The "previous words" defines sprog as sprog (v): "to go faster than a jog but slower than a sprint". When clearly this word has a well established prior use:
This is almost certainly the aim: the transition from VHS to DVD did exactly this - muddying the water on fair use copying. CDs are a huge liability for the music industry: they are selling us something which (from their point of view) gives us *far too many* rights.
I predict that it will not take more than a couple of years before some "trial" mainstream songs get released ONLY in file formats (no CDs). Some unsuspecting artist/group will become the poster child (children?) for the death of the CD (and those rights).
this seems to me to be the key issue here. Its a shame that something like OOo won't run native on the Mac but what's critical is that we preserve file formats - leaving apple (and others) free to "differentiate" with their UI but keep compatibility across platforms.
Of course its not that simple since the features of the the system also have a big influence on what you might desire in the format.
On poster mentioned that you can browse the files of the Pages files as directories earlier - er, an did you check that you're not violating copyright if you were to write another app that did that? Long live the OpenDocument initiative - even more necessary now.
This story should be about the legal rights of instances of software processes rather than computer's per se + it we could speculate that we might have pretty autonomous entities well before they are legal. An example is this speculative paper [pdf tech report / UPC in spain]. for the metadata see here - the author speculates that it might be possible to build systems which can "feed themselves" (covering all their own hosting/server needs) by generating cash from on-line games for periods of month or years pretty soon.
Disclaimer - i do know the author - no doubt there are plenty similar papers out there.
You might call people for posting anonymously - but what surely tss has more than a bit to answer for by clearly violating the notion of ANONYMOUS posts. This post on the tss regading the "new feature" makes the point perfectly:
It's stupid and dangerous. Posted By: Mouloud - on May 18, 2004 @ 05:58 AM in response to Message #122469 1 replies in this thread
Which confidence can one grant on a site which sets up such a process without informing its members as a preliminary ?
It throws suspicion on the posts: how to distinguish 1 fellow with 2 users from 2 poor fellows which share the same proxy ?
What happens if one member uses 2 different proxies (for example : job and home) ?
This is dangerous, because it creates implicitly and insidiously a link between individuals and thus between their opinions.
... deleted some
Retroactively identifying people is highly foolish - particular subsequentely linking individuals to a company. If a site provides an anonymous mode:
Users / Readers have their own responsability to take those posts with a pinch of salt!
You cannot retroactively undo this anonymity - we all live in a world we put trust in the service provider (in this case tss) to stand by what it says on the tin: this is an anonymous post.
If people using anonymous mode in an "unethical way" may be a problem - remove it, give everybody warning and move on.
No i don't work for JBoss, and yes i know IP/cookies etc. are tracked - however i don't expect amazon of anybody else to post what that information!
As commented above - if this is true the Windows security through obscurity model is really threatened by this. An outside worry has to be that the cost of maintaining Win2k and NT system is set to rise due to this code availability -> meaning all those with windows boxes will increasingly have to consider going to XP.
No doubt Win code isn't as buggy as the slashdot faithful like to hype but in that much code its impossible to believe there aren't any (more). Maybe someone should now outlaw PURIFY et. al. - as a dangerous tool for finding OS vulnerabilities...
Maybe the best strategy for Microsoft now is to open source it so developers can legitimately look at it and track vulnerabilities...
This isn't as strange as it sounds - it's happening in a lot of countries. Basically terestrial TV is very expensive to keep hoing. It would in fact be cheaper to give everybody in the UK a free digiTV box than to keep the old TV service running... hence the aim to phase it out.
...and then we can have another spectrum auction and sting the telcos again:-).
This issue raises the very scary possibility of people regularly writing software which deliberately changes your system configuration when they are installed - and under guise of their user agreement. Bascally this is viral behaviour.
If Ad-Aware retaliates it will have to try and protect itself from the unistaller - how will it do that - clearly changes at the level of the user agreement are more or less useless (what user is going know or care that they have two confliciting user agreements in use...). So it'll be at the code level - what kind of a software war could that set off? Couple that with software that regularly uploads patches and updates (to protect against the latest rival software...).
Personally I'd rather refrain from having my destop turned into a competitive software eco-system!
I still want to get a 4500, but the vendor lockin with someone who's being sued by *everyone* does throw some cold water on desire for the machine.
By the time you read this somebody will at your front door telling you that indeed the new subscription model is lowering the upfront cost to soothe your fears of lockin... - please sign on the dotted lin. Oh yes but you'll still get stung for the cost of the unit when the company bombs!
The fundamental problem with this proposal is that It appeals to the "global Internet community" - who is that? who represents them and what does it take to say "great idea - lets move ICANN's functions to the IAB / whatever" - i.e. what is the forum for consensus on this?
On the face of it it appears that the only forum is ICANN itself and baring that (for obvious reasons) all u have left is the UN! The only other power player in this is really IAB/ISOC/IETF - but this forum has no "jurisdiction" over ICANN and can't be seen as neutral.
The only way to deal with this is for a large majority of the people that support ICANN at the grass roots to set up a consensual forum not controlled by the current ICANN leadership to thrash out a solution - subsequently seeking the support of groups such as IAB and so forth (now we know what yahoo groups are useful for...). Without this non-body will be able to claim any consensus.
I think the fundamental contribution made by this article stands though - do this "outside" ICANN. Once consensus builds this forum should be able to dictate terms to ICANN and/or simply replace it. Not easy but possible if the right leading figures emerge.
Below are the comments posted on the JCP site. It seems that most people who voted yes were basically aiming to get this into a wider deabte (beyond the EC) and that's their reason for voting yes - hopefully the current wording will get shot down in the next review cycle.
On 11-Mar-2002, Apple voted YES with the following comment:
Apple fully supports the issues that have been raised by Apache and others, but the new JSPA represents a good step forward relative to the current one. We believe taking this to community review may provide the input that is needed to refine the JSPA before it goes to public review. During the community review, we would like to work with the PMO to refine the JSPA to better reflect the needs of those participating in open source efforts.
On 11-Mar-2002, HP voted YES with no comment.
On 11-Mar-2002, Borland voted YES with no comment.
On 11-Mar-2002, Fujitsu voted YES with no comment.
On 11-Mar-2002, Oracle voted YES with no comment.
*** On 11-Mar-2002, Macromedia voted NO with the following comment:
The free and creative spirit of the JCP should be directly and clearly manifested and protected legally. The major objections from the open source community argue that this is not the case, and we feel that the current language does not directly quell these concerns. We would like to see the issues that Apache raises on behalf of the open source community resolved in the JSPA itself before moving forward.
*** On 11-Mar-2002, BEA voted NO with the following comment:
After considerable soul searching, BEA has decided to vote NO on this revision of the JSPA. While considerable effort has been exerted by all concerned and significant progress has been made, we still are not convinced that this JSPA would provide the level playing field we have long advocated for Java technologies. The concerns voice by Apache and the open source community is one avenue of concern as is the autocratic power that continues to be vested in spec leads enabling them to attempt mischief to obtain competitive advantage by controlling both the pace of innovation and the availability of that innovation to the marketplace. Unless and until these issues can be satisfactorily addressed, we prefer to stick with our current agreements.
On 11-Mar-2002, Caldera voted YES with the following comment:
Caldera agree with a lot of the concerns expressed by Apache. We would like to see more to be done to protect the interests of open source providers.
*** On 11-Mar-2002, Compaq voted NO with the following comment:
Compaq shares Apache's concerns and IBM's concerns that the JSPA proposed revision provides insufficient protection for interests of open source providers and competitors (as enumerated at
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/jspa-position.html) . Compaq must therefor vote no on this proposed revision
On 11-Mar-2002, IONA voted YES with no comment.
On 09-Mar-2002, Doug Lea ABSTAINED FROM VOTING with the following comment:
I share most of Apache's concerns. However, I also think that it would be useful to open this up to
the scrutiny of all JCP members, not just the EC.
These two factors cancel themsleves out, hence I
abstain.
On 08-Mar-2002, Nokia Networks voted YES with no comment.
*** On 06-Mar-2002, IBM voted NO with the following comment:
IBM has consistently worked within the Java Community Process since its very inception to create a truly open environment with a level playing field where no single vendor has the ability to exert unnecessary control over Java technologies for their own proprietary advantage. While the current draft of the JSPA is an improvement over prior agreements, we believe we should do more to guarantee specifications, implementations and test suites developed under this agreement will be developed with a broader view of Java communities in mind, and to guarantee they are licensed under terms and conditions that allow the widespread adoption of compliant Java technologies. The JSPA amendments proposed under JSR 99 do not provide these guarantees.
IBM has always believed it is absolutely critical the Java community include Apache as well as the rest of the open source community in order to ensure the long term health and competitive vitality of the Java environment. As a result, IBM is fully supportive of the open source community's need for Sun resolve all the issues raised by Apache at http://jakarta.apache.org/site/jspa-position.html directly and unambiguously in the JSPA agreement itself.
*** On 05-Mar-2002, Apache voted NO with the following comment:
Apache is unsatisfied the JSPA revision provides sufficient protection
for our interests (as enumerated at
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/jspa-position.html) . While we and others
have worked long and hard on the JSPA revision and believe we have
made progress from the previous JSPA, we cannot support a legal
agreement which does not unequivocably satisfy these requirements.
The story text is rather missleading when it says that "ICANN has voted against" - this should be the "ICANN board has voted against". I.e. not the participants at the meeting (that might just be a bit too democratic...
The basically say that they "empathise with the (content) industry" regarding this problem. Strategically this is a great thing to do - in the future (whichever way they decide) they can simply say - well "we offered to help".
Half of the companies are still prob trying to work out if they would gain strategic advantage out of it - getting them to sign a "we fundamentally dissagree with this" may just have been too difficult.
The letter does not directly state support for passing the law - in fact it says "We
have found these voluntary multi-industry standards setting efforts to
be optimally effective in reaching workable market solutions." - implying that they think legislation is either unecessary or "sub-optimal". The wired article also picks up on this - somebody change the story text!.
I very much doubt big hardware vendors would be in favor of the kind of copy protection SSSCA seems to demand - it would be very onerous to have government imposed standards here, it could create a huge black/grey market in imported "free" hardware.
This appear to be them "showing support for the fight", not supporting "the weapon".
Very likely that Torng ceeded his rights to the University (or at least part of them). It is common practice in Unviersities that the University ends up being the (or one of the) patent holders.
Maybe - but watch software corporations who build "non-free" competitors to these free programs rub their hands with glee - now they can point out how dangerous it is not to buy products from well known vendors.
Furthermore, they will have a point at least as strong as the argument for making the source readable - most user don't have the time or ability to read through source code...
The big reason for splitting design from coding leg work has to do with the market you're serving. I guess a lot of the more interesting "custom" software is still built for richer markets (Europe, Japan, USA) and to produce systems like that you need:
A lot of interaction with the customer
A good feel for what competitors in that market can offer
A good feel for the corporate culture & existing systems in the company your selling too
These things are very hard to achieve if the design team is half a world away - the cycle times are just too long and to make a good product/system you need a lot of interaction with your customer.
So what's could happen is that a lot of the commodity, stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap software may move elsewhere but custom design remains in the home markets.
Hence this has little to do with creativity of Chinese or India programmers - simply that they are further from the target markets. Once their domestic markets really take off then the US, Japan and Europe will be in for serious competition.
Er, The solve time is expondential in the length of the key so moores law won't help you very much. You can happily double your computational power every 18 months but still run out of time before the end of the universe.
Your better bet is to work out how to solve NP hard problems (or any one) and map it back to the crypto algorithm. But of course you'll be able to do that easily once IBM releases it's first quantum computer....
I think the semantic web effort has the same problem - no incentive to mark up if there are no search engines / agents to read the stuff. No incentive to build the agents if it isn't out there.
Slashdot Mirror
Sprog: child, kid, nipper, tiddler, youngster, tike, tyke, shaver, small fry, nestling, fry.... How else could we then use the wonderful phrase "dropping sprogs"?
Furthermore, the absence of the red dwarf term smeg clearly shows which side of the atlantic the survey was compiled (or that its been sanitised....)
Compaq to spin off HP... you read it here first.
I predict that it will not take more than a couple of years before some "trial" mainstream songs get released ONLY in file formats (no CDs). Some unsuspecting artist/group will become the poster child (children?) for the death of the CD (and those rights).
U2 ipod anyone?
Of course its not that simple since the features of the the system also have a big influence on what you might desire in the format.
On poster mentioned that you can browse the files of the Pages files as directories earlier - er, an did you check that you're not violating copyright if you were to write another app that did that? Long live the OpenDocument initiative - even more necessary now.
This story should be about the legal rights of instances of software processes rather than computer's per se + it we could speculate that we might have pretty autonomous entities well before they are legal. An example is this speculative paper [pdf tech report / UPC in spain]. for the metadata see here - the author speculates that it might be possible to build systems which can "feed themselves" (covering all their own hosting/server needs) by generating cash from on-line games for periods of month or years pretty soon.
Disclaimer - i do know the author - no doubt there are plenty similar papers out there.
It's stupid and dangerous. Posted By: Mouloud - on May 18, 2004 @ 05:58 AM in response to Message #122469 1 replies in this thread
... deleted some
Retroactively identifying people is highly foolish - particular subsequentely linking individuals to a company. If a site provides an anonymous mode:
If people using anonymous mode in an "unethical way" may be a problem - remove it, give everybody warning and move on.
No i don't work for JBoss, and yes i know IP/cookies etc. are tracked - however i don't expect amazon of anybody else to post what that information!
No doubt Win code isn't as buggy as the slashdot faithful like to hype but in that much code its impossible to believe there aren't any (more). Maybe someone should now outlaw PURIFY et. al. - as a dangerous tool for finding OS vulnerabilities...
Maybe the best strategy for Microsoft now is to open source it so developers can legitimately look at it and track vulnerabilities...
But no-one seems to question its authenticity?
The least you'd expect from a news item ANYWHERE would be to quote the source.
My apologies! - all I can say is get away while you still can...
...and then we can have another spectrum auction and sting the telcos again :-).
If this happens we may need to float the british iles off into the mid atlantic and quietly sink them.
If Ad-Aware retaliates it will have to try and protect itself from the unistaller - how will it do that - clearly changes at the level of the user agreement are more or less useless (what user is going know or care that they have two confliciting user agreements in use...). So it'll be at the code level - what kind of a software war could that set off? Couple that with software that regularly uploads patches and updates (to protect against the latest rival software...).
Personally I'd rather refrain from having my destop turned into a competitive software eco-system!
By the time you read this somebody will at your front door telling you that indeed the new subscription model is lowering the upfront cost to soothe your fears of lockin... - please sign on the dotted lin. Oh yes but you'll still get stung for the cost of the unit when the company bombs!
On the face of it it appears that the only forum is ICANN itself and baring that (for obvious reasons) all u have left is the UN! The only other power player in this is really IAB/ISOC/IETF - but this forum has no "jurisdiction" over ICANN and can't be seen as neutral.
The only way to deal with this is for a large majority of the people that support ICANN at the grass roots to set up a consensual forum not controlled by the current ICANN leadership to thrash out a solution - subsequently seeking the support of groups such as IAB and so forth (now we know what yahoo groups are useful for...). Without this non-body will be able to claim any consensus.
I think the fundamental contribution made by this article stands though - do this "outside" ICANN. Once consensus builds this forum should be able to dictate terms to ICANN and/or simply replace it. Not easy but possible if the right leading figures emerge.
On 11-Mar-2002, Apple voted YES with the following comment: Apple fully supports the issues that have been raised by Apache and others, but the new JSPA represents a good step forward relative to the current one. We believe taking this to community review may provide the input that is needed to refine the JSPA before it goes to public review. During the community review, we would like to work with the PMO to refine the JSPA to better reflect the needs of those participating in open source efforts.
On 11-Mar-2002, HP voted YES with no comment.
On 11-Mar-2002, Borland voted YES with no comment.
On 11-Mar-2002, Fujitsu voted YES with no comment.
On 11-Mar-2002, Oracle voted YES with no comment.
*** On 11-Mar-2002, Macromedia voted NO with the following comment: The free and creative spirit of the JCP should be directly and clearly manifested and protected legally. The major objections from the open source community argue that this is not the case, and we feel that the current language does not directly quell these concerns. We would like to see the issues that Apache raises on behalf of the open source community resolved in the JSPA itself before moving forward.
*** On 11-Mar-2002, BEA voted NO with the following comment: After considerable soul searching, BEA has decided to vote NO on this revision of the JSPA. While considerable effort has been exerted by all concerned and significant progress has been made, we still are not convinced that this JSPA would provide the level playing field we have long advocated for Java technologies. The concerns voice by Apache and the open source community is one avenue of concern as is the autocratic power that continues to be vested in spec leads enabling them to attempt mischief to obtain competitive advantage by controlling both the pace of innovation and the availability of that innovation to the marketplace. Unless and until these issues can be satisfactorily addressed, we prefer to stick with our current agreements.
On 11-Mar-2002, Caldera voted YES with the following comment: Caldera agree with a lot of the concerns expressed by Apache. We would like to see more to be done to protect the interests of open source providers.
*** On 11-Mar-2002, Compaq voted NO with the following comment: Compaq shares Apache's concerns and IBM's concerns that the JSPA proposed revision provides insufficient protection for interests of open source providers and competitors (as enumerated at http://jakarta.apache.org/site/jspa-position.html) . Compaq must therefor vote no on this proposed revision
On 11-Mar-2002, IONA voted YES with no comment.
On 09-Mar-2002, Doug Lea ABSTAINED FROM VOTING with the following comment: I share most of Apache's concerns. However, I also think that it would be useful to open this up to the scrutiny of all JCP members, not just the EC. These two factors cancel themsleves out, hence I abstain.
On 08-Mar-2002, Nokia Networks voted YES with no comment.
*** On 06-Mar-2002, IBM voted NO with the following comment: IBM has consistently worked within the Java Community Process since its very inception to create a truly open environment with a level playing field where no single vendor has the ability to exert unnecessary control over Java technologies for their own proprietary advantage. While the current draft of the JSPA is an improvement over prior agreements, we believe we should do more to guarantee specifications, implementations and test suites developed under this agreement will be developed with a broader view of Java communities in mind, and to guarantee they are licensed under terms and conditions that allow the widespread adoption of compliant Java technologies. The JSPA amendments proposed under JSR 99 do not provide these guarantees.
IBM has always believed it is absolutely critical the Java community include Apache as well as the rest of the open source community in order to ensure the long term health and competitive vitality of the Java environment. As a result, IBM is fully supportive of the open source community's need for Sun resolve all the issues raised by Apache at http://jakarta.apache.org/site/jspa-position.html directly and unambiguously in the JSPA agreement itself.
*** On 05-Mar-2002, Apache voted NO with the following comment: Apache is unsatisfied the JSPA revision provides sufficient protection for our interests (as enumerated at http://jakarta.apache.org/site/jspa-position.html) . While we and others
have worked long and hard on the JSPA revision and believe we have
made progress from the previous JSPA, we cannot support a legal
agreement which does not unequivocably satisfy these requirements.
On 05-Mar-2002, Sun voted YES with no comment.
The basically say that they "empathise with the (content) industry" regarding this problem. Strategically this is a great thing to do - in the future (whichever way they decide) they can simply say - well "we offered to help".
Half of the companies are still prob trying to work out if they would gain strategic advantage out of it - getting them to sign a "we fundamentally dissagree with this" may just have been too difficult.
The letter does not directly state support for passing the law - in fact it says "We have found these voluntary multi-industry standards setting efforts to be optimally effective in reaching workable market solutions." - implying that they think legislation is either unecessary or "sub-optimal". The wired article also picks up on this - somebody change the story text!.
I very much doubt big hardware vendors would be in favor of the kind of copy protection SSSCA seems to demand - it would be very onerous to have government imposed standards here, it could create a huge black/grey market in imported "free" hardware.
This appear to be them "showing support for the fight", not supporting "the weapon".
Furthermore, they will have a point at least as strong as the argument for making the source readable - most user don't have the time or ability to read through source code...
- A lot of interaction with the customer
- A good feel for what competitors in that market can offer
- A good feel for the corporate culture & existing systems in the company your selling too
These things are very hard to achieve if the design team is half a world away - the cycle times are just too long and to make a good product/system you need a lot of interaction with your customer.So what's could happen is that a lot of the commodity, stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap software may move elsewhere but custom design remains in the home markets.
Hence this has little to do with creativity of Chinese or India programmers - simply that they are further from the target markets. Once their domestic markets really take off then the US, Japan and Europe will be in for serious competition.
Yeah - it would be much better if you could spend 5mins downloading their plugin before being able to see the difference ;-)
Your better bet is to work out how to solve NP hard problems (or any one) and map it back to the crypto algorithm. But of course you'll be able to do that easily once IBM releases it's first quantum computer....