There's a lot of precedent against you already with cars. You may own the car, but you can't legally remove the catalytic converter, or change intake and exhaust engine settings for example, nor may a serviceman, unless it follows the law. People do it, but it's not legal. Go to any muffler shop, most of them have signs saying they can only replace the CC, they may not remove it and replace it with a normal straight pipe and allow you to drive away. You can own your diesel car or truck, it will run on regular fuel oil, but it's illegal for you to run it on anything except approved taxes paid on it road diesel, on the public roads anyway. And even if you ran it off road with the cheaper diesel, then go back on on road, and use the approved diesel-they can determine you put the illegal fuel in chemically sometime in the past, so therefore you still broke the law *technically*. It's happened to people, and they lose in court.
No, the bottom line is you really don't completely own your property,that's LONG gone now in our legal system, the government can and does put any restrictions on it, how you use it, where you use it, etc, basically anything they can dream up, that they feel like putting on it, and they can make it a law to follow. They can tax you for owning it too, for any reason, and take it away from you or further restrict you if you fail to pay their fee for the privelege of thinkiing you own something. Happens all the time.. You pay a homeownership tax, a car registration tax,that keeps reocurring, there are thousands of various "your property" codes and regulations out there that restrict what you can and cannot do with your property, etc. Lots of back legal precedent that the bottom line is-it's not your property, it's theirs. You are allowed a government *limited use* and *partial* ownership, which can be changed on any whim they determine. The old check and balance was supposed to be voting and the court system, but with legalised bribery and the hijacking and almost complete monopolization of government by two private for-profit in the technical sense organizations called the major "political parties",who collectively run the nation as a closed shop semi-cooperating criminal cartel, those checks and balances are long gone.
They give/allow people the illusion of "owning" property, but if you really owned it, you could do with it what you wanted to do with it, and that just isn't the case.
Storagetek is a favorite for what they do. Big government(various three letter agencies come to mind easy) and big business use them a lot. I am sure there are competitors (someone will chime in with them maybe), but how many of those competitors do it differently now? If it's across the board in a specialised and expensive niche market, where are your business decisions going to go, when there are no real alternatives?
to me, just looking at it, it's when computerised controls, that have restricted software of some type, come into play that these apparently previously allowed actions by your or your repair person then magically become disallowed using the DMCA. I think the manufacturers will be following this one to see if they can go revist the older laws again. It's what we worried about and speculated about when it got passed, now you are starting to see them being applied in real world cases. And when you have software patenting, this is what will happen.
Take the oil change, or after market parts. Does your auto have a computer with copyrighted software on it that measures the oil and pressure and engine-on runtime and use? If so, it *might* apply,I am not saying it actually does, but it just might given the right case, whereas with an older car that has no such provisions, it clearly doesn't. Say your engine records hours running as applied to a complex algorithym that determines wehen the oil is really worn out, based on history of throttle settings and whatnot. they could say only their sensors and their certified mecahnics would be able to actually determine when is the right time to change, and it might even show up in a blackbox recordable history someplace inside the engine. I don't know, just speculating, but perhaps sometime down the road you have an engine failure that might be normally covered. whoops! They determined you went several hours too long before a dealer authoeirsed maintenance, or you drove too fast, etc, so you void your warranty because you "bypassed" their *allowed use*. It's creeping in near as I can see, as more and more things are computerised, with the additional copyrights and patents involved. And the default with lawyers and big corporations (and most governments) and copyrights and IP patents, etc, is, if in doubt, sue, and restrict.
....potentially anyway, these are just off the cuff and off the top.
MS (had to do it) makes it illegal for anyone without at least a MS cert of some kind to "fix" their software, for instance. Apply that-along with this ruling- to any other propietary closed source licensed software or software/hardware combination out there, which this storage tek deal is. That could mean any official vendors computer or computerish gadget in general terms. Not make it just a hassle, or "void your warranty", just make the attempt to do so *illegal*. How many whitebox shops could get sued now by the big vendors if they chose to do so?
Automotive manufactuerers finally can make it really legal to make it illegal for third party garages to "fix" your car. note:there's a story running on Drudge now over police trials of the new "car zapper" which will let them send a blast of EM aimed at your car to halt it, by screwing up the electronics. The companies (and government) might make hardening attempts against that illegal -means you can't "fix" your car and a mechanic can't/won't take a chance on it- either
Apply the idea to other sorts of appliances and gadgets, most of them are computer controlled now, and they can make them blackbox-you can't open them up at all without violating circumvention and permission. Washers/dryers/stoves, small engines, televisions, all that stuff. The basic main idea of the ruling (it's just an injunction at this point of course) is they-they being any random company with a software/hardware combined product- can state the terms in whatever detail they want, and even if you own the product you have to still follow the terms. It's like applying a copyright license that overrules any normal fair use provisions of normal hardware ownership, if it's a combination product.
I know this is in conflict with other laws, but lately, where are the "wins"? I don't see too many. It seems like it's lose access and rights 99 to 1 lately.
well, I'll agree with you on the GUI. GUI is the UI of choice for most people, because people think in pictures mostly. Look at driving around, how many places do you drive where you got from A to B over many different roads, but only know the names of a few of them? You remember your turns by what the intersections look like, not what they are called. It's the same navigating your computer for most people.
I'm just a two year linux user, but if I had to do everything from the command line, I wouldn't be a two year linux user. I came from a 99% mac classic background because way back then the choice was apple, a PC clone running Dos(I tried it, it sucked for me, non intuitive, arcane, stupid), or something else more expensive and esoteric and I never got turned on to it, as in, I have never even seen an amiga running, or a machine on os/2 or any of the other more obscure platforms and operating systems. And unless you had a heavy industry/business/professional academic background, most people never saw unix, solaris, whatever. I like GUI, I don't *mind* CLI, but I don't want to have to rely on it, because I have a job and a lot of hobbys already. The last two years, linux has had a plenty good enough GUI to use for most people, so that the argument is becoming moot. You really don't *need* much CLI action.
I think what needs to be done instead is just stop talking about linux, as it is just a kernel, and instead actually name the distro, because those are the real *operating "systems"*. All the top ones now you can run full GUI as far as I am aware. Now whether or not a person can understand them immediately,all the various applications and how to navigate the file system and set up user accounts and get down with "permissions" and "services", etc, I'd say no, heck no, still too arcane, and a lot of windows users still can't use windows WITH it's GUI either after many years use, I'd say most of them can't really "use" windows to it's fullest, they use a few familiar applications and that's it. With a name brand linux kernel based operating system, though, you get a ton of apps come pre installed, people are more likely to try them out, because downloading is scary to people, they simply do not know who to trust, or why to trust it, why they need application xyz, etc, so a lot of windows users stay pretty pedestrian with their tastes.
The linux desktop people, where the action is to make linux mainstream, have done an amazing job in a short time, IMO. And you can just see the rate of improvement, it's FAST. It's kick booty fast. So in that regard a linux kernel based operating system is ahead of the propietary guys, and another important point, updating ALL the applications is as automatic as can be, this is hard with windows.
Basically, every windows user is going to hit a security pain threshold, then they will think about it. You would be hard pressed to find a normal windows user who hasn't been nailed, re nailed, and nailed again over security issues. The time is ripe, that is the number one reason to switch. Games? ehh, I think they are silly. People should use a dedicated game console to play games. That's just an opinion of mine, and I know it isn't all that popular here, but I'd be personally embarrassed to say I "needed" some computer and specific operating system to play some game. I just have too much real life stuff to do to be bothered with games. I tried a few, ehh, even back in the olden days at the arcade, I'd drop like two bucks, that was it for 6 months or even longer, they just never floated my boat. If people want to stay stuck paying windowes cost and using it to surf because they want games, I say "let them" don't even bother talking to them about switching, waste of time. They will do it when they want to and it gets harder to crack games on windows, then they might look around. I really don't care, it's a non issue to me, just like professional sports, it's just not even on my radar.. I'll watch a few olympics events and some of the trials, th
That's a good idea, too. I already add rules to the firewall from persistent probes to block that host,especially if you can see if it's coming from a *dsl or cable connection, so might as well do it with spam as well. Thanks for the tip!
is it really little old ladies who keep spammers going, or is it porn surfers? I don't get much spam anymore, from hardly ever using email or giving out my email addy and moz's built in filter, but from what I remember the spam I used to get was way more porno,porno with anatomy enhancements, porno and and viagra, then it fell down the list, toner carts, home mortgage refinance, cheap semi legal drugs, etc.
Anyway, I tend to like my basic idea. Regular email is a default setup of accept everything,then struggle to try to filter out the junk. I prefer a universal whitelisting/blacklisting only, have a default setup with email clients to ban all email,that's the default blacklisting, and only let in who you want on an addy by addy basis, that's the whitelisting. If spam wasn't the predominant email, you wouldn't need to do it that way, but it is, so just recognizing that fact means you should go to a default blacklisting. what we are trying to do now is 180 degrtees backwards from what logic dictates. With spam and bayseian schemes, you are struggling and trying to lock the barn door after the horse gets out,that didn't work well way back then, ain't gonna work well now.
You get around "first contact" issues in this system I propose with businesses and mail lists who need access to "new" people regularly by using a webform (cheap/fast/works good enough) or the telephone (for very important transactions) as the first contact.
I always get cussed out for this but I don't care, it needs to be said. It's time to stop coding webpages on the net for explorer "standards" and windows "standards". You won't get people to change to a better universal standards environment with browser and OS and a more secure internet for everyone until you stop making it easy for people to stay on explorer and windows. Force windows and windows users to change,because that's where the critical changes need to occur, stop doing microsofts work for them. Make them change or jump through hoops to see a page as it's supposed to be. Make them change to a more secure way to access the internet. I don't care what people use on a standalone computer not networked to the internet, or what they use in a closed intranet, but as soon as they use that crap to connect to the universal internet we have huge problems all the time. And who's trying to fix the problems? Open source and apple. Why should those communities,who combined now are in the multimillions and are doing the really snazzy work, do windows security and windows useability work for them, when all that happens is it costs you time and money and aggravation, while MS racks up the megatonnage of dough for basically doing nothing?
Coding for explorer and for windows is like that scene in animal house with the punishment scene "WHACK! THANKYOUSIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER? WHACK! THANKYOUSIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?"
This is an easy one. Voice browsing, GOOD voice browsing, that doesn't suck. If we can't have a full computer controlled by voice, at least the browser would be nice to have.
Normal stuff
Have a setting so when going to a link,if you select the option, it will pre look to see if the page is also displayed as "formattted for printing" or "print this story", etc, so that the text version page is automatically displayed rather than having to re click to get to it. Can't tell you how many times I have done this going to read some article and it's 6 pages long for a grand total of a couple thousand word in the article. The "print this" option page is usually much more readable and faster and complete.
images
An option to select a single image to have it displayed,a right click menu option, when you are surfing with images off, and it shouldn't require a complete page reload to do this (a feature that icab has now, most cool)
bookmarks
Have a way to automatically upload your bookmarks to a web host as you save them, and the page can be selectable from the sub menu, those are your topic folders, so your saved URL can be automatically filed appropriately plus it's a backup. It could do both simultaneously with your normal bookmark file as well, like it does now.
what not to do
Anything if it makes it slower. Only incorporate any new features if you can at least maintain parity in downloading and rendering with what you have now. Speed baby, speed. Over all things we want FAST!
fun stuff, sub topic cookies manager
Haven't you always wanted a way to inject a little "howdy, jerk" payload into obnoxious cookies automagically? Let them track THAT!
useful but ordinary stuff,to help remove the browsing "annoying factor"
The internet is getting worse, not better, with pages that won't display properly. You can NOT get webmasters-for whatever reason, usually they are ordered to- to code for anything but "brand dismal" browser. They refuse, and there is no such thing as web standards, they are still in vague theory land. I don't know if this is possible, but if somehow when you hit such a page,you'd inform your browser, "this website layout sucks, fix it please", you could mash this "fixit" button and it would strip it to at least something approaching readable text, instead of overlapping sheets-that-have-no-style and various slobbering blinking abominations lurking in the columns.
A + bonus option would have your referrer leave a message for such a page like "peew, your page stinks, tell your boss".
Nuclear is a big and powerful method to generate a lot of power, and to insure that huge vast sums of money in the form of never ending profits remain in a small handful of corporations pockets. It's also quite a juicy target, therefore a major security risk, plus, that pesky waste stuff, that hangs around hot longer than recorded human history to date.
If you are more interested in having energy decentralised, with millions of potential islands instead of a few hundred, with the costs (and profits) decentralised, and the supplies to come from more diverse sources, and letting people and smaller businesses own their own energy, rather than leasing it with no long range payment plan available, then nuclear as it stands today is not much of an option, it is simply way too expensive and dangerous, but the other sources are an option, and are infinetly scalable.
And if I could harness the power of the run on sentence, we wouldn't even need to be having this discussion!
how do any random new recipients know which of the endless stream of look alike messages is the real one, even if they have somehow gotten the private key? Just de crypt and read all of them? I can see this working with a pre arranged subkey system where the designated good messages were known in advance or followed a pattern, perhaps with a one time pad arrangement, but to anyone new, it seems about as bad as not being able to decrypt it. Or is the idea the messages are all the same, just coming from so many places it's a waste of time for the enemy to concentrate on any one place?
first, I agree on the asteroids. It could happen, large and semi large "new" ones show up with enough regularity to prove they have no idea what's out there, that at best it's informed speculation based on what data they have, and that's it..
But some more that might occur are extremely huge solar flares, pole shifts, and the mundane but most possible,and most probable, merely running out of oil within the next two decades leading to global chaos and warfare, including extensive NBC warfare, which would in turn lead to a very long lasting and extensive global winter on top of it, from the dust from hugeparts of the world burning down, especially in the northern hemisphere.
Whether or not that means all human life being extinct is a moot point, dropping the worlds populations to just some thoudands total survivors would have basically the same effect. Most technology would be lost within the first new generation then, and no one here really knows what's inside all the worlds advanced bioweapons labs, best we can do there is again, speculate. Naturally occuring mutations of virii and bacteria can be bad enough, the biotech they have now...well... you feeling lucky? A certain percentage of infectees can live through smallpox or anthrax. Some can beat plague. More can beat measles, but still it can be lethal. Tularemia,ebola, and etc, etc, and who knows what engineered nasties they have. And a cocktail or warfare experience of all of them virtually simultanousely? Nope, nary a human could live through that if exposed, especially if they had to dodge strontiuym 90 all the time and find some way to grow food with the weather borked and no way to rely on surface water or rain to be non poisonous.
geez that's dismal, I'm sorry for you and him. Really is a bad scene. I once had to call 9-11 to have the cops come and take care of this guy I found just totally confused at a quickstore. He had driven there, got his gas, and then completely forgot who he was, what he was doing, where he needed to go, etc, and he wasn't that old, nor did he appear drunk or stoned, just "lost" as you describe. He was actually crying. I felt helpless, and didn't want to like get his wallet and rifle through it looking for his identification or anything, because the way laws and people are now, although that was an obvious temporary solution, so I called the cops to do it, and waited until they got there.
In the olden days, I don't think this happened as much, because of the way society was setup, people lived in extended family groups a lot more. They didn't send the kids to daycare or public school, and the elderly stayed home for their days. The people in the middle age brackets swapped off around the necessary work and watched over the very elderly/infirm and the very young and undeveloped/helpless. There was an obvious higher interest in maintaining care, and a higher caregiver to care recipient ratio, in that arrangement, family ties, love, etc.
Perhaps, in some ways, the collective "we" have forgotten our lessons from the past and become less civilised. This article points out a technical solution, but is it truly a human and humane solution, or is it just a further extension of our over dependence on impersonal gadgetry?
That gets into philosophy more than technical geekiness, but it's relevant to the discussion.
I guess you could combine both techniques, the patient stays with the extended family, but they have a backup of the advanced technology to help with the task.
to beat the patterning, you could have a computer randomize your sentence structure, by you using already overtly published works and your access to them to create "new" works that are your own, but don't look like it.. You could just cut and paste sentences from other works and put them together to make a new work. And if enough people did that, the pattern of the computer assisted copy/paste writing would be so widespread as to be near impossible to track down.
And it depends on what you want to do. If all you want to do is to spread information, you use what work arounds exist. If you (this Bob guy) are a direct action type,along with the words type, you work in a cell of one, no exceptions ever, for any reason. That's just normal assymetrical guerilla warfare theory. Despotic authorities can crack cells of two or more to "many", they do it all the time, but they have an almost impossible task to crack lone individuals. It's possible for them, of course, but much much harder. And if the cell of one is content with only one direct action,or even one critical publication of words, then retires, it becomes so much harder for them to crack as to approach the "impossible" state.
two good essays on this subject you can find on the net:
Leaderless Resistance
The Window War
Best info-mational novel(non sci fi, it's an action/historical genre, very readable) bar none on the subject
Lee Iococa made sure that his corporation was set up to pay a first year dealer carlot salesman a LOT more than an engineer. And that's the lowball pay structure, it goes way up from there, and it's skewed to the non innovators side. So he wonders why there weren't as many engineers as he wanted? The second point is, professional racing pays better and is more fun for an automotive engineer than working for one of the big car companies. They have more freedom to be creative, and the rewards -in all forms, not just financial-are better.
Here's an automotive engineering example,Smokey Yunick. Worked various pro racing because he truly could be creative, and he got paid well to do it. He even proved he could almost single handedly beat detroit in making a non racing car, but a commuter car that could get fantastic mileage and not be weird, just a normal looking car that worked much better. He did it,built it, proved it worked, that it could be done, when detroit was whining to congress it wasn't possible, and that detroit was being lamer about it,liars basically. Detroit-GM IIRC, offered him literally dick for it in terms of money, a quarter million, it was a joke offer for what he had, so he went back to racing.
These big companies, with a few exceptions, don't want to pay for the class A brains, they want to pay for snakeoil salesmen, because it's a better way for them to make profits, sell the sizzle, which is cheap and easy to do, rather than building a better cow and selling a better steak. They also tend to reward the memebers of their clique, the other managers and sales people, because that's who they grew up with and hung out together with and went to college with. It's a good ole boys network. Why share the pot with people not in your clique? that's what they think anyway. They think anyone not in their cliqie is a loser, or a nerd, sonmeone to make fun of and to soak for everything they can get from them. They put themselves in the position to do that, so they do that. They also go WAY out of their way to make sure the nerds never have an effective union, they keep telling them from day one they are different from the blue collars, they are "white collar" and despite the fact they get treated like the blue collars, the nerds keep thinking they are somehow part of that management/sales clique, even though they never will be, so they get shafted. It's almost impossible for the nerds to use collective bargaining,in most cases,because of that indoctrination, and they also make sure the government-which they control because lawyers and legislators are closer to their clique than the blue collars or nerds-always passes laws that favor them, and no one else, except for the occassional non meaty bone toss.
I am speaking in very general terms now, I know there are exceptions to the rule, but in those general terms that's how I see it being run, and it's been run like that for a long time now.
The same thing is happening with the MBAs. Big whopper company A swallows up smaller company B, resulting in a surplus of managers. A lot of them get let go. Then new super corporation C moves production overseas, so they let even more of the domestic managers go,even more of the techs, and replace them over seas with native speaking managers and techs. Result, less people working, more competition for what jobs are available (domestically), tech OR management.
Someplace there's a tip over point where enough companies have done that so that there is little in the way of a middle class left working at a decent enough avereage pay scale who have any money to actually purchase the products or services, no matter how cheap they are. Right now, it's gone from products purchased with already made cash to we have more credit being used. The next step is the tip over point.
I didn't look at your first link, about the impossible to be anonymous, but just at first thought on the subject in general, a combination of freenet type structure combined with a wireless meshed network would get someone pretty darn close, wouldn't it?
Nope, they will pay for stuff-hardware, tangible stuff, same as anyone else. And the linux coders will give it back 10 fold over to the hardware vendors by doing their work for them if they would just open it up a scosh. And the linux users who aren't coders will submit bug reports, and also pay for the hardware.
Saying linux users won't pay for anything is not true, they don't want to pay for intangibles,they think "owning" an intangible thought is nuts, and counter productive and bad for business and society, so they have developed and offer a new way to do things. They are willing to trade back and contribute actual effort to the hardware vendors as long as they stop being dicks about it. The ball is in the hardware vendors court, along with the "obscene profits from intangible copies" lobby, who need to get a clue or three as well.
You would have a valid point if the linux "movement" wasn't offering anything back, but they are, in spades, and they keep getting shat upon and told they are cheap, when they are the most giving and sharing folks out there. They keep going "HERE, take all this free stuff we developed, all we ask is access to a few devices specs, and make it legal to make them work better FOR YOU AND FOR US". And that is supposed to prove that "linux" is greedy? huh? Is that really so much for them to ask?
Noppe, try another argument, because that dog surely don't hunt.
Although saying it would be like SCO might not be an appropriate analogy. In this case, there is a probability of it being *true*. It's enough to get some judge someplace to think the idea has merit, and to maybe order an independent code review. Who would be competent to do that and who would be willing to do that is a different story, the way the laws are now, because of the contaminated brain aspect of it. That part sucks, but it's what we have to work with in the legal borked system. It would be complicated and nasty and MS lawyers could drag it out, but in the end they would most likely have to submit. It should happen, IMO. I think the entire MS codebase should be audited, for that matter, looking for stolen propietary or open source code. And you can assume I think that on other large closed source projects as well, I simply don't trust them as a default, because I have a near-Calvinistic view of people in general. It's also the reason I don't think any fair and true "free" market can exist outside of theory, there are just too many crimes possible once you add humans to the mix. Same deal with a total government run market/economy, same amount of humans and crime potential. Not to say it shouldn't be attempted,either one or a blend, but you will always get crooked exceptions to the rule that borks it for everyone else.
Yes, I know, this means we live in an unfixable catch 22 society, which means we fix and patch society as bad stuff rears up. It'll always be that way, too..
To get back to pure coding, I think the only rational and even medium logical long term method to make it so there are never any code thefts, is to mandate all open source code in everything, and to eliminatepatenting on code. If you think about it, that's the only way theft CAN'T occur, if it's free for the looking and taking and using in the first place. It can't be stolen then. No one would have to worry about it, they could always just do better stuff, borrowing as they see fit. Then no one would have to worry about it, and the most efficient code devised by humans could be used in as many places and in the most efficient manner as it would fit in, and people wouldn't have to worry about NDAs and cleanroom coding and so on. It would necessitate some business changes, but I think society would adjust once the tangible day to day benefits to everyone became more apparent.
The alternative is what we have now, and it gets more broken and more complex and more costly daily. Pretty soon the only people making money with code per se will be lawyers.
Yep, that's a radical notion, I realise that, but it's what I see coming if it ain't fixed soon..
Are there any remote exploits for mac os classic? If you have applesharing turned off, I am not aware of any.A machine can be DDoSed into crashing, any machine, but that's it. There might be "take over" exploits, but I am not aware of any. I used it for years with zero firewall. I know subseven will run on it as a client, but not as a zombied server if you are trying to install it remotely. Maybe that's changed, like I said I don't know, just my personal experience and what I read in the past.
maybe he wants to hear when he's not using the phone? That's probably why he did it, as a switch,also, bluetooth has less human audible interference than the straight normal cellphone transmission carries, the wire propogates and interferes with the hearing aid circuitry and operation.
It's in the article, unless I am reading this wrong.
They are predators. They would rather sue you for 12 thousand dollars and win in court, then get two movie tickets out of you.
IMO anyway, going on what they do and say
they do not care about customers, they care about maximum profits, they don't even care about who or what they represent, that's why you always see these lawsuits between the MAFFIA scammers and the artistes, they won't even play fair with the talen that makes them millions. They think greed is a virtue, suborning politicians is their birthright, and total control their destiny.
... I more or less agree. I can see sometime (maybe soon) when stand alone software companies are pretty much dinosaurs. To me, software -the development-belongs integrated with ANOTHER business that actually manufacturers stuff for sale, or services stuff for sale. As such, off the shelf free is good for a start, then customisation on a corp by corp basis will be where the demand for constant devlopment comes from. To be *just* in the business of software development itself seems like the "all your eggs in one basket" idea. You can't sell "free", but you can sell "free & fancy", and the fancy part gets back to the widget for sale, so that's where the developers need to go for the bread and butter, and still do a little of the free and fun on the side. And if the company pops for a percentage of the time to be in the "free" zone, so much the better.
I don't even see big "free" distros making it long term unless they have some serious cash alliances and business ties with widget makers, whether that is a computer as the widget (saturated market), or just some other widget (still wide open).
Really, that's the only real way MS made it, getting tied in directly with the box vendors in such an overwhelming fashion. if people would have had to go out and actually purchase all their software as boxed sets off the rack someplace, no way could MS have made it so big, nor could they have charged what they charged.
And because this is now and not then, and FOSS is a reality, and because there is such a plethora of software "stuff" out there now, that getting tied in directly, as wholly owned or as a tied in division, with any hardware-widget corp, is probably the safest bet long term for developers to keep their editors hot and their wallets at least somewhat full. Embrace the free, work at the fancy for the loot.
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There's a lot of precedent against you already with cars. You may own the car, but you can't legally remove the catalytic converter, or change intake and exhaust engine settings for example, nor may a serviceman, unless it follows the law. People do it, but it's not legal. Go to any muffler shop, most of them have signs saying they can only replace the CC, they may not remove it and replace it with a normal straight pipe and allow you to drive away. You can own your diesel car or truck, it will run on regular fuel oil, but it's illegal for you to run it on anything except approved taxes paid on it road diesel, on the public roads anyway. And even if you ran it off road with the cheaper diesel, then go back on on road, and use the approved diesel-they can determine you put the illegal fuel in chemically sometime in the past, so therefore you still broke the law *technically*. It's happened to people, and they lose in court.
No, the bottom line is you really don't completely own your property,that's LONG gone now in our legal system, the government can and does put any restrictions on it, how you use it, where you use it, etc, basically anything they can dream up, that they feel like putting on it, and they can make it a law to follow. They can tax you for owning it too, for any reason, and take it away from you or further restrict you if you fail to pay their fee for the privelege of thinkiing you own something. Happens all the time.. You pay a homeownership tax, a car registration tax,that keeps reocurring, there are thousands of various "your property" codes and regulations out there that restrict what you can and cannot do with your property, etc. Lots of back legal precedent that the bottom line is-it's not your property, it's theirs. You are allowed a government *limited use* and *partial* ownership, which can be changed on any whim they determine. The old check and balance was supposed to be voting and the court system, but with legalised bribery and the hijacking and almost complete monopolization of government by two private for-profit in the technical sense organizations called the major "political parties",who collectively run the nation as a closed shop semi-cooperating criminal cartel, those checks and balances are long gone.
They give/allow people the illusion of "owning" property, but if you really owned it, you could do with it what you wanted to do with it, and that just isn't the case.
Storagetek is a favorite for what they do. Big government(various three letter agencies come to mind easy) and big business use them a lot. I am sure there are competitors (someone will chime in with them maybe), but how many of those competitors do it differently now? If it's across the board in a specialised and expensive niche market, where are your business decisions going to go, when there are no real alternatives?
to me, just looking at it, it's when computerised controls, that have restricted software of some type, come into play that these apparently previously allowed actions by your or your repair person then magically become disallowed using the DMCA. I think the manufacturers will be following this one to see if they can go revist the older laws again. It's what we worried about and speculated about when it got passed, now you are starting to see them being applied in real world cases. And when you have software patenting, this is what will happen.
Take the oil change, or after market parts. Does your auto have a computer with copyrighted software on it that measures the oil and pressure and engine-on runtime and use? If so, it *might* apply,I am not saying it actually does, but it just might given the right case, whereas with an older car that has no such provisions, it clearly doesn't. Say your engine records hours running as applied to a complex algorithym that determines wehen the oil is really worn out, based on history of throttle settings and whatnot. they could say only their sensors and their certified mecahnics would be able to actually determine when is the right time to change, and it might even show up in a blackbox recordable history someplace inside the engine. I don't know, just speculating, but perhaps sometime down the road you have an engine failure that might be normally covered. whoops! They determined you went several hours too long before a dealer authoeirsed maintenance, or you drove too fast, etc, so you void your warranty because you "bypassed" their *allowed use*. It's creeping in near as I can see, as more and more things are computerised, with the additional copyrights and patents involved. And the default with lawyers and big corporations (and most governments) and copyrights and IP patents, etc, is, if in doubt, sue, and restrict.
....potentially anyway, these are just off the cuff and off the top.
MS (had to do it) makes it illegal for anyone without at least a MS cert of some kind to "fix" their software, for instance. Apply that-along with this ruling- to any other propietary closed source licensed software or software/hardware combination out there, which this storage tek deal is. That could mean any official vendors computer or computerish gadget in general terms. Not make it just a hassle, or "void your warranty", just make the attempt to do so *illegal*. How many whitebox shops could get sued now by the big vendors if they chose to do so?
Automotive manufactuerers finally can make it really legal to make it illegal for third party garages to "fix" your car. note:there's a story running on Drudge now over police trials of the new "car zapper" which will let them send a blast of EM aimed at your car to halt it, by screwing up the electronics. The companies (and government) might make hardening attempts against that illegal -means you can't "fix" your car and a mechanic can't/won't take a chance on it- either
Apply the idea to other sorts of appliances and gadgets, most of them are computer controlled now, and they can make them blackbox-you can't open them up at all without violating circumvention and permission. Washers/dryers/stoves, small engines, televisions, all that stuff. The basic main idea of the ruling (it's just an injunction at this point of course) is they-they being any random company with a software/hardware combined product- can state the terms in whatever detail they want, and even if you own the product you have to still follow the terms. It's like applying a copyright license that overrules any normal fair use provisions of normal hardware ownership, if it's a combination product.
I know this is in conflict with other laws, but lately, where are the "wins"? I don't see too many. It seems like it's lose access and rights 99 to 1 lately.
well, I'll agree with you on the GUI. GUI is the UI of choice for most people, because people think in pictures mostly. Look at driving around, how many places do you drive where you got from A to B over many different roads, but only know the names of a few of them? You remember your turns by what the intersections look like, not what they are called. It's the same navigating your computer for most people.
/business/professional academic background, most people never saw unix, solaris, whatever. I like GUI, I don't *mind* CLI, but I don't want to have to rely on it, because I have a job and a lot of hobbys already. The last two years, linux has had a plenty good enough GUI to use for most people, so that the argument is becoming moot. You really don't *need* much CLI action.
I'm just a two year linux user, but if I had to do everything from the command line, I wouldn't be a two year linux user. I came from a 99% mac classic background because way back then the choice was apple, a PC clone running Dos(I tried it, it sucked for me, non intuitive, arcane, stupid), or something else more expensive and esoteric and I never got turned on to it, as in, I have never even seen an amiga running, or a machine on os/2 or any of the other more obscure platforms and operating systems. And unless you had a heavy industry
I think what needs to be done instead is just stop talking about linux, as it is just a kernel, and instead actually name the distro, because those are the real *operating "systems"*. All the top ones now you can run full GUI as far as I am aware. Now whether or not a person can understand them immediately,all the various applications and how to navigate the file system and set up user accounts and get down with "permissions" and "services", etc, I'd say no, heck no, still too arcane, and a lot of windows users still can't use windows WITH it's GUI either after many years use, I'd say most of them can't really "use" windows to it's fullest, they use a few familiar applications and that's it. With a name brand linux kernel based operating system, though, you get a ton of apps come pre installed, people are more likely to try them out, because downloading is scary to people, they simply do not know who to trust, or why to trust it, why they need application xyz, etc, so a lot of windows users stay pretty pedestrian with their tastes.
The linux desktop people, where the action is to make linux mainstream, have done an amazing job in a short time, IMO. And you can just see the rate of improvement, it's FAST. It's kick booty fast. So in that regard a linux kernel based operating system is ahead of the propietary guys, and another important point, updating ALL the applications is as automatic as can be, this is hard with windows.
Basically, every windows user is going to hit a security pain threshold, then they will think about it. You would be hard pressed to find a normal windows user who hasn't been nailed, re nailed, and nailed again over security issues. The time is ripe, that is the number one reason to switch. Games? ehh, I think they are silly. People should use a dedicated game console to play games. That's just an opinion of mine, and I know it isn't all that popular here, but I'd be personally embarrassed to say I "needed" some computer and specific operating system to play some game. I just have too much real life stuff to do to be bothered with games. I tried a few, ehh, even back in the olden days at the arcade, I'd drop like two bucks, that was it for 6 months or even longer, they just never floated my boat. If people want to stay stuck paying windowes cost and using it to surf because they want games, I say "let them" don't even bother talking to them about switching, waste of time. They will do it when they want to and it gets harder to crack games on windows, then they might look around. I really don't care, it's a non issue to me, just like professional sports, it's just not even on my radar.. I'll watch a few olympics events and some of the trials, th
That's a good idea, too. I already add rules to the firewall from persistent probes to block that host,especially if you can see if it's coming from a *dsl or cable connection, so might as well do it with spam as well. Thanks for the tip!
is it really little old ladies who keep spammers going, or is it porn surfers? I don't get much spam anymore, from hardly ever using email or giving out my email addy and moz's built in filter, but from what I remember the spam I used to get was way more porno,porno with anatomy enhancements, porno and and viagra, then it fell down the list, toner carts, home mortgage refinance, cheap semi legal drugs, etc.
Anyway, I tend to like my basic idea. Regular email is a default setup of accept everything,then struggle to try to filter out the junk. I prefer a universal whitelisting/blacklisting only, have a default setup with email clients to ban all email,that's the default blacklisting, and only let in who you want on an addy by addy basis, that's the whitelisting. If spam wasn't the predominant email, you wouldn't need to do it that way, but it is, so just recognizing that fact means you should go to a default blacklisting. what we are trying to do now is 180 degrtees backwards from what logic dictates. With spam and bayseian schemes, you are struggling and trying to lock the barn door after the horse gets out,that didn't work well way back then, ain't gonna work well now.
You get around "first contact" issues in this system I propose with businesses and mail lists who need access to "new" people regularly by using a webform (cheap/fast/works good enough) or the telephone (for very important transactions) as the first contact.
I always get cussed out for this but I don't care, it needs to be said. It's time to stop coding webpages on the net for explorer "standards" and windows "standards". You won't get people to change to a better universal standards environment with browser and OS and a more secure internet for everyone until you stop making it easy for people to stay on explorer and windows. Force windows and windows users to change,because that's where the critical changes need to occur, stop doing microsofts work for them. Make them change or jump through hoops to see a page as it's supposed to be. Make them change to a more secure way to access the internet. I don't care what people use on a standalone computer not networked to the internet, or what they use in a closed intranet, but as soon as they use that crap to connect to the universal internet we have huge problems all the time. And who's trying to fix the problems? Open source and apple. Why should those communities,who combined now are in the multimillions and are doing the really snazzy work, do windows security and windows useability work for them, when all that happens is it costs you time and money and aggravation, while MS racks up the megatonnage of dough for basically doing nothing?
Coding for explorer and for windows is like that scene in animal house with the punishment scene "WHACK! THANKYOUSIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER? WHACK! THANKYOUSIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?"
nutz
This is an easy one. Voice browsing, GOOD voice browsing, that doesn't suck. If we can't have a full computer controlled by voice, at least the browser would be nice to have.
Normal stuff
Have a setting so when going to a link,if you select the option, it will pre look to see if the page is also displayed as "formattted for printing" or "print this story", etc, so that the text version page is automatically displayed rather than having to re click to get to it. Can't tell you how many times I have done this going to read some article and it's 6 pages long for a grand total of a couple thousand word in the article. The "print this" option page is usually much more readable and faster and complete.
images
An option to select a single image to have it displayed,a right click menu option, when you are surfing with images off, and it shouldn't require a complete page reload to do this (a feature that icab has now, most cool)
bookmarks
Have a way to automatically upload your bookmarks to a web host as you save them, and the page can be selectable from the sub menu, those are your topic folders, so your saved URL can be automatically filed appropriately plus it's a backup. It could do both simultaneously with your normal bookmark file as well, like it does now.
what not to do
Anything if it makes it slower. Only incorporate any new features if you can at least maintain parity in downloading and rendering with what you have now. Speed baby, speed. Over all things we want FAST!
fun stuff, sub topic cookies manager
Haven't you always wanted a way to inject a little "howdy, jerk" payload into obnoxious cookies automagically? Let them track THAT!
useful but ordinary stuff,to help remove the browsing "annoying factor"
The internet is getting worse, not better, with pages that won't display properly. You can NOT get webmasters-for whatever reason, usually they are ordered to- to code for anything but "brand dismal" browser. They refuse, and there is no such thing as web standards, they are still in vague theory land. I don't know if this is possible, but if somehow when you hit such a page,you'd inform your browser, "this website layout sucks, fix it please", you could mash this "fixit" button and it would strip it to at least something approaching readable text, instead of overlapping sheets-that-have-no-style and various slobbering blinking abominations lurking in the columns.
A + bonus option would have your referrer leave a message for such a page like "peew, your page stinks, tell your boss".
Nuclear is a big and powerful method to generate a lot of power, and to insure that huge vast sums of money in the form of never ending profits remain in a small handful of corporations pockets. It's also quite a juicy target, therefore a major security risk, plus, that pesky waste stuff, that hangs around hot longer than recorded human history to date.
If you are more interested in having energy decentralised, with millions of potential islands instead of a few hundred, with the costs (and profits) decentralised, and the supplies to come from more diverse sources, and letting people and smaller businesses own their own energy, rather than leasing it with no long range payment plan available, then nuclear as it stands today is not much of an option, it is simply way too expensive and dangerous, but the other sources are an option, and are infinetly scalable.
And if I could harness the power of the run on sentence, we wouldn't even need to be having this discussion!
how do any random new recipients know which of the endless stream of look alike messages is the real one, even if they have somehow gotten the private key? Just de crypt and read all of them? I can see this working with a pre arranged subkey system where the designated good messages were known in advance or followed a pattern, perhaps with a one time pad arrangement, but to anyone new, it seems about as bad as not being able to decrypt it. Or is the idea the messages are all the same, just coming from so many places it's a waste of time for the enemy to concentrate on any one place?
first, I agree on the asteroids. It could happen, large and semi large "new" ones show up with enough regularity to prove they have no idea what's out there, that at best it's informed speculation based on what data they have, and that's it..
But some more that might occur are extremely huge solar flares, pole shifts, and the mundane but most possible,and most probable, merely running out of oil within the next two decades leading to global chaos and warfare, including extensive NBC warfare, which would in turn lead to a very long lasting and extensive global winter on top of it, from the dust from hugeparts of the world burning down, especially in the northern hemisphere.
Whether or not that means all human life being extinct is a moot point, dropping the worlds populations to just some thoudands total survivors would have basically the same effect. Most technology would be lost within the first new generation then, and no one here really knows what's inside all the worlds advanced bioweapons labs, best we can do there is again, speculate. Naturally occuring mutations of virii and bacteria can be bad enough, the biotech they have now...well... you feeling lucky? A certain percentage of infectees can live through smallpox or anthrax. Some can beat plague. More can beat measles, but still it can be lethal. Tularemia,ebola, and etc, etc, and who knows what engineered nasties they have. And a cocktail or warfare experience of all of them virtually simultanousely? Nope, nary a human could live through that if exposed, especially if they had to dodge strontiuym 90 all the time and find some way to grow food with the weather borked and no way to rely on surface water or rain to be non poisonous.
geez that's dismal, I'm sorry for you and him. Really is a bad scene. I once had to call 9-11 to have the cops come and take care of this guy I found just totally confused at a quickstore. He had driven there, got his gas, and then completely forgot who he was, what he was doing, where he needed to go, etc, and he wasn't that old, nor did he appear drunk or stoned, just "lost" as you describe. He was actually crying. I felt helpless, and didn't want to like get his wallet and rifle through it looking for his identification or anything, because the way laws and people are now, although that was an obvious temporary solution, so I called the cops to do it, and waited until they got there.
In the olden days, I don't think this happened as much, because of the way society was setup, people lived in extended family groups a lot more. They didn't send the kids to daycare or public school, and the elderly stayed home for their days. The people in the middle age brackets swapped off around the necessary work and watched over the very elderly/infirm and the very young and undeveloped/helpless. There was an obvious higher interest in maintaining care, and a higher caregiver to care recipient ratio, in that arrangement, family ties, love, etc.
Perhaps, in some ways, the collective "we" have forgotten our lessons from the past and become less civilised. This article points out a technical solution, but is it truly a human and humane solution, or is it just a further extension of our over dependence on impersonal gadgetry?
That gets into philosophy more than technical geekiness, but it's relevant to the discussion.
I guess you could combine both techniques, the patient stays with the extended family, but they have a backup of the advanced technology to help with the task.
to beat the patterning, you could have a computer randomize your sentence structure, by you using already overtly published works and your access to them to create "new" works that are your own, but don't look like it.. You could just cut and paste sentences from other works and put them together to make a new work. And if enough people did that, the pattern of the computer assisted copy/paste writing would be so widespread as to be near impossible to track down.
And it depends on what you want to do. If all you want to do is to spread information, you use what work arounds exist. If you (this Bob guy) are a direct action type,along with the words type, you work in a cell of one, no exceptions ever, for any reason. That's just normal assymetrical guerilla warfare theory. Despotic authorities can crack cells of two or more to "many", they do it all the time, but they have an almost impossible task to crack lone individuals. It's possible for them, of course, but much much harder. And if the cell of one is content with only one direct action,or even one critical publication of words, then retires, it becomes so much harder for them to crack as to approach the "impossible" state.
two good essays on this subject you can find on the net:
Leaderless Resistance
The Window War
Best info-mational novel(non sci fi, it's an action/historical genre, very readable) bar none on the subject
Unintended Consequences
Lee Iococa made sure that his corporation was set up to pay a first year dealer carlot salesman a LOT more than an engineer. And that's the lowball pay structure, it goes way up from there, and it's skewed to the non innovators side. So he wonders why there weren't as many engineers as he wanted? The second point is, professional racing pays better and is more fun for an automotive engineer than working for one of the big car companies. They have more freedom to be creative, and the rewards -in all forms, not just financial-are better.
Here's an automotive engineering example,Smokey Yunick. Worked various pro racing because he truly could be creative, and he got paid well to do it. He even proved he could almost single handedly beat detroit in making a non racing car, but a commuter car that could get fantastic mileage and not be weird, just a normal looking car that worked much better. He did it,built it, proved it worked, that it could be done, when detroit was whining to congress it wasn't possible, and that detroit was being lamer about it,liars basically. Detroit-GM IIRC, offered him literally dick for it in terms of money, a quarter million, it was a joke offer for what he had, so he went back to racing.
These big companies, with a few exceptions, don't want to pay for the class A brains, they want to pay for snakeoil salesmen, because it's a better way for them to make profits, sell the sizzle, which is cheap and easy to do, rather than building a better cow and selling a better steak. They also tend to reward the memebers of their clique, the other managers and sales people, because that's who they grew up with and hung out together with and went to college with. It's a good ole boys network. Why share the pot with people not in your clique? that's what they think anyway. They think anyone not in their cliqie is a loser, or a nerd, sonmeone to make fun of and to soak for everything they can get from them. They put themselves in the position to do that, so they do that. They also go WAY out of their way to make sure the nerds never have an effective union, they keep telling them from day one they are different from the blue collars, they are "white collar" and despite the fact they get treated like the blue collars, the nerds keep thinking they are somehow part of that management/sales clique, even though they never will be, so they get shafted. It's almost impossible for the nerds to use collective bargaining,in most cases,because of that indoctrination, and they also make sure the government-which they control because lawyers and legislators are closer to their clique than the blue collars or nerds-always passes laws that favor them, and no one else, except for the occassional non meaty bone toss.
I am speaking in very general terms now, I know there are exceptions to the rule, but in those general terms that's how I see it being run, and it's been run like that for a long time now.
The same thing is happening with the MBAs. Big whopper company A swallows up smaller company B, resulting in a surplus of managers. A lot of them get let go. Then new super corporation C moves production overseas, so they let even more of the domestic managers go,even more of the techs, and replace them over seas with native speaking managers and techs. Result, less people working, more competition for what jobs are available (domestically), tech OR management.
Someplace there's a tip over point where enough companies have done that so that there is little in the way of a middle class left working at a decent enough avereage pay scale who have any money to actually purchase the products or services, no matter how cheap they are. Right now, it's gone from products purchased with already made cash to we have more credit being used. The next step is the tip over point.
Then things will get REAL interesting.
I didn't look at your first link, about the impossible to be anonymous, but just at first thought on the subject in general, a combination of freenet type structure combined with a wireless meshed network would get someone pretty darn close, wouldn't it?
Nope, they will pay for stuff-hardware, tangible stuff, same as anyone else. And the linux coders will give it back 10 fold over to the hardware vendors by doing their work for them if they would just open it up a scosh. And the linux users who aren't coders will submit bug reports, and also pay for the hardware.
Saying linux users won't pay for anything is not true, they don't want to pay for intangibles,they think "owning" an intangible thought is nuts, and counter productive and bad for business and society, so they have developed and offer a new way to do things. They are willing to trade back and contribute actual effort to the hardware vendors as long as they stop being dicks about it. The ball is in the hardware vendors court, along with the "obscene profits from intangible copies" lobby, who need to get a clue or three as well.
You would have a valid point if the linux "movement" wasn't offering anything back, but they are, in spades, and they keep getting shat upon and told they are cheap, when they are the most giving and sharing folks out there. They keep going "HERE, take all this free stuff we developed, all we ask is access to a few devices specs, and make it legal to make them work better FOR YOU AND FOR US". And that is supposed to prove that "linux" is greedy? huh? Is that really so much for them to ask?
Noppe, try another argument, because that dog surely don't hunt.
Although saying it would be like SCO might not be an appropriate analogy. In this case, there is a probability of it being *true*. It's enough to get some judge someplace to think the idea has merit, and to maybe order an independent code review. Who would be competent to do that and who would be willing to do that is a different story, the way the laws are now, because of the contaminated brain aspect of it. That part sucks, but it's what we have to work with in the legal borked system. It would be complicated and nasty and MS lawyers could drag it out, but in the end they would most likely have to submit. It should happen, IMO. I think the entire MS codebase should be audited, for that matter, looking for stolen propietary or open source code. And you can assume I think that on other large closed source projects as well, I simply don't trust them as a default, because I have a near-Calvinistic view of people in general. It's also the reason I don't think any fair and true "free" market can exist outside of theory, there are just too many crimes possible once you add humans to the mix. Same deal with a total government run market/economy, same amount of humans and crime potential. Not to say it shouldn't be attempted,either one or a blend, but you will always get crooked exceptions to the rule that borks it for everyone else.
Yes, I know, this means we live in an unfixable catch 22 society, which means we fix and patch society as bad stuff rears up. It'll always be that way, too..
To get back to pure coding, I think the only rational and even medium logical long term method to make it so there are never any code thefts, is to mandate all open source code in everything, and to eliminatepatenting on code. If you think about it, that's the only way theft CAN'T occur, if it's free for the looking and taking and using in the first place. It can't be stolen then. No one would have to worry about it, they could always just do better stuff, borrowing as they see fit. Then no one would have to worry about it, and the most efficient code devised by humans could be used in as many places and in the most efficient manner as it would fit in, and people wouldn't have to worry about NDAs and cleanroom coding and so on. It would necessitate some business changes, but I think society would adjust once the tangible day to day benefits to everyone became more apparent.
The alternative is what we have now, and it gets more broken and more complex and more costly daily. Pretty soon the only people making money with code per se will be lawyers.
Yep, that's a radical notion, I realise that, but it's what I see coming if it ain't fixed soon..
Are there any remote exploits for mac os classic? If you have applesharing turned off, I am not aware of any.A machine can be DDoSed into crashing, any machine, but that's it. There might be "take over" exploits, but I am not aware of any. I used it for years with zero firewall. I know subseven will run on it as a client, but not as a zombied server if you are trying to install it remotely. Maybe that's changed, like I said I don't know, just my personal experience and what I read in the past.
Those are interesting, I hadn't seen them before. Email the guy and ask him, bet he would like to help. Good luck!
maybe he wants to hear when he's not using the phone? That's probably why he did it, as a switch,also, bluetooth has less human audible interference than the straight normal cellphone transmission carries, the wire propogates and interferes with the hearing aid circuitry and operation.
It's in the article, unless I am reading this wrong.
They are predators. They would rather sue you for 12 thousand dollars and win in court, then get two movie tickets out of you.
IMO anyway, going on what they do and say
they do not care about customers, they care about maximum profits, they don't even care about who or what they represent, that's why you always see these lawsuits between the MAFFIA scammers and the artistes, they won't even play fair with the talen that makes them millions. They think greed is a virtue, suborning politicians is their birthright, and total control their destiny.
in other words, they are *nuts*
... I more or less agree. I can see sometime (maybe soon) when stand alone software companies are pretty much dinosaurs. To me, software -the development-belongs integrated with ANOTHER business that actually manufacturers stuff for sale, or services stuff for sale. As such, off the shelf free is good for a start, then customisation on a corp by corp basis will be where the demand for constant devlopment comes from. To be *just* in the business of software development itself seems like the "all your eggs in one basket" idea. You can't sell "free", but you can sell "free & fancy", and the fancy part gets back to the widget for sale, so that's where the developers need to go for the bread and butter, and still do a little of the free and fun on the side. And if the company pops for a percentage of the time to be in the "free" zone, so much the better.
I don't even see big "free" distros making it long term unless they have some serious cash alliances and business ties with widget makers, whether that is a computer as the widget (saturated market), or just some other widget (still wide open).
Really, that's the only real way MS made it, getting tied in directly with the box vendors in such an overwhelming fashion. if people would have had to go out and actually purchase all their software as boxed sets off the rack someplace, no way could MS have made it so big, nor could they have charged what they charged.
And because this is now and not then, and FOSS is a reality, and because there is such a plethora of software "stuff" out there now, that getting tied in directly, as wholly owned or as a tied in division, with any hardware-widget corp, is probably the safest bet long term for developers to keep their editors hot and their wallets at least somewhat full. Embrace the free, work at the fancy for the loot.
sounds like legal software is a good bet then.