You could quite legally sell it in countries such as the UK or the Netherlands, where software patents are not legally enforceable. And even if there is a country in the EU where software patents are legally enforceable, there would be no way to stop anyone importing the unit there from some EU member nation with sane patent laws. That would be a breach of trading laws.
Now -- thanks to Poland actually having some balls -- it now looks likely that software patents will remain forever unenforceable across the whole of the EU. Which is of course A Good Thing, because misuse of IP law only ever hampers innovation and creativity; so any country with enforceable software patents will eventually end up with a sorry excuse for a Tech industry and lawyers calling all the shots.
but they shouldn't have to (or even pressured into) if they don't want to.
Yes, they should. That's called "accepting the terms of a licence". And the GPL is a true licence {in the sense that it gives you permission to do things that the law ordinarily would not allow} rather than a legally unenforceable, unsigned contract which, if it were signed, would be automatically null and void because it obliges you not to do things that the law ordinarily would allow. Such a unilateral declaration of independence of the law of the land probably could be construed as an act of high treason -- still punishable by beheading in many countries -- depending what kind of lawyer the prosecution can afford.....
They indicated that they wanted to give back to the community when they made a change to something covered by the GPL. If they wanted to take other people's work and lock it up, then they should have found something under a different licence which permits that sort of thing -- or written it from scratch. The people who develop GPL'ed software firmly believe that everyone, not just a select few, has the right to benefit fully from it. And conversely, those who believe that some people do have the right to lock up source code are not welcome around GPL software.
The ugly truth is, piracy benefits the closed-source software industry more than it harms it. It benefits the likes of Microsoft and Adobe at the expense of small, independent firms. {Not that I think that small independent firms distributing closed-source don't deserve to go to hell, of course. Selling closed-source is still a heinous crime against humanity, whether you're rich or poor.} Just like wearing fake fur legitimises the wearing of real fur, and just like eating vegeburgers legitimises the eating of real m**t. And just like the government wants smokers to carry on
but Why the fuck does any fucker give a flying fuck about this?
It's a piece of software for Windows. Windows is a piece of closed-source shit. No fucker knows for sure what the fuck is really going on inside Windows. Security by Obscurity. And no fucker at Microsoft gives a fuck if Windows is so imperfect, because no fucker is ever going to see the code anyway, and if they try, they'll just get fucked up the arse.
Botnets are no fucking accident. Microsoft deliberately designed certain "features" into Windows so they could royally fuck over any Windows system remotely, just in case they ever have to. Like the CAA having the ability to bring down any civil aircraft, in case they ever have to. Microsoft fucking hate end users. Got that? You are just a source of money to them. Actually, you probably pirated your Windows anyway, so you're not even that. The only reason they haven't crushed you like a fag-end is that they fondly imagine they can find a way to squeeze some money out of you. And when they do, you'll be crushed like a stinking fag-end anyway.
Just occasionally, someone finds a way of exploiting one of the utterly incorrigible flaws that were irretrievably designed-into Windows the moment it was made closed-source {or even just hitches a ride on the back of one of Microsoft's deliberately-placed vehicles}. Hence we have viruses, worms and trojans multiplying out of control.
So now there's an entire fucking industry which has sprung up, dedicated to cleaning up Microsoft's stinking shit. Thanks to a bunch of lousy code hidden under a laughable "veil of secrecy" which itself depends upon almost wholesale ignorance, there is now a "legitimate" business in which the aim is to try to plug the leaks Microsoft left -- some of which are deliberate, and some of which are just fucking stupid mistakes, but none of which would ever be tolerated in an Open Source project. And the same ignorance which allowed closed-source shit like Windows to exist in the first place is now allowing closed-source software to try to plug the gaps. Of course, precisely because it is closed-source, this software will have bugs and will not do properly what it says on the package. Closed-source vendors don't give a fuck. To them you are nothing but a source of money. Do you really imagine for a fucking nanosecond that they want you to have a computing experience free of viruses, worms, trojans and all the other nasties? Of course not -- otherwise they would be developing Open Source. The fact is, they aren't. All these people want is your money, and you're fuck all use to them for anything else. It's not about developing good software. It's not even about developing mediocre software. It's about money. And if they could find a way to extract that money from you without giving you any protection at all from viruses, they fucking would. Selling closed-source software to attempt to try to unfuck the fuck-ups in some other fuckers' closed-source software is about as unscrupulous as you can get. It's one very tiny step up from selling you one addictive drug to "cure" your addiction to another, cheaper, less addictive drug.
The whole fucking closed-source system is fucking rotten -- and it needs to be burnt down sooner rather than later, before it fucking collapses.
I propose mandatory guarantees of fitness for purpose for software, just like for everything else. Vendors would have to place their source code in escrow; and in the event of any dispute, then the courts could order for the source code to be examined by duly appointed experts in order for the dispute to be resolved. Licence agreements would be regulated by law, and any agreement which encroached upon your statutory rights as a consumer -- including the right to see the source code, which does not necessar
France is in the EU. EU law gives you the right to reverse-engineer software for certain purposes: for academic study, for the purposes of developing interoperable software, or just to satisfy your own morbid curiosity.
But you have a statutory right to reverse engineer software, and nothing can take that right away from you. And if you promise not to do it, that promise is automatically null and void. There are a few other things most EULAs say that have no standing in law. Why do you think no EULA has ever been tested in court? Because {excuse my French} they're fucking illegal as fuck is why not. Anyway, if you rightfully own the CD on which the software is recorded, by law nothing on that CD is a secret from you.
Still not convinced that statutory rights are inalienable? A piece of paper signed by a woman in the presence of witnesses consenting to sexual relations won't get you off a rape charge. Saying no to sex is a statutory right. You can't waive it. Ever.
And the only licence I'd like to see made law is this one.
Yeah, any Ford key used to fit any Ford lock. Once, my mother's car was off the road so she got a lift to work off a colleague in his Cortina {so you know how long ago this was}. At lunchtime, she borrowed his car to go somewhere. He chucked her the keys and off she went..... A quarter of an hour later, he went out to the car park. His car was still there. My mum was nowhere in sight. Odd. At the end of the lunch hour, she pulled up in a Ford Escort. Not even a Cortina, an Escort! She was mortified when she found out what she had done. But there was worse to come..... At the end of the shift, someone else's car was missing! The Escort she drove back from the shops was not even the same one she had driven off in.....
Moral: Any Ford key fits any Ford lock. Or at least, it used to until "joyriding" was invented.
The point of Linux is that source code -- not binary executable code -- is the compatibility layer. It shouldn't matter a flying toss even if every system administrator's processor has a totally different instruction set {and you've gotta admit, that would be the beginnings of one hell of a trustworthy setup} -- the intention is that the source code will compile on anything.
I really don't see what hardware manufacturers find so hard to understand about this. We say NO binary-only drivers - driver source code is what we want. It's a matter of principle: we are prepared to show them our source code. What is so special about their source code that they won't show it to us? After all, a driver is no use without the piece of hardware it, erm, drives. You only have to look at the mess that is Windows hardware driver support for an example of what happens when people try to make closed-source software interact.
In fact, I would go so far as to call for it to be made law that driver software be open source, as a condition for the product to be deemed fit to sell.
If I am the rightful owner of a piece of hardware, then I am privy to any secret embodied in that hardware: that is a straightforward common-law property right and it's why DVD Jon Johansen committed no crime. The "encrypted message" in a DVD he owned was addressed to him {because he had bought and paid for the disc} and therefore he was entitled to decrypt it. {It occurs to me that were someone physically to steal a DVD, the encrypted message might well not be addressed to them and they could be committing an offence in attempting to watch it. Comments?}
There is nothing beyond simple lack of resources preventing ordinary people from analysing hardware they rightfully own and determining how to write drivers for it. It's just annoying that so many hardware firms are either Western-based and paranoid about competitors {as though their competitors weren't spending half their R&D budgets reverse-engineering the products they competed with} or Developing-World-based and don't see anything beyond Windows {which is "free as in beer", and what does "free as in speech" mean anyway in places like that?}
I'm not Mich Le Fay from Arundel in Sussex, but I know her somewhat intimately. Oh, and I puked over Mark Chadwick {the Mark Chadwick} while accusing him of eating m**t. But I was off my box.
Who else here is for creating a "uk.slashdot.org" section? Or even a "slashdot.org.uk" section?
Except that it's a mother of a job to persuade microwave frequencies to travel along wires -- especially wires that were meant to have power frequencies fed through them -- and anything you can do to stop them from just radiating off into space is going to be at least as much effort as laying new fibre optics. And that's before the nut-jobs come out of the woodwork to blame you for assorted "health risks", which they will do..... look at mobile phone masts! RF is non-cumulative, only peak instantaneous power matters. A telephone interferes with MW radio at ten times the sort of distance people hold their phone from themselves, a base station doesn't at the sort of distance passers-by maintain, but which gets the protests? And, ironically, the protesters whine the loudest when they can't get a signal.....
data rates in excess of 1 Gigabit require bandwidth in excess of 2 GigaHertz
Not quite. You can modulate a 1GHz carrier with 1Gb/s using amplitude modulation. Just switch it off altogether to send a zero and switch it on for a single cycle to send a one. If you can time the switchings with the zero crossings, then you shouldn't generate any noise. But you have to have perfect impedance-matched termination, otherwise "ringing" will cause errors.
Now, if you could detect other states than just "on" and "off", you would actually be able to send more than one bit per cycle. For example, if you could send one of 128 different recognisable levels, 8000 times a second, you could get a maximum data rate of 56000 bps. Not co-incidentally, digital POTS telephone exchanges make 8000 samples a second, and each sample is taken to 7 bits accuracy with a single parity bit.
If the power company solution used a frequency range that was entirely contained within the multi-GHz band, for example, there would be no interference in the critical "high frequency" 3-30Mhz spectrum
Unless you generated some kind of cross-modulation due to non-linearities in the transmission line. Then, all bets are off.
Dig out your old university textbooks and re-read about transmission lines and antennas. Power lines are optimised for maximum energy throughput {regardless of waveshape distortion; as long as the voltage spends as much time below zero as it does above, most appliances will cope fine} with a bandwidth of 49.99Hz to 50.01Hz {and that's allowing a greater margin for error than real life}. All the power companies really care about is that most of the joules they feed into the wires end up in whatever's on the other end of them. On the other hand, communication lines should be optimised for minimum waveshape distortion {generally with scant regard for energy loss; unless said loss be in the form of RF radiation, in which case it is strongly discouraged} over as wide a bandwidth as necessary. The signal coming out must be a faithful reproduction of that sent in, without overshooting or rounding-off on the peaks and troughs {like you see with a 10:1 oscilloscope probe that isn't adjusted properly}. It matters less if the signal gets attenuated; after all, it can always be amplified, but the shape once changed is changed forever.
Whilst it would not be impossible to design a transmission line to be low-loss at distribution frequencies and high-fidelity at higher frequencies, it's as near to a certainty as damn it is to swearing that such a design would differ radically from existing power lines. By which I mean that it'd take less cash, less effort and return better results, both in the short term and the long term, to lay brand-spanking-new optical fibres than to try to adapt the existing power lines to carry data.
And no laboratory-scale experiment will ever show up the problems that occur in real-life situations, because those problems only occur with long cables spaced far apart {"long" and "far" meaning in relation to wavelength}. If the cable is less than a wavelength, you can pretty much pretend it is an ideal transmission line. Beyond that you have to start taking into account transmission line phenomena {think of ringing a bell with an elastic rope}. And radiation..... The two ways to reduce radiation are to have a coaxial cable {power lines aren't} or to have two parallel cables carrying signals in inverse phase to each other, so the two radiated signals will annihilate one another {or, whatever each one radiates, the other will pick straight back up}. This is why Ethernet cables are twisted, to keep the two conductors close together even despite you bending the cable. On the other hand, 50Hz has a wavelength of 6Mm {yes, six megametres}, and I'm not even sure there's a big enough bit of land actually to fit that much cable across -- the circumference of the Earth is only 40Mm. Compared to that, the conductors of a power line are practically in intimate contact; but at high frequencies, they're nowhere near each other, and they will radiate.
Home recorded cassettes usually have a clean retrace. Store bought ones -- which are mass-produced by a fast thermal-magnetic printing process -- often have a noisy retrace with spikes going higher than the usual maximum which, when you try either to make a copy or to watch it on a monitor with a long AGC time constant, causes the AGC to attenuate the signal and dim the following few frames. Result: it's barely watchable. And the video companies aren't keen to do anything about it because it has the beneficial side effect of limiting video piracy to organised criminal gangs who know what they are doing, even though it hampers the ability to (for example) make sacrificial copies of the kids' favourites {I don't think their bosses have ever had to face a 4-year-old whose cassette of The Lion King got eaten when the idler in a VCR decided it had idled its last, possibly in protest at being fed other things than cassettes bearing the "VHS" [TM] mark by hands to inexperienced to know better. Like the Calpol advert [and not the one that highly unsubtly makes out that taking pills makes kids feel grown-up] says, if you've got kids, you'll understand.} Most of the picture stabiliser designs I have seen use a 1881 to pick out the timing signals; a PIC12C508 to count the lines and generate a new, "clean" timing signal with no picture information; and a 4053 bilateral switch to select either the "real" video for the visible part of the picture or the "clean" timing signal. Given that a 4053 barely has enough bandwidth for audio, let alone video, I'd probably want to use a better quality analogue switch if I was building one; but that's me being picky.
BTW, the reason why DVD players don't usually have RF outputs {apart from the cost of a tin-box modulator} is that this would negate all the "superior picture quality" advantages of DVD. {My Philips has RF passthrough but no remodulator}. People would use the RF connection, because they're lazy, and complain about the picture not being any better than VHS, because they're stupid. Also, older tellies, which often show truly lousy pictures {cathode ray tubes do wear out -- but their owners seem to forgive the set and blame the lousy picture on the broadcasting companies} don't tend to have SCART sockets -- mostly because SCART wasn't invented then; but also they don't have any other kind of direct connection because older tellies have live chassis, and even people who don't know much about electronics seem to prefer their 0V within a few volts of earth potential. It's all a plot to force you to use a reasonably modern set, capable of displaying a picture which will do justice to the format, with a DVD player.
FWIW, I picked up a tuneable audio/video modulator with passthrough from a surplus store {on the IOW would you believe? Big shout out to J.S. in Ryde} which had originally been a part of a home security camera system {link several cameras to modulators, each tuned to different frequencies; daisy chain RF outputs through each other; change station on TV or VCR to select camera}. With the addition of audio and video cables and a PSU that used to be a telephone recharger, it became a Handy Gadget. All that was in it really was a tin-box modulator and a 7805. But it's still a poor way of getting a signal to a CRT and, if you make such a gadget for yourself, you'll be able to compare the difference. Even composite video and audio looks a little fuzzy compared to the RGB which most DVD players emit via their SCART socket {but with a full composite picture on the timing pin so as to work with partly-wired sockets}. And you'll regret not just buying a decent telly with a SCART socket in the first place.
Hey, I've just had an idea! Why don't they make DVD players with a VGA output? After all, there's already RGB going to the SCART, and it's coming out of a frame buffer; so if they just retimed it for a faster scan and used a real, mechanical switch on the player {to make sure you'd never be in the position of not being able to see the on-screen menu item necessary to select whether you were outputting to TV or monitor} you probably could get a nice result.
No. Betamax was technically far superior to the alternative -- it even used to record the Teletext signal, for crying out loud! I was very disappointed to discover from the guy in the shop that a VCR wasn't supposed to record Teletext and my Sony-owning friend just got lucky.
Been done already, and mentioned on slashdot. Twice. Didn't work either time. If the media lasts long enough to be watched, it lasts at least long enough to be copied. I "invented" self-destructing audio cassettes in the early 1980s. Same problem. Good for a bit of fun, nothing more.
I thought most TV recorders used DVD+RW discs? My Philips does, and so do the sub-£200 ones imported from Spain.
Can't be long though before the Chinese start making DVD TV recorders. With any luck, they'll even include an AGC that doesn't get thrown by crap in the retrace period.....
Umm... Actualy, judging by the events that appeared to cause the lockups, it was the third-party Nikon Camera and Game that probably caused the problems.
OK, I'll grant you that. But the fact remains that there is a reason why two pieces of software -- an OS and a driver, or an OS and an application -- interacted so badly as to crash each other. And that reason is the closed-source nature of Windows.
Open source software -- once it's passed the alpha stage, at any rate -- interacts well, precisely because if anything goes wrong it can be analysed and repaired very easily. {And also, if you're writing a programme that you know other people are going to be looking at it, you make good and sure to do it properly, so nobody can say anything nasty about it.} The source code is, and always will be, the absolute definitive API documentation. The published documentation will only ever be at best a pale imitation, and at worst totally bogus. Unless the driver developer has access to the underlying OS source code, they have to trust the API documentation they have seen to be accurate. If that is not the case, then the app will crash and burn. Maybe if the driver developer shows their source to the OS developer, then the OS developer could show where the problem was, but hey! If they won't show me their code why should I show them mine, eh?
Then you also have to maintain broken, legacy APIs -- even ones that may constitute a security risk -- forever, so as to cater for closed-source applications compiled against an earlier version. In the Open Source world, you just grit your teeth, recompile your apps and everything works again. {Although, this invariably leads to jokes like "The mouse has been moved}. You will need to recompile your kernel". Processing power is cheap enough today that you probably could get away with running the kernel through an interpreter if you really wanted.
The letters "B.Eng" after my name would rather suggest I am competent, although the onus would be on the snooping busybody to demonstrate that the work had in fact taken place since the building regulations changed rather than before as I would naturally claim in my defence. Furthermore, a customer who attempted to leach my power would be committing simple trespass -- a civil offence -- by the simple act of inserting a plug into one of my sockets, and theft of electricity -- a criminal offence -- from the instant they flicked the switch {note for readers in less civilised countries: wall sockets in the UK are all 3-pin, safety shuttered and individually switched}. No different really than a door that's not for public use, with nothing behind it -- not even a floor.
As to whether it's more effort than it's worth, that's a good question -- and it depends on a number of factors, including what Kirsty Gallagher will pay for vids of mobiles exploding and laptops going on fire! {BTW, I'd charge my customers for using the extinguisher, too, if it ever came down to that. They don't recharge themselves after every use, you know.}
The last camp site I stayed on -- and the one before that -- had showers which required a 20p coin to operate them. The coin box operated a timer, which operated a solenoid valve in the cold feed to the water heater {the timer contacts probably aren't rated for the 30-40 amps a shower requires. Strictly speaking they'll probably be OK passing so many amps, but they'd have a job interrupting them}. When the timer ran out {which Sod's law dictates will be just at the most critical point of the whole operation} the water shut off, and with no water flowing through it the heater also shut off {and the lights in the facility block went back to full brightness}. Sounds like these would do the job nicely!
I'm not sure I'd use other people's power sockets without first applying my trusty AVO, maybe even an oscilloscope to check the frequency and waveshape; and even then, I'd always insist on using a well-filtered and surge-protected extension lead. Because I know exactly what I would do if I was the proprietor of a catering establishment where people were even half-likely to leech my power! In the olden days, when it used to be common for equipment to be housed in metal cases, I would just have swapped the phase and earth contacts in the customer area sockets. But today, I'd hafta settle for installing something like a Schaffner 2050 transient generator upstream of the wall sockets in the customer area, and cranking it up to its most extreme setting. Oh, yes, and I'd get another Schaffner and couple its outputs to a bunch of innocuous-looking RJ45s.
I missed an absolute freakin' classic opportunity in 1999.
I had this plan. I was going to build myself a "universal Y2K compliance tester" -- a simple plastic box with a power socket and some flashing lights, basically -- and then travel from town to town, going around residential areas, offering to "Y2K test" their small appliances (kettles, toasters, microwave ovens &c) for an extortionate..... sorry, for a reasonable fee. Then move on to a new town and do it all again another day. I'd even be able to effect a "fix" by changing the fuse in the mains plug {in this country, every plug contains its own fuse, there is a 30A wire fuse or trip switch for all the power points on a floor} for a "special" one. After which the tester would of course pass that appliance.
I suppose I ought to say that I would only have ripped off people that I thought deserved it, so of course I would have stayed away from council estates and any house with a Mini on the drive, and not gone overboard anyway with the charges unless I thought my victims were just walking stacks of pound notes.
Back in '99, most VCRs had a 14-day timer: you wanted to record a programme at nine o'clock next Thursday, you set it to THU 21:00, or if you wanted the Thursday after next you set it to 2ND THU. Didn't even care what month it was, let alone the year. The more sophisticated ones had a range of years spanning from before they were made to longer than they could be expected to last. Boiler time clocks usually kept track of the day of the week -- so you can have an extra hour's worth of DHW on working days, for a bath in the morning. Some microwaves had -- if not a simple electromechanical timer -- just a 12-hour clock. After all, they don't even care if it's morning or evening -- but that VFD needs a way to earn its keep somehow while the oven isn't being used to turninnocuous foodstuffs into deadly poisons, and counting how many times the mains is reversing is as good a job as any. As for the {actually very few} DOS and Windows PCs that genuinely minded the rollover, I was prepared. As well as some simple test programmes, I'd written a pair of DOS batch scripts, one for startup and one for shutdown, that could also be run through windows 95 or 98 even. The idea was that you stored the "real" date in a text file and picked a "safe" date before switching the computer off; then added the number of days the machine must have spent switched off to the stored date at start-up. Fine, unless midnight struck between telling it you were going to shut down and shutting it down, but we all need a bug. {My general experience was that almost all mobos of the time could live through the transition from 1999-12-31 23:59:59 to 2000-01-01 00:00:00 if they were switched on as it actually happened, and would correctly store dates beyond 2000; but would not roll over properly if they were switched off at the critical moment. Therefore, I didn't expect Linux users would have any problems. They all seemed to know what they were doing, anyway.}
But I lost the nerve to do it. Now I'm just sitting here on this bar stool telling you this story about how I almost could have made me a fortune out of some dimwits who had more money than they were smart enough to be looking after, when I should be describing the thrill of the chase, cops on my tail, need to get out of here fast; buying second-hand suits in charity shops, watching myself on the TV news, a dozen times over and larger than life in the window of D.E.R.; travelling for free, hitching lifts or being inhumanly quiet in unlocked bogs on the trains. The way I came out of nowhere and went back just as quick, as though the money hardly weighed me down. And perhaps I could have got in a f
The GPL is all about sharing and reusing code. In fact, it effectively makes "failure to share" a sin. It's one of RMS's core beliefs -- and one of mine -- that there should be no such thing as closed-source software. When all software is Open Source, then there will be nothing to prevent any end being achieved by the best means possible -- because whatever the "official best way" of doing anything is, it will be shared by all. {What if Microsoft discover a security flaw in IE but decide to cover it up rather than patch it? Tough. You'd better hope no crackers find it by accident. What if the Mozilla Project discover a security flaw in Firefox but decide to cover it up rather than patch it? Sooner or later, some independent hacker is bound to discover that same flaw by looking at the code, release a patch, and nobody will trust the Mozilla project ever again.}
The original project was subject to the GPL. Unless the spin-off was started by the principal copyright holder in the original work, or was sufficiently different to be considered a new work in its own right rather than a derivative, then the GPL still applies to the spin-off and all its derivatives -- and will continue to do so until the original work enters the Public Domain, either through lapse of copyright or by court order.
Since the spin-off is subject to the GPL, then you have explicit written permission to copy it in whole or in part and to make derivative works subject to certain conditions. As long as you abide by those conditions, you are acting in accordance with the original licence. In fact, the permissions granted under the GPL are granted by the copyright holder, not the distributor. So if it was your original project, then nobody can stop you distributing it!
That would be fine if any of the provisions were legally enforceable. Unfortunately, they aren't.
For one thing, clicking does not create a contract. Not only is there no way to prove that the clicking party is in a fit state to enter into a contract {might be acting under duress, might be a minor, might be mentally unfit or otherwise have no power of attorney, might not even be human}; but the "contract" would diminish your statutory rights, which nothing can take away. Even the reverse-engineering provisions are unenforceable. You are automatically privy to any secret embodied in any article you rightfully own.
Slashdot Mirror
You could quite legally sell it in countries such as the UK or the Netherlands, where software patents are not legally enforceable. And even if there is a country in the EU where software patents are legally enforceable, there would be no way to stop anyone importing the unit there from some EU member nation with sane patent laws. That would be a breach of trading laws.
Now -- thanks to Poland actually having some balls -- it now looks likely that software patents will remain forever unenforceable across the whole of the EU. Which is of course A Good Thing, because misuse of IP law only ever hampers innovation and creativity; so any country with enforceable software patents will eventually end up with a sorry excuse for a Tech industry and lawyers calling all the shots.
They indicated that they wanted to give back to the community when they made a change to something covered by the GPL. If they wanted to take other people's work and lock it up, then they should have found something under a different licence which permits that sort of thing -- or written it from scratch. The people who develop GPL'ed software firmly believe that everyone, not just a select few, has the right to benefit fully from it. And conversely, those who believe that some people do have the right to lock up source code are not welcome around GPL software.
destroying themselves, so they can keep on raking in millions of pounds in nicotine-stained notes.
Some options you forgot:
4. You use manual methods.
5. You use open-source software.
6. You bring the corruption to light somehow.
The ugly truth is, piracy benefits the closed-source software industry more than it harms it. It benefits the likes of Microsoft and Adobe at the expense of small, independent firms. {Not that I think that small independent firms distributing closed-source don't deserve to go to hell, of course. Selling closed-source is still a heinous crime against humanity, whether you're rich or poor.} Just like wearing fake fur legitimises the wearing of real fur, and just like eating vegeburgers legitimises the eating of real m**t. And just like the government wants smokers to carry on
but Why the fuck does any fucker give a flying fuck about this?
It's a piece of software for Windows. Windows is a piece of closed-source shit. No fucker knows for sure what the fuck is really going on inside Windows. Security by Obscurity. And no fucker at Microsoft gives a fuck if Windows is so imperfect, because no fucker is ever going to see the code anyway, and if they try, they'll just get fucked up the arse.
Botnets are no fucking accident. Microsoft deliberately designed certain "features" into Windows so they could royally fuck over any Windows system remotely, just in case they ever have to. Like the CAA having the ability to bring down any civil aircraft, in case they ever have to. Microsoft fucking hate end users. Got that? You are just a source of money to them. Actually, you probably pirated your Windows anyway, so you're not even that. The only reason they haven't crushed you like a fag-end is that they fondly imagine they can find a way to squeeze some money out of you. And when they do, you'll be crushed like a stinking fag-end anyway.
Just occasionally, someone finds a way of exploiting one of the utterly incorrigible flaws that were irretrievably designed-into Windows the moment it was made closed-source {or even just hitches a ride on the back of one of Microsoft's deliberately-placed vehicles}. Hence we have viruses, worms and trojans multiplying out of control.
So now there's an entire fucking industry which has sprung up, dedicated to cleaning up Microsoft's stinking shit. Thanks to a bunch of lousy code hidden under a laughable "veil of secrecy" which itself depends upon almost wholesale ignorance, there is now a "legitimate" business in which the aim is to try to plug the leaks Microsoft left -- some of which are deliberate, and some of which are just fucking stupid mistakes, but none of which would ever be tolerated in an Open Source project. And the same ignorance which allowed closed-source shit like Windows to exist in the first place is now allowing closed-source software to try to plug the gaps. Of course, precisely because it is closed-source, this software will have bugs and will not do properly what it says on the package. Closed-source vendors don't give a fuck. To them you are nothing but a source of money. Do you really imagine for a fucking nanosecond that they want you to have a computing experience free of viruses, worms, trojans and all the other nasties? Of course not -- otherwise they would be developing Open Source. The fact is, they aren't. All these people want is your money, and you're fuck all use to them for anything else. It's not about developing good software. It's not even about developing mediocre software. It's about money. And if they could find a way to extract that money from you without giving you any protection at all from viruses, they fucking would. Selling closed-source software to attempt to try to unfuck the fuck-ups in some other fuckers' closed-source software is about as unscrupulous as you can get. It's one very tiny step up from selling you one addictive drug to "cure" your addiction to another, cheaper, less addictive drug.
The whole fucking closed-source system is fucking rotten -- and it needs to be burnt down sooner rather than later, before it fucking collapses.
I propose mandatory guarantees of fitness for purpose for software, just like for everything else. Vendors would have to place their source code in escrow; and in the event of any dispute, then the courts could order for the source code to be examined by duly appointed experts in order for the dispute to be resolved. Licence agreements would be regulated by law, and any agreement which encroached upon your statutory rights as a consumer -- including the right to see the source code, which does not necessar
France is in the EU. EU law gives you the right to reverse-engineer software for certain purposes: for academic study, for the purposes of developing interoperable software, or just to satisfy your own morbid curiosity.
But you have a statutory right to reverse engineer software, and nothing can take that right away from you. And if you promise not to do it, that promise is automatically null and void. There are a few other things most EULAs say that have no standing in law. Why do you think no EULA has ever been tested in court? Because {excuse my French} they're fucking illegal as fuck is why not. Anyway, if you rightfully own the CD on which the software is recorded, by law nothing on that CD is a secret from you.
Still not convinced that statutory rights are inalienable? A piece of paper signed by a woman in the presence of witnesses consenting to sexual relations won't get you off a rape charge. Saying no to sex is a statutory right. You can't waive it. Ever.
And the only licence I'd like to see made law is this one.
Yeah, any Ford key used to fit any Ford lock. Once, my mother's car was off the road so she got a lift to work off a colleague in his Cortina {so you know how long ago this was}. At lunchtime, she borrowed his car to go somewhere. He chucked her the keys and off she went ..... A quarter of an hour later, he went out to the car park. His car was still there. My mum was nowhere in sight. Odd. At the end of the lunch hour, she pulled up in a Ford Escort. Not even a Cortina, an Escort! She was mortified when she found out what she had done. But there was worse to come ..... At the end of the shift, someone else's car was missing! The Escort she drove back from the shops was not even the same one she had driven off in .....
Moral: Any Ford key fits any Ford lock. Or at least, it used to until "joyriding" was invented.
The point of Linux is that source code -- not binary executable code -- is the compatibility layer. It shouldn't matter a flying toss even if every system administrator's processor has a totally different instruction set {and you've gotta admit, that would be the beginnings of one hell of a trustworthy setup} -- the intention is that the source code will compile on anything.
I really don't see what hardware manufacturers find so hard to understand about this. We say NO binary-only drivers - driver source code is what we want. It's a matter of principle: we are prepared to show them our source code. What is so special about their source code that they won't show it to us? After all, a driver is no use without the piece of hardware it, erm, drives. You only have to look at the mess that is Windows hardware driver support for an example of what happens when people try to make closed-source software interact.
In fact, I would go so far as to call for it to be made law that driver software be open source, as a condition for the product to be deemed fit to sell.
If I am the rightful owner of a piece of hardware, then I am privy to any secret embodied in that hardware: that is a straightforward common-law property right and it's why DVD Jon Johansen committed no crime. The "encrypted message" in a DVD he owned was addressed to him {because he had bought and paid for the disc} and therefore he was entitled to decrypt it. {It occurs to me that were someone physically to steal a DVD, the encrypted message might well not be addressed to them and they could be committing an offence in attempting to watch it. Comments?}
There is nothing beyond simple lack of resources preventing ordinary people from analysing hardware they rightfully own and determining how to write drivers for it. It's just annoying that so many hardware firms are either Western-based and paranoid about competitors {as though their competitors weren't spending half their R&D budgets reverse-engineering the products they competed with} or Developing-World-based and don't see anything beyond Windows {which is "free as in beer", and what does "free as in speech" mean anyway in places like that?}
I'm not Mich Le Fay from Arundel in Sussex, but I know her somewhat intimately. Oh, and I puked over Mark Chadwick {the Mark Chadwick} while accusing him of eating m**t. But I was off my box.
Who else here is for creating a "uk.slashdot.org" section? Or even a "slashdot.org.uk" section?
Except that it's a mother of a job to persuade microwave frequencies to travel along wires -- especially wires that were meant to have power frequencies fed through them -- and anything you can do to stop them from just radiating off into space is going to be at least as much effort as laying new fibre optics. And that's before the nut-jobs come out of the woodwork to blame you for assorted "health risks", which they will do ..... look at mobile phone masts! RF is non-cumulative, only peak instantaneous power matters. A telephone interferes with MW radio at ten times the sort of distance people hold their phone from themselves, a base station doesn't at the sort of distance passers-by maintain, but which gets the protests? And, ironically, the protesters whine the loudest when they can't get a signal .....
Yes, but don't forget Alan Turing committed suicide with an apple .....
Now, if you could detect other states than just "on" and "off", you would actually be able to send more than one bit per cycle. For example, if you could send one of 128 different recognisable levels, 8000 times a second, you could get a maximum data rate of 56000 bps. Not co-incidentally, digital POTS telephone exchanges make 8000 samples a second, and each sample is taken to 7 bits accuracy with a single parity bit. Unless you generated some kind of cross-modulation due to non-linearities in the transmission line. Then, all bets are off.
Dig out your old university textbooks and re-read about transmission lines and antennas. Power lines are optimised for maximum energy throughput {regardless of waveshape distortion; as long as the voltage spends as much time below zero as it does above, most appliances will cope fine} with a bandwidth of 49.99Hz to 50.01Hz {and that's allowing a greater margin for error than real life}. All the power companies really care about is that most of the joules they feed into the wires end up in whatever's on the other end of them. On the other hand, communication lines should be optimised for minimum waveshape distortion {generally with scant regard for energy loss; unless said loss be in the form of RF radiation, in which case it is strongly discouraged} over as wide a bandwidth as necessary. The signal coming out must be a faithful reproduction of that sent in, without overshooting or rounding-off on the peaks and troughs {like you see with a 10:1 oscilloscope probe that isn't adjusted properly}. It matters less if the signal gets attenuated; after all, it can always be amplified, but the shape once changed is changed forever.
..... The two ways to reduce radiation are to have a coaxial cable {power lines aren't} or to have two parallel cables carrying signals in inverse phase to each other, so the two radiated signals will annihilate one another {or, whatever each one radiates, the other will pick straight back up}. This is why Ethernet cables are twisted, to keep the two conductors close together even despite you bending the cable. On the other hand, 50Hz has a wavelength of 6Mm {yes, six megametres}, and I'm not even sure there's a big enough bit of land actually to fit that much cable across -- the circumference of the Earth is only 40Mm. Compared to that, the conductors of a power line are practically in intimate contact; but at high frequencies, they're nowhere near each other, and they will radiate.
Whilst it would not be impossible to design a transmission line to be low-loss at distribution frequencies and high-fidelity at higher frequencies, it's as near to a certainty as damn it is to swearing that such a design would differ radically from existing power lines. By which I mean that it'd take less cash, less effort and return better results, both in the short term and the long term, to lay brand-spanking-new optical fibres than to try to adapt the existing power lines to carry data.
And no laboratory-scale experiment will ever show up the problems that occur in real-life situations, because those problems only occur with long cables spaced far apart {"long" and "far" meaning in relation to wavelength}. If the cable is less than a wavelength, you can pretty much pretend it is an ideal transmission line. Beyond that you have to start taking into account transmission line phenomena {think of ringing a bell with an elastic rope}. And radiation
Home recorded cassettes usually have a clean retrace. Store bought ones -- which are mass-produced by a fast thermal-magnetic printing process -- often have a noisy retrace with spikes going higher than the usual maximum which, when you try either to make a copy or to watch it on a monitor with a long AGC time constant, causes the AGC to attenuate the signal and dim the following few frames. Result: it's barely watchable. And the video companies aren't keen to do anything about it because it has the beneficial side effect of limiting video piracy to organised criminal gangs who know what they are doing, even though it hampers the ability to (for example) make sacrificial copies of the kids' favourites {I don't think their bosses have ever had to face a 4-year-old whose cassette of The Lion King got eaten when the idler in a VCR decided it had idled its last, possibly in protest at being fed other things than cassettes bearing the "VHS" [TM] mark by hands to inexperienced to know better. Like the Calpol advert [and not the one that highly unsubtly makes out that taking pills makes kids feel grown-up] says, if you've got kids, you'll understand.} Most of the picture stabiliser designs I have seen use a 1881 to pick out the timing signals; a PIC12C508 to count the lines and generate a new, "clean" timing signal with no picture information; and a 4053 bilateral switch to select either the "real" video for the visible part of the picture or the "clean" timing signal. Given that a 4053 barely has enough bandwidth for audio, let alone video, I'd probably want to use a better quality analogue switch if I was building one; but that's me being picky.
BTW, the reason why DVD players don't usually have RF outputs {apart from the cost of a tin-box modulator} is that this would negate all the "superior picture quality" advantages of DVD. {My Philips has RF passthrough but no remodulator}. People would use the RF connection, because they're lazy, and complain about the picture not being any better than VHS, because they're stupid. Also, older tellies, which often show truly lousy pictures {cathode ray tubes do wear out -- but their owners seem to forgive the set and blame the lousy picture on the broadcasting companies} don't tend to have SCART sockets -- mostly because SCART wasn't invented then; but also they don't have any other kind of direct connection because older tellies have live chassis, and even people who don't know much about electronics seem to prefer their 0V within a few volts of earth potential. It's all a plot to force you to use a reasonably modern set, capable of displaying a picture which will do justice to the format, with a DVD player.
FWIW, I picked up a tuneable audio/video modulator with passthrough from a surplus store {on the IOW would you believe? Big shout out to J.S. in Ryde} which had originally been a part of a home security camera system {link several cameras to modulators, each tuned to different frequencies; daisy chain RF outputs through each other; change station on TV or VCR to select camera}. With the addition of audio and video cables and a PSU that used to be a telephone recharger, it became a Handy Gadget. All that was in it really was a tin-box modulator and a 7805. But it's still a poor way of getting a signal to a CRT and, if you make such a gadget for yourself, you'll be able to compare the difference. Even composite video and audio looks a little fuzzy compared to the RGB which most DVD players emit via their SCART socket {but with a full composite picture on the timing pin so as to work with partly-wired sockets}. And you'll regret not just buying a decent telly with a SCART socket in the first place.
Hey, I've just had an idea! Why don't they make DVD players with a VGA output? After all, there's already RGB going to the SCART, and it's coming out of a frame buffer; so if they just retimed it for a faster scan and used a real, mechanical switch on the player {to make sure you'd never be in the position of not being able to see the on-screen menu item necessary to select whether you were outputting to TV or monitor} you probably could get a nice result.
No. Betamax was technically far superior to the alternative -- it even used to record the Teletext signal, for crying out loud! I was very disappointed to discover from the guy in the shop that a VCR wasn't supposed to record Teletext and my Sony-owning friend just got lucky.
Been done already, and mentioned on slashdot. Twice. Didn't work either time. If the media lasts long enough to be watched, it lasts at least long enough to be copied. I "invented" self-destructing audio cassettes in the early 1980s. Same problem. Good for a bit of fun, nothing more.
I thought most TV recorders used DVD+RW discs? My Philips does, and so do the sub-£200 ones imported from Spain.
.....
Can't be long though before the Chinese start making DVD TV recorders. With any luck, they'll even include an AGC that doesn't get thrown by crap in the retrace period
Open source software -- once it's passed the alpha stage, at any rate -- interacts well, precisely because if anything goes wrong it can be analysed and repaired very easily. {And also, if you're writing a programme that you know other people are going to be looking at it, you make good and sure to do it properly, so nobody can say anything nasty about it.} The source code is, and always will be, the absolute definitive API documentation. The published documentation will only ever be at best a pale imitation, and at worst totally bogus. Unless the driver developer has access to the underlying OS source code, they have to trust the API documentation they have seen to be accurate. If that is not the case, then the app will crash and burn. Maybe if the driver developer shows their source to the OS developer, then the OS developer could show where the problem was, but hey! If they won't show me their code why should I show them mine, eh?
Then you also have to maintain broken, legacy APIs -- even ones that may constitute a security risk -- forever, so as to cater for closed-source applications compiled against an earlier version. In the Open Source world, you just grit your teeth, recompile your apps and everything works again. {Although, this invariably leads to jokes like "The mouse has been moved}. You will need to recompile your kernel". Processing power is cheap enough today that you probably could get away with running the kernel through an interpreter if you really wanted.
Closed source does not work. Period.
The letters "B.Eng" after my name would rather suggest I am competent, although the onus would be on the snooping busybody to demonstrate that the work had in fact taken place since the building regulations changed rather than before as I would naturally claim in my defence. Furthermore, a customer who attempted to leach my power would be committing simple trespass -- a civil offence -- by the simple act of inserting a plug into one of my sockets, and theft of electricity -- a criminal offence -- from the instant they flicked the switch {note for readers in less civilised countries: wall sockets in the UK are all 3-pin, safety shuttered and individually switched}. No different really than a door that's not for public use, with nothing behind it -- not even a floor.
As to whether it's more effort than it's worth, that's a good question -- and it depends on a number of factors, including what Kirsty Gallagher will pay for vids of mobiles exploding and laptops going on fire! {BTW, I'd charge my customers for using the extinguisher, too, if it ever came down to that. They don't recharge themselves after every use, you know.}
These things already exist ..... sort of.
The last camp site I stayed on -- and the one before that -- had showers which required a 20p coin to operate them. The coin box operated a timer, which operated a solenoid valve in the cold feed to the water heater {the timer contacts probably aren't rated for the 30-40 amps a shower requires. Strictly speaking they'll probably be OK passing so many amps, but they'd have a job interrupting them}. When the timer ran out {which Sod's law dictates will be just at the most critical point of the whole operation} the water shut off, and with no water flowing through it the heater also shut off {and the lights in the facility block went back to full brightness}. Sounds like these would do the job nicely!
I'm not sure I'd use other people's power sockets without first applying my trusty AVO, maybe even an oscilloscope to check the frequency and waveshape; and even then, I'd always insist on using a well-filtered and surge-protected extension lead. Because I know exactly what I would do if I was the proprietor of a catering establishment where people were even half-likely to leech my power! In the olden days, when it used to be common for equipment to be housed in metal cases, I would just have swapped the phase and earth contacts in the customer area sockets. But today, I'd hafta settle for installing something like a Schaffner 2050 transient generator upstream of the wall sockets in the customer area, and cranking it up to its most extreme setting. Oh, yes, and I'd get another Schaffner and couple its outputs to a bunch of innocuous-looking RJ45s.
I missed an absolute freakin' classic opportunity in 1999.
..... sorry, for a reasonable fee. Then move on to a new town and do it all again another day. I'd even be able to effect a "fix" by changing the fuse in the mains plug {in this country, every plug contains its own fuse, there is a 30A wire fuse or trip switch for all the power points on a floor} for a "special" one. After which the tester would of course pass that appliance.
I had this plan. I was going to build myself a "universal Y2K compliance tester" -- a simple plastic box with a power socket and some flashing lights, basically -- and then travel from town to town, going around residential areas, offering to "Y2K test" their small appliances (kettles, toasters, microwave ovens &c) for an extortionate
I suppose I ought to say that I would only have ripped off people that I thought deserved it, so of course I would have stayed away from council estates and any house with a Mini on the drive, and not gone overboard anyway with the charges unless I thought my victims were just walking stacks of pound notes.
Back in '99, most VCRs had a 14-day timer: you wanted to record a programme at nine o'clock next Thursday, you set it to THU 21:00, or if you wanted the Thursday after next you set it to 2ND THU. Didn't even care what month it was, let alone the year. The more sophisticated ones had a range of years spanning from before they were made to longer than they could be expected to last. Boiler time clocks usually kept track of the day of the week -- so you can have an extra hour's worth of DHW on working days, for a bath in the morning. Some microwaves had -- if not a simple electromechanical timer -- just a 12-hour clock. After all, they don't even care if it's morning or evening -- but that VFD needs a way to earn its keep somehow while the oven isn't being used to turn innocuous foodstuffs into deadly poisons, and counting how many times the mains is reversing is as good a job as any. As for the {actually very few} DOS and Windows PCs that genuinely minded the rollover, I was prepared. As well as some simple test programmes, I'd written a pair of DOS batch scripts, one for startup and one for shutdown, that could also be run through windows 95 or 98 even. The idea was that you stored the "real" date in a text file and picked a "safe" date before switching the computer off; then added the number of days the machine must have spent switched off to the stored date at start-up. Fine, unless midnight struck between telling it you were going to shut down and shutting it down, but we all need a bug. {My general experience was that almost all mobos of the time could live through the transition from 1999-12-31 23:59:59 to 2000-01-01 00:00:00 if they were switched on as it actually happened, and would correctly store dates beyond 2000; but would not roll over properly if they were switched off at the critical moment. Therefore, I didn't expect Linux users would have any problems. They all seemed to know what they were doing, anyway.}
But I lost the nerve to do it. Now I'm just sitting here on this bar stool telling you this story about how I almost could have made me a fortune out of some dimwits who had more money than they were smart enough to be looking after, when I should be describing the thrill of the chase, cops on my tail, need to get out of here fast; buying second-hand suits in charity shops, watching myself on the TV news, a dozen times over and larger than life in the window of D.E.R.; travelling for free, hitching lifts or being inhumanly quiet in unlocked bogs on the trains. The way I came out of nowhere and went back just as quick, as though the money hardly weighed me down. And perhaps I could have got in a f
The GPL is all about sharing and reusing code. In fact, it effectively makes "failure to share" a sin. It's one of RMS's core beliefs -- and one of mine -- that there should be no such thing as closed-source software. When all software is Open Source, then there will be nothing to prevent any end being achieved by the best means possible -- because whatever the "official best way" of doing anything is, it will be shared by all. {What if Microsoft discover a security flaw in IE but decide to cover it up rather than patch it? Tough. You'd better hope no crackers find it by accident. What if the Mozilla Project discover a security flaw in Firefox but decide to cover it up rather than patch it? Sooner or later, some independent hacker is bound to discover that same flaw by looking at the code, release a patch, and nobody will trust the Mozilla project ever again.}
The original project was subject to the GPL. Unless the spin-off was started by the principal copyright holder in the original work, or was sufficiently different to be considered a new work in its own right rather than a derivative, then the GPL still applies to the spin-off and all its derivatives -- and will continue to do so until the original work enters the Public Domain, either through lapse of copyright or by court order.
Since the spin-off is subject to the GPL, then you have explicit written permission to copy it in whole or in part and to make derivative works subject to certain conditions. As long as you abide by those conditions, you are acting in accordance with the original licence. In fact, the permissions granted under the GPL are granted by the copyright holder, not the distributor. So if it was your original project, then nobody can stop you distributing it!
That would be fine if any of the provisions were legally enforceable. Unfortunately, they aren't.
For one thing, clicking does not create a contract. Not only is there no way to prove that the clicking party is in a fit state to enter into a contract {might be acting under duress, might be a minor, might be mentally unfit or otherwise have no power of attorney, might not even be human}; but the "contract" would diminish your statutory rights, which nothing can take away. Even the reverse-engineering provisions are unenforceable. You are automatically privy to any secret embodied in any article you rightfully own.
At least it's a start, though.