Reading their judgement, it seems to say that FTC is not charging that MS has actually broken any laws. However, if they breach the consent decree they will be liable for penalties.
Don't hold your breath though, the penalty is only $11,000 per incident.
Compared to some of the other settlements that FTC has made this is pretty light, but then it seems they took into account the actual damage that has occurred as a result of MS actions. ie very little.
Don't want to be a troll but no matter how good the book is, surely for material like this, the web itself is the best medium.
A paper book is certainly more portable, and for most people easier on the eye, especially when you read for a long time but . ..
Topical material is quickly out of date
You can't search too easily for the topic or phrase you want
You can't easily look up a reference for a term or concept you don't understand
If a certain paragraph doesn't make sense you can't look for alternative statements of the same concept
Once you've read it there isn't any easy way to look up a particular section when you next need it (the books at home, borrowed by a colleague etc)
Books cost!
No shortage of estimates of Linux performance
on
Linux Sales Down, But...
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
How would you measure the importance of Linux on the desktop and get some kind of indication about progress?
Definitely not easy to get at the truth. There is the difficulty of getting accurate figures for new installs, and of finding out who has in fact upgraded an old licence. On top of this there is a lot of marketing FUD aimed at boosting the share of your favourite OS. Even the sales figures don't tell the whole story as competition from lower priced alternatives may hold back price increases out of all proportion to the revenue collected by Linuxes.
I collected a few articles which talk about it:
First off on the server side with IDC reported by Wired
http://www.wired.com/news/linux/0,1411,50311,00. ht ml
"According to market research firm International Data Corp., Linux will account for 32 percent of server installations this year, up from 27 percent in 2001. Windows will jump from 41 percent in 2001 to 47 percent in 2002. Unix, on the other hand, is expected to drop from 14 percent of new installations in 2001 to 10 percent in 2002"
For the desktop you can look at statistics gathered from unique hits on popular web sites, although stats can lie http://lowendmac.com/musings/01/1219.html
News.com has had other IDC stories recently http://news.com.com/2100-1001-243527.htm l?legacy=c net
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-938700.html gives some different figures
"Breaking into the desktop market will be tough. Although Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft isn't dominant in servers, it has 94 percent of the market for operating systems that run on "clients" such as desktop and laptop computers. Linux claims only 3.8 percent of that market, said IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky. "
And from the BSD corner "BSD Desktop Share Triples That of Linux" http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/16382.html
Looks like the US is moving towards the Japanese system where "loss of face" is the main punishment.
I remember a few years back a senior Japanese politician was caught red handed in some bribery scandal. He was a little put out that people wanted him dragged before the courts instead of slapping his wrists. Aiming to defuse the situation, he issued a press statement that he would undergo a voluntary period of 30 days house-arrest during which time he would not allow himself to go outside his house.
I think this ploy actually succeeded and after a suitable time he was back in public life.
So if there is an error in your records, you have to do all the work to correct it.
If the bank, doctor, insurance company, supermarket thinks something bad about you, you have to find out about it, find out how to complain, explain your reasons for complaining etc.
Most people don't do this unless its a serious matter like being refused credit. But in fact the price you are quoted by a vendor can be affected by what they know, or think they know. Having the ability to recognise you by a unique ID gives a lot of power to companies and they are not slow to use it. This is probably not illegal, or even immoral, but if I am forced to negotiate with someone for purchase of a product or service, I don't want them to have an armlock on me before I start.
I would like to decide how much I tell them about myself, and when to tell it, not the other way round.
She wasn't cynical really, it's just my jazzing up the language. I think the cynicism is among the people working on copyright law.
Anyway, the four levels do take in a lot of the ways people work together for good or ill.
Let me rephrase it like this starting with the most obvious and working to the subtlest:
If X does what Y wants them to then X has some form of power/influence over Y.
Clearly the lowest form of power is physical. Y is acting out of self preservation! Notice this isn't always a bad thing as police and military are there to defend us (in most cases)
Next up is knowledge / respect. X is generally reckoned to be an expert so it is worth Y paying attention to them. I'd call this co-operation and generally a good thing, although it can be subverted by special interest groups like the legal profession
Next up is positional, in other words we all agree among ourselves that X is the boss because its better if we all act in concert and someone has to coordinate things. Maybe we even elect X democratically. Again it can be a good thing provided you are not in an oppressed minority.
Last up is positional and this is where Y does what X wants without even being aware there was a choice. This is the one that is hardest to fight and the one I can't see a good side.
Of course all of these forms of influence can be challenged and overthrown ONCE RECOGNISED. The worry is that the copyright lobby sets the rules in such a way that people no longer realise they are losing out.
I thought at first this would be another piece of guff from a "guru" jumping on a bandwagon. But no, some interesting stuff in the article. Worth reading and looking at the recommended action plans.
It seems to me that battles over Intellectual Property Rights are part of the continual struggle for power and influence between Big business and the individual / consumer.
I remember from a discussion with a politics student some 20 years ago that power was defined as the ability to break an agreement/promise with impunity. She thought there were 4 types of power relationship:
Physical: Give me that valuable resource or I cudgel you!
Knowledge/Skill: Do as I say, I'm an expert in this area and I can run rings round you
Positional: I am your line manager and I don't care what I promised, you work for me and don't forget it.
Systemic: You don't even know that you are losing out because I write the rules of the game and there is no mechanism by which you can protest.
The first three powers can be held in check, controlled and balanced to some extent, well enough for us all to get some benefit. The last is more of a threat.
Big Money has always been keen to use systemic power because they can and lest such power be used against them. Setting the terms of trade, aggressive lobbying of government, aggressive use of legal muscle in SLAPP suits(strategic lawsuits against public participation) are all well honed tools.
It is not clear to me that such battles are winnable. In the end Big Money does have more money and any new development will eventually be brought under control. But . . . ..
Some have compared the grabbing of IP to the enclosure of common land (dates vary in different countries but it was back in the 18th Century in the UK) but generally land was less productive when held in common. The reverse is true of IP and copyright. When closely held, it produces less wealth for society. The more this is seen to be the case, the less interest Big Whatever will have in pursuing it
Maybe the aim should be to demonstrate the benefits of free sharing of Knowledge. If a country or group of people share IP freely and reap so much benefit then people will start asking why don't we do this too.
Lets have some more seminal Cathedral and Bazaar articles!
At the risk of being flamed for offending the large numbers of clear-headed consultants who frequent/. I would also lay a lot of the blame on the individual consultants involved in these projects.
Many is the time I have seen a decent project, well scoped, good understanding between customer management and the consultancy management, all screwed up by the people assigned to do the work. There is a huge tendency for consultants to ignore the basic brief and do whatever they think is most interesting. By the time anyone can check up on the state of the project its usually too late to control things.
I guess this really pushes blame onto the project manager.
It may be something illegal, but its not theft. Best guess is that it's infringement of copyright, depending on the laws in that country. In any event it is in a different category to theft which I think is defined as
"Taking with intent to permanently deprive"
Bracketing copyright infringement with plain ordinary theft encourages people to scoff at all laws.
Not seen any solutions posted yet so try this. We are looking at 4 digit binary strings eg 1110. If we don't change anything, then next time we look this string could be 1110, 0111, 1011, or 1101 depending on how many times the booth spun.
It seems that the only constant thing that we know about the 4 walls is which pairs are opposite.
When we start off we can assume that 1, 2 or 3 of the switches are on, and the aim is to get 0 or 4 of them on.
Start off by assuming that 2 switches are on and 2 are off. Pick a pair of opposite walls and flick both switches. If the string was 1010 or 0101 this releases you. Otherwise the string becomes 1100, 0110, or 0011. Pick any pair of adjacent walls and flick both their switches. If you got lucky you won, if not you made the string into a 1010 and for the third turn you can pick either pair of opposite walls and flip both switches.
Now supposing this sequence of three turns didn't release you.
You can conclude that either one or 3 of the switches is on. Pick a wall at random and flip its switch. If you were really lucky you just released yourself. If not then you are now looking at 2 switches on and 2 off.
So repeat the first three moves and you are done!!
First, how does that make the case of a single red eyed monk untenable?
I mean that everyone on the island now knows that if there were a single red eyed monk then he would have to commit suicide at midnight that very night.
Before the tourist spoke everyone could look around all they wanted and still draw no conclusions if all they could see was a single red eye. After the tourist spoke, and after the first midnight further conclusions could be drawn.
The tourist does add new information because he tells everyone that the case of a single red eyed monk is now untenable.
Suppose there are 3 monks with red eyes and you are one of them. You look round and see 2 other red eyes, so you know that there are either 2 or 3 red eyes in total on the island (you aren't sure about yourself)
You now try to work out what is going on in the mind of the other red eyes. Depending on what they can in your eyes they will be counting at least 1 and maybe as many as 3 red eyes in total on the island.
After the first midnight passes without incident, it becomes clear that the other red eyes must actually be seeing at least 2 red eyes on the island so that means that you yourself are red eyed. You decide to commit suicide at midnight.
Well back in the good old days (around 96) we all got together and agreed that there would be a few software glitches when the clock chimed midnight. Word spread slowly at first but by 98 most of the people who needed to know had done their homework and started work.
The band wagon started to roll when the IT industry realised that there was serious money to be made. Services to analyse your systems, reasons to upgrade NOW to the next version, a ton of bodies to poke around in every line of code you were running. New hardware by the lorry load.
By early 99 there was a secondary industry looking at everything from embedded code, to legal and insurance issues, and massive pressure on the late-adopters to fall in line and spend some money. Around this time there were people forecasting planes falling out of the sky, power outages causing knockon effects and taking down the entire grid. Meltdown of the banking industry etc etc
I was involved with some people working in the middle east on Y2K and for the most part govt and companies did just about nothing. Very little was spent, and only the the things that actually broke got fixed. Admittedly they had less IT infrastructure to worry about, but their scepticism about apocalyptic warnings from the West was perfectly justified by events.
I think we are seeing the same pattern with Security issues. There is undoubtedly a problem, people certainly need to spend money on it, for sure CEOs don't really understand the issues and last but not least the problem is not as big as people make out. I guess this is why a few public spirited types are trying to spread some panic in boardrooms.
Question is whether this is a bad thing or not. I'd love it if everyone invested wisely and promptly, but right now its in my personal interest for them to just invest in security services full stop. (or at least to pay me to implement more security)
If everyone goes too far in securing IT who really suffers?
Sounds like they needed some payback from all those Star wars anti ICBM projects.
As the article says:
"When dropped on soft ground, you can get dud rates of 30 per cent," says Owen Hofer of Sparta
The ones that fall on soft ground (eg farmland) sink into the soil and unfortunately that's just where the lasers can't reach.
Well I read it from cover to cover and found it interesting, stimulating and all that.
But short on practical advice.
I've been to a few of these legal seminars and the trouble is that virtually every legal topic of interest is still in flux. The common feature seems to be, if you think you have an Internet problem then you must consult a lawyer. The law is still so uncertain that you cannot possibly be sure that you are applying best practice. Or even that last quarter's advice is still valid.
Mind you, a lot of e-commerce companies know this and aren't too worried.
The UK has a reasonable Data Protection act that should allow some redress if a UK site does bad things with your personal details. It was passed a few years ago now and to date there have been approximately ZERO prosecutions.
there is a LOT of bespoke software running in UK government departments, and a lot of it was developed by third parties. Consultancies involved in this work have generally retained the IP to the work and in many cases have reused code, templates, and skills elsewhere for profit.
Nothing wrong with this in principle. The government doesn't really want to be in the software development business so it should be keen for others to reuse work as widely as possible. The larger the pool of users of a piece of code the more likely the govt will get some benefit back. The downside has been that not only does the govt pay through the nose for the initial development, they also pay a premium for future upgrades because they are now a captive user.
Avoiding this pain far outweighs the possible profit that could be made from retaining IP and selling to the highest bidder. (I've not seen many success stories coming out of Qinetiq which I believe is the UK agency responsible for commercialising apps that the govt owns. Correct me if I'm wrong on this one!)
Second off
The UK civil service is a passionate defender of the UK national interest. Trouble is that they often narrow the definition down to the interest of UK companies and do things that penalise UK citizens. There is a possibility that someone unaccountable will make an decision that using common apps across Europe will disadvantage UK software developers who will have to compete for govt business with equally skilled Europeans. It is also possible that someone will decide that the UK should be closely tied to US interests and that Microsoft is the only platform to work with.
The same debate has been heard many times on a wide range of issues such as banking law, European air traffic control, and even common weapons across the armies.
THE GOOD NEWS is that Open Source has the potential to be a different debate. The first government to develop or mandate sharable code has the best chance of establishing a standard for whatever app it is and therefore will avoid some later redevelopment costs. By opening the source code to scrutiny they also get the chance to check that the code does what they want it to do and nothing more. Less chance of hidden back doors, spyware etc.
And finally, it seems to me the big question is the ease or difficulty of identifying components which are truly sharable. Has anyone got any comparisons with major multi nationals that have tried to do this across their divisions?
If you get too many moderation points you will start to stand out from the crowd and become worth targetting by the content owners.
Peer to peer sharing is likely to become a cat and mouse game with increased sophistication from the sharers' application being leapfrogged by better attack strategies.
The good news is that there are more savvy people out there doing the sharing than content owners doing the protection. So most of the time the sharers will be in the lead.
My suggestion would be to allow for some kind of index (same_name.idx) file that allowed for a bit more detail on what the main file contained. If Gnucleus or whatever spotted a.idx file in the share directory with the same name as the requested file then it would grab that too. Sure most users wouldnt bother to populate the index, but the few that did bother would spread files that would become the preferred download choice.
Bond Good afternoon Q, what have you got for me today?
Q Ok pay attention Bond there have been some developments in secret codes since you last came through. I'd like to tell you about our latest wheeze for getting messages back to HQ by e-mailing pictures of Anna Kournikova.
Bond You mean the tennis player named after an Internet virus?
Q The very same. What you need to do is put your message into a very small dot, a micro dot in fact . .
Bond And stick the dot onto a Kournikova photo?
Q Exactly.
Bond Why Kournikova? apart from the obvious?
Q Well that's the devilish part. You see noone will suspect that the picture is anything other than a virus so it will be blocked and deleted.
Bond While all your team will have the perfect excuse to examine Kourno pictures in extreme detail. Now that is devilish cunning. Who invented this stuff?
Q Ah well they used to call themselves the Cult of the Dead Cow but its really a SMERSH front
Bond I see . . . . . .
At last I understand those Simpsons cartoons!
on
Animated Encryption
·
· Score: 1
Now its clear to me: they were sending coded instructions to operatives in the field.
When they all leap onto the sofa at the start of the episode it truly means something.
Now if only I could get a look at the decode manual . . .
The latest word from Microsoft seems to be that if the public and the industry won't buy it then the project will be canned.
Given the almost universal condemanation, my bet is that the project will be "shelved" only to reappear in a whole series of independent moves to deliver the same effect.
Maybe the next codename that MS come up with will be something like "Horse of Troy"
Looks like the forces of darkness decided that global thermonuclear warfare wasn't needed for knocking out the Internet: Why bother when rampant greed and corruption will do the job for you!
Slashdot Mirror
Reading their judgement, it seems to say that FTC is not charging that MS has actually broken any laws. However, if they breach the consent decree they will be liable for penalties.
Don't hold your breath though, the penalty is only $11,000 per incident.
Compared to some of the other settlements that FTC has made this is pretty light, but then it seems they took into account the actual damage that has occurred as a result of MS actions. ie very little.
Oh well.
Don't want to be a troll but no matter how good the book is, surely for material like this, the web itself is the best medium.
.
A paper book is certainly more portable, and for most people easier on the eye, especially when you read for a long time but . .
Topical material is quickly out of date
You can't search too easily for the topic or phrase you want
You can't easily look up a reference for a term or concept you don't understand
If a certain paragraph doesn't make sense you can't look for alternative statements of the same concept
Once you've read it there isn't any easy way to look up a particular section when you next need it (the books at home, borrowed by a colleague etc)
Books cost!
How would you measure the importance of Linux on the desktop and get some kind of indication about progress?
. ht ml
m l?legacy=c net
Definitely not easy to get at the truth. There is the difficulty of getting accurate figures for new installs, and of finding out who has in fact upgraded an old licence. On top of this there is a lot of marketing FUD aimed at boosting the share of your favourite OS. Even the sales figures don't tell the whole story as competition from lower priced alternatives may hold back price increases out of all proportion to the revenue collected by Linuxes.
I collected a few articles which talk about it:
First off on the server side with IDC reported by Wired
http://www.wired.com/news/linux/0,1411,50311,00
"According to market research firm International Data Corp., Linux will account for 32 percent of server installations this year, up from 27 percent in 2001. Windows will jump from 41 percent in 2001 to 47 percent in 2002. Unix, on the other hand, is expected to drop from 14 percent of new installations in 2001 to 10 percent in 2002"
For the desktop you can look at statistics gathered from unique hits on popular web sites, although stats can lie
http://lowendmac.com/musings/01/1219.html
News.com has had other IDC stories recently
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-243527.ht
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-938700.html gives some different figures
"Breaking into the desktop market will be tough. Although Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft isn't dominant in servers, it has 94 percent of the market for operating systems that run on "clients" such as desktop and laptop computers. Linux claims only 3.8 percent of that market, said IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky. "
And from the BSD corner "BSD Desktop Share Triples That of Linux"
http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/16382.html
Well I checked Janis Ian's site and the Heart of the City track is playing as I type this.
3
/.ed !
www.whiteboxcomputers.net/janis/HeartOfACity.mp
Its not
Which makes me think that they knew a deluge of activity was heading their way and got ready for it. Way to go!!
It seems to me Janis will get massive goodwill out of this and massive exposure, and hopefully a reasonable profit.
The first artists to promote their work and beliefs in the same way can expect similar. Lets hope there is a rush of converts!
If the commons like what you are doing, the benefits will follow.
Looks like the US is moving towards the Japanese system where "loss of face" is the main punishment.
I remember a few years back a senior Japanese politician was caught red handed in some bribery scandal. He was a little put out that people wanted him dragged before the courts instead of slapping his wrists. Aiming to defuse the situation, he issued a press statement that he would undergo a voluntary period of 30 days house-arrest during which time he would not allow himself to go outside his house.
I think this ploy actually succeeded and after a suitable time he was back in public life.
Go and stand in the corner Bill, until breaktime!
Way back when I saw the only definition of marketing that I can respect.
"Find out what users want and give it to them"
I like this better than
"Find out what makes us most money and look for ways to con users into accepting it"
Sounds like AOL are waking up to this too.
So if there is an error in your records, you have to do all the work to correct it.
If the bank, doctor, insurance company, supermarket thinks something bad about you, you have to find out about it, find out how to complain, explain your reasons for complaining etc.
Most people don't do this unless its a serious matter like being refused credit. But in fact the price you are quoted by a vendor can be affected by what they know, or think they know. Having the ability to recognise you by a unique ID gives a lot of power to companies and they are not slow to use it. This is probably not illegal, or even immoral, but if I am forced to negotiate with someone for purchase of a product or service, I don't want them to have an armlock on me before I start.
I would like to decide how much I tell them about myself, and when to tell it, not the other way round.
She wasn't cynical really, it's just my jazzing up the language. I think the cynicism is among the people working on copyright law.
Anyway, the four levels do take in a lot of the ways people work together for good or ill.
Let me rephrase it like this starting with the most obvious and working to the subtlest:
If X does what Y wants them to then X has some form of power/influence over Y.
Clearly the lowest form of power is physical. Y is acting out of self preservation! Notice this isn't always a bad thing as police and military are there to defend us (in most cases)
Next up is knowledge / respect. X is generally reckoned to be an expert so it is worth Y paying attention to them. I'd call this co-operation and generally a good thing, although it can be subverted by special interest groups like the legal profession
Next up is positional, in other words we all agree among ourselves that X is the boss because its better if we all act in concert and someone has to coordinate things. Maybe we even elect X democratically. Again it can be a good thing provided you are not in an oppressed minority.
Last up is positional and this is where Y does what X wants without even being aware there was a choice. This is the one that is hardest to fight and the one I can't see a good side.
Of course all of these forms of influence can be challenged and overthrown ONCE RECOGNISED. The worry is that the copyright lobby sets the rules in such a way that people no longer realise they are losing out.
I thought at first this would be another piece of guff from a "guru" jumping on a bandwagon. But no, some interesting stuff in the article. Worth reading and looking at the recommended action plans.
.
It seems to me that battles over Intellectual Property Rights are part of the continual struggle for power and influence between Big business and the individual / consumer.
I remember from a discussion with a politics student some 20 years ago that power was defined as the ability to break an agreement/promise with impunity. She thought there were 4 types of power relationship:
Physical: Give me that valuable resource or I cudgel you!
Knowledge/Skill: Do as I say, I'm an expert in this area and I can run rings round you
Positional: I am your line manager and I don't care what I promised, you work for me and don't forget it.
Systemic: You don't even know that you are losing out because I write the rules of the game and there is no mechanism by which you can protest.
The first three powers can be held in check, controlled and balanced to some extent, well enough for us all to get some benefit. The last is more of a threat.
Big Money has always been keen to use systemic power because they can and lest such power be used against them. Setting the terms of trade, aggressive lobbying of government, aggressive use of legal muscle in SLAPP suits(strategic lawsuits against public participation) are all well honed tools.
It is not clear to me that such battles are winnable. In the end Big Money does have more money and any new development will eventually be brought under control. But . . . .
Some have compared the grabbing of IP to the enclosure of common land (dates vary in different countries but it was back in the 18th Century in the UK) but generally land was less productive when held in common. The reverse is true of IP and copyright. When closely held, it produces less wealth for society. The more this is seen to be the case, the less interest Big Whatever will have in pursuing it
Maybe the aim should be to demonstrate the benefits of free sharing of Knowledge. If a country or group of people share IP freely and reap so much benefit then people will start asking why don't we do this too.
Lets have some more seminal Cathedral and Bazaar articles!
At the risk of being flamed for offending the large numbers of clear-headed consultants who frequent /. I would also lay a lot of the blame on the individual consultants involved in these projects.
Many is the time I have seen a decent project, well scoped, good understanding between customer management and the consultancy management, all screwed up by the people assigned to do the work. There is a huge tendency for consultants to ignore the basic brief and do whatever they think is most interesting. By the time anyone can check up on the state of the project its usually too late to control things.
I guess this really pushes blame onto the project manager.
Call it what it is please.
It's not theft. Period.
It may be something illegal, but its not theft. Best guess is that it's infringement of copyright, depending on the laws in that country. In any event it is in a different category to theft which I think is defined as
"Taking with intent to permanently deprive"
Bracketing copyright infringement with plain ordinary theft encourages people to scoff at all laws.
Phone booth:
Not seen any solutions posted yet so try this.
We are looking at 4 digit binary strings eg 1110. If we don't change anything, then next time we look this string could be 1110, 0111, 1011, or 1101 depending on how many times the booth spun.
It seems that the only constant thing that we know about the 4 walls is which pairs are opposite.
When we start off we can assume that 1, 2 or 3 of the switches are on, and the aim is to get 0 or 4 of them on.
Start off by assuming that 2 switches are on and 2 are off. Pick a pair of opposite walls and flick both switches. If the string was 1010 or 0101 this releases you. Otherwise the string becomes 1100, 0110, or 0011. Pick any pair of adjacent walls and flick both their switches. If you got lucky you won, if not you made the string into a 1010 and for the third turn you can pick either pair of opposite walls and flip both switches.
Now supposing this sequence of three turns didn't release you.
You can conclude that either one or 3 of the switches is on. Pick a wall at random and flip its switch. If you were really lucky you just released yourself. If not then you are now looking at 2 switches on and 2 off.
So repeat the first three moves and you are done!!
First, how does that make the case of a single red eyed monk untenable?
I mean that everyone on the island now knows that if there were a single red eyed monk then he would have to commit suicide at midnight that very night.
Before the tourist spoke everyone could look around all they wanted and still draw no conclusions if all they could see was a single red eye. After the tourist spoke, and after the first midnight further conclusions could be drawn.
The tourist does add new information because he tells everyone that the case of a single red eyed monk is now untenable.
Suppose there are 3 monks with red eyes and you are one of them. You look round and see 2 other red eyes, so you know that there are either 2 or 3 red eyes in total on the island (you aren't sure about yourself)
You now try to work out what is going on in the mind of the other red eyes. Depending on what they can in your eyes they will be counting at least 1 and maybe as many as 3 red eyes in total on the island.
After the first midnight passes without incident, it becomes clear that the other red eyes must actually be seeing at least 2 red eyes on the island so that means that you yourself are red eyed. You decide to commit suicide at midnight.
Another standard answer is:
What would you have said yesterday if i'd asked you the way to freedom?
Well back in the good old days (around 96) we all got together and agreed that there would be a few software glitches when the clock chimed midnight.
Word spread slowly at first but by 98 most of the people who needed to know had done their homework and started work.
The band wagon started to roll when the IT industry realised that there was serious money to be made. Services to analyse your systems, reasons to upgrade NOW to the next version, a ton of bodies to poke around in every line of code you were running. New hardware by the lorry load.
By early 99 there was a secondary industry looking at everything from embedded code, to legal and insurance issues, and massive pressure on the late-adopters to fall in line and spend some money. Around this time there were people forecasting planes falling out of the sky, power outages causing knockon effects and taking down the entire grid. Meltdown of the banking industry etc etc
I was involved with some people working in the middle east on Y2K and for the most part govt and companies did just about nothing. Very little was spent, and only the the things that actually broke got fixed. Admittedly they had less IT infrastructure to worry about, but their scepticism about apocalyptic warnings from the West was perfectly justified by events.
I think we are seeing the same pattern with Security issues. There is undoubtedly a problem, people certainly need to spend money on it, for sure CEOs don't really understand the issues and last but not least the problem is not as big as people make out. I guess this is why a few public spirited types are trying to spread some panic in boardrooms.
Question is whether this is a bad thing or not. I'd love it if everyone invested wisely and promptly, but right now its in my personal interest for them to just invest in security services full stop. (or at least to pay me to implement more security)
If everyone goes too far in securing IT who really suffers?
Sounds like they needed some payback from all those Star wars anti ICBM projects. As the article says: "When dropped on soft ground, you can get dud rates of 30 per cent," says Owen Hofer of Sparta The ones that fall on soft ground (eg farmland) sink into the soil and unfortunately that's just where the lasers can't reach.
Well I read it from cover to cover and found it interesting, stimulating and all that.
But short on practical advice.
I've been to a few of these legal seminars and the trouble is that virtually every legal topic of interest is still in flux. The common feature seems to be, if you think you have an Internet problem then you must consult a lawyer. The law is still so uncertain that you cannot possibly be sure that you are applying best practice. Or even that last quarter's advice is still valid.
Mind you, a lot of e-commerce companies know this and aren't too worried.
The UK has a reasonable Data Protection act that should allow some redress if a UK site does bad things with your personal details. It was passed a few years ago now and to date there have been approximately ZERO prosecutions.
First off
there is a LOT of bespoke software running in UK government departments, and a lot of it was developed by third parties. Consultancies involved in this work have generally retained the IP to the work and in many cases have reused code, templates, and skills elsewhere for profit.
Nothing wrong with this in principle. The government doesn't really want to be in the software development business so it should be keen for others to reuse work as widely as possible. The larger the pool of users of a piece of code the more likely the govt will get some benefit back. The downside has been that not only does the govt pay through the nose for the initial development, they also pay a premium for future upgrades because they are now a captive user.
Avoiding this pain far outweighs the possible profit that could be made from retaining IP and selling to the highest bidder. (I've not seen many success stories coming out of Qinetiq which I believe is the UK agency responsible for commercialising apps that the govt owns. Correct me if I'm wrong on this one!)
Second off
The UK civil service is a passionate defender of the UK national interest. Trouble is that they often narrow the definition down to the interest of UK companies and do things that penalise UK citizens. There is a possibility that someone unaccountable will make an decision that using common apps across Europe will disadvantage UK software developers who will have to compete for govt business with equally skilled Europeans. It is also possible that someone will decide that the UK should be closely tied to US interests and that Microsoft is the only platform to work with.
The same debate has been heard many times on a wide range of issues such as banking law, European air traffic control, and even common weapons across the armies.
THE GOOD NEWS is that Open Source has the potential to be a different debate. The first government to develop or mandate sharable code has the best chance of establishing a standard for whatever app it is and therefore will avoid some later redevelopment costs. By opening the source code to scrutiny they also get the chance to check that the code does what they want it to do and nothing more. Less chance of hidden back doors, spyware etc.
And finally, it seems to me the big question is the ease or difficulty of identifying components which are truly sharable. Has anyone got any comparisons with major multi nationals that have tried to do this across their divisions?
If you get too many moderation points you will start to stand out from the crowd and become worth targetting by the content owners.
.idx file in the share directory with the same name as the requested file then it would grab that too. Sure most users wouldnt bother to populate the index, but the few that did bother would spread files that would become the preferred download choice.
Peer to peer sharing is likely to become a cat and mouse game with increased sophistication from the sharers' application being leapfrogged by better attack strategies.
The good news is that there are more savvy people out there doing the sharing than content owners doing the protection. So most of the time the sharers will be in the lead.
My suggestion would be to allow for some kind of index (same_name.idx) file that allowed for a bit more detail on what the main file contained. If Gnucleus or whatever spotted a
Bond Good afternoon Q, what have you got for me today?
Q Ok pay attention Bond there have been some developments in secret codes since you last came through. I'd like to tell you about our latest wheeze for getting messages back to HQ by e-mailing pictures of Anna Kournikova.
Bond You mean the tennis player named after an Internet virus?
Q The very same. What you need to do is put your message into a very small dot, a micro dot in fact . .
Bond And stick the dot onto a Kournikova photo?
Q Exactly.
Bond Why Kournikova? apart from the obvious?
Q Well that's the devilish part. You see noone will suspect that the picture is anything other than a virus so it will be blocked and deleted.
Bond While all your team will have the perfect excuse to examine Kourno pictures in extreme detail. Now that is devilish cunning. Who invented this stuff?
Q Ah well they used to call themselves the Cult of the Dead Cow but its really a SMERSH front
Bond I see . . . . . .
Now its clear to me: they were sending coded instructions to operatives in the field.
When they all leap onto the sofa at the start of the episode it truly means something.
Now if only I could get a look at the decode manual . . .
The latest word from Microsoft seems to be that if the public and the industry won't buy it then the project will be canned.
Given the almost universal condemanation, my bet is that the project will be "shelved" only to reappear in a whole series of independent moves to deliver the same effect.
Maybe the next codename that MS come up with will be something like "Horse of Troy"
Looks like the forces of darkness decided that global thermonuclear warfare wasn't needed for knocking out the Internet: Why bother when rampant greed and corruption will do the job for you!
Google readily finds a number of sites, some clearly in the US, with code executables. Are these legal or just not sued yet?