If you want absolutely, positively bulletproof software
Doesn't need to be bulet-proof. But they should be liable for negligence, or for overstating their security. If the product is not meant to be used in a secure enviroment and with certain limitations and certain controls (say following an ISO standard), it should be stated in the license or outside the box (or somewhere).
If you get roOted, it can depend on a thouthand things. If the reason is because there was a huge hole in code and the company did not patch in 1 day (to name an example) they SHOULD be liable.
What companies want is a declaration of how secure the product is and a statement about how will a hole be handled and what to expect and how to proceed. The we fix as we go and don't blame us, but nonetheless we claim our products are as secure as everyone's else is unfair.
Do they have a option? I mean, is there any competing product that will be Windows compatible? Don't tell me Linux, because it's not Windows. And Windows is a monopoly you cannot get away to not using it in a coporate enviroment today. You can at most replace some servers and selected pals workstations.
...you can conclude that total losses resulting from xbox activities would not be greater than $109 M
Why so? They could be losing 300 on the XBox and compensating with profits on the rest of the division. It's not rare to see great differences in year to year profits for this kind of divisions.
Maybe we should buy the X-Box AND halo, and nothing else. It's probably also true Microsoft had to pay a huge price for Halo too, so that they CANT sell it (unless it becomes an old game) to other console makers.
Microsoft has the ability to lose more money and stay solvent for longer than either Sony or Nintendo
Well, I it was Keynes (or somebody) that stated: "Markets can remain irrational for longer that you can remain solvent". This is certainly also true for specific industries. If the the irrationality (selling at a loss) comes not from a shift in consumer preference of severe economic shock (radically new techology, war, etc.) then the company doing the sell at a loss is doing something very bad for the consumer and the economy.
Selling a loss a known product (not an innovative one that has to create it's own market) for longer than your competitors can remain solvent is a crime and the worst kind of "competition".
Price dumping is intentionally undercutting your competition to put them out of business.
But in practice, in the US this is used to prevent imports that are more competitive. For example, the steel industry. Companies abroad can sell cheaper because they have to pay less for work, they have better minefields, lower taxes and good productivity. They can sell at a profit. But nope, the US calls it's dumping and blocks the sales. You see, laws have a very different meaning depending on who you are hurting. It's not about justice, it's just what a country think it's best for their economy (or world domination plan or whatever).
Last year, the Sheetz gas station near us was selling gas for $0.95/gallon, significantly less than what they paid for it. It wasn't to kill the competitor, but rather to get people in the habit of filling up there.
Bad news for you...that's called dumping. Of course, for that small scale nobody cares, it will not affect the industry. But it still is dumping.
The thing is clear: sell at a loss, have the clients think you are more competitive. Then raise the price. Ideally, offer your product at unresonable prices until either you get the most customer share (and your competitors resources are not enough after that so that they can play the same game on you) or, "a la microsoft" wait until they have to close.
Great capitalism...do as we say not as we do (afaik, the USA is one of the difficult markets to export goods and services, Europe beign the most though. But europe doesn't claim to be as pro-market as the USA claims).
I don't mind the USA doing this, only the open-market free trade self declarations bother me.
Crisis = Review the past + Look for the Future + Make Decisions
A crisis means you cannot hope things to resolve themselves, nor that you can act like you are going to solve everything in a second. You have to understand what happened and make real but prudent decisions even though some people may not want the status quo to be altered.
If you were getting more value for doing the work yourself, you would've already chosen that path.
They are stating they are NOT happy with the sources not being there so that their goverment can veryfy it.
They are stating that their country does not really want to trust all their IT infrastructure on a closed source monopolist running their business at the US and serving the US needs (confirmed with the DoJ-Microsoft honeymoon).
They are NOT saying they will make war, or take any legal action to do whatever Microsoft doesn't want to do with their propietary software.
This is clear, they are stating an opinion, and if Microsoft doesn't comply, maybe they will start embracing something else. It's in all their right for them to negotiate conditions, like taking a look at the sources.
If I where a goverment I'd rule out ANY OS that wasn't open source. Closed source applications are ok, as long as they don't use network resources.
Everything else should be open for scrutiny. And the case is not nonsense. The US goverment has seen and always sees the Microsoft sources, the military sees the sources (you may not be told this, but if you think they don't have access to it and an agreement then....well...).
It's not about a "product", it's about national security. Coutrnies are realizing Microsoft is a threat, and not just a balance of trade nuisance.
Not easy. Remember you need to constantly upgrade Windows, and you can't audit all the traffic going in and on. Windows is full of false alarms due to itself having a life of it own. You cannot just trust the upgrade is not sending a piece of data you don't want to be sent over the network.
Even more, even if you can't detect any traffic there could still be subtle backdoors. If you are sufficently paranoid, you could think that a MS signal could render all your computers useless at their command. They may not even be real buckdoors, but carefully inserted very hard to detect bugs that will allow them to execute arbitrary code.
With XP, they are just allowed to do that without any restriction:) so it gets worst.
Commercial law, when you are a rich country, is about how to divide the pie, not how to create it. So it makes sense for any individual or company to sue whoever if they have a case. If Mr. Nissan is preventing Nissan to use a domain that is important to them (and it IS very important, the first thing you WILL try is www.nissan.com) and he is not willing to sell it, they (for business reasons) have to sue. And get the best lawers of course.
So everything rests on what the law is, who can buy it and who your judges represent. Don't blame the lawers, they are just leechs playing for commercial entities the game of dividing the pie.
I mean: get GOOD judges, and support GOOD laws. That's the only way to keep sue-happiness from raping your rights.
X is perfectly equiped, under a Unix system that is. Windows is not clearly so but it's not really difficult. But the thing that's needed is bandwith, a significant increase. I would say a 400 MBits/s "constant" speed would be more than enough for a 1024 display at 70 fps (compressed video of course, but good quality).
X does just that, the application broadcasts you the video inside the window you are using and if you hide the apps, it stops using your bandwith. So you only need need enough bandwidth to fill a screen even if you use many apps (+ some overhead).
Price. Start offering NC for $4,99 a month (say you already have a monitor and only need to plug a micro NC that is netword card + video display and some simple bios).
You can only win against a PC if you can offer the NC at "ridiculous" (for past standards) price. Everything should be thin clients if you ask me, and if I need I could "network to my own server" or to a server provider i hired (for my personal apps, my disk space, email, whatever). Everything will be distributed services.
The PC will then be a seens as a "local NC + server" all-in-one.
But we'll have to wait some years. It will be fun: - No instalation of software - Almost no configuration, except for user choices
Just imagine: click here to play Doom IV (service cost $0,05 a minute, or buy a monthly pack at $10). Here to launch a word process (prices start at $0,02 (OO) and up to $0,10 (MSO)). Click here for phone service, etc. etc.
Companies offering lots of "service packs" (not the MS ones! Real service packs). Your own computer will be irrelevant, the best stuff WILL NOT INSTALL ON YOUR COMPUTER.
The reasoning behind this is simple: as network speeds become incresingly powerfull, there will an inflexion point in the economics of running a local computer: when the needed "combined" bandwith for using all the applications you need + upgrade to them and updates surpasses the needed bandwith to just broadcat the "video stream" to your computer, network computing will arrive.
And the needed bandwith to broadcast a video signal grows little over time and can even go down (small screens, PDAs) but the bandwith to install new games, OSs, to watch video and applications and to stay current is growing exponentially.
It's just a matter of time! Gone will be the days one will have a computer faster than your friend. You could compile your kernel in 3 seconds in a virtualized mainframe as long as you don't exceed your CPU/hour quota!
People will ask what CPU/hour you are hiring (if you run a server) and how many clients/hour are you serving, not how much mbits you have:)
Re:They probably forgot they even owned it
on
MAME To Become GPL?
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· Score: 2
It is illegal, but not inmoral. It's not so bad. What, I played some 1943 in my computer? What a sin for crist sake.
And extreme example obut legality would be this: suppose someone got really rich, and bought 99% (technically possible) of the earth surface. And that they don't want to rent it or let people to touch it. Imagine the consecuences. The real thing is law is not right or wrong, it's some concensus and rules that get influenced by oposing forces. Law is not ethical or unethical. It's just a rule that the people with power (be them citizen representtives, companies, etc) managed to dictate.
I don't mind breaking the law if I don't agree with it and there's not a big punishment. I tend to even refrain from doing what i think is inmoral or unethical, even if the law allows me too. And some people would not mind doing everything that can't get them convicted because the law does not (yet) prohibit it.
So I don't feel bad playing some 1943 for now, thanks. And am not a bad guy. And some peopl out there abiding and twisting the law should.
Agreed: try as they might, the risk of getting stuck with a PalMOS monopoly fiasco is very very low (they don't have 30 billion in the bank, and never will for sure!).
By the way, I don't use any Palm app at all. I use ActionNames (Agendus now), Space Trader, Chess Genius and an outliner. I am buying the concept only. I don't think they can monopolice the "Palm" way of doing things. I don't even like Grafitty much (though it works well).
As long as it sycns with my main apps, what would the problem be? I can ditch it and sync to another PDA OS in hours.
And if it doesn't sync with my desktop apps, then there's no way I can use it.
I'd like it be open source if that doesn't mean less revenues for them. I better like several monopolies than 1 monopoly + a buch of rebels like us linux users (because we are, I'd have less trouble using Windows...).
No, the rules are inverted here. When you want to stop open source, you sue the ones that can't defend. Remember Microsoft DOESN'T NEED MONEY. They need to stop Open Source.
If they don't sue kernel developers (case where some code MS property) is because it would give them such a bad name they do dare take the risk. And of course, we'd all be donating and doing whatever necesary to see the trial go happy.
The problem is simple. For example, in economics as it is today, you can't say anything about it that doesn't involve writing long, the harder the better equations. Instead of understading economy we are trying to fit models, and afterwards claim we haven't proved wrong yet.
Any good old fashioned economist that is close to the world will be ale to predict better by "feeling" or "sense" than with any model.
You'd need to prove the spectometer is all that is needed to prove your sheep is black. As I have read the post you replied to, he really is not trying to make an argument or convince you, he's just explaining things cannot be proved right, just as Hume and other claimed.
Sometimes it's more important to ask the right questions than to figure out something unimportant with tons of evidence.
But you won't get credit for that of course (but that is really unfair. Many scientists where relatively wrong but going in the right directions. The followers just exerciced some corrections and expansions that didn't need ore than "extrapolation"...
Slashdot Mirror
If you want absolutely, positively bulletproof software
Doesn't need to be bulet-proof. But they should be liable for negligence, or for overstating their security. If the product is not meant to be used in a secure enviroment and with certain limitations and certain controls (say following an ISO standard), it should be stated in the license or outside the box (or somewhere).
If you get roOted, it can depend on a thouthand things. If the reason is because there was a huge hole in code and the company did not patch in 1 day (to name an example) they SHOULD be liable.
What companies want is a declaration of how secure the product is and a statement about how will a hole be handled and what to expect and how to proceed. The we fix as we go and don't blame us, but nonetheless we claim our products are as secure as everyone's else is unfair.
Do they have a option? I mean, is there any competing product that will be Windows compatible? Don't tell me Linux, because it's not Windows. And Windows is a monopoly you cannot get away to not using it in a coporate enviroment today. You can at most replace some servers and selected pals workstations.
...you can conclude that total losses resulting from xbox activities would not be greater than $109 M
Why so? They could be losing 300 on the XBox and compensating with profits on the rest of the division. It's not rare to see great differences in year to year profits for this kind of divisions.
Maybe we should buy the X-Box AND halo, and nothing else. It's probably also true Microsoft had to pay a huge price for Halo too, so that they CANT sell it (unless it becomes an old game) to other console makers.
Microsoft has the ability to lose more money and stay solvent for longer than either Sony or Nintendo
Well, I it was Keynes (or somebody) that stated: "Markets can remain irrational for longer that you can remain solvent". This is certainly also true for specific industries. If the the irrationality (selling at a loss) comes not from a shift in consumer preference of severe economic shock (radically new techology, war, etc.) then the company doing the sell at a loss is doing something very bad for the consumer and the economy.
Selling a loss a known product (not an innovative one that has to create it's own market) for longer than your competitors can remain solvent is a crime and the worst kind of "competition".
Price dumping is intentionally undercutting your competition to put them out of business.
But in practice, in the US this is used to prevent imports that are more competitive. For example, the steel industry. Companies abroad can sell cheaper because they have to pay less for work, they have better minefields, lower taxes and good productivity. They can sell at a profit. But nope, the US calls it's dumping and blocks the sales. You see, laws have a very different meaning depending on who you are hurting. It's not about justice, it's just what a country think it's best for their economy (or world domination plan or whatever).
Last year, the Sheetz gas station near us was selling gas for $0.95/gallon, significantly less than what they paid for it. It wasn't to kill the competitor, but rather to get people in the habit of filling up there.
Bad news for you...that's called dumping. Of course, for that small scale nobody cares, it will not affect the industry. But it still is dumping.
The thing is clear: sell at a loss, have the clients think you are more competitive. Then raise the price. Ideally, offer your product at unresonable prices until either you get the most customer share (and your competitors resources are not enough after that so that they can play the same game on you) or, "a la microsoft" wait until they have to close.
Great capitalism...do as we say not as we do (afaik, the USA is one of the difficult markets to export goods and services, Europe beign the most though. But europe doesn't claim to be as pro-market as the USA claims).
I don't mind the USA doing this, only the open-market free trade self declarations bother me.
I think of crisis as:
Crisis = Review the past + Look for the Future + Make Decisions
A crisis means you cannot hope things to resolve themselves, nor that you can act like you are going to solve everything in a second. You have to understand what happened and make real but prudent decisions even though some people may not want the status quo to be altered.
If you were getting more value for doing the work yourself, you would've already chosen that path.
They are stating they are NOT happy with the sources not being there so that their goverment can veryfy it.
They are stating that their country does not really want to trust all their IT infrastructure on a closed source monopolist running their business at the US and serving the US needs (confirmed with the DoJ-Microsoft honeymoon).
They are NOT saying they will make war, or take any legal action to do whatever Microsoft doesn't want to do with their propietary software.
This is clear, they are stating an opinion, and if Microsoft doesn't comply, maybe they will start embracing something else. It's in all their right for them to negotiate conditions, like taking a look at the sources.
If I where a goverment I'd rule out ANY OS that wasn't open source. Closed source applications are ok, as long as they don't use network resources.
Everything else should be open for scrutiny. And the case is not nonsense. The US goverment has seen and always sees the Microsoft sources, the military sees the sources (you may not be told this, but if you think they don't have access to it and an agreement then....well...).
It's not about a "product", it's about national security. Coutrnies are realizing Microsoft is a threat, and not just a balance of trade nuisance.
Not easy. Remember you need to constantly upgrade Windows, and you can't audit all the traffic going in and on. Windows is full of false alarms due to itself having a life of it own. You cannot just trust the upgrade is not sending a piece of data you don't want to be sent over the network.
:) so it gets worst.
Even more, even if you can't detect any traffic there could still be subtle backdoors. If you are sufficently paranoid, you could think that a MS signal could render all your computers useless at their command. They may not even be real buckdoors, but carefully inserted very hard to detect bugs that will allow them to execute arbitrary code.
With XP, they are just allowed to do that without any restriction
Commercial law, when you are a rich country, is about how to divide the pie, not how to create it. So it makes sense for any individual or company to sue whoever if they have a case. If Mr. Nissan is preventing Nissan to use a domain that is important to them (and it IS very important, the first thing you WILL try is www.nissan.com) and he is not willing to sell it, they (for business reasons) have to sue. And get the best lawers of course.
So everything rests on what the law is, who can buy it and who your judges represent. Don't blame the lawers, they are just leechs playing for commercial entities the game of dividing the pie.
I mean: get GOOD judges, and support GOOD laws. That's the only way to keep sue-happiness from raping your rights.
....Erh, I meant 400 Kbit/s (400 Mbit's hehehe, that would be nice anyway).
X is perfectly equiped, under a Unix system that is. Windows is not clearly so but it's not really difficult. But the thing that's needed is bandwith, a significant increase. I would say a 400 MBits/s "constant" speed would be more than enough for a 1024 display at 70 fps (compressed video of course, but good quality).
X does just that, the application broadcasts you the video inside the window you are using and if you hide the apps, it stops using your bandwith. So you only need need enough bandwidth to fill a screen even if you use many apps (+ some overhead).
They are giving the DVD for free. The bad thing would be the bad uses of this technology (like with every technology, nuclear, etc).
Remember when CD where promoted as a "lifetime" buy, never downgrading it's quality. Hehe.
Price. Start offering NC for $4,99 a month (say you already have a monitor and only need to plug a micro NC that is netword card + video display and some simple bios).
:)
You can only win against a PC if you can offer the NC at "ridiculous" (for past standards) price. Everything should be thin clients if you ask me, and if I need I could "network to my own server" or to a server provider i hired (for my personal apps, my disk space, email, whatever). Everything will be distributed services.
The PC will then be a seens as a "local NC + server" all-in-one.
But we'll have to wait some years. It will be fun:
- No instalation of software
- Almost no configuration, except for user choices
Just imagine: click here to play Doom IV (service cost $0,05 a minute, or buy a monthly pack at $10). Here to launch a word process (prices start at $0,02 (OO) and up to $0,10 (MSO)). Click here for phone service, etc. etc.
Companies offering lots of "service packs" (not the MS ones! Real service packs). Your own computer will be irrelevant, the best stuff WILL NOT INSTALL ON YOUR COMPUTER.
The reasoning behind this is simple: as network speeds become incresingly powerfull, there will an inflexion point in the economics of running a local computer: when the needed "combined" bandwith for using all the applications you need + upgrade to them and updates surpasses the needed bandwith to just broadcat the "video stream" to your computer, network computing will arrive.
And the needed bandwith to broadcast a video signal grows little over time and can even go down (small screens, PDAs) but the bandwith to install new games, OSs, to watch video and applications and to stay current is growing exponentially.
It's just a matter of time! Gone will be the days one will have a computer faster than your friend. You could compile your kernel in 3 seconds in a virtualized mainframe as long as you don't exceed your CPU/hour quota!
People will ask what CPU/hour you are hiring (if you run a server) and how many clients/hour are you serving, not how much mbits you have
It is illegal, but not inmoral. It's not so bad. What, I played some 1943 in my computer? What a sin for crist sake.
And extreme example obut legality would be this: suppose someone got really rich, and bought 99% (technically possible) of the earth surface. And that they don't want to rent it or let people to touch it. Imagine the consecuences. The real thing is law is not right or wrong, it's some concensus and rules that get influenced by oposing forces. Law is not ethical or unethical. It's just a rule that the people with power (be them citizen representtives, companies, etc) managed to dictate.
I don't mind breaking the law if I don't agree with it and there's not a big punishment. I tend to even refrain from doing what i think is inmoral or unethical, even if the law allows me too. And some people would not mind doing everything that can't get them convicted because the law does not (yet) prohibit it.
So I don't feel bad playing some 1943 for now, thanks. And am not a bad guy. And some peopl out there abiding and twisting the law should.
Your argument sound like:
Company: Hey Microsoft, stop the upgrade cycle
Microsoft: Ok, we'll stop updating, but you must pay us a regular fee not to
I haven't seen anyone pointing out you can play the original Dragons Lair on Linux using . Works on Windows too. You just need to buy the DVD from Dragons Lair Project....or if you are lucky enough, plug in an original Laserdisk :)
Agreed: try as they might, the risk of getting stuck with a PalMOS monopoly fiasco is very very low (they don't have 30 billion in the bank, and never will for sure!).
By the way, I don't use any Palm app at all. I use ActionNames (Agendus now), Space Trader, Chess Genius and an outliner. I am buying the concept only. I don't think they can monopolice the "Palm" way of doing things. I don't even like Grafitty much (though it works well).
As long as it sycns with my main apps, what would the problem be? I can ditch it and sync to another PDA OS in hours.
And if it doesn't sync with my desktop apps, then there's no way I can use it.
I'd like it be open source if that doesn't mean less revenues for them. I better like several monopolies than 1 monopoly + a buch of rebels like us linux users (because we are, I'd have less trouble using Windows...).
No, the rules are inverted here. When you want to stop open source, you sue the ones that can't defend. Remember Microsoft DOESN'T NEED MONEY. They need to stop Open Source.
If they don't sue kernel developers (case where some code MS property) is because it would give them such a bad name they do dare take the risk. And of course, we'd all be donating and doing whatever necesary to see the trial go happy.
What's wrong with PalmOS? It's really usable.
The problem is simple. For example, in economics as it is today, you can't say anything about it that doesn't involve writing long, the harder the better equations. Instead of understading economy we are trying to fit models, and afterwards claim we haven't proved wrong yet.
Any good old fashioned economist that is close to the world will be ale to predict better by "feeling" or "sense" than with any model.
all you need is a spectronometer
You'd need to prove the spectometer is all that is needed to prove your sheep is black. As I have read the post you replied to, he really is not trying to make an argument or convince you, he's just explaining things cannot be proved right, just as Hume and other claimed.
Sometimes it's more important to ask the right questions than to figure out something unimportant with tons of evidence.
But you won't get credit for that of course (but that is really unfair. Many scientists where relatively wrong but going in the right directions. The followers just exerciced some corrections and expansions that didn't need ore than "extrapolation"...