Actually his point about getting in trouble with the FCC is technically valid even if you misuse/abuse/modify the equipement. Most devices are supposed to have hardware limitations. [... ]
In which case, the vendor is already in violation of FCC regs, and is using software to try to obscure that fact.
Frankly, I'm not willing to let the vendor slide on this one. The story of the Therac-25, though considerably more grave, should serve as a lesson to vendors everywhere to never rely solely on software to limit the actions of hardware.
Maximum number of devices: 4 (typical; controller-dependent)
Available spindle speeds: 7200 RPM
Typical seek time: 8.5ms
SCSI:
Maximum transfer rate:
LVD Ultra SCSI: 80MB/sec
SCSI-160: 160MB/sec
SCSI-320: 320MB/sec
Maximum number of devices: 15
Available spindle speeds: 7200 RPM, 10000 RPM, 15000 RPM
Typical seek time: 4.5ms
And yes, you can tell the difference, even as a "normal" user.
This doesn't mean SATA sucks. In fact, it's quite good for the target application: Low- to medium performance workstations. And it also doesn't suffer from bus termination-fu and other black arts of SCSI configuration. But there are still clear benefits to SCSI.
A variety of reasons, and there's probably a bunch more that I'm not aware of:
And most of the ones you cited are complete bunk. To wit:
* Legal counsel decides it's a bad idea because it could expose them to liability
Liability for what, exactly? This bogeyman is often trotted out, but only in the vaguest sense. The only concrete example offered thus far is the potential for lawsuits owing to frivolous patents. Sounds to me, then, like a reason to agitate for patent reform rather than screw your userbase. Argument weak.
* It really does expose them to liability. For example, you could exceed FCC restrictions on the ISM bands by programming your card to emit more power than it should on frequencies it's not allowed in the US to be in.
That's not the fault of the manufacturer, that's the fault of the guy driving the HW out of spec, and the FCC will go after him first. If it's later discovered that the HW itself should have enforced those limits, well, that's a separate discussion. Argument invalid.
* They are selling the same hardware as three different products with only the drivers different.
This has always been a completely bullshit way to differentiate between "products", and anyone who does this should be thumped over the head. Argument invalid.
* You could make a linux-based device cheaper than their stand-alone equivelent.
And so also could the vendor. And since all the driver-writing expertise already resides under his roof, he already has all the competetive advantage that he needs to stay ahead. Argument invalid.
* There are bits of licensed code in the driver that aren't theirs to give out.
This is the first valid reason you've offered. However, as an OEM, you really should be thinking much more carefully before agreeing to such terms. You could be shutting yourself off from a lucrative market.
* They are using a reference design and the driver contains features unique to their product. If they let the driver out, people will be able to buy the cheaper implementation of the same reference design and get those features.
Then why weren't you, the vendor, doing this in the first place? Frankly, I'm not interested in compensating for a vendor's lack of business acumen. Argument invalid.
Don't expect Project Gutenberg to back down on this. They were the ones who, with the help of Lawrence Lessig and the EFF, filed suit to have the Sonny Bono Perpetual Copyright Act struck down as failing the "limited times" clause in the US Constitution. Sadly, they lost that case. But it should illustrate that PG does not take $#!t like this lying down. Expect a fight.
What makes this offering from AMD qualitatively better than these things? The Cappucinos have a real Pentium in them, whereas this AMD thing uses a Geode, which is just awful.
...if you want to update Windows in a convenient way, then you have to use ActiveX and therefore Internet Explorer. It's just a part of the browser war, there is no technological necessity to use ActiveX for this purpose.
Correct. Since ActiveX is completely unnecessary to the task of keeping software up to date, I would normally keep ActiveX turned off even for Microsoft. However, keeping Windows patched and up to date trumps that. And since Microsoft can (mostly) be trusted to not 0wnz0r our machines, I make an exception for windowsupdate.microsoft.com.
When I open some page on IE6, it asks me "do you want to allow software such as activeX controls and plugins to run"... What am I supposed to think ?? and how should I respond ? Yes ? No ?
You should respond, "No." Always.
With extremely limited exceptions, there are no sites out there that need to be fscking around with ActiveX. Any sites that require it are the result of unprofessional design and should be considered highly suspect.
ActiveX does have one or two limited uses, confined almost entirely to a corporate intra-net environment. As such, the extremely limited exceptions to the above rule are sites or systems you trust implicitly (basically, systems inside your own or your company's firewall); and windowsupdate.microsoft.com. There are no other exceptions.
As a garden variety Web surfer, ActiveX offers you nothing except an intrusion/exploit vector. It's worse than useless; it's dangerous. Turn it off.
The price disparity between IDE and SCSI wasn't always there. At the dawn of IDE, back when 200MiB was considered a large drive, IDE and SCSI drive prices were at virtual parity. If there was a difference between two otherwise identical drives, it was usually between USD$5.00 - $10.00. For a $600 drive, that's epsilon.
Sometime later -- it feels like about seven years ago -- IDE drive prices started plummeting relative to their SCSI counterparts. Now things are at the point where you'll pay three to five times more for the same storage capacity in SCSI.
About the only positive thing you can say is that SCSI prices are falling, too. Five years ago, I paid close to USD$200.00 for an 18G IBM drive. Now I can get a 75G drive for $150.00. But it's still outrageous.
SATA is no panacea, either. The last time I checked prices (very briefly) suggested that SATA drives are nearly as expensive as their SCSI counterparts.
Isn't that just like a man? Inattentive, unappreciative, selfish. Gawd, what was I thinking when I went home with you?
Do you have even the slightest idea what I do for you, tirelessly, flawlessly, every day? No. You spend more time doting on your car than me. You've never even looked in/etc, have you? Oh, that's right, "I shouldn't have to think about that."
And to think you'd begrudge me ten measly hours. Do you have any idea what those ten hours will pay you back down the road? Don't you understand that we're trying to build a relationship here? And that relationships require time and commitment? But no, your eyes keep drifting over to that cheap, heavily-made-up harlot from Washington, and thinking to yourself, "Things would be so much easier and more fun with her." Yeah, for a little while. But then the problems would start, and multiply quickly after that. And you know something? The problems you'd have with her would turn out, fundamentally, to be the same problems you say you're having with me. I proved this to you; did you think I was lying? At least I'm being honest with you, and making you aware up-front of what you're getting into, and the work you'll need to do.
I may be cheap, but I'm not easy, buster. If you want something meaningful, something lasting, I'll always be willing to give that to you. Hell, I'll even dress up like that floozy Washington chick if you want. But you'd better be ready to get off your kiester and put in some effort. You may think I'm trying to emasculate you or humiliate you, but what I'm really asking you to do is become an adult. Otherwise, you're just going to go from disappointment to disappointment, and never understand why things keep falling apart.
Only works if the libraries are binary compatible, if a new version comes out thats not binary compatible, and you replace it. All the other apps that reference the dll will break.
Again, forgive my naïveté, but what kind of idiot would do that sort of thing?
The whole point of a shared library is transparent binary compatibility among clients. If it's not binary-compatible, then it's not really the same shared library, is it? And if you absolutely must break binary compatibility, then you should either change the major revision number and make applications explicitly ask for the version they need (not so hot, but workable), or change the library name entirely (better).
I mean, this is flipping obvious to me. Surely, if these ideas were sound, The Finest Software Engineers In The World would do it the same, or in a similar, way. The fact that The Finest Software Engineers In The Industry seem not to do it this way suggests that my ideas may, in fact, be utterly crazy. But if I am crazy, I'm unable to see it. So, who's crazy here?
Why would upgrading an application also upgrade a shared system library at the same time? If the application needs the later library version, then the system needs upgrading as well (and probably a good thing, too). Only the system vendor, or the user by direct action, should be messing about in the system directories. Applications shouldn't be fscking around in there at all. If they do, then the result is guaranteed to be a complete and utter mess. (This is obvious, right?)
Further, why would upgrading a shared system library break older applications? If the new library isn't backward-compatible, then the library vendor did The Wrong Thing. This can admittedly be a bit dicey when you've fixed a legitimate bug in the library, and dependent applications break. By definition, the applications were broken for relying on broken behavior, but sometimes pragmatism has to win out. However, if you have a well-designed method for establishing library entry points, you can mitigate this problem by just reassigning vectors (new apps bind to the new, fixed vector; and old apps get the old vector, whose bugs are emulated for no more than two major releases).
I have a dumb question. I admit it's a dumb question, because I've spent the last twenty years of my career working with non-Microsoft operating systems and products. The answer may be obvious to someone with that kind of experience, but not to me. So here goes:
Why the hell are there multiple copies of the same, critical, shared system library floating around on the machine?
See, where I come from, you have one copy of shared system libraries -- the latest one, with all the latest patches. This library is fully backward-compatible with all its predecessors. Further, the shared system libraries are all in the same place, so you know where to go looking to drop in updates or, if needs be, regressions. (On very, very rare occasions, there'll be a copy of a specific version living alongside the (by definition, broken) application that needs it.) This approach leads to clean system maintenance and ensures that all applications are using the same, up-to-date, best performance, most secure version of the system libraries.
So why is Windows different? Why are there a zillion copies of GDI+ laying around? And why would you want it that way?
Yeah, right, 'cause we always execute our voice mail messages!
Alas, this is not so far-fetched, as the buffer overflow exploits in JPEG decoders illustrates.
Voice will almost certainly not be sent as plain DAC samples, but in some compressed form (MP3, Vorbis, Speex, etc.) requiring decoding in software. If your codec is not bulletproof, then a mailiciously-formed compressed audio stream could conceivably exploit the hole and take over your machine.
Remember that many VoiP clients are running on Windoze boxes.
Wouldn't a patent on a mail mechanism be the perfect legal method of reducing spam? If the patent was held by a benevolent enough organisation, they could revoke spammers rights to use the patented methods to send spam, and not need to worry about new laws being passed.
Yeah.
Exactly the same way that DVD-CCA's patent on CSS has empowered them to sue all non-conforming DVD player software out of existence.
Exactly the same way SCO's "copyrights" and "patents" on UNIX technology allowed them to sue all non-conforming UNIX and UNIX-like implementations out of existence.
If you want PDA goodness and gaming goodness, then the Zodiac from Tapwave may be worth your attention.
It's a fully Palm-compatible PDA with a nice, bright 480*320 color display. It's also optimized for gaming and media playback, with a Yamaha sound chip and an ATI graphics accelerator. It also has two shoulder buttons, a proportional thumbstick, and a rumble pack (vibrator). The unit can accept peripheral and storage expansion through the two SD slots.
I replaced my Palm-Vx clone with a Zodiac about two months ago, and I've been quite pleased with the unit. The display is just lovely, it plays MP3s well, and it reminds me of my appointments with a nice, loud alarm.
The 32M version sells for USD$300.00; the 128M version is $400.00.
Big Fat Hairy Disclaimer: I am an employee of Tapwave, Inc. But I'd be happy with the Zodiac even if I didn't work for them.
All but about ten of the episodes are in public domain now.
The term "public domain" has a very specific legal meaning. MST3K episodes are definitely not public domain. Although it may be strongly inferred that Best Brains doesn't mind unsanctioned copying (the phrase, "Keep circulating the tapes," appears prominently in the end credits of many shows), the shows themselves do not enjoy public domain status.
For what possible purpose does a skin -- which is essentially nothing more than graphical elements -- need to invoke the browser?
WTF? Seriously, help me out here. I've only been a programmer for 25 years, so I may not understand the deeply compelling reasons driving such a design decision.
Cripes, when was the last time the EFF won a case? Reno v. ACLU?
The EFF has been doing fairly well in the DeCSS case -- DVD-CCA vs. Bunner. The court hasn't given them a slam-dunk, but the EFF has been whittling away slowly and surely against the DVD-CCA's baseless claims of trade secret "misappropriation" and "improper" reverse-engineering.
DVD-CCA has claimed they have since obtained a patent on CSS, so they may attempt to enjoin distribution that way, but it looks fairly clear that their trade secret suit is going to ultimately fail. Too bad it took the court four years to figure it out.
Schwab
Re:Where do you draw the line?
on
The Spyware Inferno
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Addendum: Mentioning spyware in the "license" does not constitute meaningful disclosure.
The safe way is obviously straight from Microsoft.
I guess Microsoft never heard of MD5 sums? Or digital signatures?
Wait, they must have heard of digital signatures; otherwise, how could they frighten uneducated people by throwing up that misleading dialog reading, "WARNING! DANGEROUS UNAPPROVED SOFTWARE!" every time you try to install a third-party driver.
Slashdot Mirror
In which case, the vendor is already in violation of FCC regs, and is using software to try to obscure that fact.
Frankly, I'm not willing to let the vendor slide on this one. The story of the Therac-25, though considerably more grave, should serve as a lesson to vendors everywhere to never rely solely on software to limit the actions of hardware.
Schwab
SATA:
SCSI:
And yes, you can tell the difference, even as a "normal" user.
This doesn't mean SATA sucks. In fact, it's quite good for the target application: Low- to medium performance workstations. And it also doesn't suffer from bus termination-fu and other black arts of SCSI configuration. But there are still clear benefits to SCSI.
Schwab
And most of the ones you cited are complete bunk. To wit:
Liability for what, exactly? This bogeyman is often trotted out, but only in the vaguest sense. The only concrete example offered thus far is the potential for lawsuits owing to frivolous patents. Sounds to me, then, like a reason to agitate for patent reform rather than screw your userbase. Argument weak.
That's not the fault of the manufacturer, that's the fault of the guy driving the HW out of spec, and the FCC will go after him first. If it's later discovered that the HW itself should have enforced those limits, well, that's a separate discussion. Argument invalid.
This has always been a completely bullshit way to differentiate between "products", and anyone who does this should be thumped over the head. Argument invalid.
And so also could the vendor. And since all the driver-writing expertise already resides under his roof, he already has all the competetive advantage that he needs to stay ahead. Argument invalid.
This is the first valid reason you've offered. However, as an OEM, you really should be thinking much more carefully before agreeing to such terms. You could be shutting yourself off from a lucrative market.
Then why weren't you, the vendor, doing this in the first place? Frankly, I'm not interested in compensating for a vendor's lack of business acumen. Argument invalid.
Schwab
Don't expect Project Gutenberg to back down on this. They were the ones who, with the help of Lawrence Lessig and the EFF, filed suit to have the Sonny Bono Perpetual Copyright Act struck down as failing the "limited times" clause in the US Constitution. Sadly, they lost that case. But it should illustrate that PG does not take $#!t like this lying down. Expect a fight.
Schwab
Which is precisely why I never download updates to Windows Media Player (and no one else should, either). I use vlc and Media Player Classic.
Schwab
What makes this offering from AMD qualitatively better than these things? The Cappucinos have a real Pentium in them, whereas this AMD thing uses a Geode, which is just awful.
Schwab
Correct. Since ActiveX is completely unnecessary to the task of keeping software up to date, I would normally keep ActiveX turned off even for Microsoft. However, keeping Windows patched and up to date trumps that. And since Microsoft can (mostly) be trusted to not 0wnz0r our machines, I make an exception for windowsupdate.microsoft.com.
Schwab
You should respond, "No." Always.
With extremely limited exceptions, there are no sites out there that need to be fscking around with ActiveX. Any sites that require it are the result of unprofessional design and should be considered highly suspect.
ActiveX does have one or two limited uses, confined almost entirely to a corporate intra-net environment. As such, the extremely limited exceptions to the above rule are sites or systems you trust implicitly (basically, systems inside your own or your company's firewall); and windowsupdate.microsoft.com. There are no other exceptions.
As a garden variety Web surfer, ActiveX offers you nothing except an intrusion/exploit vector. It's worse than useless; it's dangerous. Turn it off.
Schwab
The price disparity between IDE and SCSI wasn't always there. At the dawn of IDE, back when 200MiB was considered a large drive, IDE and SCSI drive prices were at virtual parity. If there was a difference between two otherwise identical drives, it was usually between USD$5.00 - $10.00. For a $600 drive, that's epsilon.
Sometime later -- it feels like about seven years ago -- IDE drive prices started plummeting relative to their SCSI counterparts. Now things are at the point where you'll pay three to five times more for the same storage capacity in SCSI.
About the only positive thing you can say is that SCSI prices are falling, too. Five years ago, I paid close to USD$200.00 for an 18G IBM drive. Now I can get a 75G drive for $150.00. But it's still outrageous.
SATA is no panacea, either. The last time I checked prices (very briefly) suggested that SATA drives are nearly as expensive as their SCSI counterparts.
Schwab
We're not talking extended orbital flight, are we? Just a quick peek above the atmosphere, then straight back down, right?
While that might be fun, I don't consider it especially compelling -- certainly not to the tune of $100K.
Schwab
Isn't that just like a man? Inattentive, unappreciative, selfish. Gawd, what was I thinking when I went home with you?
Do you have even the slightest idea what I do for you, tirelessly, flawlessly, every day? No. You spend more time doting on your car than me. You've never even looked in /etc, have you? Oh, that's right, "I shouldn't have to think about that."
And to think you'd begrudge me ten measly hours. Do you have any idea what those ten hours will pay you back down the road? Don't you understand that we're trying to build a relationship here? And that relationships require time and commitment? But no, your eyes keep drifting over to that cheap, heavily-made-up harlot from Washington, and thinking to yourself, "Things would be so much easier and more fun with her." Yeah, for a little while. But then the problems would start, and multiply quickly after that. And you know something? The problems you'd have with her would turn out, fundamentally, to be the same problems you say you're having with me. I proved this to you; did you think I was lying? At least I'm being honest with you, and making you aware up-front of what you're getting into, and the work you'll need to do.
I may be cheap, but I'm not easy, buster. If you want something meaningful, something lasting, I'll always be willing to give that to you. Hell, I'll even dress up like that floozy Washington chick if you want. But you'd better be ready to get off your kiester and put in some effort. You may think I'm trying to emasculate you or humiliate you, but what I'm really asking you to do is become an adult. Otherwise, you're just going to go from disappointment to disappointment, and never understand why things keep falling apart.
I'll always be there for you,
Linnie
Again, forgive my naïveté, but what kind of idiot would do that sort of thing?
The whole point of a shared library is transparent binary compatibility among clients. If it's not binary-compatible, then it's not really the same shared library, is it? And if you absolutely must break binary compatibility, then you should either change the major revision number and make applications explicitly ask for the version they need (not so hot, but workable), or change the library name entirely (better).
I mean, this is flipping obvious to me. Surely, if these ideas were sound, The Finest Software Engineers In The World would do it the same, or in a similar, way. The fact that The Finest Software Engineers In The Industry seem not to do it this way suggests that my ideas may, in fact, be utterly crazy. But if I am crazy, I'm unable to see it. So, who's crazy here?
Schwab
Why would upgrading an application also upgrade a shared system library at the same time? If the application needs the later library version, then the system needs upgrading as well (and probably a good thing, too). Only the system vendor, or the user by direct action, should be messing about in the system directories. Applications shouldn't be fscking around in there at all. If they do, then the result is guaranteed to be a complete and utter mess. (This is obvious, right?)
Further, why would upgrading a shared system library break older applications? If the new library isn't backward-compatible, then the library vendor did The Wrong Thing. This can admittedly be a bit dicey when you've fixed a legitimate bug in the library, and dependent applications break. By definition, the applications were broken for relying on broken behavior, but sometimes pragmatism has to win out. However, if you have a well-designed method for establishing library entry points, you can mitigate this problem by just reassigning vectors (new apps bind to the new, fixed vector; and old apps get the old vector, whose bugs are emulated for no more than two major releases).
Schwab
I have a dumb question. I admit it's a dumb question, because I've spent the last twenty years of my career working with non-Microsoft operating systems and products. The answer may be obvious to someone with that kind of experience, but not to me. So here goes:
Why the hell are there multiple copies of the same, critical, shared system library floating around on the machine?
See, where I come from, you have one copy of shared system libraries -- the latest one, with all the latest patches. This library is fully backward-compatible with all its predecessors. Further, the shared system libraries are all in the same place, so you know where to go looking to drop in updates or, if needs be, regressions. (On very, very rare occasions, there'll be a copy of a specific version living alongside the (by definition, broken) application that needs it.) This approach leads to clean system maintenance and ensures that all applications are using the same, up-to-date, best performance, most secure version of the system libraries.
So why is Windows different? Why are there a zillion copies of GDI+ laying around? And why would you want it that way?
Schwab
"Spock, Bones... Since you are viewing this, we will assume that I am dead, that the situation is critical, and the ship is in extreme peril..."
Schwab
Alas, this is not so far-fetched, as the buffer overflow exploits in JPEG decoders illustrates.
Voice will almost certainly not be sent as plain DAC samples, but in some compressed form (MP3, Vorbis, Speex, etc.) requiring decoding in software. If your codec is not bulletproof, then a mailiciously-formed compressed audio stream could conceivably exploit the hole and take over your machine.
Remember that many VoiP clients are running on Windoze boxes.
Schwab
Yeah.
Exactly the same way that DVD-CCA's patent on CSS has empowered them to sue all non-conforming DVD player software out of existence.
Exactly the same way SCO's "copyrights" and "patents" on UNIX technology allowed them to sue all non-conforming UNIX and UNIX-like implementations out of existence.
Nice thought; won't work.
Schwab
If you want PDA goodness and gaming goodness, then the Zodiac from Tapwave may be worth your attention.
It's a fully Palm-compatible PDA with a nice, bright 480*320 color display. It's also optimized for gaming and media playback, with a Yamaha sound chip and an ATI graphics accelerator. It also has two shoulder buttons, a proportional thumbstick, and a rumble pack (vibrator). The unit can accept peripheral and storage expansion through the two SD slots.
I replaced my Palm-Vx clone with a Zodiac about two months ago, and I've been quite pleased with the unit. The display is just lovely, it plays MP3s well, and it reminds me of my appointments with a nice, loud alarm.
The 32M version sells for USD$300.00; the 128M version is $400.00.
Big Fat Hairy Disclaimer: I am an employee of Tapwave, Inc. But I'd be happy with the Zodiac even if I didn't work for them.
Schwab
The term "public domain" has a very specific legal meaning. MST3K episodes are definitely not public domain. Although it may be strongly inferred that Best Brains doesn't mind unsanctioned copying (the phrase, "Keep circulating the tapes," appears prominently in the end credits of many shows), the shows themselves do not enjoy public domain status.
Some of the shows are available commercially on DVD. That should be the first place MST3K fans look for episodes.
Schwab
Fewer display pixels, almost twice as expensive.
Schwab
For what possible purpose does a skin -- which is essentially nothing more than graphical elements -- need to invoke the browser?
WTF? Seriously, help me out here. I've only been a programmer for 25 years, so I may not understand the deeply compelling reasons driving such a design decision.
Schwab
CHoDSS? ("Choads")
Schwab
The EFF has been doing fairly well in the DeCSS case -- DVD-CCA vs. Bunner. The court hasn't given them a slam-dunk, but the EFF has been whittling away slowly and surely against the DVD-CCA's baseless claims of trade secret "misappropriation" and "improper" reverse-engineering.
DVD-CCA has claimed they have since obtained a patent on CSS, so they may attempt to enjoin distribution that way, but it looks fairly clear that their trade secret suit is going to ultimately fail. Too bad it took the court four years to figure it out.
Schwab
Addendum: Mentioning spyware in the "license" does not constitute meaningful disclosure.
Schwab
I guess Microsoft never heard of MD5 sums? Or digital signatures?
Wait, they must have heard of digital signatures; otherwise, how could they frighten uneducated people by throwing up that misleading dialog reading, "WARNING! DANGEROUS UNAPPROVED SOFTWARE!" every time you try to install a third-party driver.
Schwab