You can easily release the code under terms that prohibit use of the code without paying the appropriate fees.
It's also equally possible to just download and run the binaries without paying, this is generally called "piracy" or "warez".
The "balance" you talk of, is actually a pretty horrible imbalance, it provides an unfair advantage to larger companies and blackhats, while unfairly discriminating against smaller companies and independent whitehat researchers.
The BSDi approach was actually a much better one, as a paying customer (even a very small one) you got the sourcecode as part of the deal and could modify it to suit your needs internally, but you weren't allowed to redistribute it (or any modifications you made) to third parties.
Releasing your source under such terms doesn't make you worse off, but does make things better for many of the customers and may even bring in new customers. Also although the customers are not allowed to distribute their changes to third parties, there is nothing stopping them contributing bugfixes etc back to the original supplier, so you might actually get some free development out of your users.
Speaking of which, something i utterly detest is software with onerous license enforcement code, that is code which tries to verify that you are in compliance with the license terms and then inhibits functionality (ie causes a denial of service) if it believes you are not. Such software provides NO benefit to the customer, but it does bring a significantly increased risk - there have been many cases of license enforcement code incorrectly triggering and causing all kinds of unnecessary problems for paying customers (i believe vmware had such a problem a couple of years ago for instance). Non paying customers, eg pirates, run cracked versions where this code is removed and thus generally have a more stable product.
I think such functions should simply not exist, they are entirely detrimental to paying customers. By all means implement a feature which verifies license compliance and displays or logs a warning if a problem is detected, that is actually useful to help companies ensure they are in compliance, but under no circumstances should the software take intentional acts to disrupt the users.
Just because sourcecode is open, doesn't mean you can't make money from it. RedHat release most of their code and yet they are highly profitable.
There are plenty of people who are able to find security problems, even in binary applications... If you keep the source closed, then there is a high likelihood of it getting leaked anyway, and then you have a situation where the blackhats have an advantage over the whitehats who wouldnt want to associate themselves with leaked code.
Making source available for everyone to view doesn't mean that you have to integrate any code changes that anyone else sends you.
I do feel quite insulted by the "only big customers see the source" model tho, source should be available to everyone on equal terms even if they release it under non open terms (eg you can build/view/modify internally, but not distribute it in any way).
What process are the chips built on? Last i heard intel were trying to stay at least one process shrink ahead of arm in order to make their chips competitive...
The ability to run x86 linux binaries isn't all that useful, the vast majority of linux software is open source and is just a compile away from arm. The arm port of debian has pretty much all the same packages available for it as the x86 version.
Firefox, chromium, gimp, vlc, xbmc, quake etc already run on arm, although on a touchscreen device people generally run touchscreen specific versions because the mouse/keyboard ui would be difficult to use.
There is already at least one arm based phone that has a dock available to turn it into a laptop, although i believe the default software is quite weak there's no reason you couldn't install a full version of debian or gentoo on it.
A native game is likely to be doing a lot more than a NES game, a NES game ported to run natively would use considerably less power than the emulation or a more modern game.
No, the mac is a dumb carrier of a file which is utterly benign to the mac, but dangerous when copied to a windows system. The mac in this instance is behaving as a dumb storage device, like a disk. The malware might be dangerous if copied from a storage device to a vulnerable system, but just sitting on the storage device it's benign.
The malware becomes far more dangerous once it moves from a dumb storage device and onto a system it can actually infect, because then instead of just passively sitting there waiting to be executed, it can actively make attempts to spread, as well as trying to disguise its present and prevent its removal.
A windows executable is not considered an executable by a mac, its just considered an unknown binary file and may well be cached.
If the malware is stored in a shared documents area then sure, it *could* be executed.
On the other hand, if the windows system doing the executing is running an av product that knows about this malware then it will detect the malware at this point and prevent it from running. If that windows system is not running an av product which knows about the malware, then it is just as likely to be hosting it on its own shared documents area (if not more so, because once a system is infected the malware could make attempts to spread itself, which it couldn't do on the mac since it cannot execute there).
Only if the windows users explicitly retrieve files from the macs and execute them. While on the mac, the files are inert therefore whatever spreading mechanisms are coded into the malware will not be active. So the malware will not be actively looking for other machines, other files to infect or vulnerabilities to spread via, it will just be sitting there.
On the other hand, an actual malware infection will often be actively seeking to spread itself, depending on the individual malware it might scan the local network for vulnerable boxes or open file shares, attach itself to (or generate on its own) outgoing emails, attach itself to otherwise legitimate binaries that its able to write to, write itself to any writable media such as usb sticks which are inserted into the infected system etc.
Download yes, but it won't execute them... In the case of windows malware, it will just benignly sit there until deleted. In the case of mac specific malware, you would have to execute it in order to actually become infected otherwise it too will sit there benignly until removed.
Why should mac users be careful about downloading files which are harmless and/or useless to them? There are plenty of pieces of malware sent via email (i receive several per day) as well as websites which trigger an automatic download (although obviously it cannot execute, so it just sits in the download dir)... I imagine many users never bother to clean this junk up because its harmless to them, whereas a windows users would either become infected, or have it removed automatically by their anti-malware app.
Exactly, among the average joe Windows is associated with computers (even if they don't actually what it is and how it associates), and computers are commonly known as unreliable, prone to crashing and being infected with viruses. People don't want a phone that works like a computer.
Microsoft have already had tablets available which could do both of these things for many years, they didn't sell and part of the reason why is that most existing windows apps are pretty much unusable on a tablet interface.
1) this is a company policy, i've yet to see a corporate windows desktop where you couldn't run games anyway, at most they make it slightly more difficult... not being allowed to install games is a rule that users must follow or face disciplinary action, relying on flawed technical measures generally means that policing of the rules becomes far more lax.
2/3) you should be doing this at the proxy/network level anyway, relying on the client itself is a fundamentally flawed approach (client side security) and can easily be overcome.
You make a good point, their insistence on "windows everywhere" is extremely counter productive... I assume they hope that the familiar brand will promote sales, but the reality is generally quite the opposite.
Windows is well known as a desktop os, it is also widely associated with crashing and malware. People tolerate this on their desktop because, thanks to marketing, they think the alternatives are either to complicated for them, much more expensive or don't exist at all. On phones and tablets however, the alternatives are well established so people aren't willing to take a step down.
I know several people who have refused to try windows phone simply because its branded as windows... They either don't want the malware problems from their pc crossing over to their phone (not even true, just perception based on the brand association), or they have a bad taste in their mouth having used windows mobile.
Then there is the market fragmentation aspect, if people buy a device advertised as "windows" they will expect it to run all their existing apps... I have seen people buy really cheap laptops with windows ce, and phones with windows mobile expecting them to run the same apps as x86 windows. People have even chosen the windows ce laptops over linux based ones for this reason, only they end up sorely disappointed and feel conned.
On the other hand, look at the xbox... it's not branded as windows and doesn't try to use the windows interface etc, and it's been pretty successful. People perceive it as its own product, and take it on its own merits.
In order to have true freedom, then someone must have the freedom to take away any and all freedoms from someone else...
A truly free system will never last, because a few will always abuse that freedom to subjugate others. That's why we have society, where everyone is provided a certain level of freedom while sacrificing some too.
It's a compromise, because going too far either way doesn't work... The GPL works the same way as society does.
That sounds like paid advertising, the fact that people are stupid enough not to verify the independence and credibility of their sources is a separate matter... It happens all over the place too, people trust salesmen and third party organisations that are funded by the suppliers of the products they recommend, and never bother to seek truly independent advice.
So the solution is better internet connectivity, so that people can download their media for free rather than buying it from organised crime gangs.
In places where internet connectivity is affordable and widely available, paying actual money for pirate copies is extremely rare because even the low prices offered by pirates cannot trump free and the convenience of not even having to leave your home.
With the prevalence of small form factor computers which are easily connectable to a tv, perhaps some indie developers will try creating some games like this...
If a game is lousy, but heavily marketed it will sell well initially, but sales will soon taper off when people realise how bad it is...
If a game is good, sales will actually increase as some people buy it, enjoy playing it and tell their friends about it, especially if the game is good enough that those people who bought it don't want to resell it so subsequent players also have to pay full price.
Basically the industry is greedy, they want to do all these customer hostile things while not suffering the consequences that doing so in a free market should entail, and when such things happen its always pirates or used game sales to blame, and never the fact that they're treating their own customers with utter contempt.
In those days, you got the physical cart which in itself was a substantial piece of hardware, plus you usually got a manual with the game too.
Now? Your lucky to get a single DVD and a single sheet which is more likely to be full of legal terms than any instructions for playing the game.
In those days lousy games couldn't hide behind fancy graphics and heavy marketing, the industry was much newer and it was possible to buy magazines which actually contained impartial honest reviews. You could also quite often return the game if you didn't like it, this was generally allowed with games on media that wasn't easily copied, for instance they would never let you return games on floppies unless they were defective as they would assume you had just taken a copy.
As far as users were concerned, they got a lot more for their money with the carts.
Also you could always resell the carts and buy used games...
The comment about games being cheaper if they were not resold is ridiculous, it's purely about greed with the publishers wanting to sell more copies at over inflated prices. Publishers are greedy, they want to make more money without improving the quality of their products, and they certainly dont want to lower their prices even if it would mean significantly higher sales.
If games were cheaper, there would be less incentive to resell them.. If games were better and had more longevity, there would be less reason to resell them either. As it stands many modern games are expensive and quickly become boring, so people resell them in order to recoup some of the money they spent in the first place. There are also people who rent games from places like blockbuster, many games simply don't provide enough entertainment to justify the full price but are good enough to play for a day or two at the rental price.
The problem is that the big expensive games have huge amounts spent on designing the graphics etc, but often lack playability or longevity. If these games spent less on fancy graphics, and released the game for $1 like many mobile games i'm sure people would be happy to pay that and play until they got bored, and wouldnt bother trying to resell the game.
If you punish the officer for writing invalid tickets, and don't provide incentive for writing valid ones then they just won't write any tickets... The opposite of the current situation, where they are rewarded for writing tickets and receive no punishment for writing bad ones.
Also if you make them pay costs, it's only lawyers who will benefit since they get paid by both sides and will inflate their costs if they think a government body is going to pick up the tab.
Slashdot Mirror
You can easily release the code under terms that prohibit use of the code without paying the appropriate fees.
It's also equally possible to just download and run the binaries without paying, this is generally called "piracy" or "warez".
The "balance" you talk of, is actually a pretty horrible imbalance, it provides an unfair advantage to larger companies and blackhats, while unfairly discriminating against smaller companies and independent whitehat researchers.
The BSDi approach was actually a much better one, as a paying customer (even a very small one) you got the sourcecode as part of the deal and could modify it to suit your needs internally, but you weren't allowed to redistribute it (or any modifications you made) to third parties.
Releasing your source under such terms doesn't make you worse off, but does make things better for many of the customers and may even bring in new customers. Also although the customers are not allowed to distribute their changes to third parties, there is nothing stopping them contributing bugfixes etc back to the original supplier, so you might actually get some free development out of your users.
Speaking of which, something i utterly detest is software with onerous license enforcement code, that is code which tries to verify that you are in compliance with the license terms and then inhibits functionality (ie causes a denial of service) if it believes you are not. Such software provides NO benefit to the customer, but it does bring a significantly increased risk - there have been many cases of license enforcement code incorrectly triggering and causing all kinds of unnecessary problems for paying customers (i believe vmware had such a problem a couple of years ago for instance).
Non paying customers, eg pirates, run cracked versions where this code is removed and thus generally have a more stable product.
I think such functions should simply not exist, they are entirely detrimental to paying customers. By all means implement a feature which verifies license compliance and displays or logs a warning if a problem is detected, that is actually useful to help companies ensure they are in compliance, but under no circumstances should the software take intentional acts to disrupt the users.
Just because sourcecode is open, doesn't mean you can't make money from it. RedHat release most of their code and yet they are highly profitable.
There are plenty of people who are able to find security problems, even in binary applications... If you keep the source closed, then there is a high likelihood of it getting leaked anyway, and then you have a situation where the blackhats have an advantage over the whitehats who wouldnt want to associate themselves with leaked code.
Making source available for everyone to view doesn't mean that you have to integrate any code changes that anyone else sends you.
I do feel quite insulted by the "only big customers see the source" model tho, source should be available to everyone on equal terms even if they release it under non open terms (eg you can build/view/modify internally, but not distribute it in any way).
It's likely that if his machine was compromised, other accounts (including his gmail) would also have gotten hacked.
What process are the chips built on? Last i heard intel were trying to stay at least one process shrink ahead of arm in order to make their chips competitive...
The ability to run x86 linux binaries isn't all that useful, the vast majority of linux software is open source and is just a compile away from arm. The arm port of debian has pretty much all the same packages available for it as the x86 version.
Firefox, chromium, gimp, vlc, xbmc, quake etc already run on arm, although on a touchscreen device people generally run touchscreen specific versions because the mouse/keyboard ui would be difficult to use.
There is already at least one arm based phone that has a dock available to turn it into a laptop, although i believe the default software is quite weak there's no reason you couldn't install a full version of debian or gentoo on it.
A native game is likely to be doing a lot more than a NES game, a NES game ported to run natively would use considerably less power than the emulation or a more modern game.
No, the mac is a dumb carrier of a file which is utterly benign to the mac, but dangerous when copied to a windows system. The mac in this instance is behaving as a dumb storage device, like a disk.
The malware might be dangerous if copied from a storage device to a vulnerable system, but just sitting on the storage device it's benign.
The malware becomes far more dangerous once it moves from a dumb storage device and onto a system it can actually infect, because then instead of just passively sitting there waiting to be executed, it can actively make attempts to spread, as well as trying to disguise its present and prevent its removal.
A windows executable is not considered an executable by a mac, its just considered an unknown binary file and may well be cached.
If the malware is stored in a shared documents area then sure, it *could* be executed.
On the other hand, if the windows system doing the executing is running an av product that knows about this malware then it will detect the malware at this point and prevent it from running.
If that windows system is not running an av product which knows about the malware, then it is just as likely to be hosting it on its own shared documents area (if not more so, because once a system is infected the malware could make attempts to spread itself, which it couldn't do on the mac since it cannot execute there).
Only if the windows users explicitly retrieve files from the macs and execute them.
While on the mac, the files are inert therefore whatever spreading mechanisms are coded into the malware will not be active.
So the malware will not be actively looking for other machines, other files to infect or vulnerabilities to spread via, it will just be sitting there.
On the other hand, an actual malware infection will often be actively seeking to spread itself, depending on the individual malware it might scan the local network for vulnerable boxes or open file shares, attach itself to (or generate on its own) outgoing emails, attach itself to otherwise legitimate binaries that its able to write to, write itself to any writable media such as usb sticks which are inserted into the infected system etc.
Download yes, but it won't execute them...
In the case of windows malware, it will just benignly sit there until deleted. In the case of mac specific malware, you would have to execute it in order to actually become infected otherwise it too will sit there benignly until removed.
Why should mac users be careful about downloading files which are harmless and/or useless to them?
There are plenty of pieces of malware sent via email (i receive several per day) as well as websites which trigger an automatic download (although obviously it cannot execute, so it just sits in the download dir)... I imagine many users never bother to clean this junk up because its harmless to them, whereas a windows users would either become infected, or have it removed automatically by their anti-malware app.
Exactly, among the average joe Windows is associated with computers (even if they don't actually what it is and how it associates), and computers are commonly known as unreliable, prone to crashing and being infected with viruses. People don't want a phone that works like a computer.
Printing, like many things on iOS devices, is very easy *if* you are willing to buy into the whole stack, so having a compatible printer etc...
Microsoft have already had tablets available which could do both of these things for many years, they didn't sell and part of the reason why is that most existing windows apps are pretty much unusable on a tablet interface.
1) this is a company policy, i've yet to see a corporate windows desktop where you couldn't run games anyway, at most they make it slightly more difficult... not being allowed to install games is a rule that users must follow or face disciplinary action, relying on flawed technical measures generally means that policing of the rules becomes far more lax.
2/3) you should be doing this at the proxy/network level anyway, relying on the client itself is a fundamentally flawed approach (client side security) and can easily be overcome.
You make a good point, their insistence on "windows everywhere" is extremely counter productive... I assume they hope that the familiar brand will promote sales, but the reality is generally quite the opposite.
Windows is well known as a desktop os, it is also widely associated with crashing and malware. People tolerate this on their desktop because, thanks to marketing, they think the alternatives are either to complicated for them, much more expensive or don't exist at all.
On phones and tablets however, the alternatives are well established so people aren't willing to take a step down.
I know several people who have refused to try windows phone simply because its branded as windows... They either don't want the malware problems from their pc crossing over to their phone (not even true, just perception based on the brand association), or they have a bad taste in their mouth having used windows mobile.
Then there is the market fragmentation aspect, if people buy a device advertised as "windows" they will expect it to run all their existing apps... I have seen people buy really cheap laptops with windows ce, and phones with windows mobile expecting them to run the same apps as x86 windows. People have even chosen the windows ce laptops over linux based ones for this reason, only they end up sorely disappointed and feel conned.
On the other hand, look at the xbox... it's not branded as windows and doesn't try to use the windows interface etc, and it's been pretty successful. People perceive it as its own product, and take it on its own merits.
In order to have true freedom, then someone must have the freedom to take away any and all freedoms from someone else...
A truly free system will never last, because a few will always abuse that freedom to subjugate others. That's why we have society, where everyone is provided a certain level of freedom while sacrificing some too.
It's a compromise, because going too far either way doesn't work... The GPL works the same way as society does.
That sounds like paid advertising, the fact that people are stupid enough not to verify the independence and credibility of their sources is a separate matter... It happens all over the place too, people trust salesmen and third party organisations that are funded by the suppliers of the products they recommend, and never bother to seek truly independent advice.
So the solution is better internet connectivity, so that people can download their media for free rather than buying it from organised crime gangs.
In places where internet connectivity is affordable and widely available, paying actual money for pirate copies is extremely rare because even the low prices offered by pirates cannot trump free and the convenience of not even having to leave your home.
With the prevalence of small form factor computers which are easily connectable to a tv, perhaps some indie developers will try creating some games like this...
You have a good point about "first day sales"...
If a game is lousy, but heavily marketed it will sell well initially, but sales will soon taper off when people realise how bad it is...
If a game is good, sales will actually increase as some people buy it, enjoy playing it and tell their friends about it, especially if the game is good enough that those people who bought it don't want to resell it so subsequent players also have to pay full price.
Basically the industry is greedy, they want to do all these customer hostile things while not suffering the consequences that doing so in a free market should entail, and when such things happen its always pirates or used game sales to blame, and never the fact that they're treating their own customers with utter contempt.
In those days, you got the physical cart which in itself was a substantial piece of hardware, plus you usually got a manual with the game too.
Now? Your lucky to get a single DVD and a single sheet which is more likely to be full of legal terms than any instructions for playing the game.
In those days lousy games couldn't hide behind fancy graphics and heavy marketing, the industry was much newer and it was possible to buy magazines which actually contained impartial honest reviews.
You could also quite often return the game if you didn't like it, this was generally allowed with games on media that wasn't easily copied, for instance they would never let you return games on floppies unless they were defective as they would assume you had just taken a copy.
As far as users were concerned, they got a lot more for their money with the carts.
Also you could always resell the carts and buy used games...
The comment about games being cheaper if they were not resold is ridiculous, it's purely about greed with the publishers wanting to sell more copies at over inflated prices. Publishers are greedy, they want to make more money without improving the quality of their products, and they certainly dont want to lower their prices even if it would mean significantly higher sales.
If games were cheaper, there would be less incentive to resell them.. If games were better and had more longevity, there would be less reason to resell them either. As it stands many modern games are expensive and quickly become boring, so people resell them in order to recoup some of the money they spent in the first place. There are also people who rent games from places like blockbuster, many games simply don't provide enough entertainment to justify the full price but are good enough to play for a day or two at the rental price.
The problem is that the big expensive games have huge amounts spent on designing the graphics etc, but often lack playability or longevity. If these games spent less on fancy graphics, and released the game for $1 like many mobile games i'm sure people would be happy to pay that and play until they got bored, and wouldnt bother trying to resell the game.
If you punish the officer for writing invalid tickets, and don't provide incentive for writing valid ones then they just won't write any tickets... The opposite of the current situation, where they are rewarded for writing tickets and receive no punishment for writing bad ones.
Also if you make them pay costs, it's only lawyers who will benefit since they get paid by both sides and will inflate their costs if they think a government body is going to pick up the tab.