Sure, that's why the Japanese were never able to challenge the US car and electronic markets since US companies had over 90% of those markets.
Ah, the perennial "software is like cars" Slashdot analogy.
Japan's car and electronic industries were nurtured on their domestic markets, when US imports were restricted or much more expensive. Software can be dumped at virtually zero price to retain market share, as Microsoft is doing in some third-world countries now. Unlike other commodities, the marginal cost is so low that it's no sweat for them to do so indefinitely.
One day there will be a crack, probably in a rising technology power like India. Once an OS reaches a critical mass of users and developers, it will start to penetrate back to the West.
Of course, in the longer run, the OS will become an invisible commodity item.
Nowhere do Interpol suggest that they were using "secret techniques".
It wasn't Interpol who did the descrambling, it was the German police. However, they did imply they wanted to keep the methods secret:
Germany's Bundeskriminalamt, or BKA, police force. Contacted separately by The AP, a BKA spokesman said the agency did not want to detail the process used by its image processing expert "because we do not want to give criminals the opportunity to adjust to the techniques we are using."
You know this, how? Are you psychic? Are you John Titor? Its possible someone will, its also possible someone will and will fail miserably or its possible that no-one will.
Yes, of course. Lots will try. Do you think that no one in the world can create a better commercial PC OS than Microsoft? No one even dares now. The last serious attempt was probably Jean-Louis Gassée's Be. He got a bunch of OEMS to preinstall it. Then they were too afraid of Microsoft to actually tell their customers how to start it.
the only category that is possible is "literary works", and I think it unlikely a judge would agree that a C&D letter was such, should it come to trial.
If not, can you copyright business correspondence? I'm doubtful
What Works Are Protected? literary works; musical works, including any accompanying words dramatic works, including any accompanying music pantomimes and choreographic works pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works motion pictures and other audiovisual works sound recordings architectural works
A lawyer might claim the letter was a "literary work", but I think few judges would entertain that idea.
Even if you don't write your own app's config there, you MUST read and probably write many Windows parameters to run a firewall or antivirus, and the only way to do that is the Registry.
That's not the reason. Those who might be willing to pay for their crapware to be installed on Linux rightfully reason...
And you know that's "how they reason" how?
In any case, Linux users NOW are geeky hobbyists, a wholly different audience or market than one that might evolve if it was a real tick-the-box retail option.
Create a viable market for proprietary Linux desktop applications and then....
The whole point of this suggestion is that with Microsoft's monopoly on preinstalled OS, such a market is stifled at birth. There can never be a "then".
Just because people don't do it doesn't mean it can't be done.
It's unavoidable in Windows to use the Registry. Thus any unuistaller at a minumum has to change or delete Registry entries, as well as files. And AV products will often replace system utilities, just deleting them will leave you with a crippled system, unable to go online or do much else.
If they had gotten in trouble for doing it not during work hours I could see it being censorship, but they were doing it during work hours.
In TFA "the civil servants together made 408 entries... since 2003".
So six civil servants made 408 entries in 3 years. An average of 22 entries per man-year.
Assume one hour per entry, they were goofing off for less than one hour every two weeks. Lots of workers goof off for at least that every day. Were these guys really worse than their colleagues? Or just unlucky to be caught? (Too many rhetorical questions?)
Aargh! Where does this craze for higher and higher pixel density come from! Whats the point of more pixels on the screen if the screen is still the same physical size....Already I have to frequently use the 'increase font size' on my browser to get the text to a reable size - and my display is SXGA/19"= 86ppi !
A trivial problem. A browser preference to use a minimum font size will fix that. In any case, hardly any fonts on a PC are bitmaps (i.e. defined by pixels). Most are outline (defined by curves, like Truetype). Higher resolution just means sharper edges. or nicer anti-aliasing, at the same size.
Your particular problem could be solved by a browser tweak, like Greasemonkey in Firefox.
And I haven't even mentioned a word about *carrying* (for those that actually take their machine with them) around a frigging battle cruiser, which is what cheap typically amounts to.
When did you stop caring if the articles had any relation to the truth? When did you decide that it was more important to have a funny "from the XXX department" line than bothering to spellcheck? When did you give up reading Slashdot?
I unplug your network cable and remove your hard drive,
Plug your harddrive into my system..Get the data and recheck,
the pre-boot authentication. Put the hard drive back into your
computer. Turn it on. it continues the reboot process..
Except for the extra delay.....you never know I just got your data.
You forgot the part where you descend form the ceiling suspended by a wire harness and hang upside down while typing into the console.
With that degree of access, there are a million things you could do to gain access to sensitive data. (Eg, rummage throught the filing cabinet, paper is still king; install a physical keylogger dongle; etc, etc.) This would just be the icing on the cake; they're fucked already.
Dan Rather and the forged national guard document had the most coverage that I can think of.
Interesting story. It appears that one document was fabricated, but almost certainly Rather was the victim, not the perpetrator. There was plenty of other evidence supporting the "Bush went AWOL" story, but someone wanted a smoking gun to tie it all up in a blue ribbon. Of course, it's conceivable that Rove was behind it, to discredit the allegations. He's done worse.
My gut just tells me that we will find out he loaded up spyware on these PC's to get the advertising dollars
You might earn a few cents per install. It's not economic if you have to do it by hand, only if you can automate it and do it to millions automatically is it worth the time. Ignoring the moral issues, of course.
Portable hard disk, or tape. What "home user" generates 100s of GB of data? If it's commercial media, you can always buy/torrent a replacement, so it's not irreplaceable like personal photos and video.
there is no standard and easy way for users to backup ALL their important data
TFA says Coppolla lost a "backup device" (portable hard disk?) as well as all his PCs. So he did probably have an automated backup, but failed to make the relatively (compared to setting up his backup, which he had already done) trivial final step of making a copy of that (in whatever medium) and getting it offsite.
So I could just lock it to my computer desk. It isn't so much about backing up my data, which I do, but preventing data from being stolen.
Would probably deter a random burglar, desktop PCs have a low resale value anyway. They like laptops. But someone after your data will just use a prybar and crack your lock &/or case. Disk encryption is the only workable option.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, the perennial "software is like cars" Slashdot analogy.
Japan's car and electronic industries were nurtured on their domestic markets, when US imports were restricted or much more expensive. Software can be dumped at virtually zero price to retain market share, as Microsoft is doing in some third-world countries now. Unlike other commodities, the marginal cost is so low that it's no sweat for them to do so indefinitely.
One day there will be a crack, probably in a rising technology power like India. Once an OS reaches a critical mass of users and developers, it will start to penetrate back to the West.
Of course, in the longer run, the OS will become an invisible commodity item.
It wasn't Interpol who did the descrambling, it was the German police. However, they did imply they wanted to keep the methods secret:
Yes, of course. Lots will try. Do you think that no one in the world can create a better commercial PC OS than Microsoft? No one even dares now. The last serious attempt was probably Jean-Louis Gassée's Be. He got a bunch of OEMS to preinstall it. Then they were too afraid of Microsoft to actually tell their customers how to start it.
The whole intent of copyright law is to encourage artistic expression.
What Works Are Protected?
the only category that is possible is "literary works", and I think it unlikely a judge would agree that a C&D letter was such, should it come to trial.
A lawyer might claim the letter was a "literary work", but I think few judges would entertain that idea.
Duh. I was using ini files in Unix 30 years ago.
Even if you don't write your own app's config there, you MUST read and probably write many Windows parameters to run a firewall or antivirus, and the only way to do that is the Registry.
And you know that's "how they reason" how?
In any case, Linux users NOW are geeky hobbyists, a wholly different audience or market than one that might evolve if it was a real tick-the-box retail option.
Create a viable market for proprietary Linux desktop applications and then....
The whole point of this suggestion is that with Microsoft's monopoly on preinstalled OS, such a market is stifled at birth. There can never be a "then".
After Windowws is unbundled, someone will. That no one has yet is a proof of how the Microsoft monoply is stifling competition.
True. I could have footnoted that, I still run lots of ancient DOS apps. But not the kind of security application we're talking about.
Which means it's impossible, because Microsoft will just say the "framework" includes the registry, too bad if you don't like it.
It's unavoidable in Windows to use the Registry. Thus any unuistaller at a minumum has to change or delete Registry entries, as well as files. And AV products will often replace system utilities, just deleting them will leave you with a crippled system, unable to go online or do much else.
Problem? Solution.
In TFA "the civil servants together made 408 entries ... since 2003".
So six civil servants made 408 entries in 3 years. An average of 22 entries per man-year.
Assume one hour per entry, they were goofing off for less than one hour every two weeks. Lots of workers goof off for at least that every day. Were these guys really worse than their colleagues? Or just unlucky to be caught? (Too many rhetorical questions?)
A trivial problem. A browser preference to use a minimum font size will fix that. In any case, hardly any fonts on a PC are bitmaps (i.e. defined by pixels). Most are outline (defined by curves, like Truetype). Higher resolution just means sharper edges. or nicer anti-aliasing, at the same size.
Your particular problem could be solved by a browser tweak, like Greasemonkey in Firefox.
The OLPC weighs 1.5 kg.
When did you stop caring if the articles had any relation to the truth? When did you decide that it was more important to have a funny "from the XXX department" line than bothering to spellcheck? When did you give up reading Slashdot?
You forgot the part where you descend form the ceiling suspended by a wire harness and hang upside down while typing into the console.
With that degree of access, there are a million things you could do to gain access to sensitive data. (Eg, rummage throught the filing cabinet, paper is still king; install a physical keylogger dongle; etc, etc.) This would just be the icing on the cake; they're fucked already.
Interesting story. It appears that one document was fabricated, but almost certainly Rather was the victim, not the perpetrator. There was plenty of other evidence supporting the "Bush went AWOL" story, but someone wanted a smoking gun to tie it all up in a blue ribbon. Of course, it's conceivable that Rove was behind it, to discredit the allegations. He's done worse.
You might earn a few cents per install. It's not economic if you have to do it by hand, only if you can automate it and do it to millions automatically is it worth the time. Ignoring the moral issues, of course.
And they'll let you plug in your hard drive and upload 100 GB of video for the price of a cup of coffee?
Portable hard disk, or tape. What "home user" generates 100s of GB of data? If it's commercial media, you can always buy/torrent a replacement, so it's not irreplaceable like personal photos and video.
After you, or you kids/dog, etc had accidentally set that off a half dozen times, you might not think it was such a great idea.
Coppolla is a movie producer; and he was in Argentina. Thus massive amounts of data, and probabz\ly an expensive and/or unreliable connection.
TFA says Coppolla lost a "backup device" (portable hard disk?) as well as all his PCs. So he did probably have an automated backup, but failed to make the relatively (compared to setting up his backup, which he had already done) trivial final step of making a copy of that (in whatever medium) and getting it offsite.
Would probably deter a random burglar, desktop PCs have a low resale value anyway. They like laptops. But someone after your data will just use a prybar and crack your lock &/or case. Disk encryption is the only workable option.