This is another example of the kind of deceptive practices that the RIAA is using to convince congress to pass laws that turn our kids into criminals. The RIAA will continue to pursue this path until they learn that consumers will actually take a stand against it.
I would like to urge people to declare their independence from the RIAA on the week of July 4th, 2004. Boycott them. Do not purchase music or listen to the radio during that time. Instead, why not check out the independent artists that distribute their music for free? Show the RIAA that you know how to hit them back where it hurts... in the wallet.
While MS might be contributing some small tidbits to open source, they aren't releasing them under the GPL, thus leaving the way clear for them to make the same kinds of claims that SCO has been making.
Essentially, it seems that the RIAA wants to force universities to tax all the students in order to pay for the music listening of those who might otherwise download music illegally off the Internet.
It's a great deal for the RIAA. They don't have to make quality products, they get paid for every student regardless of the students use of the service. The only choice the students have is to go to another school.
I would have no objection to an opt-in setup. The FSF has already proposed a very reasonable setup that would allow ISPs to sell unlimited music exchange to customers for a reasonable fee that would go to the recording companies.
Interestingly enough, the RIAA has refused to consider such a reasonable solution and has recently discussed raising prices. This seems odd behavior for a group trying to gain customer acceptance of a flegling business model.
It seems to me that by raising the prices for downloading music, the RIAA is going to give new incentive to pirate their music. Doubling their prices, though, allows them to whine to Congress that now they are losing twice as much money as before. Oh no! In response, our congressional representatives will be pushed to create more poorly crafted legistlation that makes more citizens into criminals and assures the RIAA continuous revenue regardless of the quality of music they produce.
If you object to this kind of treatment, boycott the RIAA the week of July 4th. Don't buy any music. Don't listen to the radio. Show the RIAA that it's bullying behavior has it's consequences.
This guy is basically saying that the very idea that someone should be able to do anything without paying some royalty on Intellectual Property is going to destroy our economy. He seems to believe that the way to beat competition is to make sure that only the largest companies with the biggest groups of laywers can compete. Talk about destroying IP.
This guy must love the idea of software patents. I'll bet he sees them as part of the "answer" to us long-haired FOSS types that, according to him, want to destroy all IP. As Bugs would say, 'What a maroon!'
If Software companies want to survive in this world they will have to realize that the infrastructure software such as Operating Systems and Word Processors is going to move to FOSS. There is just no way commercial software can compete in those areas over time. Commercial software companies might want to look at their REAL assets, the talented programmers they are so eager to replace with foreigners and think about how the company might better utilize those resources to provide customized solutions, consulting, and commercial products that are unlikely to gather enough support to succeed as FOSS products.
The problem is that the companies think that IP is their asset. It isn't. The real assets of U.S. companies are the talented people who create the IP.
You can't really buy out an Open Source project that has a lot of support in the community like WINE has. There are too many people who want it to succeed. All MS can do is keep hiring away the top people, and there will always be more that step up to the challenge.
I believe MS would love to see WINE fail because WINE represents a stepping stone on the migration path away from Windows. It makes it that much easier for a company to start using Linux. Once they find out how much better applications work under Linux and how much more stable and secure Linux is, it's likely they'll go the rest of the way and discard all the Windows applications.
Microsoft will use any means legal and illegal to destroy competition. They've already demonstrated that by flaunting consent decrees. They know it is cheaper to pay the penalties and keep doing business as usual than to make the changes imposed by the courts.
Microsoft has a corporate culture that is built around the slogan "Kill the competition." I see no indication that anything has changed at MS despite the fact they've been convicted of monopolistic and unfair business practices twice in the last few years.
If the EU really does pass the software patent law under consideration and the U.S. adopts that treaty that Bush is pushing, won't MS just be able to sue any compatibility products out of business?
is that they asked if they guy had ever thought of filing a law suit through the ACLU.
Since I'm a member of the ACLU I guess that makes me automatically suspect. Oh, damn, I have long hair too! Even worse, I once peeked into the room where the air conditioning unit for my apartment sits. And I'm a Democrat! I should be locked up immediately! Wait... someone's at the door...
I don't object to the FBI investigating someone who makes a request for information that might easily be used by terrorists. What I object to is the implications that an interest in civil rights and having long hair means you are more likely to be a terrorist. I doubt that any of the 9/11 attackers were working with the ACLU on suing anyone.
I'm also not sure I agree that such information should be off-limits. If I'm a student on a campus where the buidings are connected by steam-pipe tunnels, shouldn't I have the right to know what kind of access those tunnels give to the campus? What if I'm writing an article for the school paper on potential security problems?
We can't conceal every bit of information that might be useful to a terrorist. It's just not possible. We can't hide dams, water resevoirs, office buildings. It's unlikely we can even keep them from finding out about steam tunnels. There is no security in obscurity, as the popular saying goes.
The chance of being killed in a terrorist attack is far less than that of being hit by lightning. Our fear of terrorism is being used by opportunistic politicians to strip us of our rights and to intimidate us. In a democracy, it's not the government's place to tell the people what they can and cannot do. It's OUR place to tell the government what it can and cannot do. Never forget that. Remember it when you think it doesn't matter if you vote or not.
First of all, I'm sure that this will provide more material for another anti-trust suit. It will also piss off people when stuff breaks and they can't get it to work. This won't fool savvy IT managers who might finally realize that moving to Linux is long overdue.
What has to happen now is that the FOSS community has to work like hell to polish our own image. We need to fix the interface problems, improve our documentation and create a nice comfy place for all those Windows refugees.
The days of commercially built Operating Systems are numbered. FOSS is the "disruptive technology" that will bury most of them. Let me give you an example of why I think this is so.
When you write a commercial application, you often purposely leave out a lot of nice things so that you can bring them out in later versions. You need those goodies so that people will be persuaded to upgrade.
Lets contrast that with an Open Source application. There is pressure to work first on the biggest and most important features. Many of the programmers working on the software are doing so because they are users of the software and want to improve it's features so they can use them. Provided that the project is fairly popular, the project should be able to put in new desirable features faster than a commercial project can. The open source developers don't have any reason to hold back on the goodies.
The place where this works best is the Operating System. Microsoft is constantly putting stuff into their OS to break old stuff. They worry constantly about adding DRM security. They have all kinds of bloated code that has never been subject to the kind of review that the Linux code gets. On the other hand, the people working on Linux are not trying to tailor it to match some bizarre marketing theory. They are simply trying to create the best OS they are capable of making.
I think the next few years are going to be interesting, but I also suspect that in the end, Microsoft and most other makers of operating systems will either have to open the source on their OS's or go out of business.
Oh well, somehow I don't feel sorry for Microsoft.
Actually the EFF has a pretty good idea. Since I don't download music, I wouldn't have to pay. With this RIAA proposal, they wouldn't even have to sue people anymore, now, the suits would be instigated by the DoJ using my tax money. I'd have to pay for the lawsuits against kids.
I doubt the EFF idea will be adopted since it's so sensible and the RIAA won't stop until they can charge everyone three dollars for every song they ever listen too.
The behavior of the members of the RIAA has been exactly the same as if they were one large monopoly. They don't really compete. They charge the same price for everything they produce no matter how crappy it is.
What is really sad is how obviously our lawmakers are selling out. They cry out that it's all about law and order and then happily make criminals out of all our kids. What it's really about is money, as always.
The real solution would be to assign voting shares to all employees at every company. These shares don't necessarily convey ownership to the employees, they would just give them the right to have representation at board meetings. I don't know what proportion of the board should be elected by the employees, but it seems to me that at a miniumum there should be at least one board member appointed by the employees to guard their interests. This might start to make companies behave more responsibly towards their workers.
The fact is that the grant of corporation is not a right. It's done because it's supposed to be in the best interest of the state and community to grant corporation status to the business. There is more at stake in any company than just share holder value.
CEO's and other corporate executives have been given a blank check. All they have to do is raise the "Share price!" battlecry and everyone is willing to excuse such behavior.
I think that most companies, at least most of the ones that I've worked for, do care about the effects of their actions on thier employees and the community. This is because they are run by people and most people have some sort of conscience that guides their actions. Unfortunately, the competition to get into the highest positions in large corporations tends to favor the most ruthless individuals. The people who get to those levels sometimes lose any compassion they had along the way.
I'm not religious, but I do believe that I am a moral person. I also believe that morality is a necessary thing to have in order to have a happy and fulfilling life. I believe that it's true as much for corporations as for individuals. Perhaps it's more important, since corporations can do far more damage than any single individual. It's time we started demanding moral behavior from everyone and stopped handing out excuses.
There are a lot of potentially terrific applications for P2P. Don't let the smear campaign that the RIAA has mounted fool you. If so, they'll successfully squelch another technology, just like they did to DAT.
When I checked up on Neti@home, the site said they use NatGeo for their location data. When I followed the link to NatGeo, I found a message at the top of the home page stating that the site had not been maintained for several years (emphisis thiers) and that the data might be wildly inaccurate. It seems that might undermine at least some of the goals of the project.
If I recall correctly, there was a pretty serious problem with the laser because it could only be shot once and the gasses generated from the chemical reaction were toxic and would kill the crew that was using the laser.
I have no problem with the cinemas using night goggles to find people illegally recording the movie. That is clearly just a reasonable attempt to protect their investment. What concerns me is the sentence of one year in prison. With our prisons already busting at the seams, do we really want a violent criminal released from prison to make room for a guy who illegally filmed a movie?
The penalties given out should fit the crime. Using a camcorder to tape a movie is an economic crime and should be dealt with on that basis. Give the guy a fine large enough to destroy any profits he could make plus some more to drive the lesson home and keep the prison space for people who are actually a danger to us.
Another thought. I've seen new parents who carry camcorders with them everywhere. They stuff it into the kids diaper bag. Are we going to send them to prison because they forgot to take the camera out of the bag and leave it in the car?
It's sad when anyone decides that their personal profits are more important than public safety. It's worse when members of congress race to suck up to such people and enact legislation at their bidding.
should be both easy to use and secure. The two are certainly not mutually exclusive though it does require more resources to accomplish both goals than it does to address only one.
For most of the eighties and early nineties, security was not nearly as big an issue for desktop systems as it has become recently. Usability was the big issue, so that got the lion's share of the resources. On the other hand, security was much more important on interconnected systems like the systems at universities and those used by DoD and large corporations. For that reason, security was emphisized for the operating systems that were built for those types of machines. Linux inherited some of this security orientation because of it's roots in UNIX.
The programmers working on Windows not only had to make the operating system easy to use, they also had to deal with techincal decisions that were driven by marketting and political concerns rather than engineering best practices. It's not surprising that Windows is less secure than other operating systems that were originally developed in more security aware environments.
Programmers working on Macintosh Operating Systems had a big advantage over Windows programmers. They were working in an environment where there was far less variation in hardware than you find in the rest of the PC world. That left more time for development of good user interfaces and secure code.
Finally, we shouldn't forget that some of Windows' reputation for being insecure comes from it's popularity. A virus writer who wants to make a big splash might concentrate on attacking Windows machines because of the larger installed base and because he or she finds more tools available for writing malware that targets Windows. It's also likely that malware authors write first for the operating system they use and are familiar with. Microsoft's stranglehold on the personal computer operating system market works against it there as well.
In today's world, good user interfaces and security are both important requirements for any software under development. With good planning and realistic estimation there is no reason that software can't be written that is robust, secure and easy to use.
When I first read this, my reaction was to side with Eolas against M$, because of Microsoft's long history of shady business practices. It also seems mighty convenient that this patent is being overturned at Microsoft's request. After reading more about it, however, I have come to the conclusion that the patent should not have been issued in the first place, especially with the W3C presenting evidence of proir art.
The problem here is first that the patent was awarded when there was plenty of prior art that should have invalidated. We were all badly served by that decision of the USPTO.
What is even worse, is that I doubt this patent would have been invalidated if I had challenged it, or if any small or medium-sized business had challenged it. The patent would have stayed in force until some giant corporation found it to be a nuisence.
Lately, trying to gain control over Internet related technology has been pursued with the same kind of irresponsible single minded fervor as was demonstrated by the miners during the gold rush. Everyone is racing to stake claims on everything they can lay their hands on. It's sad that our government hasn't seen fit to review how these patents are being awarded and make the needed changes at the USPTO to insure that the patents that are given out are deserved and unlikely to be overturned in the future.
Security is increasingly important. It's about time that Microsoft bit the bullet and made the necessary changes to increase the security of the OS that runs on most desktops.
The problems caused by this change might finally start to demonstrate to IT managers just how much more costly security changes in Windows are than similar changes in Linux. (Provided we teach them that recompiling applications in Linux is a fairly easy task, or better yet, make recompiling applications in Linux even easier.)
If Microsoft follows it's usual behavior pattern, it will break a few other competitors programs just because it can, further demonstrating the anticompetitive business practices of this monopoly.
More businesses will start to think seriously about switching to Linux.
I think we'll all profit in the end from this service pack... well, maybe not Microsoft, but oh well.
Sounds like you should switch to Mozilla or FireFox, both of which have better standards conformance than IE does and both of which have pop-up blocking built-in. Unforunately when you switch you will find that a lot of sites have just assumed that IE will be the only browser ever used and won't work properly with conformant browsers like Mozilla, Opera, and Firefox.
Is it really 'unfair'? One company says they have a valid and legal way to take out the competition... why not fork over some cash to help them out?
Yes. Microsoft has already been convicted of being a monopolist. By purchasing part of SCO by way of BayStar, they seem to now be trying to get control of one of their most significant competitors, Linux. It would also give them significant control over all other Unix distributions, if SCO's tenuous legal arguments are upheld.
The logical end result of all this stuff, if things go the way SCO wants them to, is that SCO would be able to charge license fees to anyone using Linux or any other version of Unix, whether or not it was coded independently. Since Microsoft now controls 17% or more of SCO, even if it's indirectly, that would give MS even more control over the Operating System market.
If Microsoft is allowed to continue using this kind of tactic, there is little to stop them from buying SCO outright after SCO establishes control over Linux, giving MS the ability to kill yet another competitor.
Shrugging this off as "Just Good Business" is giving Microsoft and other monopolies a license to raid your wallet and your tax dollars. Without competition, Microsoft will be able to charge whatever it wishes for Windows. Because Microsoft will have no competition, there will be no incentive for Microsoft to make any real innovations in it's software.
If you want to see how Microsoft acts after it "wins" and becomes a monopoly, just look at Internet Explorer and contrast the improvements in IE before and after Netscape was "beaten."
Monopolies have never been good for anything except draining everyone's wallet.
...A real world use I would like to see is a service offered based on this technology, that will go through all the music on my harddrive and tag and rename it correctly...
I think that the recording industry is missing the boat on this whole issue. They could offer the above mentioned service and then provide links where you could order music by the same artists or artists with similar styles. They could offer information about the songs, who first recorded them, who else has covered a particular tune. There is a huge marketting opportunity just sitting there that the RIAA is shooting in the head because they can't get over the idea that someone somewhere might listen to a song without them getting their nickel. I seem to recall that a number of studies showed that the people who were the heaviest users of Napster were also the biggest consumers of audio CD's and that sales of CD's seem to rise and fall with the growth and then demise of Napster.
I doubt that there is anything that the RIAA can do, short of draconian legistlation that will take away control of our computers, that will satisfy their desire to have absolute control over the music they hold the rights to. I think they need to get used to the changes in the world and adapt to them rather than impose a huge economic burden on our government, taxpayers and computer owners in order to pursue the phantom of total control over their copyrights.
Personally, I think the recent extensions in copyright protection to be some of the most misguided bits of legistlation I've seen when it comes to intellectual property. Just the idea that "Happy Birthday to You" deserves more protection than a patent is silly.
The longer the term of protection is for any given bit of intellectual property, the more difficult and complex enforcement and tracking of those rights is going to be. Our society needs to weigh the cost of protecting the intellectual property of entertainment companies against the costs imposed on our society to do so.
One of the costs we should not overlook is the cost incurred by turning otherwise law-abiding people into criminals. How much are we willing to pay in additional judicial expenses, delays in our court systems, and increased requirements for jail cells?
Assembly language is one of many tools that programmer can know and use in their craft. Whether you need to know assembly depends primarily on what kind of programming you are doing. It certainly helps if you work on kernal code or device drivers, but isn't likely to give you a huge edge if you work primarily on business applications written in Java.
Knowing how the computer works at a fundemental level is not nearly as important for a high level application programmer as writing code that can be clearly understood by those who have to maintain it. "Wizard" code can be difficult to understand and nearly impossible to maintain. It's best used where it can do the most good, in low-level and/or high-performance areas.
Most compilers already turn out far better assembly code than can be written by the average assembly programmer. This is the result of more than thirty years of work on optimization research that has been built into modern compilers.
If you really want to hit high performance, though, knowing assembly is not enough. You also have to have a detailed understanding of how the target chip works, the sizes of it's L1 and L2 caches, how branch predictors, byte-order, and lots of other details.
When it comes right down to it. I think that all programmers should have some exposure to assembly, but that an application programmer's educational time is better spent learning how to refactor than how to write clever assembly language. It's kind of painful to say this, since I was weaned on Z80 assembly, but I don't think my knowledge of assembly language helps me greatly when working on my Java application code.
First, XML is a language used to define markup languages. Those markup languages are called XML applications. The XML Application designed to store your preferences for a particular software application may be quite different than the XML application designed to store the data used by that software application.
All XML must be properly formatted, or well-formed, for a given XML document to be readable by XML parsers. That means that beginning and end tags have to match, the tags are all in lower case, and attributes must be enclosed in double or single quotes, as well as some other rules. It's also possible to define a DTD or Schema which formally defines the XML application and can place restrictions on how the data in a given tag can be represented. The Schema gives the XML application developer the most control over how the XML application documents can be constructed.
Not all applications need be "anal" about their data files and a certain amount of flexability can be very useful. When XML is used for configuration files, for instance, tags that aren't understood are ignored by default. The XML application schema can be written so that missing tags take on a default value, making it easy to upgrade software applications without having to include a conversion program to update the configuration files. Ignoring unknown tags also means that additional tags can be added to XML files produced and used by one application in order to add data for a second application that uses information from both sets of tags.
Enforcing the standards for a particular XML application is the job of the DTD or Schema which defines the XML application. Software applications that use the same XML application will use the same Schema. Using the Schema and validating the XML provides just the degree of "analness" that the XML application designer and software application designer desire.
This bill would follow the pattern of many recent bills and make lots of currently law-abiding citizens into criminals. It's amazing to me that our "representatives" are so eager to pass bills designed to squeeze more money out of out pockets and into the hands of the largest campaign contributors.
Many representatives now introduce legistlation that is almost entirely written by companies that are aiming to improve profits. I doubt most of the representatives understand or even read the bills they put forward that cover technical topics.
Re:One possible practical application?
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You really want to spend $100/kg to throw dirty diapers into the sun?
Re:hrm, somethings amiss, me thinks
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Uh, yeah, right, the economy is expanding, at least according to the people who's jobs depend on saying that, but unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer jobs.... Sounds like the Bush years...Oh, that's right, it IS the Bush years.
When people don't have jobs, or fear losing their job, they stop spending money. When they stop spending money, companies can't sell goods. It's one of those trickle down things.
There won't be much demand for more and more powerful computers if the current ones are "good enough" and profits are not rising.
The sky isn't falling, as some would have us believe, but things aren't getting better.
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This is another example of the kind of deceptive practices that the RIAA is using to convince congress to pass laws that turn our kids into criminals. The RIAA will continue to pursue this path until they learn that consumers will actually take a stand against it.
I would like to urge people to declare their independence from the RIAA on the week of July 4th, 2004. Boycott them. Do not purchase music or listen to the radio during that time. Instead, why not check out the independent artists that distribute their music for free? Show the RIAA that you know how to hit them back where it hurts... in the wallet.
While MS might be contributing some small tidbits to open source, they aren't releasing them under the GPL, thus leaving the way clear for them to make the same kinds of claims that SCO has been making.
Essentially, it seems that the RIAA wants to force universities to tax all the students in order to pay for the music listening of those who might otherwise download music illegally off the Internet.
It's a great deal for the RIAA. They don't have to make quality products, they get paid for every student regardless of the students use of the service. The only choice the students have is to go to another school.
I would have no objection to an opt-in setup. The FSF has already proposed a very reasonable setup that would allow ISPs to sell unlimited music exchange to customers for a reasonable fee that would go to the recording companies.
Interestingly enough, the RIAA has refused to consider such a reasonable solution and has recently discussed raising prices. This seems odd behavior for a group trying to gain customer acceptance of a flegling business model.
It seems to me that by raising the prices for downloading music, the RIAA is going to give new incentive to pirate their music. Doubling their prices, though, allows them to whine to Congress that now they are losing twice as much money as before. Oh no! In response, our congressional representatives will be pushed to create more poorly crafted legistlation that makes more citizens into criminals and assures the RIAA continuous revenue regardless of the quality of music they produce.
If you object to this kind of treatment, boycott the RIAA the week of July 4th. Don't buy any music. Don't listen to the radio. Show the RIAA that it's bullying behavior has it's consequences.
This guy is basically saying that the very idea that someone should be able to do anything without paying some royalty on Intellectual Property is going to destroy our economy. He seems to believe that the way to beat competition is to make sure that only the largest companies with the biggest groups of laywers can compete. Talk about destroying IP.
This guy must love the idea of software patents. I'll bet he sees them as part of the "answer" to us long-haired FOSS types that, according to him, want to destroy all IP. As Bugs would say, 'What a maroon!'
If Software companies want to survive in this world they will have to realize that the infrastructure software such as Operating Systems and Word Processors is going to move to FOSS. There is just no way commercial software can compete in those areas over time. Commercial software companies might want to look at their REAL assets, the talented programmers they are so eager to replace with foreigners and think about how the company might better utilize those resources to provide customized solutions, consulting, and commercial products that are unlikely to gather enough support to succeed as FOSS products.
The problem is that the companies think that IP is their asset. It isn't. The real assets of U.S. companies are the talented people who create the IP.
You can't really buy out an Open Source project that has a lot of support in the community like WINE has. There are too many people who want it to succeed. All MS can do is keep hiring away the top people, and there will always be more that step up to the challenge.
I believe MS would love to see WINE fail because WINE represents a stepping stone on the migration path away from Windows. It makes it that much easier for a company to start using Linux. Once they find out how much better applications work under Linux and how much more stable and secure Linux is, it's likely they'll go the rest of the way and discard all the Windows applications.
Microsoft will use any means legal and illegal to destroy competition. They've already demonstrated that by flaunting consent decrees. They know it is cheaper to pay the penalties and keep doing business as usual than to make the changes imposed by the courts.
Microsoft has a corporate culture that is built around the slogan "Kill the competition." I see no indication that anything has changed at MS despite the fact they've been convicted of monopolistic and unfair business practices twice in the last few years.
If the EU really does pass the software patent law under consideration and the U.S. adopts that treaty that Bush is pushing, won't MS just be able to sue any compatibility products out of business?
is that they asked if they guy had ever thought of filing a law suit through the ACLU.
Since I'm a member of the ACLU I guess that makes me automatically suspect. Oh, damn, I have long hair too! Even worse, I once peeked into the room where the air conditioning unit for my apartment sits. And I'm a Democrat! I should be locked up immediately! Wait... someone's at the door...
I don't object to the FBI investigating someone who makes a request for information that might easily be used by terrorists. What I object to is the implications that an interest in civil rights and having long hair means you are more likely to be a terrorist. I doubt that any of the 9/11 attackers were working with the ACLU on suing anyone.
I'm also not sure I agree that such information should be off-limits. If I'm a student on a campus where the buidings are connected by steam-pipe tunnels, shouldn't I have the right to know what kind of access those tunnels give to the campus? What if I'm writing an article for the school paper on potential security problems?
We can't conceal every bit of information that might be useful to a terrorist. It's just not possible. We can't hide dams, water resevoirs, office buildings. It's unlikely we can even keep them from finding out about steam tunnels. There is no security in obscurity, as the popular saying goes.
The chance of being killed in a terrorist attack is far less than that of being hit by lightning. Our fear of terrorism is being used by opportunistic politicians to strip us of our rights and to intimidate us. In a democracy, it's not the government's place to tell the people what they can and cannot do. It's OUR place to tell the government what it can and cannot do. Never forget that. Remember it when you think it doesn't matter if you vote or not.
First of all, I'm sure that this will provide more material for another anti-trust suit. It will also piss off people when stuff breaks and they can't get it to work. This won't fool savvy IT managers who might finally realize that moving to Linux is long overdue.
What has to happen now is that the FOSS community has to work like hell to polish our own image. We need to fix the interface problems, improve our documentation and create a nice comfy place for all those Windows refugees.
The days of commercially built Operating Systems are numbered. FOSS is the "disruptive technology" that will bury most of them. Let me give you an example of why I think this is so.
When you write a commercial application, you often purposely leave out a lot of nice things so that you can bring them out in later versions. You need those goodies so that people will be persuaded to upgrade.
Lets contrast that with an Open Source application. There is pressure to work first on the biggest and most important features. Many of the programmers working on the software are doing so because they are users of the software and want to improve it's features so they can use them. Provided that the project is fairly popular, the project should be able to put in new desirable features faster than a commercial project can. The open source developers don't have any reason to hold back on the goodies.
The place where this works best is the Operating System. Microsoft is constantly putting stuff into their OS to break old stuff. They worry constantly about adding DRM security. They have all kinds of bloated code that has never been subject to the kind of review that the Linux code gets. On the other hand, the people working on Linux are not trying to tailor it to match some bizarre marketing theory. They are simply trying to create the best OS they are capable of making.
I think the next few years are going to be interesting, but I also suspect that in the end, Microsoft and most other makers of operating systems will either have to open the source on their OS's or go out of business.
Oh well, somehow I don't feel sorry for Microsoft.
Actually the EFF has a pretty good idea. Since I don't download music, I wouldn't have to pay. With this RIAA proposal, they wouldn't even have to sue people anymore, now, the suits would be instigated by the DoJ using my tax money. I'd have to pay for the lawsuits against kids.
I doubt the EFF idea will be adopted since it's so sensible and the RIAA won't stop until they can charge everyone three dollars for every song they ever listen too.
The behavior of the members of the RIAA has been exactly the same as if they were one large monopoly. They don't really compete. They charge the same price for everything they produce no matter how crappy it is.
What is really sad is how obviously our lawmakers are selling out. They cry out that it's all about law and order and then happily make criminals out of all our kids. What it's really about is money, as always.
The real solution would be to assign voting shares to all employees at every company. These shares don't necessarily convey ownership to the employees, they would just give them the right to have representation at board meetings. I don't know what proportion of the board should be elected by the employees, but it seems to me that at a miniumum there should be at least one board member appointed by the employees to guard their interests. This might start to make companies behave more responsibly towards their workers.
The fact is that the grant of corporation is not a right. It's done because it's supposed to be in the best interest of the state and community to grant corporation status to the business. There is more at stake in any company than just share holder value.
CEO's and other corporate executives have been given a blank check. All they have to do is raise the "Share price!" battlecry and everyone is willing to excuse such behavior.
I think that most companies, at least most of the ones that I've worked for, do care about the effects of their actions on thier employees and the community. This is because they are run by people and most people have some sort of conscience that guides their actions. Unfortunately, the competition to get into the highest positions in large corporations tends to favor the most ruthless individuals. The people who get to those levels sometimes lose any compassion they had along the way.
I'm not religious, but I do believe that I am a moral person. I also believe that morality is a necessary thing to have in order to have a happy and fulfilling life. I believe that it's true as much for corporations as for individuals. Perhaps it's more important, since corporations can do far more damage than any single individual. It's time we started demanding moral behavior from everyone and stopped handing out excuses.
There are a lot of potentially terrific applications for P2P. Don't let the smear campaign that the RIAA has mounted fool you. If so, they'll successfully squelch another technology, just like they did to DAT.
When I checked up on Neti@home, the site said they use NatGeo for their location data. When I followed the link to NatGeo, I found a message at the top of the home page stating that the site had not been maintained for several years (emphisis thiers) and that the data might be wildly inaccurate. It seems that might undermine at least some of the goals of the project.
If I recall correctly, there was a pretty serious problem with the laser because it could only be shot once and the gasses generated from the chemical reaction were toxic and would kill the crew that was using the laser.
I have no problem with the cinemas using night goggles to find people illegally recording the movie. That is clearly just a reasonable attempt to protect their investment. What concerns me is the sentence of one year in prison. With our prisons already busting at the seams, do we really want a violent criminal released from prison to make room for a guy who illegally filmed a movie?
The penalties given out should fit the crime. Using a camcorder to tape a movie is an economic crime and should be dealt with on that basis. Give the guy a fine large enough to destroy any profits he could make plus some more to drive the lesson home and keep the prison space for people who are actually a danger to us.
Another thought. I've seen new parents who carry camcorders with them everywhere. They stuff it into the kids diaper bag. Are we going to send them to prison because they forgot to take the camera out of the bag and leave it in the car?
It's sad when anyone decides that their personal profits are more important than public safety. It's worse when members of congress race to suck up to such people and enact legislation at their bidding.
should be both easy to use and secure. The two are certainly not mutually exclusive though it does require more resources to accomplish both goals than it does to address only one.
For most of the eighties and early nineties, security was not nearly as big an issue for desktop systems as it has become recently. Usability was the big issue, so that got the lion's share of the resources. On the other hand, security was much more important on interconnected systems like the systems at universities and those used by DoD and large corporations. For that reason, security was emphisized for the operating systems that were built for those types of machines. Linux inherited some of this security orientation because of it's roots in UNIX.
The programmers working on Windows not only had to make the operating system easy to use, they also had to deal with techincal decisions that were driven by marketting and political concerns rather than engineering best practices. It's not surprising that Windows is less secure than other operating systems that were originally developed in more security aware environments.
Programmers working on Macintosh Operating Systems had a big advantage over Windows programmers. They were working in an environment where there was far less variation in hardware than you find in the rest of the PC world. That left more time for development of good user interfaces and secure code.
Finally, we shouldn't forget that some of Windows' reputation for being insecure comes from it's popularity. A virus writer who wants to make a big splash might concentrate on attacking Windows machines because of the larger installed base and because he or she finds more tools available for writing malware that targets Windows. It's also likely that malware authors write first for the operating system they use and are familiar with. Microsoft's stranglehold on the personal computer operating system market works against it there as well.
In today's world, good user interfaces and security are both important requirements for any software under development. With good planning and realistic estimation there is no reason that software can't be written that is robust, secure and easy to use.
When I first read this, my reaction was to side with Eolas against M$, because of Microsoft's long history of shady business practices. It also seems mighty convenient that this patent is being overturned at Microsoft's request. After reading more about it, however, I have come to the conclusion that the patent should not have been issued in the first place, especially with the W3C presenting evidence of proir art.
The problem here is first that the patent was awarded when there was plenty of prior art that should have invalidated. We were all badly served by that decision of the USPTO.
What is even worse, is that I doubt this patent would have been invalidated if I had challenged it, or if any small or medium-sized business had challenged it. The patent would have stayed in force until some giant corporation found it to be a nuisence.
Lately, trying to gain control over Internet related technology has been pursued with the same kind of irresponsible single minded fervor as was demonstrated by the miners during the gold rush. Everyone is racing to stake claims on everything they can lay their hands on. It's sad that our government hasn't seen fit to review how these patents are being awarded and make the needed changes at the USPTO to insure that the patents that are given out are deserved and unlikely to be overturned in the future.
This change is good for all kinds of reasons:
I think we'll all profit in the end from this service pack... well, maybe not Microsoft, but oh well.
Sounds like you should switch to Mozilla or FireFox, both of which have better standards conformance than IE does and both of which have pop-up blocking built-in. Unforunately when you switch you will find that a lot of sites have just assumed that IE will be the only browser ever used and won't work properly with conformant browsers like Mozilla, Opera, and Firefox.
Is it really 'unfair'? One company says they have a valid and legal way to take out the competition... why not fork over some cash to help them out?
Yes. Microsoft has already been convicted of being a monopolist. By purchasing part of SCO by way of BayStar, they seem to now be trying to get control of one of their most significant competitors, Linux. It would also give them significant control over all other Unix distributions, if SCO's tenuous legal arguments are upheld.
The logical end result of all this stuff, if things go the way SCO wants them to, is that SCO would be able to charge license fees to anyone using Linux or any other version of Unix, whether or not it was coded independently. Since Microsoft now controls 17% or more of SCO, even if it's indirectly, that would give MS even more control over the Operating System market.
If Microsoft is allowed to continue using this kind of tactic, there is little to stop them from buying SCO outright after SCO establishes control over Linux, giving MS the ability to kill yet another competitor.
Shrugging this off as "Just Good Business" is giving Microsoft and other monopolies a license to raid your wallet and your tax dollars. Without competition, Microsoft will be able to charge whatever it wishes for Windows. Because Microsoft will have no competition, there will be no incentive for Microsoft to make any real innovations in it's software.
If you want to see how Microsoft acts after it "wins" and becomes a monopoly, just look at Internet Explorer and contrast the improvements in IE before and after Netscape was "beaten."
Monopolies have never been good for anything except draining everyone's wallet.
I think that the recording industry is missing the boat on this whole issue. They could offer the above mentioned service and then provide links where you could order music by the same artists or artists with similar styles. They could offer information about the songs, who first recorded them, who else has covered a particular tune. There is a huge marketting opportunity just sitting there that the RIAA is shooting in the head because they can't get over the idea that someone somewhere might listen to a song without them getting their nickel. I seem to recall that a number of studies showed that the people who were the heaviest users of Napster were also the biggest consumers of audio CD's and that sales of CD's seem to rise and fall with the growth and then demise of Napster.
I doubt that there is anything that the RIAA can do, short of draconian legistlation that will take away control of our computers, that will satisfy their desire to have absolute control over the music they hold the rights to. I think they need to get used to the changes in the world and adapt to them rather than impose a huge economic burden on our government, taxpayers and computer owners in order to pursue the phantom of total control over their copyrights.
Personally, I think the recent extensions in copyright protection to be some of the most misguided bits of legistlation I've seen when it comes to intellectual property. Just the idea that "Happy Birthday to You" deserves more protection than a patent is silly.
The longer the term of protection is for any given bit of intellectual property, the more difficult and complex enforcement and tracking of those rights is going to be. Our society needs to weigh the cost of protecting the intellectual property of entertainment companies against the costs imposed on our society to do so.
One of the costs we should not overlook is the cost incurred by turning otherwise law-abiding people into criminals. How much are we willing to pay in additional judicial expenses, delays in our court systems, and increased requirements for jail cells?
Assembly language is one of many tools that programmer can know and use in their craft. Whether you need to know assembly depends primarily on what kind of programming you are doing. It certainly helps if you work on kernal code or device drivers, but isn't likely to give you a huge edge if you work primarily on business applications written in Java.
Knowing how the computer works at a fundemental level is not nearly as important for a high level application programmer as writing code that can be clearly understood by those who have to maintain it. "Wizard" code can be difficult to understand and nearly impossible to maintain. It's best used where it can do the most good, in low-level and/or high-performance areas.
Most compilers already turn out far better assembly code than can be written by the average assembly programmer. This is the result of more than thirty years of work on optimization research that has been built into modern compilers.
If you really want to hit high performance, though, knowing assembly is not enough. You also have to have a detailed understanding of how the target chip works, the sizes of it's L1 and L2 caches, how branch predictors, byte-order, and lots of other details.
When it comes right down to it. I think that all programmers should have some exposure to assembly, but that an application programmer's educational time is better spent learning how to refactor than how to write clever assembly language. It's kind of painful to say this, since I was weaned on Z80 assembly, but I don't think my knowledge of assembly language helps me greatly when working on my Java application code.
First, XML is a language used to define markup languages. Those markup languages are called XML applications. The XML Application designed to store your preferences for a particular software application may be quite different than the XML application designed to store the data used by that software application.
All XML must be properly formatted, or well-formed, for a given XML document to be readable by XML parsers. That means that beginning and end tags have to match, the tags are all in lower case, and attributes must be enclosed in double or single quotes, as well as some other rules. It's also possible to define a DTD or Schema which formally defines the XML application and can place restrictions on how the data in a given tag can be represented. The Schema gives the XML application developer the most control over how the XML application documents can be constructed.
Not all applications need be "anal" about their data files and a certain amount of flexability can be very useful. When XML is used for configuration files, for instance, tags that aren't understood are ignored by default. The XML application schema can be written so that missing tags take on a default value, making it easy to upgrade software applications without having to include a conversion program to update the configuration files. Ignoring unknown tags also means that additional tags can be added to XML files produced and used by one application in order to add data for a second application that uses information from both sets of tags.
Enforcing the standards for a particular XML application is the job of the DTD or Schema which defines the XML application. Software applications that use the same XML application will use the same Schema. Using the Schema and validating the XML provides just the degree of "analness" that the XML application designer and software application designer desire.
This bill would follow the pattern of many recent bills and make lots of currently law-abiding citizens into criminals. It's amazing to me that our "representatives" are so eager to pass bills designed to squeeze more money out of out pockets and into the hands of the largest campaign contributors.
Many representatives now introduce legistlation that is almost entirely written by companies that are aiming to improve profits. I doubt most of the representatives understand or even read the bills they put forward that cover technical topics.
You really want to spend $100/kg to throw dirty diapers into the sun?
Uh, yeah, right, the economy is expanding, at least according to the people who's jobs depend on saying that, but unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer jobs.... Sounds like the Bush years...Oh, that's right, it IS the Bush years.
When people don't have jobs, or fear losing their job, they stop spending money. When they stop spending money, companies can't sell goods. It's one of those trickle down things.
There won't be much demand for more and more powerful computers if the current ones are "good enough" and profits are not rising.
The sky isn't falling, as some would have us believe, but things aren't getting better.