They aren't just an "IP holding company" like your normal patent troll. But they have clearly gone beyond the days of holding patents merely for defense.
I'd just like to point out its not much of a defense if you don't enforce your ownership at some level. If people feel that you won't defend what's your's they'll simply use it especially if they question your right to own an item in the first place. Case in point people who cut across railroad tracks even though there are signs that say no trespassing, people who park in no parking zones, or in the tech side people who take open source material from others and sell them on "App" stores to turn a buck without regards to the original authors.
Though I don't agree with the current regime of software patents and think it seriously needs major reforms, I don't hold it against anybody who fires warning shot every now and then to remind people you're stepping on their turf. Don't blame legitimate companies who spent money to research/create products then want to protect them the best they can through patents: they're just protecting their assets, blame the legislators for allowing ridiculous assets (though a broken patent system) to exist in the first place.
Is it just me or doesn't the situation smell too much of an attempt to control errosion of Oracle's highly profitable data industry. I know this is overly cynical, but If I could take control of a very popular substitute program that's been nipping at my heals I'd do so to ensure they wouldn't further errode my bottom line. I mean, why offer competitive prices when you can get away with exuberant licensing fees. Its a bonus if I can make the deal look good by "supporting" a community in the process. A Win Win strategy if I ever saw one.
I'm going to hold of and see... but to me this just smells as a positioning strategy where Oracle's just positiong major competetion outside the realm of it's cash gererating baby.
If your business is dependant on technology to run, you better have someone on staff (or on a consultant basis) that understands it. Or would you dismiss their inability to handle accounting since they're not a finance company?
You miss the point. It is of course a necessity that appropriate people be on staff and is not disputed, but do you expect a fashion company to have and spend billions on a IT R&D department? I'd assume not, its not they're business. They're focus is the [rant]exploitation of cheap labor to maximize profits of an overpriced product[/rant]. To that end they're company culture is not geared around cool tech stuff but rather around people and showy fashion they tech is there to support this (assumption as I don't really know what the company culture is like there).
Lets take another example of the opposite side of the coin. Do you expect google to know which is the technically best option when it comes down to furniture? Or perhaps you expect them to know how it was developed and what features it may or may come with it and what type of guarantees and warranties may apply?... They could even consult a furniture procurement consulting firm however I certainly don't expect google to care very much as long as it gets the job done and is comfortable for they're needs. I would however expect a furniture company to know what the difference is and perhaps take a riskier approach based on they're knowledge, resources and skills. The underlying reason being that it's they're domain of knowledge and company culture somewhat dictate choices. Don't underestimate what people think, what people like and how a manager's bonus is structured. It plays a bigger role than any technical decision could.
Last I checked Google's a multibillion-dollar corp that actually bet on an OS. Tommy.com, a small fragment of a company that bets on perfumes is nothing of the sort.
Its one thing to be tech company who's business revolves around the technology and its another to be in a non technical business who uses the technology to support they're business. Google has a huge R&D department who are in charge of making new things and finding ways of optimizing they're performance. It also help that the people who started google are tech nuts who enjoy tinkering around with stuff. So if your going to compare two companies you better get the company culture in there two otherwise it's still apple's to oranges regardless how big they are.
This is just like the other 200 articles that have been posted here as of late... very very skimpy on details.... the closest i've ever come to a reasonable amount of information on Longhorn is via the supersite.. I would encourage anyone who's actually interested in seeing what's currently known about Longhorn to vist that site.
Since every post here seems to thinks doomsday is unavoidable when using MS ideas on other platforms, may I remind everyone that you don't have to follow them to the letter!.
I mean, they opened up the basics that open up the platform, but does Linux/anything else really need WindowsForms/ASPX/ADO.NET/Whatever else that's not covered?
Imitation is nice, but I'm assuming that there are other ideas that can be explored and potentially take a twist for the better?... really, The beauty of the whole thing is if you write your own stuff that isn't legally ambiguous then you control where it can go so instead of a windows focused WindowForms you can have a Windowing library that is more generic and say works across several platforms and perhaps even windows... So, instead of ASPX you could hook up an "enhanced" PHP, use another dataset API instead of ADO and write a better windowing api, and that way your on stable legal terms instead of taking risks on ambiguity.
Mono's approach is somewhat on the right direction, they're basically copying down to the letter (with some creative license) and if a legal issue appears they'll just change the affected parts.
But that's just my 2 cents.
Sure not all the companies will be open source, but even if they are closed source you'll still be able to buy or download Chinese software which may be x100 better than the American software we have currently.
I understand your exaggerating to make your point but I really doubt that any who sits back and really thinks about the actual impact of this would agree with you. Once you close the loop and force people to use a particular product or source, then your virtually creating a monopoly which as we all know tend to resists doing any real innovation (because frankly they don't have to) to soak up more profits. The real solution to getting better programs is to put them in place via investments/grants/R&D/tax brakes etc, reduce your government IT budgets and give the pencil pushers a choice. We all know the dangers in either making it too easy or too difficult when it comes to government pencil pushers. They'll end up doing what's easier for them and not necessarily what's best.
Just look at it from a business point of view...what better environment exists to create a lovely company?... 1) find a government that's thinks it needs a software industry to protect against the Americans, 2) grab some free software who's licenses/patents aren't particularly valid under the given government's rules, 3) hire a few severely underpaid code monkeys to make the necessary changes, 4) sit back as huge wads of money start to fall from the sky, 5) hire marketers to ensure that the government keeps coming back for regular upgrades until they become so dependant that they don't consider anything else.
Why innovate when you can suck the system dry when both parties are happy: the government feeling good about supporting the local community, and the business who's sitting in huge piles of cash..... Kinda reminds me of the Microsoft/IBM deal.... And we all know what happened there...
Anyhow didn't want to bring you down, we can always hope that your view prevails, but the realist in me just can't see it happen.
You have an interesting idea, and I think that some organization as such in theory could be very beneficial.
However you have to be careful in how such a thing is implemented. If you license any patents then you have to license it evenly across the board, that's why companies, such as the MPEG group have to license to anyone including the evil one.... Now, if it's also members based, you'd have to be careful in how your members are selected as it can be discriminatory if you exclude one group. So your plan to prevent the big boys from getting access could backfire as they themselves becomes members, or drive the group in court for discrimination.
The Devil is in the details.
It's a nice idea, but I think that some of the law aware members of Slashdot could bring some light into the feasibility of such a plan.
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"Dude I can't get voice recognition to work reliably when fed by a voice cancelling headphone on a 1.2Ghz machine and a couple hours of training,..."
Funny.... I've had reliable keyword recognition since way back in '95 via my P133 and IBM via voice on OS/2 and the Mwave dsp addon board. Keyword isn't that big of a deal (relatively that is) if your selected vocabulary is relatively small. Keyword voice recognition is an almost solved problem and is used often from automated phone systems with amazing accuracy given poor signal quality. The automated collect call system's come to mind as a simple example. I have seen more complicated systems in work which are currently in research and some of the toolkits are open sourced if I'm not mistaken (would have to check to be sure)
As for difficulty.... that's not difficult at all seeing that the goal of the project is to ultimately provide that functionality.
All some interested party has to do is take they're freely available cell phone friendly code when it comes up make some modifications so that the signal is piped through a keyword recognizer instead of the speakers and poof... Its not as hard as you claim when sooo many people are willing to give you what you need.
"It would cost a lot more than $14K to do this over 100 channels."
As for cost, first of all I was using fictitious numbers as I stated... but seeing that you've brought up cost as unrealistic... I'll bring more realistic number and now overestimate. First, the paper associated with the article states that a dual 2Ghz machine could handle upto 32 GMS channels.. so.. lets see... lets say it costs $100 (which is probably being conservative) in Radio shack hardware to make the hardware to support 1 channel seeing that they say it only requires fairly inexpensive hardware... that's 3200 for 32 channels. Now add an overpriced Dell dual CPU server @ 3,444. now to get 96 channels it would cost you $19,932. Now, the average person could dig up a dual machine for less than 2000 with similar spec (minus scsi)... so realistically.... It be more like $15,600 which isn't that far off from my original $14k fictitious guess.
"Now targeted scanning could be a problem, but then maybe I can get my freaking cellular provider to turn on basic GSM encryption (phone supports it but none of the cell sites in the US do AFAIK)."
Unfortunately encryption won't end up being much of a stopping stone. It however will probably be the hardest part to deal with. There's a couple of ways that could be thwarted. 1. with so many distributed system for encryption breaking, a brute force could be used, not elegant... but hey... it works... 2. social engineering could be used to gain access to the information... Its certainly not the first time that a provider's phone password has popped up on the net. 3. if the original purpose of the system trickles down to the cellphone/pda... then you could simply walk up to your service provider and ask them to set it up, and voila you know have the encryption key.
I could keep circumventing different ideas all night.... And that's what's scary... cell phone scanners currently exist but are really pricey. Adding the cost of one sc
"Anybody with $0.30 in their pockets can order the parts necessary to eavesdrop on your phone call with hardware. Why is it scarier that you can do it in software?"
First off I'd like to see you make a pcs decoder for $0.30 seeing that its a digital signal.
Secondly, its not scarier in software per say... but rather the automation that can be done. Just like spammers can send out millions of emails each night with a few machines hooked up to the net, so too can this make it too easy to use. With just a few scanners automatically looking over the 49 Mhz (old cordless), 900 Mhz cordless, 800Mhz cell phones, PCS standard frequencies such as TDMA and GSM and any other private band increases the odds of finding something... Now mount this into a truck and drive it into a residential location or a really busy business location and poof.. with a twenty of these little babies with voice recognition aided scanning they could easily scan airwaves looking for potential targets... Its bad enough one person may be able to listen in... Its another once things get automated. You run a much bigger chance of being on the receiving end of privacy invasion.
To drive my point in... say these things (all numbers are fictitious to illustrate point) end up costing 40 bux in parts each. Now, somebody with a clue with the potential adds keyword voice recognition scanning (which includes a vast amount of freely available information to aid this just like the link I posted in my post) to the software so they can listen in and start recording once they find a specific keyword.
Now the scary part..
A typical $1000 PC say can handle 10 of them per machine...that's $1400 to scan 10 channels at a time. You add 10 PC in the back of truck for 14000 and you can scan 100 channels at time for useful information... if there's nothing on a particular channel say somebody hung up, it could always hunt for open channels... So they guy with this truck parked on the street in the middle of wall street drinking his latté now has all the inside trading information that he wants and retires with such a small investment.
Technology is a great thing... but with such power the old saying applies. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
What exists to stop this from becoming the next supper scanner?...
The current configuration of the device is said to support commercial analog FM radio services, including Family Band Radio as well as the public safety APCO 25 digital standard, with future prototypes under development that will include operational capabilities of up to 900 MHz and support for cellular and PCS standards such as TDMA and GSM.
With such a huge frequency range under its belt and the fact that it's all process via software all it needs is some voice recognition software and it could become the ultimate scanner/big brother toy. Simply put, you enter a few key words, and it scans the airways for you looking for them until it finds them and either logs it or tunes you into it. The NSA has had stuff like this for listening in on international call, but I don't know if I like the idea of my neighbour being able to selectively listen in on my calls especially with such power...
me->Hi I'd like to buy blah
staff-> will that be Visa or MasterCard
me-> Visa...
person with smart scanner->Chaching!
Didn't Next have a compositing display engine way back in the 70's via its postscript based engine? And as memory serves served as inspiration for Aqua and it's PDF based display engine.
DRM and MS everything are two entirely diferent things.... I don't deny anything... DRM abuse scares the hell out of me like the next aware person... But that's not what I was correcting.
And the reason that I am dubious about MS as a video supplier is that I am sure that they will work very hard to make sure that consumers can only run these files on Windows.
I regretably disagree with you on this point... The secret to domination is to get everyone to use it, so it's got to be on everything... If Microsoft can't get a copy of windows on it, they'll at least get royalties on the licensees bringing in a new cash cow. They're looking to dominate new markets, media is one via the DRM trojan hourse. They don't need to have windows running on every device that plays it, they'll make more on the video encode/decode rights over the longer run. Not to mention a great way to boost windows sales by positioning it as the ideal target platform for doing media related stuff... I know this is a tad cinical, but Its far more credible than claiming that all new attemps are to boost PC sales by restricting access only to PCs. Microsoft isn't stupid, if they see $$$ with lot of zero's at the end they'd Billy boy would be the new poaster boy for linux advocacy. ( i know all soo unlikely, but it illustrates my point )....
You've got your numbers wrong, first it's encoded @ 6Mb/s nor 6MB/s second the frame is 12 times larger than the average divx encode! 320x240 vs 1280 x 720.... So, here's the real math is Divx @ same ratio would be @ 10.546Mb/s vs 6Mb/s for winmed.... I think that's impressive.
for the record, I've encoded a lot... and i mean a lot of video in a whole wack of formats, from mpeg1-4, winmed (from the shittiest to the newest), quicktime, real, divx, and i'm probably going to play with some more when i get some spare time. From experience, there is a difference.
Like some other posters have already pointed out, no IE, no "stunning samples".
Screw them, honestly. What arrogance. I hate their whole "all-Microsoft" strategy. Would I buy a Sony DVD player and expect it to only play CDs or DVDs from Sony? People would be outraged!
Just want to point out your anger is a little premature and misdirected. The site itself, being Microsoft makes nice little popups that only support IE's DOM... no news there... however, you don't need IE to actually watch the clips, just windows media 9... you can actually download the files from the site if you want. Hence, its not the "All-Microsoft" strategy when it comes to the media itself. As it has been posted Microsoft is licensing all winmed 9 codes and information and a Linux port is on the way (don't know how well that will do however)....
I know its tempting to scream foul at every little bump Microsoft throws at you, hell, I do it myself sometimes, but like somebody else pointed out... they're not that evil all the time.
1) Is it moral for a government to stand idly by and allow the small business firm get crushed by legal action by the larger fish with more cash than they know what to do with? We've got lots of reports of incidents lying around slashdot's archives especially if you add the word "Microsoft" to the oppressor list (Lindows ring a recent bell to anyone?). Isn't a (to continue the metaphor) safe reef needed?
2) How far can you milk a patent till it becomes a crime?... Can anyone remember (and if I search the slashdot archives enough I'm sure I'll find it) the guy who tried to patent the predecessor to the hyperlink and tried suing all the big online providers? Or perhaps the more recent attack (bullying tactic) on IBM's assistance to the Linux community?
There are many other variants of these two questions especially when you get into specifics... hope that helps.
No offence taken.... I should have run it through a spell checker before submitting... and for that I should be apologizing to the slashdot at large for having to read my obvious spelling mistakes!
However, I think I need to clarify my points, as I was making broad claims and you've picked up at least one that needs clarification. I also disagree that Palladium provides a sandbox. Palladium applications can still be pretty damaging. They can delete all your files, or whatever, just like apps today. What Palladium does allow is that an application can encrypt its data and be confident that no one else can decrypt it. So you do gain a certain amount of security in that way. Palladium-aware apps can protect themselves in ways that old-style programs cannot. But there's no sandbox per se.
By sandbox I mean that non trusted code work under regular windows with presumably tighter restrictions (providing the default sandbox) and trusted code run in a freer app space. I do realize that a trusted app would have full control over its space ultimately have potential to create damage This ultimately then begs the question can you really trust a trusted app? On its defence (slightly), anyone willing to pay a license fee to become certified *should be* more trustworthy than some virus writer as they've got to cough up some cash make themselves apear secure!
I admit my def is not a true sandbox and a poor term to describe what I meant. But if that's not what is delivered (or at least some other variant that has obvious measures of secure/insecure code execution then the end users just won't get it) then they're not going to be any major credibility in the short run as to the whole push.
And while you're right that Palladium is not the same as DRM, I've heard Manferdelli (the Microsoft manager) talk, and he very frankly admitted that the original motivation for the project was to support DRM. Then they realized they could generalize it and do a lot more with it.
Now, I totally agree with you.... Palladium is a totally different beast then what was initially announced. Goes to show that the consumer still has some power over big companies and not the other way around. However, I must point out that in the end it doesn't matter what was the original idea was, it's what delivered that counts. Simple example, Microsoft was going to release the next generation help system having spent over 1/2 billion into the project. It was going to revolutionize how help is provided. It got canned. Bits and pieces of it pop up in office in the form of SmartTags and other things.. Apple also had a similar thing going before that... OpenDoc if I'm not mistaken.... got canned. An on the subject on failures, remember Microsoft Bob? It was suppose to revolutionize computers to beginners... that got canned after lack of consumer interest.
My long winded point (and I apologise for that) is that Microsoft can say what they want when they want it about it, but the reality is they won't release something that's going to hurt them (well much). Case in point, windows media even with it's DRM is relatively popular (cough even though it has divx to help with some of those numbers). And God knows why they're IM is so popular but they've capitalized on it and are making a "hip" integrated add-on (3 degrees) for it.
Anyhow.... The best policy when speaking about Palladium is to wait and see.... We really don't know the particulars which only lead to more speculation. A charge that can be directly aimed at Microsoft for leaving it so vague at times leaving ramped speculation impossible to avoid.
Btw... I hope my response is a tad better.... I'm working late and such my writing skills are simply not there right now...
A sandbox for MS Office macros would be an excellent idea, but you don't need Palladium for that. You don't need.NET either.
Obviously not. But such integration insures two things: Consistency and standardization..Net already has its own sandbox machanisms and is being integrated into office 2003. Pallium, well, you got to give a reason to hunk over cash to the predicesor of Offic 2k3;)
am just wondering how signing all the executables will protect anyone from viruses. Most viruses today are macro or scripted.
It's worth nothing that the behemoth apps (Outlook, Word, Excel etc) are signed, they will probably keep their embedded superscripting features, so viruses will still happily run on them.
Simple... suddenly secure Office apps will use.Net which runs the macros in a sandbox outside the secure zone. It has been on the drawing box for quite some time. Office 2003 will offer the first steps to.Net integration wich will ultimately add more security and control over these dumb macro exploits.
But the more obvious step would be to prohit you from manually launching such a script in the first place. Which is a step up. I've personally witnessed Computer Science Master and PHD students who should know better open up arbitrary code sent to them via email. Goes to show that sometimes even the knowledgeful are just as dumb as the users they often mock.
After having bought MS Visual Studio C#.Net, not realising that the "Standard" version doesn't play with non MS databases, I can't wait for the day when my OS/Computer refuses to let me use MySQL via ODBC because the drivers aren't signed/Palladium compatiable. I'll be so happy to be secure and safe from subversive and dangerous open source technolgies.
Uh... No. VS.Net only ships with Microsoft data drivers, but there is nothing stopping you from installing mySql serverOracle and any other database that has an ODBC driver (and there's a lot of them so i'm not going to link them all in here!).
The poster has missed the point and has confused two seperate issues into one. (DMR and machine security). If the poster had actually read the microsoft link from his own link he would have come up with the following quote"
" "Palladium" will not require digital rights management technology, and DRM will not require "Palladium." "
DMR is not the focus of Palladium (at least intially.... I say this with a grain of salt as you never know what they future will hold), but rather a seperate microsoft initiative spearheaded by the windowsmedia group and the Office group. I would be far more concerned about what these groups do than what Microsoft has outlined for Palladium.
Palladium is (or at least what is hoped, again i say this with a grain of salt, we'll only really know once the deliverables are shown) a combination of two big ideas. The first is to provide a system in which a user can trust stuff and allow it to run with sensitive information (eg, user data) and provide a sandbox where they can run stuff that they don't trust and know it won't do anything of consequence.
The second is to bring the PC hardware/Software to a more sofistated level, bringing up the bar as it would to what is now held by some of the mainframes. This serves two fold a purpose, one to weed out old hardware and hardware manufacturers that people keep using over and over that perhaps just don't have proper drivers which haul down the machine. Secondly, give greater credibility to the Wintel platform in all they're little political/business/OSS/User heart battles. At the end of the day, any time a user/admin/whomever sees something not function correctly (eg, system crash, failed performance of hardware eg... scanner won't scan) the first impulse is to blame Windows reguardless what caused the problem. I'm all for the improvement of the overall improvement of windows as any system that is improved makes a cost saving in both time and money at the end of the day.
There has been much speculation as to what Pallium will actually be. Most of it has been nonsense runned off by people with FUD as they're agenda. Little is known about what exactly will Pallium eventually encompase.... But what I do know is this. If it turns out that user restrictions are placed and people suddenly stop beind able to do certain things... then Microsoft will get a hit to they're bottom line and OS's like Linux and Mac OSX will suddenly have a massive inflow.
Give the public a little credit... The market doesn't have an absolute hold on them and if windows doesn't suit they're needs they'll jump off as though the ship is on fire. It's not like there aren't other capable alternatives. If there wasn't windows would have been regulated long time ago just like the telcos. But do you really think microsoft would alient people that much (or abolish competition for that matter) to be able to hurt themselves? I think not.
In reality, from experience these people tend to fall into two camps.... "I don't like digital", and "anything digital is good". And its for the exact same reason: how easy is it to pirate the material and how likely they are to accept change.
The acceptable use norm of material has been founded on the concept of being able to make a copy of whatever and whenever. Old analogue stuff was way too easy for anyone who had a vcr, digital stuff takes some work but once you have it you can ultimately do whatever you like. This is of course not what they owners/licensees want. And unfortunately this philosophy of anything intangible should ultimately be free as it cost them nothing to reproduce goes down deep in modern society.
What is needed is compromise on both parties, companies need to make things affordable instead of gouging consumers and the consumers have to realize that it cost somebody money and time to produce something so they should pay for it. I know this sounds a bit circular and communistic but the reality is that both camps can be happy if they both cooperate.
But this in the end is wishful thinking as the article clearly points out that there's plenty of people out there ready to cheat the system and complain when they get caught.
Slashdot Mirror
They aren't just an "IP holding company" like your normal patent troll. But they have clearly gone beyond the days of holding patents merely for defense.
I'd just like to point out its not much of a defense if you don't enforce your ownership at some level. If people feel that you won't defend what's your's they'll simply use it especially if they question your right to own an item in the first place. Case in point people who cut across railroad tracks even though there are signs that say no trespassing, people who park in no parking zones, or in the tech side people who take open source material from others and sell them on "App" stores to turn a buck without regards to the original authors. Though I don't agree with the current regime of software patents and think it seriously needs major reforms, I don't hold it against anybody who fires warning shot every now and then to remind people you're stepping on their turf. Don't blame legitimate companies who spent money to research/create products then want to protect them the best they can through patents: they're just protecting their assets, blame the legislators for allowing ridiculous assets (though a broken patent system) to exist in the first place.
Is it just me or doesn't the situation smell too much of an attempt to control errosion of Oracle's highly profitable data industry. I know this is overly cynical, but If I could take control of a very popular substitute program that's been nipping at my heals I'd do so to ensure they wouldn't further errode my bottom line. I mean, why offer competitive prices when you can get away with exuberant licensing fees. Its a bonus if I can make the deal look good by "supporting" a community in the process. A Win Win strategy if I ever saw one.
I'm going to hold of and see... but to me this just smells as a positioning strategy where Oracle's just positiong major competetion outside the realm of it's cash gererating baby.
You miss the point. It is of course a necessity that appropriate people be on staff and is not disputed, but do you expect a fashion company to have and spend billions on a IT R&D department? I'd assume not, its not they're business. They're focus is the [rant]exploitation of cheap labor to maximize profits of an overpriced product[/rant]. To that end they're company culture is not geared around cool tech stuff but rather around people and showy fashion they tech is there to support this (assumption as I don't really know what the company culture is like there).
Lets take another example of the opposite side of the coin. Do you expect google to know which is the technically best option when it comes down to furniture? Or perhaps you expect them to know how it was developed and what features it may or may come with it and what type of guarantees and warranties may apply?... They could even consult a furniture procurement consulting firm however I certainly don't expect google to care very much as long as it gets the job done and is comfortable for they're needs. I would however expect a furniture company to know what the difference is and perhaps take a riskier approach based on they're knowledge, resources and skills. The underlying reason being that it's they're domain of knowledge and company culture somewhat dictate choices. Don't underestimate what people think, what people like and how a manager's bonus is structured. It plays a bigger role than any technical decision could.
Its one thing to be tech company who's business revolves around the technology and its another to be in a non technical business who uses the technology to support they're business. Google has a huge R&D department who are in charge of making new things and finding ways of optimizing they're performance. It also help that the people who started google are tech nuts who enjoy tinkering around with stuff. So if your going to compare two companies you better get the company culture in there two otherwise it's still apple's to oranges regardless how big they are.
This is just like the other 200 articles that have been posted here as of late... very very skimpy on details.... the closest i've ever come to a reasonable amount of information on Longhorn is via the supersite.. I would encourage anyone who's actually interested in seeing what's currently known about Longhorn to vist that site.
Since every post here seems to thinks doomsday is unavoidable when using MS ideas on other platforms, may I remind everyone that you don't have to follow them to the letter!.
I mean, they opened up the basics that open up the platform, but does Linux/anything else really need WindowsForms/ASPX/ADO.NET/Whatever else that's not covered?
Imitation is nice, but I'm assuming that there are other ideas that can be explored and potentially take a twist for the better?... really, The beauty of the whole thing is if you write your own stuff that isn't legally ambiguous then you control where it can go so instead of a windows focused WindowForms you can have a Windowing library that is more generic and say works across several platforms and perhaps even windows... So, instead of ASPX you could hook up an "enhanced" PHP, use another dataset API instead of ADO and write a better windowing api, and that way your on stable legal terms instead of taking risks on ambiguity.
Mono's approach is somewhat on the right direction, they're basically copying down to the letter (with some creative license) and if a legal issue appears they'll just change the affected parts.
But that's just my 2 cents.
I understand your exaggerating to make your point but I really doubt that any who sits back and really thinks about the actual impact of this would agree with you. Once you close the loop and force people to use a particular product or source, then your virtually creating a monopoly which as we all know tend to resists doing any real innovation (because frankly they don't have to) to soak up more profits. The real solution to getting better programs is to put them in place via investments/grants/R&D/tax brakes etc, reduce your government IT budgets and give the pencil pushers a choice. We all know the dangers in either making it too easy or too difficult when it comes to government pencil pushers. They'll end up doing what's easier for them and not necessarily what's best.
Just look at it from a business point of view...what better environment exists to create a lovely company?... 1) find a government that's thinks it needs a software industry to protect against the Americans, 2) grab some free software who's licenses/patents aren't particularly valid under the given government's rules, 3) hire a few severely underpaid code monkeys to make the necessary changes, 4) sit back as huge wads of money start to fall from the sky, 5) hire marketers to ensure that the government keeps coming back for regular upgrades until they become so dependant that they don't consider anything else.
Why innovate when you can suck the system dry when both parties are happy: the government feeling good about supporting the local community, and the business who's sitting in huge piles of cash..... Kinda reminds me of the Microsoft/IBM deal.... And we all know what happened there...
Anyhow didn't want to bring you down, we can always hope that your view prevails, but the realist in me just can't see it happen.
However you have to be careful in how such a thing is implemented. If you license any patents then you have to license it evenly across the board, that's why companies, such as the MPEG group have to license to anyone including the evil one.... Now, if it's also members based, you'd have to be careful in how your members are selected as it can be discriminatory if you exclude one group. So your plan to prevent the big boys from getting access could backfire as they themselves becomes members, or drive the group in court for discrimination.
The Devil is in the details.
It's a nice idea, but I think that some of the law aware members of Slashdot could bring some light into the feasibility of such a plan.
Quality is excellent
Running Time: 110 mins.
Language: English
Directed by some guy
Cast: Some People
Ejoy contless hours with this action packed extras loaded DVD. Package includes slightly used EZ-D based DVD in excelent condition, no scratches and comes with the mind condition packaging. The DVD was recently purchased a month a go, and watched three weeks ago...
Enjoy the movie!.
Cheers
Seller.
Funny.... I've had reliable keyword recognition since way back in '95 via my P133 and IBM via voice on OS/2 and the Mwave dsp addon board. Keyword isn't that big of a deal (relatively that is) if your selected vocabulary is relatively small. Keyword voice recognition is an almost solved problem and is used often from automated phone systems with amazing accuracy given poor signal quality. The automated collect call system's come to mind as a simple example. I have seen more complicated systems in work which are currently in research and some of the toolkits are open sourced if I'm not mistaken (would have to check to be sure)
As for difficulty.... that's not difficult at all seeing that the goal of the project is to ultimately provide that functionality.
from they're website
"IS-136, IS-95, GSM
A complete cell phone implementation"
All some interested party has to do is take they're freely available cell phone friendly code when it comes up make some modifications so that the signal is piped through a keyword recognizer instead of the speakers and poof... Its not as hard as you claim when sooo many people are willing to give you what you need.
"It would cost a lot more than $14K to do this over 100 channels."
As for cost, first of all I was using fictitious numbers as I stated... but seeing that you've brought up cost as unrealistic... I'll bring more realistic number and now overestimate. First, the paper associated with the article states that a dual 2Ghz machine could handle upto 32 GMS channels.. so.. lets see... lets say it costs $100 (which is probably being conservative) in Radio shack hardware to make the hardware to support 1 channel seeing that they say it only requires fairly inexpensive hardware... that's 3200 for 32 channels. Now add an overpriced Dell dual CPU server @ 3,444. now to get 96 channels it would cost you $19,932. Now, the average person could dig up a dual machine for less than 2000 with similar spec (minus scsi)... so realistically.... It be more like $15,600 which isn't that far off from my original $14k fictitious guess.
"Now targeted scanning could be a problem, but then maybe I can get my freaking cellular provider to turn on basic GSM encryption (phone supports it but none of the cell sites in the US do AFAIK)."
Unfortunately encryption won't end up being much of a stopping stone. It however will probably be the hardest part to deal with. There's a couple of ways that could be thwarted. 1. with so many distributed system for encryption breaking, a brute force could be used, not elegant... but hey... it works... 2. social engineering could be used to gain access to the information... Its certainly not the first time that a provider's phone password has popped up on the net. 3. if the original purpose of the system trickles down to the cellphone/pda... then you could simply walk up to your service provider and ask them to set it up, and voila you know have the encryption key.
I could keep circumventing different ideas all night.... And that's what's scary... cell phone scanners currently exist but are really pricey. Adding the cost of one sc
First off I'd like to see you make a pcs decoder for $0.30 seeing that its a digital signal.
Secondly, its not scarier in software per say... but rather the automation that can be done. Just like spammers can send out millions of emails each night with a few machines hooked up to the net, so too can this make it too easy to use. With just a few scanners automatically looking over the 49 Mhz (old cordless), 900 Mhz cordless, 800Mhz cell phones, PCS standard frequencies such as TDMA and GSM and any other private band increases the odds of finding something... Now mount this into a truck and drive it into a residential location or a really busy business location and poof.. with a twenty of these little babies with voice recognition aided scanning they could easily scan airwaves looking for potential targets... Its bad enough one person may be able to listen in... Its another once things get automated. You run a much bigger chance of being on the receiving end of privacy invasion.
To drive my point in... say these things (all numbers are fictitious to illustrate point) end up costing 40 bux in parts each. Now, somebody with a clue with the potential adds keyword voice recognition scanning (which includes a vast amount of freely available information to aid this just like the link I posted in my post) to the software so they can listen in and start recording once they find a specific keyword.
Now the scary part..
A typical $1000 PC say can handle 10 of them per machine...that's $1400 to scan 10 channels at a time. You add 10 PC in the back of truck for 14000 and you can scan 100 channels at time for useful information... if there's nothing on a particular channel say somebody hung up, it could always hunt for open channels... So they guy with this truck parked on the street in the middle of wall street drinking his latté now has all the inside trading information that he wants and retires with such a small investment.
Technology is a great thing... but with such power the old saying applies. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The current configuration of the device is said to support commercial analog FM radio services, including Family Band Radio as well as the public safety APCO 25 digital standard, with future prototypes under development that will include operational capabilities of up to 900 MHz and support for cellular and PCS standards such as TDMA and GSM.
With such a huge frequency range under its belt and the fact that it's all process via software all it needs is some voice recognition software and it could become the ultimate scanner/big brother toy. Simply put, you enter a few key words, and it scans the airways for you looking for them until it finds them and either logs it or tunes you into it. The NSA has had stuff like this for listening in on international call, but I don't know if I like the idea of my neighbour being able to selectively listen in on my calls especially with such power...
me->Hi I'd like to buy blah
staff-> will that be Visa or MasterCard
me-> Visa...
person with smart scanner->Chaching!
woops.... thanx to all that caught my dumb typo!!...
Didn't Next have a compositing display engine way back in the 70's via its postscript based engine? And as memory serves served as inspiration for Aqua and it's PDF based display engine.
And the reason that I am dubious about MS as a video supplier is that I am sure that they will work very hard to make sure that consumers can only run these files on Windows.
I regretably disagree with you on this point... The secret to domination is to get everyone to use it, so it's got to be on everything... If Microsoft can't get a copy of windows on it, they'll at least get royalties on the licensees bringing in a new cash cow. They're looking to dominate new markets, media is one via the DRM trojan hourse. They don't need to have windows running on every device that plays it, they'll make more on the video encode/decode rights over the longer run. Not to mention a great way to boost windows sales by positioning it as the ideal target platform for doing media related stuff... I know this is a tad cinical, but Its far more credible than claiming that all new attemps are to boost PC sales by restricting access only to PCs. Microsoft isn't stupid, if they see $$$ with lot of zero's at the end they'd Billy boy would be the new poaster boy for linux advocacy. ( i know all soo unlikely, but it illustrates my point )....
Ayhow just my 2 cents.
Cheers.
You've got your numbers wrong, first it's encoded @ 6Mb/s nor 6MB/s second the frame is 12 times larger than the average divx encode! 320x240 vs 1280 x 720.... So, here's the real math is Divx @ same ratio would be @ 10.546Mb/s vs 6Mb/s for winmed .... I think that's impressive.
for the record, I've encoded a lot ... and i mean a lot of video in a whole wack of formats, from mpeg1-4, winmed (from the shittiest to the newest), quicktime, real, divx, and i'm probably going to play with some more when i get some spare time. From experience, there is a difference.
Just want to point out your anger is a little premature and misdirected. The site itself, being Microsoft makes nice little popups that only support IE's DOM... no news there... however, you don't need IE to actually watch the clips, just windows media 9... you can actually download the files from the site if you want. Hence, its not the "All-Microsoft" strategy when it comes to the media itself. As it has been posted Microsoft is licensing all winmed 9 codes and information and a Linux port is on the way (don't know how well that will do however)....
I know its tempting to scream foul at every little bump Microsoft throws at you, hell, I do it myself sometimes, but like somebody else pointed out... they're not that evil all the time.
1) Is it moral for a government to stand idly by and allow the small business firm get crushed by legal action by the larger fish with more cash than they know what to do with? We've got lots of reports of incidents lying around slashdot's archives especially if you add the word "Microsoft" to the oppressor list (Lindows ring a recent bell to anyone?). Isn't a (to continue the metaphor) safe reef needed?
2) How far can you milk a patent till it becomes a crime?... Can anyone remember (and if I search the slashdot archives enough I'm sure I'll find it) the guy who tried to patent the predecessor to the hyperlink and tried suing all the big online providers? Or perhaps the more recent attack (bullying tactic) on IBM's assistance to the Linux community?
There are many other variants of these two questions especially when you get into specifics... hope that helps.
However, I think I need to clarify my points, as I was making broad claims and you've picked up at least one that needs clarification.
I also disagree that Palladium provides a sandbox. Palladium applications can still be pretty damaging. They can delete all your files, or whatever, just like apps today. What Palladium does allow is that an application can encrypt its data and be confident that no one else can decrypt it. So you do gain a certain amount of security in that way. Palladium-aware apps can protect themselves in ways that old-style programs cannot. But there's no sandbox per se.
By sandbox I mean that non trusted code work under regular windows with presumably tighter restrictions (providing the default sandbox) and trusted code run in a freer app space. I do realize that a trusted app would have full control over its space ultimately have potential to create damage This ultimately then begs the question can you really trust a trusted app? On its defence (slightly), anyone willing to pay a license fee to become certified *should be* more trustworthy than some virus writer as they've got to cough up some cash make themselves apear secure!
I admit my def is not a true sandbox and a poor term to describe what I meant. But if that's not what is delivered (or at least some other variant that has obvious measures of secure/insecure code execution then the end users just won't get it) then they're not going to be any major credibility in the short run as to the whole push.
And while you're right that Palladium is not the same as DRM, I've heard Manferdelli (the Microsoft manager) talk, and he very frankly admitted that the original motivation for the project was to support DRM. Then they realized they could generalize it and do a lot more with it.
Now, I totally agree with you.... Palladium is a totally different beast then what was initially announced. Goes to show that the consumer still has some power over big companies and not the other way around. However, I must point out that in the end it doesn't matter what was the original idea was, it's what delivered that counts. Simple example, Microsoft was going to release the next generation help system having spent over 1/2 billion into the project. It was going to revolutionize how help is provided. It got canned. Bits and pieces of it pop up in office in the form of SmartTags and other things.. Apple also had a similar thing going before that... OpenDoc if I'm not mistaken.... got canned. An on the subject on failures, remember Microsoft Bob? It was suppose to revolutionize computers to beginners... that got canned after lack of consumer interest.
My long winded point (and I apologise for that) is that Microsoft can say what they want when they want it about it, but the reality is they won't release something that's going to hurt them (well much). Case in point, windows media even with it's DRM is relatively popular (cough even though it has divx to help with some of those numbers). And God knows why they're IM is so popular but they've capitalized on it and are making a "hip" integrated add-on (3 degrees) for it.
Anyhow.... The best policy when speaking about Palladium is to wait and see.... We really don't know the particulars which only lead to more speculation. A charge that can be directly aimed at Microsoft for leaving it so vague at times leaving ramped speculation impossible to avoid.
Btw... I hope my response is a tad better.... I'm working late and such my writing skills are simply not there right now...
Obviously not. But such integration insures two things: Consistency and standardization. .Net already has its own sandbox machanisms and is being integrated into office 2003. Pallium, well, you got to give a reason to hunk over cash to the predicesor of Offic 2k3 ;)
Simple... suddenly secure Office apps will use .Net which runs the macros in a sandbox outside the secure zone. It has been on the drawing box for quite some time. Office 2003 will offer the first steps to .Net integration wich will ultimately add more security and control over these dumb macro exploits.
But the more obvious step would be to prohit you from manually launching such a script in the first place. Which is a step up. I've personally witnessed Computer Science Master and PHD students who should know better open up arbitrary code sent to them via email. Goes to show that sometimes even the knowledgeful are just as dumb as the users they often mock.
Uh... No. VS.Net only ships with Microsoft data drivers, but there is nothing stopping you from installing mySql server Oracle and any other database that has an ODBC driver (and there's a lot of them so i'm not going to link them all in here!).
The poster has missed the point and has confused two seperate issues into one. (DMR and machine security). If the poster had actually read the microsoft link from his own link he would have come up with the following quote"
" "Palladium" will not require digital rights management technology, and DRM will not require "Palladium." "
DMR is not the focus of Palladium (at least intially.... I say this with a grain of salt as you never know what they future will hold), but rather a seperate microsoft initiative spearheaded by the windowsmedia group and the Office group. I would be far more concerned about what these groups do than what Microsoft has outlined for Palladium.
Palladium is (or at least what is hoped, again i say this with a grain of salt, we'll only really know once the deliverables are shown) a combination of two big ideas. The first is to provide a system in which a user can trust stuff and allow it to run with sensitive information (eg, user data) and provide a sandbox where they can run stuff that they don't trust and know it won't do anything of consequence.
The second is to bring the PC hardware/Software to a more sofistated level, bringing up the bar as it would to what is now held by some of the mainframes. This serves two fold a purpose, one to weed out old hardware and hardware manufacturers that people keep using over and over that perhaps just don't have proper drivers which haul down the machine. Secondly, give greater credibility to the Wintel platform in all they're little political/business/OSS/User heart battles. At the end of the day, any time a user/admin/whomever sees something not function correctly (eg, system crash, failed performance of hardware eg... scanner won't scan) the first impulse is to blame Windows reguardless what caused the problem. I'm all for the improvement of the overall improvement of windows as any system that is improved makes a cost saving in both time and money at the end of the day.
There has been much speculation as to what Pallium will actually be. Most of it has been nonsense runned off by people with FUD as they're agenda. Little is known about what exactly will Pallium eventually encompase.... But what I do know is this. If it turns out that user restrictions are placed and people suddenly stop beind able to do certain things... then Microsoft will get a hit to they're bottom line and OS's like Linux and Mac OSX will suddenly have a massive inflow.
Give the public a little credit... The market doesn't have an absolute hold on them and if windows doesn't suit they're needs they'll jump off as though the ship is on fire. It's not like there aren't other capable alternatives. If there wasn't windows would have been regulated long time ago just like the telcos. But do you really think microsoft would alient people that much (or abolish competition for that matter) to be able to hurt themselves? I think not.
In reality, from experience these people tend to fall into two camps.... "I don't like digital", and "anything digital is good". And its for the exact same reason: how easy is it to pirate the material and how likely they are to accept change.
The acceptable use norm of material has been founded on the concept of being able to make a copy of whatever and whenever. Old analogue stuff was way too easy for anyone who had a vcr, digital stuff takes some work but once you have it you can ultimately do whatever you like. This is of course not what they owners/licensees want. And unfortunately this philosophy of anything intangible should ultimately be free as it cost them nothing to reproduce goes down deep in modern society.
What is needed is compromise on both parties, companies need to make things affordable instead of gouging consumers and the consumers have to realize that it cost somebody money and time to produce something so they should pay for it. I know this sounds a bit circular and communistic but the reality is that both camps can be happy if they both cooperate.
But this in the end is wishful thinking as the article clearly points out that there's plenty of people out there ready to cheat the system and complain when they get caught.
A static or Dynamic IP with that? Remember... a smile is free!