Of course, now the question is whether that's in weeks, months, years, decades...
Though when it's over, I have a feeling that SCO will be described as 'a bunch of mindless jerks that were first against the wall when the revolution came.'
Given that it is a submarine, space and heat are more important that cost. Especially if in the same volume, for the same price, for roughly the same processing power, you use significantly less power and generate less heat. (Don't forget that less heat means less power too cool the sub as well, or that more fans = more noise.)
(BTW, XServes are hot-swappable. I doubt the Navy doesn't have a set of fault-tolerance checks for computer systems if some suffer damage. And I doubt they went to Home Depot's bargain bin for water valves; why would they want cheap computer components? And if I misread and you were trying to make that point, then just take all of this as support instead of a rebuttal.)
I've read this and re-read this, and nothing in it says 'with no consequences whatsoever'.
Essentially (and theoretically), everyone is allowed to say what they want and the legal system will decide whether it was appropriate or not. That's the guarantee - that voices won't be silenced BEFORE they are heard. Afterwards is a different story.
'Petition' does not mean 'call for the overthrow of'. The system is not perfect (few things mankind has made are), but there are ways to affect change within it. How effective they are, and how long they take, are open to debate. But they are there and the can be used.
Right now, voter turnout is atrocious. If in the next Congressional election every single person who thought the Republicans had gone to far in the war and the Patriot act voted, the shape of the House and Senate would be very different indeed. WITHOUT overthrowing the whole thing. Until voter turnout is higher, we're stuck with what we end up with.
Sorry, I meant to be clearer. What it is or isn't won't matter once the 'spin' is put on. The FBI has more pressing investigations than piracy; one reason the RIAA is going after web sites instead of asking the FBI to do so. The RIAA could have for years run its own 'sting' operations to get street vendors but never bothered. Even now neither they nor the MPAA are attacking street vendors in their advertising/education campaigns.
For the record, I've seen movies hawked in the street in D.C. and elsewhere. Is Chinatown the only streets that have it? I doubt it. But that's where you pointed out they should raid, as if the entire area is only a front for music/movie piracy. Should they also close down the entire D.C. area for piracy? While your one guy would collect evidence, all it is evidence of is the selling of illegal copies. Doesn't really mean they were made there, does it?
B) If pirated CDs are to blame, why aren't there FBI raiding Chinatown's over the U.S. everyday?
Because that would be racial profiling. Even if they had the resources to track pirates down (and the majority of Americans would see that as less necessary than tracking possible terrorists), any such raid right now would produce a P.R. backlash, whether or not the FBI is correct.
However, going after kids/students isn't racial profiling, even if they someone paint a picture of loner/nerd/geek. It's wrong, and ignores the real causes (recession mostly, though the slow down of replacing vinyl makes sense) but looks good short term. They ignore the simple fact that the majority of the sharers wouldn't have bought the music, and that their tactics push legitimate buyers away.
IBM's best bet for what? The main case against them is a contract dispute, or some such thing. Everything else is FUD, and if IBM buys them without going to court then everyone(e.g. the un(der)informed masses) will assume SCO was right about everything. Not to mention the members of SCO's board/executives will cash in while all of the programmers/engineers involved get slandered.
The judge won't need insight, he'll need facts which come from 'expert' witnesses and physical evidence. In court, SCO would have to show not only what code is theirs that is an infringement, but why the fact that they distributed it should be ignored. Once the code is revealed, then IBM/Linux can defend where the code in question came from, if necessary.
...even if it does depend on the number of files you have shared.
But is this true? I thought I heard of people getting nailed for sharing as few as a dozen songs. It seems to me that is more dependant on how easy it is for them to get ahold of your identity. That would depend on a number of variables like your provider, how you're sharing the files, how you've identified yourself. There really hasn't been much rhyme or reason otherwise.
The abstract probability of an single individual vs. all of the individuals sharing may be low, but that assumes they have a list of all of them and just pick randomly. The actual probability of each 'sharer' being targeted seems directly related to the ease to which they can be identified, coupled with the ease they share their files.
In other words, hypothetically speaking, say I contact a dozen people I know and we each set up a secure server of our own and only give access to each other, such that random surfers wouldn't even know there were music files being shared if they got their accidentally. Even if we shared 1000 files each, are odds of being discovered are only related to our encryption choice, our password choices, and our ability to keep a secret. On the flipside, a person who puts 'Rainbow_Connection.mp3' on the front of their personal web page because its their favorite song has a high probability of being on the RIAA's list, since a simple google would probably show them and the page itself may identify them.
Granted, I've exagerated to make my point, but there it is. And here's a bonus point: by going after the easier targets, they are starting a digital 'cold war' that could drive annoyed, capable consumers to devising better and better ways of hiding identities and files sources online. A conspiricy theorist might try to extrapolate that this is their plan, since surely they would invoke anti-terrorist response and give the government an easy in for more computer surveilance of ordinary activities. But for that tto make sense the RIAA would need to have strong govermental ties...
Am I the only one that had the movie voice triggered by the 'In a world where...' line? The whole first paragraph reads like a movie trailer voiceover. I think I'll wait for the rental.
More likely, they're hitting resistance from their individual restaurants. I'm not sure how their franchising works, but maybe it's just the local one that tried this.
On a related note, here in Western PA/ North Eastern OH 24hr gas stations like Sheetz have had these for years, and they seem to be spreading. I expect we'll see them more and more in this type of situation - where there aren't preexisting employees to displace, or where the food counter is in addition to what the main business is.
For one, Apple *will not* deal with the band themselves. Read anything put out by them and they make that explicitly clear.
It just occurred to me - they may have worded their last settlement with Apple Records so explicitly that representing music acts directly is the one thing they can't do, given that that is exactly what Apple Records does do.
Just a random thought. As a settlement, the details are not public. (I couldn't find them.) However, I seem to recall Paul McCartney forcing InterVideo(I think) to work with Apple Computer so his DVD would play on the computer he uses. If he still has influence with Apple Records, and isn't threatened by Apple, he may be holding them back. So called 'experts' keep bringing them up; surely if they had a legally actionable position they would have made it by now.
This is true, but possibly misleading. Whether you spend less overall would depend on the price of the ticket, though air travel being what it is now I'm sure on weekdays straight roundtrips to US cities are probably relatively cheap.
Another point to expand my first post is that price differences unique to neither Apple or computers. For example, there are people daily going between US & Canada for prescription drugs, beer, cigarettes, gambling, clothes, imported CDs/games. I'm not looking to defend or attack any instance in particular. The point I was hoping to make is that international trade is a very complex, multi-tiered beast, and it gets tiring to read the simplistic cries of 'Why is it still expensive here!' after every price change, when this can be said of virtually everything sold from someone's point of view.
(I won't even bring up ancient, pointless embargos that prevent me from getting a good cigar. Though I have suspected that half the point is that they are forbidden; can Cuba's tobacco/processing really be that much better?)
I can't help but notice you haven't done this either.
OK, I don't mean to be a smartass (at least not much of one), but what you (and others, I'd like it to) want isn't economically viable at this point. Beyond the factor of setting up a site to download songs from and handle payments, there's the problem of aquiring distribution rights. What publishers currently own the music you are referring to? Are the current contracts restrictive and do they prevent another from distributing electronic versions?
To focus on Apple for the second, they had to go for the 'big five' first to provide content that would sell AND look good to Wall Street. After it has been up for a while, then they can expand to include independents as well as older groups. They will have the capital to invest in ways to make it easier for those groups to convert their own libraries, and the will have the credibility that groups will knock on their door and say 'Let us in!'
As for Buy.com, it probably won't affect Apple's development directly. It may affect their PR - 'Sounds Great! Less Confusing!' - but they are probably developing the software as fast as is reasonable already.
That just seems ill-informed. Bush gets his money from Big Oil and Texas. Boycotts of big name products like these might alter their bottom lines, but they are large enough to rebrand in countries where they have problems selling, or pull out all together. Pulling out might cost jobs, but quite possibly local ones, so it's hard to say who was actually hurt.
And before we spin into an off-topic arguement, I would be infavor of impeachment if our next choice (Cheney) wasn't more of a corporate man. Bush is a corporate tool that will hopefully be ousted. Unfortunately, the damage he's done both foreign and domestic may be more than Reagan/his father combined. (In fact, the Patriot Act would have legalized Nixon's activities.)
And that includes the economy, which is what has slowed Games sells. Oh, and the availability of $20 Greatest Hits games. No point in buying every game when it first comes out. Though whether this hurts or not has to be balanced against the dent it takes from used games. If I can get it new for $20, even $15 for Used is too much. And I'd rather buy two 'Greatest Hits' for $40 that I can look up and see have lots of fans, than one new game for 40-60 that has little fan base yet.
When there are international pricing differences, why is it everyone assumes it's Apple's fault? There could be lots of possible reasons. Tariffs and shipping costs that they don't include with the price. Local taxes. Fluctuation in currency rates which prevents easy savings translation. (Well, if we lower this price by x here, we'd lower it y there today but z tomorrow.) Costs of local versions of the software. (And yes, even for Canada. I remember complaints early on for OS X about the included dictionary was either American or UK English, neither of which worked correctly for Canadian.)
I'm not trying to overly defend them. But International Boundaries make a mess of a lot of free trade; it's just a matter of where it shows up. And it is possible that Apple Education America and Apple Education Canada are entirely seperate entities with seperate budgets makeing their own decisions. In this case, they would do things seperately to increase their sales but meet their budgets.
Now, I don't work for Apple (as much I as may wish I did). It may be that none of these are true and someone up top did say 'Meh - don't give it to foreigners!'. I just don't think it was that cold-bloodily simple.
As for the student developer program, that probably has most to do with whatever software/services they offer and the distribution rights Apple has for them, or the level of administration they can apply towards it. I'm sure they are aware that growing an international community of developers would help them massively long term, so I doubt they simply don't want to do it.
This would amount to admitting that SCO has a case at all, and would probably hurt their defense. On the other hand, there's nothing to stop someone else from offering this insurance. Well, maybe some legal wrangling, but it would just be FUD vs FUD.
Whoa - Kramer vs. Kramer flashback. Maybe SCO will get some extra cash from selling the movie rights.
Given that Carmack has essentially said that the latest G4's and graphic cards are adequate for games, If there has been concurrent development it has been on the G4. While they may include a G5 build if the speed difference is worth it (and it's only a matter of turning on an optimizer), if Mac Doom 3 comes out within the next year I doubt they'd cut out the large percentage of users that haven't upgraded. As others have hinted at, they have progressively gotten better at scalable quality. In other words, even older computers will probably play it, just at 640x480.
The important part is "Don't expect to run it fabulous with that system setup". They don't really specify what resolution they consider "fabulous".
Fair enough. I don't know what the overall sound capabilities of Linux are, but it may be more difficult to do a Sound Editor when hardware may vary, especially if the sound API's aren't fully flushed out/standardized. Obviously, the porting of games with full sound proves it's possible, but it may still take a lot of work that no one has found a way to benefit from doing publicly.
(Offtopic guilt trip)
And I apologize for going on an attack; I've been tracking something for a week. When the first post I read in an Apple article (that wasn't even on the front page) is 'I wish Linux had this' it just struck the wrong, tightly wound, cord.
(/Offtopic)
Part of what is said that the periods around the expansion showed little difference from the overall trend, either better or worse.
Of course, the problem with this is the 'what' question. Simple population expansion led to more papers/magazines/movies/books over the years, so the quantity increase really doesn't mean much on its own (though comparing it to population/economic indexes might be interesting). Even baseball games our copyrightted nowadays. Copyright extensions have two effects: extend the owners ability to use the material, and prevent others from using it. Neither of these conditions are measured by this data.
Exactly HOW is that going to happen? Does Linus have a huge catalog of free music samples he'll open up? Is IBM sitting on a sound tool they never bother releasing? Have you written one? Or thousands of free music pieces?
There are probably places that have developed something similar in-house for Linux, though most likely less powerful (read: only as powerful as they need). Why would they release it? If it uses GPL'd code, they won't be able to charge for it. If it uses their own sound library, they surely wouldn't release that for free, and would quickly get bogged in trying to enforce their rights and earn money from it.
An interesting can of worms to open here, who owns those patents? If NASA developed them, then they should be in the Public Domain, since they used public money for funding, shouldn't they? Even if they are developed outside of NASA, if NASA pays for it, the U.S. government pays for it, so indirectly I've paid for it, so if anyone is making money I should get a cut. (Hey, that's Metallica's reasoning.)
I'm not trying to start a IP bru-ha-ha(sp?), but I'm curious if anyone actually knows this. Or do these end up in those companies with the "We don't make X, we just make it better" ads?
What I got as a general consensus was effectively:
a) The possibility of this being used maliciously required physical access, and other physical methods rendered it near moot.
b) This point is hard to get across when the news report reads "Apple has security failure from locked screen savers", and therefore may as well be fixed.
c) Being a buffer problem in a shared library, it is possible that something else, either presently or in the future, would also become vulnerable. This is probably the best reason to fix it while the risk is still light.
Slashdot Mirror
42.
Of course, now the question is whether that's in weeks, months, years, decades...
Though when it's over, I have a feeling that SCO will be described as 'a bunch of mindless jerks that were first against the wall when the revolution came.'
vs. Intel:
1) Heat/Power Use
2) Space
3) Cost
vs. Sun:
1) Space
2) Heat/Power Use
3) Cost
Given that it is a submarine, space and heat are more important that cost. Especially if in the same volume, for the same price, for roughly the same processing power, you use significantly less power and generate less heat. (Don't forget that less heat means less power too cool the sub as well, or that more fans = more noise.)
(BTW, XServes are hot-swappable. I doubt the Navy doesn't have a set of fault-tolerance checks for computer systems if some suffer damage. And I doubt they went to Home Depot's bargain bin for water valves; why would they want cheap computer components? And if I misread and you were trying to make that point, then just take all of this as support instead of a rebuttal.)
I've read this and re-read this, and nothing in it says 'with no consequences whatsoever'.
Essentially (and theoretically), everyone is allowed to say what they want and the legal system will decide whether it was appropriate or not. That's the guarantee - that voices won't be silenced BEFORE they are heard. Afterwards is a different story.
'Petition' does not mean 'call for the overthrow of'. The system is not perfect (few things mankind has made are), but there are ways to affect change within it. How effective they are, and how long they take, are open to debate. But they are there and the can be used.
Right now, voter turnout is atrocious. If in the next Congressional election every single person who thought the Republicans had gone to far in the war and the Patriot act voted, the shape of the House and Senate would be very different indeed. WITHOUT overthrowing the whole thing. Until voter turnout is higher, we're stuck with what we end up with.
Haaaahhhaaaaah haha ha ha ha!
*snort*
At first I thought this was a description of what SCO was doing when they started this.
Sorry, I meant to be clearer. What it is or isn't won't matter once the 'spin' is put on. The FBI has more pressing investigations than piracy; one reason the RIAA is going after web sites instead of asking the FBI to do so. The RIAA could have for years run its own 'sting' operations to get street vendors but never bothered. Even now neither they nor the MPAA are attacking street vendors in their advertising/education campaigns.
For the record, I've seen movies hawked in the street in D.C. and elsewhere. Is Chinatown the only streets that have it? I doubt it. But that's where you pointed out they should raid, as if the entire area is only a front for music/movie piracy. Should they also close down the entire D.C. area for piracy? While your one guy would collect evidence, all it is evidence of is the selling of illegal copies. Doesn't really mean they were made there, does it?
B) If pirated CDs are to blame, why aren't there FBI raiding Chinatown's over the U.S. everyday?
Because that would be racial profiling. Even if they had the resources to track pirates down (and the majority of Americans would see that as less necessary than tracking possible terrorists), any such raid right now would produce a P.R. backlash, whether or not the FBI is correct.
However, going after kids/students isn't racial profiling, even if they someone paint a picture of loner/nerd/geek. It's wrong, and ignores the real causes (recession mostly, though the slow down of replacing vinyl makes sense) but looks good short term. They ignore the simple fact that the majority of the sharers wouldn't have bought the music, and that their tactics push legitimate buyers away.
IBM's best bet for what? The main case against them is a contract dispute, or some such thing. Everything else is FUD, and if IBM buys them without going to court then everyone(e.g. the un(der)informed masses) will assume SCO was right about everything. Not to mention the members of SCO's board/executives will cash in while all of the programmers/engineers involved get slandered.
The judge won't need insight, he'll need facts which come from 'expert' witnesses and physical evidence. In court, SCO would have to show not only what code is theirs that is an infringement, but why the fact that they distributed it should be ignored. Once the code is revealed, then IBM/Linux can defend where the code in question came from, if necessary.
...even if it does depend on the number of files you have shared.
But is this true? I thought I heard of people getting nailed for sharing as few as a dozen songs. It seems to me that is more dependant on how easy it is for them to get ahold of your identity. That would depend on a number of variables like your provider, how you're sharing the files, how you've identified yourself. There really hasn't been much rhyme or reason otherwise.
The abstract probability of an single individual vs. all of the individuals sharing may be low, but that assumes they have a list of all of them and just pick randomly. The actual probability of each 'sharer' being targeted seems directly related to the ease to which they can be identified, coupled with the ease they share their files.
In other words, hypothetically speaking, say I contact a dozen people I know and we each set up a secure server of our own and only give access to each other, such that random surfers wouldn't even know there were music files being shared if they got their accidentally. Even if we shared 1000 files each, are odds of being discovered are only related to our encryption choice, our password choices, and our ability to keep a secret. On the flipside, a person who puts 'Rainbow_Connection.mp3' on the front of their personal web page because its their favorite song has a high probability of being on the RIAA's list, since a simple google would probably show them and the page itself may identify them.
Granted, I've exagerated to make my point, but there it is. And here's a bonus point: by going after the easier targets, they are starting a digital 'cold war' that could drive annoyed, capable consumers to devising better and better ways of hiding identities and files sources online. A conspiricy theorist might try to extrapolate that this is their plan, since surely they would invoke anti-terrorist response and give the government an easy in for more computer surveilance of ordinary activities. But for that tto make sense the RIAA would need to have strong govermental ties...
Am I the only one that had the movie voice triggered by the 'In a world where...' line? The whole first paragraph reads like a movie trailer voiceover. I think I'll wait for the rental.
I resent that! Sometimes I watch Star Trek.
Er, I mean I work 8 hours! In a tie! And I turn off the air conditioning to save money!
The question is will the robots be imported from India ?
Well, if so, I don't think their programming would allow them to work at McDonalds. But maybe KFC.
More likely, they're hitting resistance from their individual restaurants. I'm not sure how their franchising works, but maybe it's just the local one that tried this.
On a related note, here in Western PA/ North Eastern OH 24hr gas stations like Sheetz have had these for years, and they seem to be spreading. I expect we'll see them more and more in this type of situation - where there aren't preexisting employees to displace, or where the food counter is in addition to what the main business is.
Bruce: SCO's case is like making love on a manure pile.
McBride: Making love on a manure pile?
Bruce: It's fucking close to shit!
For one, Apple *will not* deal with the band themselves. Read anything put out by them and they make that explicitly clear.
It just occurred to me - they may have worded their last settlement with Apple Records so explicitly that representing music acts directly is the one thing they can't do, given that that is exactly what Apple Records does do.
Just a random thought. As a settlement, the details are not public. (I couldn't find them.) However, I seem to recall Paul McCartney forcing InterVideo(I think) to work with Apple Computer so his DVD would play on the computer he uses. If he still has influence with Apple Records, and isn't threatened by Apple, he may be holding them back. So called 'experts' keep bringing them up; surely if they had a legally actionable position they would have made it by now.
This is true, but possibly misleading. Whether you spend less overall would depend on the price of the ticket, though air travel being what it is now I'm sure on weekdays straight roundtrips to US cities are probably relatively cheap.
Another point to expand my first post is that price differences unique to neither Apple or computers. For example, there are people daily going between US & Canada for prescription drugs, beer, cigarettes, gambling, clothes, imported CDs/games. I'm not looking to defend or attack any instance in particular. The point I was hoping to make is that international trade is a very complex, multi-tiered beast, and it gets tiring to read the simplistic cries of 'Why is it still expensive here!' after every price change, when this can be said of virtually everything sold from someone's point of view.
(I won't even bring up ancient, pointless embargos that prevent me from getting a good cigar. Though I have suspected that half the point is that they are forbidden; can Cuba's tobacco/processing really be that much better?)
I can't help but notice you haven't done this either.
OK, I don't mean to be a smartass (at least not much of one), but what you (and others, I'd like it to) want isn't economically viable at this point. Beyond the factor of setting up a site to download songs from and handle payments, there's the problem of aquiring distribution rights. What publishers currently own the music you are referring to? Are the current contracts restrictive and do they prevent another from distributing electronic versions?
To focus on Apple for the second, they had to go for the 'big five' first to provide content that would sell AND look good to Wall Street. After it has been up for a while, then they can expand to include independents as well as older groups. They will have the capital to invest in ways to make it easier for those groups to convert their own libraries, and the will have the credibility that groups will knock on their door and say 'Let us in!'
As for Buy.com, it probably won't affect Apple's development directly. It may affect their PR - 'Sounds Great! Less Confusing!' - but they are probably developing the software as fast as is reasonable already.
That just seems ill-informed. Bush gets his money from Big Oil and Texas. Boycotts of big name products like these might alter their bottom lines, but they are large enough to rebrand in countries where they have problems selling, or pull out all together. Pulling out might cost jobs, but quite possibly local ones, so it's hard to say who was actually hurt.
And before we spin into an off-topic arguement, I would be infavor of impeachment if our next choice (Cheney) wasn't more of a corporate man. Bush is a corporate tool that will hopefully be ousted. Unfortunately, the damage he's done both foreign and domestic may be more than Reagan/his father combined. (In fact, the Patriot Act would have legalized Nixon's activities.)
And that includes the economy, which is what has slowed Games sells. Oh, and the availability of $20 Greatest Hits games. No point in buying every game when it first comes out. Though whether this hurts or not has to be balanced against the dent it takes from used games. If I can get it new for $20, even $15 for Used is too much. And I'd rather buy two 'Greatest Hits' for $40 that I can look up and see have lots of fans, than one new game for 40-60 that has little fan base yet.
When there are international pricing differences, why is it everyone assumes it's Apple's fault? There could be lots of possible reasons. Tariffs and shipping costs that they don't include with the price. Local taxes. Fluctuation in currency rates which prevents easy savings translation. (Well, if we lower this price by x here, we'd lower it y there today but z tomorrow.) Costs of local versions of the software. (And yes, even for Canada. I remember complaints early on for OS X about the included dictionary was either American or UK English, neither of which worked correctly for Canadian.)
I'm not trying to overly defend them. But International Boundaries make a mess of a lot of free trade; it's just a matter of where it shows up. And it is possible that Apple Education America and Apple Education Canada are entirely seperate entities with seperate budgets makeing their own decisions. In this case, they would do things seperately to increase their sales but meet their budgets.
Now, I don't work for Apple (as much I as may wish I did). It may be that none of these are true and someone up top did say 'Meh - don't give it to foreigners!'. I just don't think it was that cold-bloodily simple.
As for the student developer program, that probably has most to do with whatever software/services they offer and the distribution rights Apple has for them, or the level of administration they can apply towards it. I'm sure they are aware that growing an international community of developers would help them massively long term, so I doubt they simply don't want to do it.
This would amount to admitting that SCO has a case at all, and would probably hurt their defense. On the other hand, there's nothing to stop someone else from offering this insurance. Well, maybe some legal wrangling, but it would just be FUD vs FUD.
Whoa - Kramer vs. Kramer flashback. Maybe SCO will get some extra cash from selling the movie rights.
Given that Carmack has essentially said that the latest G4's and graphic cards are adequate for games, If there has been concurrent development it has been on the G4. While they may include a G5 build if the speed difference is worth it (and it's only a matter of turning on an optimizer), if Mac Doom 3 comes out within the next year I doubt they'd cut out the large percentage of users that haven't upgraded. As others have hinted at, they have progressively gotten better at scalable quality. In other words, even older computers will probably play it, just at 640x480.
The important part is "Don't expect to run it fabulous with that system setup". They don't really specify what resolution they consider "fabulous".
Fair enough. I don't know what the overall sound capabilities of Linux are, but it may be more difficult to do a Sound Editor when hardware may vary, especially if the sound API's aren't fully flushed out/standardized. Obviously, the porting of games with full sound proves it's possible, but it may still take a lot of work that no one has found a way to benefit from doing publicly. (Offtopic guilt trip) And I apologize for going on an attack; I've been tracking something for a week. When the first post I read in an Apple article (that wasn't even on the front page) is 'I wish Linux had this' it just struck the wrong, tightly wound, cord. (/Offtopic)
Part of what is said that the periods around the expansion showed little difference from the overall trend, either better or worse.
Of course, the problem with this is the 'what' question. Simple population expansion led to more papers/magazines/movies/books over the years, so the quantity increase really doesn't mean much on its own (though comparing it to population/economic indexes might be interesting). Even baseball games our copyrightted nowadays. Copyright extensions have two effects: extend the owners ability to use the material, and prevent others from using it. Neither of these conditions are measured by this data.
Exactly HOW is that going to happen? Does Linus have a huge catalog of free music samples he'll open up? Is IBM sitting on a sound tool they never bother releasing? Have you written one? Or thousands of free music pieces?
There are probably places that have developed something similar in-house for Linux, though most likely less powerful (read: only as powerful as they need). Why would they release it? If it uses GPL'd code, they won't be able to charge for it. If it uses their own sound library, they surely wouldn't release that for free, and would quickly get bogged in trying to enforce their rights and earn money from it.
An interesting can of worms to open here, who owns those patents? If NASA developed them, then they should be in the Public Domain, since they used public money for funding, shouldn't they? Even if they are developed outside of NASA, if NASA pays for it, the U.S. government pays for it, so indirectly I've paid for it, so if anyone is making money I should get a cut. (Hey, that's Metallica's reasoning.)
I'm not trying to start a IP bru-ha-ha(sp?), but I'm curious if anyone actually knows this. Or do these end up in those companies with the "We don't make X, we just make it better" ads?
What I got as a general consensus was effectively:
a) The possibility of this being used maliciously required physical access, and other physical methods rendered it near moot.
b) This point is hard to get across when the news report reads "Apple has security failure from locked screen savers", and therefore may as well be fixed.
c) Being a buffer problem in a shared library, it is possible that something else, either presently or in the future, would also become vulnerable. This is probably the best reason to fix it while the risk is still light.