"it" certainly isn't "dead" but it is in a state of change. but nothing new there, it has always been in a state of change: from "tabulating", to "data processing", to "information technology"
and in the "information technology" phase the IT specialists provide assistance to the myriad of users who have now spread throughout the organization and into every department
in particular I don't like it trying to guess what I want it to do
and especially in a numbered list WordPerfect did numbered lists and outlining very nicely. Ms. Word programmers just don't "get it"
the numbered list should start by indenting both the left and right margin and then resetting the left margin inside the number for the start of text. I should be able to type several paragraphs separated by blank lines with each reference number. and get the next numbered item in the list by means of a command key such as ^Enter
I should be able to break a numbered paragraph or parts of a numbered paragraph into sub paragraphs such as 3.1 and 3.2
yeah, you can get Word to do this stuff but it's a PITA where WordPerfect 5.1 did it beautifully
my writing needs at this time don't go much beyond the trusty Office Memo so I just use PolyEdit and.rtf format
(3) A "digital audio recording device" is any machine or device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine or device, the digital recording function of which is designed or marketed for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, making a digital audio copied recording for private use, except for -
(A) professional model products, and
(B) dictation machines, answering machines, and other audio recording equipment that is designed and marketed primarily for the creation of sound recordings resulting from the fixation of nonmusical sounds.
is a PC a "digital audio recording device" it is certainly capable of being used that way, -- but -- that is NOT it's primary purpose. A PC HAS NO PRIMARY PURPOSE it is a general purpose machine.
now if you put a sound card in your PC and announce that your PC is your Music Library system then that is just something you are saying
copyright law was intended to protect the right of the owner to regulate the manufacture and distributions of copies of the copyright material.
what we need is the law clarified with the addition of a paragraph on computers and networks
if you post any material to a web site or on a P2P share you have published that material and if the material is copyright protected then you have trespassed on that copyright and can be charged with a crime.
it is the duty of the Congress to clarify the definition of a digital recording device it is not up to the court to wreck someone life with a test case. If the law is NOT CLEAR then the defendant must go free and if there is any remaining issue that has to be refered to the Congress -- NOT to the Court. The court does not make the law only Congress can do that and it's about time this trouble with "juducial activism" got straightened up too.
it appears to me the music business has no case whatever against non-commercial home use pursuant to Subchapter D of the 1992 HMRA:
Subchapter D --Prohibition on Certain Infringement Actions, Remedies, and Arbitration
1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
what does this all mean? if you buy a music CD you can play it anyway you want for yourself. put a copy in your car put a copy in your ear, anyplace you like
BUT DON'T PUBLISH A COPY
if you publish a copy -- e.g. off a web site or network share off a P2P net -- you are outside of "home use"
publishing is reserved to the copyright holder by US copyright law, and guess what, Clones: you ain't gonna change that. The law will likely be clarified however.
the article is very interesting because it invites us to consider whether the Shadow wants us to exterminate hacking or not...
Hacking could be exterminated. why has that not be done?
this is a line of thought that we should pursue
I have felt for some time that all these "vulnerabilities" we most likely intentional but intended for prefered customers only, the idea being that select, priviliged parties have the right to access anything and update programming as needed to facilitate that activity
tat would explain why no amount of patching has ever slowed up the hackers; 2007 has been a banner year for the bad boys
I've said it before but it bears repeating: if our commercial interests want to do business over the net the hacking has to come to a stop.
it will take a while to convince us that hacking has been stopped even after it is in fact stopped.
all executable programming should be signed by the responsible party.
we must have ISO or ANSI write the standard and set up compliance tests for RTF and without input from Ms because Ms needs to take a good licking for their nasty behavior
uuuuuuh, not so fast, Pard
Ms IS a monopoly -- and we all know this, even though the gov't whimped out ( how much did that round of golf with Bubba cost ? ) on the trust busting case
now is Ms is a gov't monopoly we need gov't regulations
that alone ought to scare the Fear of the Blue Screen of Death into them softies
open source projects are predicated on an agreement to share work
and that is OK, -- anyone can agree to place their work in the public domain -- or to reserve a copyright. that is up to the original authors
but that has no bearing on the fact that the availability of patent and copyright protections have served to help provide financial incentives for the development of many good works
the absence of such protection is a dis-incentive to spending capital on research and development
and no, you and John Lennon may not "borrow" my "ink pen" and just adopt it while singing "imagine no possessions"
and the lie that needs to be dispelled is that corruption is a natural aspect of software
the first step in eliminating corruption is to put a stop to UNAUTHORIZED PROGRAMMING by requiring signatures on all executable codes. this will insure the owners take responsibility and unauthorized programs can be traced to their perpetrators
if an outfit ( such as Solaris ) were to provide hard, real security of this nature they could take Ms knickers in very short order
OS/X is -- and I think will remain -- a niche system. a very good one and one we love to see stay with us but I don't see OS/X "taking over the market"
OS/2 of course sank years ago off the coast of Armonk, and Old Blue went out to pasture.
now the thing that resulted in Old Blue heading out to pasture was RESPONSIVENESS
before the PC Revolt if you wanted to do anything on computer you had top petition data processing to do it for you. and users of every feather where chomping and clamoring at the door to the Computer Room
and then the PC appeared
and the user could do what he wanted without waiting
it was RESPONSIVENESS to put Old Blue to pasture and not just in the "do it for yourself" aspect but also in the Server Farm: the use of many small computers in a network configuration. No Monster mainframe had any prayer of matching a nest of Servers, each working on its own special assignments.
But Old Blue did have pretty good security and maybe this was because we didn't let anyone into the computer room. Whatever the reason, security has gone to pot and it is the security issue that will be the principle issue evaluated in the next changeover.
what we have now is NO GOOD
and EVERYONE know this
this means that there is going to be a change.
and that change is going to center on who is authorized to make programming changes?
Only the OEM Software vendor and then only to his own programming.
Digital signatures that can be checked with a certificate authority will be required.
the company that can do this CONVINCINGLY will be the next company to be the market leader
Microsoft will find some way to weasel Linux from the world.
I certainly hope not
I think Ms is going to have to hurry unless they are ready to join Old Blue, in the Out to Pasture department
and the reason I say this is simply that the under-tow of sentiment that I'm sensing now against Ms. is essentially the same as what there was against Old Blue, Back in the Day.
Dissent started as a whisper, down the Halls of Academia. And grew louder, as voices picked it up in the Computer Room. And the End Results are now clearly apparent to all. Ms won and Old Blue is out to pasture.
not everything in the change was for the better
Ms has HORRIBLE security problems or perhaps I should argue that Ms lacks security at all
And Ms tries to monopolize the market which is not in the best interests of the consumers: We the People.
And so the effort to un-horn the Monster is well underway. Part of this effort is in Linux, Fedora, Ubantu, et.al. but I think the Solaris system is also a highly viable alternative that doesn't get enough attention
sometimes ideas take a while to catch hold
one idea that has come to the front of national attention however is identity theft. while this problem is not endemic to computers, nonetheless computers are, are seen as being, a significant aspect of the identify theft problem.
this issue will have a great deal of momentum and it will take a long time for the Public View of computer processing to change
but computers aren't going away, we know that. what is more likely then will be another "sea change" like the shift from Old Blue to Ms. In that Sea Change the desired outcome was RESPONSIVENESS.
this next time the main issue will be SECURITY
Openness will remain an issue for us Computer Cats but we will always have a niche. the Sea Change will go to the Corporation that can market a product that has CONVINCING security
and this will only be obtained by addressing the question of : who is authorized to provide programming updates?
==> Only the software OEM and only to their own products.
All software updates will have to be signed with registered digital signatures. we don't need x.509 certificates, just a digital PGP signature that can be verified with a trusted Authority will do the trick.
the government is a huge, out of control bureaucracy
the people by fiat have representatives who do have the authority to alter the government in any desired manner. but this mechanism is de facto controlled by ?
= ? = what do you need to get yourself elected? what does anyone need to get elected?
==> name recognition
= ? = how do you get name recognition ?
answering these questions to yourself *honestly* will help
Unfortunately, it's the government itself, through patents and copyrights, which is acting to perpetuate the existing monopolies.
A fair society shouldn't have the current intellectual property laws.
patents and copyrights are what entice entrepreneurs to make improvements in our circumstances. the protection of intellectual property is literally "the lamp by the golden door" .
our protection of intellectual property is one of the elements that has made us the prosperous society that we are
1. government regulations 2. free market competition
in a Free Society the government is supposed to be for The People. and it should act as an arbiter of fairness in respect to the above, insuring that access to the market is available to entrepreneurs, and that monopolies do not form, either in fact or by collusion
the above sounds like a Pretty Tall Order. But We the People do have all the legal authority necessary to insure that we do have a proper Free Society. It all starts with the Freedom of Speech and Assembly as the reader will note that to make use of their legal authority to control the government the people must act collectively
to act collectively requires communications, leadership, and organization.
in our world today we have better communication than ever, by means of electronic technology. the latter elements are often manipulated by demagogues
copy right means the copyright owner has exclusive rights to control who can copy and/or distribute copies of the copyrighted object.
now back in the day if ya made a casette from a few LP albums to play in yer truck on the way to the basketbvall game that was cool. nobody gave a rip
today, if ya copy a few CD into yer iPOD so ya can run around with a dongle hanging in yer ear and lookin' like a ditz-bopper I rather doubt that get you in much trouble unless some red-neck straightens yer brain out for ya
but if ya copy music onto a computer where it can be downloaded/copied by another network user then you are most definitely in foul territory
now if RIAA wants to say "any directory is sharable" I can't blame them one bit because guess what: you guys have made a total mess of computer security. there ain't no such critter
there actually IS Military Intelligence, but there ain't no such thing as "computer security" in the case of Ms Windows
it's got to be such a joke I think it's even worse than looking for an "honest politician"
so don't load music on yer computers cuz any decent RAT can download it all he wants
( end of RANT ) ( but this did need to be posted )
we have a real battle forming up I think and the issue is: who will be allowed to update our programming.
I say: Only the OEM and only by means of official updates to the software that I have duly ordered, and registered, and installed.
my computer is *my* computer, it ain't for some ditzy-bopper to play with
now in this respect I note the Congress of these united States agrees with me; there being two bills H.R. 1525: Internet Spyware (I-SPY) Prevention Act of 2007 H.R. 964: Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act which have now passed the house easily and which will significantly strengthen the law against making un-authorized modifications to other folks' computers
the net is needed by regular people for regular honest uses and we need to get the ditz-hackers off
the trouble with the two bills listed above is that they don't address responsibility . the response ( penalty ) for hacking is PLENTY but the bills should require providers to address the DETECTION aspect of eliminating the problem with ditz's
all that's needed to finish Ms windows is for the makers to ship a LINUX base system with FIXED software
NO SOFTWARE MODIFICATIONS ALLOWED, PERIOD.
that would put a wrench into the wheels on the hackers , all they have left is what they can load in memory and guess what: Boot before you Bank and the RAT is DEAD.
actually, with computers coming with FLASH hard drives we may be closer to this that anyone thinks
there is NO REASON the computer can't be an appliance and I keep MY DATA on a FLASH STICK
if I feel the need to compute I just pick out any handy computer, plug in my FLASH stick and go to work
these "appliance" computers would be made NOT MODIFYABLE except by the OEM
the SOLARIS operating system might be the place to start and if I was with Sun I'd be looking at this from the serious side. if this is done right it can be guaranteed virus proof. this simply because a virus has to modify its target and we are talking about a FIXED non-modifyable system.
( you have to take this computer offline to update the software and can only do that using OEM updates from CD or FLASH -- with digital signatures )
Slashdot Mirror
"it" certainly isn't "dead" but it is in a state of change. but nothing new there, it has always been in a state of change: from "tabulating", to "data processing", to "information technology"
and in the "information technology" phase the IT specialists provide assistance to the myriad of users who have now spread throughout the organization and into every department
I like your comments
.rtf format
for my money Ms. Word is over-kill
in particular I don't like it trying to guess what I want it to do
and especially in a numbered list WordPerfect did numbered lists and outlining very nicely. Ms. Word programmers just don't "get it"
the numbered list should start by indenting both the left and right margin and then resetting the left margin inside the number for the start of text. I should be able to type several paragraphs separated by blank lines with each reference number. and get the next numbered item in the list by means of a command key such as ^Enter
I should be able to break a numbered paragraph or parts of a numbered paragraph into sub paragraphs such as 3.1 and 3.2
yeah, you can get Word to do this stuff but it's a PITA where WordPerfect 5.1 did it beautifully
my writing needs at this time don't go much beyond the trusty Office Memo so I just use PolyEdit and
here is the law
is a PC a "digital audio recording device" it is certainly capable of being used that way, -- but -- that is NOT it's primary purpose. A PC HAS NO PRIMARY PURPOSE it is a general purpose machine.
now if you put a sound card in your PC and announce that your PC is your Music Library system then that is just something you are saying
copyright law was intended to protect the right of the owner to regulate the manufacture and distributions of copies of the copyright material.
what we need is the law clarified with the addition of a paragraph on computers and networks
if you post any material to a web site or on a P2P share you have published that material and if the material is copyright protected then you have trespassed on that copyright and can be charged with a crime.
it is the duty of the Congress to clarify the definition of a digital recording device it is not up to the court to wreck someone life with a test case. If the law is NOT CLEAR then the defendant must go free and if there is any remaining issue that has to be refered to the Congress -- NOT to the Court. The court does not make the law only Congress can do that and it's about time this trouble with "juducial activism" got straightened up too.
what does this all mean? if you buy a music CD you can play it anyway you want for yourself. put a copy in your car put a copy in your ear, anyplace you like
BUT DON'T PUBLISH A COPY
if you publish a copy -- e.g. off a web site or network share off a P2P net -- you are outside of "home use"
publishing is reserved to the copyright holder by US copyright law, and guess what, Clones: you ain't gonna change that. The law will likely be clarified however.
the article is very interesting because it invites us to consider whether the Shadow wants us to exterminate hacking or not...
Hacking could be exterminated. why has that not be done?
this is a line of thought that we should pursue
I have felt for some time that all these "vulnerabilities" we most likely intentional but intended for prefered customers only, the idea being that select, priviliged parties have the right to access anything and update programming as needed to facilitate that activity
tat would explain why no amount of patching has ever slowed up the hackers; 2007 has been a banner year for the bad boys
I've said it before but it bears repeating: if our commercial interests want to do business over the net the hacking has to come to a stop.
it will take a while to convince us that hacking has been stopped even after it is in fact stopped.
all executable programming should be signed by the responsible party.
NO SIGNATURE? NO EXECUTE.
Remember: we need to exchange across time as well as between vendors' systems
I see this as the role of
we need a document format that is both simple and open so that documents can easily be exchanged
.rtf
.rtf and we need a certification test so that vendor products can be evaluated and given a pass/fail grade
clearly this CANNOT be trusted to a corporation; it has to be owned publicly.
HTML might be used, but while HTML is fine for browser documents it lacks some features needed for print format.
PDF is the exact opposite, it prints perfect but browses poorly and requires specialized compilers to build documents.
and so at least for now there is still a place for something like
but we need an open standard for
comma delimited data, for example
as i noted in the other post we need ISO and ANSI to write the spec and set up the acceptance test
how many foos i have falling over commas and or quotes that are enclosed within quoted text -- or who cannot write a number properly
AGGRAVATING! these foos need to get a big fat F on their report card and join Hillary in re-hab
we must have ISO or ANSI write the standard and set up compliance tests for RTF and without input from Ms because Ms needs to take a good licking for their nasty behavior
now our hackers can sell stolen identities to everyone who want to sneak into the country
why would anyone want to listen to half-truths, distortions, and advertising?
Good reading offered recently on WorldNetDaily includes "Journalistic Fraud" and "Hillary's Secret War to Silence the Internet Journalists"
uuuuuuh, not so fast, Pard Ms IS a monopoly -- and we all know this, even though the gov't whimped out ( how much did that round of golf with Bubba cost ? ) on the trust busting case now is Ms is a gov't monopoly we need gov't regulations that alone ought to scare the Fear of the Blue Screen of Death into them softies
I'm a confirmed member of the the resistance myself.
.rtf format unless someone demands .doc and I can't think of the last time that happened
.xls format, well that's more of a "SOL"
I always use
now in the
Where's Borland's Quattro Pro when we need it?
"less secure"
Ms preaching security? What a joke.
any foo knows this is forced obsolescence in a BS wrapper
open source projects are predicated on an agreement to share work
and that is OK, -- anyone can agree to place their work in the public domain -- or to reserve a copyright. that is up to the original authors
but that has no bearing on the fact that the availability of patent and copyright protections have served to help provide financial incentives for the development of many good works
the absence of such protection is a dis-incentive to spending capital on research and development
and no, you and John Lennon may not "borrow" my "ink pen" and just adopt it while singing "imagine no possessions"
==>The Biggest Threat: Educated Customers
that would be true
and the lie that needs to be dispelled is that corruption is a natural aspect of software
the first step in eliminating corruption is to put a stop to UNAUTHORIZED PROGRAMMING by requiring signatures on all executable codes. this will insure the owners take responsibility and unauthorized programs can be traced to their perpetrators
if an outfit ( such as Solaris ) were to provide hard, real security of this nature they could take Ms knickers in very short order
OS/X is -- and I think will remain -- a niche system. a very good one and one we love to see stay with us but I don't see OS/X "taking over the market"
OS/2 of course sank years ago off the coast of Armonk, and Old Blue went out to pasture.
now the thing that resulted in Old Blue heading out to pasture was RESPONSIVENESS
before the PC Revolt if you wanted to do anything on computer you had top petition data processing to do it for you. and users of every feather where chomping and clamoring at the door to the Computer Room
and then the PC appeared
and the user could do what he wanted without waiting
it was RESPONSIVENESS to put Old Blue to pasture and not just in the "do it for yourself" aspect but also in the Server Farm: the use of many small computers in a network configuration. No Monster mainframe had any prayer of matching a nest of Servers, each working on its own special assignments.
But Old Blue did have pretty good security and maybe this was because we didn't let anyone into the computer room. Whatever the reason, security has gone to pot and it is the security issue that will be the principle issue evaluated in the next changeover.
what we have now is NO GOOD
and EVERYONE know this
this means that there is going to be a change.
and that change is going to center on who is authorized to make programming changes?
Only the OEM Software vendor and then only to his own programming.
Digital signatures that can be checked with a certificate authority will be required.
the company that can do this CONVINCINGLY will be the next company to be the market leader
I certainly hope not
I think Ms is going to have to hurry unless they are ready to join Old Blue, in the Out to Pasture department
and the reason I say this is simply that the under-tow of sentiment that I'm sensing now against Ms. is essentially the same as what there was against Old Blue, Back in the Day.
Dissent started as a whisper, down the Halls of Academia. And grew louder, as voices picked it up in the Computer Room. And the End Results are now clearly apparent to all. Ms won and Old Blue is out to pasture.
not everything in the change was for the better
Ms has HORRIBLE security problems or perhaps I should argue that Ms lacks security at all
And Ms tries to monopolize the market which is not in the best interests of the consumers: We the People.
And so the effort to un-horn the Monster is well underway. Part of this effort is in Linux, Fedora, Ubantu, et.al. but I think the Solaris system is also a highly viable alternative that doesn't get enough attention
sometimes ideas take a while to catch hold
one idea that has come to the front of national attention however is identity theft. while this problem is not endemic to computers, nonetheless computers are, are seen as being, a significant aspect of the identify theft problem.
this issue will have a great deal of momentum and it will take a long time for the Public View of computer processing to change
but computers aren't going away, we know that. what is more likely then will be another "sea change" like the shift from Old Blue to Ms. In that Sea Change the desired outcome was RESPONSIVENESS.
this next time the main issue will be SECURITY
Openness will remain an issue for us Computer Cats but we will always have a niche. the Sea Change will go to the Corporation that can market a product that has CONVINCING security
and this will only be obtained by addressing the question of : who is authorized to provide programming updates?
==> Only the software OEM and only to their own products.
All software updates will have to be signed with registered digital signatures. we don't need x.509 certificates, just a digital PGP signature that can be verified with a trusted Authority will do the trick.
hardly
the government is a huge, out of control bureaucracy
the people by fiat have representatives who do have the authority to alter the government in any desired manner. but this mechanism is de facto controlled by ?
= ? = what do you need to get yourself elected? what does anyone need to get elected?
==> name recognition
= ? = how do you get name recognition ?
answering these questions to yourself *honestly* will help
patents and copyrights are what entice entrepreneurs to make improvements in our circumstances. the protection of intellectual property is literally "the lamp by the golden door" .
our protection of intellectual property is one of the elements that has made us the prosperous society that we are
there are two ways to control corporations:
1. government regulations
2. free market competition
in a Free Society the government is supposed to be for The People. and it should act as an arbiter of fairness in respect to the above, insuring that access to the market is available to entrepreneurs, and that monopolies do not form, either in fact or by collusion
the above sounds like a Pretty Tall Order. But We the People do have all the legal authority necessary to insure that we do have a proper Free Society. It all starts with the Freedom of Speech and Assembly as the reader will note that to make use of their legal authority to control the government the people must act collectively
to act collectively requires communications, leadership, and organization.
in our world today we have better communication than ever, by means of electronic technology. the latter elements are often manipulated by demagogues
copy right means the copyright owner has exclusive rights to control who can copy and/or distribute copies of the copyrighted object.
now back in the day if ya made a casette from a few LP albums to play in yer truck on the way to the basketbvall game that was cool. nobody gave a rip
today, if ya copy a few CD into yer iPOD so ya can run around with a dongle hanging in yer ear and lookin' like a ditz-bopper I rather doubt that get you in much trouble unless some red-neck straightens yer brain out for ya
but if ya copy music onto a computer where it can be downloaded/copied by another network user then you are most definitely in foul territory
now if RIAA wants to say "any directory is sharable" I can't blame them one bit because guess what: you guys have made a total mess of computer security. there ain't no such critter
there actually IS Military Intelligence, but there ain't no such thing as "computer security" in the case of Ms Windows
it's got to be such a joke I think it's even worse than looking for an "honest politician"
so don't load music on yer computers cuz any decent RAT can download it all he wants
( end of RANT ) ( but this did need to be posted )
yup , good post
we have a real battle forming up I think and the issue is: who will be allowed to update our programming.
I say: Only the OEM and only by means of official updates to the software that I have duly ordered, and registered, and installed.
my computer is *my* computer, it ain't for some ditzy-bopper to play with
now in this respect I note the Congress of these united States agrees with me; there being two bills
H.R. 1525: Internet Spyware (I-SPY) Prevention Act of 2007
H.R. 964: Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act
which have now passed the house easily and which will significantly strengthen the law against making un-authorized modifications to other folks' computers
the net is needed by regular people for regular honest uses and we need to get the ditz-hackers off
the trouble with the two bills listed above is that they don't address responsibility . the response ( penalty ) for hacking is PLENTY but the bills should require providers to address the DETECTION aspect of eliminating the problem with ditz's
we want a computer that does what it's told
not what some ditzy tells it in an effort to affect our behavior in some way
so the issue comes down to who's controlling the programming
i spot any IA running through my place I'm gonna fire phasers at it
all that's needed to finish Ms windows is for the makers to ship a LINUX base system with FIXED software
NO SOFTWARE MODIFICATIONS ALLOWED, PERIOD.
that would put a wrench into the wheels on the hackers , all they have left is what they can load in memory and guess what: Boot before you Bank and the RAT is DEAD.
actually, with computers coming with FLASH hard drives we may be closer to this that anyone thinks
there is NO REASON the computer can't be an appliance and I keep MY DATA on a FLASH STICK
if I feel the need to compute I just pick out any handy computer, plug in my FLASH stick and go to work
these "appliance" computers would be made NOT MODIFYABLE except by the OEM
the SOLARIS operating system might be the place to start and if I was with Sun I'd be looking at this from the serious side. if this is done right it can be guaranteed virus proof. this simply because a virus has to modify its target and we are talking about a FIXED non-modifyable system.
( you have to take this computer offline to update the software and can only do that using OEM updates from CD or FLASH -- with digital signatures )