Actually, for quite some time, there were significant portions of the Visual C++ Suite dealing with databases that could not be used to produce a competing Office Suite, for those of us who occasionally read the EULA.
I guess my favorite things for Windows users have not been created yet.
Remember, this is for non-geeks and families, so Cygwin is out (even though I love it) and games are in.
First, I think that if someone spent the time to create a decent UI-driven Cygwin-based "ports" or similar system empowering non-geek users to get and install the latest software which is runnable on windows, that would really tap into the power of open source for these users.
Second, if Windows users had a rootless XFree86 available to them that they could use (like on Darwin), they could take a much deeper run at UI-based software and not be limited to just a few like Mozilla or OpenOffice that have spent the time to program to the Windows UI. I realize an X-based UI might not be as thrilling, but it makes much larger inroads for the Windows user.
I set up a mail server gave addresses to no one, and within a few days spammers found the new domain that never existed before and discovered the short email names 3 - 4 characters long and were sending spam. This is a slight variation of things I experienced elsewhere with short names.
Lesson. They monitor domain names and try all the short email names. So much for my desire to have my own domain for a short email name:-(
No, the legitimate libertarian complaint would be about the various forms of IPR protections that have grown out of control including copyright that give monopolists their stranglehold on these markets today.
Your sophistry aside, by NOT going for a closed-source solution and introducing the software into the public domain as Open Source, the German government is entering into a competitive arena currently being served (for the most part in businesses and governments) by software created by private companies.
Where have you been? While this used to be a market served by companies, the free market has been killed off for a variety of reasons discussed at length, and now it is a market served by a monopolist. If it is going to be served in this way, I would prefer one that is responsive via politics and votes versus one that is not, AKA Microsoft, who doesn't care in the slightest because they will get the money anyway. If the free market were working well for software, many things would be different.
Maybe there would be one if this were not EXACTLY what Sun fought Microsoft so hard on -- integrating the Java object model with COM. That was really what much of the fighting was about, and as a result, it is quite difficult to thing about getting any momentum to do it with XPCOM. Java isn't supposed to touch polluted things like that.
As Microsoft becomes the gatekeeper of digital identity, I predict that Verisign is the next major company who boasted that their part of the market was safe from Microsoft to be crushed by Microsoft.
You and the article you reference both spell the name wrong. It is "Eichhorn", with two h's. Spelled properly, it means "squirrel" in German. If you look on the company's web page, it is spellec correctly.
"O Companies," said Microsoft,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we defend our copyrights?
But answer came there none --
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.
(apologies to Carroll)
After all, almost everyone here constantly and stridently asserts their right to copy digital recordings of his music.
My post to which you were supposedly responding said exactly the opposite -- that I do not violate either music or software copyrights. I copy within reasonable personal use of CDs that I have legally purchased, just as I make reasonable backup copies of legally-obtained software. There is a big difference here, but you apparently don't get modded up here for accurately answering a post, but by changing the issue so you can answer the straw man.
How, then, are you paying your bills?
Canvassing the neighborhood for donations? Why would you expect to receive the community's continuing goodwill? (By community I mean a real, physical place, not the imaginary "community" of disparate people with sharedd interests.)
In my case, it is still through advertising on a successful product, but there are certainly other business models possible.
I think it is demeaning to people who create software to expect them to work for nothing. Likewise, it is demeaning to musicians to expect them to work for nothing.
Life is hard, because of the dominant players in the industry -- the only ones who stand to gain significantly from these new laws by the entertainment industry is the power brokers. One way or the other, we have to adapt to the polluted market or find a new career. I have a long history of software that used to be very competetive and profitable before Microsoft controlled the market so tightly to make it very difficult to sell any software in the growing set of domains they control, despite it's value.
No question that the media corporatins have successfully molded copyright law into a tool to bludgeon both the consumer and the artist. Historically, though, copyright law is intended to protect artists and consumers from predatory businesses.
Intended by whom? By you? It is evolving into its current form because of the stupid sheep who support it blindly in spite of what it is doing. There is one major predatory business left in the software market, named Microsoft, who has destroyed the other legitimate competetive offerings. Copyright in no way protects others from them but rather grants them the exclusive monopoly on their OS that can be leveraged in many new ways to control the rest of the market, as they have done time after time. That is why they have few friends left. They have eaten them all.
In simple terms, no copyright, no protection of reproducible art, no art to buy apart from live performances. Most importantly, the ability of people who write books to protect their interests would disappear. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
When I see a live baby still there, I will be careful. The new sets of laws are nothing that should be protected for fear of hurting the baby. They have never protected the baby and were not drawn up by those with the baby's best interests at heart.
Try being part of the solution instead of such a large part of the problem.
Wealth that would be simply divided and used differently if they weren't given through the government monopoly called copyright.
I do not buy Microsoft products, nor have I for many years. I do not willingly invest in Microsoft. I would be happier to see the money invested in companies worried more about service and less about controlling, which I see much more of in smaller enterprises than large. There are exceptions, but Microsoft is the rule.
It is no suprise that if accumulation of wealth is their goal, other desirable things will take a back seat, and eventually the downside is big, whether you consider the tax evasion issues against companies who don't pay dividents, the accounting / juggling, CEO mega salaries, etc. or how money is really distributed in such company. The dot com bubble destroyed lots of valuable companies by changing their priorities in a similar fashion by telling developers they were there to impress the shareholder rather than to provide a very valuable service.
Perhaps we need to extend the law to a musician's musical instruments. Creaters of musical instruments have one year to build in technology to prevent musical instruments from reproducing music that was created by someone other than the musician without explicit permission to play it. Vocalists need an implant.
I infringe neither software nor musical copyright. You have no right to force me to program big-brother-style content control into all the software and hardware systems I create.
Those working on open source, like myself and many others, clearly rely on the goodwill and kindness of the community.
In terms of horizontal software, copyright really only serves to make Microsoft and a few others profitable. These laws are to make large corporations rich, who control publicity and name brand to control what the masses want, often regardless of quality or merit by the company earning the profit.
Please, Mr. Hacker, don't make any sudden moves, and hand over your unauthorized glasses.
Don't you know that only subscribed New Media Conglomorate members and FBI agents are authorized to wear cool shades that let them see the copyrighted media that surrounds them?
The security of this approach is so shallow, that even in the lobby of an office building it is arguably worse than relying on other techniques.
I walk into the building with polarized glasses or contacts or something and can see everything that they would have normally taken measures to hide behind some sort of desk and not kept displayed on a screen for long.
ultra-wideband (UWB) devices "knocked out" collision-avoidance systems and impaired instrument landing systems
Collision-avoidance and instrument landings systems seem to be critical only during takeoff and landing, coinciding with the 15 minutes at the beginning and end of flights when use of computers is already banned. So what?
unfortunately these companies are trusted, and should be. I don't like verisign anymore than the next person but who else is gonna do it, M$?
Do you think VeriSign is going to survive any more than other companies in similar positions against Microsoft initiatives? Most users trust Microsoft more than VeriSign, anyway.
A bank would be the natural institution of trust, but that would imply associating financial liability with use of the signature, which Microsoft has always been careful to avoid.
I am quite certain that there are already caller-id-based whitelist systems available for the telephone. For me, I just watch the caller ID and only answer the phone when I want to talk to the caller.
Then why do we get it in our email? It is certainly not less-prosecutable as email. You make the opposite case -- that we need a technological solution.
If you are basing your security on spammer's caring, you have no security. A proper RFC would make it mathematically infeasible for spammers to use the protocol. I don't understand why you think this case is so different from all other security issues, that it can only be fixed by legislation and not technology.
The bits do not enter your house unless your machine accepts them. Just because you have a very stupid protocol that allows all bits to enter without checking whether you want them, is no reason to outlaw sending messages that some recipient may object to.
The "I know it when I see it" argument for SPAM is what is also used for Pornography to outlaw all kinds of things, that are much less obvious to others including classical art and literature. Once you open up the can of worms of litigating people who send messages you do not like, it is a very slippery slope.
Like it or not, my first use of SMTP was on machines that did not even communicate on the ARPAnet, and there was no law or policy stating that I could not use it within my commercial enterprise.
Non-commercial restrictions of ARPANet soon went by the wayside and commercial machines using SMTP extended their use for commercial purposes became connected, which was clearly only a restriction on the network, not on the protocol.
Your argument doesn't fly at all. If you believe commercial uses of internet are not permitted, you are really out of touch, and should be tilting at the whole issue/windmill of using the internet for commercial purposes.
How do recipients of mailing lists decide which messages are off-topic enough to be illegal. Those they do not agree with?
What if I know of two big email lists I want to spam. I cross-subscribe them using two simple subscription requests, and it seems not hard to do if I am forging email headers since the request for cross-authentication goes to the whole list. Now, everyone who sends email to one of the lists is spamming the other list, completely off-topic, and can be sued?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, for quite some time, there were significant portions of the Visual C++ Suite dealing with databases that could not be used to produce a competing Office Suite, for those of us who occasionally read the EULA.
They chose the license.
I guess my favorite things for Windows users have not been created yet.
Remember, this is for non-geeks and families, so Cygwin is out (even though I love it) and games are in.
First, I think that if someone spent the time to create a decent UI-driven Cygwin-based "ports" or similar system empowering non-geek users to get and install the latest software which is runnable on windows, that would really tap into the power of open source for these users.
Second, if Windows users had a rootless XFree86 available to them that they could use (like on Darwin), they could take a much deeper run at UI-based software and not be limited to just a few like Mozilla or OpenOffice that have spent the time to program to the Windows UI. I realize an X-based UI might not be as thrilling, but it makes much larger inroads for the Windows user.
Lesson. They monitor domain names and try all the short email names. So much for my desire to have my own domain for a short email name :-(
No, the legitimate libertarian complaint would be about the various forms of IPR protections that have grown out of control including copyright that give monopolists their stranglehold on these markets today.
Where have you been? While this used to be a market served by companies, the free market has been killed off for a variety of reasons discussed at length, and now it is a market served by a monopolist. If it is going to be served in this way, I would prefer one that is responsive via politics and votes versus one that is not, AKA Microsoft, who doesn't care in the slightest because they will get the money anyway. If the free market were working well for software, many things would be different.
The most important thing to ask: did you file a bug?
Maybe there would be one if this were not EXACTLY what Sun fought Microsoft so hard on -- integrating the Java object model with COM. That was really what much of the fighting was about, and as a result, it is quite difficult to thing about getting any momentum to do it with XPCOM. Java isn't supposed to touch polluted things like that.
As Microsoft becomes the gatekeeper of digital identity, I predict that Verisign is the next major company who boasted that their part of the market was safe from Microsoft to be crushed by Microsoft.
You and the article you reference both spell the name wrong. It is "Eichhorn", with two h's. Spelled properly, it means "squirrel" in German. If you look on the company's web page, it is spellec correctly.
"O Companies," said Microsoft, "You've had a pleasant run! Shall we defend our copyrights? But answer came there none -- And this was scarcely odd, because They'd eaten every one. (apologies to Carroll)
After all, almost everyone here constantly and stridently asserts their right to copy digital recordings of his music.
My post to which you were supposedly responding said exactly the opposite -- that I do not violate either music or software copyrights. I copy within reasonable personal use of CDs that I have legally purchased, just as I make reasonable backup copies of legally-obtained software. There is a big difference here, but you apparently don't get modded up here for accurately answering a post, but by changing the issue so you can answer the straw man.
How, then, are you paying your bills? Canvassing the neighborhood for donations? Why would you expect to receive the community's continuing goodwill? (By community I mean a real, physical place, not the imaginary "community" of disparate people with sharedd interests.)
In my case, it is still through advertising on a successful product, but there are certainly other business models possible.
I think it is demeaning to people who create software to expect them to work for nothing. Likewise, it is demeaning to musicians to expect them to work for nothing.
Life is hard, because of the dominant players in the industry -- the only ones who stand to gain significantly from these new laws by the entertainment industry is the power brokers. One way or the other, we have to adapt to the polluted market or find a new career. I have a long history of software that used to be very competetive and profitable before Microsoft controlled the market so tightly to make it very difficult to sell any software in the growing set of domains they control, despite it's value.
No question that the media corporatins have successfully molded copyright law into a tool to bludgeon both the consumer and the artist. Historically, though, copyright law is intended to protect artists and consumers from predatory businesses.
Intended by whom? By you? It is evolving into its current form because of the stupid sheep who support it blindly in spite of what it is doing. There is one major predatory business left in the software market, named Microsoft, who has destroyed the other legitimate competetive offerings. Copyright in no way protects others from them but rather grants them the exclusive monopoly on their OS that can be leveraged in many new ways to control the rest of the market, as they have done time after time. That is why they have few friends left. They have eaten them all.
In simple terms, no copyright, no protection of reproducible art, no art to buy apart from live performances. Most importantly, the ability of people who write books to protect their interests would disappear. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
When I see a live baby still there, I will be careful. The new sets of laws are nothing that should be protected for fear of hurting the baby. They have never protected the baby and were not drawn up by those with the baby's best interests at heart.
Try being part of the solution instead of such a large part of the problem.
Wealth that would be simply divided and used differently if they weren't given through the government monopoly called copyright.
I do not buy Microsoft products, nor have I for many years. I do not willingly invest in Microsoft. I would be happier to see the money invested in companies worried more about service and less about controlling, which I see much more of in smaller enterprises than large. There are exceptions, but Microsoft is the rule.
It is no suprise that if accumulation of wealth is their goal, other desirable things will take a back seat, and eventually the downside is big, whether you consider the tax evasion issues against companies who don't pay dividents, the accounting / juggling, CEO mega salaries, etc. or how money is really distributed in such company. The dot com bubble destroyed lots of valuable companies by changing their priorities in a similar fashion by telling developers they were there to impress the shareholder rather than to provide a very valuable service.
Perhaps we need to extend the law to a musician's musical instruments. Creaters of musical instruments have one year to build in technology to prevent musical instruments from reproducing music that was created by someone other than the musician without explicit permission to play it. Vocalists need an implant.
I infringe neither software nor musical copyright. You have no right to force me to program big-brother-style content control into all the software and hardware systems I create.
Those working on open source, like myself and many others, clearly rely on the goodwill and kindness of the community.
In terms of horizontal software, copyright really only serves to make Microsoft and a few others profitable. These laws are to make large corporations rich, who control publicity and name brand to control what the masses want, often regardless of quality or merit by the company earning the profit.
I'd happily call it a hoax if that were the price of the ticket to go to the moon.
Don't you know that only subscribed New Media Conglomorate members and FBI agents are authorized to wear cool shades that let them see the copyrighted media that surrounds them?
I walk into the building with polarized glasses or contacts or something and can see everything that they would have normally taken measures to hide behind some sort of desk and not kept displayed on a screen for long.
ultra-wideband (UWB) devices "knocked out" collision-avoidance systems and impaired instrument landing systems
Collision-avoidance and instrument landings systems seem to be critical only during takeoff and landing, coinciding with the 15 minutes at the beginning and end of flights when use of computers is already banned. So what?
Do you think VeriSign is going to survive any more than other companies in similar positions against Microsoft initiatives? Most users trust Microsoft more than VeriSign, anyway.
A bank would be the natural institution of trust, but that would imply associating financial liability with use of the signature, which Microsoft has always been careful to avoid.
I am quite certain that there are already caller-id-based whitelist systems available for the telephone. For me, I just watch the caller ID and only answer the phone when I want to talk to the caller.
Then why do we get it in our email? It is certainly not less-prosecutable as email. You make the opposite case -- that we need a technological solution.
The bits do not enter your house unless your machine accepts them. Just because you have a very stupid protocol that allows all bits to enter without checking whether you want them, is no reason to outlaw sending messages that some recipient may object to.
The "I know it when I see it" argument for SPAM is what is also used for Pornography to outlaw all kinds of things, that are much less obvious to others including classical art and literature. Once you open up the can of worms of litigating people who send messages you do not like, it is a very slippery slope.
Non-commercial restrictions of ARPANet soon went by the wayside and commercial machines using SMTP extended their use for commercial purposes became connected, which was clearly only a restriction on the network, not on the protocol.
Your argument doesn't fly at all. If you believe commercial uses of internet are not permitted, you are really out of touch, and should be tilting at the whole issue/windmill of using the internet for commercial purposes.
So you would also sue someone for slashdotting your web page. Now we get to the real problem in your position.
How do recipients of mailing lists decide which messages are off-topic enough to be illegal. Those they do not agree with? What if I know of two big email lists I want to spam. I cross-subscribe them using two simple subscription requests, and it seems not hard to do if I am forging email headers since the request for cross-authentication goes to the whole list. Now, everyone who sends email to one of the lists is spamming the other list, completely off-topic, and can be sued?