MS EULA => Sharing is stealing.
BSD => Sharing is not stealing.
GPL => Not sharing is stealing.
The GPL protects freedom for users in the future by limiting certain actions which are deemed harmful to freedom now.
In a society where the ownership of slaves is permitted, you might think a person has more freedom than in a society where owning slaves is not permitted. However, it's more likely in the former society, especially if slavery is practised actively and widely, that the average level of freedom will be lower, since a slave has considerably less freedom than a person who has only been banned from owning slaves.
IMHO it is worth giving up the right to own slaves (or the right to make software non-free) in order to protect the rights of those who might otherwise be enslaved (or made to rely on non-free software). The BSD licence unfortunately does not preserve Freedoms One and Three, since it does not ensure continued access to Source Code. Note that a successful decompiler, if it existed, would enable the Taking by Force of Freedoms One and Three, as Freedoms Zero and Two can be taken by Force today.
No. For that matter, it's gone for good after one time. You don't even have to make sure all the most recent state transitions are the same direction (which would necessitate 2 passes unless all you're doing is EORing whatever's already there with 1; this is time-efficient, but also trivially reversible).
Once upon a time, heads didn't track so precisely as they do today, and there were sometimes minute traces of data either side of the track; and once upon a time, magnetic media had a wide hysteresis loop that showed an obvious difference between, say, a 1 that used to have been a 0 and a 1 that had always been a 1. Since the Gutmann paper was written, data densities have increased by almost four orders of magnitude. Side traces are almost invisible, and each tiny dot of oxide is driven so far into saturation that it's next to impossible to tell whether it has been changed. The single thing most likely to frustrate the authorities' efforts to recover overwritten data by surface analysis would be the sun exploding before they got halfway -- that's the kind of timescale we're talking about. There has never been a documented case of overwritten data being successfully recovered.
If the magnetic remanence effect were reliable, it would almost certainly have been exploited commercially to increase storage density. Until the advent of cheap solid-state RAM in the mid-1970s, all computer storage was magnetic; and every component in a computer system has fluctuated wildly in price. At some point in the past, such a storage device would definitely have been economically attractive. It never materialised, apart from a "trick recording" function on some reel-to-reel tape recorders, allowing you to shut off the current in the erase head {remember energised erase heads?} and superimpose one recording over another. Perhaps to add vocals to an instrumental track you had already laid down. Since (1) you couldn't listen to the old recording as you were making the new one and (2) it sounded like shite anyway, the feature was discontinued. Anybody sufficiently bothered by its omission could always plumb in their own trick-recording switch.
On the other hand, there are several groups with a vested interest in making people believe the fallacy that data is recoverable after multiple overwrites. These include governments (because they want to give enemy governments the fear), intelligence agencies (because they don't want to admit to how they really found the data), data recovery specialists (because they don't want to admit defeat -- more often than not, there are old versions of data kicking around, since Windows only begins overwriting deleted files as a last resort, when it runs out of virgin disk space), HDD manufacturers (because persuading people to destroy perfectly good used HDDs means they will sell more new ones) and Jerry Bruckheimer (because it looks good on CSI).
Depends. If the penalty for not handing over your encryption keys is less than the penalty for whatever offence the evidence would pin on you if it were decrypted, you might be better off going with that.
There's also a (very slim, admittedly) chance that Labour will be voted out at the next election (May 2010 at the absolute latest..... unless Gordon Brown changes the rules.....) and the incoming government might re-introduce a certain quaint, old-fashioned concept called "innocent until proven guilty".
One of these perhaps. In series with the brown lead from the mains cable, and don't put any insulation sleeves over the terminals (you want anyone touching it to get a surprise or 230).
Electric ones aren't. They make your food taste awful. I can definitely taste the difference between gas-cooked and electric-cooked food, and I'm not at all keen on the latter.
Why the hell do you need a Firefox extension to protect yourself from Phishing?
It's simple enough: NEVER, EVER respond to an e-mail purporting to be from a bank. If your bank really need to contact you, they will find a way. If there's really a problem with your account, you will have to visit a branch to sort it out anyway. You NEVER have to "confirm your details". Barring special circumstances, there are only two valid reasons for ever visiting a bank; paying in money through the HITW machine, and drawing out money through the HITW machine.
Also, prefer postal orders to cheques when paying for goods you have ordered. They can't be traced back any further than the post office where they were sold (which need not even be in your own town). You can pay for your postal order using a cheque, but cash is always best. Especially coins, which don't have serial numbers. Don't use very small denominations, though, as other customers behind you in the post office queue may remember being held up by someone fart-arsing about with coppers.
I just use MySQL and mpg321 to deal with all my music cataloguing and playing needs. Sort of like
$ mpg321 `echo "SELECT filename FROM songs WHERE artist LIKE 'kylie%' ORDER BY date" | mysql songs`
Or, for syncing,
$ mount/mp3player $ rm -f/mp3player/*mp3 $ cp `echo "SELECT filename FROM songs WHERE artist LIKE 'kylie%' ORDER BY date" | mysql songs`/mp3player/ $ sync && umount/mp3player
I lost all respect for Dan Brown within the first few pages of Digital Fortress. Not only does he clearly know nothing about cryptography, he even managed to get the name of the Spanish coin wrong.
It probably won't work with my current or next computers (currently Debian; next most likely to be dual boot Mac OS / Kubuntu). And anyway, I have a telephone with a perfectly good MP3 player and USB mass storage. Unfortunately it's a Sony Ericsson; but I reckon I got the last laugh on them anyway since I discovered (in parallel with many others, so I can't take full credit) how to rip off CDs with the Sony Rootkit, on a PC that had already been infected. (*cough* Slax *cough*)
Re:Same with the ipods back when they hit 1 mil.
on
A Million Zunes Sold
·
· Score: 1
It amazed me that you didn't start seeing cheap and nasty cassette players with white headphones when the iPod first came out. With a built-in clock with a digital display just so they could use the word DIGITAL in big lettering and it not be a completely false claim.
If nothing else, it would have disappointed a few muggers.
They have taken the minimal-risk route so far, and are only offering Linux with known-compatible hardware. If anything, this is merely exposing the level of incompatible hardware out there.
Now, somewhere between the North Atlantic Ocean and Asia lies a fantastic place where they still have laws preferring the consumer over the corporation, and where "anti-competitive behaviour" (such as deliberately preventing you from watching at home on your multi-standard {PAL/SECAM/NTSC/SVHS/RGB, 625/525 line} telly a DVD that you bought and paid for somewhere else) is considered a sin. So far, the closed driver issue has passed mostly beneath their radar (or over their heads). Watch for an ear about to prick up.....
Sounds like the kind of radiant gas fire common in British living rooms. A burner at the bottom heats an unglazed, vertical ceramic surface with an array of protruding pimples to red heat. This gives off IR. A heat exchanger cools the combustion products and releases this heat back into the room before they are drawn up the chimney (or, if you have no chimney or don't want to risk it with CO, out of the balanced flue).
Anyone within line of sight of the radiant elements feels warmth from absorbing infra-red radiation. The air in the room is also warmed. In a chimney-flue model, some of the air drawn in at the bottom ends up going up the chimbley while the rest is emitted from the top vents. in a Unigas model, the combustion chamber is isolated from the room. The flue vent exposes equal areas of intake and exhaust duct to the outside air (usually they are coaxial with the intake outside the exhaust), so the effect of outside air pressure cancels itself out whichever way the wind is blowing.
You can detect the IR by photographing the fire (with an IR-sensitive camera, but most are) after shutting off the gas. The radiant elements should continue glowing brightly (at a wavelength too long for the eye) for a few minutes.
But you don't have to learn it. You just have to type it exactly as it was written (if necessary, the support person can dictate it to you over the phone, one letter at a time). The computer neither knows nor cares whether you understood what you were doing.
Also, people are in the habit of royally arsing up their GUIs -- they routinely do things like moving the menu bar to the side, changing the order of menu options or selecting a language that they don't speak and so can't see to put it back to how it used to have been. The command line cuts through all the point-and-drool baby-talk bullshit and gets straight to the point.
The command line is not as bad as some people make it out to be. No, really, it's not. Maybe you just had a bad experience with MS-DOS?
This little program (originally part of something I was writing to fill in bogus details on phishing sites) allows you to get all the credit card numbers you could possibly want!
#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my $ccnum = ""; my ($luhn_sum, $digit, $mung); my @munged = (0,2,4,6,8,1,3,5,7,9); if (rand >.5) { $ccnum = "5"; # mastercard always starts with 5 } else { $ccnum = "4"; # visa always starts with 4 }; foreach (1..14) { $digit = int ((rand) * 10); $ccnum.= $digit; }; # Now we have 15 digits; only need the check digit $luhn_sum = 0; $mung = (length $ccnum) % 2; foreach (split//, $ccnum) { $digit = $mung ? $munged[$_] : $_; $luhn_sum += $digit; $mung = 1 - $mung; }; $digit = (10 - $luhn_sum % 10) % 10; $ccnum.= $digit; print "$ccnum\n"; exit 0;
Of course, the "bare" credit card numbers by themselves will be bollocks without CVV numbers (3 random digits), expiry dates (a random month and year up to 18 months in the future) and cardholders' names and addresses (google "curriculum vitae.doc" for plenty of namers and addresses).
The point is that limited disclosure, as practised by some hardware manufacturers, is just wrong. It prevents:
Kernel developers from studying the interactions between components
Systems integrators from making informed decisions regarding hardware and software compatibility
Users of non-80x86 Linux systems from making use of hardware devices
Ordinary users of standard 80x86 Linux systems from benefitting from the general efforts of the wider community
Developers of non-Linux OSes from supporting hardware
Ordinary users of standard 80x86 Linux systems from using hardware that they rightfully own, if the vendor decides to cease support across a kernel ABI change
Everyone from making full use, perhaps in ways not originally envisaged by the vendor, of hardware that they rightfully own
Hardware manufacturers from selling units.
Now, in a democracy, the idea is that we have laws which -- hopefully -- prevent people from doing harmful things. Sometimes it's necessary to curtail one person's freedom in order to protect another's freedom -- for instance, the owner of a knife is not allowed to go around stabbing people, because my right to not get stabbed overrides your right to stick your knife in whomever you like. And not everyone has the physical strength to defend themself against an attacker armed with a knife, so they can call on the law for assistance. Such a law might be seen as harming the interests of knife manufacturers (because they probably would sell more knives if it were legal to go attacking people with knives) and body-armour manufacturers (because they would sell more anti-stab vests), but the simple fact is that the set of {people who do not want to get stabbed} outnumbers the set of {people who want to go around stabbing people}.
By a similar token, not every computer user has the wherewithal to figure out a complex piece of hardware if the manufacturer is stubbornly refusing to provide information that they need. Manufacturers falsely believe they are benefitting from this situation (the harsh fact is their competitors are almost certainly reverse-engineering their products, and probably with better resources than Fred-in-the-shed can muster); but the set of {people who would stand to benefit from full disclosure} outnumbers the set of {people who actually or perceivedly benefit from the status quo}.
Hardware manufacturers might not like it at first, but they're going to have to get used to it. In the long run, Mandatory Full Disclosure -- although it will require the force of law to achieve it -- will turn out to be better for everyone (not just "ordinary" users) than the quick and dirty bodge of a stable kernel ABI and closed-source, binary-only drivers. In the meantime, of course we need to continue with the reverse-engineering efforts and the direct targeting of manufacturers, but we also need to push just as hard for our rights to be enshrined in the law of the land.
I'm sure people in other countries do have MPs, even if they call them by a different name. I'm just too lazy to type "elected representative in your national government".
Any country whose legal system is based on English Common Law (that includes the USA and Her Majesty's Commonwealth) ought to have something similar. Basically, it's a simple property right: if you are the rightful owner of an article, then you are by virtue of ownership privy to any secret embodied in that article. I'm not sufficiently familiar with the old Napoleonic Code (which is the basis of the law in most of Mainland Europe) to know whether it says anything similar.
I'm suggesting a new law because it's generally easier to pass a new law than to enforcing a long-neglected old law.
There are two ways to do anything. There's the quick and dirty way (with the potential to come back and bite you in the arse), and the proper way. The proper way, for reasons which have been demonstrated elsewhere ad nauseam, is to prefer Open Source drivers. Keeping a stable kernel ABI just for the purpose of allowing closed source drivers is the quick and dirty way.
The point is, you never know when you may have to update your kernel. If a huge kernel vulnerability has managed to hide under the radar for a long time, then it suddenly surfaces; or if a new mathematical technique is discovered which makes a kernel exploit previously deemed impossible possible, and the only way to fix it must necessarily break the kernel ABI (perhaps because the vulnerability is within the ABI layer itself), you'll have two choices: update your kernel or stay off the Internet.
Now suppose you have an old-ish, but nonetheless satisfactorily working, piece of hardware with closed source drivers, so you are utterly dependent upon the manufacturer for driver updates. If the manufacturer decides not to release an updated driver for your card, you're -- not to put too fine a point on it -- fucked.
If you want your hardware to Just Work, your best bet -- in the long term -- is to write a polite letter to your Elected Representative and request a new law obliging hardware manufacturers to release specifications. From the point of view of ordinary users, there's little practical difference between that, and a stable kernel ABI and closed source drivers (unless and until the above scenario occurs). From the points of view of kernel developers, systems integrators, users of specialist, non-80x86 hardware, developers and -- in the end -- even hardware manufacturers, things will be a lot better with mandatory disclosure.
Your hardware continuing to work, even following important changes over which you may have no control, is entirely contingent upon somebody having access to the driver Source Code.
Beneficial to everyone! Beneficial to kernel developers, because they can study the interactions between components in a way that is only possible with access to Source Code. Beneficial to systems integrators, because they know that they can specify X and Y hardware with Z and W software and it will all just work together. Beneficial to ordinary users, because the Grand Pooh-bahs of High Magick can work on any problems that may exist. Beneficial to users of specialist, non-80x86 hardware, because with Source Code they can compile drivers for their systems. Beneficial to hardware manufacturers, because they will shift more product. Beneficial to developers (and by extension users) of non-Linux operating systems, because they will have an easier time rewriting drivers from scratch with the aid of some Source Code even if they can't use that code directly.
And yes, beneficial to purists, because the kernel remains i-tal.
..... a problem which only arises because the existing law which already obliges manufacturers to disclose details to hardware owners is not being enforced. Write to your MP and ask for a new law, obliging hardware manufacturers to release, generally and gratis (or at any rate, for no more than the cost of copying and delivery) sufficient documentation so that independent programmers can write drivers for their hardware as a precondition before it is allowed onto the market. Independent expert review of the documentation would be a requirement alongside electrical safety / EMC certification.
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Even simpler explanation:
MS EULA => Sharing is stealing.
BSD => Sharing is not stealing.
GPL => Not sharing is stealing.
The GPL protects freedom for users in the future by limiting certain actions which are deemed harmful to freedom now.
In a society where the ownership of slaves is permitted, you might think a person has more freedom than in a society where owning slaves is not permitted. However, it's more likely in the former society, especially if slavery is practised actively and widely, that the average level of freedom will be lower, since a slave has considerably less freedom than a person who has only been banned from owning slaves.
IMHO it is worth giving up the right to own slaves (or the right to make software non-free) in order to protect the rights of those who might otherwise be enslaved (or made to rely on non-free software). The BSD licence unfortunately does not preserve Freedoms One and Three, since it does not ensure continued access to Source Code. Note that a successful decompiler, if it existed, would enable the Taking by Force of Freedoms One and Three, as Freedoms Zero and Two can be taken by Force today.
See this: Freedom or Power.
No. For that matter, it's gone for good after one time. You don't even have to make sure all the most recent state transitions are the same direction (which would necessitate 2 passes unless all you're doing is EORing whatever's already there with 1; this is time-efficient, but also trivially reversible).
Once upon a time, heads didn't track so precisely as they do today, and there were sometimes minute traces of data either side of the track; and once upon a time, magnetic media had a wide hysteresis loop that showed an obvious difference between, say, a 1 that used to have been a 0 and a 1 that had always been a 1. Since the Gutmann paper was written, data densities have increased by almost four orders of magnitude. Side traces are almost invisible, and each tiny dot of oxide is driven so far into saturation that it's next to impossible to tell whether it has been changed. The single thing most likely to frustrate the authorities' efforts to recover overwritten data by surface analysis would be the sun exploding before they got halfway -- that's the kind of timescale we're talking about. There has never been a documented case of overwritten data being successfully recovered.
If the magnetic remanence effect were reliable, it would almost certainly have been exploited commercially to increase storage density. Until the advent of cheap solid-state RAM in the mid-1970s, all computer storage was magnetic; and every component in a computer system has fluctuated wildly in price. At some point in the past, such a storage device would definitely have been economically attractive. It never materialised, apart from a "trick recording" function on some reel-to-reel tape recorders, allowing you to shut off the current in the erase head {remember energised erase heads?} and superimpose one recording over another. Perhaps to add vocals to an instrumental track you had already laid down. Since (1) you couldn't listen to the old recording as you were making the new one and (2) it sounded like shite anyway, the feature was discontinued. Anybody sufficiently bothered by its omission could always plumb in their own trick-recording switch.
On the other hand, there are several groups with a vested interest in making people believe the fallacy that data is recoverable after multiple overwrites. These include governments (because they want to give enemy governments the fear), intelligence agencies (because they don't want to admit to how they really found the data), data recovery specialists (because they don't want to admit defeat -- more often than not, there are old versions of data kicking around, since Windows only begins overwriting deleted files as a last resort, when it runs out of virgin disk space), HDD manufacturers (because persuading people to destroy perfectly good used HDDs means they will sell more new ones) and Jerry Bruckheimer (because it looks good on CSI).
Depends. If the penalty for not handing over your encryption keys is less than the penalty for whatever offence the evidence would pin on you if it were decrypted, you might be better off going with that.
..... unless Gordon Brown changes the rules .....) and the incoming government might re-introduce a certain quaint, old-fashioned concept called "innocent until proven guilty".
There's also a (very slim, admittedly) chance that Labour will be voted out at the next election (May 2010 at the absolute latest
One of these perhaps. In series with the brown lead from the mains cable, and don't put any insulation sleeves over the terminals (you want anyone touching it to get a surprise or 230).
Electric ones aren't. They make your food taste awful. I can definitely taste the difference between gas-cooked and electric-cooked food, and I'm not at all keen on the latter.
Why the hell do you need a Firefox extension to protect yourself from Phishing?
It's simple enough: NEVER, EVER respond to an e-mail purporting to be from a bank. If your bank really need to contact you, they will find a way. If there's really a problem with your account, you will have to visit a branch to sort it out anyway. You NEVER have to "confirm your details". Barring special circumstances, there are only two valid reasons for ever visiting a bank; paying in money through the HITW machine, and drawing out money through the HITW machine.
Also, prefer postal orders to cheques when paying for goods you have ordered. They can't be traced back any further than the post office where they were sold (which need not even be in your own town). You can pay for your postal order using a cheque, but cash is always best. Especially coins, which don't have serial numbers. Don't use very small denominations, though, as other customers behind you in the post office queue may remember being held up by someone fart-arsing about with coppers.
The carbon was already offset when the trees were grown. Or were you asleep in third year GCSE chemistry?
I lost all respect for Dan Brown within the first few pages of Digital Fortress. Not only does he clearly know nothing about cryptography, he even managed to get the name of the Spanish coin wrong.
The CO2 was already accounted for when the trees used to make the books were grown.
It probably won't work with my current or next computers (currently Debian; next most likely to be dual boot Mac OS / Kubuntu). And anyway, I have a telephone with a perfectly good MP3 player and USB mass storage. Unfortunately it's a Sony Ericsson; but I reckon I got the last laugh on them anyway since I discovered (in parallel with many others, so I can't take full credit) how to rip off CDs with the Sony Rootkit, on a PC that had already been infected. (*cough* Slax *cough*)
It amazed me that you didn't start seeing cheap and nasty cassette players with white headphones when the iPod first came out. With a built-in clock with a digital display just so they could use the word DIGITAL in big lettering and it not be a completely false claim.
If nothing else, it would have disappointed a few muggers.
Yes, indeed. Dell are to be commended for this.
.....
They have taken the minimal-risk route so far, and are only offering Linux with known-compatible hardware. If anything, this is merely exposing the level of incompatible hardware out there.
Now, somewhere between the North Atlantic Ocean and Asia lies a fantastic place where they still have laws preferring the consumer over the corporation, and where "anti-competitive behaviour" (such as deliberately preventing you from watching at home on your multi-standard {PAL/SECAM/NTSC/SVHS/RGB, 625/525 line} telly a DVD that you bought and paid for somewhere else) is considered a sin. So far, the closed driver issue has passed mostly beneath their radar (or over their heads). Watch for an ear about to prick up
Sounds like the kind of radiant gas fire common in British living rooms. A burner at the bottom heats an unglazed, vertical ceramic surface with an array of protruding pimples to red heat. This gives off IR. A heat exchanger cools the combustion products and releases this heat back into the room before they are drawn up the chimney (or, if you have no chimney or don't want to risk it with CO, out of the balanced flue).
Anyone within line of sight of the radiant elements feels warmth from absorbing infra-red radiation. The air in the room is also warmed. In a chimney-flue model, some of the air drawn in at the bottom ends up going up the chimbley while the rest is emitted from the top vents. in a Unigas model, the combustion chamber is isolated from the room. The flue vent exposes equal areas of intake and exhaust duct to the outside air (usually they are coaxial with the intake outside the exhaust), so the effect of outside air pressure cancels itself out whichever way the wind is blowing.
You can detect the IR by photographing the fire (with an IR-sensitive camera, but most are) after shutting off the gas. The radiant elements should continue glowing brightly (at a wavelength too long for the eye) for a few minutes.
But you don't have to learn it. You just have to type it exactly as it was written (if necessary, the support person can dictate it to you over the phone, one letter at a time). The computer neither knows nor cares whether you understood what you were doing.
Also, people are in the habit of royally arsing up their GUIs -- they routinely do things like moving the menu bar to the side, changing the order of menu options or selecting a language that they don't speak and so can't see to put it back to how it used to have been. The command line cuts through all the point-and-drool baby-talk bullshit and gets straight to the point.
The command line is not as bad as some people make it out to be. No, really, it's not. Maybe you just had a bad experience with MS-DOS?
Why -- can't you spell "sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop", or something?
No, it's not God's fault. Blame whoever created God.
This little program (originally part of something I was writing to fill in bogus details on phishing sites) allows you to get all the credit card numbers you could possibly want!
.5) { .= $digit; //, $ccnum) { .= $digit;
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $ccnum = "";
my ($luhn_sum, $digit, $mung);
my @munged = (0,2,4,6,8,1,3,5,7,9);
if (rand >
$ccnum = "5"; # mastercard always starts with 5
}
else {
$ccnum = "4"; # visa always starts with 4
};
foreach (1..14) {
$digit = int ((rand) * 10);
$ccnum
};
# Now we have 15 digits; only need the check digit
$luhn_sum = 0;
$mung = (length $ccnum) % 2;
foreach (split
$digit = $mung ? $munged[$_] : $_;
$luhn_sum += $digit;
$mung = 1 - $mung;
};
$digit = (10 - $luhn_sum % 10) % 10;
$ccnum
print "$ccnum\n";
exit 0;
Of course, the "bare" credit card numbers by themselves will be bollocks without CVV numbers (3 random digits), expiry dates (a random month and year up to 18 months in the future) and cardholders' names and addresses (google "curriculum vitae.doc" for plenty of namers and addresses).
- Kernel developers from studying the interactions between components
- Systems integrators from making informed decisions regarding hardware and software compatibility
- Users of non-80x86 Linux systems from making use of hardware devices
- Ordinary users of standard 80x86 Linux systems from benefitting from the general efforts of the wider community
- Developers of non-Linux OSes from supporting hardware
- Ordinary users of standard 80x86 Linux systems from using hardware that they rightfully own, if the vendor decides to cease support across a kernel ABI change
- Everyone from making full use, perhaps in ways not originally envisaged by the vendor, of hardware that they rightfully own
- Hardware manufacturers from selling units.
Now, in a democracy, the idea is that we have laws which -- hopefully -- prevent people from doing harmful things. Sometimes it's necessary to curtail one person's freedom in order to protect another's freedom -- for instance, the owner of a knife is not allowed to go around stabbing people, because my right to not get stabbed overrides your right to stick your knife in whomever you like. And not everyone has the physical strength to defend themself against an attacker armed with a knife, so they can call on the law for assistance. Such a law might be seen as harming the interests of knife manufacturers (because they probably would sell more knives if it were legal to go attacking people with knives) and body-armour manufacturers (because they would sell more anti-stab vests), but the simple fact is that the set of {people who do not want to get stabbed} outnumbers the set of {people who want to go around stabbing people}.By a similar token, not every computer user has the wherewithal to figure out a complex piece of hardware if the manufacturer is stubbornly refusing to provide information that they need. Manufacturers falsely believe they are benefitting from this situation (the harsh fact is their competitors are almost certainly reverse-engineering their products, and probably with better resources than Fred-in-the-shed can muster); but the set of {people who would stand to benefit from full disclosure} outnumbers the set of {people who actually or perceivedly benefit from the status quo}.
Hardware manufacturers might not like it at first, but they're going to have to get used to it. In the long run, Mandatory Full Disclosure -- although it will require the force of law to achieve it -- will turn out to be better for everyone (not just "ordinary" users) than the quick and dirty bodge of a stable kernel ABI and closed-source, binary-only drivers. In the meantime, of course we need to continue with the reverse-engineering efforts and the direct targeting of manufacturers, but we also need to push just as hard for our rights to be enshrined in the law of the land.
I'm sure people in other countries do have MPs, even if they call them by a different name. I'm just too lazy to type "elected representative in your national government".
Any country whose legal system is based on English Common Law (that includes the USA and Her Majesty's Commonwealth) ought to have something similar. Basically, it's a simple property right: if you are the rightful owner of an article, then you are by virtue of ownership privy to any secret embodied in that article. I'm not sufficiently familiar with the old Napoleonic Code (which is the basis of the law in most of Mainland Europe) to know whether it says anything similar.
I'm suggesting a new law because it's generally easier to pass a new law than to enforcing a long-neglected old law.
There are two ways to do anything. There's the quick and dirty way (with the potential to come back and bite you in the arse), and the proper way. The proper way, for reasons which have been demonstrated elsewhere ad nauseam, is to prefer Open Source drivers. Keeping a stable kernel ABI just for the purpose of allowing closed source drivers is the quick and dirty way.
The point is, you never know when you may have to update your kernel. If a huge kernel vulnerability has managed to hide under the radar for a long time, then it suddenly surfaces; or if a new mathematical technique is discovered which makes a kernel exploit previously deemed impossible possible, and the only way to fix it must necessarily break the kernel ABI (perhaps because the vulnerability is within the ABI layer itself), you'll have two choices: update your kernel or stay off the Internet.
Now suppose you have an old-ish, but nonetheless satisfactorily working, piece of hardware with closed source drivers, so you are utterly dependent upon the manufacturer for driver updates. If the manufacturer decides not to release an updated driver for your card, you're -- not to put too fine a point on it -- fucked.
If you want your hardware to Just Work, your best bet -- in the long term -- is to write a polite letter to your Elected Representative and request a new law obliging hardware manufacturers to release specifications. From the point of view of ordinary users, there's little practical difference between that, and a stable kernel ABI and closed source drivers (unless and until the above scenario occurs). From the points of view of kernel developers, systems integrators, users of specialist, non-80x86 hardware, developers and -- in the end -- even hardware manufacturers, things will be a lot better with mandatory disclosure.
Your hardware continuing to work, even following important changes over which you may have no control, is entirely contingent upon somebody having access to the driver Source Code.
Beneficial to everyone! Beneficial to kernel developers, because they can study the interactions between components in a way that is only possible with access to Source Code. Beneficial to systems integrators, because they know that they can specify X and Y hardware with Z and W software and it will all just work together. Beneficial to ordinary users, because the Grand Pooh-bahs of High Magick can work on any problems that may exist. Beneficial to users of specialist, non-80x86 hardware, because with Source Code they can compile drivers for their systems. Beneficial to hardware manufacturers, because they will shift more product. Beneficial to developers (and by extension users) of non-Linux operating systems, because they will have an easier time rewriting drivers from scratch with the aid of some Source Code even if they can't use that code directly.
And yes, beneficial to purists, because the kernel remains i-tal.
..... a problem which only arises because the existing law which already obliges manufacturers to disclose details to hardware owners is not being enforced. Write to your MP and ask for a new law, obliging hardware manufacturers to release, generally and gratis (or at any rate, for no more than the cost of copying and delivery) sufficient documentation so that independent programmers can write drivers for their hardware as a precondition before it is allowed onto the market. Independent expert review of the documentation would be a requirement alongside electrical safety / EMC certification.