I had a friend who was sent one of these notices after he downloaded a show from suprnova. Fortunately in Canada the notices don't mean jack because the ISPs aren't permitted to (or aren't willing to) turn over subscriber information without a court order. In fact several of the big high-speed ISPs went to court against the RIAA to fight this. It's nice having your ISP in your corner even if it's mutual self-interest rather than the big guy looking out for the little guy.
My dad's very computer savvy (he's a P.Eng; probably would have been in Comp. Eng except it didn't exist when he was in school) and my mom's getting a lot better. They have two partitions and whenever it gets hosed beyond repair my dad does a reformat and reinstall. My mom gets the occasional stern warning but she generally calls my dad (or myself if I'm home from school) downstairs when something suspicious happens.
Let's face it, Windows XP (and to a lesser extent Windows 2000) is designed to be run as an Administrator. They tell you in the documentation not to run the computer as an Administrator but the first user who logs into an XP Home machine is an Administrator by default. Several popular CD burning applications will not run correctly without Administrator priveleges. Hell, Diablo II won't run if the user is not an Administrator.
I have a heterogeneous network of a half-dozen computers here, some Windows, some Mac, some BSD, some Linux. Don't get me wrong, after it's been properly secured I don't mind running Windows but explaining to my mom why she couldn't burn CDs, install software, etc. was causing more headaches than it was worth. Other operating systems (notably Mac OS X) deal with this sort of thing fairly intelligently, why can't Windows?
From the article you posted it looks like the legislation is intended to give the police the right to decrypt communications they've already intercepted as part of an investigation. Can they do this without a warrant? If they can't, what's the problem?
Is it not necessary to have probable cause and a warrant in order to demand that information be decrypted? Arbitrary e-mail monitoring seems intrusive and counter-productive since the problem such legislation seems to be trying to solve is lack of information, where one of the main issues facing police and intelligence agencies is the inability to sift through the massive quantities of information already available to find what's relevant.
If the only people using encryption are the people with something to hide I'm not seeing any advantage to a law like this. It's frightening to think that legislators might be that out of touch with reality.
I have no problem giving up a little bit of personal freedom for a genuine increase in safety (e.g. drunk driving laws, fire regulations) but trading freedom for the illusion of safety provided by airport spot checks and the like just doesn't fly with me (so to speak).
I've showed half a dozen people how easy it was to use GPG with the Thunderbird Enigmail extension and they've never looked back. Many people are ignorant of the alternatives rather than simply being lazy.
I dunno, I think it would be hard to qualify Metroid Prime: Hunters or GoldenEye DS as "cute". I think there's going to be scores of RPGs (most of which are similarly not-cute) for the DS because of the capabilities provided by the second screen, e.g. tapping menus instead of scrolling through them.
Even if the majority of Nintendo's first- and second-party titles are cute, I have yet to play one that I didn't enjoy. Windwaker, despite its cartoonish appearance was fun and challenging, and the characters were all very expressive even when under player control. I found the attention to detail amazing.
I bought a Gameboy Advance used for about $20 USD so I could connect it to my gamecube for things like the Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion link bonuses. After I had picked up a few games for it I invested in the SP because it has a better form factor, a backlit screen, better battery life, etc..
Now I carry it everywhere. Bored on the bus and riding alone? I pull out my GBA and play some Metroid. TV in use? No problem, I've got my own screen.
It's a good point that it's frequently possible to get outside support for systems like cars. I think software is a little different because it's hard to draw a line between construction and maintenance. Software doesn't have a set structure so once you have the code you can turn it into anything you want, really. It would be harder to turn a car into, say, an airplane.
I'm firmly of the opinion that lifetime support should be lifetime of the user / company and not lifetime of the software. The lifetime of software is hard to define. There's software from the 70s emulated on mainframes still running some of the manufacturing lines where I had a summer job.
It's an interesting question, though - at what point is it fair to force a product into obsolescence? With manufactured goods they tend to wear out (e.g. cars - my parents' cars have lasted about 15 years on average). What do you do if your product is an intangible and never wears out? It's a hard question to answer and I don't have much faith that legislators would get it right.
One alternative is that a company that's developing code could decide to release their old code after some time has elapsed. For example, surely it wouldn't hurt Microsoft if they GPLed Windows 95. No one's going to create a competitive product from it
Microsoft's biggest OS competition right now is their own obsolete versions. I have no intention to upgrade to XP or Longhorn on my Windows computers (information for the curious: I have two Windows machines, an OpenBSD machine and a dual-boot Win/Lin laptop) because Windows 2000 does everything I need.
None of the commercial closed source software that has been Open Sourced has relied on control and vendor lock-in in the same way that Microsoft's products do. The worst thing that could happen to Microsoft is loss of control and that's exactly what an open Windows 95 would do. I'd be willing to bet that Microsoft would be happy if every obsolete version of Windows were to spontaneously self-destruct because it would mean continued revenue and furtherance of control.
I've written a few contracts. I'm not a professional developer by any means (I'm a student at the moment) but when I sell software, the code is included. I don't license under the GPL but I do stipulate that they can use it, modify it and distribute it internally as they see fit, making it clear that they can only expect free support if they are using an unmodified version. My customers were happy because they could make changes if they needed to and I was happy because I've still been well compensated.
It's not Open Source in terms of OSI or FSF but it's better than giving them nothing but a black-box binary.
GPG integration with the EnigMail extension has been the killer app for Thunderbird for me. I recommended it to a few of my geek friends (just like I did with Firefox way back when it was still Phoenix). A month or two later they sent me a message saying they had switched and wondering idly why they hadn't done it when I suggested it.
The only reason I keep Outlook installed now is time management. Last I checked, Mozilla Calendar (currently at version 0.9) is aiming for handheld synchronization after version 2.0 which is unforunate because I would love to ditch Outlook completely.
So the 0.004% of users is just how many have made it into the final, verified stage of (probably massive) copyright infringement. There may be 5-10% who are in process of being verified, or who have not uploaded a sufficient quantity yet to warrant a lawsuit but who are being watched while they do.
From what I read, there was never any intent to upgrade from Win2K to WinXP - there was an accident with an XP patch escaping the test environment and being rolled out on the production network.
The patch itself won't install on a non-XP system unless you use some sort of third-party automated patch tool, e.g. Tivoli. The author of the patch installer script should have written a check that it was the correct operating system. Ideally, since the patch was to be deployed to seven test machines, the script should have checked that the node name was one of the seven correct node names. Somebody at EDS overrode the builtin failsafes and the shit hit the proverbial fan.
although I'd hazard a guess that the person who skipped over the part of the process that said 'double check the groups you assign this patch to' will be sorely chastised...
He or she has probably already been promoted to management. I find that's generally how EDS deals with people who screw up really bad.
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The ISP forwarded the notice they received. Think "stern disapproving look".
I had a friend who was sent one of these notices after he downloaded a show from suprnova. Fortunately in Canada the notices don't mean jack because the ISPs aren't permitted to (or aren't willing to) turn over subscriber information without a court order. In fact several of the big high-speed ISPs went to court against the RIAA to fight this. It's nice having your ISP in your corner even if it's mutual self-interest rather than the big guy looking out for the little guy.
As far as I'm aware, none of the legacy Mac software requires root access - not anything I've run into, anyway.
My dad's very computer savvy (he's a P.Eng; probably would have been in Comp. Eng except it didn't exist when he was in school) and my mom's getting a lot better. They have two partitions and whenever it gets hosed beyond repair my dad does a reformat and reinstall. My mom gets the occasional stern warning but she generally calls my dad (or myself if I'm home from school) downstairs when something suspicious happens.
An Admin user in OSX is not root. An Admin user in OSX requires a password to install software. Big difference.
Let's face it, Windows XP (and to a lesser extent Windows 2000) is designed to be run as an Administrator. They tell you in the documentation not to run the computer as an Administrator but the first user who logs into an XP Home machine is an Administrator by default. Several popular CD burning applications will not run correctly without Administrator priveleges. Hell, Diablo II won't run if the user is not an Administrator.
I have a heterogeneous network of a half-dozen computers here, some Windows, some Mac, some BSD, some Linux. Don't get me wrong, after it's been properly secured I don't mind running Windows but explaining to my mom why she couldn't burn CDs, install software, etc. was causing more headaches than it was worth. Other operating systems (notably Mac OS X) deal with this sort of thing fairly intelligently, why can't Windows?
Firefox search box resize tip.
Supply and demand. If people want encrypted SMS badly enough somebody will start offering it (unless or until it's declared illegal, of course).
From the article you posted it looks like the legislation is intended to give the police the right to decrypt communications they've already intercepted as part of an investigation. Can they do this without a warrant? If they can't, what's the problem?
Is it not necessary to have probable cause and a warrant in order to demand that information be decrypted? Arbitrary e-mail monitoring seems intrusive and counter-productive since the problem such legislation seems to be trying to solve is lack of information, where one of the main issues facing police and intelligence agencies is the inability to sift through the massive quantities of information already available to find what's relevant.
If the only people using encryption are the people with something to hide I'm not seeing any advantage to a law like this. It's frightening to think that legislators might be that out of touch with reality.
I have no problem giving up a little bit of personal freedom for a genuine increase in safety (e.g. drunk driving laws, fire regulations) but trading freedom for the illusion of safety provided by airport spot checks and the like just doesn't fly with me (so to speak).
I've showed half a dozen people how easy it was to use GPG with the Thunderbird Enigmail extension and they've never looked back. Many people are ignorant of the alternatives rather than simply being lazy.
Well, if anything is going to drive people to personal encryption, this type of brain-damaged legislation will be it.
Only if there's fatalities. Any able-bodied individual who owns a Segway obviously has too much money.
I dunno, I think it would be hard to qualify Metroid Prime: Hunters or GoldenEye DS as "cute". I think there's going to be scores of RPGs (most of which are similarly not-cute) for the DS because of the capabilities provided by the second screen, e.g. tapping menus instead of scrolling through them.
Even if the majority of Nintendo's first- and second-party titles are cute, I have yet to play one that I didn't enjoy. Windwaker, despite its cartoonish appearance was fun and challenging, and the characters were all very expressive even when under player control. I found the attention to detail amazing.
Why handhelds?
I bought a Gameboy Advance used for about $20 USD so I could connect it to my gamecube for things like the Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion link bonuses. After I had picked up a few games for it I invested in the SP because it has a better form factor, a backlit screen, better battery life, etc..
Now I carry it everywhere. Bored on the bus and riding alone? I pull out my GBA and play some Metroid. TV in use? No problem, I've got my own screen.
It's a good point that it's frequently possible to get outside support for systems like cars. I think software is a little different because it's hard to draw a line between construction and maintenance. Software doesn't have a set structure so once you have the code you can turn it into anything you want, really. It would be harder to turn a car into, say, an airplane.
I'm firmly of the opinion that lifetime support should be lifetime of the user / company and not lifetime of the software. The lifetime of software is hard to define. There's software from the 70s emulated on mainframes still running some of the manufacturing lines where I had a summer job.
It's an interesting question, though - at what point is it fair to force a product into obsolescence? With manufactured goods they tend to wear out (e.g. cars - my parents' cars have lasted about 15 years on average). What do you do if your product is an intangible and never wears out? It's a hard question to answer and I don't have much faith that legislators would get it right.
Microsoft's biggest OS competition right now is their own obsolete versions. I have no intention to upgrade to XP or Longhorn on my Windows computers (information for the curious: I have two Windows machines, an OpenBSD machine and a dual-boot Win/Lin laptop) because Windows 2000 does everything I need.
None of the commercial closed source software that has been Open Sourced has relied on control and vendor lock-in in the same way that Microsoft's products do. The worst thing that could happen to Microsoft is loss of control and that's exactly what an open Windows 95 would do. I'd be willing to bet that Microsoft would be happy if every obsolete version of Windows were to spontaneously self-destruct because it would mean continued revenue and furtherance of control.
I've written a few contracts. I'm not a professional developer by any means (I'm a student at the moment) but when I sell software, the code is included. I don't license under the GPL but I do stipulate that they can use it, modify it and distribute it internally as they see fit, making it clear that they can only expect free support if they are using an unmodified version. My customers were happy because they could make changes if they needed to and I was happy because I've still been well compensated.
It's not Open Source in terms of OSI or FSF but it's better than giving them nothing but a black-box binary.
GPG integration with the EnigMail extension has been the killer app for Thunderbird for me. I recommended it to a few of my geek friends (just like I did with Firefox way back when it was still Phoenix). A month or two later they sent me a message saying they had switched and wondering idly why they hadn't done it when I suggested it.
The only reason I keep Outlook installed now is time management. Last I checked, Mozilla Calendar (currently at version 0.9) is aiming for handheld synchronization after version 2.0 which is unforunate because I would love to ditch Outlook completely.
And yet they still somehow managed to tag somebody who doesn't have a computer capable of running Kazaa. Good job, music industry.
From what I read, there was never any intent to upgrade from Win2K to WinXP - there was an accident with an XP patch escaping the test environment and being rolled out on the production network.
The patch itself won't install on a non-XP system unless you use some sort of third-party automated patch tool, e.g. Tivoli. The author of the patch installer script should have written a check that it was the correct operating system. Ideally, since the patch was to be deployed to seven test machines, the script should have checked that the node name was one of the seven correct node names. Somebody at EDS overrode the builtin failsafes and the shit hit the proverbial fan.
He or she has probably already been promoted to management. I find that's generally how EDS deals with people who screw up really bad.