So you switched on your TV just now and it happens to show a commercial. Because of the lock, you have to wait about 10 minutes. Problem is, that this channel wasn't even the one you wanted but you still have to wait. Now if you are like me, I know some of the numbers on my TV but not all. Most of the time I switch up/down the channels until I reach the one I want. So finally you are "allowed" to switch to the next channel, which happens also to show an ad right now and you have to wait another 10 minutes. If this happens again you can easily have to wait 30-40 minutes, in worst case, just to switch to another channel and by the time you reach it, what you wanted to watch is over. Not that I really would wait so long, because if this happens two times in a row I would switch off anyway. Nice.
If you are an advertising company, the effect of this flag could eevn have the adverse effect. After all, the article says that you can pay to skip a commercial. So who would do this? Obviously people who have the money who can afford to pay for it. This in turn would mean that people with money, the ones that the advertising should target, will NOT see the commercials, while people with less or no money will be forced to watch it. These people are the ones that the commercial most likely will have no affect on anway, because if they had enough money, they most likely would skip the commcercials as well.
I know that it is not as black and white as I make it up there, but I think this effect could easily take place.
I always thought that patents should protect original ideas to cover for the expenses that are required for research. When I read patent proposals like this, they are a prime example for what patents should NOT cover. I mean, how hard do you have to think to come up with a flag like this? Basically this is already done in games, to skip cutscenes, only the other way around. I really don't see why a patent should be granted on such trivial ideas. That completely defeats the purpose of patents.
I have no problem accepting patents for stuff where a company actually has to invest money and months or years of work, but ideas like that ar so trivial that you don't even have to think more then two seconds to come up with this solution, if somebody describes this "problem" to you and how you could resolve it.
The only good thing this may have is, that you would have a reliable advertising flag. This was already in that older stream (forgot the name) to automatically program VCRs but no channel used it. Since this flag most certainly would be used, you could cerate a counterdevice, that does the opposite, unless it is not protected by some stupid laws.
Switching channels ist not really usefull anyway. In my experience, most channels have about the same time the first commercial is shown and since they start the main movies at the same time, the effect is, that channel hopping results only in seeing different adverts in most cases. Of course this varies for different countries and is only valid for my personal experience.
Another reason that I found is, that if you switch channels, chances are that you are finding another movie that is right in the middle anyway, so the question is, do I rather watch a movie in the middle of knowhere just to avoid a commercial? If I want to watch the original movie, then this is not really a solution.
What I do is that I started to have a book on the table, and when the commercials start I continue reading. And in those cases, where I really want to see a good movie, I go for the DVD anyway because it is just to plain annoying.
Since I'm not so keen on watching TV, most of the time, it's not a big problem for me. I rather go to bed and read a good book, which is much more rewarding anyway.
I wondered about that when I read that article because it didn't mention this.
A kid at the age up to four or five is usually much more playfull then when they get older. I know from my own kids that until five they play quite differentely. At the age of five it usually starts that they get more interested in their surroundings and also start to think about more abstract concepts like numbers, characters, alhpabet and such things.
So I wonder wether this test could be explained that the kids were just playfull and it is no surprise, because we know that kids like to imitate grown ups at this age.
So what mental age where the chimps? If they were in a similar stage as an adult would have been then the result might be expected. After all, when kids grow up, they do less and less imitating and start do to it their own way. So the question is: was the chimps mental age comparable to the kids age?
Will the author use the DMCA to sue F-Secure?
on
Sober Code Cracked
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· Score: 1
Apparently F-Secure reverse engineered this virus. So now the author can sue them, based on the DMCA, and MAKE MONEY FAST.:)
What a wonderful new "Get Rich" scheme this provides.
The article is kind of wrong. Isntead of saying that users lack security, it should rather say that they lack brain.
I can agree that a firewall is a goo dthing, but I never used any anti-virus software and I never had a virus on my machine. The only tim this happened, was when I debugged a virus and I accidently started it. Usually I take care when I debug a virus, but I pressed the wrong key in this case. Apart from that I never found a virus when I scanned my system, and I certainly not avoided 'those' sites, where you are supposed to be swamped by them. I'm also 24 hours a day online and still this was not enough to install an exploit or a virus.
Which raises the question for me, why do I not get a virus while so many others do? Is the only reason, that I don't click on everything that my email allows me to click on?
They did NOT fix IE's bug, they just fixed a loophole because of this bug in IE by tightening security. That's all good and well, but I still fail to see why this is even worth mentioning in an article claiming that this bug has been fixed. Or is it just to show that IE doesn't need to get fixed in order to protect against this bug, in which case I could see some merit to this article.
but then again why the comment about Google being a software vendor now and it needs a strategy to deal with bugs and rollouts? Apparently they have such a strategy and even if not, that article doesn't even address it.
Every software has some bugs.
These bugs should be fix according to their priority.
Google provides some software.
Google should fix it's bugs according to their priority.
I'm not sure what this article wants to tell us? That even Google can create bugs? Is this a surprise? Is Google special that this is actually worth to mention?
Why would a bug created by Google any better or worse than a bug by any other software vendor? Of course the bugs should be fixed and apparently Google did it. So this article tells us that a security flaw has been fixed for some special case, because apparently it can't fix it permanently unless it took over maintainence for IE.
Why this MacDonald guy needs a special plan for Google is beyond me though. Maybe somebody could enlighten me there.
Actually this parent should be modded down. SMP doesn't refer to dual or single core, it jsut referes to multiple CPUs in general and it doesn't matter how many of them there are. It should run on two as well as on three or fifteen (depending on the implementation of course).
What is crap though is when different CPUs are used, because software most likely wont expect this, as has been already explained in another posting regarding SSE or other special optimized code.
It's not surprising either, because mmost software would determine special features at startup and not at runtime. Having a special instruction set would beg the question if the performance gain is negated by constant checks if this feature is still there.
This article seems pretty strange to me. After all, the author is complaining that open source is buggy. And if this is true, so what? What is the motivation of an open source developer? Obviously I can't answer for all of them, but I can make my motivation known.
For me there are multiple reasons why I code for open source:
1) I wrote a little tool for myself, which I think might be usefull for others too. So instead of keeping it on my harddisk, I can just as well register it on sourceforge and put it up there.
2) Somebody (or I myself) has started a project that interests me (curiousity, education, etc.), so I take a look at it and contribute to it.
3) An open source project, that I use has some bugs or missing functionality and if it is annoying enough for me, I fix it and submit the changes.
4) Since I have only limited time and knowledge in other areas, I can offer my service as a programmer and team up with a modeler, soundengineer and other artists sharing a mutual interest (like a game concept). I can code the game but I can't model, so in order to play the game that I coded, I would need to hire a modeler to make it look good. The modeler has the same view the other way around. He can't code so in order to make his game come to life he needs a coder. Obviously open source is a good alternative, because both offer their services for free and get the other service in return.
5) I'm using free software a lot, so I want to give something back in return
Now when I look at all these reasons, it is always me who is at the center of it. I don't code for others, I code primarily for myself and then share it. So even if the code is buggy by SOME OTHER standards, this would not really matter to me, because obviously, as long as I'm satisfied with the performance I don't have any reason to change it so that it matches some OTHER requirements. Of course I MIGHT do this, but I don't have an obligation to do so.
That's the nature of open source. If you don't like it, grab the source and change it yourself. No use in complaining to others what they should or should not do, because NONE of the open source developers have an obligation to any other one except themselve. Unless they get paid for, which is an entirely different matter.
I know that most slashdot articles are usually not more then just "X exists go there [weblink]". I would expect from an article that it would at least gives a summary of what has been changed instad just a bunch of pointers and you have to compare them for yourself. Needles to say that not everybody is an expert english speaker and might have troubles to actually determine what has been changed and what it means for the enduser. I don't really expect a full juristical treatise on this, but it would have been nice to include a LITTLE bit more than just this.
Senator S.T.Upid yesterday announced his move to more effeciently battle terrorists. In an interview he told us that his plan is simple, yet efficient. Terrorists, or people striving to make a career in that area, will need to register with the authorities, before they can start working. The hightech passport will get an RFID chip that uniquely identifies the terrorist and his particular area of expertise. With this new technique it will be possible to immediately identify any criminal throughout the world. "Consider the implications when the officer at the border just has to look at the passport and KNOW for sure that this guy is a terrorist. No collateral damages anymore, because he can be absolutely sure about it. No need for jails or annyoing investigation, you can execute him on the spot." the senator says. According to the senator, when this new technique proved itself in the field, there are already plans to broaden the passport to common criminals as well.
If you want to save screen estate there is a little tool here http://sourceforge.net/projects/launchmenu which can help you. On Windows there was a tool named RunIt, which is quite handy. You can configure your most often used applications and then it's gone. When you want to start one you simply put the mouse cursor to the rightmost position on the screen and press the right mouse button. The menu pops up and you can start your aplication. This is a replacement I wrote which runs on Windows and on Linux and it is one of the application that I couldn't live without it anymore. The Windows version has some drawbacks because of the way how the windows are managed, but the linux version works great.
In fact, you appear to be calling the entire population of the U.S.A. Nazis because of the actions of the grandfather of their current President.
Isn't this similar to what is done to the germans anyway? I'm also not repsonsible for what my grandfathers did, but we continously hear it in school and everywhere. As soon as you critizie something in relation to jews, it's bashed down, because there should not even be the tiniest doubt that we should feel responsible for eternity. How very convenient...
The advantage is if you compare it to Wine. Wine runs on Linux, and has much more problems getting up to date, and there is also the barrier that many people may not install Linux just to run Windows applications under Wine. ReactOS doesn't have this problem, because it is a 100% native OS and fully compatible. This has nothing to do with Linux bashing or Linux being a bad OS (which it isn't, I use it myself quite extensivley), only how people perceive Linux in relation to running Windows applications.
The problem with Wine is that everything has to be routed through the drivermodel of Linux which can be a handicapp in some cases. ReactOS shouldn't have such a problem, because a Windows driver should run natively on it.
If you don't know what ReactOS is, it is a replacement for Windows which aims to get 100% binary compatible. http://www.reactos.org/
Just like Wine does on Linux, but with the advantage that there is no Linux underneath it. It is a fully working OS on it's own.
One of the initial motivations for this project was to brake this MS enforced cycle, and so far they made good progress. They are already capable of running some serious stuff like Unreal Tournament (Serious in terms of implementation not neccessarily for companies:) ).
Of course there is a long way to go still, but since the aim is to stay binary compatible, if they progress as good as in teh last two years, then this could become a serious thread if it would be adopted by companies to avoid hardware changes when they don't even need them. And of course, since it is an Open Source OS you still have room for improvement and fixing of exploits that may be discovered. Which is more than you can expect from a Microsoft Windows.
In my company we already had this kind of problem. About 1400 PCs were replaced because we were still running NT4.0 which would have suited our needs quite fine. Since MS doesn't support it anymore, we had to upgrade to W2K and consequently replaced also the hardware because it was rather old. Of course personall I'm more happy with the newer machine, but from the business point of view it wouldn't have been required as W2K offers us nothing that we need.
I guess this is good news for gamers. If MS starts to enforce 64Bit machines, then game developers will also turn around and start making more for 64Bit machines. Of course this will still take some time as the 32Bit machines will still be available for quite some time. As for companies it is probalby not so nice, because MS constantly forces them to upgrade without need.
And as somebody else said: Some time we have to bite the bullet anyway, so why not now?
For me the addiction is to create a game, not to play it (anymore). Does this make me a dealer?
And for all the junkies here on slashdot I have some serious stuff for you to get off http://www.thedarkmod.com/
What most bothers me is that the people screaming "no software patents" are never going to have one ANYWAY. They are not brilliant original thinkers, they are primarily wage slaves and open source advocates; they want the ability to grab and use *anything* that looks like it might fit when they have to build something. There is nothing wrong with that; brilliant original thinkers are rare, and while we would all like to believe that group includes us, we are all probably wrong.
Your argument is flawed here. Just because someone doesn't file a patent, it doesn't mean that he is not a brilliant thinker. It just may mean that he has a more reasonable view on what actually constitutes a 'brillian idea'. What you promote with your statement is that somebody who files a patent has to be a brilliant thinker also, which is obviously wrong. Because the only thing that a patent shows is that the author THOUGHT it might be worth patenting.
A small example: I learned assembly programming a long time ago, before MS was founded or at least known enough to the masses. There exists a patent on code injection, which means that you replace some parts of the existing code, replace it with your own code, and then execute the original code that you replaced. the purpose of this technique is that you can extend or do some stunts with software where you only have the binaries for and no sourcecode. Now this idea is really 'brilliant' in fact it seems so brilliant that I found just with a cursory search about 6 patents from different companies, including Microsoft, IBM and other big players. Each of these patents uses this exact same pattern, but for different purposes and the patents are distributed over about 10-15 years when they were granted. To make it even more interesting: I came up with this 'brilliant' idea myself long ago, without knowing that this was such a brilliant idea that I could put a patent on it. I fixed a buggy software for a friend where the vendor was no longer available with this. In fact I would expect ANY reasonable assembly language programmer to come up with this idea, because it simply is the most obvious route to go. It's so 'brilliant' that this is also a common technique when cracking protections as well, because this is just another application for this.
So much for 'brilliant thinkers' and their relation to patents. I concede that a programming technique like inventing a new compression based on some obscure mathematical algorithm, requires some thinking and is not obvious to everybody, but these are most likely NOT the majority of the 'brilliant' patents you seem to make them to be.
The law says you can't distribute stuff without a proper license.
That implies something like a international unified law. What is 'The law' that you are refering to?
As to Sony. If Sony buys the rights to distribute this DRM software from another company, than it HAS a valid license. The vendor has to know wether he has the rights or not, and if there are strings attached to it, then he should inform Sony that there are certain conditions to be met when it wants to redistribute it. So the question is more, what is the contractual relationship between Sony and the vendor?
On a similar vein I'm developing a community project. A total conversion for Doom 3 http://www.thedarkmod.com./ There are developers sending in code and they put it into CVS which is my own server standing in my home. When I distribute this software to our beta testers you could say in the same vein that I'm responsible for the code, but I'm not. Because I tell teh developers that they have to make sure that they indeed have the copyright to the code they send me, or if they don't have the copyright themself (because they took the code from some other library) they must have at least made sure that they have the rigth to redistribute it. This is a normal procedure. Even more, even if I would look at each and every piece of the code (which I do for new members) I could never recognize that this code may belong to somebody else. I have to take their word for it and can just check it for functional requirements. So if Sony bought the rights from All4Internet then this is all they should need to know, until somebody brings it to their attention. As soon as Sony is made aware of it, of course they would have to stop shipping and clear things up with their vendor, but up until them I think you would have a hard time claiming a copyright violation on Sony's part.
Of course this is pure speculation as I don't know the actual agreement between Sony and All4Internet.
That's not really a surprise. Would YOU take the risk of a patent violation and the attached costs for court and everything, if you buy some stuff as a company, but your businespartner 'forgot' to licence the technology (let's say an MP3 player)? I doubt it.
Of course if two companies make business with each other, they usually reach an agreement about the responsibillities of each one of them. It's your fault if you are so blue eyed that you don't read what the contract says.
I don't know if this is the case here, but I would be very surprised if Sony and First4Internet would have NO contracts signed before Sony uses their software. And if Sony just bought the rights to use the software then it COULD be that they just listed what they wanted to do with it and verified that the software actually does it, and that's it. Why would Sony want to know all the details about the used libraries? They shouldn't know it. Of course you can argue that it still would be in their interest, because like it is here it can destroy their name, but what if the vendor just says, "yes, of course everything is properly licenced." Sony could sue the vendor for the damages, but I don't think there is much more to do on Sony's behalf.
Is ignorance a defence, for instance if Sony said "We didn't know it had unlicensed code!", how would that affect things?
It depends on your contracts wether this is a defence or not. If I'm an unsuspecting customer that goes into a shop and buys a copy of Microsoft Word I doubt that I can be hold liable if there is an unlicenced piece of code in there hidden. If I develop In-House and a programmer includes unlicenced code I might be liable. In the case of Sony it depends on what the contracts say, but I doubt that Sony would be liable if they just bought the complete software and customized it to their needs.
I don't know this particular application, as I have never seen it.:) I was responding to the article itself, which seemed to imply that the violation existed BECAUSE no software was shipped with it, which would be wrong. So maybe the author got it right but with the wrong facts.
Slashdot Mirror
That thought just occured to me.
So you switched on your TV just now and it happens to show a commercial. Because of the lock, you have to wait about 10 minutes. Problem is, that this channel wasn't even the one you wanted but you still have to wait. Now if you are like me, I know some of the numbers on my TV but not all. Most of the time I switch up/down the channels until I reach the one I want. So finally you are "allowed" to switch to the next channel, which happens also to show an ad right now and you have to wait another 10 minutes. If this happens again you can easily have to wait 30-40 minutes, in worst case, just to switch to another channel and by the time you reach it, what you wanted to watch is over. Not that I really would wait so long, because if this happens two times in a row I would switch off anyway. Nice.
If you are an advertising company, the effect of this flag could eevn have the adverse effect. After all, the article says that you can pay to skip a commercial. So who would do this? Obviously people who have the money who can afford to pay for it. This in turn would mean that people with money, the ones that the advertising should target, will NOT see the commercials, while people with less or no money will be forced to watch it. These people are the ones that the commercial most likely will have no affect on anway, because if they had enough money, they most likely would skip the commcercials as well.
I know that it is not as black and white as I make it up there, but I think this effect could easily take place.
I always thought that patents should protect original ideas to cover for the expenses that are required for research. When I read patent proposals like this, they are a prime example for what patents should NOT cover. I mean, how hard do you have to think to come up with a flag like this? Basically this is already done in games, to skip cutscenes, only the other way around. I really don't see why a patent should be granted on such trivial ideas. That completely defeats the purpose of patents.
I have no problem accepting patents for stuff where a company actually has to invest money and months or years of work, but ideas like that ar so trivial that you don't even have to think more then two seconds to come up with this solution, if somebody describes this "problem" to you and how you could resolve it.
The only good thing this may have is, that you would have a reliable advertising flag. This was already in that older stream (forgot the name) to automatically program VCRs but no channel used it. Since this flag most certainly would be used, you could cerate a counterdevice, that does the opposite, unless it is not protected by some stupid laws.
Switching channels ist not really usefull anyway. In my experience, most channels have about the same time the first commercial is shown and since they start the main movies at the same time, the effect is, that channel hopping results only in seeing different adverts in most cases. Of course this varies for different countries and is only valid for my personal experience. Another reason that I found is, that if you switch channels, chances are that you are finding another movie that is right in the middle anyway, so the question is, do I rather watch a movie in the middle of knowhere just to avoid a commercial? If I want to watch the original movie, then this is not really a solution. What I do is that I started to have a book on the table, and when the commercials start I continue reading. And in those cases, where I really want to see a good movie, I go for the DVD anyway because it is just to plain annoying. Since I'm not so keen on watching TV, most of the time, it's not a big problem for me. I rather go to bed and read a good book, which is much more rewarding anyway.
I wondered about that when I read that article because it didn't mention this.
A kid at the age up to four or five is usually much more playfull then when they get older. I know from my own kids that until five they play quite differentely. At the age of five it usually starts that they get more interested in their surroundings and also start to think about more abstract concepts like numbers, characters, alhpabet and such things.
So I wonder wether this test could be explained that the kids were just playfull and it is no surprise, because we know that kids like to imitate grown ups at this age.
So what mental age where the chimps? If they were in a similar stage as an adult would have been then the result might be expected. After all, when kids grow up, they do less and less imitating and start do to it their own way. So the question is: was the chimps mental age comparable to the kids age?
Apparently F-Secure reverse engineered this virus. So now the author can sue them, based on the DMCA, and MAKE MONEY FAST. :)
What a wonderful new "Get Rich" scheme this provides.
The article is kind of wrong. Isntead of saying that users lack security, it should rather say that they lack brain. I can agree that a firewall is a goo dthing, but I never used any anti-virus software and I never had a virus on my machine. The only tim this happened, was when I debugged a virus and I accidently started it. Usually I take care when I debug a virus, but I pressed the wrong key in this case. Apart from that I never found a virus when I scanned my system, and I certainly not avoided 'those' sites, where you are supposed to be swamped by them. I'm also 24 hours a day online and still this was not enough to install an exploit or a virus.
Which raises the question for me, why do I not get a virus while so many others do? Is the only reason, that I don't click on everything that my email allows me to click on?
They did NOT fix IE's bug, they just fixed a loophole because of this bug in IE by tightening security. That's all good and well, but I still fail to see why this is even worth mentioning in an article claiming that this bug has been fixed. Or is it just to show that IE doesn't need to get fixed in order to protect against this bug, in which case I could see some merit to this article.
but then again why the comment about Google being a software vendor now and it needs a strategy to deal with bugs and rollouts? Apparently they have such a strategy and even if not, that article doesn't even address it.
Every software has some bugs.
These bugs should be fix according to their priority.
Google provides some software.
Google should fix it's bugs according to their priority.
I'm not sure what this article wants to tell us? That even Google can create bugs? Is this a surprise? Is Google special that this is actually worth to mention?
Why would a bug created by Google any better or worse than a bug by any other software vendor? Of course the bugs should be fixed and apparently Google did it. So this article tells us that a security flaw has been fixed for some special case, because apparently it can't fix it permanently unless it took over maintainence for IE.
Why this MacDonald guy needs a special plan for Google is beyond me though. Maybe somebody could enlighten me there.
Actually this parent should be modded down. SMP doesn't refer to dual or single core, it jsut referes to multiple CPUs in general and it doesn't matter how many of them there are. It should run on two as well as on three or fifteen (depending on the implementation of course). What is crap though is when different CPUs are used, because software most likely wont expect this, as has been already explained in another posting regarding SSE or other special optimized code. It's not surprising either, because mmost software would determine special features at startup and not at runtime. Having a special instruction set would beg the question if the performance gain is negated by constant checks if this feature is still there.
This article seems pretty strange to me. After all, the author is complaining that open source is buggy. And if this is true, so what? What is the motivation of an open source developer? Obviously I can't answer for all of them, but I can make my motivation known.
For me there are multiple reasons why I code for open source:
1) I wrote a little tool for myself, which I think might be usefull for others too. So instead of keeping it on my harddisk, I can just as well register it on sourceforge and put it up there.
2) Somebody (or I myself) has started a project that interests me (curiousity, education, etc.), so I take a look at it and contribute to it.
3) An open source project, that I use has some bugs or missing functionality and if it is annoying enough for me, I fix it and submit the changes.
4) Since I have only limited time and knowledge in other areas, I can offer my service as a programmer and team up with a modeler, soundengineer and other artists sharing a mutual interest (like a game concept). I can code the game but I can't model, so in order to play the game that I coded, I would need to hire a modeler to make it look good. The modeler has the same view the other way around. He can't code so in order to make his game come to life he needs a coder. Obviously open source is a good alternative, because both offer their services for free and get the other service in return.
5) I'm using free software a lot, so I want to give something back in return
Now when I look at all these reasons, it is always me who is at the center of it. I don't code for others, I code primarily for myself and then share it. So even if the code is buggy by SOME OTHER standards, this would not really matter to me, because obviously, as long as I'm satisfied with the performance I don't have any reason to change it so that it matches some OTHER requirements. Of course I MIGHT do this, but I don't have an obligation to do so.
That's the nature of open source. If you don't like it, grab the source and change it yourself. No use in complaining to others what they should or should not do, because NONE of the open source developers have an obligation to any other one except themselve. Unless they get paid for, which is an entirely different matter.
I know that most slashdot articles are usually not more then just "X exists go there [weblink]". I would expect from an article that it would at least gives a summary of what has been changed instad just a bunch of pointers and you have to compare them for yourself. Needles to say that not everybody is an expert english speaker and might have troubles to actually determine what has been changed and what it means for the enduser. I don't really expect a full juristical treatise on this, but it would have been nice to include a LITTLE bit more than just this.
+++---+++ Fake news ticker +++---+++
Senator S.T.Upid yesterday announced his move to more effeciently battle terrorists. In an interview he told us that his plan is simple, yet efficient. Terrorists, or people striving to make a career in that area, will need to register with the authorities, before they can start working. The hightech passport will get an RFID chip that uniquely identifies the terrorist and his particular area of expertise. With this new technique it will be possible to immediately identify any criminal throughout the world. "Consider the implications when the officer at the border just has to look at the passport and KNOW for sure that this guy is a terrorist. No collateral damages anymore, because he can be absolutely sure about it. No need for jails or annyoing investigation, you can execute him on the spot." the senator says. According to the senator, when this new technique proved itself in the field, there are already plans to broaden the passport to common criminals as well.
If you want to save screen estate there is a little tool here http://sourceforge.net/projects/launchmenu which can help you. On Windows there was a tool named RunIt, which is quite handy. You can configure your most often used applications and then it's gone. When you want to start one you simply put the mouse cursor to the rightmost position on the screen and press the right mouse button. The menu pops up and you can start your aplication. This is a replacement I wrote which runs on Windows and on Linux and it is one of the application that I couldn't live without it anymore. The Windows version has some drawbacks because of the way how the windows are managed, but the linux version works great.
In fact, you appear to be calling the entire population of the U.S.A. Nazis because of the actions of the grandfather of their current President.
...
Isn't this similar to what is done to the germans anyway? I'm also not repsonsible for what my grandfathers did, but we continously hear it in school and everywhere. As soon as you critizie something in relation to jews, it's bashed down, because there should not even be the tiniest doubt that we should feel responsible for eternity. How very convenient
The advantage is if you compare it to Wine. Wine runs on Linux, and has much more problems getting up to date, and there is also the barrier that many people may not install Linux just to run Windows applications under Wine. ReactOS doesn't have this problem, because it is a 100% native OS and fully compatible. This has nothing to do with Linux bashing or Linux being a bad OS (which it isn't, I use it myself quite extensivley), only how people perceive Linux in relation to running Windows applications. The problem with Wine is that everything has to be routed through the drivermodel of Linux which can be a handicapp in some cases. ReactOS shouldn't have such a problem, because a Windows driver should run natively on it.
If you don't know what ReactOS is, it is a replacement for Windows which aims to get 100% binary compatible. http://www.reactos.org/
:) ).
Of course there is a long way to go still, but since the aim is to stay binary compatible, if they progress as good as in teh last two years, then this could become a serious thread if it would be adopted by companies to avoid hardware changes when they don't even need them. And of course, since it is an Open Source OS you still have room for improvement and fixing of exploits that may be discovered. Which is more than you can expect from a Microsoft Windows.
Just like Wine does on Linux, but with the advantage that there is no Linux underneath it. It is a fully working OS on it's own.
One of the initial motivations for this project was to brake this MS enforced cycle, and so far they made good progress. They are already capable of running some serious stuff like Unreal Tournament (Serious in terms of implementation not neccessarily for companies
In my company we already had this kind of problem. About 1400 PCs were replaced because we were still running NT4.0 which would have suited our needs quite fine. Since MS doesn't support it anymore, we had to upgrade to W2K and consequently replaced also the hardware because it was rather old. Of course personall I'm more happy with the newer machine, but from the business point of view it wouldn't have been required as W2K offers us nothing that we need.
I guess this is good news for gamers. If MS starts to enforce 64Bit machines, then game developers will also turn around and start making more for 64Bit machines. Of course this will still take some time as the 32Bit machines will still be available for quite some time. As for companies it is probalby not so nice, because MS constantly forces them to upgrade without need. And as somebody else said: Some time we have to bite the bullet anyway, so why not now?
For me the addiction is to create a game, not to play it (anymore). Does this make me a dealer? And for all the junkies here on slashdot I have some serious stuff for you to get off http://www.thedarkmod.com/
What most bothers me is that the people screaming "no software patents" are never going to have one ANYWAY. They are not brilliant original thinkers, they are primarily wage slaves and open source advocates; they want the ability to grab and use *anything* that looks like it might fit when they have to build something. There is nothing wrong with that; brilliant original thinkers are rare, and while we would all like to believe that group includes us, we are all probably wrong.
Your argument is flawed here. Just because someone doesn't file a patent, it doesn't mean that he is not a brilliant thinker. It just may mean that he has a more reasonable view on what actually constitutes a 'brillian idea'. What you promote with your statement is that somebody who files a patent has to be a brilliant thinker also, which is obviously wrong. Because the only thing that a patent shows is that the author THOUGHT it might be worth patenting. A small example: I learned assembly programming a long time ago, before MS was founded or at least known enough to the masses. There exists a patent on code injection, which means that you replace some parts of the existing code, replace it with your own code, and then execute the original code that you replaced. the purpose of this technique is that you can extend or do some stunts with software where you only have the binaries for and no sourcecode. Now this idea is really 'brilliant' in fact it seems so brilliant that I found just with a cursory search about 6 patents from different companies, including Microsoft, IBM and other big players. Each of these patents uses this exact same pattern, but for different purposes and the patents are distributed over about 10-15 years when they were granted. To make it even more interesting: I came up with this 'brilliant' idea myself long ago, without knowing that this was such a brilliant idea that I could put a patent on it. I fixed a buggy software for a friend where the vendor was no longer available with this. In fact I would expect ANY reasonable assembly language programmer to come up with this idea, because it simply is the most obvious route to go. It's so 'brilliant' that this is also a common technique when cracking protections as well, because this is just another application for this. So much for 'brilliant thinkers' and their relation to patents. I concede that a programming technique like inventing a new compression based on some obscure mathematical algorithm, requires some thinking and is not obvious to everybody, but these are most likely NOT the majority of the 'brilliant' patents you seem to make them to be.
The law says you can't distribute stuff without a proper license. That implies something like a international unified law. What is 'The law' that you are refering to? As to Sony. If Sony buys the rights to distribute this DRM software from another company, than it HAS a valid license. The vendor has to know wether he has the rights or not, and if there are strings attached to it, then he should inform Sony that there are certain conditions to be met when it wants to redistribute it. So the question is more, what is the contractual relationship between Sony and the vendor? On a similar vein I'm developing a community project. A total conversion for Doom 3 http://www.thedarkmod.com./ There are developers sending in code and they put it into CVS which is my own server standing in my home. When I distribute this software to our beta testers you could say in the same vein that I'm responsible for the code, but I'm not. Because I tell teh developers that they have to make sure that they indeed have the copyright to the code they send me, or if they don't have the copyright themself (because they took the code from some other library) they must have at least made sure that they have the rigth to redistribute it. This is a normal procedure. Even more, even if I would look at each and every piece of the code (which I do for new members) I could never recognize that this code may belong to somebody else. I have to take their word for it and can just check it for functional requirements. So if Sony bought the rights from All4Internet then this is all they should need to know, until somebody brings it to their attention. As soon as Sony is made aware of it, of course they would have to stop shipping and clear things up with their vendor, but up until them I think you would have a hard time claiming a copyright violation on Sony's part. Of course this is pure speculation as I don't know the actual agreement between Sony and All4Internet.
That's not really a surprise. Would YOU take the risk of a patent violation and the attached costs for court and everything, if you buy some stuff as a company, but your businespartner 'forgot' to licence the technology (let's say an MP3 player)? I doubt it. Of course if two companies make business with each other, they usually reach an agreement about the responsibillities of each one of them. It's your fault if you are so blue eyed that you don't read what the contract says. I don't know if this is the case here, but I would be very surprised if Sony and First4Internet would have NO contracts signed before Sony uses their software. And if Sony just bought the rights to use the software then it COULD be that they just listed what they wanted to do with it and verified that the software actually does it, and that's it. Why would Sony want to know all the details about the used libraries? They shouldn't know it. Of course you can argue that it still would be in their interest, because like it is here it can destroy their name, but what if the vendor just says, "yes, of course everything is properly licenced." Sony could sue the vendor for the damages, but I don't think there is much more to do on Sony's behalf.
Is ignorance a defence, for instance if Sony said "We didn't know it had unlicensed code!", how would that affect things? It depends on your contracts wether this is a defence or not. If I'm an unsuspecting customer that goes into a shop and buys a copy of Microsoft Word I doubt that I can be hold liable if there is an unlicenced piece of code in there hidden. If I develop In-House and a programmer includes unlicenced code I might be liable. In the case of Sony it depends on what the contracts say, but I doubt that Sony would be liable if they just bought the complete software and customized it to their needs.
I don't know this particular application, as I have never seen it. :) I was responding to the article itself, which seemed to imply that the violation existed BECAUSE no software was shipped with it, which would be wrong. So maybe the author got it right but with the wrong facts.