I have alway felt that all of the copy protection schemes only hurt those suckers (like me) who actually pay for the software. CDs won't last forever, and with no way to backup the games to another media (when CDs go the way of the floppy disk), the money I spend on copy protected software ends up being wasted.
The funny thing is, all of these copy protection schemes never stop the real pirates. You can find a cracked version of any popular piece of software. All that the software companies do when they attack a company that enables users to backup their software is stop a few amateurs from giving the games to their friends. Maybe they even drive a few to try to find another way to get the game for free, and suddenly the user who used to buy software finds out that they can get it all for free.
I have been burned by DRM in the past. I probably have paid about $1000 for games for my Amiga (a long time ago). I occasionally have a bout of nostalgia, and want to play some of my old games (that I paid for) through emulation. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to make image files of the copy protected games, and in order to play the games that I paid for, I had to find pirated versions of those games.
Now imagine it is 5 years from now and suddenly Microsoft somehow manages to push through "trusted computing" or some such, and the only way to play your older games is through emulation. Or more likely, one of the CDs for your favorite old game that you break out every once in a while starts having read errors. The game companies just tell you "too bad, sucker" because some people (or maybe even most people) out there might use the software to break a law and give the game to their buddy down the street.
I buy all of my software, or find a free alternative, and I actually have a legitimate use for backup software in order to protect the investment I have made in my software. It really annoys me that the software industry just assumes that all of us users are criminals.
I wrote many essays when I was in school, and I remember being graded down because the teachers didn't like my ideas. The quality of my writing was acceptible, but how I wrote the topic was not. I didn't write anything offensive, but I occasionally took creative liberties with the point of view (i.e. I changed the gender of the person who wrote the article, and then interpreted it from that point of view). Maybe I write an essay about atheism, but the grader is intensly religious and has a bias against my point of view.
I just want to point out that having a computer grade a paper using rules would be much more 'fair', because the computer won't have any personal bias about the content. I am sure that the computer would grade an essay against computerized grading identically to an essay promoting computerized grading.
How will the taxes be determined and collected? What about some Windows user who's computer gets comprimised and becomes a spam relay or sends out thousands of emails when hit by the next email virus?
I think that the spammers will find some way around this tax to continue annoying all of us.
I never suggested technological solutions to legal problems. Although, when a poor technological solution doesn't work, it is discarded and forgotten. When a poor legal solution doesn't work, it is forgotten but continues to live forever.
You analogy doesn't make any sense (how is sending spam equivalent to murder?), but it points out another stupid trend in new laws. Lawmakers seem to love making something that is already illegal even more illegal.
In your example, we should pass a law making it illegal to kill people using a genetically engineered pathogen. That way, when someone does it, we can charge them with two crimes instead of one.
I am sure that that is a great way to stop crime. I am sure that the terrorist who is thinking of using a disease to kill people will change his mind once he finds out that he could get charged for two crimes instead of just simple mass murder.
This brilliant law would probably end up making all genetic engineering on microorganisms illegal, so any vaccines or cures for real diseases that could be created by the same technique would also have to be abandoned as well.
There are differences between junk faxes and spam. First, all junk faxes are tracable to the originator through phone records. Also, for the most part, someone's fax machine cannot be hacked and forced to send out a bunch of faxes, whereas it is fairly common for spam to be coming from the computer of someone other than the originator of the spam. So even when you know the source address of the 'spammer,' it may just be someone's poorly secured home computer.
Secondly, faxes cost money to send if they are not local, therefore, local laws can have some affect. Out of country faxes don't make much sense unless you can get a high enough response rate to justify the international long distance charges. Since e-mail spam can come from anywhere in the world and it costs the same whether it comes from next door or the other side of the planet, a local law has no effect on all your spam coming from out of the country. The law just stops all of the spam coming from within the country's borders.
Therefore, and anti-spam law won't stop spam from hacked computers, and it won't stop spam from outside the country. How much do you think that this will affect the quantity of spam?
Oh, and if you think that we could go after the products that are advertized in spam, very few legitimate products are sold by spam. The majority of spam come from scammers and fly-by-night operations, so the anti-spam law will stop the 1% of spam that comes from a legitimate source.
Just about every legal solution to a technological problems end up backfiring. The problem is that most laws are so broadly written that they usually end up making something legitimate illegal as well.
Usually these laws end up fining someone who sends 'spam' described in legalese. Then, you forward a joke to someone who gets offended by it, calls it an unsolicited e-mail message, and then uses the law to extract money from your wallet. Meanwhile, since the spammers never send anything using their own return address, they just continue doing what they always have done.
I think of laws as the social equivalent of bug fixes in code. You fix one problem and unintentionally create 5 new problems.
Actually, both articles mention the lack of a PCMCIA Slot:
Washington Post:
"The lack of a PC Card slot might also limit this machine's utility down the road."
OSNews"
"There is no DVI port, nor PCMCIA or PC card/bus port on the Powerbook, and in order to install the new Airport Extreme card, you will need to remove the battery and make a "real" hardware installation."
I would guess that the reason for the higher TCO for Linux vs. Win2k would be because the Linux administrators are paid more for doing less work.
The people who hire IT personnel assume that Windows must be easier to administer because all you have to do is point-and-click. Most of them use Windows and think, "How hard can it be to administer a Windows server?" Additionally, there are so many applicants who can claim Windows experience that they have many applicants to choose from. Since Windows seems easier to administer, and the pool of applicants is so large, the Windows administrators are paid less.
Linux, on the other hand, seems mysterious and scary to those who have never used it, and the pool of applicants is smaller, so Linux administrators get paid more. Within a couple of months, all of the scripts have been written so that the Linux machines practically administer themselves, and the high paid Linux administrators spend most of their time trying to look busy.
Where I work, there is a full-time IT person who handles all of the Windows servers. I have a few Linux servers set up, and I log in for about 30 minutes every month to install updates. My Linux servers e-mail me the status of the daily backups and if any problems occur (like running out of disk space). The rest of my time is spent on my primary job, which is programming in MACRO32.
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I have alway felt that all of the copy protection schemes only hurt those suckers (like me) who actually pay for the software. CDs won't last forever, and with no way to backup the games to another media (when CDs go the way of the floppy disk), the money I spend on copy protected software ends up being wasted.
The funny thing is, all of these copy protection schemes never stop the real pirates. You can find a cracked version of any popular piece of software. All that the software companies do when they attack a company that enables users to backup their software is stop a few amateurs from giving the games to their friends. Maybe they even drive a few to try to find another way to get the game for free, and suddenly the user who used to buy software finds out that they can get it all for free.
I have been burned by DRM in the past. I probably have paid about $1000 for games for my Amiga (a long time ago). I occasionally have a bout of nostalgia, and want to play some of my old games (that I paid for) through emulation. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to make image files of the copy protected games, and in order to play the games that I paid for, I had to find pirated versions of those games.
Now imagine it is 5 years from now and suddenly Microsoft somehow manages to push through "trusted computing" or some such, and the only way to play your older games is through emulation. Or more likely, one of the CDs for your favorite old game that you break out every once in a while starts having read errors. The game companies just tell you "too bad, sucker" because some people (or maybe even most people) out there might use the software to break a law and give the game to their buddy down the street.
I buy all of my software, or find a free alternative, and I actually have a legitimate use for backup software in order to protect the investment I have made in my software. It really annoys me that the software industry just assumes that all of us users are criminals.
I just want to point out that having a computer grade a paper using rules would be much more 'fair', because the computer won't have any personal bias about the content. I am sure that the computer would grade an essay against computerized grading identically to an essay promoting computerized grading.
How will the taxes be determined and collected? What about some Windows user who's computer gets comprimised and becomes a spam relay or sends out thousands of emails when hit by the next email virus?
I think that the spammers will find some way around this tax to continue annoying all of us.
Tom
I never suggested technological solutions to legal problems. Although, when a poor technological solution doesn't work, it is discarded and forgotten. When a poor legal solution doesn't work, it is forgotten but continues to live forever.
Tom
You analogy doesn't make any sense (how is sending spam equivalent to murder?), but it points out another stupid trend in new laws. Lawmakers seem to love making something that is already illegal even more illegal.
In your example, we should pass a law making it illegal to kill people using a genetically engineered pathogen. That way, when someone does it, we can charge them with two crimes instead of one.
I am sure that that is a great way to stop crime. I am sure that the terrorist who is thinking of using a disease to kill people will change his mind once he finds out that he could get charged for two crimes instead of just simple mass murder.
This brilliant law would probably end up making all genetic engineering on microorganisms illegal, so any vaccines or cures for real diseases that could be created by the same technique would also have to be abandoned as well.
Tom
There are differences between junk faxes and spam. First, all junk faxes are tracable to the originator through phone records. Also, for the most part, someone's fax machine cannot be hacked and forced to send out a bunch of faxes, whereas it is fairly common for spam to be coming from the computer of someone other than the originator of the spam. So even when you know the source address of the 'spammer,' it may just be someone's poorly secured home computer.
Secondly, faxes cost money to send if they are not local, therefore, local laws can have some affect. Out of country faxes don't make much sense unless you can get a high enough response rate to justify the international long distance charges. Since e-mail spam can come from anywhere in the world and it costs the same whether it comes from next door or the other side of the planet, a local law has no effect on all your spam coming from out of the country. The law just stops all of the spam coming from within the country's borders.
Therefore, and anti-spam law won't stop spam from hacked computers, and it won't stop spam from outside the country. How much do you think that this will affect the quantity of spam?
Oh, and if you think that we could go after the products that are advertized in spam, very few legitimate products are sold by spam. The majority of spam come from scammers and fly-by-night operations, so the anti-spam law will stop the 1% of spam that comes from a legitimate source.
Tom
Just about every legal solution to a technological problems end up backfiring. The problem is that most laws are so broadly written that they usually end up making something legitimate illegal as well.
Usually these laws end up fining someone who sends 'spam' described in legalese. Then, you forward a joke to someone who gets offended by it, calls it an unsolicited e-mail message, and then uses the law to extract money from your wallet. Meanwhile, since the spammers never send anything using their own return address, they just continue doing what they always have done.
I think of laws as the social equivalent of bug fixes in code. You fix one problem and unintentionally create 5 new problems.
Tom
The search string was probably something like "MS.*Office" and it matched the full path:
Tom
A DRM version of Office sure would have saved them a lot of time shredding documents.
Tom
Washington Post:
"The lack of a PC Card slot might also limit this machine's utility down the road."
OSNews"
"There is no DVI port, nor PCMCIA or PC card/bus port on the Powerbook, and in order to install the new Airport Extreme card, you will need to remove the battery and make a "real" hardware installation."
The people who hire IT personnel assume that Windows must be easier to administer because all you have to do is point-and-click. Most of them use Windows and think, "How hard can it be to administer a Windows server?" Additionally, there are so many applicants who can claim Windows experience that they have many applicants to choose from. Since Windows seems easier to administer, and the pool of applicants is so large, the Windows administrators are paid less.
Linux, on the other hand, seems mysterious and scary to those who have never used it, and the pool of applicants is smaller, so Linux administrators get paid more. Within a couple of months, all of the scripts have been written so that the Linux machines practically administer themselves, and the high paid Linux administrators spend most of their time trying to look busy.
Where I work, there is a full-time IT person who handles all of the Windows servers. I have a few Linux servers set up, and I log in for about 30 minutes every month to install updates. My Linux servers e-mail me the status of the daily backups and if any problems occur (like running out of disk space). The rest of my time is spent on my primary job, which is programming in MACRO32.
Tom