one tenth of this tax while the rest is pulled in from other states... unless those other states follow suit.
The cost will not be passed on to consumers in other states either. There is a certain wholesale price for gasoline and other refined products which is determined by the commodity exchanges via the futures contract. There are regional distributors of gasoline in the United States which have NO presence in California. These distributors will buy at the wholesale price and sell at the equilibrium retail price in their region. The national gas station chains run by the oil majors (Exxon, Chevron, et al) have to match these prices charged by the regional distributors or they will lose money. If it is illegal to pass on the cost in California AND the majors cannot raise prices in other states due to competition with regional distributors then California will experience a genuine SHORTAGE where little or no gasoline is provided (legally anyway) because the law removes the safety valve which would otherwise allow the cost of increased taxes to be paid by the consumers. This will lead to INCREADIBLY inefficient economic outcomes not just in the energy markets, but in everything which depends upon gasoline or diesel fuel which in practice is just about anything, including food, which needs to be shipped from point A to point B. There are probably many liberals in California that would love to 'stick it' to the oil majors with a law like this but they are cutting off their own nose to spite their face. The world demand for gasoline is so great that any excess capacity will quickly be bought up in other markets. In the end the only the people of California will suffer the consequences of this ill-conceived proposition.
Why exactly would MS need/want it?
Perhaps their goal is to remove a competitor form the marketplace, thereby driving more customers to XBOX by exercising ownership power to shut PlayStation down, and to wield the patent portfolio that once belonged to the PlayStation group against any potential upstarts that would seek to fill Sony's shoes in the console market following the shutdown. It is not so hard to imagine really, buying up the pesky competition and then shutting them down while absorbing their assets is a time honored tradition in American business.
Who the hell is going to buy a 600$ piece of electronic equipment out of spite with no intention of using it?
How about the guys at SmashMyPS3.com?
Ordinary police work, within the strong framework of rights and liberties that is fundamental to Anglo-American law
Perhaps you can explain how ordinary police work will be effective against large groups of insurgents roaming the back roads of Afghanistan and the back alleys of Baghdad armed to teeth with automatic weapons, rocket propelled grenades, and suicide truck bombers. These people are not interested in laws or reason, the only laws they understand are the laws of combat where all that matters is who is left alive and standing and who is left dead or dying. These insurgents will fight to the death if caught or cornered with more firepower than just about any regular police force operating anywhere in the world. The terrorists represent a strategic international military threat and they must be addressed with an international military response. Police work is most effective in an organized, law abiding, and stable society, but what you have over there in the Middle East is bordering on pure anarchy where the only law is the law of the gun. The situation must first be stabilized militarily; before any serious work can begin on rebuilding the type of society where good police work has a chance at maintaining order.
BTW: If you think that the war is "make-believe" then why not sign up for a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan and see for yourself just how "make-believe" the war really is when the hot metal starts flying. Say what you want about the war, but don't deny that we are at war and that real people are being killed every day.
Visual Studio.NET is just fine for putting together 'professional' ASP.NET stuff, so why you'd want to release a product that overlaps is beyond me
I do production development with Visual Studio and ASP.NET 2.0 and I agree with this sentiment completely. The professional ASP.NET developers are 99% likely to be using Visual Studio anyway so why not further enhance the Visual Studio product by adding the additional web development functionality as an optional download? The people who just want to 'do a web page' are not going to pick up server side scripting and database driven web applications on a lark, so they can leave those people with the FrontPage product and fold the professional stuff into their professional tools. Expression seems more like a solution looking for a problem between two camps with very different needs or perhaps a first stab at competing with Dreamweaver and the like, because hey I can admit it...Visual Studio is not the best tool out there for CSS, Layout, and design with XHTML, JavaScript, etc. It does an adequate job, but some optional enhancements, at the risk of further enlarging the scope of what is already a massive piece of software, would probably be welcome.
All of this could probably be pretty easily foiled by having Bittorrent mask what it's doing by sending noise once in a while to throw these tools off.
This is actually a common feature in many cryptosystems which serves to prevent a successful cryptanalysis via "cribs" or short passages of known plaintext within the cipher text, especially at known location such as the start of the message (the Germans made this mistake with their Enigma traffic during WWII for example with standard message headers on their daily weather reports to the U-Boat flotillas). If the protocol were modified to introduce random segments of padding (i.e. junk) into the packets then cryptanalysis via cribbing would most probably be rendered impractical.
it makes life easier, because you don't have to deal with confrontation
The Bobs: We like to fire people on Friday...you see studies have shown that there is statistically less chance of an incident that way...
Lumberg: mmmmm....grrreat.
I seem to recall that it is theoretically possible to extract energy from a rotating mass that is generating a magnetic field at the cost of reducing the rate of rotation of that mass (i.e. converting the rotational energy of the mass into electric current and tapping that current via the magnetic field lines). this would be like spinning up a generator and then squeezing a bit more energy out after the motor has been shut off and the coil is spinning down. However, do we really want to mess with the rotation speed of the earth, possibly causing the end of life as we know it on this planet, just to get some "free" energy?
Remember! SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP! Would you like to know more?
The reason drugs should be legal is because people should have dominion over their own bodies.
The problem is that your dominion over your own body is not completely detached from the responsibility of society to save your life when they roll you into the hospital even though you find yourself in that situation because of illicit drug use. Is it fair to make everyone else pay for the poor choices of the individual? The question is a difficult one since other potentially harmful substances, including as alcohol and tobacco for instance, ARE legal. I suppose it comes down to a collective decision by society as to which drugs whether by tradition or consensus, when compared against potential harmful effects, are worth the potential risks when used for recreational purposes.
I admit it wasn't the brightest idea to leave the stack there in the first place, but how dense do you have to be to see a tiny fire next to an enormous pot of water and not make the connection?
Meaning no offense, since you have obviously moved on to much better things as compared to your previous knuckle dragging associates, but the correct answer to your query would probably be, "Dense enough to work at Taco Bell."
It is actually not surprising that disaster situations tend to change people's priorities when it comes to physical possessions and property. Would you rather have your intact XBOX (w/working controllers) but no power OR MREs, Jeep Wrangler (or other four wheel drive vehicle), jerry cans w/fuel, waterproof matches, and your trusty sidearm (w/box of ammunition)? Actually, getting Americans to be more self-sufficient in a survival situation is probably a good thing as opposed to the throw away, outsourcing, let someone else do it society that we live in today. It is unfortunate that people suffered and in some cases lost their lives, but perhaps this will remind people that the government is not responsible for the survival of any one citizen, but rather society in general. You have to be prepared to take matters into your own hands because the police, government, coast guard, etc...will not always be there to help you.
I have heard it said that many hardware manufacturers have been pushing for a binary driver communication layer to be implemented in the kernel so that their driver source code could remain closed source. This of course conflicts with those that support the philosophy of open source because it would allow hardware manufacturers the "privilege" of running on Linux without having to contribute code for their drivers. It really comes down to a philosophical and legal disagreement between parties and not any particular technical reason, or at least that is the primary reason that I have heard.
Sounds like fear-mongering to me
They (MPAA, RIAA, et al) did it before with Macrovision and VCRs so it is not too far fetched to believe that they will try similar schemes again in the future. Remember when they were trying to lobby for a "cop chip" to somehow magically detect whether an arbitrary stream passing through a DAC was actually an infringement of a copyrighted work? Fortunately for all of the electrical and computer engineers out there even THEY (MPAA, RIAA, et al) realized how futile and stupid that approach was (probably after some engineers explained it to the execs in a way that even a second grader could understand). However, The strategy of the legally required control/scrambling chip is one that is near and dear to the hearts of the content companies and they will definitely try again in the future provided that they can get a solution that is not completely brain dead.