You asked the question in a leading manor and have got odd responses as a result:
'Scrapping' pages is exactly what the Internet archive or Goggle do, this is common and generally accepted practice (look at the amount spend on SEO). It is also assumed that these operate without human supervision and do not need to read or compile with the human TOS of your site. Critically spiders should compile with the 'robots.txt'. If you do this you have the moral high ground. If you don't then it can be interoperated as criminal under the laws such as the Computer Misuse Act.
Similarly no one suggests that everyone using gMail is a parasite. Most 'free' services come with a very explicit contract detailing their allowed uses. If you compile with the contract you are fine, if not, you are again breaking the law.
Probably more importantly, this is almost certainly a bad business discussion:
Given that you as an employee have judged it as ethically questionable you can be fairly sure a significant proportion of your clients are likely to feel similarly.
Even if you are complying with the contract from your free service you are almost certainly not getting a SLA in return. If the supplier decides your business is dodgy, or you are putting too much burden on their system they will shut down all of your accounts without warning or reprieve. Constantly battling this is likely to cost you more then the hosting in the long run.
Page scrapping is very unreliable. Even when the source site is cooperating they invariable break it on every edit. What will happen to your business when the source site detects your scrapping and decides to serve goatse to your spider, and hence your clients?
To some extent Mono will always be playing catch up. (Though it is interesting to note that by my count Mono has more libraries/features that.NET doesn't implement then the other-way round.)
The Dynamic Language Runtime is currently where Microsoft is focusing is platform development for the next release, so this is likely to be the area Mono is least compatible.
Languages and platforms are about the correct tool for the job. I mainly use Python, but am currently working on a issue that would be trivial on.NET and is proving a real head scratcher in Python:
Copy a bitmap (from file) into the clipboard.
To nit pick I can also name one big platform that is.NET but none of the three you suggest (Xbox360).
They have not copied any of the games' original assets, they have taken static 2d screen-shots of them. This is directly comparable to real world photography.
In this case it is defiantly very lame, probably illegal (breaking the original games' EULAs at least), but hardly immoral.
Mono's.NET API implementations (WinForms etc) are to.NET what WINE is to Windows. (I.e. great for easy porting, but destined never to be perfect). Though WinForms is a much simpler and better documented API then the Win32 beast.
However Mono's VM is more comparable to x86. It is a published standard and Intel's initial development of it doesn't give them much intrinsic advantage over AMD. (And hopefully Mono's OSS nature will prove equivalent to Intel's fabrication advantage).
Mono's compilers can also be directly compared to GCC v Intel's compiler. No one would write off either, just because Intel also designed the architecture.
Then you come to Mono's own libraries GTK#, Tao, Gecko#.
I am certainly not suggesting this tells us anything about theoretical ideals, just that in the given environment, being religions can't be at 'expense of the many'.
Actually the System Requirements are disingenuous. Novell want you to use their desktop, but I can confirm that the RPM works fine on Gentoo with at least the AMD64 versions of the standard OOo 2.2 and 2.3.
It also provides a stand alone program that should solve the problem for anything that supports ODF.
It is also BSD licensed so the are no license issues, at least for those of us lucky enough to live in a country that dose not recognize software patents.
n.b The license also covers redistributing the source if anyone knows where it is?
I would compare it more to coming home to find your garden vandalized, you double check all your locks, but rebuilding the house seems a bit extreme.
As with everything the are different answers for different people:
In a lot of corporate environments it is quicker to re-image the machine then to even turn it on to see what the user is complaining about. On a home PC with a 100+ games installed (each with a fiddly CD-key), I am not going to reinstall just because some idiot downloaded trojen to their throw away low-privileged account. (Though I wouldn't let anyone use that computer for banking before or after it was compromised)
Anyway a lot of people have put a lot of time into this problem, I hope they don't all get fired for being negligent:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jail_(computer_security)
By the same logic you have no way of knowing if your machine has been compromised by an unknown vulnerability at any given time. You must spend your whole time rebuilding.
I am happy with the assumption if malware is capable of undetectably rooting my box, and remaining undetectable once I know I am looking for it, then it is probably not going to tip off an average user using an unprivileged account. Conversely anything that dose tip-off unprivileged users can probably be removed by root.
But fetching the banner doesn't let them log which computer you are on (assuming the norm of browsing from a dynamic-IP and/or behind NAT), let alone who is listening, and certainly not 'who bought the music' as claimed.
Given that the root-kit could easily be feeding them all the information on your PC (passwords, contacts, other music you have 'acquired' etc.) the extent of the information it sends is highly relevant.
(Though from my point of view the captua for this post sums it up best: If you trust Sony you are going to be 'screwed'!)
Slashdot Mirror
When 100% of its surface area is translucent?
You asked the question in a leading manor and have got odd responses as a result:
'Scrapping' pages is exactly what the Internet archive or Goggle do, this is common and generally accepted practice (look at the amount spend on SEO). It is also assumed that these operate without human supervision and do not need to read or compile with the human TOS of your site. Critically spiders should compile with the 'robots.txt'. If you do this you have the moral high ground. If you don't then it can be interoperated as criminal under the laws such as the Computer Misuse Act.
Similarly no one suggests that everyone using gMail is a parasite. Most 'free' services come with a very explicit contract detailing their allowed uses. If you compile with the contract you are fine, if not, you are again breaking the law.
Probably more importantly, this is almost certainly a bad business discussion:
Given that you as an employee have judged it as ethically questionable you can be fairly sure a significant proportion of your clients are likely to feel similarly.
Even if you are complying with the contract from your free service you are almost certainly not getting a SLA in return. If the supplier decides your business is dodgy, or you are putting too much burden on their system they will shut down all of your accounts without warning or reprieve. Constantly battling this is likely to cost you more then the hosting in the long run.
Page scrapping is very unreliable. Even when the source site is cooperating they invariable break it on every edit. What will happen to your business when the source site detects your scrapping and decides to serve goatse to your spider, and hence your clients?
Except I can also run Mono on the PS3.
To some extent Mono will always be playing catch up. (Though it is interesting to note that by my count Mono has more libraries/features that .NET doesn't implement then the other-way round.)
The Dynamic Language Runtime is currently where Microsoft is focusing is platform development for the next release, so this is likely to be the area Mono is least compatible.
Languages and platforms are about the correct tool for the job. I mainly use Python, but am currently working on a issue that would be trivial on .NET and is proving a real head scratcher in Python:
Copy a bitmap (from file) into the clipboard.
To nit pick I can also name one big platform that is .NET but none of the three you suggest (Xbox360).
Eclipse (Emonic) is my preference, but Emacs (csharp-mode) also works surprisingly well.
It needs porting to be pure dot-net first, but this is under-way; it is mostly working:
http://code.google.com/p/paint-mono/
Mono will soon support both Python and Ruby via the MS developed Iron* versions.
They have not copied any of the games' original assets, they have taken static 2d screen-shots of them. This is directly comparable to real world photography.
In this case it is defiantly very lame, probably illegal (breaking the original games' EULAs at least), but hardly immoral.
Yes, for the right price ...
You realise folding at home is software right?
Actually it goes further then this:
.NET API implementations (WinForms etc) are to .NET what WINE is to Windows. (I.e. great for easy porting, but destined never to be perfect). Though WinForms is a much simpler and better documented API then the Win32 beast.
Mono's
However Mono's VM is more comparable to x86. It is a published standard and Intel's initial development of it doesn't give them much intrinsic advantage over AMD. (And hopefully Mono's OSS nature will prove equivalent to Intel's fabrication advantage).
Mono's compilers can also be directly compared to GCC v Intel's compiler. No one would write off either, just because Intel also designed the architecture.
Then you come to Mono's own libraries GTK#, Tao, Gecko#.
See http://blog.secondlife.com/2005/08/01/second-life-in-mono/ for a clear example of Mono as the best tool for the job.
Why the Wii is PowerPC based?
However her finger will not change significantly month-to-month. Just set the system to recalibrate after every successful login.
Surely the question is why isn't they another way to finish the game then by defeating the boss!
I am certainly not suggesting this tells us anything about theoretical ideals, just that in the given environment, being religions can't be at 'expense of the many'.
You can't choose not to be infected with parasites. Parasites exist because they cost the host less then an effective defense.
In the case of religion this means that the cost of believing in religion is less then the cost of not believing (or at least was, for some people).
Actually Darwinian evolution makes that extremely unlikely. Anything as common as religion can not poses a selective disadvantage.
Actually the System Requirements are disingenuous. Novell want you to use their desktop, but I can confirm that the RPM works fine on Gentoo with at least the AMD64 versions of the standard OOo 2.2 and 2.3.
It also provides a stand alone program that should solve the problem for anything that supports ODF.
It is also BSD licensed so the are no license issues, at least for those of us lucky enough to live in a country that dose not recognize software patents.
n.b The license also covers redistributing the source if anyone knows where it is?
Or Novell:
http://download.novell.com/SummaryFree.jsp?buildid=ESrjfdE4U58~
Wouldn't that be:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dwarf_characters#Talkie_Toaster
The Nokia N-series phones have used WebKit based browsers long before the iPhone was a glint in Steve's eye.
They even released a proper open source version you can compile and install yourself.
I would compare it more to coming home to find your garden vandalized, you double check all your locks, but rebuilding the house seems a bit extreme. As with everything the are different answers for different people: In a lot of corporate environments it is quicker to re-image the machine then to even turn it on to see what the user is complaining about. On a home PC with a 100+ games installed (each with a fiddly CD-key), I am not going to reinstall just because some idiot downloaded trojen to their throw away low-privileged account. (Though I wouldn't let anyone use that computer for banking before or after it was compromised) Anyway a lot of people have put a lot of time into this problem, I hope they don't all get fired for being negligent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jail_(computer_security)
By the same logic you have no way of knowing if your machine has been compromised by an unknown vulnerability at any given time. You must spend your whole time rebuilding.
I am happy with the assumption if malware is capable of undetectably rooting my box, and remaining undetectable once I know I am looking for it, then it is probably not going to tip off an average user using an unprivileged account. Conversely anything that dose tip-off unprivileged users can probably be removed by root.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/20214963
But fetching the banner doesn't let them log which computer you are on (assuming the norm of browsing from a dynamic-IP and/or behind NAT), let alone who is listening, and certainly not 'who bought the music' as claimed.
Given that the root-kit could easily be feeding them all the information on your PC (passwords, contacts, other music you have 'acquired' etc.) the extent of the information it sends is highly relevant.
(Though from my point of view the captua for this post sums it up best: If you trust Sony you are going to be 'screwed'!)