I picture the ultimate goal of DRM to be computers like Nintendo boxes. Buy software cartridges plug them in and use your limited controls to get stuff done. Hardware to copy and interact is extremely controlled, complex and/or expensive so that most people will just buy the software instead of get the rom readers, burners, etc to copy a cartridge. Sure rich geeks like us may be "free" to do it, but it will be very illegal if it isn't already.
Lets say we do make computers so that it is impossible to rip-off software vendors.
Will Open Source software still exist in such a system, or will we be unable to use even that? Look at how hard it is to hack the X-Box and that's just their first try at such a system.
The US was founded on Seperation of Church and State, maybe the next time around it will be seperation of Business and State.
Once you try it though you can't do without it. And broadband is already a utility for me. I couldn't run my business without it. Like the cigarette tax, I'm hooked.
My biggest complaint is that if I want cable internet I had to get ALL 100+ channels. They want about $99 / month - $35 for internet and $60 or so for cable. I don't watch TV so we went with the slightly more expensive DSL about $40 / month.
Well that and the fact that cable lines aren't going to be laid my way for another few years. Only about 5 houses / mile in my location.
I used to be the Technology person for a rural school district covering 3 counties serviced by 4 phone companies. About 1995. We still had PULSE dialing until recently. We couldn't get a trunk hunt for our modems unless we could find a block of physically adjacent unused switches at the local Telco for our modems.
It was supposed to be an internship but the real Technology Directory died shortly after I hired on so it became a paying position for a year or two during college until someone else finally got hired so I could get back to my classes.
The USF was used to help us pay for upgrades to our community and schools system. The amount of money put into our programs was based on the number of students on the Federal Free Lunch program. About 60% of the kids back then. I don't know if that's how it's done now, but there is no way we could have had any service for schools, libraries or anything back then without it.
"The study looked only at business software -- general applications like the Office suite and antivirus programs as well as niche software titles like AutoCAD for architects and designers. Games, personal finance and other consumer programs were not included."
Of course with so many busineses cutting staff and going under it really isn't any surprise that software sales have gone down. They probably get their data from those little registration cards - "X - I plan on buying software in the next 6 months" but then no money or company 6 months later.
I really see no reason to upgrade working software except to keep it working with the latest OS. When old programs don't work right on the new OS they blame the old program.
I wonder what other groups of data were omitted from the study.
Gecko tape would be cool, but does it work again once you've stuck it to something? I hope it's not all static either so it immediately tries to stick to itself when you unroll it.
The Sims maker has a deal with FOX? It's an interesting story? How is anyone supposed to post their uninformed, off the cuff, ms bashing, Open Source supporting, In Soviet Russia, You Inconsiderate, Beowulf cluster of these responses to just the headlines when you post stories like this. Please stick to the formula.;)
Once Microsoft decides to do it were doomed. The next "Windows Update" will automatigically convert all of your old archaic address to the new format. When you try to fix them Clippy will come up and teach you the new address system. In a month or so millions of american will have assimilated the new system.
Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One.
Ah yes, can't wait. A universal alphanumeric addressing system is exactly what this imperfect world needs. Have that embedded in our RFID tags just under the skin and taxi's could just drive you straight home on the holidays.
I reviewed the Compaq T1000 TabletPC for doing building inspections. The device would have been perfect since the users are basically going to be checking off items on a large simulated form.
The major issues I ran into...
1. Cost 1 TabletPC = about 4 Regular PDA's - lots more if you go with the super cheap Dell Axim. 2. Screen - Building inspectors have to go outside and the screen is invisible in full sun. With a PDA you can shade it with your hand at least, but the TabletPC was too big to cover the whole thing. 3. Battery Life - the real killer. The T-1000 averaged only *2* Hours of battery life when the real inspections were done on it.
Good things? Existing apps works and the convertable keyboard made sucky handwriting recognition not so bad. Still need a laptop size base to set it on while typing.
While it really is a cool device until those things are fixed we wont be using it. A custom modified app designed for TabletPC will be great I'm sure, but not at this price/performance point.
PS. I hate Dell, Gateway and the like having different prices and plans for home, business, schools etc. Tell me the prices and let me decide what I'm doing to do with it. If there are volume discounts then state that. GRRR
It must be great to live in a nation that still has dreams of accomplishing something great. Things are too easy right now and without a challege or challenger the US is aimless. Like NASA once they reached the moon - ok now what. Having an idiot at the helm doesn't help much either, but at least there is no way he'll be in office after next year.
I'm all for it. Being king of the hill is no fun when no one else plays. I hope NASA isn't too out of shape and can get their act together when they are called on again.
Once they milk the press enough and actually declare what lines of the kernel and/or other software includes "lines" of their code, wouldn't a quick CVS blame type report show exactly who put the code in and when? Determining if it's IBM should be easy.
I'm curious if a comparison was done between BSD, Hurd and Linux how much "common" code exists between them and how it got there. Operating systems have similar functions to accomplish and hardware standards and it seems likely that at least a small number of sections could be similar or identical as pointed out by the QuickSort comment.
Now, Assuming the code exists and is found and identified, what level of change is required to make it not be in violation of their IP?
Change "if ( x == y )" to "if ( x - y == 0 )" ? Rename the variables? Split or merge functions?
Does anyone have experience with anything similar?
You should be please to know then that Phython came preinstalled on my Office Max HP box. It's a hidden system directory installation just off the root. C:\Python22
Not bad considering they it didn't even have Java on it to begin with.
Ignore the other posts and their techno babble. You upgrade to enter the new world of fully interactive 3D porn. Make sure the new card comes with a built in auto-dialer modem for downloading more "Demos".
Constant vibrations should make the ants tunnels will collapse and all you'll see is them pounding on the glass trying to get out. Course maybe your into that - sicko.
Anyone remember Mark Ludwig? I remember getting "The Little Black Book of Computer Viruses" and his other books. It contained excellent explanations of how programs work, COM, EXE strcutre and then how to use ASM to modify those programs. There were ever some polymorphic virus in there all with Source Code.
His later books, The Big Black Book of Computer Viruses and Computers, Viruses and Artificial Life were all right, and discussed Alife ideas about the code really being alive in the "world" of the computer.
I haven't read his latest book, The Little Black Book of Email Viruses: A Technical Guide. I haven't thought about that stuff in a long time. It did allow me to find the ILoveYou virus and fix it at our company by quickly renaming the wscript.exe program since I learned to think about viruses in terms of what they needed to reproduce.
Personally I think the Novell file security system would be an excellent way to combat viruses and other things. Read, Write, Execute, Copy, Modify and a few others all as true seperate rights. Pain in the but to configure, but very nice once it was setup
Windows NTFS is a little better then just Read Only, Hidden, and System, but even the standard Linux RWX3 rights make me miss Novell. Anyone know if there is there a filesystem out there for Linux that has that level of rights?
Personally I don't know if it's possible to have a secure system that that is still usable by the masses who just want to check there email and click OK on every message box that pops up. It's hard enough to secure things when you know what your doing.
Software crashes because it's acceptable and information about how to make programs that don't crash is sometimes hard to come by.
There are programmers out there who have spent years coding and learned how to avoid buffer overflows, check return codes, and fail safe if something unknown happens. But these things are not taught in school and even if they are, someone is going to make a mistake.
Software Engieering never advances. We don't follow the blue prints, we send out the constructions workers and makes sure something is standing ASAP so it looks like were working. Boss is coming, put some drywall up - we'll wire it later. Some guys worked on a really safe way to build the stairways, but his last company patented it so we'll have to do something else this time.
As an industry we don't learn from our mistakes. We reinvent the wheel time and time again but this time it's transparent, chrome and glows in the dark and square. Things are moving too fast and the old can't teach the young to avoid their mistakes because they are considered dinosaurs after a few short years. So we make the same mistakes on the "new" systems over and over.
Plus the system feeds itself this way. This software sucks, I better upgrade.
We would need something like standard Building Codes and Inspectors. When real buildings fail people could get hurt or die, but when a computer fails you reboot. It's just not worth it economically to make a program that never crashes. It would be obselete by the time it's done.
Is UNIX a Trademark?
on
OSI vs SCO
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I was wondering if "UNIX" was still a trademark. In all the days I've been around computers I've heard them described as PC, Mac or unix system. PC has always been Wintel or compatible. Unix systems could mean Irix, Linux, *BSD, Solaris but mainly mean your going to be using "ls" instead of "dir" to do your dirty work.
This article
mentions a few ways a trademark can be lost and lists some nice examples.
if buyers understand that the mark refers only to the type of goods sold, and not to its source, then it makes no difference what efforts the owner used, because the mark has become generic.
if consumers use that company's mark to identify a certain product type, because the mark is shorter and easier to pronounce than the product's generic name
when a particular brand achieves such a high market share that the brand becomes the category.
I think that most computer people would agree that unix is pretty generic by now. I don't know if this is directly related to the lawsuit or not. What do you think?
"In the first demonstration of how the system would work, the company showed Tuesday how programs protected by the technology could not be altered or their communications intercepted by a malicious hacker, who happened to be played by a Microsoft worker dressed in a red T-shirt adorned with a skull."
"In Tuesday's demonstration, the separate elements work seamlessly with each other. The only difference to the end user was that in the unsecured version, the hacker could alter the program and view the data; in the secure version, he could not."
If only I could have been there. Watching someone type and being told it worked seemlessly, then watching them type some more and being told they are locked out... I mean WOW. Where do I sign? Does it work with people wearing blue shirts too, or does it detect the skull I wonder? Could it be modified to detect ties and PHBs? Perhaps they have a new API call to disable all the horibly insecure existing API calls which let you snoop on any and all messages and data on the running system.
"Secure documents created in Microsoft Office, for instance, could be unusable on other operating systems or with other office productivity suites.
In the interview, Gates said it's up to other companies to ensure interoperability. "
Maybe when people get tired of doing - File Save as *.txt in order to share their files with others normal people will look a step or two past the default settings.:P
I thought the people who fed script kiddies were bad. I suppose next someone will show how to make your own chemical weapons at home. Of course we can assume that's been done somewhere - please don't respond with links.
This man is a fool trying to get money and attention by doing something stupid. My two year old would know better.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so what's your take on DRM?
I picture the ultimate goal of DRM to be computers like Nintendo boxes. Buy software cartridges plug them in and use your limited controls to get stuff done. Hardware to copy and interact is extremely controlled, complex and/or expensive so that most people will just buy the software instead of get the rom readers, burners, etc to copy a cartridge. Sure rich geeks like us may be "free" to do it, but it will be very illegal if it isn't already.
Lets say we do make computers so that it is impossible to rip-off software vendors.
Will Open Source software still exist in such a system, or will we be unable to use even that? Look at how hard it is to hack the X-Box and that's just their first try at such a system.
The US was founded on Seperation of Church and State, maybe the next time around it will be seperation of Business and State.
Once you try it though you can't do without it. And broadband is already a utility for me. I couldn't run my business without it. Like the cigarette tax, I'm hooked.
My biggest complaint is that if I want cable internet I had to get ALL 100+ channels. They want about $99 / month - $35 for internet and $60 or so for cable. I don't watch TV so we went with the slightly more expensive DSL about $40 / month.
Well that and the fact that cable lines aren't going to be laid my way for another few years. Only about 5 houses / mile in my location.
I used to be the Technology person for a rural school district covering 3 counties serviced by 4 phone companies. About 1995. We still had PULSE dialing until recently. We couldn't get a trunk hunt for our modems unless we could find a block of physically adjacent unused switches at the local Telco for our modems.
It was supposed to be an internship but the real Technology Directory died shortly after I hired on so it became a paying position for a year or two during college until someone else finally got hired so I could get back to my classes.
The USF was used to help us pay for upgrades to our community and schools system. The amount of money put into our programs was based on the number of students on the Federal Free Lunch program. About 60% of the kids back then. I don't know if that's how it's done now, but there is no way we could have had any service for schools, libraries or anything back then without it.
More like the people who still use cursive will be dead in a few decades
villains could use Lasers too...
CHA
"The study looked only at business software -- general applications like the Office suite and antivirus programs as well as niche software titles like AutoCAD for architects and designers. Games, personal finance and other consumer programs were not included."
Of course with so many busineses cutting staff and going under it really isn't any surprise that software sales have gone down. They probably get their data from those little registration cards - "X - I plan on buying software in the next 6 months" but then no money or company 6 months later.
I really see no reason to upgrade working software except to keep it working with the latest OS. When old programs don't work right on the new OS they blame the old program.
I wonder what other groups of data were omitted from the study.
Gecko tape would be cool, but does it work again once you've stuck it to something? I hope it's not all static either so it immediately tries to stick to itself when you unroll it.
The Sims maker has a deal with FOX? It's an interesting story? How is anyone supposed to post their uninformed, off the cuff, ms bashing, Open Source supporting, In Soviet Russia, You Inconsiderate, Beowulf cluster of these responses to just the headlines when you post stories like this. Please stick to the formula. ;)
No wonder this story only has about 60 posts.
You mean that nose of hers?
Once Microsoft decides to do it were doomed. The next "Windows Update" will automatigically convert all of your old archaic address to the new format. When you try to fix them Clippy will come up and teach you the new address system. In a month or so millions of american will have assimilated the new system.
Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One.
Ah yes, can't wait. A universal alphanumeric addressing system is exactly what this imperfect world needs. Have that embedded in our RFID tags just under the skin and taxi's could just drive you straight home on the holidays.
I reviewed the Compaq T1000 TabletPC for doing building inspections. The device would have been perfect since the users are basically going to be checking off items on a large simulated form.
The major issues I ran into...
1. Cost 1 TabletPC = about 4 Regular PDA's - lots more if you go with the super cheap Dell Axim.
2. Screen - Building inspectors have to go outside and the screen is invisible in full sun. With a PDA you can shade it with your hand at least, but the TabletPC was too big to cover the whole thing.
3. Battery Life - the real killer. The T-1000 averaged only *2* Hours of battery life when the real inspections were done on it.
Good things? Existing apps works and the convertable keyboard made sucky handwriting recognition not so bad. Still need a laptop size base to set it on while typing.
While it really is a cool device until those things are fixed we wont be using it. A custom modified app designed for TabletPC will be great I'm sure, but not at this price/performance point.
PS. I hate Dell, Gateway and the like having different prices and plans for home, business, schools etc. Tell me the prices and let me decide what I'm doing to do with it. If there are volume discounts then state that. GRRR
It must be great to live in a nation that still has dreams of accomplishing something great. Things are too easy right now and without a challege or challenger the US is aimless. Like NASA once they reached the moon - ok now what. Having an idiot at the helm doesn't help much either, but at least there is no way he'll be in office after next year.
I'm all for it. Being king of the hill is no fun when no one else plays. I hope NASA isn't too out of shape and can get their act together when they are called on again.
Once they milk the press enough and actually declare what lines of the kernel and/or other software includes "lines" of their code, wouldn't a quick CVS blame type report show exactly who put the code in and when? Determining if it's IBM should be easy.
I'm curious if a comparison was done between BSD, Hurd and Linux how much "common" code exists between them and how it got there. Operating systems have similar functions to accomplish and hardware standards and it seems likely that at least a small number of sections could be similar or identical as pointed out by the QuickSort comment.
Now, Assuming the code exists and is found and identified, what level of change is required to make it not be in violation of their IP?
Change "if ( x == y )" to "if ( x - y == 0 )" ? Rename the variables?
Split or merge functions?
Does anyone have experience with anything similar?
Maybe someone said this so far, but I haven't seen it.
The first Animatrix movie, the first robot to rebel was "N1663R" or Nigger in Haxor speak.
Neo is an anagram of One
And that NPR can take even the Matrix and make it seem boring.
You should be please to know then that Phython came preinstalled on my Office Max HP box. It's a hidden system directory installation just off the root. C:\Python22
Not bad considering they it didn't even have Java on it to begin with.
Ignore the other posts and their techno babble. You upgrade to enter the new world of fully interactive 3D porn. Make sure the new card comes with a built in auto-dialer modem for downloading more "Demos".
Constant vibrations should make the ants tunnels will collapse and all you'll see is them pounding on the glass trying to get out. Course maybe your into that - sicko.
Anyone remember Mark Ludwig? I remember getting "The Little Black Book of Computer Viruses" and his other books. It contained excellent explanations of how programs work, COM, EXE strcutre and then how to use ASM to modify those programs. There were ever some polymorphic virus in there all with Source Code. His later books, The Big Black Book of Computer Viruses and Computers, Viruses and Artificial Life were all right, and discussed Alife ideas about the code really being alive in the "world" of the computer.
I haven't read his latest book, The Little Black Book of Email Viruses: A Technical Guide. I haven't thought about that stuff in a long time. It did allow me to find the ILoveYou virus and fix it at our company by quickly renaming the wscript.exe program since I learned to think about viruses in terms of what they needed to reproduce.
Personally I think the Novell file security system would be an excellent way to combat viruses and other things. Read, Write, Execute, Copy, Modify and a few others all as true seperate rights. Pain in the but to configure, but very nice once it was setup
Windows NTFS is a little better then just Read Only, Hidden, and System, but even the standard Linux RWX3 rights make me miss Novell. Anyone know if there is there a filesystem out there for Linux that has that level of rights?
Personally I don't know if it's possible to have a secure system that that is still usable by the masses who just want to check there email and click OK on every message box that pops up. It's hard enough to secure things when you know what your doing.
Everyone knows this. That's why Mars is the God of War.
Software crashes because it's acceptable and information about how to make programs that don't crash is sometimes hard to come by.
There are programmers out there who have spent years coding and learned how to avoid buffer overflows, check return codes, and fail safe if something unknown happens. But these things are not taught in school and even if they are, someone is going to make a mistake.
Software Engieering never advances. We don't follow the blue prints, we send out the constructions workers and makes sure something is standing ASAP so it looks like were working. Boss is coming, put some drywall up - we'll wire it later. Some guys worked on a really safe way to build the stairways, but his last company patented it so we'll have to do something else this time.
As an industry we don't learn from our mistakes. We reinvent the wheel time and time again but this time it's transparent, chrome and glows in the dark and square. Things are moving too fast and the old can't teach the young to avoid their mistakes because they are considered dinosaurs after a few short years. So we make the same mistakes on the "new" systems over and over.
Plus the system feeds itself this way. This software sucks, I better upgrade.
We would need something like standard Building Codes and Inspectors. When real buildings fail people could get hurt or die, but when a computer fails you reboot. It's just not worth it economically to make a program that never crashes. It would be obselete by the time it's done.
I was wondering if "UNIX" was still a trademark. In all the days I've been around computers I've heard them described as PC, Mac or unix system. PC has always been Wintel or compatible. Unix systems could mean Irix, Linux, *BSD, Solaris but mainly mean your going to be using "ls" instead of "dir" to do your dirty work. This article mentions a few ways a trademark can be lost and lists some nice examples.
I think that most computer people would agree that unix is pretty generic by now. I don't know if this is directly related to the lawsuit or not. What do you think?
"In the first demonstration of how the system would work, the company showed Tuesday how programs protected by the technology could not be altered or their communications intercepted by a malicious hacker, who happened to be played by a Microsoft worker dressed in a red T-shirt adorned with a skull."
:P
"In Tuesday's demonstration, the separate elements work seamlessly with each other. The only difference to the end user was that in the unsecured version, the hacker could alter the program and view the data; in the secure version, he could not."
If only I could have been there. Watching someone type and being told it worked seemlessly, then watching them type some more and being told they are locked out... I mean WOW. Where do I sign? Does it work with people wearing blue shirts too, or does it detect the skull I wonder? Could it be modified to detect ties and PHBs? Perhaps they have a new API call to disable all the horibly insecure existing API calls which let you snoop on any and all messages and data on the running system.
"Secure documents created in Microsoft Office, for instance, could be unusable on other operating systems or with other office productivity suites.
In the interview, Gates said it's up to other companies to ensure interoperability. "
Maybe when people get tired of doing - File Save as *.txt in order to share their files with others normal people will look a step or two past the default settings.
I thought the people who fed script kiddies were bad. I suppose next someone will show how to make your own chemical weapons at home. Of course we can assume that's been done somewhere - please don't respond with links.
This man is a fool trying to get money and attention by doing something stupid. My two year old would know better.
Don't know why you bothered posting, The Wicked Witch of the West had one of those things quite a while ago.