I mean, this is the time where people buy the TiVo specifically to avoid advertising. Annoying advertising that is. Now what would happen with this interruption based advertising is that people would look for solutions to avoid it. Other browsers, some modifications to the flash engine or whatever drives these ads. I would rather look at raw html code than to have those ads forced on me. It all becomes especially ridiculous when he starts to argue that the NY Times would be an ideal place for this. Hey, once the text is there i hit some equivalent of 'stop' and all the page can do is scroll. If they decide to cut up the articles into so many tiny parts, each headed with advertising i open two windows and read one, while the other loads/advertises in the background. So even with existing browsers noone would look at 20 seconds ads.
On the other hand advertising in journals still seems to work. There are no "click throughs" in journals, so they should stop all advertising there anyway. I think these people confuse advertising with annoying. I would really like to have that guy locked in a room with tv-screens in all directions (even floor/ceiling) with sound he can't turn off and constantly running adverts of 'foo', then after 2 hours of this i'd ask him if he now would like some 'foo'.
Sorry, annoying people until they buy the crap isn't working with todays technology. Because todays technology allows the people to avoid said annoyances. If they make the adverts louder i press the 'mute' button. So advertisers should better rethink their strategy and try to make people interested.
Here (Germany) the law realized, that stopping people from copying movies in their homes and giving them to friends is unenforcable. So it is *allowed* to make copies for private use (so to follow the law by the letter you may not give away a copy, but you can lease the movie to someone, he copies it (he may even give it to you to copy it for him) and returns the "original").
To compensate this there's GEMA: for blank media a certain amount is paid to GEMA which (supposedly) hands it on to the artists. Now this system is getting out of hand since the GEMA wants money for anything "computer" since you can make copies with computers. We'll see where that leads to.
I wonder if there really is a law forbidding to make copies of movies for private use, since that seems pretty much unenforcable and hence even unethical. There's quite a difference to *publicly* sharing movies via gnutella in my opinion and i think these issues shouldn't be confused.
The problem was bundling the AIM.exe. Obviously there's no legal way to do that. But there is no need to either since there is an easy way out: let the people get AIM.exe themselves. This solution is even mentioned in the article but marked as "of dubious legality" because it relies on the AIM.exe to be present somewhere and being used in "unacceptable ways".
Now any solution i can think of is relying, in one way or another, on gathering data "in unacceptable ways" on the AIM.exe. To cache all possible checksums (i don't know if they're limited in some way so i assume arbritrary byte-ranges) would mean to cache sufficient data to be able to reconstruct the executable. So even the proposed legal cover is of "dubious legality". In essence, once you start building a client that mimicks a proprietary client to the level of returning correct binary checksums you should ask a lawyer how to get yourself out of the hot water.
I think it's safe to assume, that AOL won't go after the users themselves with lawsuits. So what is needed is to get a practicable solution out there which can't be attacked by getting at one person. The next thing we'll see is AOL using some cryptoscheme and however weak it is, we'll get the DeCSS story all over again. If it gets as complicated as Checksum servers etc. then why not go and set up alternative IM-servers?
Do you really think, that "more money"="more quality"? Maybe the licenses to broadcast a movie will stop to rake in ridicoulous amounts of money for the MPAA, fine by me. Ow, now they're bound to make worse movies. Sorry, but what i appreciate most about a good film is the story. Then a good director who avoids messing the story up. Then actors (and i think there are enough good actors out there, no need to pay millions for someone who is good at acting) and locations. Then special effects start to become interesting. I mean, hey, they made good movies 20 years ago, it was possible, so why has at least half the budget of a movie to be allocated to special effects?
When i see movies announced as being "the most expensive movie of all times" i ask myself why that should say anything about the quality of a movie. Especially if so much of the money is assigned to special effects which take a few minutes to view altogether. Then there's a huge advertising campaign which doesn't make that movie one bit better. Maybe they waste all that money to get the label "most expensive movie of all times".
What you demand is, that people tolerate other viewpoints. I don't have a problem with a statement like "I think porn is bad". I tolerate that viewpoint, and that it's expressed in a way that marks it as a personal opinion. Someone who thinks that way is free not to buy pornography all his life.
What i have a problem with (and aparently i'm not the only one) are people applying their personal opinions on other peoples lifes. Demanding that pornography shouldn't be sold is intolerance. Anne Marie obviously doesn't tolerate people with other morals than her own and fluxrad is happy there are places which aren't affected by such intolerance. Now you demand we have to tolerate Anne Maries intolerance (please read her other article for more intolerant statements).
Wow, so the morality you prefer is along the lines of "we do anything to make a buck, if it means dumping our plans to avoid bible fanatics raising a fuss then even that." or what? To sell porn films over the internet was a very straightforward business plan. Everyone knows sex sells on the internet, so why not on yahoo?
Now let's quote some of your other article (modded 5 Funny) to get some taste your kind of moral:
"Pornography is indistinguishable from rape."
"If we let Yahoo sell pornography like this, then it's a slippery slope down to having them sell videos of executions."
"... criminal activity such as this..."
"Pornography kills women's souls. Pornography burns men's souls."
"... men universally crave and devour pornography." (Lets ask those men from Sirius)
All this is intermixed with some stuff about the bible and the ten commandments. The morals behind this? If we look away it (pornography) doesn't happen? Sex (outside marriage) is bad? Everyone has to live the way i do? Men are swine all over the universe?
It's no news, that customers are presented with corporate doublespeak to make even the worst blunders look like it's in fact even an advantage for them ("because you now get that extra special service..."). These documents obviously have to have some revision history, most of it probably dealing with how big a lie the customers will accept without laughing out loud. So you have to read between the lines, and to figure out the facts by searching for what is left out in the text. Now someone blundered (nothing new there either) and we get to read the revision history filling in all those little omissions in the document text.
I find the whole story only mildly funny (the blunder part) and not shocking at all. The sad part here is, that everyone already knows he's lied to and still buys the stuff. The people even expect to be lied to. The truth would be really shocking here, something along the lines of: "Well, all we want is your money anyways. Since you already bought our product we only want you to be quiet about it's shortcomings and the cheapest way to buy some time here is obviously a pressstatement. And please understand we treat businesses different, because they might pay some lawyer and really raise a fuss". Now that would've been some story.
See here (sorry, couldn't find an actual pricing scheme): Rights owners are licensed by Macrovision to utilize Macrovision's DVD copy protection on their program material. These companies pay Macrovision on a per-disc basis according to a set price sheet, based on volumes reported by their replicator(s).. That means when you buy the DVD you allready have payed the license fees. Since Macrovision also demands license fees from the manufacturers of ICs capable of Macrovision encoding, you also payed the license fees when you bought a DVD player.
If MS really manages to "unsupport" MP3 into oblivion it may turn out to be not a good thing at all since the Media Industry will happily go along with this scheme (they want content protection at all costs, even if it means to depend on Microsofts proprietary standard, anyone remember the GIF story?). At first everything will be fine and dandy, until most windows people forgot about MP3 players. So: less/crappy MP3-players -> less MP3 -> less music under Linux (you don't think MS will release a player for Linux, do you?). Then the Media Industry will happily screw the consumers until "fair use" is a fairy tale. Next Microsoft will screw Media Industry and Consumers by demanding license fees for their proprietary standard (see Marcovision) Or just make recording software expensive to rent (why sell it at all...). Maybe they even sell the players (yeah, they come for free... you only need to purchase Windows).
The obvious way to thwart this plan is reverse engineering the Microsoft codec. Then it will be DeCSS all over again. The other way is not to use that new standard. But microsoft doing everything to make it look bad and just stopping short of having it's new OS erase them off the HD on sight is really making it hard to convince Joe User to go on with MP3.
Well, i don't think this "throwing money at something to make it valuable" attitude with trademarks makes not much sense, where it not for laws that made it so. I believe MasterCard is in fact very happy to see so many "priceless" jokes and to see their name under them. So if they have all those cubicled attorneys bullying people all over the world with cease and desist letters they deserve to be laughed at. If they loose face because the jokes now make ridicule of themselves they simply deserve it.
I'm sorry, but i don't think allowing big companies to send those letters without risking anything should be part of a good legal system. If i bully someone around on the street he can sue me, but if a 3rd grade attorney sends me threatening letters in the name of some company i can't do a thing. Oh wait, i can, i can publish it and damage the companys reputation that way. And that's exactly what happened.
I'm sorry, but what i don't understand about the issue is: Why does it have to be the chinese governments fault? It could only be the chinese governments fault if they specifically ordered the pilot to crash that plane. While this is what might have happened noone is asking them to admit that. So there was a nice way out of the whole thing, by blaming it on the crews of one or both of the planes. But the Chinese decided not to go that way, they saw that by keeping the American crew hostage they could leverage some pressure and decided to play a game of chicken with the US government.
Now they knew that it wouldn't be easy to coax an apology out of the USA. If they applied their own rules it would be virtually impossible, but they also have plenty of foreign affairs analysts who could have told them. The whole thing only makes sense, if the chinese government win something by an apology. Else why risk to loose face by demanding an apology the USA might refuse? Now the Chinese Govt. brought themselves into a position it can't easily back out, but that in itself is no reason for the US to help them out. (The fact that the american crew might want home is, though).
I mean, if we allow argumentation like "Well ok we shouldn't have started it, but now we can't do anything about it anyway, so now it's your turn to offer everyone an easy way out." it'd make things a little too easy to screw oneself out of options and let the other side sort out the diplomatic mess.
If there can be made more money from a game by advertising, that money will only pay for a bigger industry, more managers, shareholder value, whatever, the same way it is with music. Then, after the MPAA and the RIAA we'll have the CGIAA (Computer Gaming Industry...) or something similar. Next one game will advertise the other and it's only money being pushed around in circles and the game itself being more expensive than before, because they need people to move all that money around, all kinds of lawyers and whatnot.
Consumers should start to realize, that in the end they pay everything, all the advertising too. So even if it were true and Coca Cola payed half the game for you, you'd pay the Game little by little with each can of coke.
What bothers me even more is the possibility of redefining the contract under which you are allowed to use the thing. With the new update comes one of these click-away contracts which may as well redefine the terms of use. Maybe a DVD-player suddenly asks you to buy a special version if you want to run public shows. I really don't want to think of something really nasty here in fear of seeing it in reality tomorrow.
If you are pausing the TV, why are you paying attention to it?? I find advertisements annoying. Most of them are flashy, extra loud, and in short penetrating. The advertiser wants your attention by all means he can get. When i'm pausing the TV it's most likely i want to focus on something else, maybe taking a phonecall. Then i really don't want advertises blaring in the background.
Actually i never had any problems with them wanting no reverse engineering (i just mentioned it to point out that there comes a contract with the thing anyway) not only because some of the source might even not be theirs, but because i find it perfectly understandable that they don't want everyone messing with the code. Even if it's wellmeaning it can do damage by sacrificing accuracy for a performance gain.
Anyway, when they come out with a linux client i'll look at it again. Until then i'll dedicate some cycles to Folding@Home.
Yes, but that's how you get the stuff to the market. I expect the resulting product to be something you can't brew together in your backyard. Publishing the results will also do some good, because if the pricing is too ridiculous someone will just go along, ignore the patents and build a fab Where a government is too happy to get a few dollars into the country to ask what international IP-laws exactly are violated.
Something like this would be better placed at the "cure for cancer" site than here. It is irritating to get the connection between that project and the business presented on slashdot, while the "cure for cancer" site doesn't loose a word about it.
Maybe that was a good tactic to avoid people believing their cycles are being misused before the rumors started flying all about the net. But now the rumor is out in the world (and for the people you try to win for the project it can't be more in the world than on slashdot) you should put some reassuring documents up what exactly the client will do, and what those cycles will be used for, and more important, what they will not be used for.
Also someone at UD should contact the slashdot editors ASAP to get an update of that article. While it may be tempting to ask the lawyers first, they will only waste away time. Sorry, but even if things are as you state, UD has to take part of the blame for: a) not being upfront about the rest of it's business and b) not providing along some reassuring terms in the contract saying that those cpu cycles will not be used for anything else (there is anyway a contract with the code saying you may not reverse engineer the code, why not put something in there to the effect that the Program will only work on the cure for cancer Project?)
The straight way to conspiracy theory. (Although maybe not, considering that much of todays consumer products have a "builtin" finite lifetime). But since enough older versions of IE are still in use (else the artilcle wouldn't be an issue) the question is, if it was really too much asked of Microsoft to provide a patch for those versions as well.
And as a nice sideeffect everyone is forced to upgrade his Browser. Even if the upgrade is free this has some implications. My major concern would be changes in the Licensing terms, i.e. what you are allowed to do with that browser and the files with your data it is managing. See here why this might be a concern. As an example, if it manages your email, and that updated browser is using a proprietary format to save it you're suddenly tied to that productline if you want to keep that e-mail. Extend that to address-lists, bookmarks, etc.
So i think there are valid reasons not to want a free update, but security-holes that large are plain unbearable.
If you're big enough you should be able to get something in writing as to what exactly the license allows you to do and if/how it can be transferred. Actually this should be just part of the license (which i always thought of as a kind of contract) and accessible for everyone. Sorry, i can't understand why it should be necessary to phone after microsoft, to know what the licenses terms are, if it's not in the license (and if the license not points to reliable sources either) it is, in my opinion, not part of the license. So if you have got a piece of paper, saying that this piece of paper allows you to do x, but nowhere it says anything limiting the transfer of said piece of paper, then whoever holds the piece of paper may do x.
So if i have a license which allows my business to run 200 instances of program "foo" worldwide, and do the necessary installing on the machines it's supposed to run on, then i might even install it on 600 machines if only 200 of them use it at a time (think license server, applications only used during daytime, worldwide business and timezones). Now *that* might be something to lower license costs.
"We spend a lot of time and resources constantly proving license compliance"
Maybe a better investment would be, to train the staff to use another operating system, instead of always trying to figure out how to make the best of Microsoft licensing terms, only to have it in pieces again, when Microsoft decides to change their licensing again. At least retraining has to be done only once. Also they may expect that with the event of XP (which means eXPerience as we all now learned) they're in for a totally new (but not better) licensing eXPerience.
Just an example: the GUI was a great concept, and though Microsoft didn't actually invent it they built it into their OS with great success.
I see nothing wrong there. Anyone building something new, or improving something will look for proved and well working concepts to include, and for new concepts just emerging to consider. It's how a software product stays at the edge of technology: looking at what the competition is doing and trying to make it better.
My question is, what new concepts (in competing software products) do you deem worthy of considering and why?
Oh and a member of what was once a notorious cracker outfit should be automatically believed when he makes such statements? According to the Article Mueller Maghun is also an occasional adviser to government figures, the CCC is nowadays quite frank about it's motivations and what he said is, while carefully expressed, quite reasonable. It also fits with what the Ministry Defense Official said. His wording is also quite careful: "I can confirm that the Ministry signed a general licensing contract with Microsoft [...] and we intend to continue to use such systems." quite a lot of words to say very little. Also he didn't deny that serious concerns remained. Then he explicitly states that "[...] additional security measures are independent of Microsoft software.". Also Mueller-Maguhn never said anything like it MUST BE TRUE and his arguing isn't along the line they can't prove it to be false, but more along the line of "they choose their wording carefully so as not to hurt international relationships, so you'll have to read between the lines for the true meaning".
Had you read the first article you'd also know that Linux was not considered the alternative, but some OS from a german corporation. Also i don't find it weird that a military organisation can have a consistent policy wich OS to use. They have rules for everything there, to the point at which depth of water you have to start swimming.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, this is the time where people buy the TiVo specifically to avoid advertising. Annoying advertising that is. Now what would happen with this interruption based advertising is that people would look for solutions to avoid it. Other browsers, some modifications to the flash engine or whatever drives these ads. I would rather look at raw html code than to have those ads forced on me. It all becomes especially ridiculous when he starts to argue that the NY Times would be an ideal place for this. Hey, once the text is there i hit some equivalent of 'stop' and all the page can do is scroll. If they decide to cut up the articles into so many tiny parts, each headed with advertising i open two windows and read one, while the other loads/advertises in the background. So even with existing browsers noone would look at 20 seconds ads.
On the other hand advertising in journals still seems to work. There are no "click throughs" in journals, so they should stop all advertising there anyway. I think these people confuse advertising with annoying. I would really like to have that guy locked in a room with tv-screens in all directions (even floor/ceiling) with sound he can't turn off and constantly running adverts of 'foo', then after 2 hours of this i'd ask him if he now would like some 'foo'.
Sorry, annoying people until they buy the crap isn't working with todays technology. Because todays technology allows the people to avoid said annoyances. If they make the adverts louder i press the 'mute' button. So advertisers should better rethink their strategy and try to make people interested.
Here (Germany) the law realized, that stopping people from copying movies in their homes and giving them to friends is unenforcable. So it is *allowed* to make copies for private use (so to follow the law by the letter you may not give away a copy, but you can lease the movie to someone, he copies it (he may even give it to you to copy it for him) and returns the "original").
To compensate this there's GEMA: for blank media a certain amount is paid to GEMA which (supposedly) hands it on to the artists. Now this system is getting out of hand since the GEMA wants money for anything "computer" since you can make copies with computers. We'll see where that leads to.
I wonder if there really is a law forbidding to make copies of movies for private use, since that seems pretty much unenforcable and hence even unethical. There's quite a difference to *publicly* sharing movies via gnutella in my opinion and i think these issues shouldn't be confused.
The problem was bundling the AIM.exe. Obviously there's no legal way to do that. But there is no need to either since there is an easy way out: let the people get AIM.exe themselves. This solution is even mentioned in the article but marked as "of dubious legality" because it relies on the AIM.exe to be present somewhere and being used in "unacceptable ways".
Now any solution i can think of is relying, in one way or another, on gathering data "in unacceptable ways" on the AIM.exe. To cache all possible checksums (i don't know if they're limited in some way so i assume arbritrary byte-ranges) would mean to cache sufficient data to be able to reconstruct the executable. So even the proposed legal cover is of "dubious legality". In essence, once you start building a client that mimicks a proprietary client to the level of returning correct binary checksums you should ask a lawyer how to get yourself out of the hot water.
I think it's safe to assume, that AOL won't go after the users themselves with lawsuits. So what is needed is to get a practicable solution out there which can't be attacked by getting at one person. The next thing we'll see is AOL using some cryptoscheme and however weak it is, we'll get the DeCSS story all over again. If it gets as complicated as Checksum servers etc. then why not go and set up alternative IM-servers?
Do you really think, that "more money"="more quality"? Maybe the licenses to broadcast a movie will stop to rake in ridicoulous amounts of money for the MPAA, fine by me. Ow, now they're bound to make worse movies. Sorry, but what i appreciate most about a good film is the story. Then a good director who avoids messing the story up. Then actors (and i think there are enough good actors out there, no need to pay millions for someone who is good at acting) and locations. Then special effects start to become interesting. I mean, hey, they made good movies 20 years ago, it was possible, so why has at least half the budget of a movie to be allocated to special effects?
When i see movies announced as being "the most expensive movie of all times" i ask myself why that should say anything about the quality of a movie. Especially if so much of the money is assigned to special effects which take a few minutes to view altogether. Then there's a huge advertising campaign which doesn't make that movie one bit better. Maybe they waste all that money to get the label "most expensive movie of all times".
But then i didn't go watch "Titanic" either.
What you demand is, that people tolerate other viewpoints. I don't have a problem with a statement like "I think porn is bad". I tolerate that viewpoint, and that it's expressed in a way that marks it as a personal opinion. Someone who thinks that way is free not to buy pornography all his life.
What i have a problem with (and aparently i'm not the only one) are people applying their personal opinions on other peoples lifes. Demanding that pornography shouldn't be sold is intolerance. Anne Marie obviously doesn't tolerate people with other morals than her own and fluxrad is happy there are places which aren't affected by such intolerance. Now you demand we have to tolerate Anne Maries intolerance (please read her other article for more intolerant statements).
Well, i think intolerance is not to be tolerated.
Wow, so the morality you prefer is along the lines of "we do anything to make a buck, if it means dumping our plans to avoid bible fanatics raising a fuss then even that." or what? To sell porn films over the internet was a very straightforward business plan. Everyone knows sex sells on the internet, so why not on yahoo?
..."
Now let's quote some of your other article (modded 5 Funny) to get some taste your kind of moral:
"Pornography is indistinguishable from rape."
"If we let Yahoo sell pornography like this, then it's a slippery slope down to having them sell videos of executions."
"... criminal activity such as this
"Pornography kills women's souls. Pornography burns men's souls."
"... men universally crave and devour pornography." (Lets ask those men from Sirius)
All this is intermixed with some stuff about the bible and the ten commandments. The morals behind this? If we look away it (pornography) doesn't happen? Sex (outside marriage) is bad? Everyone has to live the way i do? Men are swine all over the universe?
It's no news, that customers are presented with corporate doublespeak to make even the worst blunders look like it's in fact even an advantage for them ("because you now get that extra special service ..."). These documents obviously have to have some revision history, most of it probably dealing with how big a lie the customers will accept without laughing out loud. So you have to read between the lines, and to figure out the facts by searching for what is left out in the text. Now someone blundered (nothing new there either) and we get to read the revision history filling in all those little omissions in the document text.
I find the whole story only mildly funny (the blunder part) and not shocking at all. The sad part here is, that everyone already knows he's lied to and still buys the stuff. The people even expect to be lied to. The truth would be really shocking here, something along the lines of: "Well, all we want is your money anyways. Since you already bought our product we only want you to be quiet about it's shortcomings and the cheapest way to buy some time here is obviously a pressstatement. And please understand we treat businesses different, because they might pay some lawyer and really raise a fuss". Now that would've been some story.
Must've been incredibly funny. Does all the world have to view the superbowl on TV or what?
My favourite was 11 anyway.
See here (sorry, couldn't find an actual pricing scheme): Rights owners are licensed by Macrovision to utilize Macrovision's DVD copy protection on their program material. These companies pay Macrovision on a per-disc basis according to a set price sheet, based on volumes reported by their replicator(s).. That means when you buy the DVD you allready have payed the license fees. Since Macrovision also demands license fees from the manufacturers of ICs capable of Macrovision encoding, you also payed the license fees when you bought a DVD player.
If MS really manages to "unsupport" MP3 into oblivion it may turn out to be not a good thing at all since the Media Industry will happily go along with this scheme (they want content protection at all costs, even if it means to depend on Microsofts proprietary standard, anyone remember the GIF story?). At first everything will be fine and dandy, until most windows people forgot about MP3 players. So: less/crappy MP3-players -> less MP3 -> less music under Linux (you don't think MS will release a player for Linux, do you?). Then the Media Industry will happily screw the consumers until "fair use" is a fairy tale. Next Microsoft will screw Media Industry and Consumers by demanding license fees for their proprietary standard (see Marcovision) Or just make recording software expensive to rent (why sell it at all ...). Maybe they even sell the players (yeah, they come for free ... you only need to purchase Windows).
The obvious way to thwart this plan is reverse engineering the Microsoft codec. Then it will be DeCSS all over again. The other way is not to use that new standard. But microsoft doing everything to make it look bad and just stopping short of having it's new OS erase them off the HD on sight is really making it hard to convince Joe User to go on with MP3.
Well, i don't think this "throwing money at something to make it valuable" attitude with trademarks makes not much sense, where it not for laws that made it so. I believe MasterCard is in fact very happy to see so many "priceless" jokes and to see their name under them. So if they have all those cubicled attorneys bullying people all over the world with cease and desist letters they deserve to be laughed at. If they loose face because the jokes now make ridicule of themselves they simply deserve it.
I'm sorry, but i don't think allowing big companies to send those letters without risking anything should be part of a good legal system. If i bully someone around on the street he can sue me, but if a 3rd grade attorney sends me threatening letters in the name of some company i can't do a thing. Oh wait, i can, i can publish it and damage the companys reputation that way. And that's exactly what happened.
I'm sorry, but what i don't understand about the issue is: Why does it have to be the chinese governments fault? It could only be the chinese governments fault if they specifically ordered the pilot to crash that plane. While this is what might have happened noone is asking them to admit that. So there was a nice way out of the whole thing, by blaming it on the crews of one or both of the planes. But the Chinese decided not to go that way, they saw that by keeping the American crew hostage they could leverage some pressure and decided to play a game of chicken with the US government.
Now they knew that it wouldn't be easy to coax an apology out of the USA. If they applied their own rules it would be virtually impossible, but they also have plenty of foreign affairs analysts who could have told them. The whole thing only makes sense, if the chinese government win something by an apology. Else why risk to loose face by demanding an apology the USA might refuse? Now the Chinese Govt. brought themselves into a position it can't easily back out, but that in itself is no reason for the US to help them out. (The fact that the american crew might want home is, though).
I mean, if we allow argumentation like "Well ok we shouldn't have started it, but now we can't do anything about it anyway, so now it's your turn to offer everyone an easy way out." it'd make things a little too easy to screw oneself out of options and let the other side sort out the diplomatic mess.
Not.
...) or something similar. Next one game will advertise the other and it's only money being pushed around in circles and the game itself being more expensive than before, because they need people to move all that money around, all kinds of lawyers and whatnot.
If there can be made more money from a game by advertising, that money will only pay for a bigger industry, more managers, shareholder value, whatever, the same way it is with music. Then, after the MPAA and the RIAA we'll have the CGIAA (Computer Gaming Industry
Consumers should start to realize, that in the end they pay everything, all the advertising too. So even if it were true and Coca Cola payed half the game for you, you'd pay the Game little by little with each can of coke.
What bothers me even more is the possibility of redefining the contract under which you are allowed to use the thing. With the new update comes one of these click-away contracts which may as well redefine the terms of use. Maybe a DVD-player suddenly asks you to buy a special version if you want to run public shows. I really don't want to think of something really nasty here in fear of seeing it in reality tomorrow.
If you are pausing the TV, why are you paying attention to it??
I find advertisements annoying. Most of them are flashy, extra loud, and in short penetrating. The advertiser wants your attention by all means he can get. When i'm pausing the TV it's most likely i want to focus on something else, maybe taking a phonecall. Then i really don't want advertises blaring in the background.
Actually i never had any problems with them wanting no reverse engineering (i just mentioned it to point out that there comes a contract with the thing anyway) not only because some of the source might even not be theirs, but because i find it perfectly understandable that they don't want everyone messing with the code. Even if it's wellmeaning it can do damage by sacrificing accuracy for a performance gain.
Anyway, when they come out with a linux client i'll look at it again. Until then i'll dedicate some cycles to Folding@Home.
Yes, but that's how you get the stuff to the market. I expect the resulting product to be something you can't brew together in your backyard. Publishing the results will also do some good, because if the pricing is too ridiculous someone will just go along, ignore the patents and build a fab Where a government is too happy to get a few dollars into the country to ask what international IP-laws exactly are violated.
Something like this would be better placed at the "cure for cancer" site than here. It is irritating to get the connection between that project and the business presented on slashdot, while the "cure for cancer" site doesn't loose a word about it.
Maybe that was a good tactic to avoid people believing their cycles are being misused before the rumors started flying all about the net. But now the rumor is out in the world (and for the people you try to win for the project it can't be more in the world than on slashdot) you should put some reassuring documents up what exactly the client will do, and what those cycles will be used for, and more important, what they will not be used for.
Also someone at UD should contact the slashdot editors ASAP to get an update of that article. While it may be tempting to ask the lawyers first, they will only waste away time. Sorry, but even if things are as you state, UD has to take part of the blame for: a) not being upfront about the rest of it's business and b) not providing along some reassuring terms in the contract saying that those cpu cycles will not be used for anything else (there is anyway a contract with the code saying you may not reverse engineer the code, why not put something in there to the effect that the Program will only work on the cure for cancer Project?)
The straight way to conspiracy theory. (Although maybe not, considering that much of todays consumer products have a "builtin" finite lifetime). But since enough older versions of IE are still in use (else the artilcle wouldn't be an issue) the question is, if it was really too much asked of Microsoft to provide a patch for those versions as well.
Let's do it from scratch ;-)
And as a nice sideeffect everyone is forced to upgrade his Browser. Even if the upgrade is free this has some implications. My major concern would be changes in the Licensing terms, i.e. what you are allowed to do with that browser and the files with your data it is managing. See here why this might be a concern. As an example, if it manages your email, and that updated browser is using a proprietary format to save it you're suddenly tied to that productline if you want to keep that e-mail. Extend that to address-lists, bookmarks, etc.
So i think there are valid reasons not to want a free update, but security-holes that large are plain unbearable.
If you're big enough you should be able to get something in writing as to what exactly the license allows you to do and if/how it can be transferred. Actually this should be just part of the license (which i always thought of as a kind of contract) and accessible for everyone. Sorry, i can't understand why it should be necessary to phone after microsoft, to know what the licenses terms are, if it's not in the license (and if the license not points to reliable sources either) it is, in my opinion, not part of the license. So if you have got a piece of paper, saying that this piece of paper allows you to do x, but nowhere it says anything limiting the transfer of said piece of paper, then whoever holds the piece of paper may do x.
So if i have a license which allows my business to run 200 instances of program "foo" worldwide, and do the necessary installing on the machines it's supposed to run on, then i might even install it on 600 machines if only 200 of them use it at a time (think license server, applications only used during daytime, worldwide business and timezones). Now *that* might be something to lower license costs.
"We spend a lot of time and resources constantly proving license compliance"
Maybe a better investment would be, to train the staff to use another operating system, instead of always trying to figure out how to make the best of Microsoft licensing terms, only to have it in pieces again, when Microsoft decides to change their licensing again. At least retraining has to be done only once. Also they may expect that with the event of XP (which means eXPerience as we all now learned) they're in for a totally new (but not better) licensing eXPerience.
Just an example: the GUI was a great concept, and though Microsoft didn't actually invent it they built it into their OS with great success.
I see nothing wrong there. Anyone building something new, or improving something will look for proved and well working concepts to include, and for new concepts just emerging to consider. It's how a software product stays at the edge of technology: looking at what the competition is doing and trying to make it better.
My question is, what new concepts (in competing software products) do you deem worthy of considering and why?
Oh and a member of what was once a notorious cracker outfit should be automatically believed when he makes such statements? According to the Article Mueller Maghun is also an occasional adviser to government figures, the CCC is nowadays quite frank about it's motivations and what he said is, while carefully expressed, quite reasonable. It also fits with what the Ministry Defense Official said. His wording is also quite careful: "I can confirm that the Ministry signed a general licensing contract with Microsoft [...] and we intend to continue to use such systems." quite a lot of words to say very little. Also he didn't deny that serious concerns remained. Then he explicitly states that "[...] additional security measures are independent of Microsoft software.". Also Mueller-Maguhn never said anything like it MUST BE TRUE and his arguing isn't along the line they can't prove it to be false, but more along the line of "they choose their wording carefully so as not to hurt international relationships, so you'll have to read between the lines for the true meaning".
Had you read the first article you'd also know that Linux was not considered the alternative, but some OS from a german corporation. Also i don't find it weird that a military organisation can have a consistent policy wich OS to use. They have rules for everything there, to the point at which depth of water you have to start swimming.