I don't know if it's changed, but it used to be very hard for the FBI to get authorisation to track computer taps. This is why they used to prefer to find out what numbers were called from an address, and do a number trace on incoming calls.
This australian law allows for easy access to all computer data, including wire tapping.
This is legalised hacking, and its a VERY, very, very badly thought out piece of legislation.
1) The bill allows for intrusion of a computer system and removal of any relevant data.
2) It doesn't allow for trashing of the computer system.
3) It does allow for bugging and tracking of people or equipment.
4) It allows for the "use of any force that is necessary and reasonable" to enter your premises for bugging you.
If you come under the scrutiny of the security services under this law, expect someone to hack your system, break into any premises that yo frequent, copy the hard disks of your computer systems, fit a tracking device to your laptop or your shoes, and bug the telecoms systems that your use.
It's a *really* bad law in my opinion. It's too wide ranging, and leaves too many things open for abuse. I know that the security services need wide ranging rules to allow for "odd" situations, but in the past, if they were careful not to break the law. This law allows for so much that they can do anything, and it's legal.
Now they have the full force of the law behind them, so if you catch them, you can't do anything, but they can do anything they want to you.
This law even allows for spying: 27B Performance of other functions under paragraph 17(1)(e)
If:
(a) the Director-General gives a notice in writing to the Minister requesting the Minister to authorise the Organisation to obtain foreign intelligence in relation to a matter specified in the notice; and
(b) the Minister is satisfied, on the basis of advice received from the relevant Minister, that the collection of foreign intelligence relating to that matter is important in relation to the defence of the Commonwealth or to the conduct of the Commonwealths international affairs;
the Minister may, by writing signed by the Minister, authorise the Organisation to obtain the intelligence in relation to the matter.
So, in theroy, anyones computer could be available it you annoy the aussies enough.
It's frightening that a government can think about passing a law that will allow thier security services to declare cyberwar against people that they don't like.
This law allows for total information gathering. Under this law anywhere you go, anything you say, anything you record on your computer systems, EVEN IN A FOREIGN COUNTY will be recorded.
Re:This was SCRAPPED last week (link + quotes)
on
Waiting for the Knock
·
· Score: 3
I think the important thing to note is: "The controversial Part III, which dealt with police seizure powers for encryption keys, has been shifted into a separate Home Office bill" its not been scrapped - just delayed a little - It will return:(
Labour have always had a tradition of making *really* bad laws like this (not just with the PTA). It's usually something like this that ends up getting an otherwise useful government voted out of office.
The sad thing is that the government will keep trying until this gets passed. This is the second attempt at this. It will probably get thrown out, but it will surface again under a different name in 6 months or so. They may end up passing it very quietly, and not telling anyone about it.
This law is the prevention of terrorism act revised. They seem to have fixed all the things that the courts found flaws with, eg letting solictors have publicity (those nasty terrorists would have never been found innocent if Gareth Pierce had been gagged), giving people appeals, and the right to a trial.
The law even allows the minister responsible to alter the legislation later if something isn't working.
When they passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act, a South African minister was said to have retorted "I wish we had laws like that". This law is something from the text book of a dictator, "give us what we want or else we lock you away and there is nothing you can do." I'm sure there are a few people in Chinese government looking at this saying "Oooh... Thats nice. Think we can get away with do that to our people?"
I think I'll start renaming the various ministers as characters from "Animal Farm".
I've not had good success with NT. One server install is about 3 months behind schedule because of strange software configuration problems. Our other NT server is a nightmare to keep running.
The guys working on this are Microsoft certified.
The Unix and VMS installs I've done have gone without too much of a hitch. Hardware and software is easy to configure and install. Most things are picked up automatically, and if a bit of hardware is not quite up to spec it still runs.
We've had problems with NT because the new memory wasn't something NT knew about and it didn't like it and refused to use it - in Win 95 and Linux it worked fine. Same thing with a tape unit - I had to do a firmware upgrade on a tape unit before NT could be forced to use the damned thing.
NT is waaaay too choosy about the hardware it uses. its too choosy about the service packs it needs.
No other system I know causes as much sweat as NT.
Maybe microsoft conceded defeat to get a bigger prize - thier antitrust case.
Showing that the Big Bad Microsoft can be defeated on something like this proves that they have competition. If they can prove that they have competition they can try and appeal any anti-trust decision against them.
Look for microsoft to "lose" a few more battles in the next couple of months, eg conceding to Apache etc.
It's not like Microsoft to give up so easily on something.
It fell to me to maintain a helpdesk system that a director of the company had written.
This guy wrote about 20,000 lines of code and all the variables were variations on the letter "t", eg t, tt, ttt, t1, tt1, t1t, etc.
He had the mistaken belief that he was a hotshot programmer. The rest of the real programmers knew that he was a clueless idiot.
In one report he had the calculation: ttt=t1+t2-((tt1*ttt1)/tt)+tttt1
He was very keen on squeezing as much code onto one line as he could too.
It took me 3 weeks to amend one report so that 1 extra item from the customer database could be displayed.
After this I wrote a suite of tools to reformat the guys code so that it was understandable, and pointed out the errors that he'd made. The same company director later made a small fortune selling my tools to the company that provided the database engine. I think that was his revenge.
I also knew one programmer that wrote an RPG system without using arrays, because he didn't realise you could do that sort of thing. Last I heard of him he was an engineer for Compaq.
To my mind, Truste doesn't have any credibility any more. If your credit card company was as lax as this about credit violations you wouldn't sign up to them. They have become another mindless piece of web page logo that should be ignored. If they had wanted to get credibilty with the public they would have used the stick with the first transgressor, (a stick the size of a giant redwood preferably) and they used this as an example of what would happen in future. In corporate terms its easier to use a threat than use the stick, but for threats to work, people need to know you'll use the stick. Time after time Truste has been shown violations and time after time nothing much ahs been done about it. If they had hit the first transgressor hard, Microsoft may not have said "No" so easily. Today if you are a software manufacturer with a trustmark and your software copies off all documents marked "business futures" and emails them back for you to use in the stock market, Truste will come after you. You'll look at the history, you'll see Realnetworks, you'll see microsoft, etc, where really nothing happened, and you'll follow thier line and say "No" Its time that Truste was disbanded, because to the public that know its history it has no credibility, and to the software industry it has no power.
If Microsoft defeat (or come to an agreement) with the antitrust trial, can the facts, and details that cam out in this trial be used for other litigation?
Microsoft is a multinational firm - how would the americans anti-trust trial affect other companies. Would Microsoft be allowed to split these off as another independant company, leaving only Microsoft-USA to be broken up, while they continue to dominate markets?
The medical software company I used to work for always had an open source policy. The code is not GPL'd etc, its on a restricted license, but the principle of open source is there - release the source code to the customer; don't hide it.
This dates back to 1979 when the company was setup.
When the system was installed all the source was left on the machine too. This meant that we could easily debug on-line without the messiness of tapes and the resulting delay.
Our customers developed and maintained the software.
I'm now working in a hospital, and I develop and maintain the same software as a customer.
It's useful - I can determine exactly where a problem occurred and report it. The fault is fixed within minutes.
Most of the competition had a turn around time of 24 hours in getting a bug fix to us.
This is where the open source in medicine should be.
Our laboratory information system is open source as is our patient database.
My definition of an Operating system is whatever provides you with simple access to I/O.
On Unix this is the kernel, in MS terms with is DOS.
Anything else is an application. I don't consider Windows 95 to be an OS. Thats a GUI shell.
The most basic OS ever was probably CP/M. It let you enter commands from a keyboard, load things off floppy disks, and to send things to a printer or a screen. THis is what an OS has to achieve - on these blocks you can build anything else.
GenevaConvention of 1949 The convention deals mainly with the protection of innocents and prisoners.
Articles 12 & 13 deals with protection of wounded and sick Articles 19 to 23 deals with protection of hospitals and medical units Article 33 deals with protected buildings
All these could be accidentally affected by a cyberwarfare attack and put the attacker in violation of the geneva convention and liable to a war crimes trial.
Take article 19 as an example: Art. 19. Fixed establishments and mobile medical units of the Medical Service may in no circumstances be attacked, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict. Should they fall into the hands of the adverse Party, their personnel shall be free to pursue their duties, as long as the capturing Power has not itself ensured the necessary care of the wounded and sick found in such establishments and units. The responsible authorities shall ensure that the said medical establishments and units are, as far as possible, situated in such a manner that attacks against military objectives cannot imperil their safety. Shutting off power to a city could affect a hospital and put the attacker in violation of the convention. If you are trying to make yourself be seen as the force of good, then this would hurt your credibility a lot. This is also why hospitals were given so much press during war.
The convention is drafted so that many things are already protected even under cyberwar. But I do think it needs to be extended to include protection of certain forms of attack.
The army hack into the electrical system, and shut down the power to a city.
A hospital in the city has a generator failure as a result and several babies and patients on life support die.
Has this violated the Geneva Convention rules on war?
The problem here isn't so much the rules as the results of a cyberwar attack. A cyberwar attack can be much more far reaching than people think.
A cyberwar attack can sometimes take out a specific target, eg a TV station, but in many cases the results of the attack can't be so easily planned for.
Many computer systems are configured with triggered-backups and inter-networked with other systems so that these respond in a certain way if a failure occurs.
Going back to my electrical example, what if the main power computer system is linked to a computer in a nuclear power plant that polls it to see if it needs to up the load to take care of a demand. If the software was buggy (and in Eastern Europe, this could very well be the case) the reactor could overload before someone realises and you have a second Chernoybl.
For a cyberwar attack to succeed you need to have a complete picture of the target. Only when you have a complete picture can you decide to attack or not. This is why the military rely so much on satellite and air imaging systems - they need to know exactly what is being hit. Without a clear picture you can take out a target and not realise that you just started a firestorm.
There are two ways this box could go... it could be a stanard Microsoft pre-announce that doesn't show for several years OR it could be a good box.
Either way I'm not sure if this is an area that MS want to get into - for a start its locked up tight by Sega and Sony, and for once MS will be up against companies that play the same sort of hardball they do, in a market that Sega and Sony understand intimately, and Microsoft are VERY late comeing into this - they could have still done something two or three years ago.
It's a near impossible market to break into. There aren't even any good killer features that I can think of that MS can use to get leverage into the market, they have already all been used in Sony and Sega machines. Sony have the PSX II acting as games machine/home entertainment box, and Sony have the dreamcast doing wonderful net things.
MS can't sell it as a PC games machine - most people that would want this already have a PC that can play games.
They can't sell it as a pure games machine unless the graphics and speed exceed the dedicated hardware of the Playstation II and the Dreamcast. A PC based box won't do this - lets face it - if you had the ability to do this on a PC you would.
I think this project will be steamrolled into market, but I can't see a good reason for it selling.
All MS will be able to do is to copy features (and oddly - they are very good at this) but in the games market gamers are very loyal to thier platform. The Japanese market which is the big one to get, hasn't been very good to MS, and I can't see the trend changing.
MS need to provide a killer game and a few killer features on thier box. The killer game is easy to do, the features are harder to achieve.
In all I don't think this will succeed, and may not even make it onto shelves.
Patents can hinder process if they are administered badly. They can also be a form or protection for knowledge.
If a patent is administered badly (eg the GIF technology mugging) then this is a bad thing. People won't want to use technology if they expect to get a letter saying "you used our technology - pay us $x or desist".
GIF is an example of a patent that was used right then went bad. The technology was patented, but was opened up to allow people to use. If research was patented this way this would the ok. But there is always the fear when using patented technology that your idea will be lost if the patent is suddenly enforced.
For research nothing should be patented - allow everyone access to use the data or technology.
Patenting DNA is A Very Bad Thing. If you have, for example, a resistance to AIDS, you could suddenly find that your DNA had been patented against your knowledge. Worse still, under existing law there is no way that you can stop this.
Patents for inventions are ok, but patenting nature is a bad thing.
This can mean either one of two things: 1. Prostitution is being legalised there or 2. Microsoft are moving development there;)
Seriously though, I think these states suddenly "discovering" the internet is not a good thing - they should be spending thier time and money on improving things for the people there.
Calling yourself anything internet related just looks silly, (unless your are "show me" Missouri who need a new slogan), and even then the Missouri Secretary of State's website calls itself "The information place"
How long will it be before DC calls itself the.GOV place...?
Linux commercialisation has fragmented things a little bit, but in a good way.
Linux is fragmenting into specialised tools with a common base. The tools are aimed at certain core markets where it performs very, very well. Microsoft is a good example of where a product hasn't fragmented to exploit markets. Win9x doesn't know if it wants to be a server or a desktop system, and NT has grown so large trying to be all things for all people that its nearly unmanageable, and each release seems to be getting heavier and heavier, and more unstable (the Win2k test shows that even microsoft has realised this).
Linux must retain and expand these areas and make sure people understands why this is the case. If you are presented with a project that requires multi-user access, take a look at all the linux distros. Somewhere in there is a distro that will provide you with exactly the base you need to build your application on. In some cases all you need to do is to change a few variables and design a webpage.
There is no major infighting between developers over disros - this is where bad things would happen (but there is a bit of mumbling and finger pointing). The developers either tend to igore one another or work with each other. This is good.
The current trend of articles is to portray linux as a fragmented infighting collection of geeks. There needs to be more PR and education projects to get the journalists to realise that this is not always the case.
If linux was a corporation, it would take a seclection of editors off and wine and dine them somewhere expensive, and pick up the tab. It would take a selection of journalists off on a jaunt somewhere and get them drunk.
The problem Linux faces is that until recently it's not had the financial backing to do this. The RedHat IPO does give them the money to do this, but it remains to be seen if they wil follow this way of doing business. I think that they probably won't (at least not for a while yet).
This can only be bad for Microsoft, although it is typical of thier tactics: attack, attack, attack
I think this sends a signal to the government, and the signal is "we are bigger than you" and the government won't like at all.
The government response will be to go after microsoft and make sure they get a kill. You can take money from schools, health, the poor and NASA but I've yet to see laywers accepting a pay cut.
Doing this is corporate suicide - they should have spent the lobby funds showing how essential microsoft is to the american and world economy and painting a bleak future of a microsoftless world. This tactic would have been more efficient in getting a ground swell of beneficial public opinion for Microsoft.
Perhaps Microsoft have given up - thier previous attempts at getting the public to back them haven't exactly set the world alight. This is probably because its hard to feel emotional about a company that doesn't care about you or your needs.
The Open Source movement tends to get this kind of emotion because you can take the bit you care about and nurture it; you can get close to the people that actually matter in the open source movement; you can read Alan Cox's diary, see feedback from Linux Torvalds. This doesn't happen with closed source. Its a rare event to see someone who actually matters in Microsoft talking opening about the future.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if it's changed, but it used to be very hard for the FBI to get authorisation to track computer taps. This is why they used to prefer to find out what numbers were called from an address, and do a number trace on incoming calls.
This australian law allows for easy access to all computer data, including wire tapping.
This is legalised hacking, and its a VERY, very, very badly thought out piece of legislation.
1) The bill allows for intrusion of a computer system and removal of any relevant data.
2) It doesn't allow for trashing of the computer system.
3) It does allow for bugging and tracking of people or equipment.
4) It allows for the "use of any force that is necessary and reasonable" to enter your premises for bugging you.
If you come under the scrutiny of the security services under this law, expect someone to hack your system, break into any premises that yo frequent, copy the hard disks of your computer systems, fit a tracking device to your laptop or your shoes, and bug the telecoms systems that your use.
It's a *really* bad law in my opinion. It's too wide ranging, and leaves too many things open for abuse. I know that the security services need wide ranging rules to allow for "odd" situations, but in the past, if they were careful not to break the law. This law allows for so much that they can do anything, and it's legal.
Now they have the full force of the law behind them, so if you catch them, you can't do anything, but they can do anything they want to you.
This law even allows for spying:
27B Performance of other functions under paragraph 17(1)(e)
If:
(a) the Director-General gives a notice in writing to the Minister requesting the Minister to authorise the Organisation to obtain foreign intelligence in relation to a matter specified in the notice; and
(b) the Minister is satisfied, on the basis of advice received from the relevant Minister, that the collection of foreign intelligence relating to that matter is important in relation to the defence of the Commonwealth or to the conduct of the Commonwealths international affairs;
the Minister may, by writing signed by the Minister, authorise the Organisation to obtain the intelligence in relation to the matter.
So, in theroy, anyones computer could be available it you annoy the aussies enough.
It's frightening that a government can think about passing a law that will allow thier security services to declare cyberwar against people that they don't like.
This law allows for total information gathering. Under this law anywhere you go, anything you say, anything you record on your computer systems, EVEN IN A FOREIGN COUNTY will be recorded.
I think the important thing to note is: :(
"The controversial Part III, which dealt with police seizure powers for encryption keys, has been shifted into a separate Home Office bill "
its not been scrapped - just delayed a little - It will return
Labour have always had a tradition of making *really* bad laws like this (not just with the PTA). It's usually something like this that ends up getting an otherwise useful government voted out of office.
The sad thing is that the government will keep trying until this gets passed. This is the second attempt at this. It will probably get thrown out, but it will surface again under a different name in 6 months or so. They may end up passing it very quietly, and not telling anyone about it.
This law is the prevention of terrorism act revised. They seem to have fixed all the things that the courts found flaws with, eg letting solictors have publicity (those nasty terrorists would have never been found innocent if Gareth Pierce had been gagged), giving people appeals, and the right to a trial.
The law even allows the minister responsible to alter the legislation later if something isn't working.
When they passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act, a South African minister was said to have retorted "I wish we had laws like that". This law is something from the text book of a dictator, "give us what we want or else we lock you away and there is nothing you can do." I'm sure there are a few people in Chinese government looking at this saying "Oooh... Thats nice. Think we can get away with do that to our people?"
I think I'll start renaming the various ministers as characters from "Animal Farm".
I've not had good success with NT. One server install is about 3 months behind schedule because of strange software configuration problems. Our other NT server is a nightmare to keep running.
The guys working on this are Microsoft certified.
The Unix and VMS installs I've done have gone without too much of a hitch. Hardware and software is easy to configure and install. Most things are picked up automatically, and if a bit of hardware is not quite up to spec it still runs.
We've had problems with NT because the new memory wasn't something NT knew about and it didn't like it and refused to use it - in Win 95 and Linux it worked fine. Same thing with a tape unit - I had to do a firmware upgrade on a tape unit before NT could be forced to use the damned thing.
NT is waaaay too choosy about the hardware it uses. its too choosy about the service packs it needs.
No other system I know causes as much sweat as NT.
ESR in Dublin and I didn't know...
I really need to get my head out of this coding...
Maybe microsoft conceded defeat to get a bigger prize - thier antitrust case.
Showing that the Big Bad Microsoft can be defeated on something like this proves that they have competition. If they can prove that they have competition they can try and appeal any anti-trust decision against them.
Look for microsoft to "lose" a few more battles in the next couple of months, eg conceding to Apache etc.
It's not like Microsoft to give up so easily on something.
Then again they could just be scared.
It fell to me to maintain a helpdesk system that a director of the company had written.
This guy wrote about 20,000 lines of code and all the variables were variations on the letter "t", eg t, tt, ttt, t1, tt1, t1t, etc.
He had the mistaken belief that he was a hotshot programmer. The rest of the real programmers knew that he was a clueless idiot.
In one report he had the calculation: ttt=t1+t2-((tt1*ttt1)/tt)+tttt1
He was very keen on squeezing as much code onto one line as he could too.
It took me 3 weeks to amend one report so that 1 extra item from the customer database could be displayed.
After this I wrote a suite of tools to reformat the guys code so that it was understandable, and pointed out the errors that he'd made. The same company director later made a small fortune selling my tools to the company that provided the database engine. I think that was his revenge.
I also knew one programmer that wrote an RPG system without using arrays, because he didn't realise you could do that sort of thing. Last I heard of him he was an engineer for Compaq.
Once the genies is out of the bottle it's very hard to put it back in.
I'm sure we'll see a concerted effort to sue the planet though.
To my mind, Truste doesn't have any credibility any more. If your credit card company was as lax as this about credit violations you wouldn't sign up to them.
They have become another mindless piece of web page logo that should be ignored.
If they had wanted to get credibilty with the public they would have used the stick with the first transgressor, (a stick the size of a giant redwood preferably) and they used this as an example of what would happen in future. In corporate terms its easier to use a threat than use the stick, but for threats to work, people need to know you'll use the stick.
Time after time Truste has been shown violations and time after time nothing much ahs been done about it. If they had hit the first transgressor hard, Microsoft may not have said "No" so easily.
Today if you are a software manufacturer with a trustmark and your software copies off all documents marked "business futures" and emails them back for you to use in the stock market, Truste will come after you.
You'll look at the history, you'll see Realnetworks, you'll see microsoft, etc, where really nothing happened, and you'll follow thier line and say "No"
Its time that Truste was disbanded, because to the public that know its history it has no credibility, and to the software industry it has no power.
depends if it hits the Supreme court though...
Microsoft may try to stall and appeal until after the next president comes into office.
This would mean that the many political appointments that are made could be beneficial to Microsoft.
The current administration want to have a solution so that they aren't seen as being weak.
They may also want to have something that will cause the next adminstration as much havoc as possible.
If Microsoft defeat (or come to an agreement) with the antitrust trial, can the facts, and details that cam out in this trial be used for other litigation?
Microsoft is a multinational firm - how would the americans anti-trust trial affect other companies. Would Microsoft be allowed to split these off as another independant company, leaving only Microsoft-USA to be broken up, while they continue to dominate markets?
The medical software company I used to work for always had an open source policy. The code is not GPL'd etc, its on a restricted license, but the principle of open source is there - release the source code to the customer; don't hide it.
This dates back to 1979 when the company was setup.
When the system was installed all the source was left on the machine too. This meant that we could easily debug on-line without the messiness of tapes and the resulting delay.
Our customers developed and maintained the software.
I'm now working in a hospital, and I develop and maintain the same software as a customer.
It's useful - I can determine exactly where a problem occurred and report it. The fault is fixed within minutes.
Most of the competition had a turn around time of 24 hours in getting a bug fix to us.
This is where the open source in medicine should be.
Our laboratory information system is open source as is our patient database.
My definition of an Operating system is whatever provides you with simple access to I/O.
On Unix this is the kernel, in MS terms with is DOS.
Anything else is an application. I don't consider Windows 95 to be an OS. Thats a GUI shell.
The most basic OS ever was probably CP/M. It let you enter commands from a keyboard, load things off floppy disks, and to send things to a printer or a screen. THis is what an OS has to achieve - on these blocks you can build anything else.
Geneva Convention of 1949
The convention deals mainly with the protection of innocents and prisoners.
Articles 12 & 13 deals with protection of wounded and sick
Articles 19 to 23 deals with protection of hospitals and medical units
Article 33 deals with protected buildings
All these could be accidentally affected by a cyberwarfare attack and put the attacker in violation of the geneva convention and liable to a war crimes trial.
Take article 19 as an example:
Art. 19. Fixed establishments and mobile medical units of the Medical Service may in no circumstances be attacked, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict. Should they fall into the hands of the adverse Party, their personnel shall be free to pursue their duties, as long as the capturing Power has not itself ensured the necessary care of the wounded and sick found in such establishments and units.
The responsible authorities shall ensure that the said medical establishments and units are, as far as possible, situated in such a manner that attacks against military objectives cannot imperil their safety.
Shutting off power to a city could affect a hospital and put the attacker in violation of the convention. If you are trying to make yourself be seen as the force of good, then this would hurt your credibility a lot. This is also why hospitals were given so much press during war.
The convention is drafted so that many things are already protected even under cyberwar. But I do think it needs to be extended to include protection of certain forms of attack.
Consider this:
The army hack into the electrical system, and shut down the power to a city.
A hospital in the city has a generator failure as a result and several babies and patients on life support die.
Has this violated the Geneva Convention rules on war?
The problem here isn't so much the rules as the results of a cyberwar attack. A cyberwar attack can be much more far reaching than people think.
A cyberwar attack can sometimes take out a specific target, eg a TV station, but in many cases the results of the attack can't be so easily planned for.
Many computer systems are configured with triggered-backups and inter-networked with other systems so that these respond in a certain way if a failure occurs.
Going back to my electrical example, what if the main power computer system is linked to a computer in a nuclear power plant that polls it to see if it needs to up the load to take care of a demand. If the software was buggy (and in Eastern Europe, this could very well be the case) the reactor could overload before someone realises and you have a second Chernoybl.
For a cyberwar attack to succeed you need to have a complete picture of the target. Only when you have a complete picture can you decide to attack or not. This is why the military rely so much on satellite and air imaging systems - they need to know exactly what is being hit. Without a clear picture you can take out a target and not realise that you just started a firestorm.
There are two ways this box could go... it could be a stanard Microsoft pre-announce that doesn't show for several years OR it could be a good box.
Either way I'm not sure if this is an area that MS want to get into - for a start its locked up tight by Sega and Sony, and for once MS will be up against companies that play the same sort of hardball they do, in a market that Sega and Sony understand intimately, and Microsoft are VERY late comeing into this - they could have still done something two or three years ago.
It's a near impossible market to break into. There aren't even any good killer features that I can think of that MS can use to get leverage into the market, they have already all been used in Sony and Sega machines. Sony have the PSX II acting as games machine/home entertainment box, and Sony have the dreamcast doing wonderful net things.
MS can't sell it as a PC games machine - most people that would want this already have a PC that can play games.
They can't sell it as a pure games machine unless the graphics and speed exceed the dedicated hardware of the Playstation II and the Dreamcast. A PC based box won't do this - lets face it - if you had the ability to do this on a PC you would.
I think this project will be steamrolled into market, but I can't see a good reason for it selling.
All MS will be able to do is to copy features (and oddly - they are very good at this) but in the games market gamers are very loyal to thier platform. The Japanese market which is the big one to get, hasn't been very good to MS, and I can't see the trend changing.
MS need to provide a killer game and a few killer features on thier box. The killer game is easy to do, the features are harder to achieve.
In all I don't think this will succeed, and may not even make it onto shelves.
The vendors listed in the articles are supporters of Linux, so its possible thats what will be installed.
The machines descriptions sound like PC versions of the iMac, so they'll probably be very stripped down PC's, hence the low cost (and Linux for zero)
Patents can hinder process if they are administered badly. They can also be a form or protection for knowledge.
If a patent is administered badly (eg the GIF technology mugging) then this is a bad thing. People won't want to use technology if they expect to get a letter saying "you used our technology - pay us $x or desist".
GIF is an example of a patent that was used right then went bad. The technology was patented, but was opened up to allow people to use. If research was patented this way this would the ok. But there is always the fear when using patented technology that your idea will be lost if the patent is suddenly enforced.
For research nothing should be patented - allow everyone access to use the data or technology.
Patenting DNA is A Very Bad Thing. If you have, for example, a resistance to AIDS, you could suddenly find that your DNA had been patented against your knowledge. Worse still, under existing law there is no way that you can stop this.
Patents for inventions are ok, but patenting nature is a bad thing.
Its a good idea - its an attempt to try and get a count of who and what is out there - always a hard thing to do.
I hope they do produce some good figures. The machines listing will be interesting.
This can mean either one of two things: ;)
.GOV place...?
1. Prostitution is being legalised there
or
2. Microsoft are moving development there
Seriously though, I think these states suddenly "discovering" the internet is not a good thing - they should be spending thier time and money on improving things for the people there.
Calling yourself anything internet related just looks silly, (unless your are "show me" Missouri who need a new slogan), and even then the Missouri Secretary of State's website calls itself "The information place"
How long will it be before DC calls itself the
Linux commercialisation has fragmented things a little bit, but in a good way.
Linux is fragmenting into specialised tools with a common base. The tools are aimed at certain core markets where it performs very, very well. Microsoft is a good example of where a product hasn't fragmented to exploit markets. Win9x doesn't know if it wants to be a server or a desktop system, and NT has grown so large trying to be all things for all people that its nearly unmanageable, and each release seems to be getting heavier and heavier, and more unstable (the Win2k test shows that even microsoft has realised this).
Linux must retain and expand these areas and make sure people understands why this is the case. If you are presented with a project that requires multi-user access, take a look at all the linux distros. Somewhere in there is a distro that will provide you with exactly the base you need to build your application on. In some cases all you need to do is to change a few variables and design a webpage.
There is no major infighting between developers over disros - this is where bad things would happen (but there is a bit of mumbling and finger pointing). The developers either tend to igore one another or work with each other. This is good.
The current trend of articles is to portray linux as a fragmented infighting collection of geeks. There needs to be more PR and education projects to get the journalists to realise that this is not always the case.
If linux was a corporation, it would take a seclection of editors off and wine and dine them somewhere expensive, and pick up the tab. It would take a selection of journalists off on a jaunt somewhere and get them drunk.
The problem Linux faces is that until recently it's not had the financial backing to do this. The RedHat IPO does give them the money to do this, but it remains to be seen if they wil follow this way of doing business. I think that they probably won't (at least not for a while yet).
Sorry to hear about the house and the phone Hemos. I hope you can get things sorted out pretty quick.
You didn't insult any strange voodoo women lately?
This can only be bad for Microsoft, although it is typical of thier tactics: attack, attack, attack
I think this sends a signal to the government, and the signal is "we are bigger than you" and the government won't like at all.
The government response will be to go after microsoft and make sure they get a kill. You can take money from schools, health, the poor and NASA but I've yet to see laywers accepting a pay cut.
Doing this is corporate suicide - they should have spent the lobby funds showing how essential microsoft is to the american and world economy and painting a bleak future of a microsoftless world. This tactic would have been more efficient in getting a ground swell of beneficial public opinion for Microsoft.
Perhaps Microsoft have given up - thier previous attempts at getting the public to back them haven't exactly set the world alight. This is probably because its hard to feel emotional about a company that doesn't care about you or your needs.
The Open Source movement tends to get this kind of emotion because you can take the bit you care about and nurture it; you can get close to the people that actually matter in the open source movement; you can read Alan Cox's diary, see feedback from Linux Torvalds. This doesn't happen with closed source. Its a rare event to see someone who actually matters in Microsoft talking opening about the future.