As for 3D graphics work. I am not sure exactly what field of work you work in, but assuming for a moment that you work in some kind of animation, motion pictures for example, movie production will still be able to make money. The big money in movies these days aren't in DVD:s (they're just cream on the top), but on movie theater showings.
That's bullshit. There is a growing market for straight-to-DVD productions, that rely totally on DVD sales. These are things that aren't as big-budget or "grand" to warrant a theatrical release, but are still quality work for which the creators deserve to get paid in accordance with the popularity of the work. And you're totally wrong even for big movies. A significant percentage of movies make more money on the DVD release than they do in theaters. Indeed, many movies lose money at the box office and don't start to turn profit until the DVD release.
And lastly, your proposal would allow a (unscrupulous) movie theater to play bootleg copies of the movie (since there's no copyright), at cheaper ticket price than the legit theaters, which undercuts even the theater industry.
Your proposal is quite ill-conceived, and is based on a combination of selfishness and misguided idealism, with nary a thought to the broader ramifications.
"Writing in such an environment is less of a solitary activity, where the writer closets him or herself away and returns after some time with a book to hawk, than an interactive one, where the writer needs to constantly maintain the relationship with his benefactors."
Sounds like a recipe for writers constantly catering to the least common denominator. Your proposal is sure to produce, not only fewer works, but, ironically, a higher percetange of utter trash.
So how does an author "perform" a book? How does a director "perform" a movie? How does Bungie "perform" Halo? Your party platform sucks badly. It's so shortsighted and ill-considered as to be beyond belief. Even with regards to music, how does a song writer (not performer) get paid in accordance to the popularity of his song?
Oh, and isn't the GPL backed by copyright? Would not your proposal screw over the GPL crowd too, as GPL source code would be freely copyable and used without regard to the GPL license? This is an honest question, not rhetorical.
Is it the new "in" thing around here to authoritatively speak about something one is totally ignorant about? Read up on WHS before speaking more so you don't make yourself look even more foolish.
And if I use GPL code in my closed source app that I sell to the public, then it's the original creator's fault because he released the code for me to use without paying me, right? He made the naive assumption that I'd abide by GPL; what a buffoon he is. To put it in your words: "If FSF wants devs that use GPL code to follow their rules, they should pay the devs then. Very simple concept."
Wait, let me get this straight. If I make a deal with you to test an internal build of a software package, under certain terms (e.g. NDA, not distributint the package to others etc), and you agree to those terms, and then go on to violate those terms, then it's MY FAULT for not paying you? Wow. Just wow.
Just because the CPU is at 100% doens't mean that the particular hung process is accounting for all of that 100%. If the OS is preemptive multitasking, then other processes will get time-slices, so you can kill the offending task.
Let's say that I write a 10-line program that simply takes integer input, performs some mathematical calculation and printfs the output. My program makes use of SafeIntOnOverflow (the function that Word is using to throw exceptions on integer-overflow). You run my program and give it an integer that causes my calculation to do integer-overflow, SafeIntOnOverflow detects it and throws an exception, I don't bother catching it, and therefore crash. How is that one step away from exploitation? This is a controled crash, if you will. No data was overwritten, no corruption of anything, and no exploitation possible.
Look, there's a bug. Nobody's saying otherwise. Did you bother to read the article? It admits that there's a bug. The bug wasn't uncovered in normal testing or the huge beta. (Beta testers don't bother running apps through a debugger and feeding it random data just for grins.) It'll get fixed in an SP. Or maybe not, if the bug is so rare that fixing it would be more risking than letting it be.
But it's not exploitable because the bug is detected by SafeIntOnOverflow(), which throws an exception on integer-overflow. This is GOOD. And please, don't act like slashdotters write perfect code.
According to the article, the crash in question is a result of Word using the SafeIntOnOverflow() function to deal with integer-overflow. That function throws an exception on integer overflow. That the function is being used in the code is evidence that the code is indeed checking the validity of an integer. But apparently there's no good way to recover from that situation, so they don't bother to catch the thrown exception and let it crash. Seems good to me. The only reason there was integer-overflow in the first place is that some researcher was running the app in a debugger and feeding it random data.
Now, someone could intentionally create a corrupt document that causes integer-overflow, which would cause the exception and crash, but real documents won't cause that behavior (notwithstanding other possible bugs).
He's not taking it "lightheartedly" at all. He says, "I have written many times and in many places, JUST FIX THE !$@%@^* BUGS!!! If it does NOT crash, then there's no need to lose sleep over whether it is exploitable or not. Solid code tends to be secure code." But sometimes it's not possible to fix the bug (due to time constraints, legacy code structure, etc), so it's better to throw an exception and crash. Microsoft supplies SPs to Office, and those do have bug fixes (not just security fixes, but general bugs like this one).
"Mac users need iPhone"? I'm a Mac user and couldn't care less about iPhone. I'd much rather have Leopard. (Especially since I'm still running Panther, having decided to skip Tiger.)
Actually, I remember Mac fanboys in May 2006 claiming that Leopard would be released Sept 06 (see news:alt.mac.sys.advocacy (or whatever the exact url is)). I remember Jobs himself saying that Leopard would ship the same time as Vista. The "Spring 2007" date was already a delay. The delay has now been extended.
"If they adapted their business model" ...
on
AACS Cracked Again
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· Score: 1
"If they adapted their business model"? WTF is that supposed to mean? You mean, simply give the movies away for free and live off of "support"? Explain what you mean, if you will.
Why do you guys so badly want to remove the DRM? If you have the disc, then your HD-DVD player will play it, so why strip the DRM? I've heard people saying, "Well, I want to transfer the movie to my iPod", to which I say, "Bullshit". Nobody gives a damn about watching a highdef movie on an iPod. So if you can, please provide legit reasons for "stealing or cracking the key to every code created for the discs". I know there are plenty of illegit reasons, but list some legit ones.
I agree that those that bought the disc should have the ability to remove the DRM if they can; that is within "fair use". Unfortunately, the very same readers (and possibly posters) of the doom9 forum that extol the virtues of "fair use" also release bittorents of the DRM-stripped movies. That goes way beyond "fair use". Slashdotters always gloss over that part.
Aren't these the same guys that are determined to create miniature black holes to study them, and they guarantee that these black holes won't suck the earth into them? That's pretty scary if if they're suffering from math errors.
Sonic MyDVD 6 does the same thing. "Open Session" is the default, and you have to go into the options dlg to change it. In the past, Microsoft has used Roxio software as the builtin disc burning software, and Roxio is now owned by Sonic, so maybe that explains Vista's behavior. But the vast majority of systems recognize open session discs (I'd guess all systems that have been made since the year 2000).
"I have noticed that Windows fans' excuse for crashing on other people's systems is something along the lines of "Jeez, they must be stupid if they couldn't figure out what was causing their problem". "
In other words, they've lowered themselves to that of the Linux fanboys.
Uh, what? The whole point of it is that you can click anywhere in the 'path' and jump to that folder. So jumping up 5 levels now requires just one click rather than 5. How is this "more painful"?
I agree with you, but I can see the opposing point of view where one might prefer to click a button 5 times rather than move the mouse to a certain part of the path and then click.
Unlike Vista, XP really DIDN'T offer anything Windows 2000 didn't already have, except for the improved interface and related APIs. Ok, it had system restore too - but that was pretty much it.
Why do people keep comparing XP with Windows 2000? Windows 2000 wasn't a mainstream OS. The upgrade path for 99% of windows users was from Win9x to XP (a huge improvement) or NT4 to XP. My own upgrade path went from Win98 to XP at home, and NT4 to XP at work. I never saw Windows 2000 running, and know nobody that did.
And yet Firefox, with millions of eyes pouring over the code, has buffer overflows and exploits aplenty (or have you not noticed the ever increasing frequency and size of Firefox security updates recently?). Software developers are human beings, not robots, and are imperfect. Live with it.
Slashdot Mirror
"Embedded advertising"?
So the LOTR movies would have the characters drinking Pepsi and whatnot?
Wow, what a great idea!!
That's bullshit. There is a growing market for straight-to-DVD productions, that rely totally on DVD sales. These are things that aren't as big-budget or "grand" to warrant a theatrical release, but are still quality work for which the creators deserve to get paid in accordance with the popularity of the work. And you're totally wrong even for big movies. A significant percentage of movies make more money on the DVD release than they do in theaters. Indeed, many movies lose money at the box office and don't start to turn profit until the DVD release.
And lastly, your proposal would allow a (unscrupulous) movie theater to play bootleg copies of the movie (since there's no copyright), at cheaper ticket price than the legit theaters, which undercuts even the theater industry.
Your proposal is quite ill-conceived, and is based on a combination of selfishness and misguided idealism, with nary a thought to the broader ramifications.
"Writing in such an environment is less of a solitary activity, where the writer closets him or herself away and returns after some time with a book to hawk, than an interactive one, where the writer needs to constantly maintain the relationship with his benefactors."
Sounds like a recipe for writers constantly catering to the least common denominator. Your proposal is sure to produce, not only fewer works, but, ironically, a higher percetange of utter trash.
So how does an author "perform" a book? How does a director "perform" a movie? How does Bungie "perform" Halo? Your party platform sucks badly. It's so shortsighted and ill-considered as to be beyond belief. Even with regards to music, how does a song writer (not performer) get paid in accordance to the popularity of his song?
Oh, and isn't the GPL backed by copyright? Would not your proposal screw over the GPL crowd too, as GPL source code would be freely copyable and used without regard to the GPL license? This is an honest question, not rhetorical.
Is it the new "in" thing around here to authoritatively speak about something one is totally ignorant about? Read up on WHS before speaking more so you don't make yourself look even more foolish.
And if I use GPL code in my closed source app that I sell to the public, then it's the original creator's fault because he released the code for me to use without paying me, right? He made the naive assumption that I'd abide by GPL; what a buffoon he is.
To put it in your words:
"If FSF wants devs that use GPL code to follow their rules, they should pay the devs then. Very simple concept."
Wait, let me get this straight.
If I make a deal with you to test an internal build of a software package, under certain terms (e.g. NDA, not distributint the package to others etc), and you agree to those terms, and then go on to violate those terms, then it's MY FAULT for not paying you? Wow. Just wow.
Just because the CPU is at 100% doens't mean that the particular hung process is accounting for all of that 100%. If the OS is preemptive multitasking, then other processes will get time-slices, so you can kill the offending task.
Bullshit.
Let's say that I write a 10-line program that simply takes integer input, performs some mathematical calculation and printfs the output. My program makes use of SafeIntOnOverflow (the function that Word is using to throw exceptions on integer-overflow). You run my program and give it an integer that causes my calculation to do integer-overflow, SafeIntOnOverflow detects it and throws an exception, I don't bother catching it, and therefore crash. How is that one step away from exploitation? This is a controled crash, if you will. No data was overwritten, no corruption of anything, and no exploitation possible.
Look, there's a bug. Nobody's saying otherwise. Did you bother to read the article? It admits that there's a bug. The bug wasn't uncovered in normal testing or the huge beta. (Beta testers don't bother running apps through a debugger and feeding it random data just for grins.) It'll get fixed in an SP. Or maybe not, if the bug is so rare that fixing it would be more risking than letting it be.
But it's not exploitable because the bug is detected by SafeIntOnOverflow(), which throws an exception on integer-overflow. This is GOOD. And please, don't act like slashdotters write perfect code.
According to the article, the crash in question is a result of Word using the SafeIntOnOverflow() function to deal with integer-overflow. That function throws an exception on integer overflow. That the function is being used in the code is evidence that the code is indeed checking the validity of an integer. But apparently there's no good way to recover from that situation, so they don't bother to catch the thrown exception and let it crash. Seems good to me. The only reason there was integer-overflow in the first place is that some researcher was running the app in a debugger and feeding it random data.
Now, someone could intentionally create a corrupt document that causes integer-overflow, which would cause the exception and crash, but real documents won't cause that behavior (notwithstanding other possible bugs).
He's not taking it "lightheartedly" at all. He says, "I have written many times and in many places, JUST FIX THE !$@%@^* BUGS!!! If it does NOT crash, then there's no need to lose sleep over whether it is exploitable or not. Solid code tends to be secure code." But sometimes it's not possible to fix the bug (due to time constraints, legacy code structure, etc), so it's better to throw an exception and crash. Microsoft supplies SPs to Office, and those do have bug fixes (not just security fixes, but general bugs like this one).
"Mac users need iPhone"?
I'm a Mac user and couldn't care less about iPhone.
I'd much rather have Leopard. (Especially since I'm still running Panther, having decided to skip Tiger.)
Actually, I remember Mac fanboys in May 2006 claiming that Leopard would be released Sept 06 (see news:alt.mac.sys.advocacy (or whatever the exact url is)). I remember Jobs himself saying that Leopard would ship the same time as Vista. The "Spring 2007" date was already a delay. The delay has now been extended.
"If they adapted their business model"? WTF is that supposed to mean? You mean, simply give the movies away for free and live off of "support"? Explain what you mean, if you will.
Why do you guys so badly want to remove the DRM? If you have the disc, then your HD-DVD player will play it, so why strip the DRM? I've heard people saying, "Well, I want to transfer the movie to my iPod", to which I say, "Bullshit". Nobody gives a damn about watching a highdef movie on an iPod. So if you can, please provide legit reasons for "stealing or cracking the key to every code created for the discs". I know there are plenty of illegit reasons, but list some legit ones.
I agree that those that bought the disc should have the ability to remove the DRM if they can; that is within "fair use".
Unfortunately, the very same readers (and possibly posters) of the doom9 forum that extol the virtues of "fair use" also release bittorents of the DRM-stripped movies. That goes way beyond "fair use". Slashdotters always gloss over that part.
Aren't these the same guys that are determined to create miniature black holes to study them, and they guarantee that these black holes won't suck the earth into them? That's pretty scary if if they're suffering from math errors.
Sorry, songs are not worth $1.29 a piece to me.
Non-DRM carrying a 30% markup? Give me a break.
Sonic MyDVD 6 does the same thing. "Open Session" is the default, and you have to go into the options dlg to change it. In the past, Microsoft has used Roxio software as the builtin disc burning software, and Roxio is now owned by Sonic, so maybe that explains Vista's behavior. But the vast majority of systems recognize open session discs (I'd guess all systems that have been made since the year 2000).
"I have noticed that Windows fans' excuse for crashing on other people's systems is something along the lines of "Jeez, they must be stupid if they couldn't figure out what was causing their problem". "
In other words, they've lowered themselves to that of the Linux fanboys.
I agree with you, but I can see the opposing point of view where one might prefer to click a button 5 times rather than move the mouse to a certain part of the path and then click.
Why do people keep comparing XP with Windows 2000? Windows 2000 wasn't a mainstream OS. The upgrade path for 99% of windows users was from Win9x to XP (a huge improvement) or NT4 to XP. My own upgrade path went from Win98 to XP at home, and NT4 to XP at work. I never saw Windows 2000 running, and know nobody that did.
But I agree with the gist of your post.
Maybe he did look at the alternatives to Photoshop and Office and found them wanting. Not that that justifies his piracy.
And yet Firefox, with millions of eyes pouring over the code, has buffer overflows and exploits aplenty (or have you not noticed the ever increasing frequency and size of Firefox security updates recently?). Software developers are human beings, not robots, and are imperfect. Live with it.