No. Closed Source doesn't do it better, and that's the whole point. What these people need includes the freedom to develop software for themselves, precisely in order to break their dependency on us. As I mentioned several posts above, there's no point in teaching someone to fish if they then depend on you for the bait they use. Open Source is the only way to set the users free, and it's the users we should be concerned about. The mission is not to get people turned on to existing software as quickly as possible but at the expense of some of their freedom. The mission is to end the Age of Scarcity and usher in the New Age of Plenty -- where there will be no place for Closed Source software. Then and only then will the First Industrial Revolution be finished.
As to the rest of the points you raised, I didn't bother to respond because frankly, they're mainly irrelevant. Prototypes often don't look anything like the finished design. The price will come down over time, once local factories are established.
And there's actually a very good reason to reinvent the wheel, sometimes: if somebody else has already patented the wheel, and seeking to hold you to ransom by demanding royalties, then it might be better in the long run for you to invent a different kind of wheel; at least, until the patent on the original expires.
It has to be Open Source. That much is non-negotiable. Anything proprietary will only keep the Developing World dependent on the Developed World -- which in turn will keep them from ever truly joining the Developed World.
They want to create a means to educate. See, huge, vast libraries of educational software exist under Windows. Even educational frameworks that are adaptable to new educational software exist and are available for free or cheap.
But is any of that software localised to these people's languages? Chances are no, in which case it's going to need to be re-compiled anyway. And it's not a lot of extra effort do that for an Open Source OS such as GNU/Linux or one of the BSDs.
Actually, language isn't the only localisation issue. I can't quite see anybody in the Third World needing to know the capitals of the states of the United States of America or the names, birthdays and inside leg measurements {divided by 2.54 at that} of the past US Presidents.
And that's even assuming they would open up the Source Code. Because without Source Code, it would be useless; the dependency on the Developed Nations would still exist. {Obviously, people will be dependent on experienced programmers from the Developed World in the beginning. But in an Open Source environment, they will be able to apply everything they learn, and one day not be dependent on the West anymore.}
Such offerings DO NOT EXIST under linux. This is an area Linux is very weak in, and has been acknowleged, and is trying to be worked on - Edubuntu, k12linux.org, etc. But it still doesn't match the 15+ years of Windows software that has accumulated.
That software will still be useless without proper localisation and Source Code. And it's going to take a lot less than fifteen years {more like 25 years: the BBC Model B, standard educational microcomputer in the UK, came out in 1982} to re-create it. Plus, I'll guess most of it is obsolete anyway -- there's probably a maximum of three years' work, including overcoming the particular challenges imposed by the hardware.
While Negroponte has a device, he doesn't have the software yet. Had he picked Windows, he'd be almost there with the software.
Being mainly Closed Source, the software you're talking about probably is quite sloppily written. Will it run well on what is, by necessity, a lean machine? Really we come back to the same argument against equipping users in the Third World with our cast-off computer equipment; it sounds like a nice idea but it's unworkable in practice.
We'd do better to start again from scratch. New machine, clean slate. Reprogram according to the machine's strengths and weaknesses. Make it all Open Source, so that anybody who discovers they have an aptitude for programming can "get up and have a go". Eventually, there will be factories out there; making the new, improved versions of these things, more locally to the point of use, and providing decent jobs.
It's really a massive project. If it's twice as much effort as shipping out a few containers of used PCs and software, we'll have got off lightly. The returns on that investment are going to be staggering. What we are looking at is potentially the end of the Economics of Scarcity, and the ushering in of a new Age of Plenty -- which was always the logical conclusion of IR1.
I thought we were trying to educate the children...
One of the goals must be to break the dependence of the Developing World on the Developed World. Otherwise, they will never be playing anything but second fiddle. And we've already made all the mistakes, so they should have an easier time than we did.
Educating people includes teaching people how computers work. Not just how to change the font in Microsoft Word or draw bell-ends in Paint Shop Pro or prevent chip pan fires with Welephant. How to create their own software. For that, you need a programming language and you need to read other people's Source Code. Please don't think this is cheating. You learn to be a writer by reading other people's books. You
Is signing a cell phone contract for 2 years to get a free phone anti-competitive? Is signing a satellite TV contract for 2 years to get $1500 in free hardware anti-competitive? You made the decision.
If I buy an Orange mobile on a two year contract, that does not stop me going out during those two years and buying a Vodafone mobile. If I sign a satellite TV contract with Sky, that doesn't keep me from signing a cable TV contract with NTL. I never promised those companies exclusive use of my money.
If you're saying that if I buy your software, I can't replace it with anybody else's software; or that if I work for you then I can't work for anyone else, then that is against EU law.
Yes, it's wrong of Microsoft as it's wrong of you. If you were in Mainland Europe, the "agreements" your customers had signed would not be worth the paper they were printed upon: anti-competitive practices are well and truly illegal, and damn right too.
Microsoft are abusing their dominant position, which they only reached in the first place by abusing a dominant position.
If it had been powered by Windows -- or any proprietary, closed-source software for that matter -- it would have created a dependency on that software. Dependency per se is what is considered bad here. If the developing world is ever to develop, it must be given the autonomy to develop for itself, without anybody else's say-so. Whatever problems this thing is meant to solve {can you honestly say you knew what a CD-ROM drive would be useful for, the first time you saw one? When you saw a ZX81 for the first time, could you anticipate the full extent of IR2?} won't be solved any better or faster if its users can't program it themselves. "Field maintainability" in the context of a general-purpose computer specifically includes the ability to write programs that access every one of its features. Anything else would be like giving people knives for free, then insisting they pay you to sharpen them whenever they got blunt.
Employing local programmers to create a solution to a particular problem might start out more expensive than buying pret-a-courir software from overseas; but you have to remember that local programmers pay local taxes, shop in local stores, take their families to visit local tourist attractions and contribute to local good causes. So, that money stays in the local economy -- as opposed to being permanently exported overseas, making the rich richer.
To use the "giving someone a fish vs. teaching them how to fish" cliché, Microsoft et al want to teach people to fish -- but only as a reason to sell them bait. Negroponte's initiative starts out with teaching people how to fish and ensuring they can get their own bait.
That sounds like the sort of thing we would have done using a pencil, ruler and graph paper when I was doing my O-levels. You plot each variable against each of the others, shade in all the obviously unacceptable regions, and anywhere within whatever is left is OK.
Having said that, if you already know somehow which traps are least likely to be catching rabbits, the most logical thing to do is move them! Viewed in this light, this is an example of an Unrealistic Problem.
Bad idea. The water closet might be appropriate for rainy countries, but it's totally impractical to use four to six litres of water per slash / dump in most of Africa. Dry sanitation has to be the way forward. Once you have killed all the germs in the shit, what remains can be used as a fertiliser {though preferably not for anything intended for human consumption -- the food chain exists for a reason}.
There's really nothing to research on AIDS. Slip on a rubber Johnny every time you have a shag. Inhale heroin, don't inject it; if you must inject it, don't share works. Avoid contact with blood, sperm and vaginal secretions of anyone not known to be free of infection. HIV cannot pass through unbroken skin and is killed by almost anything stronger than water {even a HIV sufferer's urine will kill the virus}.
The real nub of the problem stems from those in positions of power having some kind of distaste for perfectly natural human activities, like having sex and getting high.
The Freeplay radio model of which I have an example is actually fairly field-maintainable. The casing is transparent. There is a tray covering the clockspring, fastened with screws from the inside; so when you separate the two halves of the outer casing, that scary ribbon of razor-sharp steel is still contained, requiring a deliberate act to expose it. The drive belt does perish and need replacing after a few years. The PCB looks like it was hand-populated and is built using mainly discrete components. The copper lands are big enough not to require the use of a temperature controlled, needle-point soldering iron for working on them.
I believe that with just a power supply, a schematic diagram and a crystal earphone {certainly more affordable than an oscilloscope, and surprisingly useful for troubleshooting circuits working in the audio frequency range} it wouldn't be too hard to fault-find the Freeplay radio. After doing a few, you could easily get used to the most common faults. A repair shop serving a large enough base could keep a few whole spare boards in stock, on a swap-and-repair-later basis {the removed ones being repaired for re-use later as replacements}.
Actually, as far as the security angle goes, it's for post-mortem purposes as much as anything else. If anything does go terribly wrong after deployment, at least we can trace back and fix it -- and then release a patch. Initial audit is little more than taking a quick peek at the code in an editor, compiling it on an isolated machine, running it as a non-privileged user and seeing if it does what it was expected to. Which is not much, but it's still more than we could ever do with Closed Source. For every bad guy out there who would write a piece of malicious software and release it Open Source {and that really isn't as easy as it sounds; most of the people who are good enough programmers to write Open Source software actually have better things todo with their time than mindless vandalism}, there are at least ten good guys who would put a stop to it.
But that's not to say that there aren't other benefits to our insistence on Open Source software: for one, we have nothing to fear from the licencing gestapo, which is a huge bonus. For another, we aren't constrained to work the exact same way someone else thinks we should work -- instead, we can modify the software to suit the way we work. For example: instead of downloading a "standard form" letter from a server, editing it in a word processor, printing it out and faxing it, we have only to fill in a web form and click the submit button -- and a neatly-formatted fax comes out of the customer's fax machine. If we get a positive response, the details are already there waiting to be recalled; and we need only click another link to transfer them to the customer database.
Anyway, if the staff want hacking tools, they don't have to download them off the Internet. We've got them all right here on our workstations:)
At my workplace, you are allowed to install any software you like on your workstation..... as long as the IT department have seen the source code.
But then, we do have a company policy actually preferring manual methods over closed-source software..... we probably are the exception rather than the rule.
In order to be acceptable, Open Source DRM must preserve statutory Fair Dealing rights, the eventual expiration of copyright protection {unchangeable once set, in order to guard against the retroactive application of a new or changed law which would be a violation of the UN declaration on human rights, UK Human Rights Act and US constitution} and also allow for some mechanism to accept special permission. Example: the band, Ocean Colour Scene, granted me verbal permission {in a drunken conversation nonetheless; but the fact of us all being pissed at the time won't make any difference in a court of law} to copy any of their albums for my personal use and my friends and family. There would have to be some method for people in similar situations to inform the DRM system that they have additional rights over and above those already granted to them by the Law of the Land. This must be built-into the software from day one, to guard against the {very real, in the prevailing economic climate} possibility that the company could go out of business and effectively take your statutory rights with them.
It would also be nice to see a legal requirement that any DRM system which fails to preserve a user's full set of statutory rights would be deemed an ineffective technological protection measure {hence, open season!}
So how do you get an RGB signal into your TV sets, then? RGB is what goes straight to the tube / panel -- anything else needs processing and gives a noticeably inferior picture. Does every manufacturer have their own proprietary connector or something?
I guess some expensive, non-CRT TV sets can probably tolerate the scan rates used by PC monitors. All TV sets bigger than 35cm. have RGB SCART inputs; but these are expecting TV-style, negative-going composite sync, so you might have to do some rudimentary signal conditioning {use a 2903 dual comparator, which has open-collector outputs that can safely be wired together, and a pull-up resistor -- you can pick up 12 volts somewhere like a disc drive power cable. While you are at it, pull pins 8 and 16 of the SCART socket high, to select RGB mode}.
If your graphics card will sync down to 50Hz interlaced, it should theoretically be able to display on any set with an RGB input -- if you can create the appropriate modeline. TV sets are generally more resistant to out-of-spec sync rates than monitors, since they have to tolerate all manner of weirdy shit inbetween stations.
How about using a kind of photographic printing process? Detect pits and lands on master disc using laser. Cut out pits corresponding to lands, leaving lands corresponding to pits, in metal stamper. Stamp out pattern of pits and lands in plastic blanks. Metallise stamped surface. Add protective layer.
You don't need to crack any encryption, much less touch an analogue signal. This method is obviously only good for large runs.....
It's the person on the inside that counts. If you have a problem with what I'm wearing, it's your problem. Just like it's your problem if you have a problem with the colour of my skin or what's between my legs. It's your problem, and you don't have a right to take it out on me.
But, some people just have the idea in their minds that there are two types of people in the world, good enough and not good enough, and that they can be told apart visually. That idea can manifest itself as sexism, racism, homophobia..... or clothesism.
Just because a person can change their clothing more easily than they can change their sex or the colour of their skin, does not mean that this is legitimate grounds for discrimination. In fact, I would say the opposite: as long as the sin of clothesism is perpetrated, there will exist some justification in some people's minds for racism, sexism and all the other -isms out there.
The obvious answer is to unify the sex discrimination, race relations, disability discrimination, gender preference discrimination and all other similar laws into one new law, making it a criminal offence to discriminate against any person on any grounds beyond aptitude for a particular endeavour. Your would not say to a black employee, "Look, can you try to stay out of the way this afternoon, please? We've got some important new potential customers coming around, but they're Ku Klux Klan. It's not going to do us any favours if they see you here."
I'm not sure I buy this... If this old, broken software is being used for a critical business application, who in their right mind is messing with it by upgrading the OS?
Anyone who used to be running said software {which was written by a company which is now probably out of business -- or, if they are still around, they are more than likely not supporting it, instead touting a new and incompatible product} on a Windows 3.1 or 95 PC, which has finally and irretrievably packed up after several years' loyal service. Management supply a brand new PC with Windows XP, expecting it to Just Work. The new motherboard requires drivers which were not built for any version of Windows capable of running the mission-critical software.
Of course, I would say it was a short-sighted move to use closed-source software in the first place {but then, I would say that -- after all, I'm a sphenisciphile}.
I have a feeling the backwards compatibility in Windows, in practice anyway, actually serves to benefit the average consumer more than it does the average business.
Yes, a fair proportion of the aforementioned dodgy software consists of cheap games and educational software aimed at kids, who will have temper tantrums if and when a loving parent is unable to make it work; much of the rest is cheap, alternative home office software, bought by people too poor to buy and too honest to pirate MS Office.
Despite the hype, by no means all establishments are using 100% Microsoft supplied software. There is a lot of dodgy legacy software out there, running on Windows, written using a variety of questionable techniques that most people don't get to know about, simply because the source code is kept hidden.
Every new version of Windows has to support all this old, broken software, because someone, somewhere is using it for a critical business application. Some of this old, broken software does things like control laboratory instruments. Engineers, technicians and scientists are often unable to use Windows-driven equipment to its full potential, simply because the software does not allow them to do some particular operation that was easy enough with its manual predecessor -- and they cannot modify the software, nor write their own. {We tried, at my former employer; we did successfully reverse-engineer one or two things; but on the whole I, and our development manager, found it simpler just to ditch the computer-controlled test equipment and build manual, analogue test sets.}
Yet more of this software is device drivers. Manufacturers in the Far East develop driver software on pirated Windows using pirated development tools. {They could easily develop Open Source drivers, but they don't need to: as far as the authors are concerned, Windows is available gratis anyway.} Windows needs a full complement of device drivers, otherwise existing hardware becomes obsolete and its owners become annoyed.
If Microsoft introduce a new version of Windows which breaks compatibility with old versions, then they will lose customers. It is as simple as that. If there is some important piece of software that cannot be used anymore, then alternatives will be evaluated; and questions will be asked. One of those questions might be "Why have we been paying money for this, when this does just as good a job for much less?" Another of those questions might be "Whose freaking saved documents are these anyway?"
So when it comes to backwards compatibility, Microsoft are damned if they do, and damned if they don't. If they keep backwards compatibility, it makes Windows slower, harder to test and more prone to errors. If they eschew backwards compatibility, it makes Windows a lot less attractive.
It's important to point out that these problems do not exist with Open Source software. Although binary compatibility will break from time to time, when it becomes necessary to add new features to a kernel or heavily-used library, source code can always be recompiled. Sometimes a patch may be necessary; but at least it's possible for someone to figure out how to patch a piece of software, even if the original author is no longer supporting it. And since file formats are open, migrating from one Open Source application to another is invariably less painful than migrating from Closed Source to Open Source. If the new application doesn't already have a suitable import filter, then one can be added; or a conversion tool can be written.
Ah, but I'm old-fashioned like that:-) Still, it's good to know there's an equivalent place to tap an unencrypted digital signal..... at least until they integrate all the decryption stuff onto the display panel itself {but even then, there might well be a need for a manufacturer's test point, in order for appliances to be verified for correct operation before they leave the factory.....}
Of course, the real professional pirates won't bother to crack the encryption; as long as the pattern of zeros and ones in the copy is exactly the same as the pattern of zeros and ones in the original, the player can decode it correctly. So they will just stamp out exact bit-for-bit copies. It's not necessary to understand what something means to copy it -- you needn't be fluent in a foreign language to copy exactly a passage of text written in that language.
My favourite technique for defeating copy-prevention is to get the RGB signals from the tube grid drives, and regenerate the timing data from the scan coil drives. With just some elementary signal conditioning {a few resistors, capacitors and op-amps which will fit easily on a small piece of copper strip breadboard} you can derive a signal set ready to feed into any fully-wired SCART input.
Unfortunately for those who would exercise their Statutory Right of Fair Dealing in this way, modern TV sets so far have tended to be based on LCD or plasma technology. But now, Samsung have released a HDTV which uses a cathode ray tube: see this review on The Register's hardware site.
Also, it should not be forgotten that the people in the labs -- ordinary people who enjoy a good movie as much as the next person -- know exactly how to defeat copy prevention technology {which is a mathematical impossibility anyway}. It's true what they say: What do you call someone who knows just as much as an engineer, works just as hard as an engineer and gets paid less than an engineer? A technician.
It's not so much that the law is declared invalid just because someone is acquitted of the offence; what's most important here is that nobody has ever been convicted of that particular offence before. {Nor are they ever likely to be, for reasons already stated}. Therefore, the court is determining not whether or not the defendant actually did whatever they were alleged to have done, but whether or not it actually is an offence. The outcome of such a decision will definitely set a precedent.
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No. Closed Source doesn't do it better, and that's the whole point. What these people need includes the freedom to develop software for themselves, precisely in order to break their dependency on us. As I mentioned several posts above, there's no point in teaching someone to fish if they then depend on you for the bait they use. Open Source is the only way to set the users free, and it's the users we should be concerned about. The mission is not to get people turned on to existing software as quickly as possible but at the expense of some of their freedom. The mission is to end the Age of Scarcity and usher in the New Age of Plenty -- where there will be no place for Closed Source software. Then and only then will the First Industrial Revolution be finished.
As to the rest of the points you raised, I didn't bother to respond because frankly, they're mainly irrelevant. Prototypes often don't look anything like the finished design. The price will come down over time, once local factories are established.
And there's actually a very good reason to reinvent the wheel, sometimes: if somebody else has already patented the wheel, and seeking to hold you to ransom by demanding royalties, then it might be better in the long run for you to invent a different kind of wheel; at least, until the patent on the original expires.
It has to be Open Source. That much is non-negotiable. Anything proprietary will only keep the Developing World dependent on the Developed World -- which in turn will keep them from ever truly joining the Developed World.
But is any of that software localised to these people's languages? Chances are no, in which case it's going to need to be re-compiled anyway. And it's not a lot of extra effort do that for an Open Source OS such as GNU/Linux or one of the BSDs.
Actually, language isn't the only localisation issue. I can't quite see anybody in the Third World needing to know the capitals of the states of the United States of America or the names, birthdays and inside leg measurements {divided by 2.54 at that} of the past US Presidents.
And that's even assuming they would open up the Source Code. Because without Source Code, it would be useless; the dependency on the Developed Nations would still exist. {Obviously, people will be dependent on experienced programmers from the Developed World in the beginning. But in an Open Source environment, they will be able to apply everything they learn, and one day not be dependent on the West anymore.}
That software will still be useless without proper localisation and Source Code. And it's going to take a lot less than fifteen years {more like 25 years: the BBC Model B, standard educational microcomputer in the UK, came out in 1982} to re-create it. Plus, I'll guess most of it is obsolete anyway -- there's probably a maximum of three years' work, including overcoming the particular challenges imposed by the hardware.
Being mainly Closed Source, the software you're talking about probably is quite sloppily written. Will it run well on what is, by necessity, a lean machine? Really we come back to the same argument against equipping users in the Third World with our cast-off computer equipment; it sounds like a nice idea but it's unworkable in practice.
We'd do better to start again from scratch. New machine, clean slate. Reprogram according to the machine's strengths and weaknesses. Make it all Open Source, so that anybody who discovers they have an aptitude for programming can "get up and have a go". Eventually, there will be factories out there; making the new, improved versions of these things, more locally to the point of use, and providing decent jobs.
It's really a massive project. If it's twice as much effort as shipping out a few containers of used PCs and software, we'll have got off lightly. The returns on that investment are going to be staggering. What we are looking at is potentially the end of the Economics of Scarcity, and the ushering in of a new Age of Plenty -- which was always the logical conclusion of IR1.
One of the goals must be to break the dependence of the Developing World on the Developed World. Otherwise, they will never be playing anything but second fiddle. And we've already made all the mistakes, so they should have an easier time than we did.
Educating people includes teaching people how computers work. Not just how to change the font in Microsoft Word or draw bell-ends in Paint Shop Pro or prevent chip pan fires with Welephant. How to create their own software. For that, you need a programming language and you need to read other people's Source Code. Please don't think this is cheating. You learn to be a writer by reading other people's books. You
If you're saying that if I buy your software, I can't replace it with anybody else's software; or that if I work for you then I can't work for anyone else, then that is against EU law.
Yes, it's wrong of Microsoft as it's wrong of you. If you were in Mainland Europe, the "agreements" your customers had signed would not be worth the paper they were printed upon: anti-competitive practices are well and truly illegal, and damn right too.
Microsoft are abusing their dominant position, which they only reached in the first place by abusing a dominant position.
If it had been powered by Windows -- or any proprietary, closed-source software for that matter -- it would have created a dependency on that software. Dependency per se is what is considered bad here. If the developing world is ever to develop, it must be given the autonomy to develop for itself, without anybody else's say-so. Whatever problems this thing is meant to solve {can you honestly say you knew what a CD-ROM drive would be useful for, the first time you saw one? When you saw a ZX81 for the first time, could you anticipate the full extent of IR2?} won't be solved any better or faster if its users can't program it themselves. "Field maintainability" in the context of a general-purpose computer specifically includes the ability to write programs that access every one of its features. Anything else would be like giving people knives for free, then insisting they pay you to sharpen them whenever they got blunt.
Employing local programmers to create a solution to a particular problem might start out more expensive than buying pret-a-courir software from overseas; but you have to remember that local programmers pay local taxes, shop in local stores, take their families to visit local tourist attractions and contribute to local good causes. So, that money stays in the local economy -- as opposed to being permanently exported overseas, making the rich richer.
To use the "giving someone a fish vs. teaching them how to fish" cliché, Microsoft et al want to teach people to fish -- but only as a reason to sell them bait. Negroponte's initiative starts out with teaching people how to fish and ensuring they can get their own bait.
That sounds like the sort of thing we would have done using a pencil, ruler and graph paper when I was doing my O-levels. You plot each variable against each of the others, shade in all the obviously unacceptable regions, and anywhere within whatever is left is OK.
Having said that, if you already know somehow which traps are least likely to be catching rabbits, the most logical thing to do is move them! Viewed in this light, this is an example of an Unrealistic Problem.
Bad idea. The water closet might be appropriate for rainy countries, but it's totally impractical to use four to six litres of water per slash / dump in most of Africa. Dry sanitation has to be the way forward. Once you have killed all the germs in the shit, what remains can be used as a fertiliser {though preferably not for anything intended for human consumption -- the food chain exists for a reason}.
There's really nothing to research on AIDS. Slip on a rubber Johnny every time you have a shag. Inhale heroin, don't inject it; if you must inject it, don't share works. Avoid contact with blood, sperm and vaginal secretions of anyone not known to be free of infection. HIV cannot pass through unbroken skin and is killed by almost anything stronger than water {even a HIV sufferer's urine will kill the virus}.
The real nub of the problem stems from those in positions of power having some kind of distaste for perfectly natural human activities, like having sex and getting high.
The Freeplay radio model of which I have an example is actually fairly field-maintainable. The casing is transparent. There is a tray covering the clockspring, fastened with screws from the inside; so when you separate the two halves of the outer casing, that scary ribbon of razor-sharp steel is still contained, requiring a deliberate act to expose it. The drive belt does perish and need replacing after a few years. The PCB looks like it was hand-populated and is built using mainly discrete components. The copper lands are big enough not to require the use of a temperature controlled, needle-point soldering iron for working on them.
I believe that with just a power supply, a schematic diagram and a crystal earphone {certainly more affordable than an oscilloscope, and surprisingly useful for troubleshooting circuits working in the audio frequency range} it wouldn't be too hard to fault-find the Freeplay radio. After doing a few, you could easily get used to the most common faults. A repair shop serving a large enough base could keep a few whole spare boards in stock, on a swap-and-repair-later basis {the removed ones being repaired for re-use later as replacements}.
Actually, as far as the security angle goes, it's for post-mortem purposes as much as anything else. If anything does go terribly wrong after deployment, at least we can trace back and fix it -- and then release a patch. Initial audit is little more than taking a quick peek at the code in an editor, compiling it on an isolated machine, running it as a non-privileged user and seeing if it does what it was expected to. Which is not much, but it's still more than we could ever do with Closed Source. For every bad guy out there who would write a piece of malicious software and release it Open Source {and that really isn't as easy as it sounds; most of the people who are good enough programmers to write Open Source software actually have better things todo with their time than mindless vandalism}, there are at least ten good guys who would put a stop to it.
:)
But that's not to say that there aren't other benefits to our insistence on Open Source software: for one, we have nothing to fear from the licencing gestapo, which is a huge bonus. For another, we aren't constrained to work the exact same way someone else thinks we should work -- instead, we can modify the software to suit the way we work. For example: instead of downloading a "standard form" letter from a server, editing it in a word processor, printing it out and faxing it, we have only to fill in a web form and click the submit button -- and a neatly-formatted fax comes out of the customer's fax machine. If we get a positive response, the details are already there waiting to be recalled; and we need only click another link to transfer them to the customer database.
Anyway, if the staff want hacking tools, they don't have to download them off the Internet. We've got them all right here on our workstations
At my workplace, you are allowed to install any software you like on your workstation ..... as long as the IT department have seen the source code.
..... we probably are the exception rather than the rule.
But then, we do have a company policy actually preferring manual methods over closed-source software
In order to be acceptable, Open Source DRM must preserve statutory Fair Dealing rights, the eventual expiration of copyright protection {unchangeable once set, in order to guard against the retroactive application of a new or changed law which would be a violation of the UN declaration on human rights, UK Human Rights Act and US constitution} and also allow for some mechanism to accept special permission. Example: the band, Ocean Colour Scene, granted me verbal permission {in a drunken conversation nonetheless; but the fact of us all being pissed at the time won't make any difference in a court of law} to copy any of their albums for my personal use and my friends and family. There would have to be some method for people in similar situations to inform the DRM system that they have additional rights over and above those already granted to them by the Law of the Land. This must be built-into the software from day one, to guard against the {very real, in the prevailing economic climate} possibility that the company could go out of business and effectively take your statutory rights with them.
It would also be nice to see a legal requirement that any DRM system which fails to preserve a user's full set of statutory rights would be deemed an ineffective technological protection measure {hence, open season!}
So how do you get an RGB signal into your TV sets, then? RGB is what goes straight to the tube / panel -- anything else needs processing and gives a noticeably inferior picture. Does every manufacturer have their own proprietary connector or something?
I guess some expensive, non-CRT TV sets can probably tolerate the scan rates used by PC monitors. All TV sets bigger than 35cm. have RGB SCART inputs; but these are expecting TV-style, negative-going composite sync, so you might have to do some rudimentary signal conditioning {use a 2903 dual comparator, which has open-collector outputs that can safely be wired together, and a pull-up resistor -- you can pick up 12 volts somewhere like a disc drive power cable. While you are at it, pull pins 8 and 16 of the SCART socket high, to select RGB mode}.
If your graphics card will sync down to 50Hz interlaced, it should theoretically be able to display on any set with an RGB input -- if you can create the appropriate modeline. TV sets are generally more resistant to out-of-spec sync rates than monitors, since they have to tolerate all manner of weirdy shit inbetween stations.
How about using a kind of photographic printing process? Detect pits and lands on master disc using laser. Cut out pits corresponding to lands, leaving lands corresponding to pits, in metal stamper. Stamp out pattern of pits and lands in plastic blanks. Metallise stamped surface. Add protective layer.
.....
You don't need to crack any encryption, much less touch an analogue signal. This method is obviously only good for large runs
Phraseology such as "nailing" "chicks" sounds rather sexist, so you lose already.
It's the person on the inside that counts. If you have a problem with what I'm wearing, it's your problem. Just like it's your problem if you have a problem with the colour of my skin or what's between my legs. It's your problem, and you don't have a right to take it out on me.
..... or clothesism.
But, some people just have the idea in their minds that there are two types of people in the world, good enough and not good enough, and that they can be told apart visually. That idea can manifest itself as sexism, racism, homophobia
Just because a person can change their clothing more easily than they can change their sex or the colour of their skin, does not mean that this is legitimate grounds for discrimination. In fact, I would say the opposite: as long as the sin of clothesism is perpetrated, there will exist some justification in some people's minds for racism, sexism and all the other -isms out there.
The obvious answer is to unify the sex discrimination, race relations, disability discrimination, gender preference discrimination and all other similar laws into one new law, making it a criminal offence to discriminate against any person on any grounds beyond aptitude for a particular endeavour. Your would not say to a black employee, "Look, can you try to stay out of the way this afternoon, please? We've got some important new potential customers coming around, but they're Ku Klux Klan. It's not going to do us any favours if they see you here."
Of course, I would say it was a short-sighted move to use closed-source software in the first place {but then, I would say that -- after all, I'm a sphenisciphile}. Yes, a fair proportion of the aforementioned dodgy software consists of cheap games and educational software aimed at kids, who will have temper tantrums if and when a loving parent is unable to make it work; much of the rest is cheap, alternative home office software, bought by people too poor to buy and too honest to pirate MS Office.
Microsoft have made a rod for their own back.
Despite the hype, by no means all establishments are using 100% Microsoft supplied software. There is a lot of dodgy legacy software out there, running on Windows, written using a variety of questionable techniques that most people don't get to know about, simply because the source code is kept hidden.
Every new version of Windows has to support all this old, broken software, because someone, somewhere is using it for a critical business application. Some of this old, broken software does things like control laboratory instruments. Engineers, technicians and scientists are often unable to use Windows-driven equipment to its full potential, simply because the software does not allow them to do some particular operation that was easy enough with its manual predecessor -- and they cannot modify the software, nor write their own. {We tried, at my former employer; we did successfully reverse-engineer one or two things; but on the whole I, and our development manager, found it simpler just to ditch the computer-controlled test equipment and build manual, analogue test sets.}
Yet more of this software is device drivers. Manufacturers in the Far East develop driver software on pirated Windows using pirated development tools. {They could easily develop Open Source drivers, but they don't need to: as far as the authors are concerned, Windows is available gratis anyway.} Windows needs a full complement of device drivers, otherwise existing hardware becomes obsolete and its owners become annoyed.
If Microsoft introduce a new version of Windows which breaks compatibility with old versions, then they will lose customers. It is as simple as that. If there is some important piece of software that cannot be used anymore, then alternatives will be evaluated; and questions will be asked. One of those questions might be "Why have we been paying money for this, when this does just as good a job for much less?" Another of those questions might be "Whose freaking saved documents are these anyway?"
So when it comes to backwards compatibility, Microsoft are damned if they do, and damned if they don't. If they keep backwards compatibility, it makes Windows slower, harder to test and more prone to errors. If they eschew backwards compatibility, it makes Windows a lot less attractive.
It's important to point out that these problems do not exist with Open Source software. Although binary compatibility will break from time to time, when it becomes necessary to add new features to a kernel or heavily-used library, source code can always be recompiled. Sometimes a patch may be necessary; but at least it's possible for someone to figure out how to patch a piece of software, even if the original author is no longer supporting it. And since file formats are open, migrating from one Open Source application to another is invariably less painful than migrating from Closed Source to Open Source. If the new application doesn't already have a suitable import filter, then one can be added; or a conversion tool can be written.
False. The H is pronounced, and as such begins with a consonant sound, calling for "a".
Ah, but I'm old-fashioned like that :-) Still, it's good to know there's an equivalent place to tap an unencrypted digital signal ..... at least until they integrate all the decryption stuff onto the display panel itself {but even then, there might well be a need for a manufacturer's test point, in order for appliances to be verified for correct operation before they leave the factory .....}
Of course, the real professional pirates won't bother to crack the encryption; as long as the pattern of zeros and ones in the copy is exactly the same as the pattern of zeros and ones in the original, the player can decode it correctly. So they will just stamp out exact bit-for-bit copies. It's not necessary to understand what something means to copy it -- you needn't be fluent in a foreign language to copy exactly a passage of text written in that language.
It's a HDMI cable, not an HDMI cable.
My favourite technique for defeating copy-prevention is to get the RGB signals from the tube grid drives, and regenerate the timing data from the scan coil drives. With just some elementary signal conditioning {a few resistors, capacitors and op-amps which will fit easily on a small piece of copper strip breadboard} you can derive a signal set ready to feed into any fully-wired SCART input.
Unfortunately for those who would exercise their Statutory Right of Fair Dealing in this way, modern TV sets so far have tended to be based on LCD or plasma technology. But now, Samsung have released a HDTV which uses a cathode ray tube: see this review on The Register's hardware site.
Also, it should not be forgotten that the people in the labs -- ordinary people who enjoy a good movie as much as the next person -- know exactly how to defeat copy prevention technology {which is a mathematical impossibility anyway}. It's true what they say: What do you call someone who knows just as much as an engineer, works just as hard as an engineer and gets paid less than an engineer? A technician.
It's not so much that the law is declared invalid just because someone is acquitted of the offence; what's most important here is that nobody has ever been convicted of that particular offence before. {Nor are they ever likely to be, for reasons already stated}. Therefore, the court is determining not whether or not the defendant actually did whatever they were alleged to have done, but whether or not it actually is an offence. The outcome of such a decision will definitely set a precedent.