Huh? You mean MS's hardware... because I haven't heard of any.
As noted, I fully expect future versions of the OS to only work with DRM features enabled on the BIOS, but you could still turn them off for alternate OS's ('nix, 'BSD, etc) and somebody will probably hack the OS to bypass the requirement eventually
A lot of what is done on an actual machine is in hardware, integrated with an OS. So with an emulator you actually have:
an OS (win/linux/etc)...
which communicates existing hardware to act like another piece of hardware through software intervention... another OS
And the rest of the program, which would handle the actual code behind the console/etc being emulated: another OS
You could say they're just programs too... but really you have a system mounted on another with the purpose of loading varying forms of data. I guess it depends on your definition of an OS.
3. They are not fixed functions - it can be disabled permanently.
As also mentioned, how this is controlled (BIOS screen only, jumper, software) is mostly up to the motherboard manufacturer. But really... if it can be turned off, why worry?
You know windows is going the DRM road... you'll probably have to turn it on for Win2005 or whatever, but for the linux users simply having the switch-off feature is key.
If specific options can be switched, even better. I'm particularly interested in the ideas of using it to speed up PGP/MD5/etc processes, or spawning new-and-improved ones.
What disturbs me is the great amount of misnamed files that contain somewhat objectionable content. Some are named as such things as disney movies, or pokemon, etc... but contain adult content. I'm sure at least a few kids have come across this crap on kazaa.
Some of said clips (or those somewhat ambiguously named), contain content of somewhat dubious legality as well (not copyright legality, I'm referring to the content itself being very very wrong). It's bad enough that I see such things when browsing my kazaa cache... but it's worse when I think that somebody may have sniffed my (static) IP and associated me with it - or others have downloaded it off my PC.
The messaging feature is nice... I can let people know when I find bad, or immoral, downloads - and hopefully help filter the crap-files.
The aforementioned zone-warning system for cellphones would be cool: have the phone automatically tune down or go on vibe mode when entering a "silent zone"
But as mentioned... that doesn't solve other idiot user problems. Personally, I'd like a theatre with an "audience poll" options. Have little voting controls on the chairs like on certain game shows... if >10 people click on A-10 (row,seat)... it could:
a) Give the person some form of friendly jolt, allowing them a reminder
b) Notify an usher of a idiot in immediate need of disposal
c) Ejection seat? Nah. Maybe just a seat that retracts the cushion
d) All of the above.
Oh, and realistically... I can't see anyone buying a zap-me-if-I-talk-too-loud cellphone for himself/herself, but I could think of a lot of people *I* would be one for.
At an old job, we had a similar issue with Belkin power supplies. When plugging the first UPS in, it went up in smoke right away. We returned it, and got a second which demonstrated a similar smokeshow.
With any power source or backup, it may be an idea to plug it in first... without attaching devices, in case a resulting short takes out your computers. That being said... I wonder if the warrantees on these surge bar's and UPS's are worth their weight.
a) A lot of steam...
b) An engine hot enough to cook food
I could thing of a couple of other cars that almost come equipped like this anyways... perhaps a kia?
In all seriousness though, what can you do with a trashed out rusty car... other than sticking it in a junkyard to be made into a trash-compacted cube? A sauna sounds like a pretty cool idea... makes me wonder what other things one could do with a car. Perhaps if they had a convertible... a hot-tub?
For some old vehicles which have suffered accidents... you have a body which is slightly mangled (maybe not drivable) but not too bad, and a working engine. The engine can be a power source... a heat source... whatever.
When not moving, many cars can run for hours while using very little gas... many around here become portable entertainment centers (big stereos) for bush parties, etc.
Sooooo... how many people can think of alternate uses for these cars. If it's not too crazy, be inventive, and we've got a lot of ingenious people out there. I've got an old '88 Toyota that still runs quite well, although the body is shite. I might consider donating it if it doesn't sell and somebody can think of something cool for it?
I can't remember what PCI stands for, but why not just use the actual name of the device, rather than the abbreviation. Or, if it's just the logos that are in question, remove the logos. At first, it seems that PCI-SIG doesn't want the site
They also state that the site could be moved to the official PCI-SIG website. Does this mean that they don't want to seem affiliated, or that they want the credit for the listing?
Are they related to the "Domain Registry of X?" Slightly different sounding name, but similar sounding scam (that, or just one of likely many copycats)
It's more to protect one's anonymity. While I wouldn't walk naked in public, I would rather do so than give out a 95% coverage of my daily activities etc.
At the very least, the amount of spam would really suck if one could track where an individual shops, frequents, etc.
Not to mention:
So Mr. Smith... when you called in sick to work to day the RFID readers at the "pearly oyster" registered the tag on your ballcap entering the premisis
Is generally the users. Excluding those who run open mail relays, most servers/sysadmins have enough brains not to run the file in their email coming with a message:
This iz a very fun game
I hope you anjoy it
I made this just for u
How users manage to continually fall for this idiocy is beyond me, but they do. My family is a prime example of this (they refer to me when something dies, but never listen to my "do not open attachments" rant): thus, they now get Mozilla and I'll probably block emails with.exe/.vbs/etc entirely.
Just based on the chapter titles, I think tricks such as the "Let me help you", etc are probably some of the nastiest. Considering the many people who seem to know shiat about progamming and come for help, it wouldn't be hard to slip something cruel into your "sample code."
It's amazing how, after helping somebody directly with something for 30 minutes or so, they're suddenly willing to let me
a) Have root access to their machine ('nix)
b) Control their PC (netmeeting/etc windows)
Luckily I'm a nice person, but not everybody is so helpful as they appear. Social engineering is definately an increasing trend, which is leading to user pananoia. I still don't think that the statement "One of the weakest links to the most secured computer systems are the humans that operate them."
A good sysadmin will block a lot of things that lead to exploitation (unused ports, etc), and perhaps notice odd happenings/traffic. It's the operators of the less-secure systems (clients) that are at risk most often.
40% of this probably counts all the copies of Brittney Spears and Backstreet Boys songs squirming across P2P, often masquerading as different files. Personally, I'd rather take a real virus than these - an Antivirus can find trojans but none of them seem to have a feature to detect boy/girl-band of the moment type audio files.
Indeedy, I picked up a nice audio CD that was left in an old drive here at work. The first two tracks are gibbled, but since I now own an original media I can go out and (I believe) legally copy a working disc.
The same thing applies to discs I own... one of my CD's fell out of the case between the car seats and got scratched all to hell. I think I have it as part of a collection on an MP3 disc, but otherwise Kazaa, etc would be the tool I use to get the tracks and burn a new working copy - and legally too since I bought the original media.
Even downloading music isn't illegal, unless you're downloading music you don't own in an original format. For some people, it's easier to go on Kazaa and rip songs to make a mix/backup CD than try and strip them to Mp3/wav from a CD, or copy a protected CD for backup purposes.
Don't wear clothes. When you're in court for indecent exposure, tell them that RFID tags have made current clothing violate your right to privacy/anonymity...
That, or you could advertise a protect using your body...
From what I remember, there was a problem when web-enabled (we're talking with a graphic browser, not a lynx-style text browser) phones become more popular in Japan. Young males had the tendancy to download/view porn in public places, such as subways, etc.
Now I ask you, do you really want to be sitting next to the guy in an overcoat who is streaming 3G porn on his cellphone? I think this could become somewhat of a public nuisance, inviting public indecency charges for cellphone use of this type.
Here in Canada, when I buy online services in-province - I pay provincial tax. In-country, I pay federal tax. If I order from the US, 75% of the time I pay the tax as it crosses the border (even on used items!) plus border duties, etc.
Over here, I don't think we can be taxed anymore than we are. I also wonder... with free trade, why is there border taxation/duties?
Is that these people are at least listening enough to us (geeks) to be aware that slashdot et al are a good source of the "voice of geekdom" and they are checking up on common opinion (whether correctly founded or not).
Seems that we have 2 slashdot articles today with various people "clarifying" (or perhaps muddying, but at least attempting to save face) actual circumstances. Perhaps if enough big companies read slashdot/etc they'll realize that such idiocy is tainting public opinion and could lead to more bad publicity, and possible sales loss.
A5
Buffer Overflows
It seems to me that a lot of "overflow" type issues are often somewhat of a daemon/application problem. Yes, there are exploits that allow for users who don't do bounds checking etc and cause stupid issues, but a lot of these pop up as part of the application and end up being repaired in bugfixes. Even if you code safely and bounds check, an exploit in the daemon could get this one by you.
Oh... and also, *FOR GAWD SAKE* turn register_globals off. If you must have globals (maybe for a prewritten piece) then write a custom procedure that tags them in and paste it into said prewritten code... preferentially doing integrity checks first!
I just had similar discussion over the weekend regarding virus writers and spammers. Truly, infecting somebody who doesn't understand the nature of virii/social-engineering, or doesn't adequately protect their system. Same with those who leave their servers to spamaholics, or easily cracked websites.
But the point is, these people are destroying the industry. When people get 15+ spams a day, and 3+ virii a day, email becomes a lot less productive. When companies to some extent depend on email to communicate with clients, it's costing a lot of money. When a company gets a quickly spreading virus, it can mean even more money down the tubes.
Not everyone is smart enough to use PGP-signed email, an intelligent spamfilter, etc. Virus writers are the worst of all, and frankly - whether it's a 15-yr-old kid in Canada or a 35-yr-old Russian guy with a 2 foot beard, I don't care. These people need to be caught, and punished to the extent that they become examples for all. If big companies stopped sueing those who aren't causing intentional damage (frivolous lawsuits, patent claims, etc), then everybody would do better in the long run.
Instead of building spamblockers and firewalls, we should be building tools to track these buggers down, and then either hand them in for justice, or formulate our own solution (not necessarily vigilante, but enough to get a message acecss) if the state/country isn't willing to properly take up decent action.
It seems odd to me that the Logitech Optical mouse was only said to last about 3-4 days. I remember reading on other cordless opticals that they can last weeks or even months, but perhaps this is because they aren't using rechargable batteries. With NimH (sp) batteries I would have expected better performance.
Can somebody verify this? I was actually quite interested in this mouse due to the recharging basestation, but if it dies a lot quicker than others I'll just go with a non-recharging mouse on a Lithium-Ion battery.
Depends on the customer base. Selling, say, 1000 post-console games at $10-$15 won't make much money. Selling 100,000 (bigger numbers probably apply) to an all-in-one package would probably make more cash. If you could dump it in there with some EMU's for a bunch of different hardware: NES emulator, SNES emulator, Sega Emulator, MAME Arcade Emulator - you could sell different games as packs (as is often done with old games anyways).
I'm not sure how many people would buy "Hang On" for a cellphone, but I'd imagine a certain number would find it rather sweet to own the "Capcom fighter collection", or "Zelda Suite" etc etc.
I was actually just thinking about this recently. A lot of people are clammoring for decent linux games, and why not? If we get a few good 'nix games, then we could see a lot of people at least trying the OS, if not moving over. On a DVD, you could have a crapload of drivers etc, make the disk bootable, and run without even loading off the hard-disk (except for savegames, etc). A DVD should be big enough to fit a scaled down linux OS, the game, and a bunch of graphics/etc drivers (with an autodetect, or again, something to save the config to the drive).
Here's where I get stuck though: how do I make a 'nix game without making it entirely open source, if I want to make a profit but not have to write a million GPL modules or pay large licensing fees? I was thinking that one could:
Write the entire engine source available. Make the game art, meshes, maybe even the config files copyrighted. I'm not sure if this would conflict.
If it worked, you've got a fully workable game that people aren't allowed to copy (due to copyright on the artwork, etc). Since the game itself is open source, and only the characters etc are copyrighted, is there a GPL conflict? One could write a new game on the engine, or run the game with custom graphics (isn't the the current context of people using old doom/quake/etc engines).
The only problem I would think of is: you probably have to make the engine easily acquried, and have the art addons entirely seperate on a sale disk - or can everything that can be o/s available on the same disk, and have it as a product with documentation outlining what belongs to whom, and what is actually being paid for.
Code wants to be free... but talent and hard work work hopefully earn some money still, or 'nix-first games will still be a whiff of smoke in the future.
Except that one of the key things Microsoft et al have been saying is that the DRM features in the OS can be disabled - so basically it is just to prevent backdoor hacker apps from getting into your system - somewhat like a hardware (more global) Zone-Alarm. Of course, I don't believe for a second that MS won't try and make some of it impossible to disable, or at least very difficult.
But then, if somebody can get an X-box to run linux... I'm fairly sure some of the whiz kids out there will figure out how to hack DRM hardware
Generally do work at home. Some hairdressers do, but not many that get high customer volume
A lot of techies (and good ones) work from home, such a requirement could very well kill their business. All things considered, if a business kills a computer - they should replace it. If there's very valuable data on it, the customer should notify them beforehand and they can weight the risks.
On the other note: I recently sent my semi-computer-illiterate grandparents to pick up a new fan for their old Pentium 200 from the local Future Shop. They told the main tech they had a Pentium 200 ($5 heatsink+fan combo), and were given a huge heatsink+fan combo ($25) for an Althon XP/P3/P4. Being idiots, they decided to try installing it themselves, and ended up damaging capacitors near the CPU socket with the oversized heatsink. Apparently Future Shop has no liability in this, they hire idiots for techs who can't read that a heatsink is for a Socket A/370 (Athlon/P4) mainboard.
My point? If major businesses were required to hire at least semi-competetent techs, it would be better. But by the same reasoning I am guessing that people reading this article (who didn't already know of FS's tech crappiness) will keep this in mind when getting PC work/parts from there. Word of mouth is a big factor in a PC business... and a bad reputation as a computer dealer can sink you very fast sometimes.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh? You mean MS's hardware... because I haven't heard of any.
As noted, I fully expect future versions of the OS to only work with DRM features enabled on the BIOS, but you could still turn them off for alternate OS's ('nix, 'BSD, etc) and somebody will probably hack the OS to bypass the requirement eventually
A lot of what is done on an actual machine is in hardware, integrated with an OS. So with an emulator you actually have:
an OS (win/linux/etc)...
which communicates existing hardware to act like another piece of hardware through software intervention... another OS
And the rest of the program, which would handle the actual code behind the console/etc being emulated: another OS
You could say they're just programs too... but really you have a system mounted on another with the purpose of loading varying forms of data. I guess it depends on your definition of an OS.
3. They are not fixed functions - it can be disabled permanently.
As also mentioned, how this is controlled (BIOS screen only, jumper, software) is mostly up to the motherboard manufacturer. But really... if it can be turned off, why worry?
You know windows is going the DRM road... you'll probably have to turn it on for Win2005 or whatever, but for the linux users simply having the switch-off feature is key.
If specific options can be switched, even better. I'm particularly interested in the ideas of using it to speed up PGP/MD5/etc processes, or spawning new-and-improved ones.
What disturbs me is the great amount of misnamed files that contain somewhat objectionable content. Some are named as such things as disney movies, or pokemon, etc... but contain adult content. I'm sure at least a few kids have come across this crap on kazaa.
Some of said clips (or those somewhat ambiguously named), contain content of somewhat dubious legality as well (not copyright legality, I'm referring to the content itself being very very wrong). It's bad enough that I see such things when browsing my kazaa cache... but it's worse when I think that somebody may have sniffed my (static) IP and associated me with it - or others have downloaded it off my PC.
The messaging feature is nice... I can let people know when I find bad, or immoral, downloads - and hopefully help filter the crap-files.
The aforementioned zone-warning system for cellphones would be cool: have the phone automatically tune down or go on vibe mode when entering a "silent zone"
But as mentioned... that doesn't solve other idiot user problems. Personally, I'd like a theatre with an "audience poll" options. Have little voting controls on the chairs like on certain game shows... if >10 people click on A-10 (row,seat)... it could:
a) Give the person some form of friendly jolt, allowing them a reminder
b) Notify an usher of a idiot in immediate need of disposal
c) Ejection seat? Nah. Maybe just a seat that retracts the cushion
d) All of the above.
Oh, and realistically... I can't see anyone buying a zap-me-if-I-talk-too-loud cellphone for himself/herself, but I could think of a lot of people *I* would be one for.
At an old job, we had a similar issue with Belkin power supplies. When plugging the first UPS in, it went up in smoke right away. We returned it, and got a second which demonstrated a similar smokeshow.
With any power source or backup, it may be an idea to plug it in first... without attaching devices, in case a resulting short takes out your computers. That being said... I wonder if the warrantees on these surge bar's and UPS's are worth their weight.
a) A lot of steam...
b) An engine hot enough to cook food
I could thing of a couple of other cars that almost come equipped like this anyways... perhaps a kia?
In all seriousness though, what can you do with a trashed out rusty car... other than sticking it in a junkyard to be made into a trash-compacted cube? A sauna sounds like a pretty cool idea... makes me wonder what other things one could do with a car. Perhaps if they had a convertible... a hot-tub?
For some old vehicles which have suffered accidents... you have a body which is slightly mangled (maybe not drivable) but not too bad, and a working engine. The engine can be a power source... a heat source... whatever.
When not moving, many cars can run for hours while using very little gas... many around here become portable entertainment centers (big stereos) for bush parties, etc.
Sooooo... how many people can think of alternate uses for these cars. If it's not too crazy, be inventive, and we've got a lot of ingenious people out there. I've got an old '88 Toyota that still runs quite well, although the body is shite. I might consider donating it if it doesn't sell and somebody can think of something cool for it?
I can't remember what PCI stands for, but why not just use the actual name of the device, rather than the abbreviation. Or, if it's just the logos that are in question, remove the logos. At first, it seems that PCI-SIG doesn't want the site
They also state that the site could be moved to the official PCI-SIG website. Does this mean that they don't want to seem affiliated, or that they want the credit for the listing?
Are they related to the "Domain Registry of X?" Slightly different sounding name, but similar sounding scam (that, or just one of likely many copycats)
That's one of the reasons I love being a Canadian. Of course, we pay out the nose for our CD media... with profit going to the RIAA and co.
It's more to protect one's anonymity. While I wouldn't walk naked in public, I would rather do so than give out a 95% coverage of my daily activities etc.
At the very least, the amount of spam would really suck if one could track where an individual shops, frequents, etc.
Not to mention:
So Mr. Smith... when you called in sick to work to day the RFID readers at the "pearly oyster" registered the tag on your ballcap entering the premisis
Is generally the users. Excluding those who run open mail relays, most servers/sysadmins have enough brains not to run the file in their email coming with a message:
.exe/.vbs/etc entirely.
This iz a very fun game
I hope you anjoy it
I made this just for u
How users manage to continually fall for this idiocy is beyond me, but they do. My family is a prime example of this (they refer to me when something dies, but never listen to my "do not open attachments" rant): thus, they now get Mozilla and I'll probably block emails with
Just based on the chapter titles, I think tricks such as the "Let me help you", etc are probably some of the nastiest. Considering the many people who seem to know shiat about progamming and come for help, it wouldn't be hard to slip something cruel into your "sample code."
It's amazing how, after helping somebody directly with something for 30 minutes or so, they're suddenly willing to let me
a) Have root access to their machine ('nix)
b) Control their PC (netmeeting/etc windows)
Luckily I'm a nice person, but not everybody is so helpful as they appear. Social engineering is definately an increasing trend, which is leading to user pananoia. I still don't think that the statement "One of the weakest links to the most secured computer systems are the humans that operate them."
A good sysadmin will block a lot of things that lead to exploitation (unused ports, etc), and perhaps notice odd happenings/traffic. It's the operators of the less-secure systems (clients) that are at risk most often.
40% of this probably counts all the copies of Brittney Spears and Backstreet Boys songs squirming across P2P, often masquerading as different files. Personally, I'd rather take a real virus than these - an Antivirus can find trojans but none of them seem to have a feature to detect boy/girl-band of the moment type audio files.
Indeedy, I picked up a nice audio CD that was left in an old drive here at work. The first two tracks are gibbled, but since I now own an original media I can go out and (I believe) legally copy a working disc.
The same thing applies to discs I own... one of my CD's fell out of the case between the car seats and got scratched all to hell. I think I have it as part of a collection on an MP3 disc, but otherwise Kazaa, etc would be the tool I use to get the tracks and burn a new working copy - and legally too since I bought the original media.
Even downloading music isn't illegal, unless you're downloading music you don't own in an original format. For some people, it's easier to go on Kazaa and rip songs to make a mix/backup CD than try and strip them to Mp3/wav from a CD, or copy a protected CD for backup purposes.
Don't wear clothes. When you're in court for indecent exposure, tell them that RFID tags have made current clothing violate your right to privacy/anonymity...
That, or you could advertise a protect using your body...
From what I remember, there was a problem when web-enabled (we're talking with a graphic browser, not a lynx-style text browser) phones become more popular in Japan. Young males had the tendancy to download/view porn in public places, such as subways, etc.
Now I ask you, do you really want to be sitting next to the guy in an overcoat who is streaming 3G porn on his cellphone? I think this could become somewhat of a public nuisance, inviting public indecency charges for cellphone use of this type.
Here in Canada, when I buy online services in-province - I pay provincial tax. In-country, I pay federal tax. If I order from the US, 75% of the time I pay the tax as it crosses the border (even on used items!) plus border duties, etc.
Over here, I don't think we can be taxed anymore than we are. I also wonder... with free trade, why is there border taxation/duties?
Is that these people are at least listening enough to us (geeks) to be aware that slashdot et al are a good source of the "voice of geekdom" and they are checking up on common opinion (whether correctly founded or not).
Seems that we have 2 slashdot articles today with various people "clarifying" (or perhaps muddying, but at least attempting to save face) actual circumstances. Perhaps if enough big companies read slashdot/etc they'll realize that such idiocy is tainting public opinion and could lead to more bad publicity, and possible sales loss.
A5
Buffer Overflows It seems to me that a lot of "overflow" type issues are often somewhat of a daemon/application problem. Yes, there are exploits that allow for users who don't do bounds checking etc and cause stupid issues, but a lot of these pop up as part of the application and end up being repaired in bugfixes. Even if you code safely and bounds check, an exploit in the daemon could get this one by you.
Oh... and also, *FOR GAWD SAKE* turn register_globals off. If you must have globals (maybe for a prewritten piece) then write a custom procedure that tags them in and paste it into said prewritten code... preferentially doing integrity checks first!
We come in peace, shoot to kill! - scorched earth
I just had similar discussion over the weekend regarding virus writers and spammers. Truly, infecting somebody who doesn't understand the nature of virii/social-engineering, or doesn't adequately protect their system. Same with those who leave their servers to spamaholics, or easily cracked websites.
But the point is, these people are destroying the industry. When people get 15+ spams a day, and 3+ virii a day, email becomes a lot less productive. When companies to some extent depend on email to communicate with clients, it's costing a lot of money. When a company gets a quickly spreading virus, it can mean even more money down the tubes.
Not everyone is smart enough to use PGP-signed email, an intelligent spamfilter, etc. Virus writers are the worst of all, and frankly - whether it's a 15-yr-old kid in Canada or a 35-yr-old Russian guy with a 2 foot beard, I don't care. These people need to be caught, and punished to the extent that they become examples for all. If big companies stopped sueing those who aren't causing intentional damage (frivolous lawsuits, patent claims, etc), then everybody would do better in the long run.
Instead of building spamblockers and firewalls, we should be building tools to track these buggers down, and then either hand them in for justice, or formulate our own solution (not necessarily vigilante, but enough to get a message acecss) if the state/country isn't willing to properly take up decent action.
It seems odd to me that the Logitech Optical mouse was only said to last about 3-4 days. I remember reading on other cordless opticals that they can last weeks or even months, but perhaps this is because they aren't using rechargable batteries. With NimH (sp) batteries I would have expected better performance.
Can somebody verify this? I was actually quite interested in this mouse due to the recharging basestation, but if it dies a lot quicker than others I'll just go with a non-recharging mouse on a Lithium-Ion battery.
Depends on the customer base. Selling, say, 1000 post-console games at $10-$15 won't make much money. Selling 100,000 (bigger numbers probably apply) to an all-in-one package would probably make more cash. If you could dump it in there with some EMU's for a bunch of different hardware: NES emulator, SNES emulator, Sega Emulator, MAME Arcade Emulator - you could sell different games as packs (as is often done with old games anyways).
I'm not sure how many people would buy "Hang On" for a cellphone, but I'd imagine a certain number would find it rather sweet to own the "Capcom fighter collection", or "Zelda Suite" etc etc.
I was actually just thinking about this recently. A lot of people are clammoring for decent linux games, and why not? If we get a few good 'nix games, then we could see a lot of people at least trying the OS, if not moving over. On a DVD, you could have a crapload of drivers etc, make the disk bootable, and run without even loading off the hard-disk (except for savegames, etc). A DVD should be big enough to fit a scaled down linux OS, the game, and a bunch of graphics/etc drivers (with an autodetect, or again, something to save the config to the drive).
Here's where I get stuck though: how do I make a 'nix game without making it entirely open source, if I want to make a profit but not have to write a million GPL modules or pay large licensing fees? I was thinking that one could: Write the entire engine source available. Make the game art, meshes, maybe even the config files copyrighted. I'm not sure if this would conflict.
If it worked, you've got a fully workable game that people aren't allowed to copy (due to copyright on the artwork, etc). Since the game itself is open source, and only the characters etc are copyrighted, is there a GPL conflict? One could write a new game on the engine, or run the game with custom graphics (isn't the the current context of people using old doom/quake/etc engines).
The only problem I would think of is: you probably have to make the engine easily acquried, and have the art addons entirely seperate on a sale disk - or can everything that can be o/s available on the same disk, and have it as a product with documentation outlining what belongs to whom, and what is actually being paid for.
Code wants to be free... but talent and hard work work hopefully earn some money still, or 'nix-first games will still be a whiff of smoke in the future.
Except that one of the key things Microsoft et al have been saying is that the DRM features in the OS can be disabled - so basically it is just to prevent backdoor hacker apps from getting into your system - somewhat like a hardware (more global) Zone-Alarm. Of course, I don't believe for a second that MS won't try and make some of it impossible to disable, or at least very difficult.
But then, if somebody can get an X-box to run linux... I'm fairly sure some of the whiz kids out there will figure out how to hack DRM hardware
Generally do work at home. Some hairdressers do, but not many that get high customer volume
A lot of techies (and good ones) work from home, such a requirement could very well kill their business. All things considered, if a business kills a computer - they should replace it. If there's very valuable data on it, the customer should notify them beforehand and they can weight the risks.
On the other note: I recently sent my semi-computer-illiterate grandparents to pick up a new fan for their old Pentium 200 from the local Future Shop. They told the main tech they had a Pentium 200 ($5 heatsink+fan combo), and were given a huge heatsink+fan combo ($25) for an Althon XP/P3/P4. Being idiots, they decided to try installing it themselves, and ended up damaging capacitors near the CPU socket with the oversized heatsink. Apparently Future Shop has no liability in this, they hire idiots for techs who can't read that a heatsink is for a Socket A/370 (Athlon/P4) mainboard.
My point? If major businesses were required to hire at least semi-competetent techs, it would be better. But by the same reasoning I am guessing that people reading this article (who didn't already know of FS's tech crappiness) will keep this in mind when getting PC work/parts from there. Word of mouth is a big factor in a PC business... and a bad reputation as a computer dealer can sink you very fast sometimes.