But MS are not fixing the actual problem, they are just selling their own bandaid addon like other companies have been doing for years, only theirs is inferior to the ones already available. This can only be bad for the consumer... MS now have a conflict of interest between improving the security of windows, or leaving it poor to encourage sales of onecare... Their product will also end up widely used despite the lack of quality, it will sell just like every other MS product simply because it gets pushed along with sales of window/office. The sales reps will start offering discounts against windows/office if they take onecare too, and the customers will consider it pointless to have 2 antivirus products and won't bother buying a third party one anymore. Once all the other AV vendors are out of business, and all windows users are running onecare or nothing, the malware will have a much easier time of it because malware authors will now have a single known target.
Hopefully when all these apps get rewritten, they will be written for any browser rather than being tied to ie7, so that they don't have this same issue again in the future. Or maybe they'l never learn...
Most cars didn't have CD players a few years ago, and still most don't support data CDs containing mp3s by default. You have to install a third party player into your car, which most people do anyway because the default ones fitted by vehicle makers are often rather poor.
DVD writers today are cheaper than CD writers were when mp3 files first became widely available, and broadband is far more widespread and faster than it was back then too. Why not download FLAC files, and burn them to DVD... It won't cost you more or take more time than it did when you were downloading MP3s over a modem a few years ago and burning them to CD.
Well, when i was in school they taught WordPerfect, because that's what the workforce used. Once i actually grew up and got a job, WordPerfect was nowhere to be seen and everyone was using word. When the current generation of schoolkids start work, who knows what they will be using? That's why it's important to teach kids in a vendor neutral function oriented way (that is, teach them how to use a word processor (and other apps) in general, what the common options are and what they do, and how to find them on different programs instead of making them dependant on the exact layout in a single program)... and refer to spreadsheets as spreadsheets instead of "excel spreadsheets"
I was talking about music, not books, but still. Books are a part of our culture too, their use should not be artificially restricted.
On the other hand, books don't encourage major copying, it is it time consuming to produce a copy of a book and each copied book requires a big chunk of paper and ink. You can make digital copies, which is still time consuming for the first copy, but many people prefer to have a physical book they can read anywhere.
Many things which people might want to do on a website, and which are easily accomplished using standard code, simply don't work on IE... Thus, many sites deviate from the standards to support IE users, since there are rather too many of them out there. The alternative, is sticking to the subset of the standard that IE does support, and having a reduced site. Look at the CSS homepage - http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS and select the blue shadow style, that used to be the default, but because it gets completely mangled by IE6 (not tried 7) they changed it because people thought the site was broken.
// "And Microsoft has no obligation to facilitate a competitor."
And nor do vmware, although a lot of their newer management tools now require windows, thus facilitating their competitors. Any business that microsoft has chosen to compete with, but yet relies on microsoft for a significant portion of their revenue is in trouble... Just look at novell, netware was relying upon microsoft based clients... What vmware need to do, is work hard on encouraging the use of non microsoft software with their products, and make sure that none of their products depend on microsoft. After all, if your infrastructure is partly microsoft based anyway, there will always be reasoning (and pushy salesmen) to make it entirely microsoft based, and no longer need to deal with additional suppliers like vmware.
Extraction of oil takes time, machinery, manpower and you no longer have the oil yourself once it's been sold. Work is required for every single barrel of oil. You can't extract a single barrel of oil and then continue selling it infinite times without doing any more work. So why should an artist continue to be paid for something they did years ago?
Would you like to buy my car? I obviously won't be able to give you the actual car, but you can have a digital photograph of it for the price of a real car.
However this version still keeps you tied in to the platform, and also imposes artificial restrictions (on database size etc)... Postgres does neither of these things.
Microsoft intentionally makes it easy to port applications *TO* windows... This is the bait. They also make it intentionally difficult to port applications *FROM* windows... This is the trap. It's called vendor lockin, and is a much cheaper way of ensuring sales than trying to compete with better products.
And maybe, just maybe, if some of the more ridiculous laws were removed, that is the laws that benefit corporation and not the citizens the law is supposed to protect, then the police would have plenty more time on their hands to pursue those who commit murders assaults and rapes.
I would differentiate between intellectual property and property, because when someone takes your property you are deprived of it. In the natural order of things, someone would need to physically take your property and deprive you of it, yet you can share intellectual property with as many people as you wish and still retain it yourself. Education is fundamental to society, and keeping information (which is all intellectual property really is) secret is detrimental to society as a whole... Imagine if the caveman who discovered fire hadn't told anyone else how to do it? Societies and the human race have prospered and advanced due to sharing information, but that continued advancement is slowed by the greedy few who want to keep information secret for their own benefit at the cost of society as a whole.
As for scientifically justifying a copyright period, i would imagine by studying the relative pros and cons of each length of time, although it's very subjective depending on what information is being copyrighted.
About profiting off the back of someone else's work... What do you call fair compensation? Many large companies generate huge profits from people's works, while giving those people a miniscule cut. Also, do you think someone should be able to continue making ridiculous profits indefinately? Surely there's a point where it's no longer fair compensation, and now they;re just ripping people off.
Whatever system is used, it should be more consumer-friendly than the current copyright laws... The current laws allow copyright holders to charge anything they want, continue doing so for ridiculously long periods of time, and both restrict supply and discriminate as to who is allowed to buy copies and what they pay. (and yes, i consider media which costs far more in europe and comes out several months after the us to be racial discrimination)
A much better approach would be to give away music and such for free, or at cost (which wouldn't be too hard) and use it to advertise the groups who made it.. If they want to make money, they can do live shows (you know, actually work for their money... what a thought) or produce physical merchandise etc.
Here's another thought... Without obscene profits to be made from producing music once, and selling it millions of times, the only people who would stop producing it are the money grabbers who have no real love for music... Would it be such a loss to lose the people who are only in it for the money, and keep the people who are passionate about music (since they would produce music for free if they had to).
DRM was never meant to stop piracy, that was just a thinly veiled excuse... DRM is meant to squeeze more money out of paying customers. The only piracy it will stop, is the casual copying that goes on between schoolkids. I remember the old games that used a printed code wheel, or made you enter codes from a manual... I lost the manuals so often that i ended up using cracked versions even if i had bought the original games.
Sure they would... They would no longer be able to get additional licenses for new machines etc... Any microsoft based deployments would stay a static size or shrink, and any company wanting to grow would be forced to complete a migration away from microsoft before they could do so. And with microsoft products being designed as proprietary as possible, to make migration difficult, this could be very expensive.
The fact that any of the patents which weren't declared invalid in court, would get sold to more companies when their original owners faced bankruptcy, the problem would continue and the industry would collapse because everyone would be too afraid of being sued.
It's even more of a problem with minimal bandwidth, since all that bandwidth will be sucked up by using these online apps all day... Plus, most of these offices won't have expensive multi homed redundant connections, so when the link goes down (which it will, sooner or later) noone will be able to do any work.
Maybe not, but microsoft's apps will constantly try to encourage you to use the closed formats, and if your users don't realise what's happening they will quickly get suckered in and then your stuffed.
While the permissions system offered by default on unix is not the most powerfull, or buzzword compliant system out there... It works, is simple enough to easily manage and is more than sufficient for the vast majority of cases. For those few cases where it's not sufficient, there are ACLs. Although file permissions were not what i meant in the original post.
In windows, every file longer than a dos 8.3 filename has 2 names, an 8.3 filename (progra~1) and a long filename (Program Files)
There are separate interfaces to access cdroms, as hard disks, as floppies, as usb storage devices (whereas unix has a single block-device interface and only the underlying driver code differs)
All of the system files are lumped in together (windows/system32 dirs), files of different types are not separated out into any logical hierarchy.
Files are identified by their filename extension, there are many different extensions associated with executable files. Also, because of this creating a file with the correct extension is sufficient to make it executable, whereas with unix an extra step of marking a file executable is required.
There are many deprecated APIs, which have since been replaced with newer APIs doing pretty much the same thing, but the old APIs remain in place... For instance, current versions of directx retain all the previous versions for compatibility purposes, win16 is still supported etc...
Windows has many more system calls than any unix, and many of these are duplicated or calls with very similar functionality.
Although the NT kernel was a nice idea in theory, it has been completely ruined by all the legacy code ported over from the dos based versions of windows... Had NT evolved as a completely separate OS, without trying to port crufty old code from dos it would be a lot better than it is.
Linux benefits from offering both ACLs and regular file permissions. For the vast majority of uses, standard file permissions are not only sufficient, but also much easier to manage. ACLs are generally reserved for rare cases where something out of the ordinary is required. As an example, most binaries on the system need to be readable and executable by any user, but only writable by the superuser. Home directories should only be readable and writable by their owner etc.
At least you can get support if you want it, or you can use it for free if you dont want/need support... You can also buy support from multiple places in many cases. With most commercial software as you said, you pay for it whether you like it or not, and if the one vendor provides poor or no support than you have no alternative.
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But MS are not fixing the actual problem, they are just selling their own bandaid addon like other companies have been doing for years, only theirs is inferior to the ones already available.
This can only be bad for the consumer... MS now have a conflict of interest between improving the security of windows, or leaving it poor to encourage sales of onecare... Their product will also end up widely used despite the lack of quality, it will sell just like every other MS product simply because it gets pushed along with sales of window/office. The sales reps will start offering discounts against windows/office if they take onecare too, and the customers will consider it pointless to have 2 antivirus products and won't bother buying a third party one anymore.
Once all the other AV vendors are out of business, and all windows users are running onecare or nothing, the malware will have a much easier time of it because malware authors will now have a single known target.
Hopefully when all these apps get rewritten, they will be written for any browser rather than being tied to ie7, so that they don't have this same issue again in the future. Or maybe they'l never learn...
Same for the patch for windows media DRM that was also turned around quicker than any security patches ever have been?
Or you just reverse engineer the protocol, and proxy the game traffic modifying it on the fly...
Most cars didn't have CD players a few years ago, and still most don't support data CDs containing mp3s by default. You have to install a third party player into your car, which most people do anyway because the default ones fitted by vehicle makers are often rather poor.
DVD writers today are cheaper than CD writers were when mp3 files first became widely available, and broadband is far more widespread and faster than it was back then too.
Why not download FLAC files, and burn them to DVD... It won't cost you more or take more time than it did when you were downloading MP3s over a modem a few years ago and burning them to CD.
Well, when i was in school they taught WordPerfect, because that's what the workforce used.
Once i actually grew up and got a job, WordPerfect was nowhere to be seen and everyone was using word.
When the current generation of schoolkids start work, who knows what they will be using?
That's why it's important to teach kids in a vendor neutral function oriented way (that is, teach them how to use a word processor (and other apps) in general, what the common options are and what they do, and how to find them on different programs instead of making them dependant on the exact layout in a single program)...
and refer to spreadsheets as spreadsheets instead of "excel spreadsheets"
There are a number of other petitions on the same site that might be of interest to slashdotters:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/OpenDocument/ - petition for opendocument to be used by the british government.
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/teach-oss - petition for teaching in schools to be vendor neutral, instead of promoting microsoft products
I was talking about music, not books, but still.
Books are a part of our culture too, their use should not be artificially restricted.
On the other hand, books don't encourage major copying, it is it time consuming to produce a copy of a book and each copied book requires a big chunk of paper and ink. You can make digital copies, which is still time consuming for the first copy, but many people prefer to have a physical book they can read anywhere.
Many things which people might want to do on a website, and which are easily accomplished using standard code, simply don't work on IE... Thus, many sites deviate from the standards to support IE users, since there are rather too many of them out there. The alternative, is sticking to the subset of the standard that IE does support, and having a reduced site.
Look at the CSS homepage - http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS and select the blue shadow style, that used to be the default, but because it gets completely mangled by IE6 (not tried 7) they changed it because people thought the site was broken.
// "And Microsoft has no obligation to facilitate a competitor."
And nor do vmware, although a lot of their newer management tools now require windows, thus facilitating their competitors.
Any business that microsoft has chosen to compete with, but yet relies on microsoft for a significant portion of their revenue is in trouble... Just look at novell, netware was relying upon microsoft based clients...
What vmware need to do, is work hard on encouraging the use of non microsoft software with their products, and make sure that none of their products depend on microsoft. After all, if your infrastructure is partly microsoft based anyway, there will always be reasoning (and pushy salesmen) to make it entirely microsoft based, and no longer need to deal with additional suppliers like vmware.
Extraction of oil takes time, machinery, manpower and you no longer have the oil yourself once it's been sold. Work is required for every single barrel of oil.
You can't extract a single barrel of oil and then continue selling it infinite times without doing any more work. So why should an artist continue to be paid for something they did years ago?
Would you like to buy my car? I obviously won't be able to give you the actual car, but you can have a digital photograph of it for the price of a real car.
However this version still keeps you tied in to the platform, and also imposes artificial restrictions (on database size etc)... Postgres does neither of these things.
Microsoft intentionally makes it easy to port applications *TO* windows... This is the bait.
They also make it intentionally difficult to port applications *FROM* windows... This is the trap.
It's called vendor lockin, and is a much cheaper way of ensuring sales than trying to compete with better products.
And maybe, just maybe, if some of the more ridiculous laws were removed, that is the laws that benefit corporation and not the citizens the law is supposed to protect, then the police would have plenty more time on their hands to pursue those who commit murders assaults and rapes.
I would differentiate between intellectual property and property, because when someone takes your property you are deprived of it.
In the natural order of things, someone would need to physically take your property and deprive you of it, yet you can share intellectual property with as many people as you wish and still retain it yourself. Education is fundamental to society, and keeping information (which is all intellectual property really is) secret is detrimental to society as a whole... Imagine if the caveman who discovered fire hadn't told anyone else how to do it?
Societies and the human race have prospered and advanced due to sharing information, but that continued advancement is slowed by the greedy few who want to keep information secret for their own benefit at the cost of society as a whole.
As for scientifically justifying a copyright period, i would imagine by studying the relative pros and cons of each length of time, although it's very subjective depending on what information is being copyrighted.
About profiting off the back of someone else's work... What do you call fair compensation? Many large companies generate huge profits from people's works, while giving those people a miniscule cut. Also, do you think someone should be able to continue making ridiculous profits indefinately? Surely there's a point where it's no longer fair compensation, and now they;re just ripping people off.
Whatever system is used, it should be more consumer-friendly than the current copyright laws... The current laws allow copyright holders to charge anything they want, continue doing so for ridiculously long periods of time, and both restrict supply and discriminate as to who is allowed to buy copies and what they pay. (and yes, i consider media which costs far more in europe and comes out several months after the us to be racial discrimination)
A much better approach would be to give away music and such for free, or at cost (which wouldn't be too hard) and use it to advertise the groups who made it..
If they want to make money, they can do live shows (you know, actually work for their money... what a thought) or produce physical merchandise etc.
Here's another thought... Without obscene profits to be made from producing music once, and selling it millions of times, the only people who would stop producing it are the money grabbers who have no real love for music... Would it be such a loss to lose the people who are only in it for the money, and keep the people who are passionate about music (since they would produce music for free if they had to).
DRM was never meant to stop piracy, that was just a thinly veiled excuse...
DRM is meant to squeeze more money out of paying customers.
The only piracy it will stop, is the casual copying that goes on between schoolkids.
I remember the old games that used a printed code wheel, or made you enter codes from a manual... I lost the manuals so often that i ended up using cracked versions even if i had bought the original games.
Sure they would...
They would no longer be able to get additional licenses for new machines etc... Any microsoft based deployments would stay a static size or shrink, and any company wanting to grow would be forced to complete a migration away from microsoft before they could do so. And with microsoft products being designed as proprietary as possible, to make migration difficult, this could be very expensive.
The fact that any of the patents which weren't declared invalid in court, would get sold to more companies when their original owners faced bankruptcy, the problem would continue and the industry would collapse because everyone would be too afraid of being sued.
It's even more of a problem with minimal bandwidth, since all that bandwidth will be sucked up by using these online apps all day...
Plus, most of these offices won't have expensive multi homed redundant connections, so when the link goes down (which it will, sooner or later) noone will be able to do any work.
Maybe not, but microsoft's apps will constantly try to encourage you to use the closed formats, and if your users don't realise what's happening they will quickly get suckered in and then your stuffed.
While the permissions system offered by default on unix is not the most powerfull, or buzzword compliant system out there... It works, is simple enough to easily manage and is more than sufficient for the vast majority of cases. For those few cases where it's not sufficient, there are ACLs. Although file permissions were not what i meant in the original post.
In windows, every file longer than a dos 8.3 filename has 2 names, an 8.3 filename (progra~1) and a long filename (Program Files)
There are separate interfaces to access cdroms, as hard disks, as floppies, as usb storage devices (whereas unix has a single block-device interface and only the underlying driver code differs)
All of the system files are lumped in together (windows/system32 dirs), files of different types are not separated out into any logical hierarchy.
Files are identified by their filename extension, there are many different extensions associated with executable files. Also, because of this creating a file with the correct extension is sufficient to make it executable, whereas with unix an extra step of marking a file executable is required.
There are many deprecated APIs, which have since been replaced with newer APIs doing pretty much the same thing, but the old APIs remain in place... For instance, current versions of directx retain all the previous versions for compatibility purposes, win16 is still supported etc...
Windows has many more system calls than any unix, and many of these are duplicated or calls with very similar functionality.
Although the NT kernel was a nice idea in theory, it has been completely ruined by all the legacy code ported over from the dos based versions of windows... Had NT evolved as a completely separate OS, without trying to port crufty old code from dos it would be a lot better than it is.
Linux benefits from offering both ACLs and regular file permissions. For the vast majority of uses, standard file permissions are not only sufficient, but also much easier to manage. ACLs are generally reserved for rare cases where something out of the ordinary is required.
As an example, most binaries on the system need to be readable and executable by any user, but only writable by the superuser. Home directories should only be readable and writable by their owner etc.
At least you can get support if you want it, or you can use it for free if you dont want/need support... You can also buy support from multiple places in many cases.
With most commercial software as you said, you pay for it whether you like it or not, and if the one vendor provides poor or no support than you have no alternative.