I'm affraid it's not that insightful. It's even quite misinformative:
From parent Suppose they don't de-activate paid-off RFIDs and let the chips keep on responding to query signals. [...] Target will set up a truck in a Wal-Mart parking lot and start measuring their sales
That's simply not possible for many different reasons: - the space outside the street is public domain, and no company will be allowed to put trackers there without valid reason. Tracking your competitor's sales obviously is not one. - supposing they can be installed. Wal Mart would easily identify those trackers and could just use a very cheap signal scrambler near them to prevent identification - even if they could identify the RFID tags, they would need access to a database indicated which companies possess those tags, it's most probable that such information won't be made available
This leads me to think that either you are pretty optimistic regarding WalMart destroying the tags after purchase, either you would like us to believe so. I hope for the best;)
Even if they were going to start sticking RFID tags on everything tomorrow(which would be prohibitedly expensive) their distance limitations would make them useless once you got out into the parking lot, and that erring on the generous side on the distances they can transmit. So unless you have a RFID reader in your house, no worries.
If prices go low enough, then they'll be able to put RFID tags on everything tomorrow. Tech products prices always go down, even more when built in huge quantities which we can expect to be the case quite soon. Moreover, nobody is concerned about RFID tags being detected up to within your house.
You are missing the point here, which is that once RFID tags are associated with a credit card, a name or social security number, then you have a consumer profile that allows you to track people wherever they go, track their purchasing habits, and so on. Enterprises in the US already exchange what is considered confidential informations about their customer so RFID tags will be much of a concern here unless the law takes consumer privacy more seriously in the US.
Those devices need a legislative frame to restrict their use and the spreading of confidential information they allow if trackers are put around every street corner (wouldn't that please Bush's famed department of Homeland Security ? I guess it would). Without this legislative consumer protection, I guess US citizens won't be worth much more than a consumer or criminal profile.
They are worth much more than that (and I'm not one of them).
My point was purely technical : generosity implies that you do not get anything in return for your actions. So, Epic are certainly not being generous in that case since they most probably expected a good return on investment, but they surely are clever, and of course there's no harm being so.
I do agree with your whole point (as well as Polyphemis one), but let's just use some other word than generosity:)
I have the utmost respect for Epic as a company, and they have my undying loyalty and admiration for being such awesome and generous people.
I'd not use the term generous here. They certainly are talented people who know how to craft good games and market them very well but what you experienced was a big advertising campaign, using one of the most efficient medias available : users' word of mouth. This does not make them generous, they'll be generous if they gave money away without expecting any profit from it, I doubt this was the case;)
And of course I'm not saying they're bad people, but never forget that this does not imply that they are good ones, one would have to check much deeper under Epic's surface to really know that.
This leads me to think that this idea of allowing nearly costless extension of copyright is not a good thing. The copyrights that will be of most interest for citizens/customers probably correlate with those big companies make a lot of money from.
So, what this proposal will incitate them to do is drop the copyrights for works that have near to zero interest to citizens/consumers. I am not sure that this will be very useful to the masses and allow non commercial innovation. At best it will be useful for people with very specific interests that nearly nobody shares.
Copyrights as well as patents are a restriction of the use of knowledge by the masses. They are designed so that the people/enterprises who invest time and money to bring innovations to society will have a chance to get their money back before the corresponding knowledge goes back to the common knowledge pool.
So copyrights and patents law should perhaps be modified so that those would be valid for a maximum of say 5 to 40 years depending on the copyright/patent object, and would move up to the public domain once say they have brought back enough revenues to their owner so that they gained a given factor (>1 !) of what they invested in R&D to develop it and bring it to the market.
Copyrights and patents would be extented freely as long as the revenues would not allow a reasonnable reimbursement of the investor.
This looks to me quite a good middle ground solution : allowing investors to get enough money back to incitate innovation and making sure common knowledge does not benefits private hands for too long.
It is true that Canada does not depend only on oil/coal to produce their energy, but it's false to say that it comes only from nuclear and water.
As the CIA World factbook (http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geo s/ca.html) says: Electricity - production by source: hydro: 61% fossil fuel: 25% other: 2% (2000) nuclear: 12%
One fourth of Canada electricity is produced using fossil fuels, both oil and coal.
France electricty production (same source): nuclear: 77% hydro: 13% fossil fuel: 10% other: 1% (2000)
And now Germany (always same source): fossil fuel: 63% nuclear: 30% hydro: 4% other: 3% (2000)
Wind energy is currently growing very fast in Germany but not to the point that it can be used to produce enough hydrogen to run vehicles (or only very few).
So as you see, producing enough clean hydrogen so we can use it to power really-emissions-free vehicles is not yet possible and is very far from being so. Even if wind farms grow up very fast, they will need to produce nearly twice the energy which is now used to propell vehicles since hydrolisis has a very small efficiency (less than 50%).
Most of the world uses oil and coal to produce energy including the huge majority of the rich countries, so the clean hydrogen economy is far from becoming a reality (I wish it will but I doubt it's possible without reductions of the energy consumption). The dirty oil-based hydrogen economy has much more probability to become a reality however...
uh. it has no emissions, its hydrogen powered dude. the case of a tree-hugger barking up the wrong tree (:
Hydrogen in itself is not an energy source but rather an energy vector. As it is not available under its gaseous (H2) form naturally it must be extracted either from water (H20) or hydrocarbons such as oil or methan (CH4).
If hydrogen is extracted from water via electrolysis, it consumes a *lot* more energy than what you gain by burning it in the scooter's engine both because thermodynamics dictates it and because this process is not very efficient. If you live in the US, the major part of electricity is produced by oil/coal-burning plants, and this will induce a lot more CO2 emissions than if you had used a standard oil scooter. Most of the world generates electricity this way (France being the biggest exception with 76% of its electricity being nuclear).
If you extract hydrogen from oil or gases it will use less electricity but it will generate CO2 emissions too. I read in a recent scientific (paper) article that they were also greater than when burning oil in a standard scooter...
So unless hydrogen is produced using electricity which itself was produced via an emission free process, ie renewables, using such a scooter is actually more damaging to the environment than not doing so.
The so-called hydrogen economy is currently a dream unless our global energy consumption goes down enough that we can use renewable sources to satisfy it. Otherwise it's just a new marketting trend initiated by the chemical/petroleum industry which is the one producing hydrogen and lobbying it despite the danger it causes to the environment under the current electricity producing conditions.
Well, it's probably going to cost me a negative score but why was this post modded up to +5 ? Isn't this a obvious abuse of the scoring system used on slashdot ?
This troll has elements of a reasonable idea, but tries to support them with mistakes and misinterpretations:
I have yet to understand why this post is considered a troll. Its sarcastic tone probably helps but the argumentation is correct.
ISS is not in a "rapidly-decaying orbit". As a satellite in low-Earth-orbit, ISS requires occasional use of onboard thrusters to maintain the correct orbit. This is common.
It is common for short-lived satelites. But not for a space station which goal is to stay in space for the longest possible time at the lowest cost. A space station weights *much* more than the biggest satelites ever sent to space and making sure it doesn't fallback to earth implies providing it with important amounts fuel on a regular basis. It is indeed true that the ISS was put on such a low orbit to compensate for the shuttle inability to reach higher orbits. Europeans and russians did not want to rely on the shuttle for practical and financial reasons: a shuttle flight costs much more than a rocket one, carries much less payload and cannot reach higher orbits where the ISS should have been put.
>> The safety record sucks.
It is naive to expect spacce travel to have a safety record that even approaches that of commercial air travel. This is risky and experimental work, and we should accept that. A safety record that approximates that of the X-series of manned experimental aircraft would be more than acceptable.
This is a very bad answer. It never has been said that the shuttle safety record should approach that of commercial air travel. This obviously implies that its safety record sucks compared to other space travel methods. And this is quite true. The percentage of shuttle failures per flight is much higher than the same thing for rockets.
>> Most of the satellites that are "launched" by the shuttle suffer from the design constraint that they have to fit into the friggin' bay AND have room for the accompanying boosters that will put them into their real orbit once the shuttle lets them out. Again, the shuttle can't go high enough for real deployment.
Height has nothing to do with it. Orbit is achieved by virtue of velocity. While it can be argued that some satellites didn't need to be launched via the shuttle, it is silly to argue that satellites have been compromised by being ddiesinged to fit in the shuttle's cargo bay. All satellites must be designed to fit in the craft that launches them, whether a shuttle or an expendable booster.
Height has much to do with it. The "troll" (as you say), indeed said exactly what you say in your last sentence : satellites have to adapt to the launching craft. Hence it's a bad thing to use the shuttle to launch them : it costs (much) more than a rocket and it implies heavy modifications to the satellite propulsion system when they need to reach higher orbits than what the shuttle is capable to go. Even for low-orbit satellites using the shuttle is a big loss of money and resources, so using it for intermediate or higher orbits and imposing modifications on the satellites to do so is even more absurd. Rocket launchers put the satellites at the desired orbit and can carry much heavier satellites while imposing much less constraints on them.
>> Scrap the silly "space-plane"...
The purpose of putting wings on a spacecraft is recovery and reuse. Otherwise, they're more trouble than they are worth.
The real problem with the U.S. space effort is that it has lacked a clearly defined mission since the Nixon administration told NASA it had to cut its funding, following the initial lunar missions, from about 3% to 1% of GDP. That played havoc with NASA'a scheduled remaining lunar missions, with its plans to return to the
Well, once again a "scientist" whose main field is not climate neither any other related domain tries to describe the debate about global warming as occuring between "environmentalists" and "serious scientists" ignoring all scientific work on the subject and forgetting that the "evidence" he mentions was already taken into account by the scientific community.
It's not a suprise that he doesn't even mention the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) which reviews all scientific publications about climate change and yearly produces extensive reports on the current knowledge about global warming.
If he did it would be too easy to dismiss all his claims since the IPCC already took all the elements he brings to light into account.
Have a look at the latest scientific evidence about global warming directly at their site. THIS is the absolute reference on the subject and no economic PhD will be able to claim it's the work of environmentalist hippies without looking both dishonest and ridiculous.
http://www.ipcc.ch
The IPCC is no "environmentalist" association, it's a "governments-appointed" scientific panel which job is to review ALL scientific evidence on the subject including the "revolutionnary" stuff this poor oil-industry-sponsored economists talks about. Not exactly an environmentalist lobby...
You don't need to apologize, I am not an english native speaker but even in french I have that nasty habit of continually trying to add information to my sentences by adding parentheses (such as this one) to them:)
It's a good thing you made me aware that it was not that readable, you're also not alone to mention it anyway so there's no problem really.
This being said I do not promise anything : it already takes me hours to be satisfied when writting as few as 10 lines of text and you can see the result. I guess I'll have to buy sandwiches before beginning my next post if I want to ensure my survival:)
The only problem with this practice being that it would be fully illegal since Microsoft has no right to destroy user personal data without its consent. The chip flash content belongs to the user and only him can decide whether it should be trashed or not.
I guess that the FSF or EFF lawyers would be quite happy to test this in courts.
That's not true. An XBox sold is better than an XBox shelved
That isn't true neither.
the figures below are approximative but this does not matter here:
-MS loses $300 per built-but-not-sold-console
-MS loses $100 per console-sold-to-install-linux-without-buying-games
Whatever geeks do, MS will sell nearly all their consoles regardless of how many people buy the machine because they are clever enough not to build too many machines and will adapt to the demand's evolution.
So MS will never lose $300 per not-sold-console because there won't be such thing as a not-sold console (or too few to make a difference).
That loss is purely virtual and would be obtained only if MS was stupid enough to build a massive number of unsold consoles which will all know will never happen. Bill might be cynical unscrupulous moron but he's certainly not stupid.
Moreover, the linux-xbox might interest a quite high number of non-geeks people not able to buy a computer because of prices issues.
Remember that for $249 you get a computer that just needs to be plugged on the TV : a complete set top box, easy access to the internet, to which you can add a keyboard and mouse, write email, surf the web and a zillion other things.
A computer running with free software (free as in beer).
The average Joe does not need power, nor graphical resolution, he needs a low price, a user friendly interface quick controls and possibly cracked games if he gets his hands on some. The linux/xbox combination gives him all this and MS actually pays to make sure he'll buy it.
The average Joe's is also a huge number of people, multiply that number by those $100 that MS hoped to recover by selling games. If you are not convinced remember that running a user friendly linux on the xbox will be very soon as simple as buying the already modded/linuxed xbox.
You can also expect the medias will be more than happy to tell such a story when it will be reality which will add to the hype.
Regarding the comments on sales increases actually helping MS this is also untrue. The only money that MS will get thanks to the xbox comes from the fee that publishers pays them for each sold DVD. But publishers won't produce more games than they can sell how high the installed base might be.
facts are like this: -MS loses $300 per built-but-not-sold-console -MS loses $100 per console-sold-to-install-linux
so, what makes the highest loss to MS ? It's clear that whatever geeks do, MS will sell consoles to the usual console consumer and that they will be able to sell *all* of their stock just using a "standard" consumer base.
So MS will never lose $300 per not-sold-console because there won't be such thing as a not-sold console.
However, depending on how geeks can provide the xbox-linux console with highly user-friendly solutions (of all imaginable kind) it will be possible to have MS lose a *huge* number of $100 xbox-linux-no-game-bought-console, since the potential user base for a cheap computing platform running free software is much bigger than the single console market.
This is where the real potential of the xbox lies. And this where it will hurt MS if we take care of it.
1) I am a game developer myself and I can ensure you that my bosses here are perfectly aware that the big boost to xbox xmas sales in Europe here is most probably due to the fact that its now very easy to get access to pirated games on the console. MS may claim whatever installed base they want, we are not going to build more units than we can sell and this takes piracy estimation into accounts. Publishers start to build a safe number of units that they (hope) are guaranteed to sell, then build more according to the speed with which games are sold. But they won't build a lot of units on a highly pirated platform unless they sell a huge lot of them.
The number of developers going to xbox is not really a factor neither, porting a game to xbox is quite easy (we did it for two of our projects without major problems in relatively very small time) and a developer working on other platforms can go or withdraw from the xbox market without much trouble, if the xbox sells a lot they will go quite fast on it, but they can withdraw as fast as they came since the costs are very low so there is no inertia here to help MS.
So lots of xbox does not necessarily lots of developers and lots of developers does not mean it's profitable for MS.
2) This argument contains its own death as I strongly doubt that "geeky" linux modded xbox users will actually buy games when they can have them for free. Not that I am saying that they should use cracked games (I don't support piracy for obvious reasons) but it is just very highly likely that they will. That's 0$ for MS.
You can also note that is it quite possible that a lot of publishers or developers will be interested in providing the xbox-linux with games if an easy way to run linux games on the console is provided.
We would be more than happy to sell games for which there are no licensing fees to pay to Microsoft. After all, PC games can sell quite a lot too, so going to xbox-linux is not such a huge risk given the relative low costs of development. If the average geek is receptive to such kind of support he might decide to buy such games. I would strongly support this option in my company.
3) This last point is true but it's not as important as you think.
Remember that when you don't buy an xbox the only think you can play with is 299$ but... no machine.
What I mean is that the point is not how much money MS looses on each sold or unsold xbox, the point is that people get cheap hardware sponsored by Microsoft. The gain to society as a whole is much bigger than the slight compensation MS gets for having one less xbox built for nothing.
Another important point is that, in order to stay in the console business, MS actually intends to double the amount of money they have already spent on the xbox, which means that either via advertising or public prices reduction they are going to increase their per-console-sold losses.
Make sure that once they are the big player in the console market (and they can become it, they have the money to do so), hardware prices will rise again and that the benefit for society will thus disappear.
Finally, I'll add that you do not take into account the number of domestic uses that MS plans to offer via MS software they intend to sell, if all those uses can be satisfied with Linux based open source equivalents that's as much money that MS won't gain and in fact lose in development costs.
And I shall emphasize again the potential beneficial uses that xbox as a cheap-powerful-tvable-internetable-computer has for society as a whole : this would make computing (not coding of course) accessible to a huge number of people who otherwise would have no way to it. Some humanitarian organizations try to help education in developing countries by providing people with (usually outdated) computers and networks. They would probably buy a lot of linux-xbox if there was an easy way to configure it the same way they do for those outdated computers (not to mention that TVs are also a lot cheaper than monitors) This would not be possible without MS loosing money on each xbox. And this will not increase Bill's fortune.
So go on geeks ! Buy it and code, this won't kill MS but it will hurt them for sure and at least, *everyone* will benefit.
Remember, this won't happen twice.
Computing and the future of civil liberties
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Hi and welcome back to freedom,
I have read on your site about the quite expeditive way your "pre-trial period" was handled by justice and how justice in its "moral" sense did not fulfill its job and how some of your essential rights were clearly denied to you.
After the 11/9 events, the new US national security directives, big corporations more and more trying to gain control over their users, what does your expertise in computer security and probably deep knowledge of obscure corporate and state practises (open wiretaps for example) incline you to think about the future of civil liberties in the US and as a whole (if you think you know anything worth telling about Europe for example) ?
And do you think you would accept to talk about in public if asked to do so by associations or political parties wishing to communicate on the subject ?
The AMI's Brian Richardson interview is somewhat informative but unfortunately it doesn't go very deep on the technical side of the TCPA/Palladium debate.
How are we supposed to determine that a technical specification (TCPA is nothing more than that after all, it's its uses which are potentially negatives) can lead to abuses (Microsoft's or vendor's ones) if we don't get a detailed explanation of how works.
We would need to know how this crypto-chip interacts with the BIOS first, then the booted OS, then all software running under that OS in order to know if it can be used to deprive us of our liberty.
From what I've read on slashdot about the TCPA until now (but I may have read too fast) this point was not talked about and the interview while informative on some points fails to fill that hole (the TCPA FAQ Brian pointed to is not informative, nor are the TCPA specs I read). It could be intentional or not but - as some have mentionned it - vague answers have been replied to questions that might have lead to such detailed explanation of the working of the TCPA chip/bios system. I hope however that Brian Richardson will be given the possibility to correct this omission (more at the bottom).
Anyway, even without knowing how the whole thing runs we can make a few simple technical assumptions and see what consequences they would have on the user's liberty. Getting a clear answer on TCPA's risks would just be a matter of asking which assumptions are right or wrong to guys such as Brian R.
Let's imagine the boot process of a TCPA BIOS with TCPA enabled :
The chip is basically used to secure the boot process, ie its goal is to verify that essential boot code was not compromised beetween consecutive reboots. For this purpose, it must be the first chip on the mother board to boot. Then the only thing it has to do is check the BIOS signature and verify that it matches the private key (which the chip keeps hidden in its own externally-unnaccessible backup memory).
If the BIOS signature does not match then the chip would inform the user via an audio or visual message.
Whether the user chooses to continue the boot process or investigate further the cause of his BIOS "corruption" is up to him and does not interest us anymore : he has been warned that his system was compromised.
If the BIOS signature matches, then the user knows he can trust the BIOS to correctly load the boot loader. From there the BIOS would now send a message to the crypto-chip saying "take a rest now, i'll call you when needed", it would load the boot-loader and check its signature using the crypto chip.
Once the boot loader sig has been verified and can thus be trusted, the BIOS launches it.
From that point I guess there's no more need to detail the booting chain as most of you will get the point : the trusted boot-loader loads the OS kernel, uses the chip to check its sig, and so on.
When the OS has finally loaded, the user is fully sure that its system was not compromised in any way, if the OS (be it Linux or Windows, this is not relevant) or the software running on it need to check some important data integrity, they will just have to load it and ask the chip to check it for them.
This all leads to what we can call without fear in the common-man (ie not security expert one) sense to a really trusted computer : a computer which can be trusted by its owner to have all its critical (or not) data integrity guaranteed.
No one outside can change any part of the system or user data without the user being informed of it.
At this point, this looks rather helpful : user gets data integrity for the cost of a probably quite cheap chip (sorry) and everyone's happy.
With this system, windows can of course encrypt sensitive data which nobody will be able to decrypt from another OS (on the same machine)... unless this OS is able to use the TCPA chip, which means that anyone using a TCPA enabled Linux (always fully open source which guarantees nothing's hidden to us) will be able to decrypt the windows kernel, windows software, disassemble them and remove eventual protection.
User : "So where's does the monster hide ?"
To find it we must be able to locate what technically makes this system really "secure" (from the user's point of view) and it's quite easy : windows/linux can be trusted because they rely on a lauching stage which is itself considered trusted, which itself relies on a previous trusted stage and so on... until...
the BIOS itself which is the first stage of the booting process:
The system is secure if and only because the BIOS is.
Which means that the BIOS is the most crucial security element of the whole TCPA system (and I can't believe that Brian Richardson as an engineer is not aware of this) : whoever can become a friend of the BIOS will have full access to every single unencrypted byte stored on the machine whether Bill Gates wants it or not.
User : "Well, I'm confused. Are you saying there's no monster ?"
Let's continue :
Imagine a user with a TCPA aware windows, we're not talking Palladium (at least not yet) : this is just a windows version able to use the crypto chip to ensure the user can trust all its data.
Now imagine that this user wants to install a TCPA aware Linux on his machine. As we saw before, to do so he must be a friend of the BIOS if he wants to modify the boot loader.
User : "Ok, so how do I become a friend of the BIOS ?"
It's easy to imagine that to access the BIOS settings one will have to enter a password known only to the TCPA chip : when you press DEL at boot, the BIOS prompts for the password, sends it to the TCPA chip which replies "valid" or "invalid" (with a few seconds delay to ensure that brute force attempts will be worthless). If the password is valid the BIOS considers you a friend and user has full access again to every single byte of its machine and can install whatever OS he likes, be it TCPA enabled or not.
User : "Ok, but no monster still ???"
But... imagine that your machine came with Windows installed.
User : "Well, I still get to enter the password so I can still install TCPA/Linux no ?"
Well, perhaps, but imagine there is no password.
Imagine that the only thing you can do is format your whole harddrive and reinstall only manufacturer-signed OSes.
That the BIOS does not allow you to install another OS, using the SAME private key which was used to install windows.
Do you get it now ?
I actually think that Brian Richardson might not have been very honest when answering the question regarding accessibility of data from open source OSes (TCPA enabled or not).
Answering that TCPA could be disabled is not a valid answer, the BIOS might let you install a non TCPA OS providing it allows you access only to hard drive partitions unused by windows but this OS still won't be to read windows data : you won't be able to read data you downloaded from windows if windows encrypts it (and be sure it will !).
The only monster present here lies in the very BIOS AMI and Brian R. try to present as innocuous, if the BIOS does not allow the user to share the same private keys beetween different OSes then it is clear that the Palladium system is just a smoke screen deployed by Microsoft in order to let time for all users to switch to TCPA BIOSes. Once most users will use such BIOSes there will be no need for a palladium chip or any other kind of Microsoft/Intel hardware : a TCPA enabled version of windows able to tell the chip "here's the new key, never share it with anyone but me" is all Bill needs to ensnare everyone.
There's no need either for curtain memory or anything else as long as this windows version only allows signed executables to be run...
So Brian, what have you got to say at that point ?
Now that it is clear that what is what *you* (and others) at AMI and not Microsoft will choose to implement will determine whether Bill will be king or not, are you going to tell us a bit more about the interaction beetween the AMI TCPA BIOS and the TCPA chip or are you still going to be very vague on that point ?
And please don't point on the quite vague TCPA FAQ or whitepaper. Tell us simply this : will multiple OSes be allowed to share the same key and what will be the procedures to become a BIOS friend ?
I guess everyone here at/. is eager to have your point on those.
Well this post is quite long enough, but I'll take the time to add another thing about ethics and trade.
Despite what Brian said, what we do with technology is not just a matter of consumers/vendors relation, the economic world does not (should not at least) rule over the civical one, it's the contrary which is (should be) true.
Did you ever ask yourself why it's not allowed to kill someone for money ? That might be beneficial for the economy if it was, but humans don't want to live in such a society so they make laws to restrict what the economic agents are allowed to do.
And as citizens of so-called civilized countries it is our duty to refuse to build/make tools whose intent is to gain power over other citizens and to make other citizens aware of such issues.
To this respect Brian I think that you might be a good sales engineer, but you might also be a quite bad human being depending on what you choose to do or sell.
Actually, by purchasing an Xbox and using 3rd-party software on it, you're helping Microsoft lose money. They actually make a loss on every Xbox sale.
I'll second that and i'll add that all Linux open sourced initiatives to become available on the XBox are a real chance for every open-source-geek here to have Microsoft actually shoot itself in the foot.
Every single Xbox sold costs money to MS since they are hoping to gain money thanks to the license fee publishers have to pay for each copy of a game they build (not even sell !).
With Linux on the XBox and all open sourced alternatives to products that MS actually intends to bring to the machine we get a real chance to make the masses aware of Linux as a home-and-family-friendly tool with the added benefit of using money brought by Microsoft itself.
We have this unique chance that Microsoft by losing money on each XBox sale is actually sponsoring heavily the open source movement. We shall not let this chance pass !
Just imagine how many uses there could be for this very low cost machine : from educational ones, to fun ones (such as the PVR, mp3 player), to humanitarian ones (bring cheap computing internet able platforms to developing countries).
All this sponsored by Microsoft itself !
We won't have another chance so if you can code and know linux, do not hesitate and buy an XBox. This might be THE occasion to give MS a serious lesson.
I'd say that within 50 years industrialized countries will have deployed large number of various directed energy weapons, such as lasers.
And I'd say that if the democracies' citizens did not manage within those 50 years to convince their governements to stop the current arms race and solve the problems at the source of wars and terrorisms instead (that is poverty and inequalities as any ethno/socio/scientists and honest statisticians will tell you) the world will most probably be a smoking ruin.
If you want to get rid of a growing tree you do not try to wipe out each of the leaves individually hoping that it will eventually die, you target the roots, it is both faster and easier.
Feeding the poors and providing them with education would cost us much less than conceiving and producing weapons to endlessly fight them.
The Geneva Conventions do not explicitely ban laser weapons.
They are concerned by the use of blinding weapons and laser weapons (it might event not ban them explictely, one would need to have a deeper look at it) but it is implied that it's in the case that they are used against soldiers.
I guess that the blinding an artillery shell was not a major concern to the countries ratifying the Geneva Conventions;)
And I may add that many countries (including the US and some European ones) fail to comply entirely to the Conventions as it is admitted that they stock biological and/or bacteriological weapons despite the fact that it is explicitely prohibited
So even if they were banned this would alas probably not bother weapons manufacturers much. (it is common knowledge that "good" people do not need to comply to the law, only "evil" ones do...)
Slashdot Mirror
mod parent up please, very insightful
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:
;)
I'm affraid it's not that insightful.
It's even quite misinformative
From parent
Suppose they don't de-activate paid-off RFIDs and let the chips keep on responding to query signals. [...] Target will set up a truck in a Wal-Mart parking lot and start measuring their sales
That's simply not possible for many different reasons
- the space outside the street is public domain, and no company will be allowed to put trackers there without valid reason. Tracking your competitor's sales obviously is not one.
- supposing they can be installed. Wal Mart would easily identify those trackers and could just use a very cheap signal scrambler near them to prevent identification
- even if they could identify the RFID tags, they would need access to a database indicated which companies possess those tags, it's most probable that such information won't be made available
This leads me to think that either you are pretty optimistic regarding WalMart destroying the tags after purchase, either you would like us to believe so. I hope for the best
Even if they were going to start sticking RFID tags on everything tomorrow(which would be prohibitedly expensive) their distance limitations would make them useless once you got out into the parking lot, and that erring on the generous side on the distances they can transmit. So unless you have a RFID reader in your house, no worries.
If prices go low enough, then they'll be able to put RFID tags on everything tomorrow. Tech products prices always go down, even more when built in huge quantities which we can expect to be the case quite soon.
Moreover, nobody is concerned about RFID tags being detected up to within your house.
You are missing the point here, which is that once RFID tags are associated with a credit card, a name or social security number, then you have a consumer profile that allows you to track people wherever they go, track their purchasing habits, and so on.
Enterprises in the US already exchange what is considered confidential informations about their customer so RFID tags will be much of a concern here unless the law takes consumer privacy more seriously in the US.
Those devices need a legislative frame to restrict their use and the spreading of confidential information they allow if trackers are put around every street corner (wouldn't that please Bush's famed department of Homeland Security ? I guess it would).
Without this legislative consumer protection, I guess US citizens won't be worth much more than a consumer or criminal profile.
They are worth much more than that (and I'm not one of them).
Sorry if this sounded cynical.
:)
;)
My point was purely technical : generosity implies that you do not get anything in return for your actions. So, Epic are certainly not being generous in that case since they most probably expected a good return on investment, but they surely are clever, and of course there's no harm being so.
I do agree with your whole point (as well as Polyphemis one), but let's just use some other word than generosity
--
PS: I warned I was nit-picking
I have the utmost respect for Epic as a company, and they have my undying loyalty and admiration for being such awesome and generous people.
;)
;)
I'd not use the term generous here.
They certainly are talented people who know how to craft good games and market them very well but what you experienced was a big advertising campaign, using one of the most efficient medias available : users' word of mouth.
This does not make them generous, they'll be generous if they gave money away without expecting any profit from it, I doubt this was the case
And of course I'm not saying they're bad people, but never forget that this does not imply that they are good ones, one would have to check much deeper under Epic's surface to really know that.
And yup, i'm quite picky there
This leads me to think that this idea of allowing nearly costless extension of copyright is not a good thing.
The copyrights that will be of most interest for citizens/customers probably correlate with those big companies make a lot of money from.
So, what this proposal will incitate them to do is drop the copyrights for works that have near to zero interest to citizens/consumers. I am not sure that this will be very useful to the masses and allow non commercial innovation. At best it will be useful for people with very specific interests that nearly nobody shares.
Copyrights as well as patents are a restriction of the use of knowledge by the masses. They are designed so that the people/enterprises who invest time and money to bring innovations to society will have a chance to get their money back before the corresponding knowledge goes back to the common knowledge pool.
So copyrights and patents law should perhaps be modified so that those would be valid for a maximum of say 5 to 40 years depending on the copyright/patent object, and would move up to the public domain once say they have brought back enough revenues to their owner so that they gained a given factor (>1 !) of what they invested in R&D to develop it and bring it to the market.
Copyrights and patents would be extented freely as long as the revenues would not allow a reasonnable reimbursement of the investor.
This looks to me quite a good middle ground solution : allowing investors to get enough money back to incitate innovation and making sure common knowledge does not benefits private hands for too long.
You are right and wrong too ;)
o s/ca.html) says :
:
:
It is true that Canada does not depend only on oil/coal to produce their energy, but it's false to say that it comes only from nuclear and water.
As the CIA World factbook (http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ge
Electricity - production by source:
hydro: 61%
fossil fuel: 25%
other: 2% (2000)
nuclear: 12%
One fourth of Canada electricity is produced using fossil fuels, both oil and coal.
France electricty production (same source)
nuclear: 77%
hydro: 13%
fossil fuel: 10%
other: 1% (2000)
And now Germany (always same source)
fossil fuel: 63%
nuclear: 30%
hydro: 4%
other: 3% (2000)
Wind energy is currently growing very fast in Germany but not to the point that it can be used to produce enough hydrogen to run vehicles (or only very few).
So as you see, producing enough clean hydrogen so we can use it to power really-emissions-free vehicles is not yet possible and is very far from being so.
Even if wind farms grow up very fast, they will need to produce nearly twice the energy which is now used to propell vehicles since hydrolisis has a very small efficiency (less than 50%).
Most of the world uses oil and coal to produce energy including the huge majority of the rich countries, so the clean hydrogen economy is far from becoming a reality (I wish it will but I doubt it's possible without reductions of the energy consumption).
The dirty oil-based hydrogen economy has much more probability to become a reality however...
uh. it has no emissions, its hydrogen powered dude. the case of a tree-hugger barking up the wrong tree (:
Hydrogen in itself is not an energy source but rather an energy vector. As it is not available under its gaseous (H2) form naturally it must be extracted either from water (H20) or hydrocarbons such as oil or methan (CH4).
If hydrogen is extracted from water via electrolysis, it consumes a *lot* more energy than what you gain by burning it in the scooter's engine both because thermodynamics dictates it and because this process is not very efficient.
If you live in the US, the major part of electricity is produced by oil/coal-burning plants, and this will induce a lot more CO2 emissions than if you had used a standard oil scooter. Most of the world generates electricity this way (France being the biggest exception with 76% of its electricity being nuclear).
If you extract hydrogen from oil or gases it will use less electricity but it will generate CO2 emissions too. I read in a recent scientific (paper) article that they were also greater than when burning oil in a standard scooter...
So unless hydrogen is produced using electricity which itself was produced via an emission free process, ie renewables, using such a scooter is actually more damaging to the environment than not doing so.
The so-called hydrogen economy is currently a dream unless our global energy consumption goes down enough that we can use renewable sources to satisfy it. Otherwise it's just a new marketting trend initiated by the chemical/petroleum industry which is the one producing hydrogen and lobbying it despite the danger it causes to the environment under the current electricity producing conditions.
Well, it's probably going to cost me a negative score but why was this post modded up to +5 ?
Isn't this a obvious abuse of the scoring system used on slashdot ?
It looks awfully so...
I have yet to understand why this post is considered a troll. Its sarcastic tone probably helps but the argumentation is correct.
It is common for short-lived satelites. But not for a space station which goal is to stay in space for the longest possible time at the lowest cost. A space station weights *much* more than the biggest satelites ever sent to space and making sure it doesn't fallback to earth implies providing it with important amounts fuel on a regular basis. :
It is indeed true that the ISS was put on such a low orbit to compensate for the shuttle inability to reach higher orbits.
Europeans and russians did not want to rely on the shuttle for practical and financial reasons
a shuttle flight costs much more than a rocket one, carries much less payload and cannot reach higher orbits where the ISS should have been put.
This is a very bad answer.
It never has been said that the shuttle safety record should approach that of commercial air travel. This obviously implies that its safety record sucks compared to other space travel methods. And this is quite true. The percentage of shuttle failures per flight is much higher than the same thing for rockets.
Height has much to do with it.
The "troll" (as you say), indeed said exactly what you say in your last sentence : satellites have to adapt to the launching craft. Hence it's a bad thing to use the shuttle to launch them : it costs (much) more than a rocket and it implies heavy modifications to the satellite propulsion system when they need to reach higher orbits than what the shuttle is capable to go.
Even for low-orbit satellites using the shuttle is a big loss of money and resources, so using it for intermediate or higher orbits and imposing modifications on the satellites to do so is even more absurd.
Rocket launchers put the satellites at the desired orbit and can carry much heavier satellites while imposing much less constraints on them.
Well, once again a "scientist" whose main field is not climate neither any other related domain tries to describe the debate about global warming as occuring between "environmentalists" and "serious scientists" ignoring all scientific work on the subject and forgetting that the "evidence" he mentions was already taken into account by the scientific community.
It's not a suprise that he doesn't even mention the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) which reviews all scientific publications about climate change and yearly produces extensive reports on the current knowledge about global warming.
If he did it would be too easy to dismiss all his claims since the IPCC already took all the elements he brings to light into account.
Have a look at the latest scientific evidence about global warming directly at their site.
THIS is the absolute reference on the subject and no economic PhD will be able to claim it's the work of environmentalist hippies without looking both dishonest and ridiculous.
http://www.ipcc.ch
The IPCC is no "environmentalist" association, it's a "governments-appointed" scientific panel which job is to review ALL scientific evidence on the subject including the "revolutionnary" stuff this poor oil-industry-sponsored economists talks about.
Not exactly an environmentalist lobby...
It's a good thing you made me aware that it was not that readable, you're also not alone to mention it anyway so there's no problem really.
This being said I do not promise anything : it already takes me hours to be satisfied when writting as few as 10 lines of text and you can see the result. I guess I'll have to buy sandwiches before beginning my next post if I want to ensure my survival :)
The only problem with this practice being that it would be fully illegal since Microsoft has no right to destroy user personal data without its consent. The chip flash content belongs to the user and only him can decide whether it should be trashed or not.
I guess that the FSF or EFF lawyers would be quite happy to test this in courts.
That isn't true neither.
the figures below are approximative but this does not matter here :s
-MS loses $300 per built-but-not-sold-console
-MS loses $100 per console-sold-to-install-linux-without-buying-game
Whatever geeks do, MS will sell nearly all their consoles regardless of how many people buy the machine because they are clever enough not to build too many machines and will adapt to the demand's evolution.
So MS will never lose $300 per not-sold-console because there won't be such thing as a not-sold console (or too few to make a difference).
That loss is purely virtual and would be obtained only if MS was stupid enough to build a massive number of unsold consoles which will all know will never happen. Bill might be cynical unscrupulous moron but he's certainly not stupid.
Moreover, the linux-xbox might interest a quite high number of non-geeks people not able to buy a computer because of prices issues.
Remember that for $249 you get a computer that just needs to be plugged on the TV : a complete set top box, easy access to the internet, to which you can add a keyboard and mouse, write email, surf the web and a zillion other things.
A computer running with free software (free as in beer).
The average Joe does not need power, nor graphical resolution, he needs a low price, a user friendly interface quick controls and possibly cracked games if he gets his hands on some. The linux/xbox combination gives him all this and MS actually pays to make sure he'll buy it.
The average Joe's is also a huge number of people, multiply that number by those $100 that MS hoped to recover by selling games. If you are not convinced remember that running a user friendly linux on the xbox will be very soon as simple as buying the already modded/linuxed xbox.
You can also expect the medias will be more than happy to tell such a story when it will be reality which will add to the hype.
Regarding the comments on sales increases actually helping MS this is also untrue. The only money that MS will get thanks to the xbox comes from the fee that publishers pays them for each sold DVD. But publishers won't produce more games than they can sell how high the installed base might be.
The average Joe does *not* buy $50 games.
This is not quite exact.
:
facts are like this
-MS loses $300 per built-but-not-sold-console
-MS loses $100 per console-sold-to-install-linux
so, what makes the highest loss to MS ?
It's clear that whatever geeks do, MS will sell consoles to the usual console consumer and that they will be able to sell *all* of their stock just using a "standard" consumer base.
So MS will never lose $300 per not-sold-console because there won't be such thing as a not-sold console.
However, depending on how geeks can provide the xbox-linux console with highly user-friendly solutions (of all imaginable kind) it will be possible to have MS lose a *huge* number of $100 xbox-linux-no-game-bought-console, since the potential user base for a cheap computing platform running free software is much bigger than the single console market.
This is where the real potential of the xbox lies.
And this where it will hurt MS if we take care of it.
I have to disagree with your points :
1) I am a game developer myself and I can ensure you that my bosses here are perfectly aware that the big boost to xbox xmas sales in Europe here is most probably due to the fact that its now very easy to get access to pirated games on the console. MS may claim whatever installed base they want, we are not going to build more units than we can sell and this takes piracy estimation into accounts. Publishers start to build a safe number of units that they (hope) are guaranteed to sell, then build more according to the speed with which games are sold. But they won't build a lot of units on a highly pirated platform unless they sell a huge lot of them.
The number of developers going to xbox is not really a factor neither, porting a game to xbox is quite easy (we did it for two of our projects without major problems in relatively very small time) and a developer working on other platforms can go or withdraw from the xbox market without much trouble, if the xbox sells a lot they will go quite fast on it, but they can withdraw as fast as they came since the costs are very low so there is no inertia here to help MS.
So lots of xbox does not necessarily lots of developers and lots of developers does not mean it's profitable for MS.
2) This argument contains its own death as I strongly doubt that "geeky" linux modded xbox users will actually buy games when they can have them for free. Not that I am saying that they should use cracked games (I don't support piracy for obvious reasons) but it is just very highly likely that they will. That's 0$ for MS.
You can also note that is it quite possible that a lot of publishers or developers will be interested in providing the xbox-linux with games if an easy way to run linux games on the console is provided.
We would be more than happy to sell games for which there are no licensing fees to pay to Microsoft. After all, PC games can sell quite a lot too, so going to xbox-linux is not such a huge risk given the relative low costs of development. If the average geek is receptive to such kind of support he might decide to buy such games. I would strongly support this option in my company.
3) This last point is true but it's not as important as you think.
Remember that when you don't buy an xbox the only think you can play with is 299$ but... no machine.
What I mean is that the point is not how much money MS looses on each sold or unsold xbox, the point is that people get cheap hardware sponsored by Microsoft. The gain to society as a whole is much bigger than the slight compensation MS gets for having one less xbox built for nothing.
Another important point is that, in order to stay in the console business, MS actually intends to double the amount of money they have already spent on the xbox, which means that either via advertising or public prices reduction they are going to increase their per-console-sold losses.
Make sure that once they are the big player in the console market (and they can become it, they have the money to do so), hardware prices will rise again and that the benefit for society will thus disappear.
Finally, I'll add that you do not take into account the number of domestic uses that MS plans to offer via MS software they intend to sell, if all those uses can be satisfied with Linux based open source equivalents that's as much money that MS won't gain and in fact lose in development costs.
And I shall emphasize again the potential beneficial uses that xbox as a cheap-powerful-tvable-internetable-computer has for society as a whole : this would make computing (not coding of course) accessible to a huge number of people who otherwise would have no way to it.
Some humanitarian organizations try to help education in developing countries by providing people with (usually outdated) computers and networks. They would probably buy a lot of linux-xbox if there was an easy way to configure it the same way they do for those outdated computers (not to mention that TVs are also a lot cheaper than monitors)
This would not be possible without MS loosing money on each xbox. And this will not increase Bill's fortune.
So go on geeks !
Buy it and code, this won't kill MS but it will hurt them for sure and at least, *everyone* will benefit.
Remember, this won't happen twice.
Hi and welcome back to freedom,
I have read on your site about the quite expeditive way your "pre-trial period" was handled by justice and how justice in its "moral" sense did not fulfill its job and how some of your essential rights were clearly denied to you.
After the 11/9 events, the new US national security directives, big corporations more and more trying to gain control over their users, what does your expertise in computer security and probably deep knowledge of obscure corporate and state practises (open wiretaps for example) incline you to think about the future of civil liberties in the US and as a whole (if you think you know anything worth telling about Europe for example) ?
And do you think you would accept to talk about in public if asked to do so by associations or political parties wishing to communicate on the subject ?
How are we supposed to determine that a technical specification (TCPA is nothing more than that after all, it's its uses which are potentially negatives) can lead to abuses (Microsoft's or vendor's ones) if we don't get a detailed explanation of how works.
We would need to know how this crypto-chip interacts with the BIOS first, then the booted OS, then all software running under that OS in order to know if it can be used to deprive us of our liberty.
From what I've read on slashdot about the TCPA until now (but I may have read too fast) this point was not talked about and the interview while informative on some points fails to fill that hole (the TCPA FAQ Brian pointed to is not informative, nor are the TCPA specs I read). It could be intentional or not but - as some have mentionned it - vague answers have been replied to questions that might have lead to such detailed explanation of the working of the TCPA chip/bios system. I hope however that Brian Richardson will be given the possibility to correct this omission (more at the bottom).
Anyway, even without knowing how the whole thing runs we can make a few simple technical assumptions and see what consequences they would have on the user's liberty. Getting a clear answer on TCPA's risks would just be a matter of asking which assumptions are right or wrong to guys such as Brian R.
Let's imagine the boot process of a TCPA BIOS with TCPA enabled :
The chip is basically used to secure the boot process, ie its goal is to verify that essential boot code was not compromised beetween consecutive reboots. For this purpose, it must be the first chip on the mother board to boot. Then the only thing it has to do is check the BIOS signature and verify that it matches the private key (which the chip keeps hidden in its own externally-unnaccessible backup memory).
If the BIOS signature does not match then the chip would inform the user via an audio or visual message.
Whether the user chooses to continue the boot process or investigate further the cause of his BIOS "corruption" is up to him and does not interest us anymore : he has been warned that his system was compromised.
If the BIOS signature matches, then the user knows he can trust the BIOS to correctly load the boot loader. From there the BIOS would now send a message to the crypto-chip saying "take a rest now, i'll call you when needed", it would load the boot-loader and check its signature using the crypto chip.
Once the boot loader sig has been verified and can thus be trusted, the BIOS launches it.
From that point I guess there's no more need to detail the booting chain as most of you will get the point : the trusted boot-loader loads the OS kernel, uses the chip to check its sig, and so on.
When the OS has finally loaded, the user is fully sure that its system was not compromised in any way, if the OS (be it Linux or Windows, this is not relevant) or the software running on it need to check some important data integrity, they will just have to load it and ask the chip to check it for them.
This all leads to what we can call without fear in the common-man (ie not security expert one) sense to a really trusted computer : a computer which can be trusted by its owner to have all its critical (or not) data integrity guaranteed.
No one outside can change any part of the system or user data without the user being informed of it.
At this point, this looks rather helpful : user gets data integrity for the cost of a probably quite cheap chip (sorry) and everyone's happy.
With this system, windows can of course encrypt sensitive data which nobody will be able to decrypt from another OS (on the same machine)... unless this OS is able to use the TCPA chip, which means that anyone using a TCPA enabled Linux (always fully open source which guarantees nothing's hidden to us) will be able to decrypt the windows kernel, windows software, disassemble them and remove eventual protection.
User : "So where's does the monster hide ?"
To find it we must be able to locate what technically makes this system really "secure" (from the user's point of view) and it's quite easy : windows/linux can be trusted because they rely on a lauching stage which is itself considered trusted, which itself relies on a previous trusted stage and so on... until... the BIOS itself which is the first stage of the booting process :
The system is secure if and only because the BIOS is.
Which means that the BIOS is the most crucial security element of the whole TCPA system (and I can't believe that Brian Richardson as an engineer is not aware of this) : whoever can become a friend of the BIOS will have full access to every single unencrypted byte stored on the machine whether Bill Gates wants it or not.
User : "Well, I'm confused. Are you saying there's no monster ?"
Let's continue :
Imagine a user with a TCPA aware windows, we're not talking Palladium (at least not yet) : this is just a windows version able to use the crypto chip to ensure the user can trust all its data.
Now imagine that this user wants to install a TCPA aware Linux on his machine. As we saw before, to do so he must be a friend of the BIOS if he wants to modify the boot loader.
User : "Ok, so how do I become a friend of the BIOS ?"
It's easy to imagine that to access the BIOS settings one will have to enter a password known only to the TCPA chip : when you press DEL at boot, the BIOS prompts for the password, sends it to the TCPA chip which replies "valid" or "invalid" (with a few seconds delay to ensure that brute force attempts will be worthless). If the password is valid the BIOS considers you a friend and user has full access again to every single byte of its machine and can install whatever OS he likes, be it TCPA enabled or not.
User : "Ok, but no monster still ???"
But... imagine that your machine came with Windows installed.
User : "Well, I still get to enter the password so I can still install TCPA/Linux no ?"
Well, perhaps, but imagine there is no password.
Imagine that the only thing you can do is format your whole harddrive and reinstall only manufacturer-signed OSes.
That the BIOS does not allow you to install another OS, using the SAME private key which was used to install windows.
Do you get it now ?
I actually think that Brian Richardson might not have been very honest when answering the question regarding accessibility of data from open source OSes (TCPA enabled or not).
Answering that TCPA could be disabled is not a valid answer, the BIOS might let you install a non TCPA OS providing it allows you access only to hard drive partitions unused by windows but this OS still won't be to read windows data : you won't be able to read data you downloaded from windows if windows encrypts it (and be sure it will !).
The only monster present here lies in the very BIOS AMI and Brian R. try to present as innocuous, if the BIOS does not allow the user to share the same private keys beetween different OSes then it is clear that the Palladium system is just a smoke screen deployed by Microsoft in order to let time for all users to switch to TCPA BIOSes. Once most users will use such BIOSes there will be no need for a palladium chip or any other kind of Microsoft/Intel hardware : a TCPA enabled version of windows able to tell the chip "here's the new key, never share it with anyone but me" is all Bill needs to ensnare everyone.
There's no need either for curtain memory or anything else as long as this windows version only allows signed executables to be run...
So Brian, what have you got to say at that point ?
Now that it is clear that what is what *you* (and others) at AMI and not Microsoft will choose to implement will determine whether Bill will be king or not, are you going to tell us a bit more about the interaction beetween the AMI TCPA BIOS and the TCPA chip or are you still going to be very vague on that point ?
And please don't point on the quite vague TCPA FAQ or whitepaper. Tell us simply this : will multiple OSes be allowed to share the same key and what will be the procedures to become a BIOS friend ?
I guess everyone here at /. is eager to have your point on those.
Well this post is quite long enough, but I'll take the time to add another thing about ethics and trade.
Despite what Brian said, what we do with technology is not just a matter of consumers/vendors relation, the economic world does not (should not at least) rule over the civical one, it's the contrary which is (should be) true.
Did you ever ask yourself why it's not allowed to kill someone for money ? That might be beneficial for the economy if it was, but humans don't want to live in such a society so they make laws to restrict what the economic agents are allowed to do.
And as citizens of so-called civilized countries it is our duty to refuse to build/make tools whose intent is to gain power over other citizens and to make other citizens aware of such issues.
To this respect Brian I think that you might be a good sales engineer, but you might also be a quite bad human being depending on what you choose to do or sell.
I'll second that and i'll add that all Linux open sourced initiatives to become available on the XBox are a real chance for every open-source-geek here to have Microsoft actually shoot itself in the foot.
Every single Xbox sold costs money to MS since they are hoping to gain money thanks to the license fee publishers have to pay for each copy of a game they build (not even sell !).
With Linux on the XBox and all open sourced alternatives to products that MS actually intends to bring to the machine we get a real chance to make the masses aware of Linux as a home-and-family-friendly tool with the added benefit of using money brought by Microsoft itself.
We have this unique chance that Microsoft by losing money on each XBox sale is actually sponsoring heavily the open source movement. We shall not let this chance pass !
Just imagine how many uses there could be for this very low cost machine : from educational ones, to fun ones (such as the PVR, mp3 player), to humanitarian ones (bring cheap computing internet able platforms to developing countries).
All this sponsored by Microsoft itself !
We won't have another chance so if you can code and know linux, do not hesitate and buy an XBox. This might be THE occasion to give MS a serious lesson.
Lours
And I'd say that if the democracies' citizens did not manage within those 50 years to convince their governements to stop the current arms race and solve the problems at the source of wars and terrorisms instead (that is poverty and inequalities as any ethno/socio/scientists and honest statisticians will tell you) the world will most probably be a smoking ruin.
If you want to get rid of a growing tree you do not try to wipe out each of the leaves individually hoping that it will eventually die, you target the roots, it is both faster and easier.
Feeding the poors and providing them with education would cost us much less than conceiving and producing weapons to endlessly fight them.
The Geneva Conventions do not explicitely ban laser weapons.
;)
They are concerned by the use of blinding weapons and laser weapons (it might event not ban them explictely, one would need to have a deeper look at it) but it is implied that it's in the case that they are used against soldiers.
I guess that the blinding an artillery shell was not a major concern to the countries ratifying the Geneva Conventions
And I may add that many countries (including the US and some European ones) fail to comply entirely to the Conventions as it is admitted that they stock biological and/or bacteriological weapons despite the fact that it is explicitely prohibited
So even if they were banned this would alas probably not bother weapons manufacturers much.
(it is common knowledge that "good" people do not need to comply to the law, only "evil" ones do...)